Lyrical Diagrams – Book cover
For the past couple weeks I’ve been tweaking and re-working some drawings and diagrams I started over two years ago. It seems the book of Lyrical Diagrams I created with writer David Greenslade will be published by Shearsman Books in April 2012. I’ve not had any of my drawings published before so this is really exciting for me!! The book Lyrical Diagrams has 100 poems and 100 diagrams. Here’s a glimpse of the book cover I made:
I blogged about this project back in July 2010.
Miami’s street art
When you leave your hometown and settle somewhere new, upon your return you’ll always notice the small changes – the color of the front door changed, cars are on steroids, and your closest bakery has shut down. However, nothing about these outdoor murals is small, they are a huge leap into Miami’s ever-growing art scene. Located in the Wynwood District on NW 2nd Ave and between 20th and 36th St there is a cultural hub of artists, cafe’s, gallery’s and these striking pieces of Urban Art.
Notice the blue sky, this piece below continued to the left for another half block!
If anyone knows the name of any of these artists please let me know.
Times are changing for Miami it’s not just about celebrities, fast cars and CSI anymore.
That’s my mom below, she’s there to say hello and show you the scale in this one.
Back to Cardiff today. Thanks Miami it has been fun!
Sgin Ti Syniad
New projects, new adventures, new collaborators.
Sgin Ti Syniad – that’s the name of this community project, based around Sgint. On the project I’m the creative techie person and it’s all in the welsh language, so what better opportunity to improve my Welsh, especially with SaySomethinginWelsh!
The past two weeks we have been recruiting and working with our newly formed Creative Team, which is made up of 6 very cool people aged 16-19 from Peblig in Caernarfon. Bethan Marlow is directing and together with the Creative Team we are going to make a film, create a new Empty Shop, social design techie things around Caernarfon and much more. So far the Creative Team are at the beginning of training in film, editing, and acting and we are starting to know each other better and realise everyone’s involvement in the project.
Find us on Facebook, twitter, and vimeo and watch how the Creative Team grows throughout this unique process. Above are snippets of the end of the second week, follow us on Facebook to see much more.
Bethan and I took the Creative Team on a trip to Black Rocks:
And here is our wicked Creative Team!
Sgin Ti Syniad is supported by Galeri, Theatr Gen and Pobol Peblig.
Click ends it’s 12 day tour around South Wales
On Tuesday Click ended its 12 day tour around South Wales at Mess Up the Mess’ home base theatre Ammanford Miner’s Theatre. After 12 days, with 12 actors, 8 shows, 6 locations, a team of 4 techies and 99% of the cast and crew under 18 years old, we were more than thrilled to have wonderful audience responses to the shows.
I worked on Click as the video artist creating and animating Skype, Facebook, and youtube chats. I also edited our Welsh ninja videos.
Click was written by Dafydd James and tackles hard hitting issues including those of young carers, youth sexuality, teenage pregnancy, homophobia and identity with an in your face humour that youth audiences will respect.
Here’s a bit of Welsh Ninja.
On QLab I set up all the projection cues for the show and I mentored Elis (a 14 year old who is twice my height!) on how to run the projection and from the first show he was able to run the video from back stage. All in all he did brilliantly with only a few minor hiccups.
During the tour I was filming the process as well as creating voxpops with all the members involved. I’ve been communicating with our project partners in NewZealand, Hong Kong and Australia encouraging them to film as well and leading them with guidelines and suggestions. The process on how the project came to life will be condensed into a short documentary which I’ll start editing as soon as the last show in Australia is complete.
A review on the show is here. Here’s a post I wrote about this project just over a year ago when I got on board. And here’s another one.
These are photos I took during the dress run at the Lyric, Camarthen.
Colombia
Today I have finally updated my flickr account with some photos from my travels in Colombia. Below are some of my favourite.
After creating CuatrOOjos events for 5 weeks non-stop in Barranquilla, we headed to Bogota for some family fun. It was my grandmother’s 80th birthday and a-week-long hanging out session with family from all over… After Bogota we traveled by bus to San Gil and went caving and white water rafting. Later we headed up towards Medellin and spent some time at Las Cascadas de Curi (Curi’s Waterfalls), which is what see below.
After more bus journeys we made it to Medellin and hung out with my mom, cousins, aunt and uncle. Medellin is an awesome artistic driven city. Not as cool as Barranquilla, but much more laid back and accessible than Bogota. For all you Bogota lovers – yes, I said it! Near Medellin is the famous Piedra del Peñol and we took a day trip there. After climbing 649 steps up the enormous rock, this was our view. More on el Peñol here.
Back in Medellin we took trips around the city and took the cable cars all the way up crossing two mountains. Here is the view from and around there. And more here.
I made other short trips to El Jardin in Antioquia and to the rainforest in Rio Claro. I filmed some GoPro videos in Rio Claro, which hopefully I’ll edit soon. I’m glad to have finally but these photos up on the web, don’t know what has taken me so long.
Music for Silent Films
On Sunday 21 August the musical composer Chris Becker and bassist Thomas Helton presented an evening of improvised music to silent films in Houston, Texas. The combination of laptop computer, kaoss pad and upright bass was said to be sublime. Musical performances were made to my film ‘25Years‘ alongside films by Noe Kidder, Jonathan Jindra, Robert Thoth, and Pablo Gimenez Zapiola.
Using the popular software program Ableton Live and a large collection of samples musical or otherwise, Becker improvises a soundtrack to each silent film, selecting and layering samples like the pieces of an aural jigsaw puzzle. Although the music for each film begins with a prepared, partially composed “template” of sounds and samples, once the film hits the screen the improvised dialogue between the music and the image begins. No two performances to a film are ever the same.
Last Friday Becker and Helton were on KUHF’s The Front Row talking about the project and playing my film and another whilst improvising live on the radio. You can listen to the interview and improvisation of the day here.
A recent interview with Becker in Free Houston Post about Music for Silent Films can be found here.
Above image: “Goad” film by Noe Kidder and Ariane Anthony.
