FlashMorph
Sunday, March 1st. The Tate Modern. 2pm. An army of Morphs:
Nearly 200 of them, in fact, arranged in tribute to the late Tony Hart. I didn't know anything about the event until an invite early on Sunday, but I thought it sounded lovely, so I jumped on a train. I figured it would be a fairly small-scale event until I checked the Facebook event page and found nearly 800 confirmed guests. I arrived just as things were getting started: people were mingling and comparing Morphs of all shapes and sizes. Some were clearly labours of love; others were put together on nearby benches, and there was plenty of plasticine lying around. I had no Morph, sadly, so I figured I'd do my best to document the event.
There were many, many variations of Morph:
Plus one made from cardboard, and another (rather oddly) making a political statement.
Hundreds of passers-by came to take a look, and a crowd gathered on the steps of the Millennium Bridge:
I wandered around getting crowd shots for a while, then parked myself at the front of the competition area. Professional photographers with Rather Expensive Cameras were doing the same thing, and I did my best to blend in. A few media-people were interviewing anyone they could get hold of, and BBC News turned up (at least twice) and went live on News 24 to show Tony Hart's daughter presenting the prize for best Morph.
Everybody I saw spent a lot of time smiling, and it was a completely charming couple of hours. Isn't it great that things like this happen? I was happy with the photos, and one made Londonist1. Editing them was good fun, too. Now they're finished, I really want some plasticine.
- </required nonchalance>w00t!<required nonchalance> [↩]
#FlashDate
This Valentine's Day I went on a FlashDate. What's a FlashDate?
What: Beat the VDay blues with a Flashmob for single people.When: 2.22pm, Saturday 14th February, 2009
Where: In front of the National Gallery, London
How: Wear red or pink (if you can), bring a Valentine card for a stranger. Chocolates and flowers also welcome.
Why: Why not?
Sounds fun, right? I'd bumped into the organiser earlier in the week and she'd invited me along, and I figured it'd make for a fun few minutes at least. Happily it lasted much longer than that.
I arrived in central London a little later than intended and rushed to find appropriate gifts. Marks and Spencers obviously weren't selling Valentine's cards on Valentine's day - that'd be silly - but a smaller nearby shop had many, so I joined various slightly-guilty-looking people and found something appropriately cute but not-too-slushy.
I got back to Trafalgar Square at about ten past two and hung around for a bit, trying to spot any likely flashdatees. Over by the column a preacher of some denomination (I didn't pay much attention) was eulogising on the grace of his particular sky-fairy, and probably wouldn't have approved of flashdating (yay!). In front of the National Gallery was a street magician (overheard: "he was hot until he started doing magic") who'd attracted a large crowd, making it difficult to differentiate potential flashdaters. But before too long a group distinguished themselves by glancing at watches while nervously clutching roses, and at 2:21 I headed in their direction.
A few seconds after 2:22 someone kindly shouted from the National Gallery steps that the flashdate should BEGIN, and everyone scurried to deliver their payloads. I did so, and received a lovely handmade card in return. A couple of minutes later I was given another - "you look like you could do with a card" - and I felt terribly guilty that I had nothing to give back, especially when it was followed by a packet of rolos. This must have been a slight problem generally, as there were definitely more women than men - hopefully there weren't too many people left cardless.
The group was actually pretty large. I wasn't bothered whether there were 10 or 100 of us, but the event had been plugged on London radio, in the Metro, possibly on The One Show, and by the awesome Ben Goldacre, so I figured it would be well attended. I'd say there were ~50 people, which isn't bad going. There were lots of smiles and happy chatting, which was lovely, and everyone seemed to have heard about it a different way - some had been dragged along, some had found it on twitter, some had just caught it on the radio...it was fascinating to see how these things spread. I wasn't sure whether people would mind being photographed at a 'dating' event, but there were a couple of cameras evident, so I joined in and grabbed a few shots from the National Gallery steps.
A few minutes later, led by the inimitable @RadioKate, we headed into the Gallery itself. They'd promised a free tour for flashdaters, and while I wasn't there for the conversation at the desk, I hear it went something like this:
Us: Hello, we're here for the flashdate tour.
Them: The what?
Us: The flashdate tour. It's on your website, and was arranged by [such and such]...
Them: [phones someone]
--two minutes later--
Us: Did you find out?
Them: I called security to move you along. And if anyone does want to go in, they mustn't have balloons.
Which was pretty miserable of them. So we headed to a pub instead.
I took a fair few photos, and generally tried to mingle. I quickly realised a fair few people were Joinees, which was fantastic. I haven't been active in Join Me for a few years (as much as I ever was) but I matched a couple of people to names I remembered from the forums, and it was great to hear about Karmageddon etc. from those who'd actually been there. I let slip the Friday RAoKs at some point, but I think I'll pick it up again...
It was also entertaining to watch the general flirting unfold. I saw various phone numbers exchanged - some people getting multiple - so the event was clearly romantically productive (phrases like this are possibly why said phone numbers were nowhere near me - my second card did say 'call me', but that was all it said).
At the end of the evening there were nine of us left, so we headed out for a meal. We chose to view ourselves as the stalwarts who'd lasted: it wasn't that everyone else had paired off and left on proper dates. It was a touch tricky finding restaurants with space on Valentine's evening, but we eventually squeezed into a Chinatown restaurant. Great conversation and pretty good food followed.
If T-Rex had been there, he'd have reviewed it thus: FUN TIMES. No dates, but a fine way to spend Valentine's Day: the whole thing was lovely, and I'm very glad I went.
TAM: London announced
For the last few years I have gazed with envy, resentment and not a little drooiling at the annual bout of skeptical awesomeocity that goes down each summer in Las Vegas. The Amazing Meeting (henceforth known as TAM: Vegas, just because it then sounds like CSI and is therefore made of win) brings together many of the world's most interesting skeptical thinkers for a few days of lectures, comedy, magic, skeptical-guard-down chitchat, and general madness.
Sadly, I can never go: getting to and staying in Vegas is unfortunately way beyond my budget. For years there been rumours and fleeting mentions of a European version, but nothing's ever come of it. Until today.
New JREF President Phil Plait this afternoon announced TAM: London, to be held on October 3-4. May I say: w00t. And furthermore may I say: w00t^2. Just try and stop me being there.
Twilight London, from above
The things you can do with a helicoper, some gyros, and the nous to come up with the idea.
Telectroscope
The Telectroscope looks steampunky cool.
Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.
Must visit. Open until the 15th June.
People of London
Here is the deal. Here is how it works. If you live in London, everybody does you a favour. We pretend like London isn't where most interesting things happen, so you don't have to feel embarrassed talking to people who live in Milton Keynes. This is how it is. We're nice like that.
Here's another thing. You live in London, where you're surrounded by many interesting people. This makes you inherently liberal. We don't nuke small-town we-hate-change-and-anyone-not-like-us Tories who infect the greener areas because we know that decent city-dwelling folk can appreciate the world's eclectic nature without getting scared. Your votes cancel out the dumb ones. This is all part of the goodness that goes with living in the capital city.
People of London. If you were any part of this, the deal is off. I'd revoking your privileges. Get out. Seriously, this is not a drill. Once we find Charlie Brooker, and I don't think it'll be that hard, he'll be round to pack your stuff.
The Victorian tightrope-walking violin-playing street entertainer
I was looking for pictures of tightrope walkers this evening. Flickr kept thinking I meant 'tight rope', which brings up very different results. *shudder*. Still, I found some cool stuff, but kept being drawn back to this guy:
Now that's street entertainment. There's something about this shot I really like - maybe it's that he looks like a visitor from the past, and I've always had a thing for Victorian London. Whatever, it simply rocks.
I like this shot too - yikes.
Single lens reflexes
I was wandering around central London with a camera last Thursday, and took this in Trafalgar Square:
I like the shapes, but the end result isn't particularly special. It could do with some light on the foreground, um, baby column bollard things.
Now, lesser photographers would have whipped out an off-camera flash. Perhaps using a wireless setup, they would have placed the flash to the right and experimented with exposure until they achieved something respectable. Wusses.
Proper photographers have no need of such machinations. Having trained their reflexes for literally years, they simply set their shutter speed to 1/25 of a second, then press the shutter at exactly the same time as a passing tourist takes a snapshot:
No need for all that faffing. Sure, the light's a weird colour and the picture still isn't all that, but come on - that's artistry, that is.
Link railcards to oyster
Tip for any occasional visitors to London: railcards can now be linked to oyster cards, reducing the off-peak daily cap from £4.80 to £3.10. I think this is only useful for a small group of people who don't buy season tickets, but happily I meet all the criteria 
For me it offsets almost exactly the increase in rail fares, which is handy.
The Tate Modern
It was to the Tate Modern today. I'd never been before, and beyond a vague awareness of it being a ex-power station had little idea what to expect. The directions from Southwark tube said 'follow the orange lamp posts', so first impressions were good.
We were there with the full-time students, who were interesting in that they all looked distinctive. Much more so than us mature students, the vast majority had a particular look they'd clearly cultivated above and beyond their 'natural' image, be it in their hair, clothing, or whatever. Which I thought was cool. We were given an exercise to separate into groups, head to a particular gallery and choose four pieces we found interesting, then give a short presentation to everybody.
Our gallery was 'Material Gestures', a fairly abstract area (roughly) devoted to painting and sculpture from the 40's and 50's. We walked around in a group and I had trouble adding to the conversation. In fast moving discussions it's usually necessary to express opinions succinctly, and I couldn't. I was quite happily holding three contradictory opinions about the same piece, depending on which context I was using. A Jackson Pollack painting didn't hold much immediate appeal, but is clearly interesting in a historical context and I liked its inherently subversive style. But did I like it overall? Not a valid question. Some of the others were able to come to conclusions about whether they liked something, but most of the time I couldn't - it was more complicated than that. I also found it interesting to observe my own psychological reactions to people's opinions - sometimes I'd be inclined to like something simply because a few people said they disliked it, but this could change or completely reverse depending on the people and whether I'd agreed with them previously. Basic art stuff, I'm sure, but I'm new at this, give me a chance
I will, however, posit Andrew's Law: any discussion of art, given long enough, will tend towards Tracy Emin's bed. Furthermore, 'long enough' will probably only be ten minutes.
After a quick sandwich the groups described their chosen pieces in a series of talks somewhat marred by building work, the wind and helicopters. One Coke later a few of us headed back to the gallery to check out all the other areas. It's full of cool stuff and, later, became the first art gallery to remain interesting when I was alone. I particularly liked the surrealism, and discovered the existence of a movement called 'Vorticism'. A video of ants carrying away discarded confetti from a Brazil street carnival was disappointing, however - pretty as it was, the scientist in me demanded to know what happened next: did they eat it, abandon it, build a techicolour ant god from it?
I think the secret, for me, is not to take it seriously. The grandeur of the descriptions would have you think they were era-defining, world-shattering, life-and-death towers of artistic brilliance. Crap. Cubism might have been revolutionary, but it's still just a method of expression in a world full of them. I used to instinctively rebel against such attitudes, but today I automatically took it with a pinch of salt and the genuinely interesting aspects immediately made themselves clear. Cubism actually is fascinating, and I learnt a huge amount overall.
Once the gallery closed I wandered across the bridge to St. Paul's - another place I've never visited before - then in a loop and along the South Bank to Westminster. I think I'm going to like being around London.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
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on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
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on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
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on ISS.
