electric angel /design for life

no boundaries

we have some bad habits at electric angel. we often get so wrapped up in a project that it crosses that boundary between business and pleasure. actually, pretty much everything we do involves not knowing where that line is – that’s just what happens when you’re doing something you love for a job. and so a project that begins in the studio will quite often feature in our leisure time too. this seems to gain us respect from creatives in other disciplines and causes accountants to have fits. (but what do accountants know – if they get creative it usually ends up in time at her majesty’s pleasure.)

anyway, such it is with CHART Scarborough. we’re having to dissuade james from spending every spare hour mapping the rest of the town in microscopic detail (wait until someone pays us to do it!) and i’m on some kind of pyschogeographic tip – one of those occurrences where you’ve been doing something for a while and not realised that it had a proper name.

so here’s some links for you that i’ve come across in my internet and real world wanderings:

phantom city
the blurb: ‘phantom city uses personal digital devices to transform the city into a living museum’. my iphone says it needs a holiday in nyc to check this out. ‘other futures’ is the first such tour – allowing you to wander the city looking at buildings that never were. ace.

soundwalk
beautifully done walking tours of nyc, paris, china and elsewhere by locals for the iphone.

stephen walter
the lovely hand-drawn map art of stephen walter – i first saw his stuff on the recent couple of excellent BBC series about maps and map-making which were perfect timing for us working on CHART Scarborough.

history pin
simple idea but it’s the front page images that capture the imagination – wonder if this could be made to work just like those with google street view?

london poetry game
because in london you’re supposedly never more than 10ft from a speaker of a foreign language, ross sutherland has translated each line of a new poem into a different language. the idea being you find someone to translate a line for you. the finish poem will be assembled from every translation phoned in and broadcast at the national theatre this sunday.

coastival365
scarborough photographer tony bartholomew’s ongoing documenting of the town over the course of a year

blipfoto.com/ah2010
and evening news photographer, andrew higgins’ photoblog

the devils plantation
a story as puzzle, navigating ‘glasgow’s secret geometry’.

and here you can download my own pyschogeographic trail of scarborough, although you could use it with any map of any place really. james is currently writing a trail based on almost-disappeared wall painted signs that we’re often spotting around the town.

schools creative & media diploma

last night was the first public exhibition of work by the students on the schools creative and media higher diploma in the north yorks coast area and mighty impressive it was too. we’ve been in touch with the diploma since a creative coast event in 2008 which introduced the idea to the local creative sector. i’ve since been invited to be an ‘business champion’ which involves offering a working world perspective to the diploma and helping connect local creatives with the course so students meet practitioners and get a glimpse of what a career in the creative industries might be like. rachel and i spent an hour with them at the start of the year showing them our work on the railway art project.

the diploma was described in a nutshell on the exhibition guide as…

“…designed to teach young people how to work creatively; they work in groups and alone on a series of activities that will give them a good overview of the different things you can do in the creative industries. the diploma is not one subject; the students combine work in six of the following disciplines across the two years: photography, interactive media, film, television, music, drama, graphic design, 2D art, 2D art, animation, creative writing, radio and audio…”

i wish we’d had this opportunity when i was at school. last nights work was response to a brief to record the ‘distinctive atmosphere of scarborough sea front’. these students are year 10 (14-15 year olds) and the quality of work was excellent. here are some that particularly caught my eye.

the image at the top is of megan jepson’s ‘scarborough/castle’ in which photos of the seafront are pasted on a foamboard model of scarborough castle. megan did a work work placement with us a few weeks ago so we had an idea of what her piece would be although i’m told the final construction happened rather close to the exhibition opening – we’ve all been there. it really exceeded my expectations – the scale (which doesn’t really come across on my photo) and use of colour were spot on.

the use of text in this oil painting by shannon barker reminded me of ‘we two boys together clinging’ by david hockney. creatively integrating text with drawings and paintings was a theme in several pieces.

and i was really taken with scott asquith’s ‘rolling’ in which a ball rolled and bounced the length of the sea front. it was inventive, nicely edited and great fun. a brilliant piece of work.

it’s a little unfair to single just a few out as all the students deserve to be proud of their work. congratulations too to spencer, their tutor. the only blight of the evening was that we didn’t get a better turn-out from local creatives who had been invited to come take a look and offer support to the coast’s next generation of creatives. obviously i’ve got my work cut out in this role.

around your world in 80 days

we’ve been sent a travelling moleskine on the theme of ‘stuff that makes you go ooh’. you can read all about the travelling moleskines here, but as a quick summary it’s a whole host of sketchbooks being passed around as part of the big draw and will result in an exhibition in september. there’s a flickr group for it here.

above is my contribution to the one that’s arrived with us. expect at least 3 more from us as it travels round the studio before we pass it on.

who would work in an office like this?

we would. we do. our studio-cum-gallery has been featured in the latest update of the culture vulture e-magazine/blog in their ‘who would work in an office like this?‘ section including an short interview about the gallery and scarborough.

i’ve also been invited to be a blogger on their site supplying tasty cultural nuggets from the east coast so if you follow me on twitter you’ll be seeing a lot more mention of that. in the meantime we recommend you pay the culture vulture a visit, sign up for their e-newsletter and keep an eye out for some cool competitions and freebies.

[photo by david chalmers. showing light box and window pieces by rachel welford]

peasholm magic lantern

coastival sees the welcome return of scarborough’s festival of light [which i think was our first design work for create]. we’ll be converging on the rotunda museum for a lantern parade on friday 13 february and will certainly be checking out other light goodies such as video installations in the south bay underground car park and in the crypt of saint martin’s church on south cliff. there’s also something called the chroma van which promises ‘a unique exploration of colour perception in the comfort of a remodelled caravan’. how can you resist that?

i’ve also been invited by poet kate evans to apply typographic interpretations to a series of haiku’s as part the peasholm magic lantern. the lantern will take place in the faux-oriental pagoda on the island of peasholm park and features haiku’s by kate, photographs by mark vesey and an original composition by amaya huntley. kate showed me the first draft of the complete sequence yesterday – i think it’s going to be something rather special. the music is wonderful and the whole experience reminds me very much of some of the more immersive alt.worship experiments we instigated in bradford.

the images above are from felt – our little book of treatments of poetry from 2 years ago. this haiku makes an appearance as part of the magic lantern – you’ll have to come experience it for yourself to see the others.

films at coastival

[no.2 in our 'things we're looking forward to at coastival' mini-series]

the studio opinion is that we’re rather impressed with the coastival film line-up which reflects the other strands of the festival – a link we wanted to make explicit on the poster.

i’m particularly looking forward to round midnight which i’ve been wanting to see for ages, james will be heading for control [and probably every other film he can get to] and there’ll be a riley family outing to see yellow submarine which is one of dylan’s favourite movies. but there’s more than just music movies – west yorkshire-set my summer of love is tempting as is turn of the tide – a 1935 story of rivalry between two fishing families filmed in robin hoods bay. and it’s always hard to resist reggae-gangster classic the harder they come [pictured].

full coastival listings at www.coastival.com

what the chamber maid saw

we thought it would be fun to blog some of things we’re looking forward to at coastival.

one of the artists exhibiting is rachel howfield. her blog was selected as ‘bloggers choice’ on the an site in december. i intended to blog about her installation at the art gallery last year which included a projection of rachel sat and dancing in the exhibition space, projected (from a suitcase on top of a wardrobe) in the exact space.

her installation for coastival – what the chamber maid saw – sounds intriguing. it takes place in a room in the grand hotel in scarborough and each visitor has their own bookable slot to explore through the absent tenant’s possessions and perhaps discover some of their secrets.

[image: rachel howfield. 'the slightly depressing bottom line'. wire 27.2.08. from rachel's blog]

what i like about rachel’s work is that because it regularly uses everyday items, sometimes it can almost seem to be not there – it’s only because of the context that you take notice. and so you then have to look and think to understand the piece. i love the piece above for being so simple and witty yet ably communicating the themes that rachel is exploring. we were chatting in the pub at new years about the differences between artist and designer, particularly in how you respond to or cope with external direction and feedback. the above piece demonstrates an ability to communicate that many designers would envy.

acoustic gathering III

… is this sunday and has a pretty good relationship with the weather. so pack a picnic, cross those fingers and get down to the yorkshire coast’s most chilled free music festival. we will be. [image below - detail from this year's poster - an electric angel design. if you're wondering about the link between dragons and acoustic music you need to visit peasholm park where the festival takes place...]

the green, green grass of home. on a road.

as part of the enterprising britain presentation i told the story of us moving here to scarborough at a time when the town’s reputation was pretty much at an all time low. ‘why scarborough?’ is a question i get asked almost once a week anyway. to be honest we thought scarborough still had a lot of charm five years ago, albeit of the faded victorian glory variety. but we had got an inkling of a cultural renaissance happening.

and that was because i’d previously worked with site specific artist trudi entwistle who in 2002 was commissioned to ‘green’ the street that runs right through the centre of town past the royal hotel and town hall. this was the first renaissance happening after the initial community planning weekend and here in scarborough it’s cited as being the point when people started to think afresh about what was possible in the town.

back in leeds where i was doing some consultancy work at leeds met university and catching up with trudi who was teaching, i got the impression that something must be happening in scarborough. i think that helped cement the idea of moving for us. it created a buzz about the town amongst the people i knew in west yorks. it’s fascinating what an impact a piece of art can have, even something as temporary as this [it was in situ for one weekend] in changing people’s perceptions.

checkout trudi’s website here. and please do – there’s some amazing work.

rachel at new designers

friend rachel welford is exhibiting at the new designers exhibition this week in london. rachel works in glass and has been developing larger scale pieces as part of her MA. we produced some postcards for her to hand out this week [a close up of one of her pieces using sand-blasted glass and mirrors] and are working on a visual identity applied to stationery and website [still very much under development, but take a look if you'd like to see a little more of her work]

photography of rachel’s work by david chalmers.