ARTISTS TALKING

# 22 [3 February 2012]

This week I’m having a break from my conversations to bring you a recording I made last year of the sound installation ‘Impossible Architexture’. This works was made by young people from Portland Rocks aided by local artists ivon oates and David Rogers, as part of a b-side encounter. It was a great installation in the The Brackenbury Centre, on Portland.

http://creativedialog.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/cre...

My audio recording follows my personal walk through of the spaces inside Brackenbury Centre. It gives you a taste of this installation, but in no way matches the experience of being in the space and hearing the installation live.

# 21 [29 January 2012]

episode eleven of creative conversations. sees me talking too two artists, ivon oates and David Rogers, about a collaboration that involved them working with young people from Portland Rocks.

http://creativedialog.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/cre...

We hear about how their sound installation ‘Impossible Architexture’ came into being. And we talk around collaborations and authorship. Who was the ‘owner’ of this piece of work?

In a collaboration where you are commissioned to facilitate new work, who is the ‘author’ of these pieces? Is it just the young people, or is it the artists work, or some space in-between all these interested parties.

ivon feels that the joint authorship, the equal collaboration MUST be stated at the start of the process. For this work, it is the young peoples work, as this was the stated start point. It was an important aspect of the commission and if they commissioned had stated that they should ‘collaborate’ she would have made a very different piece of work.

While David felt that their artistic decisions makes them an important collaborator. That they installed the installation, that they formed the basis of the work, and that these decisions makes the work a more joint piece.

# 20 [25 January 2012]

I have posted a new episode of my creative conversations. This week I have been chatting with James Kimber, a performer/Musician and Director of Weapons of Sound, a group of junk percussionists.

http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

James talks about his early educational experiences and about his formative experiences doing a exchange year in USA during his degree. He goes on to talk about how he came to form the Junk Band while working at a youth club in Plymouth.
 
We go onto chat about how the band has become more professional and how having an agent is a key part of his success. That he gets to play, to be creative, while his agent handles all the management and admin jobs.
 
Last year, 2011, proved to be a particular good year with James doing some interesting work and travelling around the world. One gig he got was in Tallinn, which he found out had been the site for the sailing for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Here he was given a tour of Soviet architecture built for the occasion that was all derelict.
 
We talk a little about cultural Olympiad and the Olympic legacy. With James telling me how the Olympics are awarded to a city, which I had never thought of. That technically it had been awarded to London.
 
More about this episode and about the show in general can be found here: http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

# 19 [7 January 2012]

episode nine of creative conversations features Alex Murdin, Creative Places Development Manager for Dorset Design and Heritage Forum. This is a part time position, where he works in a freelance capacity. http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

We start off by hearing about his role within the council, working with many stakeholders to benefit local people, funded by the arts council. Engaging people with place: art, design & local distinctiveness for housing.
 
Out of the four projects that have been commissioned Alex outlines two projects. One is ‘Rural Roads Protocol’ with artist: Michael Pinsky. The second working with artists: London Fieldworks to help design a new open space as part of a housing development on the edge of a Dorset village.
 
Along with Alec working within this role he also operates as an artist himself. He is very interested in low cost DIY interventions. Building culture into all areas of life. He tells us about a project in development he has been working on over the last year or two with Turn Lyme Green.
 
We talk over the difficult question of what effect the Cultural Olympiad might have on the region. Wrapping up our conversation, briefly talking about what will be left after the Olympics has left town and the last sweet wrapper is swept off the streets of Weymouth.
 
More about this episode and about the show in general can be found here: http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

# 18 [5 December 2011]

This week Sarah Gilpin, a sculptor based on The Isle of Portland, joins me, at her Sculpture Hut - a beach hut studio at Portland Bill. We start off by hearing Sarah's route to being an artist and moving to Portland.

http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

We talk about the richness of taking people out into the landscape to work. That rather then taking photographs of the landscape, of the place, into a classroom and talking about these places. If you can take people into this landscape then their experiences are a million times richer.

We then move onto what advice we could give young artists setting out now. We then hear about her involvement with ArtWey and the benefits to her practice of working within a collective of artists.

We talk about ways local artists can "up their game". And Sarah has a very good idea in that there should have been more mentoring opportunities for local artists to tag along with the commissioned artists.

# 17 [30 November 2011]

as part of the blog I setup to host my conversations with the arts community, I embedded images pulled from flickr.  This is set to load the 3 latest images that were geo-tagged with being from Portland and would auto change, so only the latest 3 images showed and I find they were being continuously updated.

A photographer who had posted onto their flickr page and tagged it with Portland thus showed up on my site and they have complained I have infringed their copyright. What do you think, have I?

I have changed the image categories I was linking to so that this person’s images no longer showed. And apologised to the person. But I was wondering;

1.    Technically have I in fact infringed their copyright?
I have not downloaded their image. I have not specifically chosen their image. It is embedded into my site from their page on flickr, thus if someone clicks on the image from my site they go to the photographers page (and thus find out more about this persons work).

2.    generally is it wrong to use this type of embedded random image loading?
For me personally I would not be concerned and in fact welcome the extra exposure it might gain my work. In fact that is why I stick images up onto flickr. If I had the skill I would change the code used to grab these images to include authors name. But is this just my openness to use of my work.

I’d welcome your thoughts on this. You can see the changing images on the site http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

# 16 [28 November 2011]

episode 7 of creative conversations

This week I am joined by artist Susan Hughes, who had organised an exhibition at Weymouth Library. We talk about the exhibition she has arranged and put on. About Weymouth artists group, ArtWey CIC and how she fits within this group. About the ArtWey Big Draw and cultural Olympiad project, ‘the Giant Wall’.

http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

We talk about being a professional artist, about finding your audience and selling your work. Susan talks about coming back to drawing and the influence that Betty Edwards' method of drawing has had on her. We hear about her life drawing class and how working with a spreadsheet helped her convince herself that these classes could work. That artists should not be afraid of dealing with money, that a bit of a business head is good. But it is a struggle to manage all aspects of being an artist, of marketing, doing the admin, bookkeeping and finding time to produce your work.

The most important thing though is to just enjoy making work. To enjoy that quiet space to produce your work. To find a way to make it as enjoyable as you can and realise that it is going to be difficult.

# 15 [23 November 2011]

have some new audio visual work shown at counterText11 in Bridport. It's a great opportunity to meet other artists and talk about our work, our ideas and future possibilities.  Been really great to be part of this show.

# 14 [21 November 2011]

Episode 6 of creative conversations is now online at; http://creativedialog.wordpress.com

This week I finish my conversation with Alan Rogers, Cultural Coordinator as part of the Weymouth and Portland 2012 Operations Team, at Weymouth Pavilion.

We start by talking about how he balances the difficult decisions of working within a limited budget. We go onto hear what Alan thinks about the long lasting effect of the cultural Olympiad on this area. & I end by picking Alan’s experience about ways artists can build in sustainability in the incredibly precarious career of artists practice.

# 13 [20 November 2011]

It's easier to do these recorded conversations with people I do not know & i have decided to not give participants a chance to review my draft edit.  I clearly state at the start what i am about and what is to happen with my recordings. I emphasis that the recordings will go onto the internet and who knows who may end up hearing what they have said, so they should be careful.

Also they can now listen to olde recordings, to my previous conversations, so that gives people an idea of the show.