six6

textures for thoughts

Macro

Shapes

Contrast

Repetitive Streets

People

Tones

Colours

Angles

Banksy

southwark

Old Vic Theatre

a few that didnt have html:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yuki/290994907/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidgutierrez/3385917630/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ippy_ippy/2078706062/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ippy_ippy/1120056965/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/valanne/340785634/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kanganarora/378830089/

random london musings

Begger's perspective

Sometimes it's through loneliness where you feel the most connected.

my 12 hour edited video

Ignore the girl's acting, she's rubbish. just wanted to show the editing, efftects whatever =)

BATTERSEA BRIDGE

BATTERSEA BRIDGE

This is London-Cameron Yang

The dark cold alleyways,
The cold cobbled streets,
The hum of the city,
This is London

As dawn breaks slowly,
And lights the dark city,
Civilians rush about in a hurry,
This is London

The blaring of horns,
The air of fumes,
The smell of dampness
This is London

The tourists flock from all directions,
Getting their memorable moments captured,
Big Ben towers over the old tired buildings,
This is London

Double deckers rush by
As do taxis
People running,
always running
This is London

The Eye glares slowly out across the river
Buckingham guards carefully over the Queen
The chapels in Kensington packed to the rafters
This is London

Beggars lie in the street
Half heartedly cupping their hands
Booths with advertisements for all kinds of action
This is London

Never a dull moment
Never a quiet one
Not here where people are running
Always runningLondon

Cameron Yang

Four Tet- Spirit Fingers

this song always reminds me of travelling- wondering if people wanna use it in the sound?happened to get someone's 8mm mashup.

A Few Quotes on London

“You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

-- Samuel Johnson

“This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.”

-- William Butler Yeats

“My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

And open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.”

-- William Butler Yeats

"By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show".

-- Samuel Johnson

Manifesto

Pondering Solitude

2 right angled panels

2 projectors

In a novelised structure, a contrasting effect of dynamic, mellow, poetic, rigid, fluid and rhythmic atmospheres is created.

On the right screen, a mesmerising female solemnly wanders six locations in London during six phases of light, which are dawn, morning, mid day, afternoon, twilight and night. Her eccentric attire and peculiar behaviour capture audience who relate to her foreign attitude.

On the left screen, rapid editing illustrates her thoughts, mirroring her curious personality.

Number 6 is central in our project for these reasons:

As group 6, we have 6 members

The word London has 6 letters

Hence, the use of 6 locations during 6 phases of the day in our project.

25th Hour Monologue

This was the monologue scene I was talking about earlier from 25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002). It's a powerful scene when you see the rest of the film and I personally think it's Spike Lee's best film. Though it doesn't really have anything to do with our particular theme of wandering and wondering, I think the scene came to my mind earlier because the protagonist of 25th Hour (Edward Norton) feels detached and isolated from the city; much like our prospective protagonist. Additionally, the city itself is of major importance in the film (thematically), as it will be in ours. I think the lighting in the monologue scene is terrific as well; its very cinematic and adds to this feeling of isolation.

by avi

h I can't remember my password to my blogger account (I saved it on my laptop but Im not at halls so dont have it at the mo). I found a poem on some website which kinda reminded me about what we were talking about today (mainly due to it's constant mention of wandering).

Replace the word 'he' with 'she' and I think it works quite well for our piece.

It's by James B.V. Thomson.

He came to the desert of London town
Gray miles long;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Singing a quiet song.

He came to the desert of London town,
Mirk miles broad;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Ever alone with God.

There were thousands and thousands of human kind
In this desert of brick and stone;
But some were deaf and some were blind,
And he was there alone.

At length the good hour came; he died
As he had lived, alone.
He was not missed from the desert wide;
Perhaps he was found at the throne.

for the morning part

Morning has broken, like the first morning Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird Praise for the singing, praise for the morning Praise for the springing fresh from the word  Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven Like the first dewfall, on the first grass Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden Sprung in completeness where his feet pass  Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning Born of the one light, Eden saw play Praise with elation, praise every morning God's recreation of the new day

A london trip by ravi panamanna

Busy streets fled past me
Busy roads ran towards me.
As the thirsty eyes of a tourist
I was enjoying the scenes.

I was on the roads of London,
My heart danced upon my chest.
I was flying along the avenues
My white car was as swift as a glider.

Thames flowed gently,
London Bridge brought me the call of centuries.
A lone nightingale sat at Hampstead Heath
And Russell Park brought me memories of London Notebook*.

And Avon flowed carrying Shakespeare
Piccadilly Circus brought me soft memories.
Lake District was serene with Words Worth
And Chatham’s grounds were alive with Dickens.

Big Ben rang deep under my chest,
Buckingham added a flavor to it.
At Tabbard’s Inn I had my breakfast
And slowly proceeded towards Stonehenge.

I soon reached a level crossing
And heard the steaming whistle of a train.

The city of london poem by ruth walters

The City of London.

Early morning after a thunderous night I can breathe easy.
If I’m quiet I may hear the sound of birdsong.
Sometimes there is a mist. It hangs over London like a veil.
Soon empty streets will heave with massing crowds,
but until then all London is at peace.

The gentle tinkling of milk bottles breaks the quiet
and the smell of bacon and fried bread
waft through the chill morning air.
Distant sounds of sirens fill my head and
concrete rises heavenward filling my eyes,
crushing their foundations through my soul.
A sickness seeps through me,
everything beautiful has gone.

“Morning paper, read all about it! ”

Girls hurry buy in tight blue jeans,
men in suits, some in Mac’s, high-heeled ladies,
clicky, click, clack.
Poor old tramp, fingernails black,
stirs on the floor beside a closed door,
‘Got the price of a cuppa luv’, he calls.
The girl quickens her pace.
A couple kiss in tender bliss
A young man sighs, a baby cries,
an old lady dies on the streets of London.

Alanis Morissette-Thank You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUmQXnBPeb0&feature=fvst Here this was the Music video I was talking about. "Alanis Morissette-Thank You. "(My computer somehow just doesn't want me to place the video on this blog Sorry again. )
I really like this methaphor of the Human body lost in the city. I believe this actually won a award in the 90s.

This is the dress which I'll be wearing.

Splash in front of my flat (the entrance to the mirror world) it reminds me of Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Monet - Waterloo Bridge (my favorite painting, my favorite place)

I'm thinking of remixing some videos (linked to my writers, artists idea), this is Orwell's 1984 apple commercial

interesting projection (video installation artist Candice Breitz)

Final Scene of Happy Together

I was thinking of this scene a few days ago. I think it feels a bit like London, even though it clearly isn't. The trains and the bright lights of the city seen in the video are certainly reminiscent of London. Ironically, Rosie's comment below includes a link to a YouTube video of another Wong Kar-wai film; Chungking Express.

Probably a bit out there but...

Particularly, 2:20 onwards. I find the pop art colours and mise-en-scene really striking. Also the mix of black and white and colour towards the end.

Chris Cunningham Trailer - I like the sound and fast editing