an indistinct or billowing mass

Leonardo da Vinci said that clouds were like 'bodies without surface.' And in Folding Chair, Regina Spektor wisely points out, 'the sea is just a wetter version of the skies.' So a couple of weeks ago I returned from what has become an annual camping trip to the Isles of Scilly. Islands allow you to see so much wider and further and higher than you otherwise would. There's a clarity of vision that you don't get on the mainland, meaning you see the weather coming towards you, far in advance. It's like looking at your immediate future laid out before you. I rarely pay attention to keeping one step ahead of teh weather when I'm in a city or working.

Interestingly, clouds exist, whilst not being visible… read an article on subvisible clouds.

And this site is brilliant for anyone who's in the least bit interested in the skies above them:
The Cloud Appreciation Society.

kinda candles

£60 for the 60 year old!

tanks & tablecloths

After a long year, it's finally summer. Most of my work ends for a few weeks now and I'm trying to think about ME for a while and be a practising creative again!

So I'm delighted to announce that Tanks & Tablecloths returns rejuvenated after a long pause! Discussions between myself and Elizabeth Haven are currently underway as to how we move forward, but we are excited at the possibilities and have set up another blog to begin documenting our dialogue.

Check:
tanksandtableclothsvisualarchive.blogspot.com

Hopefully see you here a bit more often in the future…

her-suit / hirsute

An adapt-a-boiler-suit party solution…

some valentine

perfect architecture

a period of darkness

With SCB, Anne & Armin

three

On the afternoon of the private view for The Art of Lost Words, in which I launched In Absentia, a book about owls, I came across these three little chaps in Hyde Park. I would never have spotted them without the help of an excellent friend and an unknown birder. My first owls in the wild.

marks & gestures

'Punctuation is not a proper object: it is neither speech nor writing; art nor craft; sound not silence. It may be neither here nor there and yet somehow it is everywhere.'

'Punctuation marks function as shadow figures that both compose and haunt writing's substance.'

'Intonation - what we might call the trace of the sound of punctuation.'

'Therefore I call them [punctuation] not symbols of Logic, but dramatic directions, enabling the reader more easily to place himself in the state of writer or original speaker.'

Punctuation: Art, Politics & Play, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Duke, 2008

in correspondence to the speaker's breath

'Punctuation. Four stops, two marks of movement, and a stroke, or expression of the indefinite or fragmentary –

Comma , Semicolon ; Colon : Period . Mark Interrogation ? Note of Admiration ! Stroke –.

It appears next to self-evident, that the first four or five characters can never be made to represent all the modes and subtle distinctions of connection, accumulation, disjunction, and completion of sense – of it would be quite as absurd as to imagine that the ? and ! should designate all the moods of passion, that we convey by the interrogation or wonder – as the simple question for information – the ironical – the impetuous – the ratiocinative &c – No! this must be left to the understanding of the Reader or Hearer. What then is their use?'

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

in absentia

In Absentia, created for The Art of Lost Words has been compiled. 24 printed pages, with 8 full-colour photographs tipped in and printed in an edition of 200. The book explores the word 'skirr', its imminent removal from the dictionary and other themes surrounding absence of flight. For six weeks only, from March 5th, copies are available to purchase from text/gallery for £5 and all proceeds from the sales will be donated to the National Literacy Trust.

missing flight vol. III

Searching for owls that aren't there.

missing flight vol. II

The myth, that the Monarchy and the government will fall if the ravens leave the Tower of London is well known, but I didn't realise that each raven has one of it's wings clipped so that it can't fly far from the tower. Now on a mission to get some raven wing clippings…

missing flight vol. I

Photo © Arthur Christiansen.
From The Collins Guide to the Countryside in Winter by Alastair Fitter & Richard Fitter

Wing prints of a Magpie in the snow.

in a word

All images © Charles Barten & magic-lantern.eu

More from the Magic Lantern Slide Collection of Charles Barten.
With thanks for allowing me to reproduce his images here.

with microfilm strapped to their ankles

All images © Charles Barten & magic-lantern.eu

A nice fact: during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) carrier pigeons were crucial for communication outside Paris, which was under siege. Pigeons were carried out of the city by balloon, with both official and private 'dispatches'. Correspondence was mainly in the form of microfilms, allowing for up to 21 letters to be documented on film and carried in a tube by a single pigeon. The microfilms, once they had arrived at their destination, were projected, read and copied by teams of clerks, using magic lanterns. The letters were transcribed onto special forms and often annotated with 'pigeon' before being sent on to the addressee.

If time and money were no issue, I'd send out a flock of pigeons with hand-drawn magic-lantern messages right this minute. The Magic Lantern Slide Collection of Charles Barten in the meantime offers some beautiful inspiration, both in terms of material referencing birds, flight and other skirr-related activities but also for text-based and hand-drawn magic-lantern slides (see tomorrow's post). A big thank you to Charles Barten for allowing me to reproduce just a few of his slides here.

airmail

snowy & barn

With help from Cornwall Birding

I appear to have become a twitcher…
This evening at dusk: the impossible task of photographing an owl I am unlikely to be able to see or hear. But I think perhaps that is the idea.

bracelets

sermon to the birds

According to folk-lore, one day when Francis of Assisi was traveling with a group of companions, they arrived at a clearing in which birds filled the trees lining the road. Francis told his friends to wait for him while he spoke to his sisters the birds. The birds surrounded him, and not one flew away, the power of his speech holding them transfixed.

'My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, and always in every place ought ye to praise Him, for that He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and hath also given you double and triple rainment; moreover He preserved your seed in the ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of the world; still more are ye beholden to Him for the element of the air which He hath appointed for you; beyond all this, ye sow not, neither do you reap; and God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams and fountains for your drink; the mountains and valleys for your refuge and the high trees whereon to make your nests; and because ye know not how to spin or sow, God clotheth you, you and your children; wherefore your Creator loveth you much, seeing that He hath bestowed on you so many benefits; and therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto God.'

Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the animals
c 1220

mist net

Image: BTO

no ears to prick up, no mouth to utter

No ears to prick up, no mouth to utter

Designs for bird balaclavas, preventing the wearer from both hearing and speaking properly.

cast all your care upon god

Ring for tagging a goose's foot. Created by Jack Miner in the early 20th C.

Keep yourselves in the love of God — Jude 1-21
With God all things are possible — Mark 10-27
I walk among you — Lev. 26:12
Ye must obey God — Acts 5:29
Let us consider one another — Heb. 10:24
Have faith in God — Mark 11:22

black light

Claude Glass. Photo: V & A

The gloomy Claude glass is a convex blackened mirror designed in the 18th century to aid artists and tourists to create landscape paintings. They would turn their back away from the landscape and instead view it in the mirror, which would present a vast scene in a more manageable size whilst also subtly harmonising the tonal values of the view.

Claude Lorrain (1600-82) was a leading 17th-century landscape painter who worked in Rome and became famous for drawings and paintings displaying a subtle gradation of tones. His work became immensely popular in England in the 18th century. The Reverend William Gilpin, an amateur artist, advocated the use of a Claude glass saying, 'they give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge like the colouring of that Master'.

birds eye drawings

From our apartment window. Photos by SB.

i wish i had seen this but i was lying on the sofa in the warm

More good work from my Berlin partner, SB. This boy takes nice photos.

bleakly, darkly, romanticly berlin

New Year's dual effort: LR & SB

characterless

'The whisper is essential, because the full human voice is too idiosyncratic, too marked with its own history. I'm looking for anonymity so the purity of the object won't be blocked from coming through, from displaying itself in its nakedness. A whisper has no character.'

Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold

the owl and the birds

Barn owl flying upwards into darkness. Still from video © RSPB

'An Owl, in her wisdom, counseled the Birds that when the acorn first began to sprout, to pull it all up out of the ground and not allow it to grow. She said acorns would produce mistletoe, from which an irremediable poison, the bird- lime, would be extracted and by which they would be captured. The Owl next advised them to pluck up the seed of the flax, which men had sown, as it was a plant which boded no good to them. And, lastly, the Owl, seeing an archer approach, predicted that this man, being on foot, would contrive darts armed with feathers which would fly faster than the wings of the Birds themselves. The Birds gave no credence to these warning words, but considered the Owl to be beside herself and said that she was mad. But afterwards, finding her words were true, they wondered at her knowledge and deemed her to be the wisest of birds. Hence it is that when she appears they look to her as knowing all things, while she no longer gives them advice, but in solitude laments their past folly.'

An Aesop's Fable, translated by George Fyler Townsend

of silent flight

African eagle owl feather, magnified x 150. Image © Paolo Taranto

'Some of our birds fly in a way which makes them unmistakable. One of them is the Lapwing or Green Plover, whose flapping quickly identifies it. The silent flight of the owl is almost always a clue; their extremely soft feathers make them silent as they wing their way through the air. In contrast to the owls the swans beat through the air with a whistling sound you can never forget. Once you've heard a swan in flight you will always remember it.'

Spotting Birds, Jaroslav Spirhanzl Duris & Edmund Burke, Hamlyn, 1975.

There seem to be some links back to this post…