Olympus (Camping) Trip

Ahh camping! That picture is from my favourite camping spot, and is making me long for another trip. Luckily, I’ve managed to chase the summer by moving to Canada and it will soon be appropriate weather for such trips again.

But this is about a rediscovered, old camera that was a hand-me-down from my father. I recall being allowed to take it to school camp in grade six, and it still has the now-weathered masking tape with my name written on it in Mum’s handwriting. When I started getting into film photography again, thanks mostly to lomography, I never considered that we might have a point and shoot in the family that could be worth using. (My sister has already snagged the SLR – her pictures are fantastic, take a look.) I found this Olympus Trip 35, at the bottom of an old box and I showed it to my sister, thinking she might want it. She told me that she had already bought one from Ebay – and that she had been keeping an eye out for one to buy me as a gift, that’s how good it is! So, I was really looking forward to seeing what it could do. Here are some of the first pictures I’ve taken with it, during camping trips back home, shot with 100 ISO slide film. I seem to have a thing for this recurring camping chair off-centre composition!

My mate’s kid at the Hume Weir. Gotta love the ‘tude in her expression!

And a couple of shots in the Otways over New Year’s. The way the filtered rays of light were captured was a lovely discovery.

A Few Firsts

I realised that I still have pictures to post of the objects from my youth. See other posts here and here. These items are quite representative of ‘growing up.’ Above is my green belt, the level I reached in karate. That’s until I got sick of going to classes where there was no one else my age and I either had to spar with over-zealous younger boys who would be using all their strength on me while I was holding back from hurting them, or fully grown men who I couldn’t even reach high enough to punch.

This is my first perfume, a nearly empty bottle handed down to me by my mother. Oh Anais Anais – its scent is as elderly as its bottle design.

My first pair of glasses. No wonder these ended up staying in the case more often than not. Mmmm tortoiseshell.

My first watch. One of those ones that has the number of the minutes as well as the hours, for learning to tell the time. I probably need it again now, since I’m so used to digital.

And this little number is the uber geeky wallet chain I used so that I wouldn’t loose my bus pass in the first year of high school. Those yearlies were precious! At the time I thought it was just so darn practical, though I do recall being mocked by other kids but I think I just didn’t care. It was like, them: Oh my god what is that! (mocking tone) Me: Oh look it’s soooo useful, it just goes on this button on my school dress and into my pocket and I won’t loose my bus pass! (oblivious to mocking)

Idea 30 and 31

Idea #30: Create a quarterly penpal/subscription network amongst my friends. We will send each other mystery packages of things we made/found/bought/wrote with a small size to keep postage costs down. Everyone sending the same thing/s to all involved. Use a Facebook event to gather a list of subscriber/contributors. Set a limit of how many people can be involved – so that we can all afford to make/buy the content and send the packages. Things inside can be something with a local flavour, or something that inspired us, something we picked up at a market, objects that tell a story. Hmmm maybe each mailing period can have a theme like in the Wander app. Combines a way to keep in touch with friends at home, my love of receiving packages, and the element of surprise!
Inspired by subscriptions like: The Thing Quarterly, Quarterly Co. and Lost Crates.

Idea #31: Make a Meetup event where the point is to make something that draws on the creativity of our inner child. Eg: the materials we have to use are just toilet rolls, or making sandcastles etc. Though, I fear that as adults there’d be someone who could make some amazing cut paper sculpture out of a toilet roll and leave the rest of us with glue in our hair.
Idea inspired by the amazing things kids are doing here.

Previous Post

Time to post some pics from my new lomography fisheye camera – a birthday present. A couple of rolls of film took me from Aussie beach, to bush festival, to Canadian snow. The following were taken with slide film.

Rainbow Serpent Festival near Beaufort, Victoria, Australia.

Bloedel Floral Conservatory, Vancouver, BC.

Grouse Mountain, BC

Feculant Crucifeast

My first stop in getting my bearings within Vancouver’s art scene was naturally the Vancouver Art Gallery. There is currently a pretty rad exhibition on art, hip hop and Aboriginal culture which features skateboards carved to resemble snow shoes and Nikes stitched into first nation inspired masks. What really grabbed me, however, was art from the museum’s general collection; a wall of framed words hung slightly higher than eye level, by local artist Steven Shearer.

I was instantly drawn to Shearer’s Poems, repeating select phrases aloud. Each one was so delightfully grotesque it made my memories of morose teenage headbanging bubble to the surface with uncharacteristic joy. I like the effect the words have on me, they are evocative and shocking – and yet this very effect is made so by the literary ingredients of verse, such as assonance and alliteration. Thus composed, I enjoy the way such vulgarities roll of my tongue. Visually, the text is displayed for the perfect impact; bold white capitals screaming from a black background. Individual words jump out at you, SCATOPHAGUS, DISCHARGE, ROT MUNCHING, PUTRID, CADAVERIC from within the overwhelming message.

I wanted to list for you some of the truly great lines, but each one is as good as than the next. Singled out they are awesome, but together they are epic.

“His mural, billboard, and poster poems inspired by scatological and blasphemous Heavy Metal lyrics and song titles present visions of the nihilistic sublime that would be disturbing if they weren’t so entertainingly hyperbolic.” Lupe Nunez-Fernandez. “Steven Shearer at Ikon, Birmingham.” Saatchi Gallery. Spring 2007.

As poems they are aleatoric, using the cut-up technique popularised in literature by beatnik William S. Burroughs, and used in music by Bowie and Radiohead, to add the element of chance to the final creation. I love the concept of taking an existing text and extracting and rearranging words to create a new meaning. Burroughs said, ”When you cut into the present the future leaks out.” Yet here in glorious irony, it is being used  to find the divine meaning in the ‘obscenities’ of Heavy Metal.

Idea 29

Idea #29: Use embroidery to make a stop motion animation. – Would be so much work! I’d have to set up a studio space with exact, unchanging lighting conditions, so I could work at it like a jigsaw puzzle on the kitchen table. Or make a super amateur one using an iPhone.

View vs View

Although I always had a fondness for the sun setting behind the Pelaco sign, Richmond, Melbourne…

I’m pretty impressed with the view of snowcapped peaks from my balcony in Kitsilano, Vancouver.

In February I was on my way to a zine fair at Melbourne Town Hall and I got the tram that meant I’d have some extra walking to do once I got to Swanston St. I was bummed that I’d missed the 48, until my tram pulled up next to Fed Square and I caught a glimpse of something that was so familiar it made me lurch with excitement. Yet I couldn’t quite believe I could actually be looking at what I was seeing. I think I even made an audible squeak of glee.

I raced across the road and yes, there were two of Theo Jansen’s kinetic sculptures! I recognised their structures from the TED talk I had seen where he demonstrated the way these creatures – his “Strandbeests” – move. At Fed Square there was even one open to the public to walk with and see its plastic joints in operation. You can see a little girl pushing it along.

The structures are built from plastic tubes and bottles. The large Strandbeest that was on display was one of the new generation that can move independently. It’s powered by wind captured in the wings that you can see below, and pumped into old lemonade bottles, that in turn pipe air into the legs. With the intricate mechanics of the pipes, I never imagined that I would see one of these sculptures in Melbourne! I can’t help but wonder how on earth they are transported, or reconstructed, if they are broken down for packing.

Or perhaps Jansen has found a way for them to float across the oceans! As he says in his TED talk below, the creatures are designed not only to move, but even to survive on their own.