Wednesday 28 October 2009

I am an archaeologist

It takes multiple persons to Tango

I spent a quality night last week working on files for the up-coming Tango 9 produced by local funny book aficionado Bernard Caleo and thought I'd do a plug for the soon to be launched 'Tango Collection' and 'Tango 9 - Love and War', both of which I'm contributing to. The collection, available in stores on the 23rd of November is an absolute treat - beautifully produced with a popping 2-colour cover and an impressive array of comics goodness throughout.

Here is a teaser of my work in the collection (also available in 'Tango 8 - Love and Food'):


And an exclusive frame from my work in Tango 9:



Sufficiently teased? The collection and Tango 9 both launch on the 10th of December at Dante's in Fitzroy.

Monday 26 October 2009

History is so, like, yesterday

Ahh, Geocities...



For those who came in late, Geocities is/was one of the first free webhosting services on the Internet. Geocities was bought by Yahoo in 1999. In the recent past, Yahoo decided to close Geocities down (effective tomorrow), offering existing users the option to use a paid Yahoo service to host their sites. Archive.org is also working on archiving the old sites, but they are relying on users to submit their sites which will cause some to fall through the cracks.



Which is OK, I guess. These sites make for interesting historical evidence of where the web once was - the tools available, the styles, the sounds. In the archaeology of the multi-layered stratum of digital earth that forms the Internet, Geocities was an important layer. Web rings. A conspicuous absence of gradients. Animated gifs of fires. Midi files. The 256 colour palette. Blue underlined links. Halcyon days.



It's a shame that Yahoo is closing these sites down, but it's their prerogative and they aren't making any money off of the existing Geocities sites, many of which probably aren't even being updated any more. And it is about making money, right? Some of these sites are linked to or bookmarked, and after tomorrow they essentially become an ad for Yahoo via the web being peppered with thousands of additional 'Pages not found' linking to Yahoo and containing massive ads. It's also sad that a huge part of the Internet's collective history will be gone. You may not notice it right away, but you will be notice.



Vale Geocities, VALE.

Roy Orbison - In Dreams (.mid version) [4.6MB .mp3 file]
(Original .mid file found on a Geocities site).

Thursday 22 October 2009

Site-specific, 2009


Balaclava train Station.

Tuesday 20 October 2009

29 minutes for 47 minutes

Recent work:



Actually that's not entirely true. It's a screngrab of the outlines of some work I've been doing for a local comics anthology. The final work does not look like this.

Anyway, there have been many progress bars in my life of late. I'm thinking that whoever coined the term 'progress bar' was being ironic. My laptop has been in the repair shop twice. Almost three times actually. Seems I was a victim of the infamous 2007 NVIDIA fiasco.


Know what I mean?

I'm getting a real sense of the organic and tricky nature of electronic technology. For example: I'm reinstalling some software and the estimated time has been fluctuating wildly. This suggests that the computer is actually uncertain of the time remaining, but it's guessing anyway. What's better, an honest assessment of uncertainty or an educated yet inaccurate stab-in-the-dark?

Computer, ANSWER ME.

Monday 5 October 2009

Sans-Ruth



Today: I felt the need for some Spring Cleaning and tidied up my studio. I attempted complete ruthlessness and did a relatively good job achieving this. For example, I reluctantly threw away a backpack that was like a good old friend of mine. Many kilometres were travelled with this backpack but it was full of holes and had served it's time honourably. Some of the things I found in it's various pockets included, but were not limited to:
  • A fortune cookie fortune, pictured above.
  • A pen (working)
  • A Chap stick
  • The receipt for my wedding suit
  • A single plastic leg (small)
  • 2 small packets of tissues
  • A 2005 'Festival of China at the Lincoln Center' pin
  • A copy of 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius
  • Hay-fever and headache medication
  • 2 Individually wrapped pieces of dark chocolate
  • 33 Train tickets (see below)
  • A pencil sharpener
  • A pencil (broken)
  • A leaf
  • A band-aid (unopened)
  • The receipt for my Nintendo Wii
  • A packet of sugar from the 'Luxor' hotel
  • A marble
  • A band-aid (used)
  • 11 US cents
  • A key

The train tickets contributed to what may be Balaclava's newest tourist attraction: The (Allegedly) Highest Stack of Train Tickets in the Southern Hemisphere.


Not to scale.