BLINDBOY PODCAST AND POST-TROUBLES INTER-GENERATIONAL TRAUMA

Graffiti in Strabane, 2018

I’ve started listening to the Blindboy podcast, a fascinating weekly programme by popular Limerick comedian/musician from The Rubberbandits that tackles issues such as mental health, Irish culture, Marxism and philosophy. The podcast is fantastic, and I recommend everyone subscribe and listen.

One of the more recent episodes was a live recording from Duncairn Arts Centre in Belfast, where Blindboy interviewed Donzo, an award-winning tour guide from DC Walking Tours. Donzo takes people around the historically significant parts of Belfast that had been affected by the troubles. In this episode, they discussed many aspects of the civil conflict in Belfast, but what interested me, in particular, was a segment about how modern day post-troubles children were getting involved with continuing the violence and contributing to the perpetual feedback loop of sectarianism in Northern Ireland.

Now, this is a subject I am trying to tackle, explore and contextualise with my own practice.

In the discussion, Donzo and Blindboy offered one example each: The first was about how during a particularly politically heated time of year, groups of children from rival Catholic and Protestant communities attempted to meet up for a large-scale pre-organised fight. When the police approached one child before the riot, they discovered that both groups were in communication via text message, and were currently conversing to find a better location for the fight to occur, away from the police.

The second story was from Blindboy's southern Irish perspective. When he was a child, his own experiences of the troubles in the North were simply via the news. Blindboy’s childhood concept of masculinity was that to be a ‘hard lad’ you had to smoke hash and support the IRA. This concept physically materialised not through organised altercations as above, but through graffiti of Bob Marley with accompanying IRA glorification writing.

What is specifically interesting from each of these anecdotes is the idea that the children were using the historic sectarianism as merely a backdrop to manifest an example of hypermasculinity. It could be argued that this is exasperated somewhat by growing up in a post-trauma community, but what is of more importance is whether or not the sectarianism vein extends past its beginnings as simple childish behaviour to more sinister and deeply understood bigotry later in life. Again, the perpetual feedback loop.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard popularised the idea of Simulation, that events understood via the TV screen or newspaper are merely copies of the original even. I am interested in how children who have only lived in what might be considered peacetime (post-Good Friday Agreement) can still be influenced and subverted by old events through inter-generational stories. I understood such stories as unfaithful copies; perversions of reality and sometimes very dangerously sectarian.

There is undoubtedly something of a crossover between children, ultraviolence in video gaming and ultra-violence in real life. I am making my own simulations using such stories as foundation and subject matter. The results seem to dovetail very well and perhaps too easily. More to follow.


You can find a link to the specific podcast episode here.

THREE DOORS UP EXHIBITION RECAP

Just some immediate thoughts and reflection from our recent group show in Three Doors Up. The show was called Who Me? and was the collective work of the 2017/2018 Fine Art Masters group from Cardiff School of Art and Design. While not a traditional exhibition, the space was presented as more of a working environment with a relaxed attitude. We were encouraged to drop in and produce work, change up the pieces and evolve the show over the period.

For this show, I chose to exhibit my Schoolday’s End self-playing game. I had initial thoughts to have the piece projected onto a wall, but it eventually worked out better to display via an old CRT TV on a plinth. A requirement of the space was to have a sofa for people who wanted to come and chat. I positioned my work adjacent the couch, something which I felt added a little to the overall feeling of my work and suited the nature of the exhibition.

I was able to change up my game throughout the show, adding different things, correcting errors, adding a new level and overhauling the colour. Other artists produced works on paper in the space, adding to the exhibition throughout the fortnight.

Some commented on the ramshackle appearance of the show, and I do indeed agree that we could have taken a more refined approach. Overall it wasn’t particularly bad considering it was the first time we had all exhibited together and also that we had all mostly different work. Part of my idea for at least one of our future exhibitions is to have a theme to glue our works together. It can be a loose theme, perhaps just a word or phrase, but something to help make it feel like a curated show and not just a collection of works produced by people studying together.

As far as paperwork was concerned, we had a printout of artist statements. There were no other materials, and some artists and visitors expressed that we should label the work, perhaps also including a visible price. It would probably have been useful to some extent, but I did enjoy approaching the public and explaining the works and artists, often giving much more insight than a simple title or printed piece while allowing for further conversation and discussion.

Thanks to Rob, Richard and Ronnie for their parts in the organisation of this show.

THOUGHTS ON REVISITING OLD IDEAS

I’ve started noticing a pattern in my recent projects: that I’ve been revisiting old ideas and reworking them, trying different approaches, techniques and developments.

Typically, I work quite quickly with ideas. They are executed as close to conception as possible. This is not to say that these ideas don’t develop over time, or develop through iteration, often I can build and change out as I go. This lets me see if something is working or not if I am achieving what is intended.

Examples of this are in the Emoji Morandi project, which originated as a collection of eBay images, followed by paintings, and now as a series of emoji paintings (above). See also my latest game about mining, which was prototyped a few years ago as a proof of concept for a game about mining lyrics. When trying to create work in response to Bitcoin, it was the perfect opportunity to hang that idea on.

Much of what I have produced over the past few years is site or project specific, which I think lends itself quite well to this approach. More recently, I’ve been able to make explorative work in the process of my Masters. Perhaps this has allowed me to revise old ideas without the limitations inherent making something for a specific exhibition. It might also be understood that the safe framework of the academic environment allows me to revisit these concepts and further develop them. Either way, I’m enjoying this new approach of revisiting older work.

ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION PROCESS

WORK IN PROGRESS

I thought I’d like to show a little bit of work in progress and also talk a little about my processes for this latest project.

For this piece, I’ve used a Unity plugin to create some Perlin noise generated landscapes. These landscapes were randomly generated again and again, until something that might work as a naturally occurring border appeared. To this, I first add a body of water, a skybox, lighting, weather, and flora. I then use a first-person controller to explore my environment, adding in downloaded 3D objects from found sources via the Unity store.

Within the play-throughs, I try and find little scenarios that might work with implicit narratives, perhaps items that might be identified as relating to an imagined border situation while simultaneously referencing gaming semiotics.

Above is one finished image. Throughout the development of this project, I have taken 100+ of such screenshots. Below, are a few examples of my different attempts, showing my exploration with adding and subtracting objects this screenshot. Unity allows me to work in a painterly kind of way, building up composition via this process until I have something with which I am happy.

Incidentally, this particular shot was inspired by a painting I had completed many years ago, taken from a Google Street View trip around Northern Ireland.

Nokia Cocks Twitter Bot

NokiaCocks is an automated Twitter bot that periodically tweets lewd text-based penises, reminiscent of the glory days of the Nokia 3210.

0-0 ////////// Ð

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) January 1, 2018

Two things influenced this project: to rejuvenate a previous attempt to recreate this era, and my ambition to create an absurdist Twitter bot.

My first attempt at this was back in May 2017, where I had a little fun making the tweets up by myself. I lost interest after a few weeks, assuming that it had run its course. More recently,  after experiencing some hostile bots on Twitter, I planned to create something of a counter-bot which sole purpose was simple, puerile humour. I felt like this would be a perfect opportunity to develop my NokiaCocks into something autonomous.

By randomly choosing different parts of the penis, the bot is able to make up to 5million different variations. At a rate of two cocks per day, the twitter bot will, theoretically, be able to produce enough cocks for 6,978 years worth of tweets before repeating itself. Starting to sound a lot like Silicon Valley here.

ΘΘ ]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] Փ . . . .

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 27, 2017

∞ // 0

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 25, 2017

( ) ( ) ------------------ ø

— Nokia Cocks (@nokiacocks) December 24, 2017

I see this Twitter bot and my School Days Over self-playing mining game to be very similar. Both have been born out of a response to the very recent globally detrimental use of computer automation and also as an attempt to capture something fun and perhaps culturally significant.

I look forward to what this bot will produce over the next few years.

SCHOOL DAYS OVER: MINING GAME

via GIPHY

I thought I’d write up a little work in progress report on a new game I’ve been developing.

The concept for this game came about perhaps two or three years ago, where I was getting annoyed with the surplus of mining and crafting games. After the exponential success of Minecraft, it seemed like every new game incorporated some facet of its game mechanic. I grew immediately tiresome and felt like making an anti-Minecraft game that used these same mechanics to draw attention to the social and historical issues of mining. My initial thoughts were to produce a game that featured politically motivated songs about mining, inspired by a moving performance of The Mountain by Steve Earle in St. David’s Hall in Cardiff, Wales. Earle remarked that this was his only song to have been translated into Welsh, poignantly highlighting the relational nature of the working-class struggle.

I parked my first attempts until relatively recently until two things again inspired me:

The desire to make a self-playing game following this keynote, and, the evolution of Bitcoin as a mainstream currency.

When simplified, it is possible to see Bitcoin as something of a self-playing game; hugely powerful computers run programmes that slowly ‘mine’ cryptocurrency. The recent popularity of Bitcoin can be seen to be mostly in part to media coverage, but the typical user has grown from early-adopter pizza purchasers to money laundering, gangsters, and other illegal activities. I wanted to make my game along the same lines as Bitcoin, but instead of mining for something considered morally dubious, I aimed to produce a game that mined for something culturally beneficial. In this case, song lyrics.

What I’ve arrived at (so far) is a 2D self-playing game referencing the 16-bit era. A solitary protagonist slowly mines out a pit, uncovering lyrics of the Ewan MacColl song School Days Over with each block. The miner gradually gets slower, a-la Bitcoin. Some of the design decisions have been taken from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game from my childhood. I've included below a few different colour palettes to give an idea of the progress of my prototypes.

Regarding gameplay, I had the miner as a formerly playable character, but after reading about self-playing games, I felt that removing player interaction would relate my game better to both Bitcoin and online streaming services. It was also my intent for the viewer to feel as merely a helpless spectator.

The lyrics uncovered by the miner are from a song by Ewan MacColl, presented as text along the bottom of the screen. MacColl’s song is about leaving school at a young age to go down into the pit, and I wanted to juxtapose this with a game of childish nostalgia. I had considered using Minecraft and a bot to relay this message but changed to building a self-contained 2D standalone game. Currently, I have the lyrics in English, but I have considered using Welsh translated lyrics for two reasons. I don’t think this song has ever been translated. Secondly, I’d like to see a translation done using something automated like Google Translate, again, reiterating using something of robotic nature for cultural good.

So there are a few little things left to fix for this game but I’m relatively happy with the current prototype in both looks and execution. Watch this space for a proper release soon.

CARDIFF MUSIC CITY

I’m writing this post as my initial reactions to the announcement of Cardiff as the UK’s first ‘Music City’.

I’ve lived in Cardiff for ten years now, and my experience here regarding music has been as a concert attendee, a promoter, and as a musician. I am excited that Cardiff has received this status. In fact, there are a lot of people who are very pleased about this. Cardiff is a great city for music, musicians and gigs. But I have some gripes.

Let me list a few things off the top of my head:

Dempsey’s is now a football-themed grub pub.
The Globe has long resorted to booking endless safe-bet tribute bands.
The Point has been closed down due to noise complaints.
The Coal Exchange is now a hotel.
The Barfly is now a craft beer bar.
The Full Moon is now a prohibition-themed cocktail bar.
The Moon was forcibly closed only to reopened due to outstanding local fundraising support.
The flats & Wetherspoon hotel on Womanby street were eventually vetoed due to the Save Womanby Street campaign.

So with this in mind, what does it mean to be a ‘Music City’? The recognition is given by the London-based company, Sound Diplomacy, who specialise in delivering ‘strategies that increase the value of music ecosystems’. It appears that Sound Diplomacy will now work alongside the local council to create a new music/tourism platform in the capital.

North Sea Gas earlier this year, at the Four Bars

I don’t see this as recognition for an already thriving music city. I see this as the musical lifeline that Cardiff fundamentally needs.