GLITCH TWITCH

When my pal RICKY ~tweeted about 9 EYES, a blog of incredible images from Google Street View (check out the accompanying essay), I had that familiar sensation of simultaneously being delighted by it and flying into a rage at myself for not having done it first. I know Google Art Project is what's hot right now (have no reason at all to leave the house now) but I'm hopelessly and pathetically addicted to exploring Street View - I guess you could call it virtual psychogeography or something if you felt like being a dick - and for a while I've been grabbing images of the glitches that appear intermittently, like a glimpse of the underlying matrix. I like when they're juxtaposed with chocolate box country cottages.



























PS anyone who can identify every one of these locations wins £237847

COME DIE WITH ME

One good thing about being back home right now is having access to my dad's books, which I'm honestly trying super hard to make use of despite the fact that I have a healthy generation web 2.0 attention span and pretty quickly lose interest in anything if it doesn't constantly update itself in real time. My intellectual potential was written off the moment I downloaded MSN Messenger in my teens and discovered the joys of logging in as a classmate and telling a girl that you wanted to nip her (obv I never had the social status to actually say the more usual 'Wanna nip my pal?' IRL). But anyway, I'm not a complete philistine as I appreciate the books' covers. These trippy Penguin Poets were all acquired by Dad in 1967 when he was 19 (he does that cute thing of writing his name and the date inside).








My fave by far is the Baudelaire and I'm in two minds about the Mallarmé - does it fall into 'polyester blouse noone wore in the 70s-themed Come Dine With Me on earlier' or 'Nicki Minaj new do' territory? As far as I can tell all these covers are by STEPHEN RUSS, apart from the sober but nice French and Russian ones.

UNRELATED: Partly inspired by How TV Ruined Your Life I watched THREADS, a 1984 play about the effects of a nuclear war on Sheffield, the other night and omfg it's unrelentingly grim. Even before the whole apocalypse thing, it has the ingrained misogyny and dreary nastiness of loads of British scary things I've seen from this period (see also THE HOUSE THAT BLED TO DEATH, a Hammer Horror - my best bit is when they're in Spain or LA or whatever at the end but it's clearly an English suburban executive detached home, although the blood-drenched sub-Carrie children's birthday party scene is very special). This led to a disconsolate nuclear all-nighter for me, including NUCLEAR WAR - A GUIDE TO ARMAGEDDON which tells you what would happen if an atomic bomb exploded above London. It's more of a documentary but equally upbeat; the deadpan way the narrator tells you that after all of the trendy 80s couple's (the dude is a 'musician' - I hear he later joined Fall Out Boy) elaborate preparations for nuclear war 'they would probably stay alive... FOR ABOUT SEVENTEEN SECONDS' is killer. It also shows you loads of chillingly mundane brochures for nuclear bunkers of varying elaborateness, which look more like documents you'd consult when choosing a new conservatory than something to save your life come the end of the world. They make it very apparent that if nuclear war were to break out and by some stroke of luck didn't destroy the whole planet the rich and rural just might conceivably survive while the poor and urban would be doomed. Ain't that just the way.

ILL USTRATION

matthew feyld


swahili.be


Eric Shaw



Pete Willis



Nieves Books


Ella Plevin (See also her PHOTOS of our Nicholls & Clarke show, which feel like they're from 36776835 years ago)


nura porat


SANTIAGO SALVADOR


William Edmonds



Travis Stearns


Ric Holland


hannaterese


Stéphane Prigent



jaakko_ghostbuster


2 weird 2 live, 2 wired 2 die


owl foreigner


三色井 Hsuan

~SWOON~

Plus here's some stuff I said (which I may have just found while googling myself ok). It was a while back and I can't quite bring myself to read it back so you'll just have to, then tell me I'm a douche. ANYTHING FOR A COMMENT BABES.

(UNCLE) SAM DOYLE

i managed to make it to the museum of everything before it shut, and i'm glad i did as it was full of nice pictures (and so primrose hill english eccentric right now; i was relaxing in a bit with a contemplative chapel vibe when a banging techno ringtone shattered its peace, the phone's owner a boho octogenarian+ who brayed SHAHHHLEY DAHLING I CAN'T TAWWWK RIGHT NOW I'M IN THE MUSEUM DAHHHLING SHAAHLEY. admittedly this isn't as good an anecdote as the time the minister at my great-uncle's funeral's GIRLS ALOUD ringtone went off in the middle of the service).

i'm still not sure what exactly an outsider artist is though. the saatchi page describes the museum as being for "artists living outside the boundaries of mainstream society" before saying that some were janitors and miners (alongside jailbirds, as if all are roughly equal), which don't sound like occupations outwith the boundaries of mainstream society to me, unless mainstream society is just an urbane elite? i suppose it's related to a perceived lack of self-consciousness, and it's probably that which makes sam doyle's work appeal to me (the most self-conscious boy in the world) so strongly. and i like the colours btw.

JOCKUM ITCH

i only became consciously aware of JOCKUM NORDSTROM relatively recently but his influence is pretty apparent in a lot of contemporary illustration (which isn't to say he isn't contemporary, just that he's been around a bit longer than my peers). it all looks so simple to emulate but it ain't. he has a super sense of composition and manages to reach that dream place in between a bit twee and overwrought, and cold, stylish and empty. as is apparent from the times i've half-heartedly attempted to use similar techniques in the past, there's a lot to learn.

here's a video of him what a ledge I WANT TO BE HIM