David Hockney interrogates space and time

Anita Pisch, Australian National University
When a living treasure like David Hockney visits our shores, it might be tempting to hold a blockbuster retrospective. Instead, the NGV, in collaboration with Hockney’s studio, has chosen to comprehensively explore Hockney’s works of the past decade.
This reflects the fact that Hockney continues to be a prolific picture-maker, constantly evolving and incorporating new mediums into his artistic oeuvre. The NGV exhibition boasts a huge collection of Hockney’s digital drawings, as well as photography, video works, and paintings.

Self-portrait, 25 March 2012, No. 2 (1233) iPad drawing. Collection of the artist © David Hockney

Hockney has neither rested on his substantial early laurels, nor is he currently quite the innovator he is frequently labelled as. The technology that allows one to draw on the iphone and ipad is available and widely used even by children, and I find it slightly patronising and ageist to suggest that merely by engaging with this technology, Hockney is an innovator.
Where Hockney is innovative and pivotal in current artistic discourse is in his ongoing explorations of perspective, time and space – themes he has explored throughout his career through a variety of artistic mediums, often embracing new technologies.
Hockney first drew on a room-sized computer in 1986, waiting two minutes for the lines to appear. Since then, he has used faxes, photocopiers, Xerox machines and polaroids, before adopting the iphone in 2009, and then the ipad in 2010.
Embracing these latter with the exuberance of a digital native, he has created thousands of artworks, memos, emails and greeting cards (although I’m not quite sure why so many cards and emails are displayed in this exhibition).
He has also used digital technology to help construct what is possibly one of the largest en plein air paintings ever completed, Bigger Trees near Warter, comprising 50 oil on canvas panels. Donated to the Tate in London, it now occupies a huge wall in the NGV, flanked by two reproductions on paper on the adjacent walls, designed, apparently, to create an “immersive experience”.

Bigger trees near Warter or/ou Peinture sur le motif pour le nouvel age post-photographique 2007. Tate, London. Presented by the artist 2008. © David Hockney. Photo: Richard Schmidt

Although the experience is immersive, it owes little to the addition of the copies. The huge painting becomes immersive because it is impossible to take it in at a glance. The eyes must scan back and forth, and up and down, even when standing back. Walking along the image, moving through the landscape and continually adjusting your view, facilitates a lived experience in both time and space.
This meticulous exploration of time and space unifies this somewhat disparate and visually overwhelming exhibition. Hockney claims that painting will never be replaced by photography because the slick, flat surfaces and frozen instants of time in photographs do not represent the reality of what the constantly scanning eye sees (try showing a photo to a dog ­– it won’t recognise the subject matter).

Yosemite I, October 16th 2011 (1059) iPad drawing. Collection of the artist © David Hockney

Two series of digital drawings, Yosemite (National Park in California), and The arrival of spring in Woldgate (the Yorkshire landscape), show the landscapes as constantly in flux, blooming, cascading, puddling and filled with ever-changing light.
Hockney has used the Mac facility for “playing back” the drawing to highlight the passage of time by animating the process of the creation of the piece, showing his landscape come to life over time.
Many of the Yorkshire landscapes feature roads leading off into the distance or through natural archways of vegetation. When reproduced at large scale, the eye journeys down the roadways and meanders through the trees at the side. The animations enhance this, the flickers of movement caused by emerging details catching the eye and pulling it around the picture plane.

The arrival of spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) – 31 May, No. 1 (900). iPad drawing printed on 6 sheets of paper. © David Hockney Photo: Richard Schmidt

Another immersive installation, The Four Seasons, Woldgate Woods, articulates this theme further. A darkened room houses four large panels, each with nine high-definition video screens. A car rigged with nine video cameras, all set at slightly different zooms and angles, was driven slowly through the Woldgate landscape, capturing an identical trip in each of the four seasons.
Displayed simultaneously on panels placed around the room as if at the cardinal points, the idea is simple. But the result is mesmerising and soothing, forcing you to step back from your hectic routines and contemplate the notion of movement through open space and cyclical time from which we are increasingly alienated and dislocated in the contemporary world.
A further highlight with a genesis in a tragic death is 82 portraits and 1 still life, comprising 82 acrylic on canvas portraits of Hockney’s family, friends and associates. Viewed by Hockney as a single work, each portrait is the same size with a similar coloured background, all sitters occupying the same elevated chair.

Barry Humphries, 26th, 27th, 28th March 2015. acrylic on canvas. © David Hockney Photo: Richard Schmidt

The works are displayed chronologically in an elongated room that must be circumnavigated to view them. By controlling the major elements of location, Hockney invites us again to contemplate both space and time.
Over the precisely three days of sitting, each sitter came to own and claim the space uniquely and each portrait is vital and brimming with character. The importance of time is highlighted in the title of each piece which, along with the name of the sitter, records the dates of the sitting.
Talking to NGV director Tony Ellwood, Hockney emphasised that both people and trees are individuals. I was initially taken aback at these seemingly self-evident remarks.
But perhaps in our alienated and disconnected world, where life is increasingly experienced through the camera lens of the phone and ipad, we need to be reminded of nature, trees, the passage of time, shifting perspectives and to live life with exuberance.
David Hockney: Current is at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria until 13 March 2017

Anita Pisch, Visiting Fellow, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Australian National University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

My first big rock concert experience in Tulsa

Leon Russell passed away November 13, 2016 (aged 74). My first major rock concert experience was in 1972 with Leon,  J. J. Cale, and YES on Leon's or J J Cale's ranch (not sure which one owned the property). It was a great day with friends from Rogers Arkansas and caught up with some school mates from Subiaco as well.

Rolling Stone Review



http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/david-fricke-on-leon-russell-behind-the-scenes-mastermind-w451994

Sweden’s NationalMuseum Releases 3,000 Hi-Res Images on Wikimedia Commons

It just keeps getting better.

Defending Sydney Park from WestCONnex

http://youtu.be/_t2GAjrhhMM

Homage to Andy

Australia looks a bit sad on education investment

How 'Star Trek' almost failed to launch

Stephen Benedict Dyson, University of Connecticut
Fifty years ago – on Sept. 8, 1966 – TV viewers were transfixed by the appearance on screen of a green-hued, pointy-eared alien called Spock. But beneath the makeup, actor Leonard Nimoy fretted that this would be the end of his promising career.
“How can I play a character without emotion?” he asked his boss, Gene Roddenberry. “I’m going to be on one note throughout the entire series.”
Nimoy thought he looked silly wearing the prosthetics that turned him into a Vulcan, at one point issuing an ultimatum: “It’s me or the ears.”
Nimoy’s misgivings were just one of many problems the writers, producers and cast faced during “Star Trek”’s troubled journey to the screen. Culled from their recollections, this is the story of how “Star Trek”’s mission to explore strange new worlds was almost over before it began.

Seeds of inspiration

The ingredients of “Star Trek” had been slow-cooking in creator Gene Roddenberry’s brain for years. At first he wanted to write a show about a 19th-century blimp that journeyed from place to place, making contact with distant peoples.

‘Star Trek’ creator Gene Roddenberry in the early 1960s. Mutual of New York (MONY)/Wikimedia Commons

Deciding instead to set the show in the future, Roddenberry drew upon his youthful immersion in science fiction magazines like Astounding Stories. Also important was his experience as a World War II bomber pilot, which caused him to ruminate on human nature: Would we ever outgrow our obsession with violence? And from C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels, Roddenberry borrowed the idea of a courageous captain burdened by the duties of command.
With tiny Desilu Studios interested in making the show, Roddenberry pitched “Star Trek” to the networks. CBS passed after Roddenberry botched the pitch. But NBC bit and ordered a pilot episode, which was eventually titled “The Cage.”

NBC responds to the pilot

Watching “The Cage” now is a disorientating experience. In the captain’s chair is a sullen man called Pike, played by star Jeff Hunter. There is no sign of future series regulars McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, Checkov. Spock is there, but not quite the inscrutable Spock we would come to know. He shouts and, more than once, breaks into a wide grin.

The opening credits to ‘The Cage,’ ‘Star Trek’’s first pilot episode.

The role of chilly logician and second in command is instead taken by “Number One,” a character played by actress Majel Barrett.
“Number One” wouldn’t make it past this trial run. In tests, some men and a surprisingly large number of women objected to her stridency, which was out of touch with the gender norms of the time. NBC doubted that Barrett could carry such a prominent role (and even thought Roddenberry had cast her because she was his mistress).
“The Cage” – a complicated story about alien mind-control – was an ambitious pilot. When Roddenberry presented it to NBC, the programming executives were blown away. But the sales and marketing department wasn’t convinced. Not enough action, they thought. It would be hard to promote. Pass.
“Star Trek,” it seemed, was dead.

Striking gold with Shatner

Roddenberry pleaded with NBC for another chance. He assured them he could make it action-driven, that it didn’t need to be high concept. A television miracle happened when NBC commissioned that rarest of things: a second pilot.
Roddenberry wanted Jeff Hunter to return as Captain Pike, and arranged to screen “The Cage” for him, reserving Desilu’s projection room for March 25, 1965. But Hunter was a no-show, sending his wife in his stead. “This is not the kind of show Jeff wants to do,” she told Roddenberry. “Jeff Hunter is a movie star.” Pike relinquished command.

William Shatner as Captain Kirk. NBC Television/Wikimedia Commons

The ebullient Canadian actor William Shatner was hired to play the ship’s captain, now named James R. (later James T.) Kirk. For Leonard Nimoy, the casting of Shatner, a stage actor accustomed to playing scenes big and loud, was the key to unlocking Spock.
“Jeff [Hunter] was playing Captain Pike as a very thoughtful, kind of worried, kind of angst-ridden nice guy,” Nimoy later told Shatner, in an interview for Shatner’s book “Star Trek Memories.” “Pike didn’t have the clarity or precision of character against which you could measure yourself.”
Shatner’s clear-cut performance carved out space for Nimoy to shape his saturnine Spock. “For lack of a better metaphor, on a bright sunny day, the shadows get very clear.”
The second pilot, bolstered by the Shatner/Nimoy tandem, was a winner. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was a rollicking story about crew members irradiated in deep space and acquiring godlike powers. NBC liked it and commissioned a full season of “Star Trek.”

Righting the ship after a stormy start

Triumph quickly turned to panic for Roddenberry and for Desilu studios. Roddenberry needed scripts for the series – fast. He solicited stories from veteran TV writers, from sci-fi magazine and novel authors, and even from his office staff. His secretary Dorothy Fontana went on to become perhaps the most celebrated and prolific writer for the show.
But script problems would dog the young series. Veteran TV writers, unused to sci-fi, struggled to work within the universe Roddenberry had created. Sci-fi luminaries had boundless imaginations but little grasp of the practicalities of writing for television. Their scripts often called for casting and staging that would consume the budget for a feature film, let alone a fledgling TV series.
Roddenberry also wasn’t the best at managing the fragile egos of his writers. He took it upon himself to rewrite every script that made it on-screen, and his pages were often slow to arrive on set. Scripting was a constant source of tension and delay.
For Desilu, the elation of getting “Star Trek” picked up was dampened by the financial reality of producing the show. Network policy was to pay a set amount for each episode, calculated at something like 80 percent of the cost of production. For a small outfit like Desilu, deficit-financing both “Star Trek” and their other new show, “Mission Impossible,” required some accounting wizardry. Both were budgeted at US$200,000 per episode, with NBC kicking in $160,000. Any over-budget costs were born by the studio alone.
Tiny Desilu kept its head above water into the second season of “Star Trek” before finally drowning in debt. Studio owner and “I Love Lucy” star Lucille Ball was forced to sell to Paramount. Had she been able to hold on a few months more, she would have seen “Star Trek” picked up in 60 countries. Had she retained the rights long-term, Desilu would have benefited financially from endless reruns of the show’s 79 episodes. Network-friendly deals also ensured it would be many years before the cast would gain financial security from their iconic roles.
With the premiere date rapidly approaching, NBC chose an episode titled “The Man Trap” to be the first to air. It is, in truth, a run-of-the-mill “Star Trek” episode. The network liked that it featured a creature – a shape-shifting, salt-guzzling monster – with which the show’s heroes could do battle.
Although NBC’s marketing team had not initially seen the potential of “Star Trek,” by the time “The Man Trap” aired, they were able to trumpet the show in a glossy, multipage promotional brochure:

“As the Apollo moon shot moves steadily from the drawing board to the launching pad, STAR TREK takes TV viewers beyond our time and solar system to the unexplored interstellar deeps … the STAR TREK storylines will stimulate the imagination without bypassing the intellect. While speculating in a fascinating way about the future, the series also will have much to say that is meaningful to us today.”

A half-century later, we are on the cusp of a new CBS series set in the universe Roddenberry created. (CBS acquired the rights to “Star Trek” some years ago following a complicated series of corporate maneuverings.) Titled “Star Trek: Discovery” and scheduled for release in January 2017, the new series has no doubt had to contend with its own casting controversies, script problems and budget constraints.
The writers of the new show certainly know enough about Trek’s turbulent beginnings to temper expectations: “If you go in with open minds and open hearts, you may be rewarded,” they told a crowd eager for news at the Star Trek: Mission New York convention held over Labor Day weekend. “Whereas if you go with a set of impossible-to-realize expectations, which even you cannot specifically define, then we’re bound to fail.”

Stephen Benedict Dyson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Blenheim Park Community Victory

Dear Friends of Blenheim Park

Congratulations! The JRPP has voted unanimously to recommend to the Minister NO HIGH RISE IN BLENHEIM PARK!

The JRPP today resolved to recommend to the Minister against sending the Blenheim Park 16storey high rise proposal to gateway. What this means is that the Minister or his delegate must now decide whether to accept the reucommendation of the JRPP or to make a completely different decision. Of course, the Minister could make a decision contrary to the recommendation of the JRPP but in the words of Sir Humphrey “That would be very courageous indeed, Minister.”

I have attached a copy of the decision to this email.

A lot of people have been working hard to achieve this outcome. Whilst this is not the final final final decision (we still need the Minister to sign off), I think we need to acknowledge a whole lot of people who have worked hard to achieve this outcome:

·         Chris Turner who has been tireless in her efforts to keep the community informed and committed

·         The TWT and NDT for keeping the community informed about this important issue

·         Victor Dominello who cannot be thanked enough for his behind the scenes lobbying of the Planning Minister, most of which we will never hear about

·         Brad Powe for accompanying Chris and I to see Victor Dominello and the Planning Minister

·         The whole Blenheim Park district for maintaining the pressure on Council, Councillors, JRPP and the Minister

·         All of the staff at Ryde Council who have been professional and committed to great outcome for the community

We wait anxiously to see the Ministers decision, but I think we have jumped the major hurdle.

To celebrate our community victory, we will invite the media to come to Blenheim Park this Friday at 4pm. Please come to have a photo and celebrate the great outcome for the community

Kind regards

Councillor Craig Chung

P: 0412 605 597 | E: craig@craigchung.com.au | www.craigchung.com.au 

       

Save Blenheim park, North Ryde Australia

North Ryde is under threat from over development.

STOP FURTHER HIGH RISE 16 story apartments!

PSA Election Notice

Game of Thrones Beginner’s Guide: Uncensored (HBO)

Blenheim Park is once again under attack from High Rise Development

Dear Friends

Here we go again! Blenheim Park is once again under attack from High Rise Development !

ü  The purpose of this email is to alert you to an issue that has come up.

ü  Put Tuesday 28^th June @ 7pm aside to attend the Council meeting to have your say about this very important issue.

ü  Get ready to text, email and ring your Councillors – not yet, I will let you know when is the right time.

ü  Be ready for a photo in the newspaper in 2 weeks time – I will coordinate it with you.

ü  There is nothing more to do today. I will keep you informed.

As you know, Council on 26^th April 2016 unanimously resolved to acquire the 3 houses adjacent to Blenheim Park and to incorporate that land into Blenheim Park. The resolution instructed the general manager to attempt, in the first instance, to acquire the land on commercial terms. That is, the developer would get a fair price for the land as it is currently zoned – low density residential (R2).

This resolution followed Councils 9-1 rejection of the developer proposing a 16 storey development with a floor space ratio (FSR) of 4.3:1.

A rescission motion has been put before Council and will be debated at the next Council meeting on Tuesday 28^th June at 7pm. This rescission motion seeks to overturn the decision to acquire the land and return it to Blenheim Park. If the developer gets his way, he wants to try and convince Councillors that he is hard done by. He will tell Councillors that it isn’t fair that he can’t develop his land into 16 storeys. He will tell Councillors  that they will suffer financial hardship if we don’t allow him to develop the site as he wants. He will tell Councillors that there is something underhanded about the proposal that the community, some Councillors and staff want to preserve the amenity of local residents.

Let’s remember, when a developer buys low density residential home sites (Zoned R2) on the hope that they can rezone the land to high density for home units – it is a purely speculative proposal. It is a risk. It is a commercial decision. There is nothing underhanded about the community saying “Thanks but no thanks”. I am always in favour of reasonable development and allowing a mix of housing in the appropriate locations, but North Ryde has done its bit with the development of Lachlans Line and the North Ryde Station precinct. 

ü  Please feel free to pass on this email to other members of the community who has an interest in the future of Blenheim Park

ü  Keep Tuesday 28^th June aside to attend the Council meeting at 7pm

ü  Get ready to ring, text and email your Councillors

ü  Talk to your neighbours

Councillor Craig Chung

P: 0412 605 597 | E: craig@craigchung.com.au | www.craigchung.com.au 

       

Orson Welles Commentary: Affidavit of Isaac Woodard

I have always loved Orson Welles but now I respect him even more for what he is doing in this radio broadcast from 1946.

Treasure Trove: why defunding Trove leaves Australia poorer

Mike Jones, University of Melbourne and Deb Verhoeven, Deakin University
All swashbuckling pirates (and movie producers) know that if you want to find the treasure buried beneath the elusive X you first need a map. A charred fragment is no good: fortune only comes to those who hold enough pieces to follow the trail.
The National Library of Australia’s Trove service is that map for anyone wanting to navigate the high seas of information abundance. (You don’t even need to be a pirate.)
But our information plundering days may soon be over. Recently announced “efficiency dividends” mean that aspects of the Trove service will be scratched.
The news that Trove will face cuts has led to an outpouring of support on social media, with several thousand tweets using the #fundTrove hashtag.

So what exactly will we lose?
Trove pulls together metadata and content from multiple sources into one platform to make finding what you are looking for an efficient and successful experience.
As of February 25 2016, this includes information on over 374,419,217 books, articles, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives, datasets and more, expressing the extraordinarily rich history of Australian culture.
If, as someone interested in museums, I am looking for information on Sir Frederick McCoy, inaugural director of the National Museum of Victoria, a single Trove search reveals not just books and articles.
I’ll find information on archival collections at the State Library of Victoria and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, biographical entries from the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Encyclopedia of Australian Science, digital photographs, transcribed newspaper obituaries and images of documents such as a Geological Survey of Victoria map to which McCoy contributed.
Distributed content is available within seconds. The benefits to researchers, local and family historians, and the Australian community as a whole, is immense, resulting in over 70,000 unique visitors a day.

Yet, as The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday, staff have been told the federal government’s “efficiency dividend” will have a “grave impact” on the National Library. Aside from inevitable staff cuts,

The library will also cease aggregating content in Trove from museums and universities unless it is fully funded to do so.

This is the information equivalent to leaving money, or treasure, on the table.
Making Australia’s existing investment in information resources freely and efficiently available is not just a self-evident public good in terms of equality of access. The democratisation of information has clear benefits for innovation and the Turnbull government’s “ideas boom”.
Trove is a key piece of information infrastructure for many professionals, and this wealth of material isn’t behind a paywall or subscription service. There’s no requirement that users prove they are “bona fide” researchers (whatever that may mean).

It’s accessible to anyone with an internet connection; and the sources it draws on include more than the usual suspects. There’s content from small institutions and large, community collections as well as state-funded libraries, museums and archives.
In a sense Trove has been a revolutionary experience for those of us who rely professionally on access to high-quality information. Once our problem was that there was just too little to go on. Now there’s far too much.
Contrary to the myth of the lone researcher who loves spending hours scouring paper archives and libraries to discover “buried” or “lost” knowledge, humanities research isn’t primarily about the hunt for content. It’s about analysing, processing, interpreting, relating and synthesising useful content that has been found.
By dramatically reducing the time spent on the trail of content, Trove users spend less time hunting for the booty and more time working with the spoils.
Trove not only aggregates content, it provides sophisticated search capability to help narrow down thousands of results. It’s a focal point for the diverse community who help organise, correct and improve the information it contains.

For people and organisations with some coding skills there are also opportunities to harvest and process content via an API (application programming interface) to reveal new ways of looking at our shared heritage.
The Trove platform supports 21st-century innovation and agile practice. As a result, it has become essential and internationally renowned infrastructure for distributed, collaborative and responsive research into Australian society and culture.

As a past manager of Trove, Tim Sherratt, pointed out on Wednesday,

Trove is not going to be suddenly turned off.

But its relevance relies on constantly growing the knowledge and content it contains.
If the National Library puts Trove to the sword as a result of the government’s swashbuckling cuts, this innovative stash of content may end up dispersed and buried again, taking Australia off the map. That would definitely leave us poorer, an information desert island in an increasingly interconnected world.

Mike Jones, Consultant Research Archivist, University of Melbourne and Deb Verhoeven, Professor and Chair of Media and Communication, Deakin University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.