the peckham experiment

following on after a fashion from the last post, i'm going to check out the peckham experiment, which rewards the audience for further economic tanking. do you want crisps or a job? hmm. what flavour are the crisps?

from the exhibition website:

Ellie Harrison’s Vending Machine [...] will distribute free bags of crisps throughout The Peckham Experiment – this largesse is, however, dependent on the machine receiving bad news about the UK economy via an internal BBC information-feed. This basically means that what’s bad for the rest of the country is good for exhibition-goers! (although the actual crisps are probably quite bad for you….)

it's part of a 'social health project' called The Peckham Experiment. and as i'm currently conducting my own peckham experiment i'm definitely going to have a poke around...

hoarding your goodness doesn't make you richer

Every morning I scramble to cram myself onto a crowded train full of already armoured commuters. Everyone’s staking their claim, chafing against the day, ready for a confrontation. It’s a bloody ego battle played out in hot looks and hair flicks. Who slams into you when the train judders, who’s going to be first off when the doors slide back – suddenly becomes this crucial measure of who’s best, or more important, or – something. I don’t know. Do any of us know?

I do it too, every morning. But I’ve been thinking about opportunities to be kind. This morning I decided to let everyone off ahead of me. I smiled. I gestured for them to move first. Even those people who met my gaze (Londoners are conscientious objectors to eye contact) looked at me suspiciously. But one lady looked surprised, and smiled widely at me, and said thank you, and she meant it. We gave each other the opportunity to be kind, and I felt a bit less of an army of me by the time I stepped onto the platform.

Maybe I’ll forget tomorrow, or be crabby, or late. But days are just ordinary moments strung together like beads on a string, and I want my fingers to hover longer over the sweet options. If you’ve got it, give it away.

image above from masaaki miyara via flickr.

circles. philip glass. sesame street. 1979.

hyponotic, philip glass-scored awesomeness for kids. 'nuff said.

much marvellous

peter broderick last night was mesmeric, deft and genuine and kind of - what am i trying to say? - kind of like that sweet pre-sleep state where you're bobbing about on the surface of sleep, stringing images and thoughts and sensations together like beads, content. like that.

he was followed by the fourteen-legged musical party that is efterklang.



the last time i saw these guys was in a field. the rain was coming down sideways - literally horizontally - and it had been for hours. it was a summer festival. i wanted to go home. and then efterklang came on dressed as sort of danish matadors, all in white except for their swishy green capes. they played their hearts out and i stayed and forgot all about the rain.

they're coming back in october to play at the barbican with an orchestra. so much yay.

blowing my tiny mind

"A dying star on the verge of exploding creates a cosmic "butterfly" in a new picture from Hubble's WFC3. The central star, now obscured by a dense band of dust, was once five times the mass of the sun. Over the past two thousand years the star has expelled most of its outer gas envelope to create the ghostly "wings," which together span about two light-years."

...holy moly. do not miss the gobsmacking new images from the refurbished hubble telescope. we are so tiny. nature is god.

megazines

having spent chunks of time recently in various airports and remote outposts of WH Smith i can say for sure that if the magazine industry wasn't dying it'd probably be a candidate for compassionate euthanasia. seriously, grazia, with your constant hysterical claims to have FINALLY REVEALED: THE DIET THAT KEEPS CHERYL COLE SO INCREDIBLY SLIM can i help you out? her entire daily calorific intake is derived from mascara. mystery solved.

conversely, yay for the good ones. here are a couple to have a gander at, none of which are likely readily available in your local petrol station but nonetheless worth locating (and some are just on the interweb, so no excuses there).


wooooo magazine is written by the irrepressible jason crombie. it's kind of vice-y in its irreverence, but where vice is basically knocked out by spoiled kids angry at the world because they weren't born dov charney, wooooo is charmingly and unprepossessingly off-kilter. and then completely juvenile. jackpot! read the blog if IMing strangers, penis cakes, 'foxy but worm food' features on deceased beauties, shark obsessions, interviews with david byrne and dancing to lou reed tickle your fancy. if they don't, i feel a little bit sad for you. i bet you don't even like jelly.


i've never happened across a real-life copy of monster children but i'm intrigued. previous issues have included sister corita's art, todd selby's favourite shoots, beautiful losers, geoff mcfetridge and kate moss's nipples. it's an aussie effort, so little wonder it's a bit surf and skate obsessed. i'm not so sure about the 'freebies' though - an asahi coaster?!


it's nice that is more of an occasional publication but it's marvellous, collecting all sorts of loveliness within its (ad-free) pages. issue 1 was brilliant and number 2 is due out shortly. you might want to pre-order it because it's going to be amazing. i feel it in my waters. also it's going to involve karlssonwilker, fred butler and rob ryan, so there's pretty much a moneyback guarantee on it being mint.


uppercase magazine is a sweet little thing out of a gallery of the same name based in calgary. the third issue is imminent, but if past issues are anything to go by, it'll have gratuitous double-page spreads of people's obscure collections (scissors, anyone?), funny illustrations and a bit of design nerdery.

all you need now is a sunny afternoon and a mini milk, and you're in business. what are you reading?

a small list

a few things to help you out in case you haven't found enough things to like about today:
each and every one of the supersweet editions paumes books (buy in € from yvestown).


lena corwin's travel poster that reawakened my weird elvis thing.


these stuffed dog portraits cracked me up. is it just me?

having a world full of music to listen to after a week-long roadtrip with only the same. three. cds. to listen to... oh god. liking 'the gardener' by the tallest man on earth, very much.

plimsolls and no socks. summer's on the turn but for now i'm drinking it in.

plimsolls via stevsoll's flickr