Anarchic Design cover

Anarchic Design cover
Originally uploaded by gingerpig2000

This is just a test cover, it made an enjoyable break in planning and writing!

After about eighteen months of planning and working on my material, everything is coming together now and now all I need to do is write it. It will include both texts and images, some of which appear in this blog, and cover some of the practical aspects in learning to be more innovative and the kind of mental blocks which society is so good at placing before us.

Earlier I sorted through this blog as it had some entries not relevant to the subject, while other blog entries had to be imprted from another blog. However, while time consuming, it has been interesting and I know now how to save my blog on my own computer. It would also help if I went through this blog and tidied it up a little (a lot).

Anyway, I have set myself six months to get it written, which should mean I will be ready around the start of May 2010. Not long at all, really.

058 - Giraffe

058 - Giraffe, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

When I was a child I had a hobby horse, rather tired and secondhand, which given the lack of local horse riding in my village in the 1960s was a rather pointless toy, or so it seemed. If a squire had still been living in the big house and regularly mounted, or had I seen the local hunt from close quarters, the story may have been different. Hobby horses are a child's version of a real world wood and sackcloth scary horse, sometimes known as a 'hooden horse' that in earlier times had been used for traditional festivities, and reputedly a fearsome object with a large and clacking mouth. By my time, the only hooden horse I know was a dusty exhibit in Folkestone museum.

Other children from other backgrounds and times have found hobby horses a source of great pleasure, although I wonder how many are bought because of a soft spot for society's dream time of a yesteryear that never really existed, but for me running around with a stick between my legs was akin to you doing the same with a button in your pocket. What is or was the point? A plastic horse and cart was more fun, or a tractor with leaky batteries, or even a story book about a woman who polished a blackbird and painted his beak gold.

Horses arrived in my life at a much later, adult period, when I learnt to ride inside a ring and jump over small fences. Part of the pleasure was doing it together with people who I had never met before and who I would never meet again, and yet for a few months our paths ran side by side. While I could not be described as a confident horseperson, I feel I know the kind of people who are and how they view the world to some extent.

As to giraffes, I have no idea if anyone has ever ridden one, although I would be more surprised to learn that no one had than that someone had, but here I can ride one in my imagination. This is an important concept, although I am sure many people would regard it as childish, but here I can involve both my mind and body in a task I lack either the means or the skill to carry out in reality.

057 - all-growed-up

057 - all-growed-up, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Today I managed to get into contact with a friend from university, who I miss a great deal.

I like to try things that are new, but I do not see what is wrong with going back and trying some things from when we were much younger. It was quite fun to sit in the wash basin, although my was basin was far too small as we only intended it for washing hands and cleaning teeth.

054 - Society is a Dictator

054 - Society is a Dictator, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Society protects the conformists, the non-conformists are the enemy.

What is so fragile about the conformists that they need protecting, everything they love they have taken from the non-conformists. If the non-conformists never existed, the human race would never have existed.

So, why are non-conformists treated so badly?

Don't believe me? Dress like this at age 50 and walk down your high street and then go into work.

One interesting fact is that many people would be envious, because they only conform because they lack the confidence to be any different. so, who are the ones who lack confidence, and who genuinely cannot deal with change? Perhaps, rather than waiting for those who lack the confidence to change suffer from disease through having to live a life that isn't them we should be considering the inability to accept change as a mental disease, something imbued by society and education. If we continue to do nothing, nothing will change.

051 - Rock Guitarist

051 - Rock Guitarist, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Ah, what fun one can have on a sunday night with some cardboard and a roll of adhesive tape. I was sitting thinking, in the special thinking room on that special thinking seat and wondered whether, if i had any sort of voice for singing, I could have been the front man for a group.

The guitar really is just cut up and taped together from a cardboard box I had brought home from the supermarket a few months ago for another project, and it has been acting as a stand in the wardrobe for another box I brought home at the same time but which my wife now keeps her supply of funky new belts in. Of course, in the excitement of taking the picture, I actually held it the wrong way around, so some editing was necessary - and while I was at it I gave it a very 1970s flare, and went green this time.

As I have mentioned before, I don't buy props, I just use what is around me. I might add that the guitar looks a LOT better in the picture than it does in reality, it's cardboard color for a start, and doesn't have any knobs on.

If you are going to make prop, don't make it perfect as the eye is good at spotting imperfections in detail: while a few broad strokes to indicate something and the brain fills in the details itself. The chances are, if I had not mentioned the guitar but talked about something else, you would have assumed I really had a guitar. You might also have assumed that I could play the guitar, which I can't. I could have just posted these rocker images and said that I had a jamming session, and you would have believed that as well, if you didn't know me. Remarkable, but true.

050 - Rocker Screensaver

050 - Rocker Screensaver, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Having taken a piece of my art and abused it to achieve a description of the art -craft divide, I decided to use it as a screensaver, but because the image was so big only this amount showed on screen. Another unexpected view on my image through taking an action. At the same time Iggy Pop was singing away in the background (he just popped around for a coffee, he said), and something else clicked. Now I have a new screensaver for work, with parts of the lyrics of that song in the image.

The more you do, the more you find you can do. When I don't take pictures, nothing much happens, but I just decided to take one this weekend and now I have a whole series. This is a general principal you can apply to anything (but use it wisely, said the master), and it only gets better with practice.

049 - F is for ...artist

049 - F is for ...artist, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

I wouldn't normally show the images I take with my camera that I use to create the final image, it is rather like asking to see the contents of my laundry basket. Or, if you buy a painting, you are probably not that interested in first been shown the blank canvas before the artist applies any paint.

However, in my quest to try and demonstrate what I believe is the difference between art and craft, between skill with tools and the idea behind what one attempts to create with those tools, I need some examples.

If you built a house, you are unlikely to tell everyone that you used a Thompson No. 2 hammer, or that you believe a house built with the cheaper Samson Powerforce hammer would be in any way inferior. What is important is the house, its quality. A good craftsman would know the limitations of the Samson, and work round them.

I used Gimp to edit the image because I understand the limitations of my camera and the wall I use as a studio, but mostly because I am not interested in photography but the images themselves. At that point it really doesn't matter what tools I use, as long as I am comfortable with them.

047 - D is for getting older Disgracefully

047 - D is for getting older Disgracefully, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Sometimes I wonder why the people around me are getting older so quickly, what happened to those promises they made when they were young? I know what they say now, but what will they say when they retire and can no longer remember the way back?

Often the issue is confidence versus the expectations of the society we live in. Follow the plan society lays down and you will have a happy, fulfilling life, but what if the plan is wrong for you, the way you think is different, what then? Does this make you a danger to society, might you point out some fatal flaw and the whole edifice will come tumbling down.

If you are secure in the system of society, you may be afraid that you will not be able to cope with the change, but the reality is that change does not come from the rebellious thinkers but those working societies knobs for their own gains, trying to put there power group at the top politically or taking risks with mortgage lending to make vast quantities of money.

Rebelious thinkers seem more often to say, hey, have you any idea how much pain you are doing to certain segments of society who lack the ability to fend for themselves.

Think about the kind of person who brings about war or stock market crashes, and then think about who brings changes in thinking that create equality for more people.