Art has many functions and acting as a social catalyst is one of them. Tonight at a function met a fellow country ( Welsh) woman and discovered that we had a mutual acquaintance who went to Antartica knowing that he had terminal cancer. I made him a video based on his photos and this is up on the internet. I sent her a link. Its my memorial to him./youtube.com/watch?v=MRRzv-APp2U
Finally got around to uploading a new web movie. It's called "Mirage", result of my week in Dahab only this was made out in the Sinai desert. Hope the link works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnaq6OiKBNE
If not go to : www.annshaw.co.uk
"The Children of Craig-y-nos”
My online book is taking up most of my time.
It’s proving to be challenging as well as interactive (over 70 people have contacted me), intergenerational ( grandparents are getting their grandchildren to help them with the technology) and collaborative ( folk get a print out from the blog and can add/change as they wish) and I have a team of people helping including assistance from an historian in The Wellcome Trust, as well as the Sleeping Giant Foundation, charity specialising in oral history in Wales, and of course, friends who are helping with interviews and repairing damaged photos in Photoshop.
checkout: http://craig-y-nos.blogspot.com
I was encouraged to read in yesterday’s Financial Times that more publishing companies are putting their physical books into a virtual, digital warehouse.
Could an electronic e-book, transform the reading world as the IPod has music?
You just download the chapter you want.
The Tramway: Curatorial pseudo-intellectual artspeak!
It’s good to see Ian Gale, Scotland’s top art critic , tackling some of the obtuse art writing in exhibition guides.
Take this from the current exhibition at the Tramway in Glasgow of Katie Dove and Victoria Morton.:
“Of Dove:”experiential reference points allow the viewer access to the work through their own experience of the moment.”
Or Morton: “Detailed and continuous composition is intended to punctuate the non-linguistic, undefined limits of our imagination.”
He says:” If such worthwhile artists as these are to be introduced to a wider audience they need some sort of coherent interpretation not this half-baked, pseudo-psychological artspeak.”
I was thinking of going to see this exhibition, on second thoughts I won’t bother.
Dahab – the power of images
Following my visit to Egypt I decided to check out YouTube.
I wish I hadn’t.
There were some very disconcerting videos of divers dead at the bottom of the Red Sea: one of a young girl curled up as if asleep in a foteal position, and another of a guy who had videoed his own death.
Ann Shaw is an artist/writer based in Scotland working in new media. As a journalist she campaigned and wrote about many social and medical issues. She is a feminist and founder member of Falkirk Womens Aid, active in the trades union movement and former member of National Union of Journalists Equality Working Party, and founder member of Forth Valley Open Studios.
