drilling for gold

it’s very rare for me to have an evening where getting to sleep is a problem.  i still don’t yet understand why but last night was one of those evenings.

the evening wasn’t particularly different.  there’s a family ritual that happens on  a friday night after school and this was once again succesfully deployed.  perhaps one slight differnce was my wathcing of the documentary about kraftwork. it’s the one where they tour the globe producing art pop shows in major galleries.

the documentary shows songs from the turbine hall performances. i remember the shows happenign as the projection system they employ was one that i used to work with in the very early days of the systems existence.

what the documentary explored was the origins of kraftwork and how their experimentation was to inform and influence artists in both europe and america.

after a relaxing evening of light entertainment and wine i retired to bed, to be greeted by in ability to sleep.

as a result of being really rather exhausted, this morning i caught up with the synth britannia documentary available on the bbc iplayer.  interesting to note how trans euro express and i feel love by donna summer both were cited by artists in the two documenataries.

listening to trans euro express now has taken me away from my thoughts …..

in detroit at the time that this tunes was released it had a direct influence on the djs working in detroit and gave rise to techno.

i think it’s important to listen and watch the embedded links at the time of writing, this is a strategy i use elsewhere on social media as i need to know what it is i’m posting.

listening to the tune while on limited sleep is producing a dormantary feeling, i’m really looking forward to listening to the donna summer track for a lift…..

slightly cheating i’ve opted for a recent remix version. …

the synth britannia documentary is fantastic.  it describes a time when i was finding my feet as a person and finding out what i liked musically.  it’s a revelation hearing gary numan talking about what happened to him in london that set him to write “cars”.

this afternoon i sat down to write about me : an artist in chaos.

what i sat down to write i’ve forgotten … well diverted away from by my finding and including two music tracks that were huge at the time they came out.  having massive influence to those that heard them as the tracks boldly pronounced what could be done … sparking thoughts, ideas and many new tracks by very many other artists.

today i have begun a journey to discover my homepage.  i’ve rejected months of workng online and perfecting what each page looks like and making sure my message and best bits get communicated in an instant.

instead i’ve relaxed and looking forward to the process of thinking and making and discovering.  i’ve made space within the site for some writing and i have options to display images, video and sound.

forgotten are the feelings of worry about the site not beingg fully ready to be viewed.  left behind are the cares of how what i’m doing is being viewed by hundreds.

today i’ve put two quotes on the homepage that i really do feel at home with.

i may or may not be an artist… that’s kind of irrelevent really, the main thing for me is that i am honest with myself and what i do is enjoyable, makes me excited and i learn something in doing it,

for now my website does state artist.

recent feelings of i don’t care have been happening and they are good as i can feel my way to the feelings that i do care about.  my partner, the children and the family dog who is just starting to show signs of age and i’m already being emotional at the thought of her not being with us any more.  these are what matters to me.

last weekend we wathced a film in which there’s a scene featuring a large container made of glass with water inside and the main charater of the film saying

it’s not real.

 

i’m starting to trust what i think to be real and rejecting almost everything else.  the process of rejection is complicated for me as there is a wonder at being alive and being aware of many aspects of the lives of others.  for my own sanity and focus of practice this neck is one i can learn to rain in.

i can loose myself for 40 minutes in the natural theatre happening outside the living room window.

discovery is a powerful thing.

my homepage is andrewmartynsugars.me 

i see from google today is the start of the lunar year, it would have been my dad’s birthday too.  birthdays are symbols…. new hope…. new beginnings….another blog post.

it’s a post i’ve been considering before writing, very often a blog post will begin as a thought, an idea ….

before writing i caught up with a timely post by steve messam re artists and money.  in it he states

…. art is an expression of emotions, experiences, time and texture, and a whole realm of intangibles that may or may not have an effect on those that experience them.

 

this caught my eye this evening because of a conversation recently in which the concept of expression in art was discussed with my partner’s 16 year old daughter.  it got me thinking …. “what do i express ?”

i’ll come back to that.

today has significance for the reasons i’ve already stated and it leads me to the whole mind blowing concept of why am i here.  rather than explode i’ll simply accept that i am here, sat on a sofa with electrical light, gas powered heating and a laptop connected to a global communication system.  the human animal has evolved itself well to afford me these things.  there is a but though … not everyone on the planet has the same affordings as these i sit with this evening. an unepected twist in my thinking in this moment.

returning to the uk centric vision of evolution i consider how indeed i am benefitting from many many years and many many endeavours by those who went before me to ensure that living has a certain set of values now.

i pause and drink some water …

while washing up this evening there seemed to be some sense in this thinking and where it might lead me. now i’m sat here i can;t fully remember what it was i was thinking.

let me retrace my steps…

there was something in there about mainstream, something about me and something about my practice.

somehow it was about a relationship about how mainstream life appears to be all sorted and worked out and my practice is something that is in a constant state of discovering what it is … it evolves as my thinking does, being me and exposure to the rest of the world around me.

recently i’ve realised that the root of my domain has lovely images but fails to set up position of thinking by expanding upon the images with written word.  a year ago this was great for me.  now … it needs reviewing.

if the whole of the mainstream was expressed as a square …. what and where am i ?

i will refer to notes now … these have been made over a  span of time and are in response to me interacting with the world around me….

a written sketch now follows :

The daxco dynamic – the move to slower self directed realisation away from fast tracked realisation

Corporations are necessary as they fast track the thinking of the group.

I start to get why visual art is important. The evolved spoken language is sometimes just not evolved enough to communicate what is felt / meant / being. I get how visual art is a communication of a time of feeling.

I get how it asks a lot of the viewer and potentially only appreciated by a small few.
I consider written works of fiction. These are possible to evoke feeling. Time being the factor of scale in this instance.

Simple scalable ideas. eg ceramics on rods placed outside

Scale of man made being made more important than scale of natural world. The Imbalance of scale senario.

 
Money is asked for by those who regularly repeat their simple scalable idea. Those are of us exploring to find the simple scalable idea are happy to simply explore.

as the lunar year begins again, i have a need to evolve the root of my domain …. i see it as important to demonstrate the thinking i make as thinking on it’s own isn’t recognisable enough.

i continue to search for my simple scaleable idea.