Presstube Screensaver

Presstube.com, by a man called James Patterson is one of those sites that hangs about in your bookmarks forever. I must've shoved it in there years ago. Every so often, as with countless other things I've saved, I'll have a look to see what's new. Long enough has usually passed that I can't remember what the bookmarks even vaguely link to, and clicking the damn thing reveals a redesigned site with a bunch of new stuff to look at. It's a nice little moment of exploration and recognition.

The difference with Presstube is that I'm exposed to Patterson's work daily thanks to his amazing screensaver which I installed after one of those visits a long time ago. It's a fluid, randomly generating, black on white animation constructed from odd little drawings that hypnotically grow and morph into one another. It's the best screensaver I've ever seen. Every so often it'll go crazy and surge with movement and splashes of colour. It's the bees knees. I've made a little photo of it running on my Mac:

Looks good eh? All nice and white. Obviously it really zings when it's moving, but you get the idea. It's available for download for Mac and PC - HERE. As with all of the Presstube animations, and thanks to my ignorance of how Flash works, it boggles my brain trying to work out how he makes the damn things. Fair enough having the patience to create a line animation with a start and end, but making something that constantly changes and has a seemingly endless bank of clever drawings is too much for me to get my head around.

Go and have a look about the site. There are lots of great things to see. Especially his animations on the Projects page. He is a patient man.

EDIT: The screensaver stopped working on newer Macs for a while, but it's back! You can get it here. I also have a new blog post about it too.

Fortune Teller T-Shirts

Fortune Teller 10th Birthday T-Shirt
commissioned by The Changing Room gallery
(sold out, I think)

back to artwork list

Adam and Joe

Like most people, I'm influenced and inspired by all sorts of folks who do all sorts of things. I have favourite authors and artists and actors, Who doesn't? Somewhere in my brain box, however, is a mental list of my favourite favourites. This wee list isn't necessarily made up of the best of the best, just the people I like the most. I'll try to post about them here under the 'People' tag.

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish get on this list. If you're not familiar with them, they're most famous for a television programme called "The Adam & Joe Show" broadcast on Channel 4 in the late 90s. The show was a mix of home-made nonsense featuring the chaps in their bedroom with a lot of ideas and some toys. See!:



There are tons of other clips from the show on YouTube, so have a hunt about. Adam has been uploading a lot of his personal ones (including the new stuff he did with Radiohead) to his blog and to his YouTube channel. Joe often writes good stuff on his MySpace blog.

Something I feel often gets overlooked is how just dang funny they are, regardless of the toys and the 'studenty bollocks' skits. They're a pair of polite, well educated and slightly posh dudes who can make chatting about trivial rubbish entertaining without ever falling into horrible internetty-humour or rubbish Family Guy style wackiness. They also have crazy amounts of pop culture knowledge (Joe in particular seems to have seen every horror film ever made) and damn good taste. They're brills!

Recently Adam and Joe have been floating about radio-land, starting out on XFM and now appearing on BBC 6 Music. Their show (HERE) goes out on Saturday morning and can be listened to live on the 6 Music site and heard for the whole week using the listen again feature. Radio suits them well as they're given space to talk about whatever they want and have even started trying to out-sing each other on their 'Song Wars' feature. They even write their own jingles and play good music.
----------------------

PODCASTS!
Best of all is their podcasts. These are a mixture of highlights from their radio show as well as some new golden nuggets recorded especially for the downloads. The archive of their XFM stuff is available HERE and is in my opinion the best podcast out there. It's some of their funniest work and manages to be perhaps the only Gervais beater.

This week also sees the launch of their new BBC podcast and is the reason I am writing these words. Go and listen to it. You can download it for free HERE. There is also talk of a beefed up, new material, sweary version appearing sometime soon as well. There you go. Boy, I hope you like Adam & Joe.

Shuff Shuff

Shuff Shuff
ink & acrylic on card
from "Take To The Woods" at Analogue, 2007
(not for sale)

January News

Hello, Happy New Year! Were you sick? I wasn't. Hope you had a good festive period. I've had a pretty decent time, which I might write about soon, even though it's getting a little late into January for talk of past and future. Anyway, this is me back from my Christmas "break". It's a quiet time of year, but I'll mention a few things:

THE CHANGING ROOM MOVES
The Changing Room gallery, the only contemporary art space in Stirling is moving location. It's not going far, just up the hill to the Tolbooth, where it'll hopefully kick some bum. I became involved with the gallery in 2007 when I was fortunate enough to be asked to put on a mini solo show. After that, I did some more odds and ends, hung about, helped out and met some great folk. Kirsteen and the staff did some amazing things in the old place so the prospect of a new, more public, venue is quite exciting. The new space is on for a Spring / Summer launch, possibly (hopefully) with a new name.

SHOW AT AMBLE IN PHILADELPHIA
It may be early to mention it but this is gonna sneak up and knock me over, I know it. In May I've got an as yet untitled solo show at Amble in Philadelphia. Who knows what I'll do, but it'll be bloomin' marvellous. I kid, but only a little bit. I'm really looking forward to spending more time through there and seeing the sights and friends and things.

MY LOVE FOR YOU IS A STAMPEDE OF HORSES
Finally, let me blow my head up like a big balloon by linking to a nice wee write up I got: HERE, from Meighan O'Toole at My Love For You.. Regardless of the stuff about myself, it's a brilliant wee site where Meighan posts her favourite art, illustration and photography from all over the shop. The unstoppable posting of weird and wonderful stuff should be added to everyone's feeds. Meighan is clearly just into it and her enthusiasm is pretty infectious.

There are a good few other things knocking about but I don't want to write about them just now. Over January I'll get as much work up as possible as well as a few mini project things and other nonsense.