We made WMMNA!

As some of you will know I teach one day a week at the Royal College of Art in the Design Interactions department. Let's just say that, at times, it's quite different to the rest of my working environment and different things 'count' there ... both in terms of 'academic research' and recognition. It seems though that getting onto Regine Debatty's (really good) Blog 'We Make Money Not Art' counts for a lot - within 3 minutes of getting an email with the link from Regine I also got a text about it from Tony our professor and no less than 5 of the students mentioned it that morning. It seems after 14 odd years of working in the same department I have finally arrived!

Anyway it's a nice piece (which you can read here) about our Cat Fancy Club project which Anthony Nicols and Leslie Lyons also contributed to.

Posted Wednesday 9th February, 2011 at 1:44 pm by Nina

9 year itch

Wow.
The longest-running exhibition we've ever been in has come to an end! This time 9 years ago we were putting together an installation called 'Home-made Heroes' for a big survey show at the Barbican in London about gaming which included some commissioned pieces too.

Although,"As the nature of the hosting organizations has changed in recent years - there has not been the opportunity to display the commissioned works to the extent we had hoped." sounds ominously like the piece stayed in its packing cases a lot ...

The abysmal image opposite is sadly all I can find of this project (possibly it's a slide scan 'cos back in the day we only dreamt of digital cameras), which remains for some reason one of my favourite pieces of ours. We 'commissioned' about half a dozen 'dressing up' costumes from home dressmakers around the world, giving them just a text description of a well-known games superhero. What resulted is a really odd, charming and folksy melange of costumes that includes Supermario and Sonic amongst others.

Here's where it went:

.....Game On opened in May 2002 at the Barbican Art Gallery ...the Royal Museum at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh...... Tilburg Art Foundation, The Netherlands, ...... Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland ....... Lille European Capital of Culture 2004 in France....... The Science Museum, London, .........Cyberport, Hong Kong, .......Australian Centre of Moving Image, Melbourne ........State Library of Queensland, Brisbane .......National Museum of Science and Technology in Kaohsiung, Taiwan....... Cellars of Cureghem in Brussels, Belgium........... The Ambassador Theatre in Dublin.

Posted Monday 24th January, 2011 at 10:49 am by Karen

Smile - You're an Olympian

Here's a link to some press about our new project in and around the 2012 Olympic Park in London

Posted Thursday 20th January, 2011 at 11:12 am by Karen

What If? Windows

On my way home I took some images of our 'Cat Fancy Club' picture in the What If? windows at the Wellcome Trust on Euston Road. This show features different projects created by students, graduates and staff from the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art (where I work), each offering an alternative view of how science could influence our future. The purpose is not to offer predictions, but to inspire debate about the human consequences of different technological futures, both positive and negative, by asking 'What If…?'

There's more information about the show and other projects on the Wellcome website here.

Posted Sunday 21st November, 2010 at 11:07 pm by Nina

Super Supreme

I had a great day out on Saturday at the Supreme cat show - this year was the 100th anniversary of the GCCF who run the show so there were a lot of VERY elaborate decorated pens as well as the fancy cats! You can see more of the photos I took here.

Posted Sunday 21st November, 2010 at 11:05 pm by Nina

My Sheffield Doc Fest

Last week Nina and I stepped outside the current Jaywick film edit to go to the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, only my second time there and like all film festivals a heady mix of late night boozing and schmoozing, high-pressure funding meetings and inspirational film and talks.

Oh, and some slightly baffling presentations by TV commissioners who are using words like 'compelling' and showing a clip of something quite the opposite.

Highlights for me were meeting US grant awarding bodies and European TV commissioners who seemed genuinely in step with our language as film makers. Film-wise the fabulous Morwencol impressed, with a portrait of a brain damaged man who heals himself by making a model-scale world of his own life to 'play' in.

Great sessions by Penny Woolcock and Kim Longinotto, plus the success of Clio Barnard's innovative 'The Arbor' were heartening reminders that women over 40 are making some of the best and most original documentaries around. Go girls!

Posted Sunday 7th November, 2010 at 3:35 pm by Karen

Wellcome to our Window

We have a new large-scale photographic work and video on show in the Euston Road window of the Wellcome Trust's HQ in London. It stems for our ongoing R & D on pedigree cat breeding, working title 'Cat Fancy Club'. The work is part of a long running project there curated by designers Dunne and Raby, we worked on the image with photographer Marc Henrie.

Viewable all night and day from the pavement! Warning - it may make you want to get a pedigree cat.....

Wellcome Trust
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK
T:+44 (0)20 7611 8888

Posted Tuesday 2nd November, 2010 at 12:28 pm by Karen

Wish us luck

With 53 hours of logged footage under our collaborative belt, if Doug (our editor) arrives back in the UK this weekend, we begin our 8 week edit for the Jaywick film at AIR on Monday - I can't wait.

Posted Sunday 24th October, 2010 at 12:50 pm by Nina

Nina with legend

Browsing through an old picture archive I recently found this nice pic of Nina at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2005 where we were with our first film Bata-ville: We are Not Afraid of the Future.

One of the perks of being selected for this festival was a dinner with the festival director and this photo was taken at ours, at which legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff (1915 - 2009) also attended. Being first-time directors and very green, we didn't quite realise that this was the legendary man responsible for pushing colour cinema in its early days, with credits such as Black Narcissus, The African Queen and Death on the Nile to his name.

If the two met now I'm sure a lively conversation about using the new Canon 5d on our new film would ensue - we'll never know!

Posted Wednesday 13th October, 2010 at 12:47 pm by Karen

Sailor Girls

Due to the largely self-shooting nature of our current film in production in Jaywick, documentation of Somewhere on location is rare as hen's teeth. Here, Nina has momentarily put down her smoking Canon 5D and I my Tascam audio recorder - tired and happy in the Sailor Boy cafe.

Posted Wednesday 29th September, 2010 at 1:52 pm by Karen