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Thursday, December 25, 2008

All Your Lullabies: 24th December


Mark Mothersbaugh - Let Me Tell You About My Boat
Belle & Sebastian - Are You Coming Over For Christmas
Bjork - Baenin
Amiina - Seoul
Samamidon - Saro
Antony & the Johnsons - Another World
Shugo Tokumaru - Metrion
New Buffalo - Time To Go To Sleep
Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas
Low - Blue Christmas
Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
Lullatone - A Minature Finale

Monday, December 22, 2008

Snow prints

I found these photos at 2pie.blogspot.com.
Apparently they are quite simply faces pressed in powder snow resting on cars.








The beauty of these rests not only in their formal aesthetic properties, but their momentary impermanent existence and the experiential element of their creation.

These works are also evidence of the merits of the internet and global communication. Without it the works would have only existed for their creators on the street in a city, for a moment.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

mixtape maybe


MixwitMixwit make a mixtapeMixwit mixtapes

Pretty Show


Snow Leopard Island

Drawing for proposed botanical gardens.
Nice secret projection of a snow leopard eating some kind of hooved creature in a snow storm.

Used bubble wrap over projector to blur the brightness and edges. Doily could work well... But a moving light perhaps?

Friday, December 12, 2008

Monday, December 8, 2008

Because it was so delicious...

...ginger frog


...gopher beer & ginger bee


...ginger whale, ginger deer & ginger bear



Ginger Beer Recipe from meetmeatmikes.blogspot.com

Takes 3 weeks to make.
Makes about 25 litres.

Week One:
To reap 20 or so bottles of ginger beer - you need to make a starter or plant and 'feed' it for one week. So today - take a large clean jar. Add to it 2 tsp of ground ginger, 2 tsp of sugar, 1 tsp dried yeast and 2 cups of water. Mix it all up nicely. Cover with muslin (or other clean open weave fabric) and secure with a rubber band (or a piece of knotted elastic). Each day you need to 'feed' your ginger beer plant 2 teaspoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of ground ginger. Do that for a week so it can sweeten and ferment. (Don't put a lid on your jar - the bubbling yeast might 'blow' it right off).


Week Two:

Next, you'll be needing an extra jar!
Today, you need to divide the week old 'plant' in the jar into two halves. Place half the mixture into a clean jar with 2 cups of warm water. Then tomorrow, start 'feeding' as before, that is, two teaspoons of ground ginger and two teaspoons of sugar each day for a week.

(The other half of the 'plant' can be given to a friend with this recipe - Or you can leave it in the original jar and have two plants 'on the go'. Feed each plant as detailed above.)

You MUST start collecting plastic bottles this week! We'll need about 20 1.25l bottles - or if you want less now is the time to adjust your quantities DOWN and gift some of that ginger beer plant to someone else! All bottles must be super dooper clean - so get a bottle brush and plenty of hot soapy water happening.


Week Three:

YOU WILL NEED -
A clean tub or huge clean pot - large enough to hold about 25 litres of liquid.
Lots of clean plastic bottles with lids - at least 12 one litre bottles - and double if you are using both 'plants' we made last week.
A big spoon to stir
Some muslin or other such fine fabric to strain your 'plant'
Sugar - at least 8 cups
Lemon Juice - at least 1 cup
A Funnel
Warm Water
Fancy labels

In the tub, mix 8 cups of sugar, 48 cups of warm water and 1 cup of strained lemon juice.
Now you should strain your ginger beer 'plant' through a couple of layers of muslin (this is the ginger beer plant that we divided last Saturday - if you're greedy like me and are making two lots of ginger beer do the sums accordingly - you'll need extra sugar, bottles and lemon juice!).
If you don't have muslin use another light, open weave fabric that will catch any chunky bits! Add the strained 'plant' liquid to the sugar/water/lemon mixture and stir well until very well combined.
Dispense into super-clean plastic bottles with the aid of a funnel and a clean tea-cup or other such helpful vessel and wait ONE WEEK. It'll be lashing of ginger beer all around then!

Iron Filings


The pulse of the electromagnet is wired to the volume and frequency of the music.
So they dance!



Claire Watkins uses magnets and motors behind copper plate paintings to keep the files dancing. And pins on string attracted to a suspended magnet.



Islands For Sale

http://islands.glo-con.com/

Snowglobe

Objectives

* create a snow globe.

Materials

* Baby food jar with a lid
* Pinch of craft glitter
* Small plastic ornament or cake decoration (a snowperson, a sleigh, or some other wintry thing)
* Some silicon glue
* Water

Procedures

1. Carefully glue the ornament to the lid of the baby food jar.

2. Allow it to dry.

3. Fill the jar with water and add the pinch of glitter.

4. Run a bit of the silicon glue around the inside of the lid so that when it is screwed on, it will form a waterproof seal.

5. Store the snow globe with the lid up overnight.

6. The next day, turn the snow globe over and shake it.

While researching Snow Globes I found a series of photos from Washington National Zoo. They have some pretty Christmas lights ..







And apparently this is a photo of snowflakes projected onto a waterfall, which sounds nice doesn't it.


But then there is this...

A 10ft tall snow globe featuring a person in a panda suit. It worries me so.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Dutch Bicycle Company







http://www.dutchbikes.us./

Daytrotter Bookery

Daytrotter.com is a wonderful website that invites bands to record live songs for us to download. They also post drawings of all the bands that play...





But what I really wanted to talk about was the Daytrotter Bookery. This is where musicians read something from a book - maybe a short story, a section of a long story, maybe a poem. Its amazing! I've heard three really good ones - The Spinto band read "Gremlins 2 - The New Batch" accompanied by piano and organ, Okkervil River read a beautiful short story by Russian writer Tatyana Tolstaya, and Raveonettes read "The Little Girl With The Sulphursticks" which will make you cry into your cocoa.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

Vulnerable Beluga



we'll pass the blanched bellies of sweet supine whales,
a whorl in the wake of our veritable vessel
their mouths filled with prose,
winsome and slow
mumbled low,
and forever bashful


- their genus name 'Delphinapterus' means 'dolphin-without-a-wing'
- belugas have an extremely flexible neck and can turn their head almost 90 degrees to the side
- lips are also flexible, forming a variety of facial expressions
- clicks, grunts, squeals, screeches and whistles. These sounds can be heard through the hulls of ships and the beluga was nicknamed the 'sea canary' by early Arctic sailors
- they are classified as Vulnerable

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Lullaby Late Night


Mayo Thompson 'Dear Betty Baby'
Dirty Beaches 'In Dreams'
Micah P.Hinson 'The Fire Came Up To My Knees'
Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire 'Flaming Home'
Elliot Smith 'Going Nowhere'
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy 'I'll Be Glad'
Susanna and the Magical Orchestra 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'
Clemency Gilmour 'For I.S'
Marissa Nadler 'So Long Theresa'
My Morning Jacket 'Suspicious Minds'
Herman Dune 'Try To Think About Me'
Amiina 'Seoul'
The Beatles 'Good Night'

Sweet Sweet Spring BBQ



Thanks to meetmeatmikes for recommending the loobylu.blogspot.com chocolate cake - it was delicious...

Melt 85 grams (3 ounces) of butter.

Put in bowl (in order of appearance) with 1 cup of sifted self raising flour

1 cup of caster sugar

2 Tablespoons of cocoa (sifted) — not drinking chocolate, but real cocoa

2 cold eggs

dollop vanilla

pinch of salt

1/2 cup of whole cream milk

combine & beat 3 minutes

Cook for 45 minutes on 180°c

you will need to tip it out of the tin when it’s cooled a little and then ice it with something delicious.

Mum’s tips: If it’s a cold morning, warm the (preferably metal) mixing bowl with hot water and then dry before adding the butter. Use stale eggs. Use fresh self raising flour.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Metallophone


* Celesta
* Fangxiang
* Gangsa
* Gendér
* Glockenspiel
* Jegogan
* Jublag
* Kulintang a Tiniok/Sarunay
* Ranat ek lek
* Ranat thum lek
* Roneat dek
* Roneat thong
* Saron
* Slentem
* Steel marimbaphone
* Ugal
* Vibraphone
These are all the names for instruments that require striking metal bars.
The other night Jess and I shared a Glockenspiel

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

ARKive

http://www.arkive.org/

This is a brilliant digital library of all the animals in the world. With pictures, films and all the information you will ever need.
Here is a nice animal called an Aye-Aye

I saw a documentary with Miranda Richardson wearing a pink cowboy hat in Madagascar trying to find these little beasties in the jungle. Apparently they are the creatures that inspired J R R Tolkein's Gollum... They are such an amalgamation of other animals - bat ears, woodpecker like middle fingers (sometimes growing 3x as long as the other fingers) and monkeyish qualities. BIZZARO. Villagers believe them to be omen's of death.

James Turrell






craters/a cowboy/moons/stars/clouds/light/circles/people/ephemera

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Marlborough Gold Soundz


Beach House - gila
Department of Eagles - no one does it like you
Blitzen Trapper - Furr
Shearwater - Rooks
Vampire Weekend - Ottoman
St. Vincent - Now, Now
Bon Iver - Skinny Love
Deerhunter - Agoraphobia
Orilla Opry - I Lied
Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss)
Joshua Morrison - Alabaster
The Notwist - Good Lies
The Walkmen - Red Moon
Johnny and the Moon - Green Rocky Road
Samamidon - Saro
Grouper - Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping

Monday, November 10, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Glandular Beaver's Lullaby Sunday

Mark Mothersbaugh 'Let Me Tell You About My Boat'
Bjork 'Baenin'
Speck Mountain 'Hey Moon'
Emitt Rhodes 'Lullabye'
Shugo Tokumaru 'Metrion'
Camera Obscura 'Books Written For Girls'
The Zombies 'The Way I Feel Inside'
Nick Drake 'Fly'
Gillian Welch 'I Dream A Highway'
Ron Sexsmith 'Secret Heart'
Deerhunter 'Green Jacket'
The Velvet Underground 'Stephanie Says'
The Be Good Tanyas 'Hello Love'

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Lashings of Gingerbeer, Quilting & Orphans



Gingery craft fun with meetmeatmikes.blogspot.com