Not a lot to say on this at the moment, as I’m very tired. It does however require further consideration and contextualising within my research,so hopefully return to it at a later point.

Sometimes, these days never want to give themselves up. They continue to impose themselves on you for as long as they possibly can. Where most days get divided up into component parts of ‘work’, ‘eat’, ‘(hopefully) exercise’ and ’sleep’ these occasional days get into the pattern and grind away until all that is left is the single ribbon of one day unfolding itself behind you, showing where you should have been but never made it to.

This whole week has been one of those days.

Lack of critical methodology. Non self-critical writing. How can we analyse our own critical writing? Communities reflecting back on the blog. Validation of writing. New media communities have their own niches. Networking and communities. Question: examining use of networked to reach those niche groups. Question: A methodology to develop relationship between text and video. Interactivity could be defined as the engagement of the user with some form of code. Commonalities and differences between critical writings. HArd and fast data on Furthefield and Mute and others. Who/What/When? Hybrid practises. A vlog of vlogs (taxonomy). Listing of who and where people are. Do off top of head. Action: creae a grid of critical practise. Interface design: how people interact with information.

Am at the Hay literature festival this weekend. Have managed to find some wireless access, and although I brough t my laptop along to get stuck into my research proposal, I’v found a wi-fi hot-spot and thought that I’d log on and check emails etcetera.

Hard to summarise the festival at this stage. There’s been some great talks from Catherine Tate talking about her experiences of Shakespeare, Morgan, the guy who wrote the Queen and the Lat King of Scotland. Very erudite speaker who answered the questions really well and with a comfortable honesty when he admitted that sometimes, he just didn’t know the answers to some of the questions. Although, he was very intelligent and interesting.It’s refrshing to hear that from someone sometimes, becuase often the questions are difficult and approach the artists work from a direction that they haven’t necessarily thought of themselves, so it can be unfair to frame questions in a ways that are challenging, when in a public forum with a few hundred people waiting to hear the answers. i also went to see Les Dennis and said hello to him, although, I’m told that this isn’t something to brag about. Still, he was interesting and actually, despite how we might view him in terms of his personal life and Big Brother appearances and whether or not we may even find him funny, he’s been around and done the comedy circuit, working the clubs and knows a few things about the industry.

for instance, his view on Britains’ got Talent? Not condemning of people that think they can have instance fame, or the fast tracking to celebrity. Instead, he feels that its a shame that those people who aren’t at the top of their form, should have to go through the public humiliation of being mocked and ridiculed. Of course, you can argue that they should not bother and just hit the gig circuit where they can fuck up, perfect their act, see what works and what doesn’t and all the rest of it, but hey, wouldn’t you try to go straight for gold if you had the opportunity?

Today I’ve got Martin Amis at one and John Maybury at 7 tonight. Then Jo Brand. I’m really excited about seeing John Maybury, as his film bio of Francis Bacon was fantastic and he made films with Psychic TV in the early 80’s which were great of course. Jo Brnad should be fun!

Ahhhh how lovely, out in the fresh welsh air, parasol above us and totally relaxed. Now back to the research proposal!

I like it when writing on a subject like art expands beyond mere art history and becomes something much more than a ‘review’. whatever it is we might mean by that (old art school rhetoric cutting in there!) I like the idea that an art work can be the trigger to something else: another subject that the art work has the ability to become almost like a signifier for. Sure the art work can exist in it’s own right. Of course, it has potency as imagery and it’d possible to discuss the work in art historical terms, even if those terms are the ‘recent’ art historical terms of media art, But when the writing goes outwards, as it were, spreading virally perhaps? Becoming something else. Perhaps that’s one of the things I mean when I write about the opportunity for the creative approaches to arts writing.

Guy Debord made films that represented visually many of the ideas he was trying to explore in his writing. Screens often filled with black and mixed noises, approaching something like a multimedia version of how he viewed the spectacled society. Not just black of course, other images entwined within them and of course multitudes of sensation (oddly, having not seen the films but merely read about them, I kep imagining Chris Marker’s Sans Soliel). Who knows, perhaps it’s more important that I do visualise the films than see them. Have you ever really enjoyed reading a film or book review, only to be disappointed by the actual event? I have and I tread carefully now.

I also do not always revise and edit my blog posts.

Blimey! I’ve actually managed to get that review finished about the Richard Wright project, The Internet Speaks. Somehow between starting my new job and one thing and another, I still managed to find the time to write it and hopefully it’s done quite well for itself. But, we’ll see?

Also in the news, I’m hoping to be starting a Furthercritic residency in the not too distant future. A project that will see me producing essays on a regular basis, all being well. In fact, it’ll be great and a wonderful opportunity to tie things into my PhD research. I’m thinking that the idea at this stage is that the Furthercritic work may be less use of video in the work and more about how writing is networked and distributed/broadcast(?) to a wider audience through the use of mail-outs and Facebook say? Although, perhaps if I can sort some technical issues out, I could put video into the work?

Lots of questions…..

This blog may change it’s function a little and become a place for capturing research ideas and reflecting on the project, rather than the project space in itself, as time goes on. Balancing between here and the Furtherfield space might prove a bit difficult to manage though, so I’m leaving it open to experiment with for now.

I know that I’m supposed to be writing a review of The Internet Speaks, by Richard Wright, for Furtherfield, but once again I’ve been distracted by the Internet and arsing about. Still, at least I’m a focussed on looking at some of the stuff that’s going on in the art world.

I’ve found that Art Review have created their own social networking site. Art Review Beta is, I’m guessing, a great opportunity for people who are interested in, or work within the art world, to network with each other and make potential connections. It would be interesting to know how this would benefit artist in a positive way, through being able to open up connections with each other and help each others work develop. I guess if MySpace has become the musicians networking space, the Art Review Beta has become the artists space? I’m going to join and see if I make use of it in any way.

It does remind me that Rhizome have had something similar for a few years now, although it is more of a database than anything. I did sign up ages ago, but never made any use of it. Not sure how Rhizome would have been of some use in networking terms though?

As I focus in on what the practise-based aspect of my PhD will look like, I have to question what this blog will begin to look like in the future? Does it continue to be the research blog and general scrapbook of ideas and thoughts for my work, or does it become more focussed on the writing and blogging that will be the channel through which I explore the practise? If I strip back to the focus, does that mean I exclude my preambles and random thoughts such as this post and get more structure into it? If that were the case, how could I utilise my Furthefield blog in this endevour?

British-born science fiction author Arthur C Clarke has died in hospital in Sri Lanka at the age of 90. Clarke had been in and out of hospital since his 90th birthday in December and had breathing difficulties, his aide Rohan de Silva said “Sir Arthur passed away a short while ago at the Apollo Hospital,” Mr de Silva said.Clarke, who foresaw communication satellites in 1945, wrote more than 80 books.

Sifting through various links and following different pathways, I’ve come across this really interesting discussion between “Dan Gillmor, business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, […]as well as veteran bloggers Rebecca Blood (author of The Weblog Handbook) and Meg Hourihan (co-author of We Blog)” discussing what happens when journalists start to blog, and bloggers start to think like journalists.

It’s from 2002, but I think it has some real relevance still, and not just as a historical document as a moment in time during post September 11th coverage of the way things were changing, but some of the arguments are still very relevant now, as more journalists blog and the notion of being a ‘blogger’ means something different to just someone who publishes their rants on the web.