Breakfast reading 5.10

Posted by hil

Murdoch turning his empire green: ‘Although some of his newspapers were once sceptical about global warming, he said that although he was no scientist, he knew how to assess a risk. “This one is clear. Climate change poses clear,
catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction,” he said.’

Diggers speak about Iraq ambush: Did anyone else see this last night? Its been covered in the papers too. It seemed like something new to me, interviewing soldiers giving accounts of their activities as if they were policeman, sportsmen or celebrity. I can’t quite work out why I found it so disquieting – anyone else feel it was inappropriate or different?

The fine print in the university endowment scheme: The Howard government proposes centralised control of universities with a view to privatisation. It has wedge politics written all over it, too. Chilling.

Blogging Was Just the Beginning: Women’s Voices are Louder Online: Chris Nolan on political commentary and feminism online. (via Doc). I hope to get to other articles in S&F Online’s Blogging Feminism issue, too.

The SMH ran true to bumbling form (when it comes to its coverage of new media) the other day with this ‘lesson’ about blogging, which conflated the opening question “Isn’t blogging just for people who are stupid and lonely?” with women bloggers, gender inequity and ambivalence in Australia! “Of the 8000 women’s blogs listed at BlogHer.org, just 96 are of Australian or New Zealand origin. By comparison Canada, a country with 36 per cent more people, lists 82 per cent more women’s blogs.” I think its silly to take membership of BlogHer as a real statistic on the ratio in Australia. I’m not listed at Blogher, for instance.

Doc, who always gets a real buzz out of flying and seeing whats below, has some wonderful photos of Greenland from the air. Check out his other sets for Scotland, the Hebrides, England and others, too.

Sam Jinks

Posted by hil

Jinks

I went to the National Portrait Gallery’s recent exhibition Truth and Likeness because it had one of Sam Jinks’ sculptures on display, one of his son as a very new baby. It’s lovely, and wonderfully detailed, but disquieting at the same time, because its larger-than-life scale acts against the usual instinct to coo over a tiny new born. I also felt an implication – something about the eyes – that this little boy, like all babies, was a secret package, a whole strong personality present in there, just waiting to emerge and be discovered by others over time. I liked that.

Sam Jinks is the artist whom Patricia Piccinini collaborated with to make some of her sculptures, such as The Young Family, but his name has been less well known in the past. It’s cool that he is now exhibiting in his own right. An exhibition of his recent work opens at the Boutwell Draper Gallery in Sydney this week, and you can see some work-in-progress making pictures at that link.

Jinks2

From previous exhibitions:
West Space Inc: 2005 photos
Sam Jinks, Distortions: review of his 2005 West Space exhibition
Carnal Knowledge: about Jinks, and how he thinks about his sculptures
J Arts Crew:: Sculpting the body

Breakfast reading 5.05

Posted by hil
  • Turnbull says IPCC report backs government position: The government asserts black is white (again). Breathtaking. Peter Garret, the Opposition Environment Minister, is not hitting back hard enough with things like this. I’m not sure why, because he is articulate and knows his stuff. On present form his predecessor, Anthony Albanese would be better. I was quite impressed with how well Albanese had a handle on global warming before he was replaced.
  • Turnbull’s hypocrisy on climate: Ian Dunlop (formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive; Chair of the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88; and the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000) pulls no punches.
  • Schwarzenegger signs a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Victoria to share environmental expertise. “Sometimes if the federal government is a little slower than the states are, then we have to step up to the plate and we have to create the leadership. It is common that a lot of times the states provide the leadership and then eventually the federal government picks up with it and carries it on. So, what we are doing basically is in California we want to show the leadership and we want other states to join us in the United States, but also overseas.”
  • To treat the dead: An intriguing new theory that after a heart attack people don’t die from irreversible cell damage due to lack of oxygen, but rather from an active biochemical event triggered by the resumption of oxygen supply. The cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with
    oxygen, and triggers the death of the cell.
  • In a flat world imagination is the key: edited version of a speech by Thomas Friedman (from The New York
    Times)     to the Sydney Institute. “The world is flat – it has been flattened. We are going from a
    world of vertical silos of command and control to a world where value is created horizontally by who you connect and collaborate with… In this new flat world, there is one iron rule of business and one rule only. When The World is Flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you.”
  • Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace: Danah Boyd (2006) looks at how and why kids use MySpace, a welcome voice of reason amid the hyped MSM coverage of MySpace following the tragedy of the Victorian girls. I like her analysis that relates it to public and private space.

Flying ducks

Posted by hil

I’m working on several projects at once at the moment. One is making a set of those flying ducks that people had as wall ornaments when I was growing up. I’ve been lent a couple to model from, and looking at them up close I can understand their attraction, despite their kitsch reputation. Since the ones I am making are theatre props they only have to look like the real thing. Inside, they have an mdf structure, and I have bulked them out with polystyrene. I like carving styrene, except for the mess.

Flying ducks

The next part of the process is covering the shapes with a commercial paper mache pulp. It starts as a dry mix, and when you add it to water it turns into a thick paste, which can be smoothed on and sticks to most surfaces. Here I’m half way through adding the paper mache to the big duck:

Flying ducks

The pulp takes a couple of days to dry, but I’m always impatient with things like this, and I have been hurrying it along by putting the ducks in the sun,

Flying ducks

and the oven:

Ducks in the oven

I’ll have to add more detail to the shapes, like the eyes, tails and feather patterns, and then its a matter of getting the surface smooth and painting it to look like china.

We have four beautiful white pet Indian Runner ducks, and it was funny to see them charging across the back garden in a line just as I was photograhing these in the kitchen.