What's up Doc? yet another blog failed...yet another message about parameters. Is it something to do with the length? had no idea there was a limit to the number of words one couldwrite in a blog. Still it was only about 200 so that can't be the problem.

Why do we do it? write, paint or create. That's the question I ask myself.I could be out shopping, playing golf or just meeting friends, instead here I am flogging away at the computer, doing all sorts of digital editing and writing and wondering....
Talked to another artist friend last night and she was feeling low too. In fact she was on the verge of getting herself a job when she found that the post delivered two invitations from people wanting her work, one a prestigious London gallery.
So, its a case of struggling on...

Help! after an absence of some weeks - due to family problems in Wales- I do a blog entry and it disappears...says the parameters are wrong...this is another attempt..

Edited my first movie at home - a performance of Red Moon theatre group in Chicago - using Imovie.
They did the piece in the Three Arts Club, where I happened to be staying, for a 100 dollar a head charity function. As mere students we could not attend but I filmed it in the courtyard from my bedroom window. Talk about serendipity. The fire dancers/eaters had been rehearsing all afternoon on the roof.

Went to David Mach's opening at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. They have cleared the top gallery for his work. it is an amazing show - so much diversity, so colourful and witty. Best I have seen for a very long time.

Found myself standing next to him so I introduced myself . Have admired his work for years. He comes from Dundee, is totally without "side" and has little time for much so-called conceptual work. Hurray!

Has film failed?
That was the subject of a radio discussion tonight from Tate Modern.

Having spent the day in GMAC ( Glasgow Media Access Centre) editing a video on David Harding listened with particular interest.
To summarise - digital technologies are not only changing the way that films are made - you can shoot endless footage vey cheaply but it is also changing the way the stories are told. With digital manipulation to can create alternative narratives to the ones shot using traditional methods of film.
Mind-boggling.
Had a small taste of it the scope and fluidity of digital editing today when we needed a close-up of Pete McG laughing to go with one speech- so we took the shot from a close up of him laughing at a subsequent speakers speech...
oh what a tangled web we weave!

Victor Burgin came with glowing credentials to the last Friday lecture this season. Unfortunately he had lost his luggage containing all his lecture notes, slides and video clips. So he got something together in a hurry this morning in his hotel room.
It showed.

Yet again am reminded of the fact that academics don't live in the real world. Airlines are notorious for loosing luggage on internal flights - surely he must know that? why didnt he carry the documents?
He spopke on the 'specificity' of an art practice, arguing that the concept is more useful to us in the age of digital technologies than is the traditional notion of 'medium'.

He made some interesting points:
a).the first art school established in Paris in 1648 introduced theory. Painting was no longer a technical skill.
So we have had art theory around for an awful long time....
b) when photography was introduced they started to say that painting was dead. ye it is still very much alive. so what is it about painting that it has that other art forms do not have? he reckons it is the specifity of paint - the quality of the paint on the canvas. It is the painted surface.

He made scant reference to digital technologies. At least he was able to talk and it was stimulating. Then he showed some rough cuts of his video work which he had sent in advance to GSA. All I can say is that they fell flat on a big screen. We could sense his own embarrassment at seeing his work blown up big. Maybe on a small tv monitor , in situ, with site specific work it might have worked..
Am reminded yet again that the ability toi talk about your work is of primary importance, the ability to convince others that what you are going is "art" is really what is important. Think Duchamp. Think urinals.

Is mental illness coming in from the cold? is it the new cool? Not that long ago both subjects would have been taboo, certainly not the subject of films aimed at a mass audience. Yet both have met with tremendous critical acclaim.

Last week saw the film "Iris" Judi Dench in her Oscar winning performance of Iris Murdoch's decline into Alzheimers disease and tonight have just seen "My Beautiful Mind" all about Nobel Prize winner Prof John Nash and his affliction with schizophrenia.

Found the latter film far more alarming.

Ina Blom, art historian and associate professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Oslo, came with glowing credentials to give our weekly Friday lecture at Glasgow School of Art.

The title of her talk:" Technology and Avantgarde Historiography in the work of Raoul Hausmann and Nam June Paik" looked interesting, if a little dry. She would discuss the interrelation between technology and historiography in the construction of an avantgarde legacy. Heady stuff.

She was very tall, even by Norwegian standards and rake-thin. She started to speak, clearly an impressive intellectual then I slowly realised that her lecture verged on the impenetrable. If only she had given us a hand out it would have been easier.

Question time. Not one hand went up. The students, normally a bright vociferous lot, noted for their asute questioning of speakers sat in stunned silence.

Afterwards Mona, a Norwegian, said:" My sister in Oslo tells me that none of her students understand a word she says."
Perhaps academics ought to pass a test, like to drive a car, to ensure that they are able to communicate efficiently with their student audience.

Discover Cafe Flicker in Glasgow part of the Glasgow Media Access Centre.
Full of bright young men gung-ho to make films.

It was great. Here's a place where you can meet like minded film-makers, show your work and get feed back.
Hand over my tape "Seahorse Symphony", something I made in Chicago and edited back in Glagow.
It was the first time had seen it on a big screen and it did look very dreamy and other worldly. Of course, the music helped enormously, a specially commissioned piece by The Shed Acquairum from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra resident composer.
Other works shown were mainly documentary. The standard was much higher than expected; had thought it would be full of art school videos of students staring at their navels. Instead all the work was full of pace and very lively. Some were professional and had got funding.

Have got myself into a routine starting with twenty minutes drawing every morning. Getting a studio practice established is tough . Just read about a guy who sends out 20 sets of slides each month to galleries in the hope that they will pick him up. He reckons on a take up of 1 in 10....

Had my first studio visit from a buyer, Richard Diet. He saw "Forgotten", a digital print I made in Chicago of an older woman's hand,in the Smith Gallery in Stirling during their Christmas fund-raising exhibition for the local hospice but by the time he went back the exhibition had finished. He was a very cultivated young man with a genuine interest in art. Works in the Planning Department of Stirling District Council.

For some time now I have had a sneaking suspicion that the art world has been hi-jacked by theorists. A radio interview with Bill Viola confirmed it.
We an in thrall to the academics. Creativity goes out of the window when academia steps in.

While at college - Glasgow School of Art- the tutors would demand to know the theoretical thinking behind your work before you had done anything. If it did not fit in with the accepted norm of what is contemporary art you had it thrown out and told to start again.

Maybe it ws the department I was in - Environmental Art.

Bit of a gap in this diary...been to London to see some exhibitions including the Andy Warhol retrospective at Tate Modern, Klee at the Hayward and French art at the Royal Academy. But its the film Front Runner at the ICA that makes the biggest impression.
Truly we are in the age of the moving image.

Meet up with nieces Louise ( accountant with Unilver who wants to throw it all in and do charity work) and Angela doing a course in journalism and on placement to a charity magazine. We all have a meal in Soho. John ( Angela's actor boy-friend ) has spent the day as the Pregnant Man in the Science Museum. He says some people get very irate. The most memorable was a woman priest who became very vitriolic.

Back to Scotland . Rain , rain and more rain.
Cousin Mary rings this morning. she is back fromtwo weeks on the Aalgarve. She met lots of people wintering out there. We discuss it. Why dont we just move out next winter at least for a couple of weeks? Very tempting.
Get another phone call from a guy who wants to buy a digital print of mine from a recent exhibition.

Glasgow Saturday 23 February.

Start a two day course in Dreamweaver at GMAC ( Glasgow Media Access Centre). As usual I am the slowest and oldest in the group.

Our tutor is Adina van't Klooster, a young Dutch woman , a new media artist and graduate of GSA some years ago. We look at her web site. Her interest is cyborgs. Am struck by the similarity between her appearance and the cyborg she has created onscreen. Is she aware of it? doubt it.

Glasgow. Friday 22 February.
Do we read to escape from the real world? to enter a new world? or to broaden our understanding of this world? these were some of the questions raised by Francis Spufford, London based writer and critic on Friday at the weekly Glasgow School of Art lecture.
In his own case one suspects and he half admitted too it was to escape into the world of the imagination which for him was more real than the real world. Some discussion followed over whether films - a communal experience- could exert the same power over the imaginationas a book.The conclusion was yes but it was a different experience because it was one shared.

Am reading Stephen King's horror novel Cujo. Had forgotten just how gripping some narratives can be.

Afterwards a group of us had lunch in Fazzis. The Norwegians in the party fill us in about what life is really like in remote areas of Norway, much more to it that the film Cool and Crazy suggests. You conform or else....And the issue of the Sarmis - I referred to them as Laplanders and got pulled up for my political incorrectness- was not even touched upon.

Just as we leave I spot Tanya Ecclestone, new Head of Sculpture and Environmental Art. Go over and congratulate her . Then I add that my videos are now in GOMA's collection.
"What's GOMA?" Explain that GOMA is short for the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.
She is Australian and not noted for her tact .

A new Head of Fine Art was announced this morning before the start of the lecture. He is German and has been working for a number of years in Norway. Looks at last as if Glasgow School of Art is finally moving into the 21st century.

Scotland.
The temp. hovers around -1C.Am tempted to switch on the telly and watch a programme on Botox, the new wonder cosmetic injection, except I know it works. have seen the wrinkle-free face of too many celebrities who use it..
Force myself out and drive 30 miles into Glasgow to see Cool and Crazy (Heftig og Begeistret). Worth the effort. Amazing musical about a male choir in the remote fishing village of Begeistret.Sensation at last year's Edinburgh Film Festival. Spectacular photography. Closing shot of men standing outside in blizzard singing while snow and ice covers their faces. A huge icicle hangs from the nostril of their oldest choir member, age 95.
And still he sings.

What is a cookie? ought I to have a firewall? still trying to fix links - and failing- from my blog site to the outside world.

The downside of working digitally is your legs become redundant. Well, all of your body except your fingers.
And the result of that is weight creeps on, pound by pound.

Now over a stone overweight and enrolled with local Weight-Watchers. Take some comfort in the fact that I am one of the slimmest there.
One guy comes along. He's been going for 6 weeks, same time as me, and he's lost 17 pounds!...I've lost 2 and a half pounds.
Something wrong somewhere...

Driving into Glasgow through sheets of vertical rain, it happens, one of those a scary moments you dread.

I'm late . On the dual carriageway snaking into the heart of the city I accelerate to pass a lorry. Too late, I see the layer of water on the road.. The lorry hits it first plunging the car into darkness. Suddenly am cocooned in a metal box. For a second it feels safe. But I know thats not true.

Alongside is a big lorry, behind a car, and the speedometer reads 60mph. Gently brake, the windscreen clears.
Phew!

Where does the power lie in your home? just check who holds the tv remote control.

If we doubted the media drenched society we live in just take a look at a new report in the Sunday papers: Britons spend an average of 53 hours a week either watching television, listening to the radio or recorded music, reading books, magazines and newspapers or visiting the cinema.

But we only spend 30 minutes A WEEK reading books and newspapers!...something wrong there surely? I spend more than that in half a day.

Went to a lecture at the Glasgow Film Theatre given by Christine Geraghty of Goldsmith college. It is for GSA students but open to all. A few of us post grads like to meet up on Fridays and go along to these lectures. Its a way of keeping in touch after college.
Christine spoke on:"What's wrong with studying EastEnders?" Well, have never watched it .
She showed us a clip: a scene dealing with incest between uncle and niece. It was riveting. No wonder this television soap attracts millions of viewers.
Nobody asked about "dumbing down" of telly in recent years then realised that for the vast majority of people in the room this is all they have ever known.

An interesting point was made that research shows many people will have telly on but don't actually watch it. Activities ranged from playing musical instruments to one girl who did her homework with her back turned to the telly!

Geraghty did say that with the advent of computers, the internet and multi-media inter-activity the ordinary television set as we know it may be already have had its day.

Oops! it's happened again. Seems I took too long to do my diary and the site went down. So I've got to start again. This time will be quicker.

Sometimes I am asked what I learnt at Glasgow School of Art. (www.gsa.ac.uk)
Tell them about a throwaway remark by Ken Mitchell ,Head of First Year:
"We teach you how to learn."
That sums it up.

Walking down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow I see a young man with dyed green hair whizzing along in a wheelchair. He nearly knocks over a woman getting off a No. 73 bus. So Glasgow..So cool.

Oh hell!...I've just deleted a whole diary item by mistake.
So here goes again.
Went to the Gallery of Modern Art last night to the opening of Patricia MacKinnon Day's exhibition Naked Spaces. Once it was explained to me I found it interesting but this is the dilemma I have with so much conceptual art - you've either (a) got to read whole screeds of explanation first in order to understand or (b) get somebody to explain it to you. What you can't do is just stand there in front of it and hope to "get it".

Met Sean McGlashan, the curator. He said GOMA are delighted to have my videos in their permanent collection. Felt really chuffed. Makes up for the hassle I got at Glasgow School of Art where I ended up with a 2.2 which I am still very pissed about..

Then for something completely different.. the film Gosford Park. Very entertaining. Just a thought?,,,why are the British so obsessed with the goings-on of the upper classes in times past? Trouble is there still exists such pockets in our society now. The film brought back my own memories of the year I spent as a personal maid to the British Ambassador in Iceland.
I wrote about it and landed the newspaper - Western Mail in Wales- in a libel action. But that's another story....