Happy Steve

Innovation and Learning

Australia

Start with clarity of intent.

Now build it out with an evocative vision. Improvise progress by tinkering: with lots of trial and lots of error. The not knowing is the best bit: the mysteries the surprises, and from time to time the windfalls! 

Hello there, I'm Steve Collis! 

Click on "contact", won't you, and wave right back at me?

Adventures of Steve Collis in 2010

July 07, 2010  /  Steve Collis


Bits and pieces from 2010 so far.

Advertising

Let me start with advertising. I must note I grew up with dad yelling "mental midgets!" at the television screen. I am now equally narky with the media. There must be a gene for it. I can't bear turning the tellie on at all nowadays.

Anyway, exhibit A
Long overdue! My cokes have been slipping out of my hands for years! Finally, some decent tread!

Exhibit B


The Simpsons keep doing that joke. So art is imitating art, I suppose. Argh, also, while we're at it, why capitalise 'New'?

Exhibit C

This is what I found at Centrepoint Tower in Sydney. Seems you can't go up the tower without also investing in a newspaper. It is hardly free, if they add it to your ticket price, is it?

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Art

In other news, while on school camp with Year 10, we ended up camping on Cockatoo Island on Sydney Harbour. By sheer luck there was a huge art exhibition on the island at the time. The exhibition is called "Biennale" and this is its 17th year.

Exhibit a: crap art


Just some metal balls strewn across a deserted room.

I don't really mean it is crap art - I'm insulting myself for not being to access it. I guess if I could be bothered posting it here then it must mean something to me.

Exhibit b: great art

There were 9 or 10 screens in an otherwise dark warehouse. The screens often showed different footage, or were dark, or all showed the same footage... all deliberate and making up one overall film. I loved every second of it. It was by Isaac Julien and called Ten Thousand Waves.

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Real Life

In other news, I got in a car on Saturday and drove to Bourke. Bourke is a small country town on the edge of the proper Australian 'outback' where the roads become unsealed and the land becomes scrub, tending to desert.

It's a very long drive - over 800 km from Sydney, or about 10 hours drive.

It was worth it. After arriving at Bourke, I promptly drove another 30 km down a perfectly straight unsealed road heading west:


Then, I parked the car and headed off into the scrub with my guitar. Pure bliss.


The sun set, the shadows lengthened.



On the drive back to Bourke, at dusk, I shared the dusty road with various families of kangaroos, and one silly bunny rabbit. No photos, unfortunately.

There is an artificial above ground reservoir not too far from Bourke, just where the road goes from sealed to unsealed. You may be surprised to hear I am not a professional photographer, and that these shots are from my crummy mobile phone.

Anyway:


Maybe you had to be there. It was gorgeous. I shared the view with a fox.

I drove home in one go, arriving home at 9pm, smelly and sick of cars. Then I booted up the computer and played Test Drive Unlimited. Simulcra and simulation!

That's enough for now.

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