7 August 2019
Had feedback with tutor on A4. I will now get on with the collection of material for this assignment.
I answered John Sterne’s message from Trinity College asking for access to his archives.
Tutor also gave me some pointers to artists who have made similar type projects. So plenty of food for thought.
8 August 2019
Great find yesterday, hubby found, when he was clearing a book shelf, a booklet about one of the pioneers of the Information retrieval world. This was the precursor to the Internet. Spent my spare moments in the Craft shop yesterday reading it. Will be very helpful to put a time line on things.
Am also toying with the idea of relating the story to what was going on in the World at the time when all this online stuff was starting. Would be a laugh to add the music of the time as well as the news headlines. Just noted that in 1971 India and Pakistan were fighting over Kashmir – nothing changes…. It was my tutors mention of the space project pioneers are that triggered this ides. I also like the idea of putting the material on boards. Could be done in five year spans – am liking this idea,
11 August 2019
My lovely Mum would have been 101 today, or maybe it was yesterday – she was always confused as to whether her birth date was 10th or 11th of August!! But she was one of 9 children so I suppose my grandmother did not have time to recall exactly which day each child was born.
Have been looking at other DI&C students A5 & A6 work. It is all so different and looks so professional. I am beginning to quake about how I will ever get all this together. However I am beginning to collect material. I can then see how it goes.
12 August 2019
Am wondering if I could make my superhighway in dark grey material and add the story to this – HOW? no idea for the moment – print on material? Would be fun to intersperse the story with the cars I drove over this time, Fiat 850, 2 x orange 2CVs and an Austin….
14 August 2019
Collecting, collecting, collecting mostly information and trying to establish in my head what happened when and by whom. Interesting programme on TV last night about Hedy Lamarr as an inventor rather than a Hollywood star.
15 August 2019
Worked in the shop yesterday. Used some spare minutes to read up some more on the run up to the Internet. My head aches. Got Barry to explain some of it to me over dinner. But this was after I stopped off to attend the opening of my best friends exhibition. Discussing TCP/IP after a glass of red on an empty stomach does not assist understanding….. But I am getting there and am more convinced than ever that the story behind the WWW is at least as interesting as its ultimate arrival.
21 August 2019
Finally got A2 book off to Blurb. Also contacted book binding lady in Cork to bind handmade book. She will give me a date when she has one free.
Contacted two ex colleagues of Barrys about their memories of working on EURONET. They don’t seem to have much but we will see if I can jog their memory. At least they think the project is worth while and Chris sent me some links.
Had a few days off as we had to go to Cork for pre operation for hubbys cataract operation on Friday. Will spend the weekend with son and family. He and I can discuss how and when he can interview his father for project. That is if we get a moment in between grandchildren activities.
22 August 2019
My beloved daughter’s 49th birthday – where did those years go?
Decking finished around studio and garden cleaned around north side.
Had interesting exchange of emails with the parliament about material they have on EURONET – precious little. But they did have an image of the first computer used for EURONET. They also apparently have a video of the launching by Simone Veil and Roy Jenkins. The material is not digitised so I am not sure how or if they will be willing or able to give me a copy. Also had a good paper on the History of the WWW indicated by my husband’s colleague of the British Library.
25 August 2019
In Cork with son and family so that Grandpa can recover after cataract operation on Friday. All going fine. Back for check with surgeon early tomorrow and then back home.
Haven’t had time to discuss project with son. He very busy and travelling all over Europe in the coming weeks – Brexit preparations I suspect. Today he is making skateboard ramps for youngest member of family who is obsessed with skateboarding at the moment. Half the family gone to the Women’s football semi finals in Dublin…. It is like a merry-go-round with children these days.
I managed to get some sort of ‘highway’ on the wall of the studio before we left. Now I need to add information in a sort of timeline. Then I will try to make some sort of visuals to demonstrate the technical material around the Internet Background.
27 August 2019
Trying to make a chronological order to the Internet and WWW development – it is incredibly difficult as people are sloppy with dates on the Internet.
At the same time I am trying to get out to the garden to get it ready for the Garden fete on Saturday…..
29 August 2019
I wish I had seen this when I was doing my project on the Industrial School for Landscape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xecqNvY3Cs
I will go to see the exhibition when I am in Dublin. It is powerful work.
1 September 2019
It has been a busy weekend for me. We had the garden fete yesterday which was a brilliant success.
On Friday I went to Cork to do a book binding course to bind my handmade book on Letitia Millet: The Dressmaker. I found the one to one day brilliant. Barbara Hubert runs a book binding business and gives group and very occasionally individual tuition. Because I could not attend the group day she agree to give me an individual half day.
I had everything ready all the pages cut to size. She made an identical book in size and thickness alongside me. I had to follow what she was doing as she explained.
4 September 2019
Back in Cork for a day and a night for hubby to have medical tests. This all takes eons of time. He has amazing good health for his age but ones body starts to break down and medics expect people of his age to be decrepit! Trying to get him discharged from hospital took a full hour. The staff were super busy but we had a boat to catch. Only one nurse, a Chinese male nurse, seemed to get the urgency. He finally discharged us as the doc was unable to leave whatever emergency he was attending. Hubby very tired, needing a bit of TLC. But I have to work in Craft Shop today. I’ll leave all ready for him.
Won’t be busy in shop today. I may have time to think about how to represent project. I’ll bring computer in case I have some down time.
Busy few days ahead as garden and studio open on Saturday for the Taste of West Cork.
Then friend looking for photo of me for the book he is doing on artists of West Cork. Need more days in the week and more hours in the day.
6 September 2019
Need to get everything ready for tomorrow. Wondering if I could get input from visitors (if I have any) on how to represent the ‘Superhighway project?? Might try but my experience with these open days is that people are just curious to see your house and some of the garden. They are not especially interested in the work….
Took photographs of my handmade book. Added these to A2.
9 September 2019
Today is the calm after the storm. The sun shone from early morning till late evening. This is always the decider as the weather an event here on the island is a roaring success or not. From the first festival boat at 10.30 till the last at 5.30 the people came.
I live well off the beaten track so signposting is important. One of the artists has signposts made and I made copies of these. We were four artists living along my track. I am the last on the track. I thought no one would climb up to our place – but they did – lots of people. Some are interested in our garden and some in art. All were delightful. I was alone as hubby was in Dublin with the three generations of Mahon’s watching Ireland play Wales at rugby and celebrating the youngest’s 8th birthday.
It was a tough day for me but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did not get any great suggestions for my project but I did meet an IT guy and his civil engineer wife who were very interesting about the future of all this technical world. They were also interesting as they have just bought a whole island just a little further out to sea from us. They invited us to visit which I would love.
I fell into bed with no great ideas for my Superhighway project but this morning I see Kate posted that we could have a hangout tonight and I suggested discussing my project. Ley’s hope they agree.
13 September 2019
Friday 13th……. We off on a night out to celebrate our wedding anniversary and Barry’s birthday.
After my guests left yesterday I got some work done on my Superhighway in Illustrator. Really it only helped to get me re-started on using Illustrator. I will set up as many A3 landscape files as I need for my scroll. A couple of things became clear already. I will need quite a bit of space for each year that something happened. Am wondering if the audio of interviews and/or sound effects will help with the explanation. I think it will have to. I think I will have to have the scroll finished before the audio can be made so that it will ‘follow’ the timeline. Otherwise I will have to do a lot of editing on the audio,
15 September 2019
Wonderful meal and evening at Liss And. Could not believe that I did not know that James Thurell had designed the Sky garden there. Thurell is one of my all time favourite artists. We visited the garden before dinner then had amazing 7 course taster menu. Wonderful food.
Back home Sunday and got some cleaning of moss off paths. Lunch was a BBQ RNLI fund raiser at the island hotel. Back home and more moss cleaning.
Then still working on different designs for the scroll. Did not know that Illustrator would not recover images from an external hard drive for an illustration. Had to move all needed images to a file on the desktop and redo. Not happy with road so will probably redo it before I watch Monty on gardener’s World at 7.30 a.m.!!!
16 september 2019
The time is flying by and the weather is beautiful so I am busy putting the garden to bed. Got daffs planted and gladioli transplanted as well as a Pieris transplanted. Some mowing done and now it is down to building highways!!!!!!
19 september 2019
In Dublin to see sister and try to meet up with the Trinity archivist. Sister doing well – down to one velcro wrist support. Meeting Trinity guy on Friday. He does not seem to be a ball of laughs – we’ll see. Worked on my scroll in the train on way up to city yesterday. Will look at it again now to see what I think.
21 september 2019
Met up with tech archivist in Dublin – strange guy. Could not figure out who funded him or for whom he was working. He had some suggestions about how he thought the project should go but I am not sure I altogether agree with him. I will certainly research and use some of the suggestions but I felt his experience was very academic and Ireland based.
23 september 2019
Planted just under 200 bulbs but unfortunately hit my chest against the handle of the wheel barrow – very bruised and sore. Joined hangout last night – really interesting as always. I did not present anything. Due to rain all day so will have time to do research. Young neighbour to dinner later.
24 september 2019
Horrible day. Am up to 1983 on my scroll. Can only do so much and my mind freezes.
1 October 2019
Where did the Summer go???
Sent a first version of the scroll to tutor. I also sent it to son and daughter. Latter replied with suggestions. I am now working on these – making it less wordy and more visual. It is difficult to work on such a large piece. Have reduced the type face.
6 October 2019
Have got the scroll to a place where I will present it tonight to the Hangout for comment. Await tutor’s input too. Also received a recording of a 2015 presentation from an old colleague of Barry’s . Might be useful for the audio.
Decided to return to France on Wednesday next. All very frenetic trying to get everything put away. Have my box ready to post tomorrow containing all my work.
14 october 2019
Back in France and all set up to continue my project work. I called to my printer first to discuss whether he could print 2.2m long work. I showed him the work and we discussed papers. Since this is an expensive exercise I would like to have a ‘test’ print. As always Pascal had a suggestion – he came up with a cheap paper option for the test. I’ll go with this.
I also ordered the dot matrix paper – I had to order a whole box as 40 sheets on eBay were almost as expensive…. i sincerely hope this project works. But it is principally for the grandchildren so it will work for them anyway.
Barry checked the story and is reasonably satisfied with it.
16 october 2019
Picked up a cold on my way back to France…
Sent a low res copy of the project to my daughter who was very broadly positive. She made a couple of suggestions and picked up some typos. These are now corrected. I like her suggestion of an Intro. this will be easy with the dot matrix paper.
Now I just have to get the paper – should be delivered tomorrow.
18 october 2019
I am using my time waiting for my dot matrix paper delivery making a combined image of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings. I’ll replace the Russian Presidents eyes with this as I like it better.
I am also re-reading the whole of this Level 2 submission….
22 october 2019
I left a copy of the 2.4m image in with my printer yesterday. He will make a test copy so that I can check the text and the positioning. I will stick this copy to the dot matrix paper . I am worried about what glue to use as I tried 3M and it shows through. My printer could not help with that. I will put up a question on the Hangout.
Just came across this Wacom video I really shoudl take mine out and try to come to terms with it:
The Complete Guide to Setting Up Your Wacom Tablet for Photo Editing
23 october 2019
Listening to BBC World Service this morning I heard about Naim June Paik’s exhibition in the Tate Modern. He created a work called “The Electronic Superhighway” Had a look at it. His work is really interesting and inspiring. My work looks so FLAT compared to this but it has inspired me to try to do better and maybe to carry this project forward.
24 october 2019
Pascal, my printer, had my test Super Highway ready this morning so I went round to collect it. I was well pleased with the quality on the cheap paper but it has a strange backing. I checked for typos and then I folded to try it out on the dot matrix paper – only to discover I have miscalculated the width of the paper. It is 28cm and not 28.5. So I had to reposition a lot of stuff on the 2.4m long image…. But all this gives me great practise with Illustrator. I also learned from Pascal that you can open a file saved in Illustrator in Photoshop. This retains all the information and you can then save it as jpeg. One learns something every day.
Now the corrections are made I will have to wait till Pascal has time to print it. He is working on huge images for an exhibition at the moment.
25 october 2019
Took part in the Tutor led Group Work online: HE6Contextual studies and Body of Work led by Dr Adriadne Xenou. It was the first time that Zoom had been used for a video conference like this. There were a few teething problems but this did not detract in any way form Adriadne’s facilitating and opening presentation. She guided us through what is expected of us at L3 and how we can go about selecting a topic. She started with the choice of Grand Narrative. This will then lead to the part of this narrative that especially interests us. She dealt with the need to love the topic and how this will help with the research.
We will receive the slides she was working from as a PdF. She was assisted by Gina Lundy. We were a group of 14 students, most already at L3.
27 october 2019
The final version of A5 is with the printer. Now I am working on ideas for a cover.
This morning the Profile om BBC4 was Bridget Riley. What a woman at 88 she is still working and producing amazing work.
This painting disturbs your head like much of her work.
29 october 2019
Waiting for Pascal, the printer, to email to say he has finished the work. But he did warn me he is very busy this week.
Meanwhile my husband and I (sounds like the queen….) spent yesterday morning out on the street beside our house cutting up board to make a cover for my book. This is the joy and the problem of living right on the roadside of a French village. We do not have any garden so all this kind of work has to be done on the side of the street. This means that many of the passer’s by offer advice or just stop for a chat. This, of course, means that the whole project takes ten times as long. But it did get done and I bought an image from iStock to put on the front as I don’t have any suitable images myself. I spent the afternoon resizing it and adding a title with dot matrix print. Fun indeed.
This morning I printed the cover image on A3 lustre paper but did not like it much so I tried the etching paper which has caused me no end of trouble in my Pro9000 printer, in the past. But it sailed through and printed nicely. So now I need to go to the art shop in Aix to buy black paper for the back cover – I have every other colour under the sun but only a scrap of black left. I also need PVC adhesive. We used ot have an art shop in the next big town but with the way of things in this modern age it closed. But the plus to a trip to Aix is we can have a lovely lunch somewhere. Must check what’s on the the gallery.
30 october 2019
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first message to be sent using packet switching network. Only half the work arrived!!!
8 november 2019
I have been waiting for my print for a week now. Pascal had some emergency but has promised to get on with it on Monday. Hubby will be away for three days so I hope to get the video done before he returns. Then I can get him to do the audio. It is a lot of work and I need to get on with it.
I have checked the whole level 2 DI&C blog work. I will get the labels and plan done this weekend.
Meanwhile I am reading about preparing for my final year. I am reflecting about working on the broad theme” Pollution”
10 november 2019
Went to the African Film festival night in our local cinema, last night. Wrote up a review.
Made the audio of Barry’s story of the Superhighway. Now I need to refresh my Premiere Pro experience….. I found this good video:
15 november 2019
Been a manic few days. Hubby back in Ireland to have a small skin ‘thing’ removed from his face. That went well but on the way back he discovered his bank card had been hacked for the second time in 5 months. My sister’s car was stolen last Friday but was recovered by police – a very weird story.
While dealing with the million calls regarding these upsets I was trying to clean up the audio which I was happy I did.
Then Pascal was ready with my scroll and my Boric Johnings image for A1. Got to work immediately to fold and stick my scroll into the dot matrix book. This was difficult and messy. Got it done.
Made video of book – in fact had to make 3 videos to get one that ‘fitted’ to the audio. Not sure if this will work. Started to try to fit them together but realised that I needed to leave it till today as I was too tired. Also we had torrential rain and for the first time ever we had a leak coming in around the window…
Will concentrate on it today.
21 november 2019
I put the video up on the hangout on 17th November. I knew it was raw and unfinished but I needed guidance. As always I got it from Tutor Clive White. He suggested making a story board to check where I needed to break the video to match it to the audio. Karen made the point that she wanted to see close ups of the content of the book and Kate wanted to keep the sounds and even offered me the dot matrix sound.
I took all these suggestions on board and have been working on the video and audio since. This involved reshooting the video at the original height from the book and a lot of cutting of both the audio (to eliminate background noise and hesitations) and the videos. I then made a series of close ups of some of the book. I thought originally I could use ‘zoom’ but Clive had advised against this and online this was confirmed. So I used the tripod placed nearer the book and shot a number of short videos. I then uncoupled the audios from these and placed these at the points where I had decided they should go.
I added titles and the imported sounds of dot matrix printer, old telephone and finally modem.
I worked on the whole for two days and finally was reasonably satisfied with the result. I am uploading it to Vimeo as I write. The first attempt ended in a error as my internet connection is unstable today.
Lat night I participated in the ‘Zoom” presentation by by tutor Andrea Norrington. It was excellent and I wish I had had this when I was starting. There was twenty student participants. The Powerpoint presentation was seamless and students could comment either using Mic or with chat. A really positive experience.
Just listened to the Roddy Doyle and Anthony Gormley interview:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4w9
Really interesting to hear two artists explain how nervous they are before letting go of a piece of work and putting it out into the world. Also they are both still developing their art.
25 november 2019
Looking forward to tutor feedback today.
Read this interesting article in NYT this morning by Tim Berners-Lee. Should I use it as back page of my book????
Communities are being ripped apart as prejudice, hate and disinformation are peddled online. Scammers use the web to steal identities, stalkers use it to harass and intimidate their victims, and bad actors subvert democracy using clever digital tactics. The use of targeted political ads in the United States’ 2020 presidential campaign and in elections elsewhere threatens once again to undermine voters’ understanding and choices. [Opinion | I Invented the World Wide Web. Here’s How We Can Fix It. – The New York Times. 2019. Opinion | I Invented the World Wide Web. Here’s How We Can Fix It. – The New York Times. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/opinion/world-wide-web.html. [Accessed 25 November 2019].]
27th november 2019
Coning up to the last hurdle. Feedback received and uploaded to Drive. W can complete the final step tomorrow.
Thank you to my tutor for the link to this lecture – terrifying:
Digital Image & Culture 