Designers at the ICA

We went to the ICA to see a design show/discussion, Joff's idea as he is doing a product design course. I was sort of interested and sort of dreading it. My dread was confirmed when we arrived for a 7 pm start only to sit for half an hour wathcing 2 (very young) blokes with deisgner head stubble, fiddling with their laptops. When one of them got out his phone and was playing with both at the same time I was ready to leave. Eventually they started and their communication skills matched my expectations, not good. However once they got round to showing their work it was a completely different story. The event is set up to showcase mainly digital designers and their pet projects, in other words the things they would like to be doing when they are not designing car ads. The presentations we saw ranged from a short film, an idea for a digital art display, an interactive table and a truly astounding car ad (yes I know, it was a car ad but it was amazing). All of the designers were men and all pretty much looked under 30 and all seemed to be running their own companies. Easy to knock, but the skill they displayed was really impressive, it involved hour upon hour of doing complicated things with computers which I inherently think of as dull and tedious, mainly becuase I don't have a hope in hell of understanding it, but the work they produced was very creative and changed my opinion of both computer geeks and designers.

Broadband

After six months in the dial up wilderness I am back on broadband (hence the sudden burst of posts) and it is sooo good to be back.

Zodiac - it's a killer!

The film Zodiac has had nothing less than 4 star reviews and so I was looking forward to seeing it with great excitment, however after 2 and a half hours of watching it my excitment had turned to head nodding boredom. I admit I was tired already and I do have a habit of falling asleep in films with anything less than ear drum shattering jaw dropping action (although I like to think of myself as an arthouse lover, I think I am naturally more of a blockbuster type). This is a film about the fruitless search for a serial killer, who may or may not have killed anything from 4 - 40 people. They don't find him. Which would havebeen ok if anything else actually happened, like character development or stuff like that, but no such luck. A disparate group of police (or cops as they say over there) pursue the Zodiac as he taunts them with a seemingly endless chain of letters and codes to break (nothing duller than watching someone crack a code on film - witness the DA Vinci Code). They start off obsessed and end up obsessed and fired. Yes, the detail is impressive, the look of it inviting and the first 2 murder scenes are pretty scary, but that is not enought to carry over 2 hours of mumbling, bumbling interminable searching.

A Matter of Life and Death

A Matter of Life and death is currently on at the National and is an adaptation of the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name. The play is done in association with Kneehigh Theatre
and as a result is a blend of music, physical theatre and circus style aerobatics. It is a story of a2nd workd war pilot who falls in love with a young, attractive radio operator called June, just before he falls to his death. The dead man who is due to 'collect' him and take him 'upstairs' fails to do so and he lives, only to meet and fall in love agian with June. The conundrum then is whether he should die as he was supposed to or be spared to pursue true love. The play ends with a trial to decide his fate. It is generally exciting and innovative, using an impressive team of actors to sing, dance, dangle from harnesses, ride bicycles round the stage and literally play with fire. None of this is done simply for effect and the atmosphere created is one of a distorted tiem and shifting reality. The only off note is sounded by the decision to use the end trial to give a stream of polemic about the random and awful nature of war, and the idiocy of being spared simply for love. The women of Dresden appear to plead their case as they have also lost loved ones, an addition for a modern audience who presumably can now consider the position of the bombed German citizens , which may have been unthinkable in 1946 when the film was made. However, this rams a point home too forcibly and unnecessarily, sounding clumsy when the rest of the production is so spot on.

Coffee@bermondsey street

is a coffee shop done in 'bermondsey street' style, which means it is almost all organic (presumably inluding the staff) decorated in breeze blocks, coloured concrete and bits of lego, has wireless internet access and advertises oats milk! Having said that I actually really like it, the food is good (flalafel wraps, houmus and spinach ciabatta, good cake) the coffee strong and the staff a little floaty but generally pleasing. There are copious free papers lying about and you can access the internet on some dinky little computers at the back if you don't have your own teeny weeny notebook to use.