That Was The Week That Was - 12th January 2025

The only consistency I want is to be inconsistent

You'll often see comments from "collectors" of art how an artist should be consistent; they should create work that is instantly recognisable as "their" work. I've always felt this is lazy, simplistic thinking, coming from a place of comfort – a word which is at odds with all things creative. Over the years of my career I've created prints, made books, made 3D printed sculptures, websites, interactive experiences, commercial electronic objects, NFTs, things made of concrete, large scale video installations and most recently collaborated on a feature film which is never the same twice.

It's a varied, eclectic collection of objects which you could look at and ask "where is the consistency?" The consistency is the lack of consistency, born from a constant thirst to be curious, to ask "why?", to try new things, to adventure into areas unknown and not understood, because that's where the fun is to be had, at the edges. I'm not interested in creating commodities of my work so it's easily digest-able, reproduced and understood.

A message from over 600 million miles away

The nights here have been cold but also clear. So as I looked at the night sky I could see a very bright star. Only this wasn't a star but the planet Jupiter, from over 600 million miles away – a relatively short distance in space terms. The light takes around 35 minutes to reach us so what I was looking at was the past, not the present as I looked up into the night sky, stood on this organic time-machine. I was struck by the thought that the light I was seeing was coming from the same planet that Galileo saw when he first pointed his telescope at Jupiter in 1610. In another 400 years time, when the light from Jupiter will still be streaming towards us, what will we be looking at? Will we still be here? Will we have colonised other planets? Will we have destroyed ourselves? Will we have discovered the secrets of the universe? Will we have discovered the secrets of ourselves?

GitHub Copilot

This week I installed GitHub Copilot in Vim – my code editor of choice. Copilot is an AI pair programmer which helps you write code. It's a bit like having a rubber duck to talk to but this duck is a bit more intelligent. It's been interesting to see how it works and how it can help you write code. It's not perfect but it's a good start and I'm sure it will improve over time. It's also a bit spooky how it can predict what you're going to write next. Those few sentences you've just read were suggested to me as I wrote this article by Copilot!

Eno

It was lovely to see Studio Build have the posters they designed for the Eno film acquired by the V&A for their collection. You can purchase the posters for your own collection here.

In the early hours of Friday morning I was awaken by a text message with the words "you won!!!" from Marley McDonald, one of the amazing editors of the film who was attending the Cinema Eye Honors in New York. I had won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Design. This was a complete shock, born out from the fact I didn't even stay up to watch the live stream because I didn't think I'd win. It was a lovely surprise and I'm very grateful to the everyone who voted for me and for being part of such a great list of nominees.

Rodeo

After meaning to do so for a while, I finally posted on Rodeo. Rodeo is a new creative social network setup by the people behind Foundation where you post artwork which people can then collect. You can follow me here.