Ollie Palmer will be presenting Physical Virus project at Goldsmiths University’s Thursday Club this week (aptly, on Thursday). Also presenting is Artemis Papageorgiou with her Fabrique project.
The talk is in the Goldsmiths Digital Studios, Ben Pimlott Building at 18.00 on Thursday 28th October.
I spent a couple of days at Area10 with Maxine Pringle to help set up and document her installation Transforming Architecture earlier this year. The performance was incredible – transforming an entire warehouse room into an immersive, womblike experience.
The complete structure was fabricated by Maxine in what must have been a series of marathon sessions at the sewing machine. What doesn’t come across in the video and photos is the level of detail and high quality finish of the piece, or the hidden structure – it utilises a sophisticated set of structural supports in the form of large kevlar rods, and has a set of 36 counterweights dangling from the roof of the warehouse.
I edited this video recently for Dave Diduca. All credits for the design, build, programming, photography, and pretty much everything else goes to him.
Music by Squeak E Clean
I spent a day taking photos and recording time-lapses with my friend Kimberly Walker in July, as part of her Masters in Architectural Design. I’ve finally had the chance to watch the final edit – it’s a documentary about the process of making the film. Trailer below, full documentary here.
Photos:
I rarely work without Radio 4 harping away in the background. My ‘office’ will thus have to relocate to bars, cafés and other more sociable places.
Unit 14 went to Copenhagen earlier this year. Here’s a video of the installation we built, along with students from Bartlett’s AAC course and the Royal Danish Academy‘s Unit 1.
I also made this rough video of my journey home. It’s a time-lapse and shows an approximate location, mode of travel, and what I saw (through the “eyes” of a Canon G9). It shows my travel by plane, train, bus and foot, and finishes with the first thing I do when I get home: make a cup of tea.
As part of another project (as-yet-unblogged), I’ve been looking at RFID tags – and more specifically, how they can be used within robotic and entomological systems. The wasp below is sporting an RFID tag that costs €3 as part of a study of wasp movements (image credits: ZSL – for more on that, click here…). RFID is becoming an everyday commodity…
One of the most commonly accepted RFID systems in operation is the Oyster card. I put mine into a glass full of nail varnish in order to remove the chip inside.
After a few hours, the adhesive holding the components together was degraded to such an extent that the whole thing was a floppy mess, ready to be peeled apart.
This is version 2.6 of the Oyster card – previous versions contained copper wire, but this one uses conductive ink as the arial. The flexible centre is now ready for embedding into anything – e.g. a jacket sleeve – ready for use. The pencil points towards the “ID” part, which contains the chip’s all-important frequency.
Good news – Ollie’s photography is now available to license on gettyimages.com. The “by olliepalmer.com” library will grow over time!
It is a privilege to be invited to be part of one of the world’s great photo-libraries. Now a global audience is able to buy photographs that I have taken from around the world to use and re-interpret creatively. It’s fantastic to know that your work could be helping others create.
If you like my photography, my hideously unorganised Flickr stream has lots of nice images (along with lots of other, less pretty pictures).
Literal hacking to make this chair fit onto a staircase. Seen here.
I’ve just moved house to a converted hospital in Camberwell Green. Brilliantly named Peacock House, there are high ceilings abound, plenty of room to swing cats, and a lot of old graffiti by the patients who were treated here.
New room. New bed. Old other stuff.
Two polystyrene globes on the shelf waiting to be used in experiments at the zoo.
This Player’s Navy Cut cigarette box has followed me around since I was about ten – I think it belonged to my grandfather at some point. I instantly feel at home when I put this into a new house.
A consequence of the ex-institutional nature is that the whole place is securely gated. There’s a lovely big balcony – the perfect place to eat/relax/work when it’s sunny. Being southeast England, I dare say this won’t be a regular occurrence.
The wall to the right is covered in graffiti with the names of patients who were treated here, dating back to the early 1900s.
Layers and layers of scribblings.
A lot of the chalk graffiti has survived.
At some point I’ll have some sort of housewarming, I guess. Until then, you’ll just have to make do with these photos on Flickr.