TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

  

VIEWING ALL POSTS FOR: FEBRUARY 2003

Saturday, February 22, 2003

12:50 AM
Posted by jodi rose

cobra
see, I don't usually like stating my plans or intentions, as they so easily go awry, change midstream, are forgotten or get diverted into some new and exciting permutation. But I did say I wanted to see more live music this year, and tonight was the beginning. thomas's band the ultimonts, (sp?) named after the famed ultimont speedway at which a rolling stones concert went so spectacularly awry, delivered a great retro new york 80's garage rock set, in the incongruous setting of the old colonial sports bar on brunswick st. I could so easily see them playing in one of those parking lot gigs in brooklyn that were happening when I was there - all that hype about the liars and the yeah yeah yeahs, white stripes, strokes, vines - you just never know what you'll find when you go out. I received some dietary advice which has left me flummoxed - from sophie, the meat evangelist - eat more meat, being a vegetarian is bad for you; and from nick, whose mother studied osteoperosis in women - eat more dairy, you need the calcium. I countered with my best vegan/liver cleansing/ new weekly hollywood diet plan propaganda, but they both stood firm. Eat whatever you want, philippa told me - but what if what I want is chocolate moosse 4 times a day? you won't, they said.
Still recovering from this onslaught, we popped into the cobra bar above the tote hotel - another extremely strange juxtaposition of venue, to enquire about a birthday drinks scenario for philippa. the place is a fantastic shrine to exotic kitsch, with 40's bellydancing films playing, bamboo walls and sexy cobra lady icons in a variety of guises all over the bar - lamps, vases, posters - gorgeous. see, you never know where the night will take you.
And I made another bridge today - this one of plasticine, (upmarket italian art modelling clay, I should say!) which was much easier to shape being as how it didn't set while I was working it, and resulted in a far more sophisticated feat of gumby engineering. so you never know, I may be able to pull this idea off after all. Also sourced a perspex dome and the greeting cards I need, now just a matter of bringing it all together in one fabulous art moment. late now, time for bed again. nothing but sleep sleep sleep.

Thursday, February 20, 2003

11:03 PM
Posted by jodi rose

ilk
apparently I am one in a million worldwide blogger users. there you go.
just a quick sketch of the last week, had a visit from bob the spider - he had a big round belly with white spots, hairy brown and white striped legs ( a garden orb-weaving spider, not poisonous, and repels attackers by making his web vibrate - as I discovered on the internet before I could go to sleep with him in the room) who liked to hang on top of my bookshelf from the photo of my great-grandmother, frances redfern, who was a musical comedy actress in such plays as 'prunella, or love in a dutch garden', playing the character of "jolly romp." Fitting, as richard told me when I was freaking out about bob, that a spider in your room in Buddhist teaching means that the spirit of your ancestors, or one of them, is checking in on you. The next evening I managed to catch bob using an icecream container and transfer him out to a hedge across the road, where I hope he will live a long and happy life feasting on bugs.
today I made a nectarine flavoured candy model of the golden gate bridge - it's a bit of a gumby bridge, but gave me great hope as anything else I make can only be better. using material that hardens quickly gives the whole process added spice - next time I'll try it with modelling clay, and hope to iron out the engineering issues such as having to stick the roadway into the pylons, making it impossible for traffic to actually cross the bridge. Visited the hobby shop at lunch time and got very excited about all the wonderful model making figures available - have my eye on some construction workers (! - love a man in a nail-belt!!) and a set of tourists with cameras, hope to find some skater kids doing graffiti as well. so the bridges may be rough, but the little people on them will be gorgeous! need a perspex dome and some re-recordable piezo speaker thingy's too. you'll just have to wait and see for what it will all become - I love making art when you get to play with cool stuff. Enough of this trying to produce serious, meaningful work. let's play!
had a small adventure out to the 'garden of ilk' film screenings, at ilk bar round the corner. such a chilled out, ultra low-key yet extremely stylish place, with two of the cutest boys I've seen since berlin working the bar, but the film wasn't great, and I left before they played... an episode of the sopranos. I could stay home and watch that! anyway, it's good for me to get out on these small soul nourishing escapades and remember there is a big world out there; and that your happiness is in your hands. something which us people seem to need reminding of now and then.
it's making me very happy to snuggle up in bed in about 5 minutes and schlafen. goodnight!

Thursday, February 13, 2003

2:09 PM
Posted by jodi rose

lovely.
life just gets better.
angels walked past me on hotham st on monday. they were a young couple, mid twenties, both dressed in white, barefoot - he was in a linen suit, she had on a short white dress and blue furry wings. very cute.
last night I went to see a film about the rave scene in finland, the uk and russia in the 90's, but the entire melbourne electronic music festival had been cancelled, and the film screenings with it. a bit sad - no-one I spoke to had even heard of it, but I had a wonderful night ride and adventure getting lost and wandering up the stairs at the back of a building to a heavy metal door with an empty warehouse except for a man from berlin and his dog. Strange symmetry as I almost fell off my bicycle crossing flemington road, and last time I actually did come off a bike was the first day in berlin.
Today is the first day of my new schedule working towards success, happiness and world domination through bridge sonics. It's going well, except the admin part seems to be taking up most of the day. Time to move on to sound, reading, spanish, writing and collage studies. Thinking of making some futurist dada graphic poetry about bridges, and found gorgeous graphs of the effect of wind on bridges in one of the armloads of books borrowed form the architecture library yesterday. Time for all that after lunch.
Studying spanish so I can to to Barcelona, hang out with crick and nigel and work with Santiago Calatrava. Nothing like having new grand visions and crazy dreams.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

2:16 PM
Posted by jodi rose

a point in space
somewhere in the universe

today is 100 x better than yesterday. woke up extremely anxious about deadlines and work due that I haven't done.... decided to choose action over anxiety, rang uni faculty admin to see if I could get an extension on the more negotiable deadline. found out that I only have to hand in a couple of pages outlining the work I've done so far, chapter outline and methodology - and the 10,000 words review by circulation I'd been dreading and wondering how on earth I could get it done by the end of feb - isn't actually due until August, 2004. Great, that's a year and a half extension!
dangerous! But I've been inspired and spent the morning at uni looking up material on cables - found a fantastic book from 1877 on suspension cables in this great site digital bridges, which has wild historical documents. very cool.
Slightly different to the 70's community art practise reclaiming our history which seems to have become the mainstream for much of australian sound art, that fascination with nostalgia that makes me want to lie down and sleep for a thousand years.
And on the exhibition front, which is the non-negotiable deadline, have been talking with architects about model-making. Met an ex-architect in my favourite low-key off smith st cafe this morning, where I went to celebrate my extension - philippa suggested drinking all day, but I can't cope with the hangovers anymore. Anyway, he was in there drawing these fantastically detailed almost architectural trees and shrubs, as part of what he described as a picture book, but is more of a graphic novel, with absolutely stunning images that take you on a journey from the city out into various landscapes - I don't want to give any more away, once it comes out you can see for yourselves. But it was lovely to meet someone who was quietly working away at his fascination, with no particular plan, but just doing the work. And gave me some great tips on model-making, using tweezers, quick-drying glue and some places to source materials; then I dropped by Kennedy Nolan architects and had a chat with Rachel about people she knew who may be able to help. Enough to make me decide that since I'm definitely not a meticulously neat person and have absolutely no skill in construction of any kind, the best idea is to use technical drawings, maybe have them printed onto perspex for that precision engineering feeling, which I'm not going to achieve in 2cm high models of bridges - without very great expense.
So, buzzing today with action and possibility and now I'm going to treat myself to a movie about a woman who becomes a belly dancer in tunisia. lush!

Monday, February 10, 2003

2:35 PM
Posted by jodi rose

victoria
much better now, thanks! cycled to sue's pilates class at yogascentials on lygon st this morning, now I'm all stretched and floppy, 3pm and just getting it together to do some work. Had a moment of excitement just then, resucing Chloe from her lassie adventure barking at another dog down the road, since Peter brown - our favourite handyman in his nailbelt - who is fixing the side gate left the front gate open.
Back now, ready to take on the universe with the symphony of bridges. Enough of all this peripheral chatter time to really get focused and down to business.
Being an artist with no business sense, I'm just going to have to borrow someone else's for a while. Luckily have been offered some expertise on release strategies for the project, and am about to write up my goals and 'desired outcomes'!! You better believe if I desire them, they are gonna come, sooner or later, one way or another!

Once I get my confidence and energy back, there's one very determined, stubborn and resourceful person behind this screen. Just heard a lovely story from a friend at Emer's birthday dinrks - meyers place bar, very funky, lots of great people I hadn't seen in ages - anyway, Ward tells me an artist friend of his just got back from 4 months in India, where she'd been sent (and cashed up) by her gallery to be inspired and make work. This is the fun part, she came back and gave a talk on why she couldn't make art in India. Not sure of the reasons, but I love it! Another artist I know collects the dust from museum and gallery floors wherever he visits. Also space dust, whic apparently falls to earth at the rate of one particle per square metre per day. or something like that.
So bridges don't seem so ludicrously esoteric after all, do they!!!????!!

Sunday, February 02, 2003

1:17 PM
Posted by jodi rose

Collingwood
I miss the ocean even more after that two day teaser staying in Clovelly. Melbourne just doesn't really have anything like it, and don't try telling me the bay is ocean because it's a flat grey dirty lake.
Still haven't reconnected to my energy and enthusiasm, dragging this sorry ass through day after day without any real clear idea of why or where I'm heading.
Trying to get the sound out and into the world - but have been informed by my curator for an upcoming show that she couldn't listen to it because of the distortion on the recording from pushing the microphones - but I actually quite like that particular piece. I don't mind some excess noise and un-clean sonic objects, in fact I object to the notion of having to produce ultra high level clean pure sound with no external noise or ambient intervention. Life just isn't like that, and neither are bridges. It feels artificial to attempt an aural cleansing, the sound is what it is. messy, chaotic, out of control, I'm sick of the academic world too, where thoughts are meant to be contained and ordered into neat linear coherent rational narratives. Explosions of passion and imagination and wonder and meandering reflections are definitely not welcome. What excatly am I doing, I ask myself? well, I started on this journey and I guess I need closure on a few aspects of it, but what I really long to be doing is getting out onto some more bridges and miking them up to talk with each other across the oceans and continents. that's what makes my spirit sing. and I think the cables are the voice of god - without any justification, proof or rational coherent logic. they just are. take it or leave it!
As you can see, a little cranky and cantankerous today - finding that I don't really fit in the world I seem to be attempting to operate in, and wondering why I find myself here and if there is some other frame of reference I could find to be in context, somewhere that resonates on a higher frequency?
Yes, my recent experience working on two of John Edward's shows have had an impact, some of the things he talked about made a lot of sense, and if that brands me as an out there spiritualist wacko, then so be it. I seem to be in very good company.
Maybe I just need to let loose and write exactly what I feel and believe - just not sure how that will do down within the academic framework. Not very good at discipline at the moment. or spelling for that matter.
This too shall pass. my mantra for now.
I can see myself having an incredible installation of live bridge video and sound from around the world, and I guess I'm a little bit bored of trying to fit my ideas into an arena that is way to rational and dry and lifeless for them.
It was all fine while I was travelling, there seem to be no consequences and no obligations when you're on the other side of the world - even if that is an illusion - but the weight of one's life crashes down again once you land back on home ground.
Maybe I can work out how to keep drifting in nomadic digital bliss for ever. Any suggestions?