TREADING WATER

This is a holding post whilst I try to digest the end of one fellowship and the beginning of another.

Since my last post I've been to China, given a paper in Xi'an and put on an exhibition there - plus shot a new portraiture project in Beijing; been to Switzerland to give a paper; been to New York to take down an exhibition from the Cathedral, plus shot a new portraiture project there in New York; shot a new portraiture project in London, put on an exhibition at Salisbury Arts Centre and finally put on a major exhibition at the University of Westminster's gallery on Marylebone road which featured 18 new works on 12 HD displays - with 6 of them at 20 feet x 10 feet - plus convened 4 talk sessions on the nature of the digital in the last month of the first decade of the 21st Century.

Phew.

One thing that strikes me is that the flow of invention and innovation has rapidly sped up: When I started the fellowship the things I am now actively dealing with were glimmers in visionary thinkers eyes.

So digitality is here and everything we always dreamed about is also coming - with the possibility of everything that 1950's science fiction writers were foretelling also coming: modified humans with gills that can take advantage of other watery planets - no problem, we can do that, in time.

So our vision can be put into reality but we still slaughter eachother and pick off Iraqi citizens for fun because we're so displaced behind the digital viefinder that they're just something on the telescreen that needs removing. Sounds like the adolescent behaviour of a young species to me.

The ray of hope in that statement is that the sallow young become the mature old.

The students of Pythagoras were encouraged when entering the temple of study by a sign above the portal which admonished them in the following way:

"In all thy getting, get wisdom."