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A travelling exhibition of models of Leonardo's machines is in town at the moment over at Fox Studios (now re-named Entertainment Quarter). 60 of his inventions and devices are on display, many of which can be operated with handles and so on. It is possible to go inside his room of mirrors to see your own back and so on. The catalog is a useful addition to my library for my Leonardo web site still in progress. The whole exhibition is very timely for my writing. Here are some highlights.
Last day of term and everyone made beautiful drawings. Wednesday sketch club is always quieter than Tuesday evenings life drawing, but the passion level is just as high. I love seeing everyone's interpretations of what they see and always feel that the best time in the studio is when the model is here and the artists gather for drawing.
Tonight the model played Bach on the viola. Everyone had to feel the music and transpose the musical rhythms into visual rhythms. A beautiful poetic night of 
drawing. I recorded a little of the music with my mobile phone.
Click the player to hear the music as people were drawing. The recording is not perfect, but it does capture the magic of what was happening wonderfully well. The recording is 4 minutes and 35 seconds long.
Why would anyone volunteer for technosexuality? Or even want to be a technosexual? Why indeed? For me the answer is easy, but first I need to make a disclaimer: it is 9:20 in the morning. I haven't been to bed yet; I have spent the night drawing on the computer. The work was successful and I am feeling elated (as artwork that goes well always makes one feel) and I am having a couple of gins before bed (and as celebration)
There is a small reproduction of the drawing I have been doing. It is the sort of thing I like to do just now, marrying my classical skills with the computer. Not making a drawing in chalks and conté on paper, but doing it all with a Wacom tablet on the computer. It is something I started when the model was here on Tuesday night. I often draw like this just on paper, but this one sorted out some ideas I was wanting to translate to digital media, and printed - it looks great. It is something I want to do for my up coming exhibition. That exhibition will be the fruition of what I have been doing digitally. This small triumph this week is actually an important step along the way for me.
Another success with technology in the last few days lay in transfering this diary blog to a new domain. For ever more it will be known as www.diaryofanartist.com but it started life with a URL typical of a blog: www.kingscross.blogs.com/diary, a difficult to remember web address. To create its own domain was a ticklish matter which I had not attempted before, so while there are web experts out there who think nothing of playing with DNS records, for me this was a big deal. And fortunately I was able to figure it out without a hitch by doing sufficient research first and finding the answers I needed.
Technology has always interested me, but analog technology was always so frustrating in how little it gave back for vast investments in money and time. Now the digital world offers so much more. Yet for every successful step there is at least one other that frustrates. This week it took the form of some software for my phone. A dictionary - something one would assume is relatively straightforward. It would be if the software company's decided to make things easy. For my Merriam-Webster dictionary the software company is one of those that doesn't understand the need to be clear and straight forward. So after some back and forward e-mails i still don't have a working copy on my phone. It will get straightened out eventually, but they unnecessarily make one jump through hoops to get there.
Many people cannot understand the success of the iPod - they think it is just marketing. What they do n ot understand is that when Apple came along MP3 players had lots of features but none of them worked very well. The iPod just works. So all those who complain that it does not have enough features don't realise the importance of things working well. The same thing is likely to happen with the iPhone. Lots of phones have lots of features, like my one, but lets face it, the software is often flaky. Lots of features, but they don't all work well. All Apple has to do is have a product that does what it does well and they will have a hit.
Technology when it works well is a delight. It can also value add to productivity. It has transformed me as an artist and opened the world to me. It has laid a new creative universe at my feet. I love it, but hate the unnecessary frustrations. Lets face it, so much of the stuff that is frustrating is just company's that don't know how to make things work right, or are so greedy they couldn't care about the users experience so long as they make money.
Conclusion: technology is wonderful, what i can do with it is wonderful, but the people who sell it - are mostly not so wonderful. Lets hope we can all survive them.
Last night there was a preacher at the corner of Bayswater Road and Darlinghurst Road. There are often preachers who are attracted to Kings Cross and what they see as our sins. The most famous of them was Ada Green in the mid 20th century. Most of them are not as memorable as Ada must have been.
Last night there was a passionate man who spoke with rhymes but sadly his only audience was his own dog, Fluffy. Fluffy listened enraptured by his master's voice. His master's name is Terry. Terry told me that Fluffy is nine years old. He told me how he first met Fluffy as a puppy when Fluffy jumped into his arms. In fact the only things he could talk about were Fluffy and Jesus. I just had to get some photos. Meet Fluffy and Terry.
Lesley Dimmick has finally come of age. 18 years of running the best underground gallery in Sydney. Literally thousands of young artists have had their first show at TAP.
Ten years ago I met Lesley when I wanted to stage the first Real Refuses exhibition. That started a close friendship that has endured while I have seen TAP grow slowly year by year. I remember TAP's 10th birthday party. It seems like it was only a couple of years ago.
So tonight Lesley celebrated with an exhibition, with a band, with friends, and with a wall of photos of the madcap people and events of recent years.
Happy Birthday Lesley and TAP
The sky lit up tonight with bright gold and salmony pinks. It was extraordinarily beautiful. Some people spend a lifetime searching for meaning and purpose in life. I cannot imagine any purpose or meaning greater than simply being able to open my eyes and drink this beauty in. And, as an artist, the icing on the cake is to be able to make and manipulate images like this, and share what I see.
At the southern end of Hyde Park is the War Memorial. It is a very solemn building that perfectly marries art and architecture. Raynor Hoff was the artist. In the center, under a domed ceiling covered in 50,000 stars ( one for every soldier from here who died in World War I ) is a bronze soldier, naked, and dead, who is being carried on a shield and his arms are draped over a sword. Three women facing outwards carry him on their shoulders. There is a circular mezzanine balcony so the visitor can look down onto the sculpture from above. The mezzanine also has the eternal flame.
Set around the round room are semi domed niches with stone from the scene of important battles. I always stop and touch the dark cold stone from the Somme. That was where my grandfather was wounded, and left for dead by the retreating ANZAC's, he was found by German soldiers and nursed back to health in a German hospital. They put a metal plate in his skull, and metal pins in his leg. It was fortunate that it was the Germans who found him because the British hospitals did not have the expertise for such radical reconstruction at the time. This building represents a lot to me.
On the outside Hoff made beautiful bronze bas reliefs of battle scenes. High up around the ouside of the building are giant dark pink granite soldiers, heads hung in respect. In the corners at the highest place there are standing nurses who cared for the wounded.. Around about there are trees planted of the scrubby pines and other trees from Gallipoli and in front, lined with trees from France, there is a reflecting pool.
There is no place more sacred or holy than this in all of Sydney.
I bumped into Tesha in the street, she has had a baby girl called (forgive me, Tesha - I am going to spell it phonetically so it may not be the correct spelling) Miela. A baby with a happy disposition. It was really good to see Tesha again. She is now doing a fine arts degree at the National Art School, but she started with me what seems like a long time ago. She will always be someone who is particularly special to me. And she is a wonderful artist.
Today breakfast was croissants and tea in the warmth of the winter sun coming in the big window. Normally it would be porridge, eityher oats or semolina with oat bran and fruit. Growing up in the country breakfast is a very important meal. I never lost the habit.
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