Know what these girls have in common?
Kayleigh
Julia
Angie
Rosanna
Rhiannon
Lola
Ophelia
Michelle
Valerie (twice)
OK, so actually they're not girls, but song titles. As many as I could think of, anyway. Which you'd probably guessed already. I would have included Layla, Barbara Ann and Billie Jean, but that might have made it (even more) obvious!
There's quite a range of pop music in that list - from some 80s power ballads to tunes by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The Fab Four certainly had a knack for getting girls' names into song titles - they even covered one called Anna. Good choice, guys, if I do say so myself!
The boys are involved too, although to a lesser extent - remember Jesse, Levon and Kevin Carter? Even Doctor Robert (Beatles again) and A Boy Named Sue get in on the action!
I'm on a roll now - I then started thinking of songs with loads of names in them, but none in the title... how about The Beautiful South's Song For Whoever or Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5? I'm not counting Ella, by the way, just in case anyone was thinking of Rihanna for that category...
Twitter may have its "Music Monday", but I think I'm going to make myself a new "names" playlist today, just because it's Friday and I feel like it. So if you can add to it, let me know! Is your name a song title, or featured in a song? Add it in the comments!
Friday, 28 August 2009
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
What is art, and can you make it exposed on a plinth?
Hands up who's been following artist Anthony Gormley's living sculptures venture on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London?
I've been keeping tabs on it sporadically, usually by walking past every other day and having an interested glance up to see who's up there and what they're doing, or by stories that inevitably come out of it - such as the guy who was ordered to put some clothes on after getting naked for Trafalgar Square to see...
In itself, the issue of whether nakedness can be accepted as a form of art opens up a whole other can of worms in the perpetual "What is art?" debate, so I'll leave that aside to comment on the more general concept of using the plinth as a showcase of living art.
For me, what Gormley has set out with this concept is unique, innovative and immensely creative, which I would imagine are required criteria for getting to demonstrate your work on the plinth. Gormley, then, is an artist in my book. His subjects up there are, I feel at least, less so. I have by no means been keeping a 24/7 plinth watch (I'll leave that to @PlinthWatch... clue's in the name), but whenever I have been past it I have always felt rather underwhelmed, bordering on disappointed, by what's up there.
That sounds very negative, I know, (especially to Mr. Naked Plinth Man) but I don't mean it to be at all. (I really don't, Mr. Naked Plinth Man!) I just feel the experiment shows that the intrinsic interest and, in many ways, beauty that humans have is best demonstraetd through their interactions with other humans. Talking, laughing, all that reacting to others and interacting with others that we do every day... In fact, most of the things that make us interesting and artistic are, I feel, closely tied in with being around other people and things. We're human, we live in society: it doesn't seem wildly outrageous that this is how we've managed to spend a few millennia on earth.
Take all that away and isolate an individual on a plinth and I feel that you almost get the opposite effect to what was probably intended. Everything around us that, without us realising it, makes us create and perceive things in the world, is just removed for those guys up on the fourth plinth.
But that's just my $0.02 - everyone has a different view on what art is. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
I've been keeping tabs on it sporadically, usually by walking past every other day and having an interested glance up to see who's up there and what they're doing, or by stories that inevitably come out of it - such as the guy who was ordered to put some clothes on after getting naked for Trafalgar Square to see...
In itself, the issue of whether nakedness can be accepted as a form of art opens up a whole other can of worms in the perpetual "What is art?" debate, so I'll leave that aside to comment on the more general concept of using the plinth as a showcase of living art.
For me, what Gormley has set out with this concept is unique, innovative and immensely creative, which I would imagine are required criteria for getting to demonstrate your work on the plinth. Gormley, then, is an artist in my book. His subjects up there are, I feel at least, less so. I have by no means been keeping a 24/7 plinth watch (I'll leave that to @PlinthWatch... clue's in the name), but whenever I have been past it I have always felt rather underwhelmed, bordering on disappointed, by what's up there.
That sounds very negative, I know, (especially to Mr. Naked Plinth Man) but I don't mean it to be at all. (I really don't, Mr. Naked Plinth Man!) I just feel the experiment shows that the intrinsic interest and, in many ways, beauty that humans have is best demonstraetd through their interactions with other humans. Talking, laughing, all that reacting to others and interacting with others that we do every day... In fact, most of the things that make us interesting and artistic are, I feel, closely tied in with being around other people and things. We're human, we live in society: it doesn't seem wildly outrageous that this is how we've managed to spend a few millennia on earth.
Take all that away and isolate an individual on a plinth and I feel that you almost get the opposite effect to what was probably intended. Everything around us that, without us realising it, makes us create and perceive things in the world, is just removed for those guys up on the fourth plinth.
But that's just my $0.02 - everyone has a different view on what art is. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
A return to the playground school of showing someone you fancy them...
"Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee!!"
That, boys and girls of Youniverse, translates roughly (as far as I could work out at the time, anyway) as "Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" followed by some sort of shriek/tyre screech in the background. All of which hit my eardrums at a rate of both knots and decibels when I arrived at Imagini HQ yesterday morning, ready for another working week . And to think I almost didn't rummage through my bag fast enough to get to the phone in the first place...
Turns out the reason for the call was that a friend of mine had "had an encounter with" (her words) a bloke who sometimes takes the same bus as her into work in the mornings and whom she has something of a crush on.
An encounter, eh? Ooh er. Was that some flirty eye contact? Maybe a cheerful "good morning" and perhaps then a conversation? An exchange of phone numbers??
Oh no. No no no. What merited the shrieks and howls was the fact that she'd (somehow) been too preoccupied to notice that this bloke had got on the bus with her that morning. This meant that when he was walking past to get off the bus, she suddenly clocked him and tried to subtly whisper to her friend that the hottie she'd been talking about was actually right there.
What she actually did, however, was essentially bury her elbow (repeatedly) in her friend's solar plexus and, while this girl struggled with being rather violently winded, shrieked, "Oh my god! It's the hottie from the bus!" and collapsed in giggles. Seems unlikely he couldn't have heard or seen any of that. Smooth. She may as well have just pushed him over and run away to another part of the playground...
She saw the funny side - when you're that mortified you can only laugh or cry, and the former is really the better option. Hopefully this bloke saw it for the compliment it was intended to be...
That, boys and girls of Youniverse, translates roughly (as far as I could work out at the time, anyway) as "Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!" followed by some sort of shriek/tyre screech in the background. All of which hit my eardrums at a rate of both knots and decibels when I arrived at Imagini HQ yesterday morning, ready for another working week . And to think I almost didn't rummage through my bag fast enough to get to the phone in the first place...
Turns out the reason for the call was that a friend of mine had "had an encounter with" (her words) a bloke who sometimes takes the same bus as her into work in the mornings and whom she has something of a crush on.
An encounter, eh? Ooh er. Was that some flirty eye contact? Maybe a cheerful "good morning" and perhaps then a conversation? An exchange of phone numbers??
Oh no. No no no. What merited the shrieks and howls was the fact that she'd (somehow) been too preoccupied to notice that this bloke had got on the bus with her that morning. This meant that when he was walking past to get off the bus, she suddenly clocked him and tried to subtly whisper to her friend that the hottie she'd been talking about was actually right there.
What she actually did, however, was essentially bury her elbow (repeatedly) in her friend's solar plexus and, while this girl struggled with being rather violently winded, shrieked, "Oh my god! It's the hottie from the bus!" and collapsed in giggles. Seems unlikely he couldn't have heard or seen any of that. Smooth. She may as well have just pushed him over and run away to another part of the playground...
She saw the funny side - when you're that mortified you can only laugh or cry, and the former is really the better option. Hopefully this bloke saw it for the compliment it was intended to be...
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