Thursday, 18 August 2011
pdf file for email
I have spent all morning trying to compress a Word file for email. It is my dissertation file which I want to enter into a competition. The file with images was 59 MB. Email only allows 15MB from ntlworld.com. Firstly I saved as a .pdf file which was 49.1 MB. Then I compressed the .pdf which became a zip file but was still 49.1MB. How come? Then I laboriously cut out all the images and pasted them into a separate word file whilst maintaining the pagination in the original document. But hey ho the images file became 57.3MB even bigger than the original complete document. Only by trolling through Mac and Word user forums etc did I find that on a PC right clicking pictures brings up the format picture compress option which is not available on a Mac. I can save the complete original file as a .pdf file then open the .pdf file in Preview and save as format PDF and in the Quartz filter box click reduce file size. Hey presto 48KB!!!! I am posting here because I would never remember how to do this another time.
Saturday, 21 May 2011
With Landscape in Mind
Joe Cornish Landscape Photographer showed his film 'With Landscape in Mind' a feature length documentary from Light and Land produced by Environment Films at Hyde Park Cinema Leeds on Friday 20th May 2011.Born in Exeter the artist has an affinity with North Yorkshire and Scotland. I asked him to explain his connectedness to these landscapes and his references to limestone pavement being 'like bones' and a hawthorn tree rooted in the pavement as being 'muscular'. He though mine a wonderful question. Without anthropomorphising he recognised the planting of the body within these landscapes and agreed with my allusion to early humankind. He also referred to the bones of animals in caves at Malham Cove and Gordale Scar from the inter-glacial period when human beings had receded from England and Scotland. His is a human response to land and arguably an ancient one. The film was shown as part of the UK Green Film Festival 2011.
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Journey to Stonehenge (Durrington Walls Henge) A Time Team Special 19/05/11 at 10 pm first shown 2009 1
This programme is the followup to the Time Team Special 'Durrigton Walls' first screened 28th Novemebr 2005 Britain's biggest henge built about 4500 years ago in the Neolithic era. In 2003, as a prelude to the recent excavations, English Heritage carried out a magnetometry survey, which identified two new entrances to the henge. Over the next two years, excavations were carried out outside the henge and in one large segment cutting across the bank and ditch.
The area outside the east entrance was found to contain a series of Neolithic pits, large quantities of animal bones, pottery and worked flints, including arrowheads. There were also traces of hearths, again suggesting feasting. Study of the bones found on the site, as well as of the fat residues found on pottery, showed that a large proportion came from pigs, as well as a smaller quantity from cattle. Examination of pig teeth finds showed that they belonged to animals that were about nine months old when they were killed suggesting that this took place in midwinter. The teeth were also found to suffer from caries, or decay, leading to speculation that they had been deliberately fed honey to sweeten their meat.
Other finds on the site included flint representations of male and female sexual organs, a fragment of a carved chalk plaque and evidence of Neolithic domestic buildings. Most exciting of all for the archaeologists, they also found a massive Neolithic roadway – the first of its kind in Europe – made of compacted chalk and leading down to the river Avon from the henge entrance.
Linking the living and the dead
This led Professor Mike Parker Pearson Sheffield University to claim a definite link between Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, which also had The Avenue leading down to the river. His Stonehenge Riverside Project Fieldwork in 2008 drew on his experience of archaeological work in Madagascar, he has put forward the idea that the two sites were interlinked and in use at the same time. He believes the wooden structures at Durrington Walls, temporary and subject to decay, were representative of the land of the living, while the stones at Stonehenge, permanent and unchanging, represented the world of the ancestors. The two were linked by ceremonial routes – the roadway at Durrington Walls and The Avenue at Stonehenge, joined by the river Avon – along which the remains of the living would make a literal and metaphorical journey to the land of the dead. Included further reading. English Heritage does an interactive map.
The area outside the east entrance was found to contain a series of Neolithic pits, large quantities of animal bones, pottery and worked flints, including arrowheads. There were also traces of hearths, again suggesting feasting. Study of the bones found on the site, as well as of the fat residues found on pottery, showed that a large proportion came from pigs, as well as a smaller quantity from cattle. Examination of pig teeth finds showed that they belonged to animals that were about nine months old when they were killed suggesting that this took place in midwinter. The teeth were also found to suffer from caries, or decay, leading to speculation that they had been deliberately fed honey to sweeten their meat.
Other finds on the site included flint representations of male and female sexual organs, a fragment of a carved chalk plaque and evidence of Neolithic domestic buildings. Most exciting of all for the archaeologists, they also found a massive Neolithic roadway – the first of its kind in Europe – made of compacted chalk and leading down to the river Avon from the henge entrance.
Linking the living and the dead
This led Professor Mike Parker Pearson Sheffield University to claim a definite link between Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, which also had The Avenue leading down to the river. His Stonehenge Riverside Project Fieldwork in 2008 drew on his experience of archaeological work in Madagascar, he has put forward the idea that the two sites were interlinked and in use at the same time. He believes the wooden structures at Durrington Walls, temporary and subject to decay, were representative of the land of the living, while the stones at Stonehenge, permanent and unchanging, represented the world of the ancestors. The two were linked by ceremonial routes – the roadway at Durrington Walls and The Avenue at Stonehenge, joined by the river Avon – along which the remains of the living would make a literal and metaphorical journey to the land of the dead. Included further reading. English Heritage does an interactive map.
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Sheep poo paper
I have been thinking about how to use sheep poo. It may be possible to make my own sheep poo paper. However this site in Wales does the 'dirty' job of making paper. However the largest size is 450 x 640mm that is between A1 and A2 size 300 grams weight. I have been screen printing templates of one aspect of the badger stone. The template is roughly A2 size so this paper not big enough. The company Creative Paper Wales will make custom size paper for a price. Perhaps this is too Chris Ofili who used elephant dung to punctuate his canvases and as a support to his paintings
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Sexing the Stone
Sexing the Stone (2011) forms part of a larger body of work BARREN (Yeld): Spectral Traces of Ain, which
is part of my PhD Proposal to Bath Spa University about Postcolonialism, Landscape and Identity (Yeld is Scots
for Barren). I am performing a series of curated art walks and drawing performances on Ilkley Moor where there
is a large number of Neolithic/Bronze Age carved rocks that sign theoretical/imaginary prehistoric tracks and
trails of a Nomadic people. The largely masculine archaeological record is mediated as ‘Rock Art’ and no
mention is made of the sexual significance of the marks. The rocks belong to everyone but the landowners,
English Heritage, Bradford Metropolitan Council and the Archaeological community claim ‘ownership’. Many of
the rocks have been placed behind Victorian railings as a mark of ownership and (possibly) prudery. My
interpretation is gendered and transgressive. As a woman artist I am reclaiming the marks and the territory as a
feminine space. The rocks are neither male nor female, hetero or homosexual. They are both. They are sexual
signifiers in the landscape. I am drawing on the rocks as a transgressive act. I do not have permission or official
sanction. I draw with eco charcoal and water, making impermanent environmentally conscious post-landscape
installation art. It is possible that the rocks were originally coloured. Further drawing experiments will be made
with ochre, chalk and various clays and earth and I will film a performance. I see the lines in the landscape as
essentially matriarchal and I am reclaiming the land for my Traveler forebears. Travelers pass down inheritance
through the female line and were nomadic until forced onto permanent sites.
is part of my PhD Proposal to Bath Spa University about Postcolonialism, Landscape and Identity (Yeld is Scots
for Barren). I am performing a series of curated art walks and drawing performances on Ilkley Moor where there
is a large number of Neolithic/Bronze Age carved rocks that sign theoretical/imaginary prehistoric tracks and
trails of a Nomadic people. The largely masculine archaeological record is mediated as ‘Rock Art’ and no
mention is made of the sexual significance of the marks. The rocks belong to everyone but the landowners,
English Heritage, Bradford Metropolitan Council and the Archaeological community claim ‘ownership’. Many of
the rocks have been placed behind Victorian railings as a mark of ownership and (possibly) prudery. My
interpretation is gendered and transgressive. As a woman artist I am reclaiming the marks and the territory as a
feminine space. The rocks are neither male nor female, hetero or homosexual. They are both. They are sexual
signifiers in the landscape. I am drawing on the rocks as a transgressive act. I do not have permission or official
sanction. I draw with eco charcoal and water, making impermanent environmentally conscious post-landscape
installation art. It is possible that the rocks were originally coloured. Further drawing experiments will be made
with ochre, chalk and various clays and earth and I will film a performance. I see the lines in the landscape as
essentially matriarchal and I am reclaiming the land for my Traveler forebears. Travelers pass down inheritance
through the female line and were nomadic until forced onto permanent sites.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Homo Sacer
Homo Sacer
Walking the sacred tracks on Ilkey Moor
We remember the man my dad
Homo Sacer or ‘sacred man’
A man who can die and not be sacrificed
But be remembered
In ancient ritual and shared memories.
He passed these very rocks
Not once but many times
With Harry, with mum and with me.
Here was our ‘picnic spot’
And here the stream
Where I wrote long letters
To Jane and Joanna and Elaine
About boys and hope and no regrets.
And there high on the ridge
Mum said we were on top of the world
And we’d come back for bilberries.
Today a lark sings high overhead
Whilst the shadow of a man stripped bare
Slips down the hillside
And out of sight
In blackness glimpsed
In clints and grykes.
With these bare arms I lay you to rest
A life’s end and a life’s beginning
Bare Life Bios Zoë
And the curlew cries Amen.
A Pagan poem in memory of my Father Kenneth Bingham Dobson 22/01/22 – 03/04/11 a lifelong self educator who read Latin and Greek as well as German with a smattering of Russian. As a young Communist sympathizer he raised a glass with Harry to ‘the end of Civilization as we know it’ He endured World War II and lived to tell a different tale. The poem is dedicated to my neice Zoë Miranda Hutchison
Filippa Jane Dobson
Easter Monday 26/04/11 and Saturday 7/05/11
Walking the sacred tracks on Ilkey Moor
We remember the man my dad
Homo Sacer or ‘sacred man’
A man who can die and not be sacrificed
But be remembered
In ancient ritual and shared memories.
He passed these very rocks
Not once but many times
With Harry, with mum and with me.
Here was our ‘picnic spot’
And here the stream
Where I wrote long letters
To Jane and Joanna and Elaine
About boys and hope and no regrets.
And there high on the ridge
Mum said we were on top of the world
And we’d come back for bilberries.
Today a lark sings high overhead
Whilst the shadow of a man stripped bare
Slips down the hillside
And out of sight
In blackness glimpsed
In clints and grykes.
With these bare arms I lay you to rest
A life’s end and a life’s beginning
Bare Life Bios Zoë
And the curlew cries Amen.
A Pagan poem in memory of my Father Kenneth Bingham Dobson 22/01/22 – 03/04/11 a lifelong self educator who read Latin and Greek as well as German with a smattering of Russian. As a young Communist sympathizer he raised a glass with Harry to ‘the end of Civilization as we know it’ He endured World War II and lived to tell a different tale. The poem is dedicated to my neice Zoë Miranda Hutchison
Filippa Jane Dobson
Easter Monday 26/04/11 and Saturday 7/05/11
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