One door opens, another closes, another opens again.
Like a damned routine.
Nothing's like a fairy tale.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Las ondas sonoras, sol, agua y arena - El Compás
I've been getting a big fix of Delorean's (sorta old now) new album Subiza just in the last week or so.
It's this massive attack of disco/house/pop melding that is absolutely great. I really loved their Ayrton Senna EP, and Subiza carries it on but with a bit of refinement.
I'd describe them cheaply as a Catalonian Cut Copy. They go straight for the heartstrings with big soundscapes and play on the same disco pop vibe.
They're from Barcelona, Spain. Being near the Balearic Islands, I suppose a party vibe is only natural.
Anyway, just listening to their tunes gives me this big image of a white sand beach fading into the distance, and crowds of people playing volleyball, and swimming and all that junk. The sun's hovering about 500 metres above the beach and Subiza is pouring directly out of the centre of it. The people on the beach move to it. It's great. The water's this vivid blue.
I've never really had an urge to visit Spain, but I want to go now just to go to the same place that the band sat around in to write this music. It's got such a strong vibe to it, I feel the place must reflect the music.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Struggles
So, now being back at uni. I had forgotten what it was like to seemingly never be able to catch up on sleep, being tired all the time, and having to juggle so many things that you actually need to constantly think of how to plan your time to get things done. For example, today -
6.45 wake up (as late as possible) for work.
7.30 Leave home to drive to Cremorne.
9 Work begins.
1 Work finishes. Go to get some lunch which I eat on the way to the car.
1.20 Start driving to Rockdale. I need to go to the Bunnings to buy material.
2 Leave Bunnings to backtrack to uni.
2.15 Park at uni.
2.20 Begin modelmaking.
3. Finish gluing, take a break to have a snack and then talk to Jenny about our marketing project while waiting for glue to dry.
3.30 Go back into workshop now that glue is solid enough to begin sanding.
4.10 Finish sanding for today, leave to go to car.
4.20 Drop into Auto-1 on the way home to buy paint for model to save time tomorrow.
4.30 Back on the road.
5.15 Home, quickly to take stock of what I need for dinner.
5.30 Off to the supermarket for supplies.
6.00 Home to cook.
7.00 Finish cooking.
7.30 Finish eating. Begin marketing report.
9.00 Finish marketing report.
9.05 Writing this.
Right now I have a headache from tiredness, right in the centre of my forehead.
Anyhow to the point of this.
With the new semester, I've taken up a continuation of an old subject, Communications. This semester it's the third part, C.
Like the old Comms, it's concerned with drawing and representations of objects.
However, the new Comms is the first segment where we are doing creative drawing. That is, freehand perspective sketching. Something like this is what we're sort of expected to be working towards.
Pretty impressive, when you consider this is how it turned out:
I showed a car because I think it's a pretty easily accessible form for demonstrating my point. Also, the R8 is sweeeet.
Anyway, I've quickly discovered that I'm not particularly good at this. I was fine with the previous incarnations of the subject, but now I think my logical mind struggles to deal with creating something out of nothing and that my mind doesn't know where to place lines when I'm not dealing with rules anymore. I didn't consider myself to have an artistic bent, and some of the people in my course are incredible. They're sketching big-style. I regret now not taking some photos of other people's work yesterday to show here. It's awe-inspiring.
Yesterday our main guy Andrew, this guy I consider the epitome of the smarmy Englishman encountering midlife crisis, after our 3 hour rendering challenge, gathered us all around and he had ranked our work from best to worst across some pin-up boards. Unsurprisingly, mine was placed on the last board of the passing entries. (at least I passed!) He then entered into a long spiel about how the people with their drawings on the best board were going to be the ones to take the jobs away from the rest of us. He then went on to say that the weaknesses of the poor ones were really evident, and that he thought we should all know where our weaknesses lay.
I'd already been depressed by my lack of ability in the subject, but I was a combination of hurt and worried by the end of the spiel. At one point, he turned to the big monitors he always puts up with examples of what we should be aiming at as the pinnacle of the day's exercise, and said "Have a look at these. These are what you're working towards." I piped up to him saying "Yeah, but these people can DRAW."
He replied "this is the industry standard." I can't remember exactly what he said next, but it was effectively "if you can't do this, you'll be a failure in the industry, and you should fuck off".
My problem is not that I can't draw that well, but mainly that he has this sort of mocking tone, and assumes that we should know what to do to address our shortcomings. However, I really feel that being able to draw really excellently is essentially a born skill, much like why I will never be an international footballer.
Not once has he watched the poorer students for any period of time and attempted to provide an explanation of how we could improve and some basis for that improvement.
Flippancy is easy when you're in his position, and you have the experience. However I feel he uses his own experience to define everyone's career, and where they want to be.
However we are just students at the moment. Talking the way he does is crushing for me personally, and I feel you should never ever tell anyone they won't make it, or even hint that they won't make it, in a teaching position. I assume he feels like he's just being realistic and telling us what we need to hear. Not everyone will work like him, and we all have strengths and weaknesses both outside of the simple drawing arena. Working for a design consultancy may not be what I want to do. Drawing 16 hours a day is definitely not what I want to do.
I know I have skills outside of the drawing arena that I will use to my advantage in a professional capacity. Making out like that one area is the be-all and end-all is self-indulgent on his part. It ignores the idiosyncratic and differing capacities in diverse areas of any one IDES student.
I'm disappointed with the way he has talked, and the attitude he adopts while teaching. I feel it's unprofessional, and ignorant. I will certainly have a few choice words in the end-of-semester subject survey.
I will continue soldiering on, and give my best to the subject, to try to get the best of my (limited) natural talent for it. It's tough.
Note: Just now, 10.05pm, I just saw an ad for Skoda where the whole ad was a moving sketch with all the doors opening and stuff. Nice. FML
6.45 wake up (as late as possible) for work.
7.30 Leave home to drive to Cremorne.
9 Work begins.
1 Work finishes. Go to get some lunch which I eat on the way to the car.
1.20 Start driving to Rockdale. I need to go to the Bunnings to buy material.
2 Leave Bunnings to backtrack to uni.
2.15 Park at uni.
2.20 Begin modelmaking.
3. Finish gluing, take a break to have a snack and then talk to Jenny about our marketing project while waiting for glue to dry.
3.30 Go back into workshop now that glue is solid enough to begin sanding.
4.10 Finish sanding for today, leave to go to car.
4.20 Drop into Auto-1 on the way home to buy paint for model to save time tomorrow.
4.30 Back on the road.
5.15 Home, quickly to take stock of what I need for dinner.
5.30 Off to the supermarket for supplies.
6.00 Home to cook.
7.00 Finish cooking.
7.30 Finish eating. Begin marketing report.
9.00 Finish marketing report.
9.05 Writing this.
Right now I have a headache from tiredness, right in the centre of my forehead.
Anyhow to the point of this.
With the new semester, I've taken up a continuation of an old subject, Communications. This semester it's the third part, C.
Like the old Comms, it's concerned with drawing and representations of objects.
However, the new Comms is the first segment where we are doing creative drawing. That is, freehand perspective sketching. Something like this is what we're sort of expected to be working towards.
Pretty impressive, when you consider this is how it turned out:
I showed a car because I think it's a pretty easily accessible form for demonstrating my point. Also, the R8 is sweeeet.
Anyway, I've quickly discovered that I'm not particularly good at this. I was fine with the previous incarnations of the subject, but now I think my logical mind struggles to deal with creating something out of nothing and that my mind doesn't know where to place lines when I'm not dealing with rules anymore. I didn't consider myself to have an artistic bent, and some of the people in my course are incredible. They're sketching big-style. I regret now not taking some photos of other people's work yesterday to show here. It's awe-inspiring.
Yesterday our main guy Andrew, this guy I consider the epitome of the smarmy Englishman encountering midlife crisis, after our 3 hour rendering challenge, gathered us all around and he had ranked our work from best to worst across some pin-up boards. Unsurprisingly, mine was placed on the last board of the passing entries. (at least I passed!) He then entered into a long spiel about how the people with their drawings on the best board were going to be the ones to take the jobs away from the rest of us. He then went on to say that the weaknesses of the poor ones were really evident, and that he thought we should all know where our weaknesses lay.
I'd already been depressed by my lack of ability in the subject, but I was a combination of hurt and worried by the end of the spiel. At one point, he turned to the big monitors he always puts up with examples of what we should be aiming at as the pinnacle of the day's exercise, and said "Have a look at these. These are what you're working towards." I piped up to him saying "Yeah, but these people can DRAW."
He replied "this is the industry standard." I can't remember exactly what he said next, but it was effectively "if you can't do this, you'll be a failure in the industry, and you should fuck off".
My problem is not that I can't draw that well, but mainly that he has this sort of mocking tone, and assumes that we should know what to do to address our shortcomings. However, I really feel that being able to draw really excellently is essentially a born skill, much like why I will never be an international footballer.
Not once has he watched the poorer students for any period of time and attempted to provide an explanation of how we could improve and some basis for that improvement.
Flippancy is easy when you're in his position, and you have the experience. However I feel he uses his own experience to define everyone's career, and where they want to be.
However we are just students at the moment. Talking the way he does is crushing for me personally, and I feel you should never ever tell anyone they won't make it, or even hint that they won't make it, in a teaching position. I assume he feels like he's just being realistic and telling us what we need to hear. Not everyone will work like him, and we all have strengths and weaknesses both outside of the simple drawing arena. Working for a design consultancy may not be what I want to do. Drawing 16 hours a day is definitely not what I want to do.
I know I have skills outside of the drawing arena that I will use to my advantage in a professional capacity. Making out like that one area is the be-all and end-all is self-indulgent on his part. It ignores the idiosyncratic and differing capacities in diverse areas of any one IDES student.
I'm disappointed with the way he has talked, and the attitude he adopts while teaching. I feel it's unprofessional, and ignorant. I will certainly have a few choice words in the end-of-semester subject survey.
I will continue soldiering on, and give my best to the subject, to try to get the best of my (limited) natural talent for it. It's tough.
Note: Just now, 10.05pm, I just saw an ad for Skoda where the whole ad was a moving sketch with all the doors opening and stuff. Nice. FML
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