Clare Bryden. The Depth and Breadth of Kith and Kin, The Porch Magazine, 3 September 2024.
The English writer Clare Bryden has written an extraordinary reflection for The Porch on kith and kin. That’s a term that used to be familiar to me, but when I read Clare’s essay I realized that I had missed the depth of possibility contained in those words.
strange how December / triggered reading and writing / poetry again
10 October is World Mental Health Day. During the preceding two weeks I practised Noticing Nature from the Greater Good in Action website.
Artificial imagination of two trees in the style of
This week I’ve been doing a tiny bit of press for Prayerdle
On Monday I jumped fully onto the Wordle bandwagon and developed Prayerdle
Studio 36 has a wonderful noticeboard out front, hosting a continually changing series of shows of work by local artists. For Board 16 the wider Studio 36 community was invited to submit work relating to climate change.
This was an opportunity for me to pilot my latest work, with some interesting outcomes and lessons!!
I’m looking forward to piloting “Minecraft Climate Quest” at the ExIST STEAMM Show, an interactive exhibition of commercial, research and creative projects from the south west which combine arts, sciences and technology.
My fourth and absolutely my last attempt for Turnip Prize glory. Although you never know. After all, the Tories shouldn’t have a monopoly on U-turns, flip-flops, deceiving the voters, or otherwise go against their word.
This weekend was NASA Space Apps Challenge 2019, and I joined the Time and Tide team to play with slow visualisations of rising sea levels, and make a patchwork of contours.
In which the UK Climate Projections 2018 meet Minecraft and “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain”.
This is an update to my previous post on trialling a Lego visualisation of UKCP09. This second trial uses the latest data from UKCP18 and covers the whole UK.
A show of the conceptual artwork produced by my 4th year medical students, and the Little colouring books of climate mindfulness in Lego.
Set on a high point within Ludwell Valley Park, Exeter, the Angel’s weathered steel reflects the rust-red warmth of the local stone. It serves as a focus and an anchor, helping to tether us and give us a sense of place in an ephemeral and rapidly changing world.
I had this little idea of Paying It Forward during 2019. I’m offering up to 3 hours of my time to help you with something inspiring, worthwhile, bonkers, thought-provoking, or maybe even useful. So it’s not wholly altruistic, as I want to have fun too!
Reflections on walking and talking and bouncing a tennis ball in the streets of Exeter.
After complete and utter failure in 2016 and 2017, here is my third and possibly my last attempt for Turnip Prize glory.
This weekend I was back at the Met Office for the NASA Space Apps Challenge, and joined the 3D Earthlings team to play with visualisation of data on a 3D representation of the Earth. Historic meteorite landings… BOOM!!
Art Week Exeter is a go-go! And it turns out that I had a bit more in show than I thought. The main event (for me) is “Minecraft my home”. The Minecraft St Loyes world is available to download and play online, and on Saturday 26 May I’m holding a meetup to share our explorations and creations.
A bit of fun. Some of them are more favourite than others! Now with a second helping!
If there is a problem with loading any of the code in the “Game of Life” blog, this is a companion blog of example videos.
The Game of Life is a pretty standard coding exercise. But what if Life is no longer seen in black and white, and instead in shades of grey? Update: Or in technicolor? And what happens if we tweak the rules?
I had so much fun with generative poetry in 2017 that I wanted to continue with the coding, so I embarked on a FutureLearn course with Monash University. Here’s some outputs I did earlier.
I should have been mowing the lawn, but instead I created my entry for the 2017 Turnip Prize. Early viewers of the work immediately grasped the referencing of Magritte and its significance, which prompted a vibrant cultural debate.
In which I was a creative lead at a MozFest Fringe hack day, and also tinkered with Javascript to create some generative weather forecast poetry in motion.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been part of a group assembled by the force of nature that is Veronica Gosling at Studio 36. We’ve been bouncing ideas around and exploring inspirations on the theme of “Patterns”, and working towards a performance at St Sidwell’s Community Centre on 21 October.
Today, my “Little colouring books of climate mindfulness” popped up in the Exeter University Forum alongside “Green|Blue: Exe”. I was doing a colour-by-numbers activity as part of “Think…Art”, a day of free fun artistic activities linked to the University’s research themes.
“Kuuki : the things we take for granted, but cannot live without” is a response to climate change and other environmental concerns, and a statement on the desperate need for social change.
The idea for the “Little colouring books” originated partly in the games I made for my “Particulart: Up in the Air” show. It seemed a natural progession to create more playful engagement with climate change. Although the maps are of the UK, they can be applied elsewhere, and I am very happy that they have made their way to other lands.
In 2007, the Turnip Prize disqualified Banksy from competition for “trying too hard”. In 2016, I think I probably tried too hard.
“Fun Palaces is a movement campaigning for culture by, for and with all – with a firm belief that community belongs at the core of all culture – and an annual weekend of events… Everyone an Artist, Everyone a Scientist.”
It’s a toy shop that isn’t a toy shop, full of toys that aren’t toys.
I was at the Greenbelt Festival over the August bank holiday. As part of a fantastic weekend, I gave a Pecha Kucha talk about my art work, and “Particulart: Up in the Air” popped up in the Allotment Gallery.
I’ve finally finished my fourth and fifth “Little colouring books of climate mindfulness”. You can now get hold of “Winter Blues”, “Summertime”, “Middle Course”, “Grandchildren” and “Worst Case” in the shop.
You are welcome to download my instructions for making “Ghost Bees”, which includes a knitting pattern for the body, a size guide for cutting out the wings from milk cartons, and instructions for assembly.
The overall aim of Particulart is to engage people with environmental and social issues and challenge the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. In addition, “Exhausted” aimed to promote public awareness and provoke reflection on urban air quality, through a quirky display enabling playful interaction. It appeared at “Test Drive the Future”, an exhibition of electric vehicles, that will help solve the problem of air pollution.
The overall aim of Particulart is to engage people with environmental and social issues and challenge the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. In addition, “Greenhouse Effect” aimed to promote public awareness and provoke reflection on climate change and the underlying science, through appealing to different ways of accessing information – words and numbers, sight and touch – and enabling playful interaction.
Free Art Friday is a worldwide movement that has existed for many years. I started Free Art Friday Exeter in July 2015, and collaborate with other artists in leaving pieces in public places to be discovered and taken for free.
Clare was honoured to be able to show Particulart at TEDxExeter 2016, in between a nice lot of Particulart-relevant talks(!) such as Danny Dorling on different ways of mapping the world, Alan Smith on how statistics are about Us, and the video of Al Gore’s latest TED talk on climate change.
That’s nothing to do with the 1980s pop group, but the Festival of Weather, Art and Music. The 2016 event was all about “Extreme Weather and You”, and there were loads of activities on the programme, from print-making to climate roulette.
Today I p-p-picked up a pilot from the University printshop. I am very excited to see my idea for presenting the UK Climate Projections 2009 as a colour-by-numbers booklet coming to fruition! So, I present to you…
“Up in the Air” popped up for a second time at the Relight My Fire festival of energy and the arts run by RegenSW. Indoors this time, and slimmed down without roof or games area. It just about fit in the space.
Exeter Green Fair on 5 September saw the debut of my new “Up in the Air” pop-up. Under a blue gazebo (the sky), I suspended eight pale blue hula hoops (clouds), and from these the eight greenhouse gases.
Particulart is the art of knitting, chemistry and gentle protest. It’s about engaging people with environmental and social issues and challenging the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. You too can now knit your own chemistry using these patterns.
The overall aim of Particulart is to engage people with environmental and social issues and challenge the status quo through the power of knitting, science, and public art. In addition, “Up in the Air” aimed to promote public awareness and provoke reflection on climate change and the underlying science, through appealing to different ways of accessing information – words and numbers, sight and touch – and enabling playful interaction.
As part of the Particulart: Up in the Air exhibition, Diana Moore of Particulart and Knit-Stop ran a knit-your-own carbon dioxide workshop.
An innovative art installation goes on show this week to bring alive the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. Local artist Clare Bryden has been knitting larger than life versions of the particles and making card games. The exhibition, which will be on display from 11-24 July at the Glorious Art House in Fore Street Exeter, is designed to be a playful way of sparking people’s interest in the science and issue of climate change.
Buy a coffee and cake from the Glorious café on the ground floor, and wander up to the second floor gallery for 3D knitted molecules floating in the Earth’s atmosphere!
On Monday 18th May, I took “Particulart” into the unfamiliar territory – The Ship Inn in the middle of Exeter – as part of the annual worldwide Pint of Science festival.
“I would ask you to take a walk on your own (where and at what time of day is up to you) for at least half an hour. I would like you to walk ‘as’ the last human survivor of a zombie apocalypse.”
Clare Bryden. Review of “Counter-Tourism: The Handbook” assembled by Crab Man. Third Way Magazine, June 2013.
Clare Bryden. Visit a mythical land – our own. Review of “Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways” by Phil Smith. Reform Magazine, April 2013.
Malbork Castle in Poland, built in the mediaeval period by the Teutonic Knights, is the largest castle in the world by surface area, and the largest brick building in Europe. I visited with a friend in 1992.
A response to Phil Smith Mythogeography: a Guide to Walking Sideways.
I’ve always had a problem with buses. Mythogeography tells me to get on a random bus, and see where it takes me for a set number of stops. But I’m able to end up here there and everywhere, even when I’m just trying to get home.
