That Was The Week That Was — 25th September 2022

This week started with a drop on NiftyGateway for the forthcoming book CryptoArt Begins, created by NFT Magazine and edited by Elenora Brizi for Rizzoli Italy. The book features 50 artists – of which I'm honoured to say I'm one — and for the drop there was an edition of 1000 with special edition covers for each artist. The drop had a unique mechanic whereupon if you bought the NFT you could burn it to receive the physical copy of the book, and also receive a special NFT with a white border. 138 were minted, which was much less than the publisher had expected, but the market is tough right now and Nifty is its own weird marketplace. Many people have been burnt by drops with physicals before and people were understandably hesitant in the current market. Still, I personally can't wait to hold this book in my hands and see all the hard work Elenora has put into it.

Lasers

For the upcoming Herbert W. Franke tribute, I had decided to create a physical machine which generates patterns reacting to how far the viewer is from the work. Whilst I had everything working well through its separate parts made up of an LCD screen, a palm-sized Windows computer and an ultrasonic sensor together with bespoke code written in Processing, it of course needed to be housed in something. Over the years I've had a system using laser-cut parts, bolted together with spacers and M3 bolts. After designing the parts and exporting them as .eps files, I jumped on over to Razorlab – my fave UK based lase cutting service, only to find they were closed for a week. Unfortunately I needed the parts quickly so I had to use Ponoko and pay a small fortune in shipping costs from the USA. Now I wait for the parts.

Berlin

The final group show at IN TOUCH – a gallery show curated by VerticalCrypto and Anika Meier in Berlin – started on the Friday where my work was on display alongside the other artists. It was great to see photos and video of people enjoying the work on a beautiful display.

Lost Connections

Since upgrading to this new Mac Studio setup I've had constant connection issues, mostly in Safari and Mail. A couple of times a day the connection would just hang, for about ten minutes without seemingly any reason other than to drive me steadily crazy. Eventually I did what you do in these situations and Google the shit out of it. I came across this useful post on the Mac blog Tidbits, which talked about an unknown Network setting which limits IP tracking. It seemed that thing is causing issue for many people. After making sure it was turned off I though things had improved, but no, the problem still persisted. What did eventually solve it was the latest Mac OS update. Happy to say as of typing this blog post, I'm yet to experience the same issues.

Elsewhere

This week I watched a classic 1970's film in the form of Marathon Man starring Dustin Hoffman with the legendary dentist scene. That scene is beautifully done with the subtle whirr of the drill behind the briefcase as Laurence Olivier's character prepares to unleash true terror. "Is it safe?" I doubt it.