Ordo Ab Chao

All of my friends know that I'm fascinated with digital art work based on mathematical constructs such as fractals, cellular automata etc. I've long thought that there's something special about capturing the beauty of an equation or mathematical process which mimics natural phenomena in graphical form. Without wanting to get too philosophical or it somtimes appears that the images give you a true glimpse of the mind of God. Anyway, I've used lots of different tools to create pretty digital images of equations that I'm fascinated with. Thse include a 3-D panorama of the "life game" plotted as a plasma graph and refined using Macromedia's wonderful Fireworks. I'll be putting an online gallery of my work online over the next week so stay tuned...

R & I are currently in Virginia at Busch Gardens. As many of you know she's a guest artist in Busch Gardens this week. Busch Gardens is located near Colonial Williamsburg which is a living museum recreating the 18th Century capital of Britain's empire in the new world. That's the USA folks for all of you who haven't eaten your generic vitamin-enriched, wheat-based cereal product this morning.

Here's a pic that I snapped of a lovingly restored colonial windmill.

I've filed this posting under art as the best architecture is. In the words of a master "The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization"
The master in question being "America's Architect", Frank Lloyd Wright. FLW was born in 1867 and throughout a career spanning around 60 years he developed and refined the concept of organic architecture.
In his own words

"I would like to have a free architecture. Architecture that belonged where you see it standing—and is a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace."

Truthfully I would have loved to become an architect but I doubt my skills lie in that direction. The engineer in me is fascinated by the compelling mixture of elegant form and function througnout Frank Lloyd Wright's best works. The most famous of which is Fallingwater. Constructed for Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Kaufmann senior at Mill Run, Pennsylvania, which was designed according to Wright's desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream running under part of the building. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The cost of this architectural masterpiece was $155,000, a pricely sum in 1939. This included the architect's fee of $80,000. In practical terms we can assume that adjusted for inflation the total cost was over 3 million dollars in today's money. Kaufmann's own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright, but secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete elements. I've recently found a fantastic site which enables people to navigate through Failling Water. Click here to find out more.

Some readers may be aware that R & I are opening an art gallery/retail-emporium (tongue in cheek) in Waterford City. We're calling our little venture Manifesto which dictionary.com informs me means
"a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization.".
So that's sorted then! It's very exciting to meet new artists, peruse the generally amazing collection of work they've got stashed away and then talk them into letting us sell it in Manifesto. By and large the feedback has been very positive. Last night we attended an exhibition in Waterford by Mercedes Helnwein in Eric Theze's absolutely stunning new restaraunt, La Boheme. La Boheme is based in the same 18th century listed building as Manifesto and I can strongly recommend both the ambience and the food. Stylish, scrumptious and reasonably priced. You really must visit.

Mercedes is the daughter of iconic 70s painter & all-round visual artist Gottried Helnwein. He of the boulevard and broken dreams fame :) Meeting the child of a personal hero can often be an uncomfortable experience, doubly so when the progeny have embarked on a similiar career path. Mercedes has nothing to fear in any comparison. While her father's work is often provocative, hers has a warm intimacy and youthful vibrancy that shows a stunning technique to good effect. R & I were suitably impressed as we read her long list of accomplishments so you can expect some Mercedes Helnwein originals to appear in Manifesto in the near future. It's so exciting to be opening Manifesto. I'll keep readers up to date with happenings but provisionally, we're hoping to open at the start of November. I can't wait!

We're running another exhibition in Manifesto at the moment. It's titled "New Blue" and features work from painters who've recently come to Waterford. As usual we've a wide range of work with sizes to suit all homes and prices ranging from around 500 euro to 5000 euro. I've added pictures to my flickr account so readers can see the opening. It's really great to be involved in the arts in Ireland and I've huge admiration for those who make a successful living from it. Despite the tax breaks, most Irish artists aren't massively wealthy and I think the Irish people often get a misleading take from the popular press. For every Enya or Bono there are hundreds if not thousands of struggling artists bravely doing their thing. They should be encouraged as helping to perpetuate a long Irish tradition of artistic endeavour and creativity. Which nicely brings me on to my next comment.

We run an open day on Saturdays when new artists can come and show us their work. This has been massively successful and there's scarcely a Saturday where we're not inundated with artists showing new and interesting work. These include painters, ceramicists and jewellers from pretty much everywhere. We've artists from China, Australia, Russia, Italy etc. It's all going very well but we're always on the lookout for new work so if you know anybody interested then call the gallery on +353 51 853333 or drop me a mail at sdempsey@REMOVETHIS.manifesto.ie. Removing the obvious spam avoidance text. If you want to be traditional our postal address is.

Manifesto Gallery & Retail Emporium
No. 2 Georges Street,
Waterford,
Ireland.

I'm so excited about our first Important Irish Art Auction in manifesto on 4th April 2008. We have work from over 80 artists committed and it promises to be a great night. To find out more visit manifesto.ie.

I watch a bit of tv, generally hacking away on my laptop at the same time. One friday night over a year ago I was looking for something to watch and stumbled on a pilot for a TV show called "Intelligence". Weirdly enough the show is based in Vancouver with a plot line focussed on the parallel lives of a senior member of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the wealthy drug smuggler she recruits as her star informant. The series stars some familar faces from American TV in Klea Scott as the CSIS chief Mary Spalding and Ian Tracey as Jimmie Reardon, a 3rd generation crime boss from Vancouver. Other familar faces include Matt Frewer who's been in numerous US tv shows including Town Called Eureka.

So what makes the show so good? In a nutshell, it's a more likable Sopranos with the quirky backdrop of Vancouver. Humour, sex and violence are still vital ingredients! The show is grounded in the reality of a massive illegal drug trade between the Canada and the US, driven by simple economics; the disparity in price between marajuana in Vancouver and their neigbours on the West coast US.. The acting performances are terrific. Tracey's Jimmie Reardon runs many legitimate businesses and struggles with his long term plans to extricate himself from the wildly lucrative illegal activities which put him and his family in danger. Where Tony Soprano is at heart an egocentric monster with the glimmer of a conscience, Reardon is ultimately a decent guy whose first impulse is to negotiate rather than blow away. Reardon's natural charisma and quick-wittedness make him an anti-hero similar to Steve McQueen's Thomas Crown. Scott's Mary Spalding is an opportunistic and very smart intelligence operative who negotiates, plots and maneuveres herself into a controlling position within CSIS. The chemistry between informant and operative isn't sexual, it's about power as each side trades information and favours to get the upper hand.

The show moves along at a cracking pace while managing to maintain a coherent plot despite labyrinthine complexity in some of the subplots. The dialogue never jars, the action is always believable. It's just great television from a country which has produced previous endearingly fluffy tv exports such as the Beechcombers.

Intelligence has been produced up until this point by Chris Haddock and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The show has been syndicated to Hallmark which has shown it in a number of unhelpfully weird time slots. Despite being the most critically acclaimed series in Canada it's ratings are still quite low there. It has a loyal following but it seems that the show jars with the squeaky-clean image Canada wants to portray to the world and it's been canned.

All is not lost as the Fox network has decided it's a great premise and has bought the rights to develop the show from Haddock. The problem is that they're planning a remake and may completely ditch both Vancouver and the original cast. Tracey, Scott and Sullivan don't need replacing. I'm not quite sure why this has to happen as one of Fox's most successful shows was made in Vancouver i.e. The X Files. American TV networks are not always surefooted when it comes to producing intelligent drama.

Anyway, CBC has missed a trick here as the programme lends itself to a European audience. With some sensible marketing they could have had a worldwide syndicated hit on their hands. I'm not sure whether episodes are available on filesharing networks (nor would I advocate their use of course :)) but if you can find any expisodes on the Net..For clips see youtube. Then write an email as I've done to Fox suggesting they not f*&k up a show that could continue with minor tweaks in venue and casting.

Over at my other job, the one that doesn't involved shifting bits/bytes around a screen, we're having a silent auction. It's basically a sealed-bid auction but we thought the term silent auction had a bit of gravitas :) We've listened carefully to our customers and so we're running it for a month to give everyone time to consider the lots and their bids. We're also arranging delivery/collection for successful bidders.

We've a fantastic collection of art and artists in the Manifesto Silent Auction and some keen prices reflecting our usual modest 15% commission. So if you fancy some art then visit manifesto.ie, browse the catalogue which will be available by the 25th and register a bid at or exceeding the minimum bid value. It's not much more complicated than that!

Finally getting around to doing some more SEO work on manifesto.ie. The domain cloak wasn't cutting it for SEO purposes and we also wanted a dotCom. So we've settled on www.manifestogallery.com. We'll be using both in future publicity material and our main email addresses are still @manifesto.ie.