AbstractInstagram

An ongoing series of  work, quick simple images, always completely abstract, made from the everyday environment. They are made on a HTC and usually just have a couple of filters etc. Keeps me eagle eyed for colours and textures around me, and I really enjoy the rapidity the decision making process.

VJ Screenshots from Magiclamp jam session

Magiclamp: live electronica from the UK.

This session was from the first time we've played or jammed together for at least 5 years.

We spent the whole day in the studio getting back into the swing of creating together again. Ostensibly to rehearse for a live gig in November but it's been on the cards for a longtime. The pictures below are just a small number of screenshots from the session. 

you can hear some of the music at 

http://soundcloud.com/magiclamp

Hope you enjoy.

                                  

Landed Festival

With Landed Festival so close on the horizon I wanted to upload some photos from last years event to show you how utterly lovely the whole thing was.

Turning left at the clock tower in the middle of the village high street I knew we were close and I started to get very excited, staring like a child at the huge number of trees on either side of the road, then pulling into a side road and onto site to the the friendliest welcome I've had to any festival.

too lovely for words...

The first night we were treated to Dextrous Dexter and The Fingersmiths, a full on funk delight, and a large campfire at night till 3am, sheep staring at me in the morning, a Berlingo on fire, (funnier than it sounds), and generally a very calm atmosphere I felt all the tension from the outside world slip away.

The event is held in Early May. It is possibly the earliest point at which one could reasonably expect to have an outdoor festival, and get away with it, so I guesss the attendees are all waking from their collective winter hibernation, blinking in the light and remembering what it feels like to sit on grass, some of the more daring amongst us even tried wearing shorts, that scared the sheep off.

The true awesomeness of the festival is the location, sited with a huge hill on either side, with trees and everything, and..oh just so much nature it leaves you speechless and refreshed.

Now dear reader, You must understand that our contingency, the Grassroots crew, are all from the Fens, so anything like a bump in the ground, or a collection of more than three trees together, or an ability to walk into a field / forest or natual space without ditches, dykes and fences and 1000 acres of crops in your way and zero public access rights (for more on this check out John Clare and the Enclosure Acts) is an absolute marvel. No really it's like being in a painting for us Fen folk, it might be the only time in a the whole year we see a hill.

being from the Fens this is a very strange feeling....

Last year went small scale, and had the Sunday stage for our Peterborough acts, Sunday morning is kind of a dangerous time to schedule us, as was proven by the rambuctious performances we all put in, delightful in every way of course. More slapstick comedy and bawdy caberet punctuated by music than the finely tuned scheduling of class acts we can occasionally deliver. It was one of the most memorable live gigs i've ever seen.

The view from the tent.

This year however as the festival grows we have a slightly bigger remit for providing our Firebrand of Fenland entertainment-our immersive all-or-nothing casserole of sight & sound entertainment. And like flipping a proverbial coin, we will be hosting the stage on Friday, throughout the day and into the evening so watch out, there be a full-moon too.

We will be bringing music, art, poetry and even Bingo!? 
 

For a list of our line-up check out

our Grassroots at Landed Facebook page

and for all the full festival details the main website is:

www.landedfestival.co.uk/

 Tickets for Landed;
Contact Paul 'Pablo' Hance directly by e-mailing him at pablojinx@hotmail.co.uk

or by going to their Grassroots @ Landed event page here and leaving him a message:

http://www.facebook.com/events/189728657793394
The first 20 tickets sold by Grassroots come with a token for a free drink at Marvs Bar so get in there early!!!!  
 
To see the full set of photos go to my Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lukepayn/

The other view from the tent.

VJ workshops for the iCreate project with Beat This

I have just embarked on an exciting run of workshops with Beat ThisCiC, running from January to April of 2012.

Beat This (CIC) have been running a project called “iCreate” which has taken groups of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and given them a ten week project where they will create visual and audio content with the aim of producing either a final recorded piece or a live performance, (or both!). It's all about process and connecting different artistic disciplines. So using photography, video clips and artwork to be used later in VJ'ing alongside a finished recording or performance. The groups have been developing their own pieces as individuals and engaging in group decision making, combining their output in the final instance as a collaborative piece.

one of the images produced by the students using NuVJ equipment,

I will be presenting the groups with the VJ'ing element of their projects.

By the time I come in they will have worked with other Beat This practioners and developed and created some artwork, some video clips and be close to finishing their music track.

Then we will load all this up into the awesome machine known as “NuVJ”, more on that another time.

 Despite having done hundreds of workshops, and having also perfomed live visuals of one kind or another at hundreds of events, I have only done one VJ workshop before, so these sessions have been a wonderful learning experience for me too.

My first sessions were at A.C.E. The Alternative Curriculum Education centre, this is a place where pupils who have been excluded, or partially excluded from secondary schools in Peterborough, go to finish their education.

The original idea was to develop all the elements to put on a final performance, however with the group at ACE it was clear that this was not the direction that they wanted to go, so after the first session we decided to flip it to making a Music Video, which left us 4 hours to produce a music video with them. Their experience of education and adults was such that it was a struggle to get the students to engage or be enthusiastic, but the idea of a video that could go up on YouTube seemed to be something that grabbed their attention, so music video it was. 

They were a little bit shocked when we explained how much a music video would cost to produce, at least the glossy chart ones, and how much time and the number of people that would be involved in the production. With our four hours of production time it was going to be interesting to say the least! However, we would be using the NuVJ to generate imagery, and we had already shot quite a number of videos previously when my brother did a grafitti session with them, using fat chalk pens to tag perspex and film this. So we had some pretty cool footage to work with.

The video is all but finished, and is now in what is known as Post-Production, i.e. me, finishing the audio layer, and compressing and saving ready to publish. Otherwise they managed to get something finished, just about, in the timeframe.

I have only worked at two of the schools in this project so far, so lots more sessions still to do which is very exciting!

Watch out for the final video and updates on more adventures with Beat This CiC!