First day of working with Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man

I am very excited. And I can’t tell anyone anything, because it is all secret. But I am writing up, as I sit on the train (well I was, until I got distracted by email).

Looking at my photos – I like this one from Dublin

Another day, another project

Arts projects come to find me, these days. Is it an indication? Justin and I discussed something akin to an immersive parlour game. We are talking building an environment that makes you feel like a cricket, here (Justin is writing a thesis on non-human characters in opera)(yes, you read that correctly).

He also told me there is a festival that we could possibly take it to, called….Pestival! How marvellous is that?!

They can keep Bestival. I want to go to Pestival, with our immersive parlour game for people pretending to be crickets.

…and birdsong?!!

I just put my head outside the house, and heard the birds singing at the top of their lungs. I hope they are not mistaken, and that spring may actually be here at last.

Sun?!

Whatever happened? Today seems rather nice – it is not cold, nor is it windy, or pouring with rain. It is, in fact, warmish and sunny-ish.

There is stop-start-animation making here today. We even have a green screen going. Very exciting. You have no idea what Batman gets up to when out of public view. And you should see the company he keeps!

Later tonight, there is a dinner meeting here, for discussing a proposal that I have been thinking of since it was put to me. I can see further uses for the platform, were we to develop it.

We are having a pretty crafty weekend on the whole, as it happens. I managed to get the sleeves on Katla’s cosplay jacket last night, and they look pretty good. She can even move her arms. We may push the boat out and get some of the detailing done today.

A peaceful weekend at home

Rain pouring on the skylight in the kitchen, but it is lovely and warm inside. Food, music (renaissance lute music and The Knife, in equal measures), making Katla’s cosplay costume. It is nice to use my materials skill, once in a while. And I am enjoying my workspace in the study – I have cleared some admin, so there is space for my laptops, and the sewing. It is coming together, and I am only procrastinating a little bit about fitting the sleeves. I am working from Katla’s drawing of her design, below.

I wonder how Bermuda is. I have had brief report, and I guess I will hear the full tale on Monday. Surely the weather is better than here.

We had the Excursions website facelift session here last night, and Tom and I drove poor James like pernickety slave drivers, but the result is sweet. And James strangely seemed to enjoy it. The new issue will be launched soon, and our paper is all proofed and ready – I signed it off earlier.

Leon and Marlowe have been preparing for making stop-start animation shorts outside, and I am keen to get Katla and Cai involved in that tomorrow. And dust off my After Effects skills.

Right. Enough procrastination about fitting those sleeves.

Glenda Jackson on Margaret Thatcher – and the Speaker defending her right to speak

See it to the end:

“Let me assure the honorable gentleman, for the avoidance of doubt, that nothing unparliamentary has occurred.”