Update on progress.

On February 13th, I set myself a plan of action for the next month, none of the points on which have as yet materialised. This has been for a number of reasons, however, I still plan to enact all these points as building blocks towards the final project. I think, from now on, I shall do something that I should have learned from Vectis, and stop setting myself deadlines that may become an embarrasment in the future.

Anti-Surveillance Clothing

An article on the Guardian website caught my eye today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/mar/31/anti-drone-hoodie-big-brother

This piece explores the work of Adam Harvey, an artist/fashion designer who creates clothing, make-up and accessories that are designed to counter surveillance technology. An interesting artifact of our post-9/11 panoptic dystopia.

I am continuing with two large essays, and have made some tentative decisions about the layout and contents of the book (I think, at the moment, that it will only be one book.) I need to make a few models to map out the number and layout of the quires and other matters. I have also made a small one-off book, which I will post photographs of (hopefully) later today.

A busy month

The month since I made my last post has been a busy one, although it feels like I haven't made as much progress with Utopia/Dystopia as I would like. The main reason for this is that I have become self-employed, and have been working towards establishing my online identity and getting creative work locally. Meanwhile, though I have been progressing in fits and starts with various bits of the project along several fronts, I have had a bit of a block; or perhaps it has simply been difficult to build up steam again after Vectis. I often find myself having this sort of problem. One thing that has been helping somewhat with this block is exploring my passion for fantasy illustration with the official creation of an artistic alter ego, DS Blake. It strikes me that, as I am finally pushing towards completing a blog post on visionary and outsider art, it is a propitious time to be bringing the attention to the world of this figure, given the allusion of his name. Perhaps I can use this alter ego in my future 'academic' work? I hope to have more of relevance to Utopia/Dystopia in the next month, as well as bringing all of my online presence together in one cohesive and easily understandable network.