glasgow

a 3 1/2 hour train trip to glasgow, and some gorgeous countryside along the way - green hillsides with grazing livestock, ribbed by water causeways, hedges and trees, stone farmhouses, and a dark brooding sky - all very scottish...

Arrived at Clydesdale about 9.30 pm. I'm staying in glasgow with roddy hamilton (of "seasons of the spirit" and "mucky paws" fame) and his family for several days. really nice to be with a family rather than in a hotel.

Wednesday morning I washed and dried clothes. It's been raining and is quite cool, so I might finally need some of the warm clothes that I've dragged half-way around the world.

It's a 20 minute train ride into Glasgow - Clydebank is a town, not a suburb...

Downtown Glasgow seems like Manchester, so I kept listening out for Scottish accents. Regrettably there was a busking bagpipe player... Went into some touristy tartan shops but all over-priced clan and celtic paraphernalia. bought the "woodstock" dvd and fairport convention's remastered "liege and lief" very cheap. ah, nostaliga...

i just have to mention the smoked scottish salmon sandwich (try saying that with a lithp) from Pret a Manger, my favourite UK sandwich joint - really delicious and lots of salmon. yum!

the other interesting thing was seeing a tenor guitar - as played by seth lakeman. a mini-guitar with 4 strings. I didn't have a play. it was cheap and i would have been tempted to buy it...

this afternoon I visited "The Lighthouse" - an architecture and design centre - and "alt-w: new directions in scottish digital culture" at the Centre for Contemporary Arts".

"The Lighthouse" seemed only half operative, however "Haptic: Awakening the Senses" was a clever, funny and surprising exhibition of custom made object designed to be sensory... waste paper baskets made of paper, power boards made of round pink rubbery blobs, a plastic TV remote that goes limp when the battery is flat, a clock face made from a paper plate, fruit juice packaging with colours and textures like the fruit inside it (e.g. strawberry skin), thongs (call them 'flip-flops' here) with rectangular bases covered with the kinds of surfaces that you walk on, hanging lights covered in artificial hair... a hand-shaped doorknob made from plastic that feels very hand-like when you 'high five' your front door... a paper and cotton jacket that could be printed on... and more cool stuff including an entertaining water droplet thingy.

(note to self: borrow tony's idea and host gatherings that visit adelaide art installations and then chat about them over coffee or wine).

I love the fact that this stuff is clever and inventive and interesting and devoid of the "is it christian and does it have a message" mentality. when did christians decide that art had to be utilitarian? i am partly trying to get my head into art and craft being expression and design and beauty and invention and peculiarity and intellect and tactile without being made in a hurry for next sunday and having to deliver an instantly obvious message... 

cathy kirkpatrick used the term "curator" to talk about shaping worship in "the prodigal project" (co-authored by her and mike riddell and mark pierson). I'm wondering about the crafts of designing and making stuff, which takes place long before the curator arranges the environment. it seems to me that depth experiences have both arrangement and depth of meaning and expression which takes time to craft. Words are in some ways the easiest of these (unless you're Leonard Cohen).  I am working here on how worship and education design and curating are both art and craft, but clearly beyond (but inclusive of) the verbal/oral/literary.

of course this relates to my interest in new media. how does the digitisation of media change the authoring/crafting of immersive worship and education. i'm currently reading"video: the reflexive medium" by yvonne spielmann (professor at the university I'm about to visit) and realising that in my lifetime media in worship has gone from slide projectors to overhead projectors to analog video and television to data projectors, computers and digital media. the media authoring aspect o worship has changed immensely, and has, I suspect or am hoping, not been studied by anyone.

[it seems to me that the first use of visual media is often illustration (direct representation - sunset, lily), the second is often narrative, the third is metaphor (direct or reversal), and the fourth is 'environmental' (mood, looping, modulation, etc), and perhaps the fifth is interactive, but it's not really linear progressions at this point. i want to bring some examination of this into my 'wired church' class]

The Mackintosh Gallery and Tower (no, not Macintosh... no apples here) was the other remarkable part of The Lighthouse (OK, the 3 shops were pretty good - one with jewellery with Mackintosh designs, one furniture and books, one wonderful and clever touristy stuff. (I nearly bought a pinhole camera 6 times in 3 citiies in the past few days.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was one of eleven children. He was a world-renowned architect and designer in Scotland in the 1900s, and his buildings are Glasgow icons - houses, churches, a school, a museum, government buildings, etc. He also designed furniture and prints. He married Margaret Macdonald and they shared their artistic collaboration.

This small exhibition shows a remarkable series of small scale building reproductions combined with design information,

For the next 2 days I'm catching the train down to Ayr to the University of Western Scotland's Visual Arts library.

Glasgow photos starting here.....