Kinetica Art Fair

I popped over to the Kinetica Art Fair yesterday, armed with my E-P1 and crazy little CCTV lens. I figured the nature of the exhibition - motion-based installations mostly utilising light as a medium - would be a nice match for this cheap but fast little lens.

My favourite exhibit were these holographic light sculptures by Rosaline de Thelin. They are made with fibre-optic cables and apparently inspired by 'astronomy, scientific theories and quantum physics'.



I love these abstract bokeh photos; the unusual spiral characteristics of the lens really made some interesting results.





This was a cool little kinetic sculpture of a broken-up pair of glasses with motion driven by cogs; every so often if your point of view was right, you'd see the glasses reform into a what appeared to be a whole.

An installation of hundreds of LED lights which pulsed according to levels of sound in the room. Video of it in action here.


An interesting setup where a sensor traced the outline of a sculpture of a head and drew it onto paper on the floor.





This sweet installation entitled Flutter, by Cinimod Studio, shows the motion trail of a butterfly's wings on several 'video fins'.



Today is the last day of the exhibition, so get over there if you want to see it! Lots more photos on my Flickr.

Japanese cooking class

Ever since getting back from Japan, one of the (many) things I've been pining for is the food. Simple, light, fresh and nearly always delicious, it's a fantastic cuisine. I've read two books on it in quick succession and have attempted a few dishes using tofu and miso paste. The results have been nice and tasty - with the bonus of being very quick to prepare - but probably not very authentic.



Luckily Josh bought me a course of 5 Japanese cooking classes at Atsuko's Kitchen for my birthday, so I could learn how to do it properly. The first class was last night and it was so much fun.

It's held in the lovely Grocery store in Dalston and taught by Atsuko, who has travelled all over the world teaching classes. Her enthusiasm really came through as she talked through all the ingredients and processes at the basis of Japanese cuisine.


Guess which are Atsuko's egg rolls and which are the students' attempt!

She expertly showed us how to make sticky rice, miso soup, egg rolls and wakame-sesame salad - and we got to have a go ourselves - then we sat down to a delicious meal of the results at the end of the class.

Finally we made a rice ball each to take home in our bento boxes. I can't wait for the next class.

What Katie Eats

I go through phases with cooking.. sometimes it's a dull chore when I get in from work, I'm uninspired as to what to cook and usually end up with packet pasta with jarred pesto. But at the moment I'm finding it really fun and exciting. I signed up to the BBC Good Food site which has loads of great recipes and lets you add your favourite ones to a folder so you can check it for quick inspiration. You can also search by ingredient which is great if you have some random things in the house and can't be bothered going out. For the mushroom Wellington (above), I only had to buy in the field mushrooms, everything else was in the storecupboard or freezer, and it tasted great.


I just started a tumblr site of my more successful cooking adventures (along with a few nice meals out), mostly to serve as a reminder to myself for the next time I'm feeling uninspired. Check it out here.

I'm also really excited because tonight I start the Japanese cooking classes that Josh bought me for my birthday. Big post on Japanese food - with a review of my class I'm sure - coming later this week!

Fffflckr

Ffffl*ckr is a really great new site for finding images you might like on Flickr. It loads in your favourited images and by clicking one you can see the favourited images of that user - the idea being that if you like someone's photo, you'll probably like what they like too! Much better than the Flickr Explore channel which generally contains overdone faux-vintage Photoshoppery and horridly chesy HDR style landscapes of mountains. Have a play and see what you find.

Kidioms

A fantastic set of idioms (figurative expressions of speech) as drawn by kids. Some are literal, some are kind of cryptic and some are plain weird - but they're all adorable. See if you can guess what phrases these represent.. answers under the jump. And see loads more drawings on the site.

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Cramique

Until recently, I thought that Cramique was something dreamed up by my Belgian great-grandma, a delicious treat of slightly sweet, crumbly bread that my grandma still bakes for breakfast every Christmas. But actually I realised it's a national Belgian dish. Similar to a brioche but more buttery and with a denser crumb, it's delicious with a slick of butter eaten with tea or hot chocolate. It traditionally has raisins in, but our family recipe is done without.


My version is of course not as good as my grandma's - it didn't rise much - but better than my last attempt at baking. I might get booted out of her inheritance for sharing this, but here's our family recipe (click to enlarge).

Hype Machine Music Blog Zeitgeist

I love this project by music-streaming site Hype Machine. They asked 50 graphic artists to create a piece of work inspired by their most popular 50 artists of last year. Here are some of my favourites.


Chromeo by Julia Sonmi Heglund


Friendly Fires by Jaime Calayo


Miike Snow by Blake Suarez and Steph Davlantes


The Big Pink by Noah Kalina and Staynice

Check them all out here.

Christmas!

Happy Christmas - I hope you all had a lovely holiday. I definitely did; nothing better than being spoiled at home, champagne and snacks at 11am and a pretty dusting of snow outside. Here are a few snaps of my time at home.


My lovely main pressie from Josh, an Erica Weiner letterpress necklace - she uses vintage letters re-cast in silver to make these.


It's always customary for my sister to force the family to play loads of games over Christmas. She got this one - the Great Penguin Bookchase - for Christmas after I saw it on notcot - no better gift for a board-game loving English student. It's like Trivial Pursuit but all literature related and with tiny books instead of pies to collect. So cute.


One of my favourite presents, the hefty and beautiful Fat Duck Cookbook. The illustrations by Dave McKean are truly gorgeous making this a dream to flick through, even if I'll never try any of the recipes.




My other favourite pressie is a lens adapter for my E-P1 so I can use a ton of interesting vintage lenses on it. I'd already bought an old Wollensak projector lens and these are my first few shots with it. I love the super-pronounced vignette effect and it's surprisingly sharp for such an old piece of kit.

A few more photos on my Flickr. Oh, and happy New Year!

Favourite photos of the year

I guess this time of year is always ripe for remembrance of the year just gone, so I thought I'd do it visually with one favourite photo from every month, plucked from my Flickr archives..


January
Flowers on Columbia Road market. It was also my birthday, and we moved into our new flat.

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Failed crafts

Despite being seen as a generally 'crafty person', there are two things I can't do well at all: bake, and wrap presents.

Baking, I suspect is because it's a very precise practice more akin to science than art, and I tend to be a little slapdash in everything I do which doesn't fare well with baking. I'll substitute baking powder with bicarb of soda, or leave it in the oven until I think it looks ready, or run out of flour and think 'oh, 100g less will do, I'll just put in a bit less of everything else too'... predictably, the results are usually fairly disastrous. Viz my failed entry into the recent Poke studio bake-off:


I had visions for a charming little gingerbread house decorated with iced gems and silver balls, but my dough was too crumbly to even stand up and no amount of squeezy icing or melted chocolate (and icing sugar to hide the damage) would convince it otherwise. In the end I got too angry to continue and forfeited the competition. You can see some of the more successful bake-off entries on my Flickr.

The other sticking point, wrapping presents - I think again because it requires the kind of precision and attention span I don't possess. I can never get corners tidy, the tape curls up and sticks to itself, ribbons and bows are liberally applied to hide the damage.. the whole thing generally looks like I let the cat wrap it for me.


So this year I went for a purposefully 'rustic' look with handmade wrapping paper and tags. Even the rubber stamps are handmade (at the Make Lounge class I did last month), and just stamped onto brown parcel paper and manila tags for a rather pleasing lo-fi look.