Tuesday 29 January 2013

Creative Synchromysticism...?

Synchronicity is the grouping of two or coincidental events into meaningful events. The idea of synchronicity was first postulated by Jung who wrote a paper outlining the principles of the phenomena. A simple example of this could be, perhaps you are looking through your facebook notifications and you comment on a friends status update, at the same time you receive an email from that friend, and on the same day you are out having coffee and your facebook friend sits down at the table next to you - all seemingly separate events, but put together, meaningful.

Synchromysticism is a recent phenomenon that has swept the internet and online conspiracy community. It is, "the art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." -Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Blog. Synchromysticism aims to pull together different forms of media and esoteric knowledge to make meaningful connections. There are three main elements which take one form or another in synchromysticism - the occult, politics and the media. Synchromysticism aims to pull together these disparate worlds, to show the underlying collective consciousness of the world - the holographic principle of nature and the universe. A good explanation of synchromysticism can be found here.

Creative synchromysticism is a term I have come up with to describe a creative stream of consciousness, with a starting point and a journey into information, images and synchronistic occurrences. It can be used as an aid to open up creative channels, almost like an organic scrap book of ideas and images.

So why am I babbling on about this? Good question!
Well...I have an ipad, and some free time, and I started a creative synchromystic journey the other day that I want to share, and it all starts with pinterest and Giacometti...

Testing blogger with Blogsy

Using my new ipad has not been as smooth a transition from using a laptop and imac as I thought it would be. Oh yes! My first few moments with the ipad were infuriating, no firefox, no openoffice, most of the apps you get for free withhold their content so that you end up paying for it anyway. But finally I think I am getting somewhere, with the help of a few choice apps, and a little bit of money.
Take the blogger ipad app, yes you can use it to post a few words and photos, but that's all there is - no formatting. I was beginning to tear out my hair, until doing a search and I found 3 viable apps, two of which you have to pay for - so I plumped for the expensive option, a whole £2.99 for Blogsy. So far so good.


I also tried out a work around for reading/editing word docs, and tried out 'Documents', a free app, which can used for reading word docs, but not much else. So, fed up with having to use an online fix in the form of rollapp, I bit my tongue and went for 'pages'.

There is a lot more to the ipad, than a quick facebook and twitter fix, it just takes a bit of time to get to grips with what this thing can do, and perhaps it hasn't quite reached my expectations because of all the fiddling about and spending money on apps.




Thursday 24 January 2013

Russet and Green

Lime on blended branch,
Lichen covered; rain soaked.

Streams flow snake-like
Through the sodden earth.
Turning torrent-like;
Cutting a path through and down
To the wind blown sea,
Through and down
The russet and green.

Weaving the land
With shell, heather and stone.
Walking to the beat
Of bone on skin,
Sunlight pierces the cloud strewn sky,
Illuminating the russet and green.

Scrap Stores - a brilliant idea?

Whilst being in the middle of a ceative hub at the moment my friends have introduced me to a brilliant,  craft materials resource scrapstoresUK.   ScrapstoresUK is a charity set up to support the recycling and reuse of scrap materials donated by businesses around the country.  With a joining fee of just £5 you can go along to your local store and fill a box full of stuff (for a minimal fee) any time you want.

So yesterday, with fiver in hand, off we trotted to the local Minehead scrapstore. And what a revelation! Our expectations weren't high before we went, but after the first few minutes of tentatively searching the shelves, there were repeated exclamations of, 'look at this!',  'check this out!', 'wow, you could use this for [insert multiple uses]!'.   And for an extra £1.50 on top of the joining fee, we came away with a bag full of wonderful bits and pieces.
So go on, check out the website and get crafting!

Brilliant, a weaving loom for free, and other goodies!

Tuesday 22 January 2013

iPanoramic

One of the aspects of the photography on the iphone is it's fantastic panoramic mode. Here are a few of the shots taken while in Ireland...