Making real life fake.

Tilt shift photography can make even the most real and memorable journey seem like you were just playing with toys in your bedroom, as this image of the fair ground shows you.

Man sized blocks.

In fact blocks that are only really suited for building Brick City, or is that Block City, or indeed even Blog City. Either way, this project entitled Define Your Own City, or is that Blogging: City Building; well you get the point, we haven't settled on a name yet. I spent my day prototyping one possible idea, a multi-coloured blackboard and just applied some paint this evening. Actual chalk images to follow when the shops are open. (Just realised, anyone actually questioning the size from the title, the grids below the image are 5x5cm)

America images.

Just been sorting through photos from America for that section of the website. Take a look at bgbarker.com/america for all of them. I notice that the site is looking fine in Firefox and safari, but not working at all well in IE and Opera, so apologies if you are using either of those browsers.

The Nyctophobic Bible

I was re-photographing this project for my website earlier, with help from the ineffable Simon Cordery (for those who know him). The concept was of a book created for sufferers of Nyctophobia (fear of the dark) using modern parable as a tool to discuss and explore ideas around darkness and death. Using similar concepts to the bible (a slightly grandiose reference I know!).

Check the progress in the design section of the website: bgbarker.com

Nokia and splashes

We presented our ideas to Kin design today for a possible brief with Nokia. It was a midway presentation with a view to generating an idea good enough to present to Nokia in March. One concept was around the idea of using blocks and micro-blogs to represent the communities created by Friend View (the Nokia software we are promoting). Another was around using ripples created by a splash to show the impact a user can have. In this case on vibration sensitive LEDs. Below is some of the content I generated.

New site coming.

Just a quick note on the new site coming, bgbarker.com. Its also a new email address too ben@bgbarker.com. Its just a place holder page at the moment, but it will hopefully incorporate some photography and design. There's also another place to check out, that should be coming soon, www.studioinsideout.co.uk that i'll host.

C.V.

This is my latest attempt at an interactive C.V. i.e one that allows the user to take what ever data I give them and interact with it. So being able to make any of the versions below or a version of their choice, as any of the 15 rectangles can have any of the data cards or images.

GPS, London and Cambridge.

So continuing my gps mapping, this one includes the map of cambridge then extends down to London. I made three trips in total. Two by car (the thicker route on the right) and one by train. Then in london a fair amount of buzzing around, including trips to Lewisham shopping and dropping Robs laptop off in Greenwich. I love the power of this technology, so i'll just keep trying until something interesting comes up. Perhaps maps about my movements will only ever be interesting to me though...

Briefcase Narrative

Here's a story board from a recent project on objects and narratives. Its one of my first attempts so excuse the middling quality of the drawing. I'll post the full story at some point as its probably hard to get it from these low quality images (although I have tried to keep them good enough).

Cambridge to New Cross

I got back from Cambridge to London yesterday, perhaps to illustrate the difference between the two existences, or maybe student and 'grown-up' life, I discovered and photographed what had been cultivating in the fridge. Don't be fooled, it was disgusting. Just for contrast there is also a picture from a frosty morning on the farm.

Personal Map

I'm always interested in ways of mapping, especially how people move in spaces. This is a gps map of my movements since christmas. It includes driving my younger brother to his girlfriends, exchanging a duplicate present and metal detecting in a field of my dads. I love how individual this map becomes. In some ways it is very similar to a road map, but it only borrows certain elements, it becomes a narrative and quite personal as well. The more often you drive a certain route the thicker the line becomes, so building data and creating hotspots. Obviously this is just a few days of relatively mundane events but even so it is easy to see the potential. GPS also records information such as speed, altitude or just about anything you want.
To look out for on this map are the straight road that is involved in most journeys (an old roman road, the a14) and the two hotspots, at my house and cambridge town centre. The distance between these two points is about 12 miles.

Winter Photos

Beautiful low wintery sunsets and a need to photograph with my new macro lens have combined to make these pictures. I'm not sure what it is, but there is something evocative about bulrushes.

Coral Spot

Well after a long period of inactivity, (everyone knows I love christmas) heres a boxing day picture. Expect more of this sort of thing to come as my Christmas present was a set of extension tubes. So I shall no doubt be influenced by them for a few weeks. This fungi is normally found on dead wood and I believe is called coral spot although do correct me if I'm wrong. I also got a gps tracker so expect some maps of my movements in and around cambridge. Another notable gift and lets face it, me showing off, was a signed and personally illustrated book by Rebecca Dautremer (an absolutely superb french illustrator), given to me by a friend. Needless to say that was a sketchtravel connection. :)

Smiths Vol.2

Almost unbelievably the culmination of heaps of hours of work and just a slightly above average magazine. A good process though and I never would have imagined that trying to make a beautiful magazine would be so difficult. It is a huge improvement on the last one though.

Daniel Eatock

Anyone who knows Daniel Eatock's work will know how fascinating he is. I've really enjoyed his website for some time because of the richness of the content. You can get lost there for hours. Anyway, to cut a long story short I submitted a No Smoking sign to his collection. As there is no selection process I can hardly rate it as an achievement. The simple act of bothering to send an email is enough to get you included, but still I feel a weird sense of satisfaction. Anyway go take a look and get lost there for a while, its very interesting...

www.eatock.com

The Act of Doing

So got up very early this morning to get myself up to kings cross and do my installation. Here are the pictures complete with very disappointing grammatical error. I'll say more later but have to rush off to football now.

Fairy Tale

As promised a while ago, the story that is in the book that i made (see below) for the fairy tale project that I completed a month or so ago.

Power to the Pedestrian

Here are some pictures from the project I'm working on at the moment. Its based in the kings cross area of north London. I was looking into giving more freedom of movement to pedestrians who are the biggest users of this space. I made a lot of maps of the the most common paths that people walked through the space and then planned to put this as a crossing as well as signage and ramps for people with cases on their way to kings cross. Hopefully have the real thing soon. Just got to make it first...

Dartmoor

Just back from Dartmoor, with a greater understanding of the word 'tor', a sense of the England from stories and a deep seated mistrust of the merchant navy. Actually not true but it is beautiful down there. I can't get enough of the misty bleak moors that force you to feel a least a little bit of melancholy. So heres to lakes appearing from behind a veil of mist, stumbling upon little village squares with pubs and people driving land rovers that actually need them. Oh and wearing welly boots...

Sketchtravel

After the interview on thursday I photographed the book that the whole project is about. This is it as well as one of the illustrations within (go to the website to see all of them and learn more about the project). In short it is a book that travels the world being illustrated by top illustrators and is then sold for charity.