Friends of the Armchair Traveller

  It's a great pleasure for me to introduce you to the works of Marie Craven I'm sure some of you already know Marie and her works, but this post brings together some parts of her story which may not be well known. Marie Craven is a film-maker in Queensland, Australia, who has been making short films since 1984 in widely eclectic styles. Over the decades her films have screened at many international festivals and events, gathering multiple awards. During the decade from 2007 she was also a vocalist with electronic musicians around the world, collaborating via the internet. Her main music project during this time was a prolific collaboration with Welsh music producer Paul Foster, together forming the duo Cwtch. Since 2014 her primary creative focus has been on videopoetry, making over 70 films in the genre, again involving many online and international collaborations with artists in a variety of media. Over the decades, she has also been a writer about film and a curator of prog...

  Email from my friend Richard, received yesterday 13/1/23 Wo! Tess and I just watched “Ex Machina”. Still recovering. Haha What a brilliant movie. Nothing particularly new (for 2023 at least!) but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory. 5-stars! ***** Great way to cap off our summer-movie marathon :) rl So I responded: Well, what can I say Richard... I've been telling you about it for three years now! Better late than never! Yes, it’s a superb achievement in concept, writing, casting, performance, visual design, and audio ... the whole shebang! I don't think you've ever give us a 5* rating before Richard? Richard, you express it so accurately in just a few words. "but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory" Alex Garland is one hell of a clever writer and director... a super talent. But there are so many major talents at the top of the tree. He also made "Annihilation" which is very good, ...

Peter invited me to present Bill Morrison`s ("cinema of decay" main figure) work for our blog. First time I came into confrontation with local (Split; Croatia) academic authorities in relation with Bill`s cinema opus was years ago during "Dystopia" (2008) presentation period. Bill was stupidly ridiculed with collective Goebbelsian allusive inversion of his identity into the local religious idiot and political shithead best known for eating rotten human livers. Fifteen years later those same people are working on his visit to Croatia. (I do not care and never was). I did not pay to watch "The Village Detective: A Song Cycle" (2021) and I do not like idea that neo-chekists should seek for me around Hitlerian culture institutions for grabbing some stardust and downloading the torrent after hearing accordion sound of freedom. Let them eat what they vomit.  This is Bill`s wwww page:  https://billmorrisonfilm.com/ And some You Tube links:   ...

Life Inside a  Drop of Seawater   SCIENCE   |   JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023 A passion for the infinitesimal  leads photographer  Angel Fitor   to  discover countless creatures  that live unseen in the ocean. Clockwise from bottom right:  a calanoid copepod, a hyperiid amphipod, a decapod larva and  a pteropod, with jaws at its base and an anus at its pointy top.   Angel Fitor , a marine scientist and wildlife photographer, is  passionate  about illuminating a hidden world that’s all around us.   A drop of water contains a single  Sapphirina   a genus of copepod which has bioluminescent capabilities. A male  Sapphirina .  The species is outfitted with iridescent plates  on  its back,  which reflect sunlight and send out shimmering               signals through water.                 See the compl...

Darko has recently introduced me to multimedia artist  Maria Korporal. Of Dutch origin, Maria   lived   in Italy  for many years but she has lived and worked in Berlin  since 2014 . Her artistic production includes video art, interactive projects, installations. Her multimedia work has been designed using a wide variety of techniques. The narrative aspect, both personal and social, plays a major role in her work which together with the directness of the images and the sounds leads to greater participation of the viewer. In her work she plays with virtuality and reality, with undergone and artificially generated experiences. Most of her projects deal with social and environmental issues, often with an ironic approach. A good example is her project Korporal Zoo , a series of video works made between 2010 and 2018, which observe the animal and human world from several perspectives: cultural, social, environmental.  Over the last two years Maria experienced the...