Alternative Portraits

Another trip to london

Ok, so its been a while, again, but i felt i needed some inspiration so I went into london to do some photography, I've only worked on a couple of images, but they are looking really good, thought I would share them.

3D Optical Illusion Street Art By Former NASA Scientist

3D Optical Illusion Street Art By Former NASA Scientist

They may look like a computer-generated images but these incredible scenes are in fact hand drawn using chalk. Master artist and former NASA worker Kurt Wenner uses his mathematical skill to create illusions on cobbles and pavements across the world. The 3D artist, who was once commissioned to draw for the Pope, will soon be heading to London to unveil his latest creation. This is one of three interactive pavement art pieces commissioned for Buick motor company in 2009 in Herald Square in New York
Picture: KURT WENNER / BARCROFT MEDIA

Finally

Finally, my first of 2 shows this week has gone up and gone on display for a week from today, we put the work into the gallery on saturday and its a really diverse collection of work, there is video, painting, sculpture, print, etc... and it all works very well together. My work has came together very well, it involves 3 tv's displaying 3 videos of breaking news coverage of the death of princess diana, 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings, like I've previously said.

It's quite difficult to capture with a camera, not helped by the fact it is pretty dark in there (which works very well for me)

The show is on all week from today 12pm-6pm and we have a private view on Wednesday 6pm-9pm.

Meanwhile my end of year show is on tommorow night, which means I have to get all my portfolio work done for then aswell, not good. For that show I am having a show reel of highlights of my years work in Video, which will work well for showing the tutors aswell, much better than just having a few screenshots.

I feel bad. 
I haven't posted on here for a long time. 

But then again, I haven't done much work in a while, bit of artists block, bit of arsing around, bit of easter, its all kind of toppled on top of me.
Most I've achieved is finishing that work for the book for the show next month.

I'm going to have to, but I do want to aswell, work my ass of for the next few weeks in order to get the work ready for the show. I think the video work I have done I will keep and I am going to work on how to display the work, once I am happy with that, I may go back to editing, if I have the time.
At the same time, I would like to do some photography work, as other work to go with it. I do feel like what was a really good term, last term, I ruined by getting too into a small section of work on this conspiracy theory stuff, not going to art history and generally worrying rather than doing work (and getting pissed...) Lucky enough, its first year, so I only need to pass....

edit

I've been messing about with the image I put on here earlier, I knew it wasn't right so I've tried a couple more edits, not sure what I like best yet but I like the imagery. I also took out Michael Jackson, just due to the fact the image was a lot brighter than the others and it didn't look right.

Ive put a few pop culture references in the image, which I hope people see and understand its not supposed to be serious, one in particular, because otherwise it could look like I'm actually a bit thick. 

This is my idea for one of the two pages I get in the book being made for the history is no longer project. I'm not sure what to do, I want to show more conspiracies, maybe more things which the media has taken to another level. On the other page I'm thinking of having some piece of writing on how the media effects how we think, how we see things, hear things, how we judge.

The first of these I think has too much going on, the second too little?
By the way they have to be in black and white.

Via Pia

Ive just found this old advertisment from 1979, I know it is completely innocent, but its a strange image to view now. 

Stalemate

Ive done fuck all this week. Im a bit concerned. I think I knew in my head it wasn't going to be the most successful of weeks, problem is, I struggle to get going on a monday and then the end of the week I am generally hungover and I work on a weekend. So If I don't have a good start to the week, I am fucked.

I'm having a bit of an artists block at the moment, I feel like I've achieved a fair amount of what I wished to do with my video work and don't know where to go next. There are a few questions I want to raise within the work but I don't know where to go with them. I also need to focus on the conspiracy sides of the diana and 7/7 bombing attacks, like I have for 9/11 and then make a focal point of how the media manipulate how we think and what we think and the point that if the news tells you that something has happened then you automatically assume its the truth.

Lastly, I possibly want to visit the notion of the 'what if' and what would happen if these things hadn't happened or had happened differently and also 'what if's' like my previously attempted (and risky) assasination of Barrack Obama video.

There is lots that I want to do, I just don't know how I am going to do it.

Super Broker Shuffle

Thanks to NME, this maybe has made my day, so bad its great.

On Photography

I am reading (trying to read) a book by Susan Sontag called 'On Photography' it is really quite interesting, although in my sleepy state when I try to read I do just end up closing my eyes and having to re-read the same sentence a million times. The chapter I am on at the moment is about Diane Arbus and her 'freak' photography, its quite interesting to read through the chapter as I feel, it is something which just couldn't be written nowadays (well certainly published) not because anything that's said is particually horrible, but because you can't really put dwarfs, giants, twins, people with tattoos all over them, in one bracket and if you do, you really cant call them freaks.
Anyways I didn't actually know her before, so I figured I should look at her work as I'm reading about it and its some stunning photography, very of its time (the 1960's) but nonetheless great work. I thought I'd share some on here. I really would like to get into proper portrait photography, black and white and working with a manual camera (I have enough of them) I'm thinking about taking a few days away from staring at the computer with the hope it will miraculously come up with the end result of the video I want to create and do some fresh work. Knowing me though, it won't work, I think I need to plan a place to go, type of people I would like to photograph and how I want to do it. As when I just go out and take photos of people, frankly, they look a bit shit.

http://diane-arbus-photography.com/

History is no longer real

I'm having a bit of trouble putting my work together at the moment, so whilst trying to make ways to finish my video work Im starting on other bits and pieces. We are having a catalog for the show, for which our tutors want new/different work to go into, stuff that goes with our work but tells a different part of it, which is good because it will be a much more visually exciting book than just pictures and a short description of everybody's work, I really want this bit to be good but I'm not sure where to run with it.
I have been thinking of having accompanying still images with my video work of parts of the videos so I think this could be a nice place to put them. I'm thinking of something like this:

Apart from it would also have to be black and white:

Man, I love London

I decided to have a little visit to central today, being a sunny day and not really knowing what to do with my day yet. I wanted to go to the photographers gallery but the way I know to it was closed off to pedestrians, i couldnt be bothered with struggling to find a different way in so I did a bit of shopping (only actually buying one thing) was nice to spend a bit if time looking around the shops in Oxford street. I walked down to carnaby street where ive not spent a great deal of time before to go to the Alice Anderson show at the riflemaker gallery and once again got put off by shops and starbucks (where I got a free pack of their new instant coffee...might be good, I'd like to drink more coffee at home) where I saw a crowd of people. I thought nothing of it as I had a little look and couldn't see anything of interest, upon second inspection after going to a few shops I realised it was Barbara Windsor (and pam Sinclair) filming eastenders, I don't watch eastenders but it still made my day.

Looking around backstreets I found the Alice Anderson show completly by accident, it was a house covered in hair! The exhibition was intresting, the rapunzel hair sprouting around the house was excellent and I loved the layout of the show but the other pieces didn't inspire much interest in me sadly. I then also went to another random gallery, but it was really quite dire.

Covent garden next, I found a much larger section of shops with a few indie's and more obscure shops, I think everyone but me knows about it, there was a lot of people, but it was a nice detour from the covent garden I was aware of, thats the good thing with London, you can always find new things.

Lastly I went on the hunt for the graffiti area set up by banksy in waterloo 'The Tunnel', its really cool to go and look at, its nice that people have got this space where they can graffiti and they don't have to worry about anything else. Its not the greatest work of all time, but its cool to see all this work which will hopefully stay there for a long time just due to the fact its perfectly legal for it all to be there.

Today is a good day

Today is good. Ive had two positive tutorials in two days and I've been told I've got a lot more time than I thought I originally had to create work. So that's really good. Still not got a lot that I can put on the blog so I thought I would share some music im loving atm.


Darwin Deez - Radar Detector from Lucky Number Music on Vimeo.

Darwin Deez - Radar Detector

Ive had Darwin Deez in my itunes for a little bit, but only really found them in the last couple of days. Really cool tunes, vocals on a song called 'Constellations' really reminds me of the strokes/little joy. The song I've put up has a pretty funky video for it but a worryingly similar vocal line to constellations.



The Middle East - Blood

A really new find, but I bloody love this band, they really could be one of my top bands of the year if it all carries on like this, I really need to find more out about them actually...





Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip - Get Better (Villa Vocal Mix)

A remix of their new song, in my opinion a better mix of their song, You get a lot more of Scroobius's vocals on this song which are brilliant, witty and wise lyrics and the melody on the second verse is quite simply the best melody I've heard all year.



Little Comets - Adultery

I saw them live at the tale end of last year and can't wait for bigger things to happen to them, I'm hoping an album will be released sooner, rather than later 'cause there is a big hype about this band at the moment.



Local Natives - Airplanes

I bought their album on a whim last week, listened and was not that inspired, but its grew on me spectacualy, it came out in the UK last year but only came out in the US last week, so I'm gunna say it's one of my top album's of the year so far.



Jonsi - Go Do

The Sigur Ros frontmans solo effort is every bit as good as you could hope, I have massive expectations for this album but from this song and the few others Ive heard I don't think they are unfounded. Unfortunatly the official video for this cant be embeded but check it out : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYb2Q3DvLNE



Tall Ships - Beanie & Dodger

I saw this band supporting Tubelord a while back but they've not got a lot of recorded music, found an mp3 of this song a couple of days ago and I love it. The video is of the live performance, which is what you need to see, so much energy and amazing instrumentation (made me buy a loop pedal i loved them that much) I've just found out their supporting Hot Club De Paris at new slang in kingston in a couple of weeks so Im looking forward to seeing them again.



Gorillaz - Superfast Jellyfish

One of the many amazing songs on Gorillaz's new album, you can read my review from a couple of posts ago below. Its amazing, if nothing to do with the animated band known as gorillaz anymore, check out pitchfork's review for more information on how this came to be. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14008-plastic-beach/ (Sadly much better than my review) I'm particually sad as they are playing a small gig in birmingham the week before I am going back there, on the plus side its a fan club only thing, so I probably could't go anyway.

Theres also Foals new song Spanish Sahara but I've already posted that below...

A few other pieces

I'm still on my continuing saga of doing video work to do with conspiracy theories and what's not, so as I am continuing with that I have nothing of use to show on here. So I thought I would show some of the photo's from Richmond Park last week, I've gone back and touched up a few, but they are a bit of a botched job, I like them though, I like the slight wrong exposure look I've gave to them, whilst not my main body of work, it's something I will continue just for practice and to create a larger portfolio. 

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

I was pretty excited about this album when I heard about it and heard lead single 'Stylo' the single had a new sound and it sounded good, still keeping a very much gorillaz theme to it. But when I heard Plastic Beach for the first time last week, I was a bit disappointed, I couldn't really get into it, regardless I bought it today and now have changed my mind completley from my first listen. I think I wasn't in the right frame of mind listening to it last week, because something has changed now, I think it is pretty marvelous. It is quite a different listen to both of their previous albums, but then again it has been 5 years and Gorillaz, aren't really a band at all, rather just a list of collaborating artists, which is getting longer and longer after each album.  When looking at the guest list for this album it is nice to see a mix of big names and more established names, you definitley need to be a music lover to be aware of all the artists featured. You can tell it is an album of the people they wanted to work with rather than, the biggest artists they could get hold of, I feel the choice of artists to work with make it an original and not a tacky collaborative album, all you don't want is it to sound like timberland produced the album. One of my favourite songs and I would say a future single is 'Superfast Jellyfish' with Gruff Rhys and De La Soul, they have already worked with De La Soul on songs like 'Feel Good Inc' but they clearly like to work together and they make sweet sweet music together once again on this track, one of the stand out songs on the album, proving it doesn't have to be a headlining featuring act to stand out of the crowd. Like always, there is a preference of hip hop artists over the album, but with the electric sounds going on throughout the album this is by no means a bad thing, Gorillaz have a great Trip-Hop sound, which after 3 albums, has been refined and is a sound like no other.

The glue holding the 'band' together is Damon Albarn, who without his vocals the album would sound like a bit of a shambles, with so many featuring artists, his vocals (who really aren't the '2D' vocals he used on their debut album, they are firmly good ol' blur Damon Albarn) remind you of who you are listening to and bring it all together. The few songs which don't feature any collaborations succeed highly with his vocals, 'Rhinestone Eyes' and 'On Melancholy Hill' are fantastic songs with just his vocals, at times its almost a shame that so much of the album is taken over by other people taking the lead vocals. The second man behind Gorillaz is Jamie Hewlitt, the animator who creates the artwork, videos, etc... for the band, Personally I used to love the Gorillaz artwork and video's and although I do like the Bruce Willis featuring video for 'Stylo' I do feel that it really isn't so much of a part of the band nowadays. I kind of wish that that part of the band would come back into the foreground a bit and maybe with more video's and inevitable gigs coming up in the future that side of the band will be used more but I just don't think it clicks with the band in this album. It's an electro sounding album, very much albarn's baby and the punky Gorillaz band we were introduced to 10 years ago don't really fit anymore, heck there images for the first time aren't even on the album cover. Maybe after this album, it is time to give up on the Gorillaz name and just make an album of Albarn and friends. It's a negative, but not much of one, since 'Demon Days' Gorillaz has focused on the collabrations and the great music and that's what this is all about, the music comes first, the collaborations, although many of them, never seem to take over from the sense of an album very much with a prevelant style and a somewhat dodgy backstory that is the 'Plastic Island' which the songs and artwork focus upon.

Diana Rose

So It took me a while to think of a third design for the symbols for the questions I talked about yesterday but I think this is a pretty great one. It has definitely came out the best. It's a rose symbolizing Princess Diana, also named england's rose, so I thought it was apt. I'm really happy with it.  Ive also added to the tube logo design one.

Apples - 'Only You'

Just found this band as they are playing new slang in a few weeks, this is brilliant.


Blindeye | Films - Apples 'Only You' (Flying Picket Cover) from Blindeye | Films on Vimeo.

New work

So I came up with a new piece of work over the last 24 hours, I got a few people I know to answer the following questions:

Where were you when princess Diana died?
Where were you when 9/11 happened?
Where were you when the london 7/7 bombings happened?

I got some really good responses, I short of hoped a lot of people would write quite detailed responses and they have. I didn't have a clear idea what I was going to do with them but I think I've found a pretty good (graphicy) way to show them. With these I want to put video's of news reports, to eventually read to showing how the media portray big news stories, but that's something I am researching and need to do a lot more reading/watching on, to do properly. I would like to show these as either prints or projections with the videos I plan to make, at the same time, these are in no way, shape or form finished pieces, I haven't done one for diana yet, because I attempted to use the ones for that, within a video (which didn't work very well) and I dont know where to start with doing it in this style. I would like to get more people to answer the questions, hence the multiple where were you when......'s at the end of both images.

 

 

Foals - Spanish Sahara

Dont Think A lot of the video but the song is amazing. Foals are back!

I didn't realise, but I have never really included people in my stop motion work, I felt it would be good to do one today so its simple, its just of people in the street, but im thinking of doing something different to it at a later date.

Day so far...

Had a fairly sucessful day so far, done quite a lot, went and got out the two books I want to read for research into my work, went and did a bit of shopping. Tried to (I will find out if it's successfull in a bit) do a new stop motion & I Watched Loose Change (once again part of researching.)

Yesterday I played around with some photo's, like I showed yesterday, which I will post in a little while, read some of the really interesting 'Why Photography Matter As Art As Never Before' which is a really intresting read actually and worked on my video for 'The Assasination of Barrack Obama' a piece I'm not sure about, I would like to mix in footage of his inauguration, where, lets face it a lot of people watched just to see if he would get shot at, and sound of JFK's inauguration and assasination. I want to create a 'what if'  like piece, I've decided to try and be tasteful with it and so I've created it as something you have to think about rather than a drawing of Obama being shot, because that would simply be disrespectful. I think I've got to be careful not to cross any lines, so It may be a while before I show that piece on here.


Also, watch the new Gorillaz video for 'Stylo', sadly It wont let me embed the video so here's the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9vAOzYz-Qs

Ok Go's New Music Video

Richmond Park

I've worked on a few of the photos from yesterdays journey to richmond park, I imagine I will post a few more in the next few days as I work on the photo's, I got quite a lot of source material to be honest so I've pipped it down to 35 to work on but there's another 200 or so which I could do something with. There all of a nature type look and a lot are in the same vein as my tree photo's from the routes project, It's something I enjoy and I can produce quite a lot of in a short amount of time, so I've figured it's worth carrying on doing whilst trying to come up with my main body of work for the history is no longer real project/end of term.

Firstly, I don't think I've ever seen a deer, So this was pretty cool:

 

After that I took some pretty cool photos, here's three of the best so far:

 

 

Richmond Park

Man I'm bad at posting on this blog recently, too much shit going on, but I couldn't really tell you what I've done....

Anyways. I finally made it too Richmond park today, I walked from home and it was much easier, although I was on my feet for around 4 hours, there and back and walking around the park, I feel pretty good for it though, I worked out I walked around 9 miles. Good times....

I was basically going to Richmond park to find this view:

 

Luckily, I found many other lovely sites on the way otherwise I would be pretty gutted. 

That view is a protected view of St Paul's Cathedral from the highest point in Richmond Park, there's a telescope, and it does look pretty sick to be fair, but still...It was slightly lame. I thought there was more to it than that. Luckily down the hill from there you can see the entire london skyline, which is pretty cool, it's amazing just how close I am to central london, it really doesn't feel like it when I'm sitting here in my room in surbiton.

I am going to work on some cool pictures I got from richmond park and post them tommorow, I'm a bit too tired right now...

Shit

It's officially thursday and Ive just messed up this week. I don't know where it has gone.
Today I tried to make a piece of work for another idea of mine to very little success. The idea was to have a stringless guitar with a projection over the top of a guitar with strings, same guitar just before and after I've taken the strings off. I felt this would hopefully make a strange piece of work where the viewer at first would be unaware what is real and what is not, as everything would seem fine to begin with.
Is it a projection of a guitar?
Is it a projection of a guitar on a real guitar?
What am I supposed to be looking at?
Hopefully with further studying it would trigger that there was that slight change and what was real was a stringless guitar but you where made to believe it is a guitar with strings.

I went to uni with the best intentions of making that today, but something just didn't click for me, I got in and just didn't feel very welcome, the less I go into university (I do kinda do my work at home) the less space I get in our studio and my space is starting to look like a bit of a dumping ground. I suppose it's my own fault but there are other people who do the same as me, I'm just not a studio type of guy, I go into university for tutorials, seminars, lectures and then either go into london or do work from home, with work at the weekends aswell, my time goes quick so It never really fits into my life does studio time. I have been in the studio more recently but still I'm never really in 'my space' and something just doesn't flow well for me there.

So anywho, I took some pictures to make a small loop of the still guitar with strings and went ahead un-stringing the already broken guitar which I got from a charity shop. Greatly being rusted and without some tuning pegs, that was a lot more difficult than I intended. When I got around to going to get a projector so I could try it out, the moving image lending department was closed, I was ten minutes late, It opens for just one hour!  Which to me seems odd...

So I wasn't really feeling it and I just went back home, not very constructive really.
Oh and then I found out I had a tutorial this afternoon like 2 hours later, which I also missed. So really quite a shit day.

Somehow tommorow I have got to fit in a seminar presentation group thing (which I'm not showing in) a tutorial for 'history is no longer real' which is half way through the presentation group thing and I have to be at work for 12:30 till 7 o clock!! Great!!  I really planned that one well...

Windows Part Two

 

So I mentioned my idea for this work maybe sometime last week, maybe even before that and I've finally got round to playing around with the idea. I started by using my DSLR and my tripod, but found I was getting to no avail, trying to be sneaky with a tripod isn't good and it was too dark to work without one and it just wasn't getting anywhere. So I tried some images with my iphone and even though it has a lousy camera the loss in quality in my opinion works to the images favours, I still had to be pretty sneaky as it does seem a bit odd still walking around holding a phone in the direction of someones house but it was much easier and I felt the images where coming out better. Because theres no flash it made much darker blacks and just picked up the colours, which is much more what I wanted to achieve. The images don't look amazing on the computer but put together like this I think they make a good piece of work. 

Chris Ofili - Tate Britain - A Review...

I've heard a lot about the Chris Ofili show in the last few weeks, all very positive aswell so I bucked up my idea's and payed the £8.50 (rip off merchants) to get in to see the show at the Tate Britain. I must admit, I knew nothing about his work prior to going to the show, I often don't. I'm not the most clued up of fine artists to be honest.

The most striking thing when you enter is shit, literally loads of elephant dung, every painting has some on and is held up by the stuff, there's even a sculpture. It's difficult not to find his work funny, when you first see all this but then you actually look at the pieces themselves and ignore the shit and you realise just what great work you are seeing. Each piece is meticulously done with dots and dabs, collage and random items like pins which add to a massive layered effect which is quite startling. The connections with hip hop are amusing and intriguing but add a lot to the work, if you manage to see the video of him explaining his work which as at the end of the exhbition aswell you really start to see how the hip hop and its connotations make this work tick. The picture below, is of a penis, is it needed, probably not, is it quite amusing, yeah, it probably is.

 In the Upper Room series, Ofili has painted a series of 12 or so images in different tones of a monkey based on an Andy Warhol collage. Some colours work better than other's but within the enviroment it works really well. Its a very dark room with only lights on the work and its very chilled out, I liked the space more than the work in it. Over all though theres a maturity starting to turn in his room, the repetition like they had been printed work's really well and as a series it is interesting to look at. Sadly the dung is still there, which for me, ruins it somewhat, It just doesn't work for me. I can see it links his work together and in some peoples opinions makes the work more earthly but for me I think its a shock and awe type of thing.

In the fourth room, the Red, Green and Black paintings, their are 3 paintings which only use the colours of the pan-African union flag, the work has got considerably more intricate and considerably bigger and they are very, very successful pictures. Like throughout the exhibition there is a very sexual motif going on, but it doesn't hinder these pictures, like it could have started to do in the first series of paintings. My favourite image is Afro Sunrise which surprisingly I also do like the dung in, it acts as a motif showing the viewers the colours used and it does actually start to work a lot more on these images.

His paper works in the next room, do nothing for me, they are quite immature and I don't think they needed to be added to this retrospective of his work. But the room along from that with the 'Blue Rider' works is my favourite room, quite a darkly lit room they have a luminosity which strikes you, the images are not that coherent, all the pieces are done with dark blue colours and so its in slight tones that you see differences but this works to the pictures favors. The dung is gone and the works are large and hang on the wall, you have to stand quite far back to see the images well and get everything out of them. I spent the longest time in this room, getting my moneys worth looking at these fantastic images, I can't put my finger on what brings me to like them so much, but something clicks for me.

 

Lastly Ofili shows his latest works, vastly different, if you saw these images next to his first pictures you would not think it was the same artist, he has lost the exactness of the dots from his work ten to fifteen years previously and there are more interesting figures and shapes, vivid colours, which is a stark contrast too the blue room that is next to it. Unlike that room where you feel you have to stand back to take the work in, these pieces literally only look good if you stand far back, when you get close they look quite clumsy and in my opinion, not amazing. I feel if he had shown this as his work to begin with he wouldn't have the reputation he does today, it is good that he is moving on and experimenting but something doesn't quite work with these images. I do like the use of colour and I enjoy the images in this room but not as much as some of the other work. Overall this is an interesting exhibition, My favourite pieces are the 'Blue Rider' series but I can see why the images at the start of the show are taking the headlines, they are very, very good.

Exhibition

It's been a stressful week or so, putting on our first group exhibition, there was a lot of tension in the group and last minute difficulties, but really looking at it last night, you really wouldn't have known. In fact, the day ran pretty smoothly, it all clicked at the right time yesterday and I feel everyone was proud of the work and the space we put it into. I think the space, being in Wimbledon (us being in Kingston) did cause a lot of difficulty, just because we really didn't know if it was going to be big enough, but actually there was plenty of space and it looked really, really good. Another tension was getting the work there, but overall that was pretty flawless aswell, it's a damn shame that it took so long for all of us to realise it was actually going to work very well, there was negativity from within the group which I know other people on our course knew of and it's a shame that it kind of took away from the exhibition itself.

'Mostro Dagli Occhi Verdi'

'Caterna Montunosa'

'Arte Rupestre' 

The exhibition itself, was called 'Routes' and was to do with a single tree in Bushy Park, in Kingston which we all went to and then went off and created work from. Most people only saw the tree once, which meant we all had a quite blurred vision of it and created vastly different pieces. A lot of them were to do with childhood and how we all felt when climbing about on the tree, that sense of not caring and being free. 

My work deals with illusion and imagination, the photos are all images from part's of the tree itself, but apart from the top photo, I feel you wouldn't get that at first glance and even as a set you wouldn't necessarily see the link, I want you to look at the photo's and get your own vision of what they are, taking of your adult glasses and just looking at the images and imagining. The titles of my pieces are what I saw when I first looked at them, but translated (hopefully well, but it only adds to it if not) into Italian.