gareth bouch :: stuff & things

Here’s a fairly random clip it’s high time I posted.
It’s something I filmed years ago on 8mm. The long story is that I was writing “Rivercity” at the time, which puts it mid to late nineties – and I wanted to grab as much visual reference and inspiration as possible; ways to describe colours, textures, movement etc – that communicated the atmosphere of the Old Town as evocatively as possible.
I had a certain aesthetic in mind and along with Polaroids, standard snaps and scribbles, I took a load of 8mm footage as well – I just love something about the fuzziness, the saturation of colours, the depth of contrast and the strange sense of movement. The plan was to use all this material to look at and to help get my head around how to articulate Hull’s very particular ‘down but beautiful’ vibe from the time.

So here’s some of the bits I rather liked in conveying the ambience of the place – I filmed some of the ripple shots upside down as I thought they’d look just a tiny bit odd (as if there’s something wrong but you can’t quote figure out what). And now I’ve ifnally cobbled it together into a clip, I avoided any kind of special edits whatsoever, left it completely linear, and added “Sketchpad With Trumpet And Voice” from Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack to the Alan Parker film “Birdy” over the top (for no better reason than it’s fab).

Rivercity Scenes from Gareth Bouch on Vimeo.

A quick update on the #hulldailyfail fiasco (as the delightful Twitter hashtag puts it) with a very positive note.
It’s not clear how long things may take to get resolved over the newspaper’s original sleazy and hypocritical trashing of local online newspaper competitor Paul Smith, but it’s good to know that the Press Complaints Commission are investigating the matter.
They say that that have received “numerous complaints” from across the UK – including one from Mr Smith himself, which means they can properly investigate it. Although the others who complained cannot be regarded as genuinely legal or legitimate complainants it can only be hoped that the level of revulsion at the Hull Daily Mail’s actions will therefore not be lost on the PCC and will be a factor in assessing the impact of their articles.

This nasty little farrago tends to suggest that the Hull Daily Mail may well not be the best people to carry the torch of online community news in the city, the area and the region. And that may be where the Hull Free Press comes in…
If you like the idea of a news and community project by the people for the people then I’d strongly suggest you take a look at the Hull Free Press startup page.
I think that a genuine enterprise that is guided by and existing for the community, and which is less likely to lose its way in the mire of thrashing around at commercial objectives, can only be a good thing for all.
Very best of luck to the project: If I still lived there it’s something I’d love to be working on, and so I’m really looking forward to seeing how this shapes up and I really hope it takes off in a big way.

A couple of days ago I got sent a link from an old colleague in newspapers which horrified me for a couple of reasons…
It was for a Facebook campaign to boycott the Hull Daily Mail, and the more I looked at what they were up to the more disgusted I was, because 1 – I used to work for the HDM and held it in high regard and look back on my time there with great affection, and 2 – because I’m a web designer who knows how hard it is to keep afloat these days.

The Hull Daily Mail is essentially campaigning against a guy called Paul Smith who runs a local community newspaper online called HU17.net and is – without actually making any kind of genuine charge or accusation – simply calling him unfit for this. He has a past in building websites in the ‘adult’ (that’s posh for ‘porn’) industry – though he apparently only owns some hundred or so domains, which seems slightly at odds with the Hull Daily Mail’s shrill accusation that he’s responsible for “thousands” of hardcore porn websites (which would surely make him a lot wealthier and busier). But, as I say, no actual charge of any actual wrongdoing or illegal activity. Just smear and innuendo.
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There’s a really good programme on Radio4 weekdays at 9.45am – “A History of the World in 100 Objects” – a superb series that’s following the development of civilization by analysing historical artefacts.
They reflect all kinds of aspects of humanity – intellectual, artistic, cultural, economic… and are done an object a day. Do listen.
Or of course you can catch up with what you’ve missed on the Radio4 website here, as part of the overall “History of the World” section of the site.
You can also catch up and follow the series by subscribing to the podcasts here on iTunes

I could have written something on the day of the iPad launch but I couldn’t really be arsed.
I was busy, everyone was talking about it anyway, and most of the talk was either pro or anti hysteria.
My thoughts at the time haven’t really changed though, and reflecting on how things are gradually moving ahead with the iPad, I thought I should get round to writing them down…

The hype – there was a lot. Seriously. Rolling news channels, all kinds of online sites, newspapers and magazines. And offline. Someone was going to be disappointed. Lots of people actually. Mainly those who were either daft enough to expect something impossibly miraculous, or those who were cynical enough to want the launch to be an anti-climax.
Was there too much hype? Yep – certainly in terms of justifying the actual specific product as it stood on the day. HOWEVER, and it’s a very big however – I can’t help but think that in a few short years that hype *will* be felt to be justified. And everybody will have forgotten about the exact iPad on the launch day. The hype won’t be justified by what the iPad was on that day but by what it became over the following months and years.
And there’s a very good parallel / precedent.
Two in fact…

Say hello to the iPod and the iPhone…
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