More Bill Viola
Tristan’s Ascension, by Bill Viola
To St Olave’s College in the Borough to see the other part of the Bill Viola exhibition. (See 24 August.) Again, the exhibits reduced us and the other visitors to awed silence. “Tristan’s Ascension” (pictured) is life size, is accompanied by near-deafening roars of water — and the water goes up.
A roadside dinner in Old Compton St at the Café Bohème, then Volver at the Prince Charles. Life, as we Buddhists say, is a dream.
Urban cyclist Equipped Miki with lights and a fluorescent Sam Browne and we were off exploring the Regents Canal east from Camden Lock. Ducks, hump-back bridges and canal locks: we coulda been in the countryside. Many feel the same: we passed Londoners fishing or barbecuing by the water, and stopped at The Narrow Boat, a canalside pub that has opened a downstairs bar by the canal since I last rode this route.
Along to Victoria Park in Hackney and the cut through to the Hertfordshire Canal, then back to the Islington tunnel. Upper St found us dinner outside at Ottolenghi, then wobbling home through the quiet bits of Kentish Town and over Parliament Hill.
Miki in Somerset
I’ve posted at Flickr Miki’s pix from visiting the Ariel Motor Co. and camping at Westermill Farm on Exmoor
Love, death, serendipity
In an age when attention is the most precious commodity and the most begrudged, Viola’s meditative pieces — inspired by Tristan und Isolde and The Tibetan Book of the Dead — hold and fascinate. See too his Tate Modern webcast on his work and on the disappearance of solitude.
Ray’s moot Had I known the new Tim Powers novel was coming out, would I have planned to be at Ray Cannon’s APL-moot this weekend in Hampshire? Undoubtedly: the romantic in me can’t resist taking computers and sleeping bags to a village hall and staying up all night programming. Gilgamesh and I worked on the Yoda project almost to the point of being antisocial, but wouldn’t have missed presentations by Morten Kromberg on his Spice plugin to the Dyalog user session, and John Scholes on closures in the D dialect. Ray’s barbecue goes from strength to strength.
Camping on Exmoor
Gilgamesh’s pix from our weekend visiting the Ariel Motor Co, camping at Westermill Farm, and touring back through Lynmouth.
Need for speed
The car was built to maximise performance, and breaks all the known rules. It can outrun a fast motorbike round a racetrack. If you can shift through six gears fast enough, it will do 0-60mph in 2.9 seconds. It will outperform a half-million pound supercar, costs around £35,000, and is made by a 7-employee company in Somerset, that turns out about three a fortnight. And it’s road-legal; you could take it racing at a track and then drive it home. On a clip from TV program “Top Gear” on the manufacturer’s website, Jeremy Clarkson reported it is the most exciting car he’s ever driven. Oh, and it’s powered by a Honda Civic engine.
The secret? Designer Simon Saunders left off everything he could possibly do without, which turned out to exclude CD player, windscreen, doors and coachwork. Total weight: 500kg. The premise? Software should be written this way too.
To Crewkerne in Somerset then on Friday, to visit the Ariel Motor Company en route to Exmoor. Even to sit in the Atom is to change your view of motoring, and Tom kindly demonstrated how one tours in the car, packing your light baggage down in the spacious passenger footwell. He even had a model at the works with a towball fitted. Many thanks to all at Ariel Motor for their hospitality, and for their inspiring work.
