The Blog Header Chronicles (Part One?)

I'm sure I have very few regular visitors.  If you are a regular visitor you may have noticed that the header for my blog has been changing on quite a regular basis. 

It started on New Years Day 2013.  

I decided to change my Blog header.  

I incorporated an image of myself making artwork.  

I soon realised this may seem a little bit self absorbed.

So I tweaked it slightly. 

I decided that my photograph was perhaps too big and in your face.  

Also I felt that it needed more going on in in the rest of the image.

Soon I realised that I could keep evolving my Blog header throughout the year

Changing the header once per Blog entry.  

That the original image could fall backwards

New boundaries could keep creeping in around a shrinking image.  

Each image could then be saved and eventually put together into an animation.

How long this animation is eventually going to be I have no idea 

but I do enjoy the premise of it.  

At the moment my artwork is going through a transitional phase

I'm producing much more thoughts than actual artworks.

I'm going through ideas - looping endless pitiless ideas

None of which are written down anywhere but they are fairly sticky

They tend to stay around if they are good.  

Or at least if I think they are good.

Back on topic - which is my Blog header.  

My blog is called Obsessive Static Polarities and Recursions. 

I've thought that by New Years Day 2014 I may finished developing my banner 

Closing it off into a recursive loop - so that it will eventually come back onto itself.

I will hopefully actually be able to make the heading of my blog animated.  

Not sure if it will let me do this hopefully a GIF file will work.

Would a big flashy animated Blog header be really annoying?

Do I want to be annoying?

Also how would I go beyond that?  Where could I progress to?

Do I just stick with an animated header forever?  

Although my artwork is quite recursive I don't revel in recursions.

I just obsess about them.

Recursions are the most terrifying thing ever.  

I love the idea that there is some kind of final end.  

That one day it'll all go dark and we won't have to do anything anymore.

I want some opportunity to put a spanner in the wheels of everything.

This would allow me to just jump off for a moment and view everything at standstill.  

Rotations ceased - everything stopping and me just stood on the edges of everything.

I would probably be stood very still  - there's not much to stand on at the edge of everything.

Look above.  Up there.  To the right of the above image.

You can't NOT have noticed I've appeared in my blog header again.

Wearing my red suit and looking my most swish.

My most narcissistic and self absorbed. 

Failure in my initial attempts not to be self absorbed 

I've looped back on myself and there I am - I'm staring right at me now

Frozen on the edge of everything.

Is that progression?

YES. 

It's a progression.  

In the first photograph I had my head down and I was working hard. 

In the new photograph I'm preening myself and standing idly around 

Next to a badly integrated door.  

TO BE CONTINUED (forever?)

L ell Hell + Infinity (except not - unless it is (better when paused))

About 2 years ago I was asked to participate in an exhibition about the alphabet - where each artist was assigned an individual letter, I was assigned the letter L... I thought about the notion of loops and as I usual I ended up thinking about infinity and regression and the idea of constant concentric circles moving outwards and inwards leading back to the same thing though slightly regressed each time - inwards or outwards is usually hard to distinguish, so much that negative and positive almost bore little difference.  The exhibition never actually happened and all traces of it's future vanished.  The below video is what I put together to be exhibited and due to the disappearance of this exhibition this is actually the first time it's been seen... a small fragment of it at least (though you'll likely be able to guess the ending):

I think it must have been the non existence of this exhibition/screening that led me away from creating painstakingly jerky abstract animation - that and the fact that I was getting annoyed with my computer crashing from filling it with too many video clips interspersed and collaged with tinier and bigger video clips - also I realised whilst pausing any of my animations at any point that I had created thousands - if not more - compositions that could be used and exploited in later work (all my animations are better when you press the pause button and they stop moving, talking or doing whatever it is each one does).  Tonnes of patterns and textures from these animations could be cannibalised into new work if only I printed each frame out one by one - and then through the use of a photocopier, a pair of scissors and lots of glue sticks I could produce randomised black and white collaged artwork at a very face pace - and then use the collages to collage into each other again and again and see where this leads too.  In effect this is actually a project spanning about ten years - from when I did my early paintings and collages that were turned into cut and paste animations to my animations being turned into cut and paste collages and eventually a large scale installation - it's all very much a potentially infinite project that could get denser but also larger over the years if I continue at it... going jerkily along a path of constant permutation with a background philosophy and fascination with void, infinity and forever dead cells regurgitating themselves into living cells like when a black hole singularity explodes at the other side into other universes.  Or lungs breathing out and in until crushed into dead dust which gets breathed in and out by lungs - some kind of constant recycled forever.  Which brings me to another animation I made called "Line Line Line Line Line Line Line - - -- -" which was meant to be added onto forever and ever and ever into a long neverending thread of forever and ever.  I got as far as about 30 seconds - here it is:

There comes a point - in the consideration of infinity - where ones patience begins to run out entirely and one realises that infinity cannot be created or even fully imagined - and I've started to think more about the idea of the finite - of finding something limited and whether anything truly limited can conceptually exist in a world of never ending interconnectedness.  Is it possible that I'm looking for something finite within my work and that I should instead of looking into void space I should be hopping off my concentric conveyor belt and looking at the central steering wheel and get everything into some kind of perfect balance - then the inconceiveable distance may come into sharp focus and all these people, objects and concepts surrounding me may actually just become a wall of blank nothing on all sides.  Or perhaps not.  Anyway here's another video just to put in there because I can - last animation I made around the same time I was getting back on the photocopier - it actually almost conveys some kind of near - infinite photocopying existence - one which I seem to have ended up living in:

With any luck the price of photocopying will increase beyond what I can afford and I'll be propelled out of the machine like it was a sneezing whale - or I may just die at some point, that's what happens to most things living.  Is the point of death finite but the void of the hereafter a constant grind of static meaningless stuff? Does that meaningless stuff eventually coagulate into a puddle of interconnectedly chaotic logic - like the life we are living now?  The imagination of nothing manifesting itself into something and everything.  Oh no!  That sounds like another thought about infinity on it's way - where's that steering wheel?  Evasive action or battle stations?