White Night, Melbourne, Feb 22, 2014

Was looking forward for this.  An all night event where Melbourne's buildings were lit up with visual art installations.  It had a very normal start while it was still bright at about 7pm with family and our friends Haydn and Anna plus kids.


Indigo's taken to looking more teen cool.  Has a new 'RAD' beeny.  Not sure that one needs to have 'Rad' written on a beeny if you are already rad by nature.

According the broadsheet.com.au events were meant to begin at 7pm.  It was clearly too bright for the wall projections so we made our way through a Swanston Street that heaved with thousands and thousands of people as far as the eye could see to Bourke Street Mall where the jazz and R&B music stages could be found.

Swanston Street facing south to the War Memorial

The piano had issues so waited and we waited until Blow came on stage.  Following some kind of joke by the lead instrumentalist that backfired they got one with it.  Actually very good....if you like modern-ish jazz. Sounded a bit like Love Supreme-era Coltrane. Our kids didn't like contemporary jazz.  Not exactly a surprise, so we left after ten minutes.  Pat and I resolved to see Blow play at The Horn in Collingwood where they have a regular gig. 

Indigo and Lani showing the teenage pose of "not-impressiveness with modern jazz"

Via watching a live cartoonist we all went outside the State Library to watch the video projections.  We hung out there for fifteen minutes or so and took a few pics.  The projections were nice but not very thought provoking.

Around the corner we watched some 70's big band funk hybrid band before everyone else went home and I went on traipsing through Melbourne's streets.  It was 10:10pm.

It had all been very nice til then.  A casual evening out with family and friends.  My mind went down a different path after all that.

To Scot's Church were there was a painting based upon the Terry Taylor's visit to an ossuary in Paris.  A short background note was given out to everybody on entry to the church.  The artist has visited Paris shortly after her father's death, went into an ancient crypt or ossuary and looked at the rows of skulls.  To the artist it was as though after death the deceased look and judge us throughout time.  It made her reflect upon her father more intensely and inspired this work.

It begin to irk me that there hundreds and thousands of people would each take a note, not read it, file down the aisle of teh church, take a picture on their iPhone then walk off.  Not a moment to contemplate the picture or its intent at all.  They often spend more time looking at the pic on the iPhone than looking at the original.

  At first all this irked me.  

I'd been getting annoyed at gigs where people try to get near the front of the audience to feel the vibe then spend the entire gig with their phone in the air trying to get the ideal pic or video.  So they are trying to leach off the gig but in so doing ruin the atmosphere.

My annoyance had turned into incredulity at a recent recent to MONA in Hobart were people would walk to a picture take a photo of the notes on the wall, then the painting itself then walk off without taking even a moment to take in the art.

So I guess I was pre-disposed.....until I came to the conclusion that it was more interesting to study the people taking the pictures.

Pic 1 (above).  A couple in the vast minority that took time to contemplate to Terry Taylor's Tribute to life and to my Dad, Robert Geoffrey Taylor
Pic 2.(below)  One of the majority...walked right up to the painting, took a pic, then walked off. immediately

I left after about 20 minutes and walked down Flinders Street down to the river.  There was a steep embankment before getting to the flat bit aside the river.  Many professional-style photographers where lined up in the dark at the ridge of the hill watch the huge pyramid video installation below.  the dark sillouettes of the photographers made a dramatic contrast to the urban skyscraper aura behind.  It was nigh on impossible to capture on my cheap camera

The video installation was very watchable.  There were booming speakers playing weird low sounds.  I mused on the fact that if it had been accompanied by 120 beats per minute drums this would be considered depressing techno/ambient music like Aphex Twin and sell heaps of records.  Without the beats it is "art" "sound installation" that required expensive sub-woofer speakers to play.  So it is basically another way of saying the artist is poor and cost taxpayers money to listen to it.

I walked down the embankment to the video installation and took pictures of the shadows of people taking pictures of the installation

I was walking away having enjoyed watching this video thing.  However a man run past with a camera stuck on top of a stick telling all around to 'Follow the pole! Follow the pole!'  So I followed him back to the pyramid.

NASA astronauts took that famous picture 'Earthrise' as they were on their way to the moon.  Well, I proudly present 'Pole Rise'.  The photographer didn't seem to pay much attention to the pyramid and chatted with his friends instead.

Pole Rise.  22.02.2014

On St Kilda Bridge huge bright letters spelling White Night were there.  Throngs took pictures of it.  They will surely put it in a folder called 'White Night" and for those that enter it will have a first picture greet them saying 'White Night' in case they forgot the name of the folder from two seconds before.  They will then skip the picture because.....it isn't very interesting.  Their friends that look in the folder will skip it in even shorter time....because they didn't experience this great evening, the photo doesn't help do that either, and....the photo isn't very interesting.

Off to NGV where the whole facade was taken up with a video on tattoes.  I watched for about ten minutes, and then yes, self-righteous me took a pic.

For the evening the NGV was open all night with free entry so past midnight I went inside.  What greeted me was a section of the room with a live model and an area where people could sit, be given paper, and draw the model.  It was great.  I briefly pondered my objections to event-photography were unfair, because the people drawing were doing no different, other than using older tech (pencil and paper).

Then I saw people taking pictures of the people taking pictures of the live model....

and better, people sitting in the live drawing area reviewing on their phone the pictures they have taken of the people taking pictures of the model.

I was laughing by this point.  Just to ham it up, I found a place where I could take a picture of myself taking a picture of other people taking pictures of other people taking pictures of the live model.

As I try to explain to myself all these permutations of people taking pictures, my mind was full of Rolf Harris singing The Court of King Caractacus.  If you don't understand that, then check this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybjio6z4BA

I went into the Melbourne Now! exhibition.  Fantastic.  So much energy.  Must go back.  One piece of art had a TV on a pole.  The TV was displaying a video of the artist running in his runners to the NGV.  Here is a picture of a person in the gallery taking of picture of the artist taking a picture of going to the gallery.

Good night.