Ransen's Blog

"My will is hitching a ride on my body, and my body goes where the hell it likes"    - Owen Ransen, blog post "My Will". This phrase popped into my head as I ate my ni nth biscuit while reading "Apathy, and other small victories" by Paul Neilan.  I read it and enjoyed it in 2006 when it first came out. And I'm reading it again and enjoying it again. "Apathy" seems to have been his first and only novel. But where is Paul Neilan now? If he's reading this (he isn't, only I read these blog posts) I think he is a real writer, and I'd like him to write another book for me to enjoy. Wikipedia has a strange entry on him, which finishes in an odd way: "Paul has three brothers, John, Michael, and Ryan. He is the second oldest, followed by Michael and then Ryan. He has 3 nieces and a nephew. Lily Neilan, Lucy Neilan, Avery Neilan, and Quinn Neilan. He lives in New Jersey. " 3 nieces and a nephew? What has that

I'm sort of investigating an idea of primitive vision (as in: "how did it evolve?"), artificial neural networks and the Arduino . I'm making a primitive eye, deliberately avoiding video cameras. Here it is partially constructed: It is all very hand made and I was experimenting with the positioning of the sensors (LDRs). I struck me that the drawing on the piece of hardware looked very like one of Giordano Bruno's strange diagrams, for example: Bruno's diagram is called Campus Martis. There are 7 sensors. I could have chosen 9 7 5 or 3. But I chose 7 because, believe it or not, I thought to myself, Newton would have liked 7. He chose 7 as the number of colors in the rainbow, but the choice is arbitrary, unless you consider the magical powers assigned to the number 7. And Newton did.

Here's the why , and here is the what: The War On Cliche - 2019 The War On Cliche - 2019, detail 'M' - 2019 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies - 2019 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies - 2019, detail LH, Bedfordshire, 1979 - 2019 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies - 2019 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies - 2019, detail The Sleeper -2019 Untitled - 2019 Untitled - 2019 Untitled - 2019, detail Earlier drawings and later drawings

I had an exhibition in 2019 because in 2016 I heard that a co-worker had died. He was thin, healthy, active, intelligent, and cancer got him at 70. That gave me a kick up the bum. I thought: "Should I really waste my time on the sofa watching TV/Netflix stuff I'm not really interested in? If --- died at 70, so could I. Stop wasting time." So over three years I produced these drawings from 2017 to 2018 , and these from 2019 to 2020 . And in 2020, with coronavirus attacking (above all) the aged, I've started on a new project which will again take me three years... Part of the new art project involves neural networks, so I created an Arduino version of the standard back propagation neural network, posted here if you want to try it yourself ...

The why is explained in this link . The what is here: Untitled, 2017 Camilla, 2017 Crawford, 2017 Yokohama, 2017 Woman Looking Left, 2018 Goddess Looking Left, 2018 Goddess Looking Left, 2018, detail Sonya Looking Left, 2018 Come With Me - Learn The Truth, 2018 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies, 2018  Girl Considering The Horizon, 2018 Girl Silencing Triangles, 2018 Ivan Considering The Horizon, 2018 White Pnx, 2018 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies, 2018 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies, 2018 The Witch Of Barcelona, 2018 The Witch Of Barcelona - 2019, detail The Witch Of Barcelona, 2018 Fratelli Longo, 2018 Horizon - Then They Were Gone, 2018 Lucy And A Flat Sea, 2018 Ask No Questions Hear No Lies, 2018 The Wife Of Nostradamus, 2018 The Wife Of Nostradamus, 2018 (detail) Peppe In The Wild West, 2018 The