Ransen's Blog

The recent months have shown just how unimaginative 99% of the "creatives", "artists", "writers" and "comedians" of the world are. Their "unique" points of view, their reactions, their jokes are exactly the same as everybody else's. It's Covid this and Covid that, dystopia this and dystopia that. What a bore. Quiet a few celebrities/famous people have been making podcasts. Often they are one one famous person talking to another famous person. Twiggy's is an example... ...but it is not interesting, maybe because the interviewer and the interviewee are friends. Then there are quite a few blokey podcasts, again boring because there is no tension in the discussion, they are just two or three blokes having a chat. The first exception is Grounded with Louis Theroux ... Almost all the episodes have been good, filling an hour with interesting and novel conversation. There is one exception, the one with Chris O'Dowd. It fails may

Tom Wolfe saw the phrase " To lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial " in a New York Times review of an exhibition of realist art. He describes this in "The Painted Word", a book which reveals the Emperor's New Clothes of 20th and 21st century art. In 197? Nobody can just look any more. There has to be a theory behind the artwork, else it is worthless. And the theory must be explained. However incomprehensibly. I just do art as a hobby, but I came across a person at my last exhibition who insisted that I needed a theory, else my artworks were just "OK". He was a small old bloke in a crisp suit who came on the last Sunday of the exhibition and picked me up on a phrase in the leaflet. I say there that all I want to do is make art that talks directly to the mind and the eye, without need for explanation. All that is needed is the image, the title and the observer, a perfect triangle.  (“Voglio creare un’arte che parli diretta

"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