Tate Modern a Good Crack (Har Har)

On a whim we ventured into the smog to visit the Tate Modern for the first time. Lordy it was rather busy.

Modern art is hard work with two boys in tow, but they were both suitably impressed by the long, snaking crack that has been cut into the turbine floor (flaw he-he) by Doris Salcedo. It runs the entire length of the large room, but was fairly shallow and looked rather manufactured close up - a little lacking in drama (unlike the photo above). For me the most interesting bit was watching the crowds of people flow slowly along the length of the crack, peering in, dipping their feet in etc. etc.

The Tate also run top-notch activities for families, so we signed up and ended up playing a board-game with question cards based around the paintings in two rooms on the third floor. The boys were amused and it really got them looking at the art which was shamelessly conceptual, but on the debit side it took up all of our interest-time and we had to bail out to find some lunch before we all got fractious. Unfortunately the facilities for feeding knee-highs (waist-highs now I suppose) was not so extensive.

Have to go back just to check out the other floors another time....

More later

Jonathan Coulton Geek Pop

Tracking through what my friends and neighbours are listening (via LastFM) I came across Jonathan Coulton, who seems to be getting a lot of attention over his recent track Still Alive being used as the closing credits in Portal - the latest Half Life incarnation.

But my attention was drawn to other tracks - Skullcrusher Mountain, Ikea and particularly CodeMonkey (which I am geeky and soppy enough to love dearly). At his best the vocab is tech vernacular, the subject offbeat and the treatment comic.

His tracks range from the inspired though unsettling to ho-humm - and all can be listened to (or purchased and downloaded) from his site.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Something like 1984, The Difference Engine and Dark Materials all rolled into one tidy package.

I am in the middle (well near the end) of Mortal Engines after I noticed Waterstones had a special edition printed for them at the knock-down price of 99p ! It has previously attracted my attention and I guess the price is a hook into the other three in the series.

It comes over a lot like Pullman's Subtle Knife, but a little shorter and faster paced. Main characters are Tom (apprentice historian, standard innocent, think Pip from Great Expectations), Hettie (mutilated revengatrix, think Terminator in a
little girl package) and Katherine (hmm...rich girl and secondary innocent). Setting is the future London of a ruined earth
(Moorcock+Orwell) where cities prowl around on tracks and wheels a bit like a gargantuan Mad Max, in fact rather a lot like Mad Max.

Throw in some swash-buckling air-ships and a steam-punk slant on the technology and you have the full picture.

The only fly in the ointment is the dead-pan approach to the frequent character deaths and a tendency to be a little graphic in the descriptions of the relevant slicings/prongings/slashings as they come to their ends - I see this as a bit of Pullman emulation.

Overall a cracking book...at a cracking price.