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Slade School of Fine Art
slade school of fine art, www.ucl.ac.uk/slade, 2012
Website styling, design, front end build & integration with UCL systems.
The Useful Arts were initially commisioned to help guide the architecture and implementation of the Slade website to bring the look and feel, and content, up to date, working on top of a CMS, and to better integrate with UCL branding and services. After an an initial discovery and consultation period we were also asked to create the website design working to create a 'riff' on the UCL branding, complementing it whilst also playing with the core ideals and general implementation.
The site build involved integrating with UCL's CMS of choice, Silva, as well as creating an extra media database and integration into services provided across UCL, such as IRIS - UCL's Institutional Research Information System - to create rich staff profiles. Additional components for the site were developed using the Kohana PHP framework.
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Recent, and not so recent, work

Earlier this week I put live a new website for Jaywick Escapes, a film by long time collaborators somewhere.
In doing so I realised I've been really busy for the last year, but seemingly have nothing to show. I've been working on a few bigger projects which will be launching shortly, and have been all consuming. Along the way I've been doing lots of updates to existing client sites, and I've manged to fit in some small new projects as well.
First of all I've failed to mention the Floating Cinema website in my news, even though it's lurking in my portfolio, which though now past will be making a return later this year. Since then I've also produced an updated version of Colchester Inn for Public Works was created, complete with an in exhbition interactive for the Knick Knack Cloud component that allowed people to hear stories by swiping the knick knacks over and RFID reader; a portfolio site for film editor Adam Mufti; a portfolio site for artist Rebecca Rendell; done an exchange of services produce a promotional website for my friendly heating engineers, A1 Boilers, who saved me from a cold winter two years in a row; created a petition website to help Aleksandra Mir put Freddie on the Plinth; and finally, created a music download site for experimental musicians Squares and Triangles.
Amongst all that production work I've been working with Cornerhouse and Grizedale Arts on getting them up and running with a live HD Video streaming setup as a part of the Arts Council's 'Broadcast Project' research initiative into how arts organisations can use high end video equipment to broaden their audience reach. And working on these other big projects, and a couple of others that didn't quite make it ... yet.
So not had much time to keep this website updated.
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Matthew Shipp, Paul Dunmall, John Edwards, Mark Sanders @ The Vortex 08/09/2011
After the previous night of Matthew Shipp and Evan Parker, which was unexpectedly dissapointing, this evening was incredibly refreshing. Perhaps too much so at time, the intensity with which the quartet pounded forward left them with little time to explore the subtle interactions they could have with each other. Inbetween the frenetics all too brief fragments of duos shone out, illuminating the interactions between each instrumentalist, which were often lost in the rest of drive forward - not that they were not there, just lease easy to discern.
This clip catches the last few minutes of the second set.
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Trio Cutty Sark - Lunching Laughing Learning
I've not actually been listening to this lately, but when I first came across it in 2004 I was really taken by cut up the narrative through it, the snippets of conversation pasted together, the place, the references.
Today I had a meeting, and I was reminded of it; I believe I may have been in the space the two gents featured in this track were lunching, laughing and learning in.
I'm not sure if this came out anywhere else, but I came across it in Issue No.1 of Vibro - the Inside Out Issue
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For the hate of spam...
I've had to implement comment moderation on the website, it seems like mentioning 'cinema','film','video' and 'baby' is all too much for some [insert string of expletives] spammer and they have decided to try and use this to promote porn. So I've upped the spam checking, and put some moderation in place for anything that doesn't seem that spammy.
The best filters are human.
[WOW this post managed to get hit with spam within seconds of it being posted...]
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The Floating Cinema
the floating cinema, www.floatingcinema.info, 2011
Website styling, design and build with content management system.
The Floating Cinema was commissioned by UP Projects as part of their Portavilion series of mobile public event spaces. For the 2011 Portavilion somewhere and Studio Weave decided to create a cinema on a converted barge that would roam the waterways of East London, including areas around the new Olympic Development.
somewhere wanted a website to better reflect what they were trying to achieve than the existing portavilion website, that would offer them a space to document their process as well as the events, and give them a space to post films of the events thereafter. From this I developed the idea of orientating the site around a map of the waterways involved, styling it to give visual emphasis to this oft overlooked back bone of London's past. This also created a spatial snapshot of events and where the influences for the project come from. Blog posts come via mobile phone allowing the embedded GPS data to used to attach the images to the map.
Over the course of the project an additional record of the events will be created, turning the site from a promotional tool and booking mechanism into a full archive of the events.
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New Website for OCA

I've just launched a new website for The Office for Contemporary Arts Norway, you can see it at oca.no.
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Office for Contemporary Art Norway
office for contemporary arts norway, www.oca.no, 2011.
Website styling, design & build with Content Management System.
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway was founded by the Norwegian government with the aim of promoting visual arts and production in Norway to an international audience, and to stimulate international exchange in the arts.
I was commissioned to help OCA transition from a flat file, hand maintained website to something 'more modern' which better reflected the scope of their work, whilst reflecting their established, restrained, aesthetic, and help to improve their publishing workflow.
My aim in the redesign of OCA.no was: to improve the ability for the various audience demographics to find the information they are looking for; to provide a framework for richer documentation of their projects; to better emphasise the wide range of international connections OCA has and is developing; to provide an improved channel for communicating their multiple activities.
The OCA.no website is part publishing platform, part database, the goal of which is to link together the various practitioners and organisations OCA work with with how they work with them, to present a transparent picture of OCAs activities at all levels. As new relationships are established, and new documentation is created, the site will unfold into it's full potential creating an evolving document of OCAs field of influence.
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Rip It Up and Start Again
rip it up and start again, www.ripitupandstartagain.org, 2011.
Website design & build with Content Management System.
Rip It Up and Start Again is a series of lectures on architecture and the city, curated by Robert Mull and Kieran Long of London Met Architecture and Spatial Design to place the work of the school in relation to broader debates about the city.
The Useful Arts Organisation were engaged to develop a living archive which documented the talks and presentations in a dynamic way, whilst keeping the strong visual identity that had been developed for the print materials promoting the lectures, and providing a space where visitors could leave their own annotations to the talks.
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Portland Works

Early in December 2010 - just before I went on paternity leave - we launched a new website for Portland Works, an integrated metal works in Sheffield which is fighting for it's survival as a space for craftspeople, artists and small business to thrive. The tenants of Portland Works are attempting to raise funds to buy the building, run it as a co-operative, and restore it to it's former glory, whilst keeping it as a working building. We are happy to have been commissioned by Sheffield University to build this website to try and keep local crafts alive and developing.



