So I went for a wee stroll around Upper Hutt last night with my new Xiaomi Mi5 – which is a most pleasing phone I might add – and felt compelled to take a few photos.
They came out looking pretty good but then I started goofing around with Paintlab and the results were way more interesting. I don’t know how they do it but they seem to achieve the sort of results one could achieve from #DeepStyle but it would render in a few seconds on a phone instead of taking minutes or hours cranking a neural net on a high end PC.
Window on Fergie DriveSame window on Fergie DriveSomeones front yardTaniwhaTree on Main Street
Anyways. I totally rate this phone and Paintlab is choice.
Playing with lego leads aronimus to muse on this long known fact that nothing is created in a vacuum.
The Cubic Structural Evolution Project
The City Gallery in Wellington have an exhibition on at the moment called Demented Architecture
The centrepiece, Olafur Eliasson’s The Cubic Structural Evolution Project has drawn me back numerous times for a lunch time session. It is basically a collaborative art project. A table full of white Lego that one can sit down at and do their part in the creation of a cityscape. Well, I’m not sure that a cityscape is even the aim of the exercise as I didn’t read the blurb, but that’s what was being created when I was there.
Olafur Eliasson: The cubic structural evolution project
On the first visit I tried to start from scratch. In the meager time available, surrounded by these great behemoth structures, I frantically worked at creating my own worthy addition. The finished result was of course, mediocre by comparison and gone when I went back the next day. I was not surprised at all.
Having taken on some wisdom from the experience, this second time I created a beast headed robot figure standing with his hands forming a namaste. This beast, though relatively ordinary on its own, found it rightful place high up on the front of another creator or creators great temple. With grand staircase below and mighty DNA representative tower behind him. Two days later I went back and my mighty beast had survived, albeit with some minor modifications.
Lego Towers
On the next visit I found the remains of a fallen behemoth that had donated some of it’s very being to the rise of some other great creation. It was a worthy tower in its own right so I crafted unto it a sturdy new base, crowned it with the top taken off another tower and built a rather solid bridge across to the even mightier high rise next to it. The creation shalt thus survive until there is either no pissant little creation nearby to dismantle. Or it gets in the way of another persons grand vision. Much like real life really.
“Our whole civilisation is a collaborative effort”
Which set the old brain in motion in the direction of the old adage that no art is created in a vacuum. Even more so, nothing at all is. Everything we do is inspired by something else. A lot of what we create relies on the efforts of others. Our whole civilisation is a collaborative effort. The western world has this fixation with protecting intellectual property as if the person that came up with this particular slant on an idea should hold all rights to it and woe unto anyone that dare create anything remotely similar. Then we end up with bollocks like Apple trying to patent round corners on a device or the Mavin Gaye’s greedy family vs Pharrell and Robin Thicke case. If we stifle the ability of others to build upon our creations then we stifle innovation. We limit that which can be created.
Anyway… here’s a dreamified deepdream version just because.
Deepdream lego city
Anyway, go down there and play with some Lego. Though best be quick about it cos the gallery is closing on the 10th for quite some time.
Here we have another chapter on the life journey of Harun bin Perci al-Zelandi and a wee treatise on that great enigma “The meaning of life”
And lo, Harun Bin Perci al-Zelandi did venture forth unto the countryside and it was all very pleasant up there in his caravan in his paddock, surrounded by lambs and grass and rednecks. By day, hawks flew vigil overhead while bellbirds and tuis called out in the trees. By night, the sound of rampant cattle beasts in the surrounding farm land and sneaksie stock rustlers killing sheep.
Alas, the place was all together uninspiring for the cultured sensitivities of a great prophet and sage. Hence the total lack of updates. He could write about shit that would be highly amusing but got people in trouble or ramble on about the banalities of eating and sleeping. Much like so many fools Facebook feeds. Then again, posting images of his fathers cooking disasters could have provided much mirth.
Ultimately though, the meaning of life could not be found in a caravan in a paddock in Eketahuna. Now, back in the great urbanised locality of the Hutt Valley, Harun shall share his musings with renewed vigour! Allahu akhbar!
Country retreat
Speaking of the meaning of life…
Early on in the piece, your humble narrator did muse about a place in Thailand and Laos called Sala Kae Ku. Wandering into his hotel one night in Nong Khai he chanced upon a piece of black and white printed A4 which stated “The meaning of life is in Nong Khai” and happened to be the key to all those confounding mythological statues located at Sala Kae Ku. He thought he’d share this with his avid readers and random Google searchers…
aronimus took a photo of it, but fortunately another traveller managed to scan a copy of a similar document, though without purporting to know the meaning of life, merely claiming to be a diagram of The Wheel of Life. Which looks much better than aronimus’ grainy image, so here it is.
Wheel of life
Bask in its awesomeness! If you click on it, it’s actually big enough to read the text, no less. Anyways, it all about being born and marrying and rooting and breeding and cheating and ultimately dying. While all this is going on, one is dodging or embracing the influences of te poaka (police), suits, love, crims and beggars among other things. So armed with this legendary piece of A4 born wisdom, may thou safely navigate the influences on your horizons. Make of it what thou will.
Go forth and be born and live full lives and die a good death! Amen.
Harun takes the dog for a morning walk in Eketahuna and does some Qigong next to an electrified compound.
The sun did stream in this morning and Harun did venture forth from the freezing cold confines of his caravan. By night there is a tendency for the skies to clear and many a star can be seen. The milky way shows itself in magnificent brilliance. So quiet too…. very peaceful! Except it is bitterly cold and after a brief observance of the workings of the universe, Harun is forced inside to the relative comfort of his cheap Warehouse oil column heater. There are benefits to this, for Harun needeth no refrigerator. Here merely places his milk and beers outside the door.
Vertically growing tree on Cliff Walk.
Having consumed breakfast he took the family dog Mate aka Pukanani aka Manatle for a walk around this small town. This included Eketahuna’s one and only walking track, Cliff Walk. Harun mused unto himself that a rather nice walk it is too. The sun was streaming down and Harun took in the vista of tree and river and State Highway 2. This was pleasing unto Harun and he declared this to henceforth be, his super secret gong spot! It also happened to be right next to some random survivalist’s electrified compound. There was a 2 metre high electric fence and video cameras and warning signs though the place was clearly uninhabited at present. He proceed to engage in the Chinese monastic Qigong system Jen Jhi Dao (Pearl Way of Heaven) in front of the local bovine community. They were not very interested, in fact they were blissfully unaware as they milled about on the river flats below, munching grass and chewing cud. Mate performed his own gongs the whole time, by gleefully excavating dirt around an old pine tree. Harun shall go further into Jen Jhi Dao at a later date for it would seem the internet knows not of its very existence.
The ancient tennis club ruins situated at Eketahuna
Feeling both relaxed and invigorated from his exertions, Harun and Mate carried on their way. They came upon a pine forest… an overgrown and broken forest it was. They ventured forth and the forest did yield a large clearing which contained the magnificent ruins of the old Eketahuna Tennis Club. Some miscreant had sprayed “FTP” upon the wall in blatant disregard for a place of such historic significance!
Now satisfied with their morning adventures, the pair did stroll on back to the abode.
Here we have an image of the bush being cleared in order to establish the town of Eketahuna. Way, way back in the pioneering days… aronimus did lurk in the bushes observing the locals. Much like David Attenborough but with an anthropological bent. With the application of camouflage, stealth and great skill he did take this shot with his trusty pocket camera. We see here in plain view, those classic tools of the early Scandinavian settler… the Toyota Hilux and the bulldozer.
Historic Eketahuna in the days of the pioneers
Here we have another image of the Toyota Hilux Spray Wagon. That great weapon against the troublesome gorse scourge the moved in to replace the native forest that had been felled.
Toyota Hilux Spray wagon
Tagging along beside is that mighty hunter of the wild New Zealand bush, the golden labrador.
