<Wednesday, 1st September 2010>
im reading a digital book on my desktop computer which is in another room, by accessing the computer remotely over wifi on my iPad using an ap.
It's like turning the pages of a distant book using an arcade claw crane controlled by joystick, whilst reading the words and writing notes on a chalkboard via submarine periscope.
It's like learning to walk again, you have to rewire you entire mind...
surprisingly easy!
The book i'm reading is called 'the shallows' by nicholas carr.
Snakes and Ladders.
"The other evening we are watching the Nightly Business News, ever eager to pick up a clue and - bingo! - there it was. The expert of the hour mentioned casually, as a mere point of clarification, that they were not talking about the "real" economy. Duh . . .there's more than one? Turns out, there's the official economy and then there is the real economy, yours and mine. What does the real economy have to do with pattern design?" At harvest time this fall we will experience a plateau in which the economy seems stalled. We'll find that all the low (and barely reachable) fruit has been picked and we'll need a tall ladder. It's time to teach yourself to make something; learn to build that ladder. The fruit will cease to be the goal. You will have a beautiful ladder and a great skill, and maybe a new ladder company. Make something, start with a pattern, it promises a whole new future."
- Center for Pattern Design, August 2010 Newswire. www.centerforpatterndesign.com
<Wednesday, 25th August 2010>
I would like to create a collection to show at London Fashion Week in February 2011.
I seek partners, sponsors, space, materials, advice and a supportive audience to achieve this.
You may think that having already staged a lot of shows and exhibitions in the past that this should be a fairly easy goal to achieve, but my goals are not the same as they once were and the world continually changes. Nothing ever stays still. That's fashion.
Making the right connections, being in the right company and choosing the right moment and style is not something i do alone.
I must also be chosen to rise to the challenges and opportunities presented to me.
I've not run anything bigger than my own company or university course, because i have not yet been promoted any higher or asked to take on any bigger challenge. We talk confidently and authoritatively when we are given the opportunity to. We rise to the occasion.
I do not have a studio, i do not have a team, i do not have a sponsor or backer, i am not managed, i am not funded by anything other than my own endeavours, i do not own a house, or a car, or a factory, or any small fortune. But i am industrious.
I have skills and a distinctive style, and i have contacts and experience, and perhaps more people know of me than are known by me.
I can only make myself attractive, or the right kind of ugly. I'm as out-there as anyone like me can ever be.
Here is some work i did earlier, some collaborations with audiences and students in different countries, some people i have helped evolve, and who have been part of my own creative evolution, and who have helped me become different and to go further and to want more.
Thank you to everyone who was involved and who was there.
Click here to download a free PDF image package souvenir. Please forward it on.
Do i stay or do i go?
<Wednesday, 18th August 2010>
Tipping Point
Interesting articles on Zero-Waste pattern cutting in Sundays New York Times newspaper and New York Magazine:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/fashion/15waste.html?_r=2
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/08/ambitious_parsons_kids_aim_to.html
Lulu.
<Wednesday, 11h August 2010>
Uniting Kingdoms.
Creativity thrives in recession,
it's like a fungus, it's resistant,
it grows in the most unlikely and most unhospitable places,
between the cracks, against the grain, contraband,
against all odds, without budget,
where the sun don't shine.
If you want to stunt creativity, then throw lots of money at it.
Then you get a lot of idiot fashion designers, architects, artists and musicians
hanging out and singing crap songs.
You have to nurture the right environment for creativity to grow,
both on display in the spotlight,
and in the shadows hidden from view,
popular and underground,
the idols,
and the will to tear them down,
or paint them fluoro yellow.
Home Home.
<Wednesday, 4th August 2010>
Last days of peace.
On days like this decisions were made to beat a hasty retreat,
to write a song, to fire a gun,
to say what needed to be said,
to split up, to sign a deal,
to change the course of history forever.
Ordinary days,
where the rain hangs in the air like mist
when it ought to have been sunny,
wet weekends,
forced to stay indoors and draw,
inventing criminals to capture.
History needs rewriting, future events invented
and made to happen more remarkably.
We'll never know what's coming,
how one moment everything was one way,
and the next another, contrary to memory.
It only takes a day like today,
and a pen
and a vague feeling
and you have the beginning of a new dream,
fast becoming yesterdays worse nightmare.
Everything is made.
nature and humanity,
problems and solutions,
progression and regression,
accidents and designs.
There is only ever one direction,
and that's forward.
We never occupy the past or present.
Sleep is our only pause.
We can't stop making things,
we can only try harder to make less bad stuff,
to make better use of what we have,
and much better stuff than ever before.
RIP Mac Powerbook 2004-2010. Farewell old buddy.
Got new equipment to test-drive now...
Time for a culture change.
Unpaid work experience is essential at some point in your career, and great experience for students honing skills and getting early contacts, but fashion design studios are working on a false economy if they build unpaid skills/labor into their manufacture/production process: Their long term profitability as a business/brand is questionable when large parts of their output is unsustainable, unregulated and unethical.
Labor is an asset, and assets must be properly valued!
The current level of unpaid labor and the expectation now put on graduates to work for nothing for long periods of time needs to be regulated, and self-regulation/ culture-change is much better than heavy-handed laws which would simply get in the way, or create counter-productive loop-holes.
I drink from a paper cup,
and throw it away.
Kate Moss drinks from a paper cup,
and it becomes a collectors item.
If i ask 10 girls to wear 10 dresses for 1 hour,
and do anything they choose whilst wearing it, that might add value in the eyes of a collector,
then what could they add, and what price would someone pay??
..if they went somewhere hard to reach, if they cried in it, travelled a distance,
leapt out of a plane, drenched it with adrenalin, rolled in the dust, got soaked to the skin,
bled, did something truly memorable, historic, celebrated, captured the moment,
lived, died, broke the law, made themselves cum ...
My ideal office... coffee and cereal in bed til midday as i sort through papers and correspondence like Churchill, then a spot of lunch.
I became an uncle yesterday! Here is my 2day old nephew Reece Roberts meeting his Grandpa Peter Reece Roberts (my dad)...
Leybourne Lake, New Hythe... I always make a b-line for the largest expanse of water when i need to gather my thoughts...
Ghost Town,
emptied of my spirit
unhaunted even by memories absence,
loveless,
sleeping with the enemy,
choking on cigarette smoke,
grey yellowing to burnt orange,
deep and bitter on the side of her tongue,
tip-toeing, tripping over,
the end of god,
the earth spewing out its insides,
malignant in nature, brown-black like treacle.
Julian Roberts is pushing 40 pulling 25, 5'8" running 5k then push60 3days a week, 26 homes lived 0 owned, 18 countries worked, fallen in love 6 times heartbreaker 5:1, family of 6 now 5 heart disease on both sides, no children, 2 college degrees 1 professorship resigned, 1 handful of close friends 000s of aquaintances more female than male, now living 213 miles from where i was born 255 miles from where i always dreamt i'd end up.
Further from home
I need to get out of the house sometimes and stretch my legs/ clear my head.
I create my own GPS maps as i run through unknown territories.
I ran my first 15mile 'Lone-Wolf Half-Marathon', trace my steps in 3D here:
http://ws.mapmyfitness.com/flyby-panama/index.html?route_key=829128283797643666&site=mapmyrun.com
Human flora
As there are more than 10 times as many bacterial microbes in the human body than actual human cells, we are made up of more stuff that isn't us than is us.
Death only ever kills the smaller part.
next>>
All garments, video, graphics, websites and text are copyrighted to Julian Roberts (c) 2009. A lot of the images assembled above came from Google or somewhere, and are the copyright of their original owner. But their assembly together is very much my own doing, it's difficult to say really where creative ownership begins & ends, i'm certainly not averse to creative trespass. So no reproduction without permission, unless you're feeling subversive, punk.