Ged Carroll

Category: london | 倫敦 | 런던 | ロンドン

Why London?

First of all I live in London, I put down my roots here because of work. Commuting from the outside towns into the city takes a long time. People only tend to do that when they don’t have to come in every day or getting their kids into a good school is important for them.

Secondly it is an area distinct from the rest of the UK, this is partly down to history and the current economic reality. It is distinct in terms of population make-up and economic opportunity. London has a culture that is distinct from the rest of the UK, partly due to its population make-up. Over 30 percent of the city’s inhabitants were born in another country. From music to fashion, its like a different country:

  • As one women’s clothing retailer once said on a news interview ‘The further north you go; the more skin you see’.
  • The weekend is a huge thing outside the city. By comparison, it isn’t the big deal in London. The reason was that there were things you could enjoy every night of the week.
  • You can get a good cup of coffee
  • The city was using cashless payments way before it became universal elsewhere in the country
  • The line has extended into politics. London opposed Brexit. London, like other major cities it is one of the last holdouts of Labour party support in the 2019 UK general election

London posts often appear in other categories, as it fulfils multiple categories.

If there are London subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Smooth jazz & things that made last week

    I tried to keep the crazy in the week under control listening to smooth jazz. However the week has been just as insane as last week. Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou is out on bail, but Donald Trump cast a shadow on the whole process by a saying that he was quite prepared to use her freedom as a pawn in his trade dispute with China. Telling China that the rule of law is malleable isn’t a good move from a strategic point-of-view. Suddenly everything is negotiable, which incentivises bad actor behaviour. 

    As for Brexit, the words of Danny Dyer still ring true:

    Who knows about Brexit? No one has got a fucking clue what Brexit is… You watch Question Time, it’s comedy. No one knows what it is. It’s like this mad riddle…

    Danny Dyer, Good Morning Britain – ITV (June 28, 2018)

    How smooth jazz originated and took off

    How habit-forming products are made by Nir Eyal. This is all pretty dark and illustrates how modern apps are and web services are made habit forming.

    There are a series of Christmas themed adverts at the moment that riff on Christmas animation The Snowman by Barbour and Irn Bru’s original and belated sequel ad.

    Uber has got into the Christmas spirit by putting a limited amount of toy themed cars out on to the streets of Paris.

    Matt Farah’s Watch and Listen podcasts is one of the better YouTube channels out there. Their interview with Jean-Marc Pontrué, the CEO of Panerai is a level of insight that you wouldn’t normally have. One key observation is that Richemont has turned SIHH into a fan event for their brands as other houses have withdrawn. It is part of a wider more engaged attitude that Panerai takes with its fans compared to the likes of Rolex. I think that its a smart move as luxury is still about experiences.

  • Dawns Mine Crystal – Yunchul Kim

    Dawns Mine Crystal is an exhibition on at the Korean Cultural Centre between now and November 3, 2018. I was invited to a preview of it. The title Dawns Mine Crystals a reference to the material world and its intersection with symbols and metaphors.

    Thanks to Korean Cultural Centre @kccuk in London for invite to preview Dawns Mine Crystal exhibition by Yunchul Kim #contemporaryart #londonart

    Dawns mine crystal reminds me of science fiction from the mid-20th century, vacuum tube based electronics and the Russian film Solaris. The chromed ray gun type appearance reminded me of everything from vintage Flash Gordon, art deco object d’art, Americana and 1950s science fiction like The Day The Earth Stood Still. I also thought about my Dad who used to visit electronics junk shops when I was a small kid that would be full of everything from valve driven circuits to wartime radar components.

    The form and function of devices had a beauty to them like vintage fighter planes or the silver cathedral like structures of the chemical and petrochemical industries. I thought about Solaris when I stared into the swirling liquid surfaces of some of the installations, like storm clouds rippling across an alien planet.

    It is well worth going to see, Mr Kim merges the world of art and science together in a way that is mesmerising and entertaining. It is unsurprising, given the works link to Arts at CERN, that the art pieces have a very scientific bent to them. The works will be part of a bigger exhibition that will tour venues in France during 2019 and 2020.

    Be sure to catch it at the Korean Cultural Centre before it finishes. The Korean Cultural Centre does a really good job of curating exhibitions by Korean artists and promotes the works of Korean film makers with regular screenings at the centre.

    Mr Kim is a Seoul-based artist, composer and founder of Studio Locus Solus in Seoul. He’s exhibited in German, Spain, China and the United States. More related content here.

  • The future starts here & other things this week

    I had an amazing opportunity to see the V&A exhibition The Future Starts Here as a preview. The Future Starts Here is a collection of 100 objects that the V&A think might be indicators of the near future. smart appliances to satellites, artificial intelligence to internet culture, this exhibition brought together more than 100 objects as a landscape of possibilities for the near future.

    This includes

    • Smart appliances
    • Autonomous sailing ship
    • Micro-satellites
    • 3D face scanned sculptures
    • Masdar City, the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, Foster + Partner

    faces

    The local Unilever business in Hong Kong did their own version of a Dove advertising campaign. What’s interesting is how it differs in tonality from the usual Dove work.

    ‘Appreciate don’t adjudicate’ is very local. Cantonese is laden with puns and symbolism. It is a fluid living language (despite the efforts of the Communist Party of China). Or as Campaign Asia put it:

    The campaign is “by locals, for locals” and because Cantonese is famously colloquial and fond of wordplay, the use of Cantonese lingo is expected to resonate with the audience.

    Over 100 sony aibo robot dogs get their own funeral in japan – so much here on human robot interactions and a meditation on the metaphysics of quality. This contrasts with the horror that greeted demos of Google Duplex.

    I am a big fan of Eno’s Oblique Strategies so this was right up my street: The Quietus | News | WATCH: Brian Eno Installations Talk

    Interview with JJ Connolly, the Author of Layer Cake and Viva La Madness – YouTube – great interview with JJ Connolly of The Layer Cake. I particularly like his description of his creative process. More related content here.

  • Citizen M Hotel & other things this week

    Citizen M Hotel

    I had some meetings and discovered what a good meeting space the lobby of the Citizen M Hotel in Bankside is. The downside I managed to lose my favourite pen, that was my fault; not the hotel. Of course, that didn’t take the sting out of it.

    The Citizen M Hotel lobby area is part lobby, part co-working space that feels airy, but with some privacy, which makes it ideal for the kind of discussions that I was having at the time. It’s comfortable, but not opulent or luxurious by any stretch of the imagination.

    Eames lounger

    My dream chair is an Eames lounger and I am fascinated by production processes. This video from fulfils both admirably; showing how the Eames chair is made. A few things struck me abut the manufacturing process:

    • The dynamic nature of curved plywood, that is used in ways that plastics might be used now for structural strength, for instance in the Aeron chair that I am currently sat in.
    • The user serviceability of the product item, making it relatively easy to repair for a user or a professional with the right tools and parts.
    • In the same way that we’ve been divorced from how our food is grown, globalisation has divorced us from how things are made. This is particularly true in a de-industrialised country like the UK

    Jeremy Healy

    This week, I went back, way back, back into time and ended up listening to this mix of Jeremy Healy at Hot To Trot. What gets me about this is diversity of the set. The slight crunchiness in the beat mixing early on adds to its charm. Now of course, these sets would be laid out in Digidesign allowing for a seamless flow. More culture related content here.

    Chinese privacy

    This Chinese made video on privacy has more than an element of truth beneath the humour. It would give Black Mirror a good run for its money.

    Global digital snapshot

    Last thought… 2018 Q2 Global Digital Statshot by wearesocial

  • Yahoos and things this week

    Catching up with fellow former Yahoos. Employees of Yahoo! were known as Yahoos. All three of us worked on the European marketing team in London at the time when web 2.0 was kicking off. It was great to see my fellow former Yahoos. We kicked around the move away from quality in online media, historic ‘pirated television reception’ in Ireland, the worrying state of brand marketing and new ventures. If you are looking for high-quality male grooming products Charles has been working on Scrubd.

    tres Yahoo! deliquentes

    Andrew Tuck tells the Monocle story on the Mediamasters podcast. Really interesting origin story – what’s interesting is the contrarian thinking of Tyler Brûlé. Monocle is notable for building a print magazine in the face of a digital onslaught of media. More media related content here.

    Great interview with Roger Smith about the wonders of mechanical watch.

    Smith worked with Dr. George Daniels who invented the co-axial movement which has been a major step forward in mechanical watch making – changing the way power is delivered that is more efficient and can improve accuracy.

    Smith is exceptionally articulate about the technical differences of the different watches from high accuracy quartz watches to classic Rolex and Omega movements.

    Antonio Da Silva’s Hell’s Night where famous film characters interact in one night club stunned me when I saw it a few years ago. In the meantime he did a sequel and has had time to work on the colour grading of the video to make it even more mesmerising.

    Hell’s Club

    Hell’s Club Two

    Finally I am surprised that this was something I hadn’t heard already – what if the late great Terry Wogan had listened to Skibadee or MC GQ vintage mixtapes and Rinse FM? Peter Serafiniwicz channels The TWOG$.

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