Play- Royal Wedding and NOW! TV box

So the other day I mentioned OPEN Ealing staging a play at the Pop-Up shop in west Ealing, I thought it was set for December performance it's September (next week) here's what the blurb says..

Royal Wedding is a sparky new comedy that conjures up a chance encounter between the privately-educated director of an arts centre and the more worldly owner of an erotic goods emporium next door. Specially written for OPEN Ealing by Wally Sewell, the play was inspired by the siting of OPEN’s own performance space in an empty shop next door to West Ealing’s famed Cherry Pye erotic lingerie outlet.



The Playwright

As the play opens. a hole has just appeared in the wall between the two imaginary establishments, leading to some boisterous wordplay between our two protagonists, artist Tarquin Pritchard-Smith and sex shop owner Queen Bee. This one-act performance examines issues such as class, snobbery, and the place of the artist in wider society, with some laughs and surprises along the way. Performances of Royal Wedding will take place at OPENShop 13 Drayton Green Road, W13 0NG, at the following times:

 

And here's the details of when it's on and the cost

 

Thursday 5, Friday 6 and Saturday 7 September 7.30 pm.

Matinee Saturday 7 September 3 pm.

Thursday 12, Friday 13 and Saturday 14 September 7.30 pm.

Matinee Saturday 14 September 3 pm.

Cost  £7 per person and it's not suitable for kids!
 

Now! TV Box

Got my NOW! TV box yesterday, comes well boxed with power supply and HDMI cable very easy to set up on Wi-Fi and now working - more as I use it..

PIR at home and the end of the road with Big Idea # 200, the is/ought problem

Simple lunch

There's something nice about bookshops, even a simple regional Waterstone's can offer pleasurable time browsing(I know that Amazon are destroying them with their low prices and almost infinite choice).
The other day I was looking at a book that had some National Trust connection with different authors who espoused various pleasures and 'the good life' one of the pleasures was home produced food and at this time we're able to enjoy some of this - at the weekend I roasted some potatoes I had grown and yesterday for lunch I had tomato, cucumber, 2 sorts of basil, olives (shop bought) and Mozzarella cheese for lunch with  a glass of beer - lovely.

PIR Sensor

Driven light

The other endeavour for me was to (almost) finish off installation of a replacement light in the garden, the idea is to both deter intruders and also provide light when visiting the dustbin or garage.
A PIR (Passive infrared) sensor works on infra red emissions ands when triggered this causes light to illuminate - clever stuff.

The sensor and light were about £10 each but time and effort on this 'project' was quite a bit and I was employing some bits and pieces that I already  had/existed- quite pleasing to have it working but not a job for a complete beginner.
There are adjustments to make to make to the sensor  so it works as I wish but the devices basically work just needs tidying and finishing off.

The last Big Idea number 200, the is/ought problem

Somewhat out of sequence and after some searching (no prize up for grabs now) I have found that the missing entry (mistake on my part not Crofton's) is that knotty is/ought problem.

I don't know if the slip is a Freudian one but perhaps this is topic  a better way to wrap up the project I set myself....
Hume was the first modern philosopher to raise the issue in 'A Treatise on Human Nature' way back in 1736, Hume found that there seems to be a significant difference between the descriptive statements  that are about what is and the prescriptive or normative statements which are about what ought to be, and it is not obvious how one can get from making descriptive statements to prescriptive. The is–ought problem is also known as Hume's law and Hume's Guillotine.
Ayn Rand the US writer was al;o fascinated by the dichotomy her consideration came from the following..

"Lead is poisonous" would be an "is" statement, this view would then ask, what does that have to do with morality? Should we eat it? Should we not? A supporter of the is-ought dichotomy would say that no matter how long you stare at the three words "mercury is poisonous," no "ought" will appear—you can't deduce anything that didn't already exist in your premises—so you have no way to conclude whether you ought or ought not to eat it.
Rand dealt with the problem by attacking it at the root. According to Rand, the bridge between the "is" and the "ought," between reality and morality, between fact and value is the concept "life." If you choose to live, that instantly implies a whole slew of values, i.e. "oughts." One of those "oughts" would be that you shouldn't ingest poisons, Lead included, because if you do, your life will soon go out of existence.
Coming back to the topic of this question—Rand's statement that every is implies an ought—she really does mean "every." Even boring, trivial facts such as "the sky is blue" imply "oughts." What does "the sky is blue imply"? One implication would be: if look outside during the day and the sky is dark, that means that you ought to take your umbrella if you go out.

The is/ought principle epitomises much of the human condition and perhaps even something of free will ...
Something to thin about - Thanks Mr Ian Crofton (seen here on the left) for this and the other 199 (Big) ideas.

OPEN Ealing Collage along with Idea 199 Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Created at Snail's pace by Matisse

Last night we had a session at OPEN Ealing that was a sort of 'add-on' to the Modern Art course the subject was Collage which Nick (OPEN's very own Art Director)  thought as a fairly 20th century phenomenon warranted a single session.
Collage is derived from the French term to stick and is now accepted as a  form of art in which various materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric are arranged and stuck to a backing.

Early example from Picasso

Some give George Braque and Pablo Picasso the credit for 'inventing' modern Collage but there other figures who used it through the century including Germany's Schwitters, Britain's Hamilton and a fine example is Matisse's Snail which he created in his latter years (1953).

(Interesting to know that there's likely to be a December play at OPEN Ealing with central characters that include an Art Director and a sexy underwear shop owner..)

Idea 199 Structuralism and Post-structuralism

Structuralism
Now this is actually Ian Crofton's last big Idea in his book but is idea 199 for me (more on this tomorrow).
 Structuralism is a form of critical thinking born out of linguistics in the 1950s, it centres on signs and symbols (I think semiotics is relevant and interesting here too).
Structuralism is defined as 'a method of analysing phenomena, as in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, or literature, chiefly characterized by contrasting the elemental structures of the phenomena in a system of binary opposition'.

Roland Barthes (1915-80) on the right here was a French philosopher  who was a big figure in the movement and gave  the example that wrestling is  an example of the hero/villain opposition.
Here's a presentation on 'Functionalism and Structuralism'

Poststructuralism
Poststructuralists  are sceptical...
Poststructuralism is about  theories which arose after the structuralist period in continental philosophy they  use structuralism but do not accept all of its ideas. Poststructuralists believe in the importance of discourse for understanding social life and question the idea of the self-determining individual, but they do not believe that people's actions can be entirely reduced to an external structure. Often, they study the ways in which structures can be subverted and broken down through their own limits or through ironic reinterpretation or reconfiguration of the structure itself.
A big name in the arrival at a  Poststructuralist theory is Ferdinand Saussure.
Here's some more ..

Issac Cordal, Now TV and Big Idea #198 is Surrealism

Part of  “Follow the Leaders”

I don't know if you've heard of Issac Cordal he's a sculpture artist from Galicia, Spain (now based in London I think). His sculptures are of little people sculpted from concrete in ‘real’ situations. Cordal  manages to capture a lot of emotion in his work.
I learnt of him from a facebook posting, seems that in Nantes, the city once known as the European capital of the human slave trade  his latest work is showing it's called “Follow the Leaders” and is “a reflection on our inertia as a social mass,”
Sadly it ends this week, not sure where it goes next?

Now TV box ordered

Now TV box at £10 box proved irresistible, have ordered will update the blog on what it does when I get it .

Big Idea 198 (I think?) is Surrealism

As I thunder towards the end of Crofton's Big Ideas in Brief I find something has gone wrong either there aren't 200 or I've missed one out (a prize if you can find the missing idea!), anyway today we're on Surrealism.

Surrealist influences abound in the 'modern' world, reflect on advertising and it's connecting of disparate subjects or the LP covers of years gone by ('Wish you were here' for example perhaps).
In fact having reviewed the topic it's surprising to see such an influential movement being dominated by so few characters. Somewhat inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud on the subconscious it's  a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s. Principally known for its visual artworks and writings the aim of surrealism was according to The 20th-Century art book "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality."

After the Dada group Andre Breton went on to start and lead the Surrealist movement in 1924. In New York, Breton and his colleagues curated Surrealist exhibitions that introduced ideas of automatism and intuitive art making to the first Abstract Expressionists. Breton worked in various creative media, focusing on collage and printmaking as well as writing books. Breton  re-imagined ways in which words and images could be combined through chance  to create new word-image combinations..
Other figures strongly associated with Surrealism are the great self publicist Salvador Dali and the seemingly bourgeois Belgian Rene Magritte.
Here's an introduction..