Myopedia

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2009-10-18T20:42:26Z

My title? It's the Fibonacci Series – a mathematical sequence that starts off with small numbers and, very quickly, leads to much larger ones. It shows up in the strangest of places – financial trading strategies, the tuning of some musical instruments, and in the number of scales on a pine cone. And it also came to mind while I was at Manchester's Chinese Arts Centre, and looking at One Degree Of Separation, an installation created by Hong Kong artists specifically for display

The Hong Kong art community consists of graduates from the Fine Art Department of the Chinese University, Hong Kong, and they only take 22 students per year. Close to 100 of those graduates have taken studios in Fotan, just to the north of the University itself. This makes for a small and tight-knit community of talent, all feeding from the same pool of financial support and inspiration.

Chinese Whispers, comprising sixteen pieces by a group of five artists from this community, consciously draws inspiration from this inherently competitive, artistically incestuous cocoon. The group agreed a few simple rules, the most important of which is that each piece must draw a connection, be it literal or figurative, from the work immediately preceding it in the sequence. This is where I started thinking about maths, and wondering just how deep the later works in the sequence were going to get. I wasn't far off.

The earlier works in the series are, in truth, quite simple – certainly good, but lacking complexity. But about halfway through, there's a noticeable change of gear. Driven by the sense of competition, by the need to produce better work, by wanting to give the next artist a bit more to work with, the works become increasingly more personal and more powerful. Certainly that's the case in piece number 11 - trailing around Hong Kong being introduced as “the artist's girlfriend” led to Tribute to Inside Looking Out – For The Male Artists Along My Way by Wong Wai Yin. Seen peeking from behind a pile of books in a previous piece in the sequence, Wai Yin's video shows a feminist side to her sensibility as an artist which surprised even her. Pieces twelve and beyond, I feel, will warrant a second viewing at a later date.

All mathematical trickery aside, let it be said that the other works on display here are not overshadowed at all. The nature of the constant tightrope-walking act demanded of Hong Kong's artists, stuck between art, commerce, and the gentle, parentally kind hand of the Chinese government soaks through every piece on display. Satirical messages are acrostically hidden in till receipts. Silent but pained displays of remembrance, based around the anniversary of the Tienanmen Square protests are pinned to the centre's walls immediately next to the till receipts. There is no incongruity here - the comic and the tragic are just as woven together in Hong Kong life as anywhere else.

It did come as a surprise that these works struck such a chord in the hearts of not only a southern Englishman on permanent vacation in the North, but also of a Midwesterner looking to put down roots in the UK. But they did, and so I politely suggest that you come and seek your own meanings from these fragments of Hong Kong life – and death – dropped into the Northern Quarter.

One Degree of Separation will be on display at the Chinese Arts Centre, Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester M4 1EU, until 9th January 2010.

24fps: TRANSFORMERS (2007)

2009-04-19T22:26:01Z

So you have a childhood dream. Maybe it's about a car that talks. Maybe it's about being a mutant. Maybe it's about owning a pony. Maybe it's about these really cool robots, right, that can become everyday things like cars and jets and that. And then you grow up, and you recall that dream fondly but you don't worry about it too much. And then you see that someone you don't really like as a writer or director has got the rights to the merchandising machine that your dream came from, and you're worried he's about to poop all over it. Sound familiar?

Let me make one thing clear from the outset. I am simultaneously the best and worst person possible to write this review. I have been a complete and utter TF fanboy since 1984. I read the Marvel UK comic, I owned a few of the toys, I was glued to the original animated film with Leonard Nimoy and Orson Welles; I bought into the franchise from age 8 – lock, stock and proton cannon. So it is completely impossible to make a Transformers film that would satisfy me, short of actually building the big shiny shape-shifting robots and letting the buggers loose in a major city. That said - how close did Spielberg and Bay come?

Well, it wasn't as far away as I feared. Shia LaBoeuf successfully carried the film as lead human, Sam Witwicky. Jon Voight took his role just seriously enough to be a convincing Defense Secretary, and naturally – since he's been voicing the role since the year dot – Peter Cullen did everything right as Optimus Prime, from the quotations from his original box to the big six-panel speeches that have always been his trademark. And Spielberg did not give into what's become, in his later career, his trademark cloying sentimentality. Yes, there was a scene with a trusting small girl and a Frickin' Enormous Robot, but it was actually cute for once.

And I'll concede that, taken as a Big Dumb Popcorn Movie, it hit all the right notes. There were lots of big explosions and complicated transformation sequences. There was the inevitable chase scene between two very fast cars. So the kids watching this will have said, on the way out of the cinema, “Wow, I wish our car did that! Can I have all those toys?”. In that sense, the film can be judged as a total success. But dear lord, can Michael Bay take a metric asston of money and piss it away on special effects, or what?

You have Frickin' Enormous Robots. You have teeny-weeny humans. There must be a way, surely, to have action sequences that contribute to telling the story at hand simply. To combine the titanic machines and the weak but plucky humans, without it all turning into a mad whirly spinning fustercluck which makes the viewer feel like they've just stepped off a roller-coaster in the middle of the ride. But if you're going to find that way, you don't employ Michael Bay to do it. And frankly, making the robots overly complicated made his job much harder. Yes, it distinguished these robots in disguise from the one in the car advert, but “Whose-is-this-limb” is not a game I want to be playing in the middle of the climactic fight between good and evil.

So I think it could have been done better by giving the directing job to someone, anyone else. It's just a pity that they've given it to him again for the sequel. Will I be rolling out to the cinema for it? Probably. Y'see, once upon a time, millions of years before the coming of humanity, this spaceship from another world crashed into Mount St. Helens in Washington State...

24fps: SIN CITY

2008-12-23T15:41:45Z

Imagine a pint of bitter that’s nine-tenths froth. Think of tasting a martini with the merest hint of gin. Try eating a cheeseburger that’s all bap, no meat and precious little cheese. Sit down and watch Sin City.

It’s hard to see how it turned out this way. In very different ways, the two directors have peerless pedigrees when it comes to hard-bitten action. Robert Rodriguez brings the experience of directing Desperado and Spy Kids to this work – and anyone who can helm two such radically different films can probably handle anything. Frank Miller had no directorial experience at all – but he is the writer of the near-legendary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns, to which the recent Batman films owe a great debt. Quite how they managed to produce this film where style overwhelms any possible substance baffles me.

The characterisation is paper thin throughout. There are some standout performances; Bruce Willis as Tragic Hero Cop™ Hartigan, and Mickey Rourke as Marv, a psychopathic torturing murderer whose heart is in the right place. Most of the male characters that we follow are riddled with precisely those kinds of internal contradictions. But the same essentially one-dimensional attitude is taken towards the film’s female characters. What that leads us to is a succession of hookers, waitresses and pole dancers – and one Japanese assassin lifted straight from the manga tradition. It’s all terribly easy on the eye, but it’s all a little bit too casual for my taste, and I found it very hard to care about any of them.

The background to all this is equally thin – literally so, as the majority of the scenery is a computer generated version of the original comic book city blocks. It’s a copy of a copy, and while it’s all wonderfully atmospheric, it again lacks the painful clarity of Luc Besson’s 23rd century New York, or the hideous emotional depth of Tim Burton’s Gotham City.

But the key problem, from a story telling point of view, is that this is an anthology film, made up of several of the best early plots from the original Sin City comic books. When you can sit down and re-read the same pages repeatedly, it's ok to flash back and forwards, and dropping little easter eggs in - seeing characters from one story in another story is a nice touch. Except that the immediacy of the medium of film changes our perspective. When we see several characters casually drinking together in a bar, and they all died particularly gruesome deaths earlier in the film - what we’re looking at? Given the hallucinatory nature of the work, are we seeing an earlier fragment of this timeline, or have those characters somehow dodged or avoided the deaths that we saw?

I don’t want to say I didn’t enjoy it, because on some levels I did. The thick vein of black comedy running throughout the film made me laugh out loud several times, and seeing the likes of Carla Gugino and Jaime King mother-naked certainly stirred the blood. But not much of the film reached my brain, and while there’s a place for action movies, something as essentially trivial as this didn’t really reach my heart either. All the style in the world can’t make up for a single well-written, well told story, and that's one thing that Sin City can't provide.

24fps: ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

2008-03-28T15:22:45Z

As the timing on this post shows, it's difficult enough to review films one at a time. “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” makes things much harder, as it is essentially a film within a play within a play within a play. But don't let that put you off – while knowing “Hamlet” will mean you get more out of this film, if you've ever heard the phrase “To be, or not to be”, you will have a whale of a time watching it.
“R&G Are Dead” is about two minor characters from Hamlet, dragged from their usual place on the margins of the script to the front of the stage. Except it isn't about anything that simple. This was the first post-modern take on Shakespeare, written at a point when “post-modernism” meant more than “we are mediocre, let us giggle at the talented”. The tightly-woven, intricate script manages to cover everything from quantum physics to the inter-dependent relationship between performer and audience. It's a testament to Stoppard's skills as a playwright that it hangs together so well. But it only works when you fill every speaking role with actors at the height of their powers, and thankfully the viewer hasn't been let down.

It's wonderful and refreshing to see Gary Oldman asked to display a light hand as Rosencrantz. Even he must be a little tired of playing angst-ridden monsters and anti-heroes by now. Every so often, he does something so gosh-darned cute that you can't help but smile. And then Tim Roth's bullish and goal-directed Guildenstern comes in and shatters the mood with perfect comic timing. Roth's passion and energy shines through in every scene, and some of the interplay between the two leads beats anything I've seen on a screen recently.

Richard Dreyfus's turn as the Player King was difficult to assess. His acting was excellent, there was no question about that, but there was an obvious depth to the part that a single viewing wasn't enough to grasp. I had two guests at Myopedia Towers for this one, and we came up with six different interpretations of the role in ten minutes. It isn't outside the scope of the work, for example, to see him as a film critic. It's true that most of this is down to the playwright's intention, but Dreyfus does a lot more than just hang on for the ride. There are excellent turns from the rest of the cast as well, not least from Iain Glen who acts his socks off as Hamlet.

So if you have the slightest interest in Shakespeare, I can't recommend this highly enough. The depth and skill of the actors, writers and directors make this well worth repeated viewing. I'm certainly going to watch it again – after all, I'll know better next time.

24fps: LOST IN TRANSLATION

2008-01-12T14:18:53Z

So you go to a concert, and you listen to the warm-up act who you've never heard of. And they pull all manner of rabbits out of their hat - wow, flamenco-metal fusion, I didn't know you could do that - and they leave to rapturous applause. And then the main act comes on, someone you've been into for years. And somehow, despite all the talent accumulated on the stage, despite the clever guitar licks and the precise sax solo written to push the instrument to its limit, all you want to do is go to the bar. That's precisely how "Lost In Translation" left me feeling.

Scarlett Johansson and her bum co-star, both giving very pleasing, rounded performances. She hits all of her marks, emotes exactly as required, and earns her pay very satisfactorily. But I do have an issue, not with her, but with her character. Her marriage seems to be dead in the water after two years, and worse yet, to be a mistake on the part of her Hollywood photographer husband. But she's just letting it happen because she's, you know, finding herself man.

Bill Murray, as usual, is Bill Murray - a sardonic, self-mocking wit who never quite falls into actual self-loathing. I love watching this routine, so does everyone else, and now he's grown into his face a bit and can add a slight melancholy to his acting, he's able to take on roles like this one and, from what I've heard, "The Life Aquatic". But all you have to do is scratch his surface and he reverts to playing the same damn character he played in "Ghostbusters", just like he has so many times, and he was given several opportunities to do it here.

The western members of the supporting cast are, without exception, teeth-grindingly irritating - as if Sofia Coppola had directed them to just be as Californian as possible. I think I was supposed to find Johansson and Murray sympathetic by comparison, but that didn't quite work because these were the people they were already, by choice, surrounded by back in America. The Eastern supporting cast were equally stereotypical - precise when being professional, and beyond embarrassment while relaxing in karaoke and titty bars. Watching the leads and their Japanese friends murder various classic songs was one of the few points of warmth in the entire film.

While I'm on stereotypes, I must mention that the Japanese portrayed here are, with very few exceptions, completely unable to understand English - presumably drawing a parallel between the language gap and the gender and age gaps which the film is looking at. Except that's all it does - look at them. Again, the scene in the titty bar made the point that women are treated badly in Japan, but did so in something of a vacuum.

The cinematography is universally gorgeous. I happily concede that I have a special place in my heart for Tokyo as a whole, which meant that I got a major kick out of the travelogue sequences, and there's a golf shot with Mount Fuji in it which is sheer landscape pornography. But none of that made up for the aching gap in the centre of the piece. It was simply soulless.

Coppola doesn't seem to want to engage with anyone in her film, and in the process failed to make me really care about them, or the outcome of what was clearly meant to be a May to December romance between the leads but felt more like a father/daughter relationship with a tiny sexual frisson. I did enjoy the film, but there was the sense that it could have been so much more than simply good, and given the talents involved that isn't really excusable.

7/10
24fps is Myopedia's film review section.

24fps: Baby's Got "Back To The Future"

2008-01-08T22:32:29Z

Anyone who has visited the musty, twisted depths of the decaying Hampshire manor house which I grandly call "Myopedia Towers" is aware that the only thing harder than getting out of it is quantum physics. But my home's state of graceful decay has given me some problems in the area of getting out into the fresh air enough.

Imagine my joy and surprise, then, when I discovered that various agencies have begun, for a small fee, to allow those of us who have missed such classics as "Ernest Saves Christmas" to borrow some of their DVDs for short periods of time! Frankly I thought such home delivery services had gone out with a functioning National Health Service, but I am glad to be proven wrong.

So with a stout heart and narrow kidneys, I have cast my eyes over the list they offered. Here are the first five, which I intend to have seen by the end of January 2008. If you have any opinions, please feel free to chime in...

1) Lost In Translation; Bill Murray & Scarlet Johansen

This appears to be about the collision of two lost American souls in a foreign country, and how they deal with the small differences between themselves in the light of the enormous differences that Japan has with most of the western world. Murray can be prop-chewingly bad at times, so I hope he is able to hold it all in check.

2) Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead; it really doesn't matter

Especially because even in this piece's source text, Shakespeare's "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", neither the audience or players can really tell the two characters apart. A post-modern look at what happens, or what doesn't happen, or what not-happens to spear-carriers when they're not actually carrying spears.

3) The Big Lebowski; Jeff Bridges

Apparently a stoned farce of sorts, with mistaken identities, gratuitous bowling references and someone urinating on someone else's carpet. A classic of its kind, and an indication of precisely why I'm doing this. I ought to damn well know this stuff by now.

4) Twelve Monkeys; Bruce Willis

I'm comforted to know that, while I am aware only that this SF epic involves time-travel, biotechnology and an insane asylum, most of the people who have seen this only once understand slightly less than that. Terry Gilliam directs, which is not always a mark of quality. But...Jabberwocky! I shall view it.

5) Y Tu Mama Tambien, directed Cuaron

How can I resist a film which has a title meaning "And Your Mother Too"? Beyond the fact that Cuaron is a director of style - should I be expecting to draw comparisons with Kubrick or Tarantino? - I know nothing else, except that the actors remain obscure in mainstream cinematic terms, and that the whole thing is subtitled. Rule 18: Myopedia insists on subtitles, not dubbing, ever since the terrible incident with Akira and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

Am I barking up the right tree, or am I in the wrong forest? Only time will tell - but I would appreciate your input, best beloved reader.

Yours with his hand in the biscuit barrel
Myopedia
24fps is Myopedia's film review section.

PLAYER OF GAMES - A Verray Parfit, Gentil Gayme

2008-01-02T21:28:13Z

Even if your mother is not a hamster, and you have never even seen an elderberry, the odds are good that you know about the legends of King Arthur's Court at Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table, and how everyone thought that Lancelot was knocking Queen Guinevere off on the side, the dirty French beggar. “Shadows Over Camelot” by Days of Wonder will allow you to take a brief but memorable step into that world of quests, chivalry, betrayal and decay.

The first thing that strikes you when you open the box is how beautifully the game is presented. The player models are simple, clearly marked to show who is whom, and the enemy models are nicely made, complementing your heroes. The game boards are sensibly laid out, which is a good job considering there are four of them – you will need a kitchen table, or a floor in a house with no pets. The artwork on the boards is flawless – you're certain to try and pick one of the cards up only to realise it's the one painted on to the board to show you where to put the real ones.

The game concept is pretty strong and fairly simple – the players are the brightest and best members of the Fellowship of the Round Table, trying to defend Camelot against both the mundane and occult forces which are trying to bring it down. So far, so Eddings. In theory this should be easy, because you are meant to be working as a team. But the game itself works against you, so that even with a full complement of seven players, you'll be hard pushed to keep all your foes at bay. What makes matters worse is there's a good chance that Camelot has a snake in its bosom – one of you could be a traitor, who can only win if the group as a whole loses.

The rules are simple enough to be explained in a couple of minutes, and concise enough that the summary only takes up a small corner of the 8x4” (20x15cm) character boards which tell you your knight's name and special abilities. There aren't any obvious inconsistencies, and the rulebook is unambiguous enough to cover the small logical gaps. Although you're not allowed to co-operate too closely, it's expected that you'll discuss who's going to take on which job and how you're going to do it.

So you have to make a Bad Thing happen, and then you get the chance to have your knight Ride Out and smite the foe, sometimes giving up life points to beat a quest more quickly. While there are some complex interactions, the core of the game is that simple. The players are in complete control of their own actions, in a way that Settlers of Catan's resource dice don't allow.

But while the rules are tight, and the presentation is wonderful, it is the background which is the making of Shadows. Nothing beats sitting down at the start of a game and looking across the table at your fellow kniggets, all smirking, each one waiting to see who's going to start singing about prams and impersonating Clark Gable. And because you're not allowed to say something as gauche as “I've got 15 points worth of combat cards, so I can kill the Dragon in four turns!”, because you can only hint about the strength of your hand, before you know what you're doing you've fallen into knightly cadences of speech.

Hearing perfectly sensible adults saying things like “Certes, Sir Gawain, it is thy go. Hast thou fallen asleep?” is worth the price of the game on its own. This reaches a peak whenever someone plays King Arthur; yes, people quickly ask this player if some watery bint has heaved a sword at him, and discuss being oppressed. But then, without really discussing it, they find themselves deferring to His Majesty and waiting for his player to make all the decisions. I've Arthured twice, and seeing players for whom the Wood For Sheep gag was old by 1996 defer to my better judgement was quite a culture shock. What made things worse is that it worked.

This is a great game on many levels. It's a perfect excuse for friends to get together and play a game without that cut-throat Monopoly attitude. The co-operative nature of Shadows means that, while of course everyone wants to win, it almost doesn't matter if you lose because it's just so much damn fun. This game won't get old in a hurry, and if you're part of an established gaming group looking for something new – or even if you just want an excuse to form one – this is well worth the money.

With thanks to Travelling Man Manchester, who sold my group our copy
PLAYER OF GAMES is Myopedia's hobbygaming and geektoys section.

Free Book! Yay!

2007-08-10T12:18:06Z

Thanks to dmwcarol for pointing out the blag a free book page.

I've just signed up for this too. All you have to do is sign up on the website, read the book they send you for free, then post a review afterwards. Robert shall then become your father's brother.

I'm getting "Lock 14" by Georges Simenon, one of the Maigret Mysteries. I've not read any of them for years, so I'm really looking forward to it.

This is the link. I recommend it to you.

Contains Spoilers For Hamlet

2007-07-05T17:34:13Z

Just a brief note to inform the interested: BBC Radio 3 are tonight broadcasting a programme about Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, the play by Tom Stoppard which follows two minor and mutually indistinguishable characters from Hamlet off the stage and to their inevitable doom.

Tonight's show looks back at the very first performance, forty years ago at the Edinburgh Festival, talking to the people involved at the time. Those of us who are already familiar with the impossibility of 100 consecutive coin-tossed heads and the idea of not-being on boats can refresh our memories - but anyone interested in Stoppard's most famous play is likely to be well rewarded by listening in.

For your information, this is an interview which John Tusa of Radio 3 carried out with Stoppard recently.

HAMMERTIME: Science Festival Day One

2006-09-05T12:25:44Z

It was in order to learn about where the worlds of sport and science meet that I attended Dr. Claire Davis's lecture, which has won this year's Isambard Kingdom Brunel lecture prize. I was expecting to have a little quiet enjoyment from this award-winning talk, but when I volunteered to assist in a small experiment, the last thing I was expecting to be given was a pair of protective glasses and a hammer.

Smashing my first target - a block of water ice - was easy enough. But when I was asked to hit a second block, this time with several sheets of blue paper frozen inside, the same force led to a dent about the size of a 10p piece. Admittedly, this second block broke very satisfactorily when I rolled my sleeves up to it, but the point that composite materials are much tougher than conventional ones had already been made.

This left the audience suitably eager to hear about the impact which different, new materials has had on other sports - for example, the great leaps in tennis racket construction. When assistance was asked for in a tennis-based demonstration, my old friend Dave sauntered up only to be passed a racket strung with copper wire. At least he was better off than the poor soul using one with elastic, who kept on losing his ball through the blasted thing.

Dr. Davis wrapped the lecture up by talking about new substances, such as the "sharkskin" material used by Ian Thorpe in his Olympic career, and shirts containing "memory metal", which expands and contracts in a predictable way when exposed to heat - possibly allowing a sports shirt which automatically gave one room to breathe. This was a fascinating topic, and the hands-on nature of the lecture gave added value to everyone - although I must admit, I did get a kick out of being allowed to break stuff in a lecture theatre. Habits are formed so easily...

AMBIGUOUS FIGURES: Science Festival Day One

2006-09-05T08:44:02Z

Dr. Penny Fidler then explained to us just how badly our brains can deceive us - in entirely good causes, of course. But instead of delving into the Escherean world of impossible objects, she instead talked about our own personal Photoshops; ways in which we interpret colour and shade, that are perfect in the real world, but fall down under tests. You can find more if you click on one of these links, which all lead to Dr. Fidler's website, Your Amazing Brain.

A ambiguous figure of another kind was discussed by Hugh Aldersey-Williams; one Dr. Thomas Browne, citizen of Norwich, who was known as a breaker of myths and urban legends in his day - which ran from 1605 to 1682. His key work was "Pseudodoxia Epidemica - or, Vulgar Errors" - Ye Strait Dope, if you will - specifically to shoot down widely held fallacies.

Now, Mr. Aldersey-Williams did not demonstrate all of the fallacies that the late Doctor discussed; but we did learn that cucumbers were not poisonous (though they do give one terrible wind), that flies buzz from their bodies, not their mouths (this was confirmed when Browne beheaded one), that goat's blood does not soften diamonds (although it is increasingly difficult to get the stuff these days to check this) and that, despite all we have heard to the contrary, badgers are not lopsided.

ZOMBIE NATION: Science Festival Day One

2006-09-05T08:25:11Z

BEAUTIFUL BRAINS was a celebration; not, as we initially thought, of the diet and feeding habits of the recently undead, but of the lump of grey matter we carry between our ears. The lead speaker, Dr. Harry Witchell, added to the confusion by resembling a very erudite and educated Willy Wonka. I dread to think what his Oompa-Loompas sing about.

Dr Bruce Hood then argued in a way that was both fascinating and yet not too much for a Monday morning, that everyone is born with intuitive reasoning systems. For example, we are born knowing that objects are solid, and that things fall straight down when you drop them - which children then derive larger ideas from, such as the existence of a universal designer or the existence of the soul. Naturally, because we have each worked this out for ourselves, it makes the ideas very hard to shift.

Grabbing a well-deserved coffee between lectures, I returned to my seat to hear another animateed discussion which I had problems putting in the context of brains. It was only when Dave started talking about "a perfect place to snipe from" that I understood. The UEA campus is not merely a highly rated centre for learning. It's also a Half-life level. All the concrete bridges, the multiple levels, even the carefully placed steel containers below. Glenn had muttered something about "Gordon's alive!" earlier in the day, but I thought he was talking about Sunday's drunken impromptu Queen singalong. More fool me.

03-09-06: Diary Of A Stranded Artist

2006-09-04T16:05:13Z

The five of us sit, together, leafing through a programme. Words are my chosen career, but here I find them incomprehensible. What, on this world or any other, do "The Antarctic Canary" and "Mentoring Women: Why Bother?" mean? Phrases like that are the only refuge I have on the pages; they are surrounded by a morass of technical terms which I suspect I need two degrees or three pints to understand. I am stranded; instead of the nice, safe waters I belong in, nestled between sweet love triangles involving Japanese college students and the bitter experiences of bisexual invisibility, I am surrounded by high-energy waves and particles.

For reasons which presently escape me, I am resting in a well-appointed student kitchen - in other words, there are no cockroaches - hidden just outside Norwich, at the immensely high-brow and popular BA Science Festival. It is an event where news has often been broken; only last year, they were the first people to show images received from the US-led Cassini probe which had just settled into orbit around Saturn. Scary stuff.

So I have been persuaded to take my poor brain, still addled from the moments of Big Brother 7 which I wasn't able to avoid, and fill it up with SCIENCE! for an entire week. I'll be reporting back at regular intervals, probably around a day behind Real Time. You'll be able to read about almost everything I'll attend, if only to reassure you that I haven't evaporated into a poof of logic. Wish me favourable probabilities...

THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES: Sente's Cube

2006-03-21T19:17:43Z

In June 2004, at the end of a trailer for HALO2, a sharp-eyed physics student in Birmingham by the name of Mat Turnbull saw the game's web address flicker for a second, and be replaced with the enigmatic www.ilovebees.com. When he typed the link into his browser, he discovered his first Alternate Reality Game, which HALO2 producers Bungie had written for promotional purposes. Not that he cared: he, and a few hundred others, spent the next six months exploring websites, cracking codes, and unlocking the puzzles they found.

"So when I heard talk on the Unfiction forums of another ARG starting off in early 2005," Mat told me, "and based in England, no less, I was determined not to miss it." But the game proved a lot deeper than anyone expected. This new ARG was called PerplexCity. The plot initially seemed simple: an artifact called the Receda Cube had been stolen from the Perplex City Academy, and the Academy's head, Sente Kiteway, was asking Earth's help to locate it.

But when it turned out that, uniquely in ARG history, there would be a prize for locating the Cube worth £100,000, Mat was genuinely surprised. "This has never been done before. All the previous games were either advertisments, funded by a company, or smaller independent affairs. And above all, they've always been 100% free."

Players can buy packs of 6 puzzle cards, randomly sorted, of varying difficulty - from the fairly easy to the relatively difficult. If you follow the extra clues and links built into the cards, and the websites they lead to, you can also take part in special events - like the Perplex City Academy Games which took place in New York and London last month, which Mat attended.

But it hasn't all been plain sailing. One card in particular has divided the playing community - "#238 Riemann" which, for a handful of points, asks you to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, one of the Clay Prizes , which also happen to be worth a million bucks.

Mat echoes a large group of players when he said that "I've never been a fan of 'unsolvable' puzzles, things which the player could only solve if they already knew the answer." Given the amount of time and effort the players at Unfiction have spent working on what amounts to an elaborate hoax, no-one could blame them for a little frustration.

That said, the Perplexcity phenomenon seems to be gaining pace - with extra points on offer in US gaming magazine CGW and in the UK's Sunday Telegraph. Mat certainly isn't giving up any time soon.
"Perplexcity is far from a typical ARG, there's nowhere near the same level of immersion as ilovebees or Urban Hunt, but it's still great fun and I'm enjoying it just as much as those games - if not more so."

--
with thanks to Mat Turnbull and the denizens of the Sygyzy chatroom at Unfiction

THE FIGHT IN THE DOG: Follow The Money

2006-03-20T19:33:54Z

The wealthiest clubs in the world of football are, as of today, involved in a legal battle which at first glance has nothing to do with them. It does, however, have everything to do with their bank balances, and with the future of international football.

Charleroi, a top-level club in Belgium, released Moroccan international Abdelmajid Oulmers to play in a friendly match against Burkina Faso back in November 2004. As happens in football, he picked up an ankle injury which put him out of action for nearly a year. Charleroi are now taking the game's world governing body, FIFA, to court, looking for compensation for Oulmers's salary and medical bills.

FIFA are standing by their own rules as they stand. They don't appear to be willing to discuss the matter with the G14, and have not commented on the case to any news organisation, saying it's against their policy to do so. The G14, on the other hand, have the matter on the front page of their website. Their director, Thomas Kurth, has said that "clubs should get some reasonable compensation for the contribution that they make to international tournaments".

But this money could not come from the national associations themselves - the Moroccan FA, for example, couldn't be expected to find eight months salary for a player who cost a million euro, especially considering reports in the Moroccan press that due to poor results, the entire directorship is thinking about resigning.

So what if the money were instead to come from FIFA? FIFA has deep pockets, but not that deep. They made about 70M euro profit in 2004. Real Madrid, only one club of the seventeen G14 members, took 30M euro profit in the same year. Admittedly they're the largest club in the world by revenue, but the trend here is clear.

So if FIFA lose the case, it's fair to presume that the smaller FAs - mostly in Asia and Africa - and women's football would see their funding reduce. The latter, especially, is growing as never before, and nipping it in the bud would help no-one.

Except, of course, those clubs who can already afford to hire and pay the highest calibre of international footballer in the first place. There were thirty-three starting positions available in the lineups of the 3 British G14 members this weekend. Each slot was occupied by a player with one or more international caps. The mathematics is easy. Let us hope, for the sake of international football, that the law fails to be an ass in this case.

ZAPHOD'S PARADOX: SPECIAL

2006-03-17T09:29:12Z

Normal Myopedian service will be resumed on Monday. We all have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

I first encountered Zaphod's Paradox in the pages of The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by the late, great Douglas Adams. To paraphrase: Anyone who wants political power, and is capable of taking the steps required to gain it, should never be allowed to actually have political power. Naturally, when I decided to start writing about British politics, I decided to use the phrase as a heading. The decision has come home to roost.

The current British government is about to grant itself the power to change any law by a single vote in the House of Commons. No Lords, no royal assent, nothing else. And even that power can theoretically be altered to remove even that vote. The details are all at http://oldmotherchaos.livejournal.com/65547.html

If democracy means anything to you, please visit this link. I've read the bill myself; it's remarkably clear and simple. And terrifying. Follow the links on this person's page. Contact your MP. Contact the press. Speak out, now, or risk forever being made to hold your peace.

STRANGER THAN WE IMAGINE: These Particles Are Far Away

2006-03-16T19:51:55Z

In certain situations, it's very easy to predict the future. If you line up a snooker shot and hit the ball with the right amount of power, then unless there's a problem with the table, it will drop into the pocket every time. If it didn't, then Stephen Hendry wouldn't be famous, which might be a small price to pay. But if you instead apply a force to a single atom, there is no way to be sure what will happen, because the normal physics of the Crucible don't apply. Quantum physics takes over, which is not based on certainties, but probabilities.

Because the quantum rules only apply at very small scales, however, there's not a lot of opportunity to actually observe them in action. But back in the 1920s, Albert Einstein and Satryenda Nath Bose worked out that you could make certain atomic gases act like a single particle - and hence, obey the quantum rules - by making them very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that no-one was able to do it for seventy years.

Finally, in 1995, a team in Colorado were able to reduce about 2000 rubidium atoms down to 170 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. What they got was a Bose-Einstein Condensate - a large-scale, quantum gas which acts in such a complex way that, ten years on, they're still trying to understand it. Part of the problem is that they need powerful magnetic fields to keep this condensate in place.

So it's good news for physicists that a team of scientists in Innsbruck in Austria have, in the most recent edition of Nature, claimed to be able to put three cesium atoms into a new state of matter - an Efimov state. If you look at any pair of atoms in this state, they repel each other - but any three atoms attract each other. There's even talk of replicating the experiment on a larger scale to create a quantum fluid, which would be a lot easier to manipulate than the BEC mentioned above.

But being able to look at systems of three or four particles - which is much nearer the line between the quantum and Newtonian realms than we've been able to get until now - will do wonders for our understanding of both, and of how the two interact. Providing, of course, you have a freezer capable of chilling cesium down to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. Grab me a beer while you're there.

OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW: Matroyshka

2006-03-15T18:33:56Z

Walls have fallen once again in Jericho. But this time, no trumpet blast has been heard in the land. Instead, tanks and helicopters have taken a prison in the ancient town, and withdrawn to modern Israel with a particularly valuable prisoner. What follows is, at least in part, an attempt to clarify the events of the last few days.

Ahmed Saadat is the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He took that role when his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, was killed by two rockets from an Israeli helicopter in August 2001. It has been alleged by the Israeli government that Saadat ordered the death of Rehavam Zeevi, the then Israeli Foreign Minister, and a former Major-General of their defence forces. Zeevi was shot and killed by four gunmen in October 2001.

The Palestinian Authority arrested Saadat at the Israelis's request, only to announce his release in June 2002, claiming there was no evidence. Israel refused to accept this, and a deal was struck where Saadat would remain in prison in Palestine, under US and British guard. And that's where it stayed for nearly four years.

Until, out of frustration with their leadership, the Palestinian people exercised their democratic rights and put Hamas in power. Given that Hamas have refused to accept that Israel has the right to exist, neither country guarding Saadat wanted to be involved any more. (1)

Within a few hours of the US and UK leaving, the Israelis came to Jericho with their tanks and their guns, smote the prison walls, and took Saadat with them for trial - and, if he is found guilty, will execute him. Given that they believe he is innocent, the PA are furious, and the rest of the Arab world are pointing the finger at the Western powers, claiming that things are all too co-ordinated. (2)

-

Israel and the Arab world have, ever since the former came into being, been mutual prisoners, in a way which inevitably reminds me of the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. That said, no-one has ever actually accused Ian Paisley of ordering the murder of any members of the Irish government - and Gerry Adams isn't alleged to have any nuclear weaponry tucked away.

Israelis and Palestinians, like everyone else, should have the basic human right to live and work without getting shot at. They do not have that right. All the words and bullets flying about in what I've written here make that painfully clear. Everyone involved in this, from the current US, British, PA and Israeli governments, all the way back to the profoundly anti-semitic British Government of 1917 which wrote the Balfour Declaration, must shoulder some part of the blame.

There is no right here, and precious little democracy on any side. Until that changes, in exactly the same way that Northern Ireland has begun to change - despite the far, far higher stakes in the Middle East - there can be nothing but revenge; one killing following another, like so many blood-stained Russian dolls.

(1) I tried to check that this was still the case - but Hamas's website is completely blank. An odd decision for a ruling party of any nation.

(2) For what it's worth, although I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case, I don't think it's possible to underestimate the efficiency of the Israeli secret service.

THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES: How Bona To See Your Eek

2006-03-14T19:25:30Z

Putting on clothes that no-one ever wore, and saying things that no-one ever said, is the actor's stock-in-trade. What is much, much harder, is wearing the clothes, voice and mannerisms of someone who is not only famous, but loved - or hated - by a large proportion of those who are watching.

Michael Sheen is well used to walking that particular tightrope, having portrayed Tony Blair in "The Deal" in 2003, the teleplay about the lunch at Granita where Blair and Gordon Brown decided who would become the next Prime Minister. He manages it with no small skill again last night, in "Fantabulosa!" He takes on the role of Kenneth Williams, managing to play the tragic comedian perfectly, without falling off the wire into the pure comedy of a Chris Barrie.

His performance manages to catch the internal agonies of being a gay Christian in 1950s Britain, encapsulated by Williams's friendship with playwright Joe Orton. The film shows Orton leading Williams down the primrose path of exploring his own sexuality - but when Orton's sexual voracity leads to his murder at the hands of his partner, Ken Halliwell, Sheen carefully depicts Williams's horror and incomprehension at his friend's death. It's made clear that these feelings are a reflection of his own feelings about his own sexual conflict, amplified by his faith in God.

Williams was an intellectual actor, more than capable of Shakespeare or, for that matter, the most frightful pretension. Somehow this delicate butterfly of a man got stuck working the bawdy comedy of the Carry On films - which, I must say, while being quite appallingly vulgar, are wonderful in places. The direction hints that it was only the pay that kept dragging Williams back to work with Sid James and Kenneth Hawtrey, both of whom he hated for entirely opposite reasons. The cast manages to pass as their often deceased originals without ever slipping into satire.

Near the end of the film, by the point when Williams was reduced by illness and his own prickly nature to doing voiceover work and the chat-show circuit, Sheen's perfect sneer has become increasingly gaunt and skeletal. There's a wonderful scene where one of his own catch-phrases comes back to haunt him.

Sheen's portrayal of Williams's final night is poignant beyond belief. There's a touching moment when his mother, wonderfully portrayed by Cheryl Campbell, seems resigned to dying and leaving her son on his own. It's gently hinted that Williams's suicide was prompted by the idea - although Sheen cackles his way through a reading of the coroner's open verdict with a cynicism worthy of the original.

I was convinced I'd been watching this compelling drama for ages. Quite how only an hour and twenty minutes went past is still slightly beyond me. Watch the repeat if you can, especially if you have ever been tempted to lunge your groats.

THE FIGHT IN THE DOG: Resistance Is Futile?

2006-03-13T19:15:44Z

I must applaud Andre Agassi. I must admit, I don't usually have much sympathy for millionaire sportsmen, especially those lucky enough to be married to someone as athletic as Steffi Graf. But one can only support the effort of a man who truly understands the meaning of Wimbledon to serious fans of tennis - even what it means to the average UK punter who doesn't give two short serves about the game - except for those two, inevitably rainy, weeks each summer. Agassi has stepped down from the towering heights of his own bank balance to help one of his predecessors.

Bjorn Borg was, despite recent propaganda, not a member of any kind of collective - unless one counts his Davis Cup efforts, which saw him win thirty-three consecutive singles matches for his native Sweden, a record which remains unbroken. During his professional career, he won 62 singles titles around the world. Included in that figure are eleven Grand Slam titles. Included in that figure are five consecutive Wimbledon Men's Singles titles. This is all the more incredible when one realises that Borg's career only lasted eight years. He left the game at 26.

But somehow, despite his iconic status in the annals of Swedish sport, despite being involved - opposite John MacEnroe, in 1980 - in what is regarded as the greatest Wimbledon Men's final of all time, poor old Bjorn is finding himself on hard times. When a Brit wins five major titles in a row, he is whisked to Buckingham Palace and dubbed Knight before his cox has stopped crying. Presumably Mr. Borg has no such goodwill to fall back on, because he is selling not only his five trophies, but also the racket he beat MacEnroe with. (Only metaphorically, despite the pleas of tennis fans at the time.)

Enter Agassi, chequebook in hand. It's a bit hard to hear someone with a net - ah-ha - income from tennis in excess of US$31 million that "the thought of a Wimbledon trophy being in the hands of somebody with a lot of money is upsetting". But, as he quite rightly says, "the only way you should have one is if you win it." In these days of sponsorship and branding, it is deeply reassuring to know that one of the newer icons of the game understands the Corinthian spirit. Is there any chance we can ask him to work with Andy Murray?

--

Apologies for the temporary halt to Myopedia. Normal service should now be resumed....besides, how could I not write an article that let me sneak a Trek gag into a sports column?

THE FIGHT IN THE DOG: The Portuguese Boy Of The Remove

2006-03-06T20:00:43Z

Jose Mourinho is not the Chosen One. He is, however, quite clearly a very naughty boy. It's not an uncommon problem that he seems to suffer from, and anyone who's brought up children, or even worked with them, has seen it.

In every school, there's always one pupil who's substantially better off than their peers. The signs are usually obvious; a Mercedes-Benz shining brightly among the muddy Mondeos at Parents's Evening. A guitar, a flute, football boots, netball trainers; all a cut above what all the other kids get to play with.

But there inevitably comes the day where all the equipment in the world isn't enough. Full of pride and overconfidence, the child wanders in, oblivious, way over their head. When you try and play with the big children before you're ready, then scraped knees, knuckles, and egos must be expected. We saw it happen to Chelsea last week, and the effect on their manager has been dramatic.

Gone is the Armani-wearing sophisticate, gently encouraging his team of highly-skilled millionaires. Instead, we see a slightly desperate figure, bellowing from the dugout like some Portuguese Sam Allardyce, who decides to pick an argument with Bryan Robson, of all people. Despite winning the game 2-1, no-one from Chelsea was willing to discuss it with the media. The closest they came was a brief word from John Terry, who dedicated the win to the late Peter Osgood.

For all Mourinho's success, he seems, today, to be a deeply troubled individual. Given his boss's high standards, this is only to be expected. Remember that Roman Abramovich sacked Claudio Raneiri, the Blues's last manager, after a season which saw them reach the UEFA semi-finals and come second in the Premiership to an unbeaten and peerless Arsenal. Jose's own fate must surely give him pause.

It can't have helped his mood that, following their unceremonious loss to Charlton Athletic in the League Cup, the club's first home defeat in two years that didn't involve a penalty shootout - the 2-1 loss last week - came against Barcelona. One's neighbour is always one's bitterest rival, and whereas a loss to the equally well-funded galacticos of Real Madrid might have come as less of a shock, going out of the Champions League in the Nou Camp would hit the club hard.

Remember, too, that theirs is an uphill struggle already. A 1-0 win would still mean Chelsea lose the tie, and should Barca score first, every commentator in the land will whip "a mountain to climb" out of their Box of Cliches. Jose steps into the examination hall tomorrow, and the game in question could easily mark the difference between a passing grade - and the possibility of expulsion.

football news premiership chelsea myopedia

ZAPHOD'S PARADOX: Room 419

2006-03-03T19:43:13Z

Nothing fills the newspapers like a political scandal, unless it's an identikit pop singer being arrested. But that hasn't happened for a few days, which is no doubt why various MPs on both sides of the House of Commons are crying for the head of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell. She is alleged to have breached the Ministerial Code, by not fully disclosing her family's business affairs. Her husband David has been accused, I am certain unjustly, of a dodgy deal involving hedge funds and a six-figure mortgage taken out on their home. Tessa has claimed that she knew nothing of this, which begs the question of exactly what does get talked about over the cornflakes at Chez Mills. Thankfully, I am able to shed some light on the matter.

What follows is a copy of a letter I found, lying around in a pile of shredded documents, guarded by a large leopard, in the dustbins outside the home of the Culture Secretary. Make of this what you will.

Dear Tesssa,

I am Mrs. Obvious Madeupname (PhD) bank manager of El Italio Reservo Banko in ~~Italy~~ South Africa. Oh. I have an urgent and very confidencial business proposition for you. On October 15, 2004, a foreign football club proprietor, Mr. Pseudo Burlyskelly made a numbered time (fixed) deposit for twelve calander months, valued of EU$ 1000000 (ONE MEEEEILLION US DOLLARS) in my brane. Upon maturity, I discovered from his contractor employers; the firm of Squeal, Peggit and Dye that Mr. Burlyskelly had dissappeared without trace into the Italian government.

On further investigation, I found out that anyone who knew the current whereabbouts of Mr Burlyskelly would either help him or be sleep with fish. This sum of US$ 1 million has carefully been moved out of my trousers to a large bag marked "El Swaggo" for safe-keeping. No one has dared to come forward to claim it.

Consequently, my proposal is that I will like you to come forward as the claimant(owner) of this money deposited in the large bag; however, in order that this be carryied out with the quickness, we will require approximately £400000 (ONE LARGE BUNGG) in small, non-consecutively numbnered, untraceable gold bullion.

This is simple, I will like you to provide immediately your full names position in Her Magesti's government and address, through which my attorney can prepare the necessary documents to ~~give Mr Berlusconi lots of money~~ carry out the transffer to funds of you. Once carryied out, you may find many many doors opening up to you and your husband (No. 10 Downing Street for stern bllocking, Strangeways, AC Milan).

Thanks and God Bless. Dr Obvious Madeupname PhD. uk politics

STRANGER THAN WE IMAGINE: Up, Up and Away

2006-03-02T20:52:01Z

You can buy quite a lot with $10 million US dollars. It would buy you the batting and fielding services of Washington Nationals baseball player Alfonso Soriano. For a year. It's also the sum which the US State Department has ploughed into projects aimed at bringing Iraqi women into their nation's political process, and all but the amount of money that President Bush wants to spend on turning the Richard Nixon Library in California into a full presidential library. Make of that what you will.

But what it wouldn't do, until very recently, is get you anywhere near leaving the planet. You could buy a ride in a MiG-25 jet aircraft, which would get you roughly 25km into the air, if you have £13,500 to spare. Twenty-five kilometers is a long way to walk along, let alone up, but it's not really space as such. That particular giant leap was made by Burt Rutan in SpaceShipOne, back in 2004. But his company had to plough $20 million into the project, and last time I checked, Scaled Composites weren't accepting tourists. At least, not until 2008. Richard Branson really does get everywhere these days.

But as of this month, If you have $10 million knocking about under the sofa, there's an alternative. If you've designed something which costs about $3 million to make, is less than a meter in every direction, and can only do the job it's designed for in low earth orbit - that's 200km or 650 _thousand_ feet - then you can drop the other $7 million on Falcon 1 from SpaceX Technologies. Falcon 1 is, and I can't believe this, a privately funded, partly reusable, honest-to-god rocketship. Their website is something to behold. Apparently that cost includes launch range, payload integration costs, and third-party insurance. I dread to think how much fire and theft would cost.

We are entering, it seems, another Space Age; one founded on the backs of men who made their money out of the dot.com boom. SS1's money was largely donated by Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, and the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, made his cash by devising and then selling PayPal. It's hard not to make the connection back to the Treks, Wars and assorted other space stations of my own youth. It looks like the geeks are not only inheriting the earth, but the sky as well.

OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW: Lives, Choices and the Paternal State

2006-03-01T19:55:24Z

In theory, each of us has the right to live and live free from fear or slavery, the right to a fair trial when accused of a crime, and the right to privacy. But looking in any newspaper, or even the pages of this blog, is enough to see that even in the western world, each one of those rights are taken away from someone every day. So, when a right is challenged, then simply to make sure we can live as free as possible, that right should be defended. Last week, one of the greatest achievements of American feminism was challenged in a state Senate.

The state of South Dakota has passed a bill that would make almost all abortions there illegal. If signed into law by the Republican Governor, Mike Rounds, then only women whose lives were at risk would be able to legally terminate their pregnancy. He has stated that he is "minded to do so."

There is no other medical clause in the bill. Women who conceive through rape would not be able to choose to make good from the evil act done to them. Women who have been advised that they should not bear any more children because it might do permanent damage to their health without actually killing them, would not be able to choose to put their foetus's life ahead of their own wellbeing. They would be forced to do so, regardless of their personal wants, needs or beliefs.

Abortion is a terrible thing. Read this if you don't know what it entails, and you have a strong stomach. The piece's author quite correctly fears that Roe vs. Wade, the landmark bill which legalised abortion in the USA in 1973, will be overturned by the Christian Right which currently holds the reins of power. Although, to be fair, Bush does accept that rape, incest and harm to the mother are good enough reasons to abort. The article was written by someone wanting to support the right to abortion, it can also be taken as one of the most powerful condemnations of the operation that could be written. It's clear that this is a right that should never be exercised lightly.

Every right we are given, carries with it the responsibility to use that right correctly. Removing a right reduces our ability to make choices and function as an adult. Whatever your views on abortion might be, if you believe in the freedom to choose and live your life as you wish, then this vote will conflict with that belief. This correspondent disagrees with the vote on the most basic of principles.

THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES: British Art Show 6

2006-02-28T20:00:04Z

Artists of all kinds walk a tightrope. On one side lies sentimentality and over-commercialisation, which leads to creating something which might lift the spirits, but is still essentially about selling a product which has nothing to do with the art in question. On the other side lies pretension and cynicism. The common perception, fuelled by the work of "Young British Artists" such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, is that British artists do little but fan the flames of controversy for publicity's sake. Personally I feel that there's a lot to be said for his famous shark in formaldehyde, "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", from the title alone, but it's not hard to see where the more acidic critics are coming from.

So it was with some concern that I finished my espresso on Sunday morning and began my tour of Manchester's art galleries to view British Art Show 6, a compilation of art created by people living and working in the United Kingdom - some native to this country, others foreign but still informed by British culture. Put simply, as I walked through the doors of Urbis, I feared I was going to see a parade of empty and pointless work which would neither inform or move me. Thankfully, I was largely wrong.

Take, for example, the collages of Gordon Cheung. He uses computer graphics, spray paint, ink and the pages of the Financial Times to create works like Skyscraper and Underworld, which are not only a treat to look at, but also satisfy on an intellectual level. The skyscraper in question is literally made from the values of the FT's stocks and shares pages, and dominates the landscape around it.

Also on display at Urbis is the work of Matthew Houlding, whose cityscape sculptures such as "It was hard to believe that just 24 hours earlier I had been sitting at my desk wrestling with the next round of deadlines" - yes, really - hark back to the futurist dreams of the 1950s. It's such a bold piece that a four year old lad in the display hall spotted the resemblance to Tracy Island instantly.

Urbis is home to the pieces which spoke of the city: the Manchester Art Gallery houses the more politically aware works. Hew Locke's childhood in Guyana, for example, has led him to think about Empire and the nature of royalty, and this shines through in "El Dorado", an eight-foot high sculpture which takes the iconic bust of the Queen that we all carry around on our coinage and twists it, reconstructing it out of green stalks, gilt gimmickry and toy sword blades.

It's also where Phil Collins, a 30 year old film-maker from Runcorn, has installed "El mundo no escuchara". That translates to "The World Won't Listen", and consists of a film made in Colombia of the locals singing karaoke to The Smiths album of the same name. It's odd hearing the familiar words coming from unfamiliar faces, but the subjects of the film have the same dignity in adversity that Dom Joly's victims in Trigger Happy TV portray.

Perhaps the most disturbing installation was the one at International 3, a small gallery off Piccadilly, by Juneau/Projects/. This pair of artists test the media of their art to destruction as they make it - a battered wood chipper and several melted microphones are testament to that - and the immersion that the confined space of the I3 lends the pieces makes them almost overwhelming.

The Whitworth Art Gallery was home to Mother Tongue, by Zineb Sedira. It's a trio of films running next to each other: the artist talking to her mother in Arabic in one, to her daughter in French in the second. But the third, full of painful and mutual incomprension, shows grandmother and grand-daughter attempting to communicate through embarrassed silences. The young woman's attempts in slow, Northern-accented English, speak worlds about the way in which families can change. I also enjoyed the three small paintings exhibited by Tomma Abts; "Emo", "Nomde" and "Soko". The last, especially, although made up of relatively simple curves and shadows, really drew the eye.

At the Cornerhouse, I was pleasantly surprised by a couple of pieces by Christina Mackie. "Shakeman", when I saw it, was a human figure made up of wood and plexiglass, crouched on a heap on the floor. Strings reached up to a pulley behind it, and I couldn't help but imagine how and if the thing would move. Turning around, I saw "Falling Boundary" - various plastic spheres and rings, suspended over a perspex plate which they seemed to have splashed on to. I'm not entirely certain I grasped the artist's intent, but it again stimulated my imagination, which is all I felt I could ask.

Sadly, I couldn't say that of everything I saw. Gary Webb's two pieces, "Dom" and "Mrs Miami" were a pair of bizarre structures of aluminium and day-glo lumps of fibreglass. I felt they were so divorced from reality, I had no real way of appreciating them. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and when that beholder can't engage with the work, the artist teeters on the brink of falling off the line I mentioned earlier. But I could see that Webb's work was, without a doubt, artistic, which is not something I could say about Claire Barclay's sculpture. I could not see for the life of me how her three untitled pieces, especially the metal pole in the crocheted sleeve, could have any meaning beyond their simple existence.

But, by and large, based on what I've seen, "Britart" is in very good shape. I've barely touched the surface of what I looked at this weekend, and hope to return before the exhibition moves on. Art must be seen to be understood, and can only really exist in the considered opinion of those who look at it. If BAS6 comes to your town, I urge you to become part of that process.

British Art Show 6

[THE EMPEROR'S CLOTHES is Myopedia's art and entertainment strand.]
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