..I'M LEARNING TO FLY.......

       I'm learning to fly , but I ain't got wings.....
       Coming down is the hardest thing .

..........and as part of the Strategies Of Thought lectures on the MA course , we were introduced to the works of Wittgenstein . What I hadn't realised was that his education had started in Manchester , where he had enrolled to study aeronautics at the University......and ended up flying Cody kites off Glossop Moor , where he lodged in the Grouse pub , well known to anyone who goes walking up there.

And flying , or rather the lack of ability to do so , reminded me of a book that I had come across sometime ago , with the most wonderful illustrations........

.......The  ' Teach Your Chicken To Fly Training Manual ' - superb hand drawn anatomically correct plans and sections of chickens set out as faux technical drawings , all bolted onto a text written in the style of a training manual . Bizarre , and totally within its own little world . I have no idea what size the original artworks were , but I am guessing A2 . Wonderful.

....and maybe one day I will get to this standard.

..VALENTINE - WON'T YOU BE MY VALENTINE ?

....Kitsch , saccharine ,  overblown sentimentality of the worse kind , all set to swamp the entire western world on a rising tide of excessive commercialism , squeezing the last drop of faux romanticism out of the rabid enthusing public .........

Yes , courtesy of Hallmark and countless others it's that glorious proto-religious festival looming known as Valentines day , the day when restaurants charge twice as much for food twice as bad as usual , entire forests are consumed by paper mills for the worst kind of cards , garages sell out of flowers and chocolates , bars sell cheap fizz at champagne prices and undying love forever is proclaimed , at least until the morning after.

......and then occasionally - Very occasionally - ok , Once In A Fucking Lifetime , someone cuts through all the bullshit and the crap .............

 Willie Nelson nails it - this is all that needs to be said. This one's for you, Mary.

..WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM......

......and so , continuing on from the last posting and the designs for the installation , we have travelled past the Learning Agreement , through the Methods of Enquiry and the Strategies of Thought texts , on past the Learning Record text and have arrived at the Four Rooms ........

The main focus and purpose of the MA course being to investigate through the medium of architectural drawing the possible futures for four buildings , it seems logical at this early stage of the process to try and capture the essence of the four through each having its own room as the climax of the installation.

 These are just quick preliminary sketches to try and get the feeling for each building within one room.......so the room for The House Of The Book Lover may well have the room lined with books (all with jackets of off-white paper ) , the more dangerous ones behind a grille . Plans and sections may be in evidence , possibly in a large folio format on the centre table ; the floor may well be a map of the buildings location in Manchester together with literary associations. Exit - via the Bookshop of course - might be via a door concealed as a hinged bookcase , much as the door to the hidden apartment in Anne Frank's house........

...........and at the entrance to each room would be The Narrator ; in this instance the Book Lover , played by a student in literature from the university.......

And so , on to the House Of The Dominatrix , subdivided into a series of small areas around a central photo on the floor of life size steps leading down - a reference to the film ' Maitresse ' , where the Dominatrix's space is entered from the flat above. The rear of the room is compartmented off with drapes - do you enter ?

The Narrator , The Dominatrix , is in this instance played by herself.

The third of these sketches is for the room of The House of The Music Lover ....it seemed obvious to me that this should be about sound , so the focus of the room is a juke box loaded with Manchester music - the idea of juke-box as altar is re-inforced by the plan layout of a church laid out on the floor. Bench seating line the walls , which display the names of all the musicians and bands to have come out of the Manchester area : quite a few.

The Narrator in this instance - The Music Lover - is played by a student from the Royal Northern College of Music....

.....and so to the last room , the Room of the Art Lover .......not yet fully realised as a design , toying with the idea of perspective lines and grids laid up into a cube . Visual content reflects the art lover's like for the works of Allen Jones , and after all he does live next to the House of the Dominatrix.

The Narrator is played by a curator at the Whitworth Gallery and enjoys cross-dressing.

So all I have to do now is to tidy this lot up , write three essays and then work out the presentation method in detail.................................