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Meeting point

Miscellanea

There is a precise point where creative freedom and discipline, imagination and technology meet themselves, turning an idea into an object.  Unfortunately, the artist and the conservator are unlikely to have the same idea of discipline.  For the conservator, paper is something to safeguard and maintain unchanged for as long as possible while, for the artist, paper is a medium to live, explore, and sometimes even mistreat.

The first one fights the paper's ephemeral nature, while the second embraces it.

As a conservator, I am aware of the mechanical and chemical balance that regulates (and ensures) the durability of an object on paper, and I would keep each sheet as aseptic as possible. I ask myself many questions about the possibility of combining different materials: instinctively I would test the acidity of everything I use...

As an artist, I live the fascination of an idea, an image, a composition or just a texture. Their implementation becomes priority over the chemistry of cellulose.

Of course many precautions can be adopted, but sometimes the creative process is in itself transgressive.

Where is the meeting point?

Last Updated (Friday, 13 November 2009 19:37)

 

Help reCAPTCHA to archive human knowledge

Miscellanea

A "captcha" is a computer program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer hence stopping spammers from gaining access to an email address through automated programs.

reCAPTCHA is a free "captcha" service that helps to digitise books, newspapers and old time radio shows.
In their own words: "reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher."

So, if you want to help them to archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, add reCAPTCHA to your website! I did it (see the "contacts" page), and it works.
To learn more about reCAPTCHA, click here.

Last Updated (Tuesday, 10 November 2009 22:07)

 

The Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection

Museums

The Mander & Mitchenson Theatre Collection is one of the biggest English collections related to theatre.

Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, both actors, met in the late 1930’s and formed a professional and personal partnership that was to last for over forty years. In their house in Venner Road they amassed a vast collection of theatre ephemera, works of art, books and props.

Their collection (counting over 1500 archive boxes of theatre ephemera and 1500 books) is now in Greenwich, as part of the Jerwood Library of the Performing Arts (Trinity College of Music).

The boxes, containing over a million items of ephemera are still classified according the criteria originally used by Mander and Mitchenson. Each box is full of various materials, some more than one century old.

The collection counts many pictures, newspapers cut-outs, original documents and also a great deal of documentation regarding actors, regional theatres, circuses, puppetry and pantomime.

For more info visit the website: www.mander-and-mitchenson.co.uk

Last Updated (Sunday, 08 November 2009 16:11)