My first attempt at a little planet shot with my Nikon D800 and 60mm lens. 142 images total went into stitching this together. This is a proof of concept – as you can see the flare in the lens to the right hand side. I’ll control for that in future

There’s a theory, mentioned fairly often on websites like Cracked.com that certain ideas have a time, that there are points in history where the sheer pressure of events, scientific & social progress causes a leap that is distributed around the world. The common knowledge of society as a whole reaches a certain level, and then, simultaneously, multiple unconnected people invent the same thing in different parts of the world, because what has come before reaches this specific brightness that more or less illuminates the road ahead.

OK, enough of the metaphors – point being, I’d always found this idea interesting, but while I know intellectually that coincidences are actually very common, for instance the Birthday Problem posits that you only need 23 randomly chosen people to get a greater than 50% chance that any two will share a birthday, I’d never really experienced one until now. To be honest, it’s left me feeling a little shaken.

So, the backstory – I was recently given the 2011 film Limitless to watch. I hadn’t seen it, but remembered the title. Upon reading the blurb on the back of the box, I had something of a shock. Edited here to show the bits, upon which I locked my attention:

Aspiring author Eddie Morra … is down and out … revolutionary new pharmaceutical … allowing him to realise his full potential … he can recall everything

Now, to provide some context, this is the current blurb for the first part of my graphic novel series Surfing The Deathline:

Sometime in the near future, software codemonkey Eddie is down to his last few dollars. Unemployed and living on, or rather under, the streets, he’s also facing “repossession” of his organs to cover student debts.

Now he’s been offered a job, a job that requires he risk his sanity taking an hallucinogen that’ll give him a chance at subverting a Machine Intelligence for a few critical minutes.

Character name – check. Character’s life situation – check. Neuro-accelerator drug as the macguffin that enables the story – check. Vivid recall of memory – check.

At this stage, I was more than a little freaked out. I’d been working on the book for a looooong time. The first print publication was for Supanova Sydney in 2006. Had someone read it, and lifted some ideas? That seemed unlikely – noone in their right mind would copy a work, and then keep the character name, right? Thinking it was a funny coincidence, I decided to tweet about it, and yes, it gave me an excuse to promote one of my books:

“Limitless” a 2011 movie in which down & out “Eddie” turns to neuro-accelerator drugs. Seems familiar… (2006) http://t.co/ExoJHOZSDb

— Matt Godden (@golgothaspace) January 7, 2015

Looking at the IMDB page for the film, I saw that it was based on a novel by Alan Glynn, The Dark Fields. So, I look up the book, and good lord, published in 2001! Stranger still, the ending, well without revealing spoilers it’s ultimately similar. Feeling like a bit of an idiot, I tweet:

Well fuck me, based on a novel The Dark Fields from 2001… Around when i started #SurfingTheDeathine #HumblePie #FreakedOut

— Matt Godden (@golgothaspace) January 7, 2015

And that’s when a sick feeling began. Glynn’s work was published first, I hadn’t ever read it, but still… hang on, isn’t this the Stephen King story Secret Window, Secret Garden? I went to my working files, to see if I could find the documentation for the dates that Surfing The Deathline began production. February 2001 is the oldest metadata I can find – an old Infini-D 3.0 file, the model for an underground location where my Eddie enters the story.

That gels with my timeline for when I would have been working on it, so at least I feel confident that if anyone were to be as hasty as I was initially, jumping to conclusions about the genesis of works, that I’ve got a fairly reasonable documentation. Gotta say though, It’d be fascinating to have a chat with Glynn and see if that one moment was a case of two ships crossing, or of travelling in the same lane.

Once Surfing The Deathline is complete – and to be fair, it’s really only the original first half of the story that tracks with The Dark Fields (as far as I can see) – I’ll read Glynn’s book. From the blurb, it sounds fascinating.

So my current phone, an iPhone 3GS which I bought outright in 2009, has been getting a little long in the tooth. I’ve been thinking about options for replacement, and had pondered trying to get an old stock iPhone 5S through a 3rd party retailer, since they’re still available in a 64gb version. The iPhone 5S models Apple sells since the iPhone 6 release, are 16 & 32gb only.

So, I went to the Apple store to check out the feel of the current lineup. In short, neither of them are particularly nice.

The iPhone 5S feels cheap and hollow. It’s too light for its apparent volume. While the rectangular design is pretty, it’s an unpleasant object to hold in your hand.

The iPhone 6 is a completely different experience. It’s heavier, having what feels like the correct weight for its size, or rather, the correct feeling of density for its size. The screen is tremendous, and looks more real and less like a screen than the 5s, I suspect because the panel is closer to the surface of the glass. While the curved back and front edges feel fantastic in the hands, the simple fact is that the phone is too big. In order to hold it in a way that’s comfortable for reaching the home button, so much of the phone cantilevers out over the top of your hand, that you never feel it’s safe unless you’re gripping onto it. Contrast that with my 3GS:

 Here I can sit the phone in my hand, and use it without any need to physically hold it in place, the weight and shape of the phone keep it in place.

Added to this, the glassy-smooth surface of the iPhone 6 simply feels too slippery. Combined with the projecting into space cantilever, every second of holding it resulted in buttock-clenching terror.

The only thing I’ve held that felt less secure in my hand, was a live, wriggling fish.

Now, I could, and probably would, get a leather or silicone skin if I was going to buy this phone. That would alleviate the slipperiness, and ensure that the camera lens wasn’t projecting out into space from the back of the phone – which is another mark against the iPhone 6. However, it would make the phone even bigger.

So, I think I’m going to sit out this round of phones, yet again, and stay with my 3GS. Perhaps when Apple makes a device with an iPhone 5S (or smaller) sized screen, in an iPhone 6 denisity and shape, and gives it 64gb of storage, I’ll look into buying again.

If this article was of use, a donation would help support my projects.

Dissent was an entry for Sculpture By The Sea Bondi 2014. It was accepted for the exhibition, but unfortunately I was unable to secure funding to cover the estimated $15,000 construction cost, and so I had to withdraw from the exhibition.

The work combines the pipe and valve material language of my steel sculpture, with the massing and repetition of objects that is a part of my wall sculpture and photographic practice. It arrays a field of identical (but for one) anthropomorphised valve figures, whose arrangement creates dynamic moiré patterns as clear lines of sight through the work appear, shift, and then disappear.

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Things have been quiet for a while, mainly due to a prolonged and somewhat traumatic house & studio move. After 11 years in the previous place, it’s amazing how much stuff one can accumulate. I (possibly) came up with a little joke to describe the experience:

What’s the difference between a Sculptor and a Hoarder?

The spelling.

I had pretty much grown out of the old place in terms of what I could do with my sculpture, and the owners / agents were in a habit of putting the rent up more and more frequently, while not doing any basic maintenance. Once I was out, I found rising damp in the bedrooms, in fact damage as a result of damp throughout the apartment. Strangely, sitting around in the empty rooms that had been my home for so many years, I felt nothing at all. No nostalgia for the place that had been my home for longer than any bar one of my family homes.

That said, now I’m settled into the new place, and slowly sorting everything out, I’ll be able to start talking about it. It’s a small warehouse, about 15 minutes drive further away from the centre of town that I was previously. Once it’s set up, it should be an extremely productive space, in which I can sculpt, photograph and draw.

I’ve never been a reader of Batman, but I’ve been thinking of late about the mythos of this character, and whether it’s reasonable to think of him as a hero, or even a laudable figure.

Let’s face it, this is a rich guy, who fights crime recreationally. He won’t kill criminals, because he has a “code” against killing – a code by the way, that the criminals aren’t all that interested in following themselves. The fact that Gotham City so predictably fails to keep these recidivistic criminals in jail, only serves to reinforce that Batman knows that every time he refuses to kill a criminal, more innocent bystanders will die.

It’s the trolley problem, do you through action kill one to save many, or through inaction, allow many to die, in order to keep your hands “clean” through non-involvement.

Batman’s code does one thing – it preserves the criminal underworld from which he gains his sense of self-worth. I’d find Batman far more interesting if he was less emo about his dead parents, and more prepared to sacrifice his principles to get the results.