LONDRIZZLE MY HEART

Check out this comic performance poetry pitch I delivered at Bristol's Poetry Can (maybe should have done it in London, but they're Brits too, they love the self-deprecating schtick)

<IT'S NOT EVEN GREEN>

SCIENCE IS ART IS SCIENCE

This recreation of a false natural history (below) admits that we yearn for our roots and for things built naturally, by things over which we have no control, with a stronger connection to 'the ultimate purpose of it all':

I'm working with neuroscience experts from various universities tomorrow to develop an artistic spatial cognition stunt - can't wait. And with the curator of the Wellcome Trust's 'Brains' exhibition, to make our 'Superhuman Lab' studio artily beautiful. Maybe the same patterns will be writ small and large across the walls of the studio - branching trees and branching neurones. Hoping to bring in some art works from Robert Devcic's GVArt studio, such as a 3D print of a brain scan... Also have some great ideas on visualisation from March's SameAs event - www.sameas.us - very useful when testing the amazing mental abilities of our Shaolin warrior.

Lessons from Nature

For a while I have been working on a television treatment which brings lessons from the animal kingdom to bear on human issues - on monogamy, cooperation, punishment and many other areas. But now Terry Tom Brown has beaten me to that feat - making this connection in the media - with his brilliant column in the Observer magazine. I guess if you can't beat them join them, so I am planning to approach him to work on a proposal for a Radio 4 series - 'Lessons from Nature'? - or perhaps even a new Sunday morning natural history production. There's a lot of scope for 'mind and spirit' programming for atheists - we're not robots you know! (well not simple ones).

Wonders of the Rollerskate Park: The Physics of Rollerskating

My current project, 'Superhuman Lab' for the Discovery Channel, is a brilliant excuse to spend time thinking about amazing abilities and how our amazing biology can explain them.

Amazing abilities like, for example, that smug ice-skating jump that Robbie Williams does in that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7mZ5Y6OuH0

Having read up on tennis and dancing techniques, and seen how this can improve the performance of even top-flight athletes, t seems to me that science could hugely benefit those who want to succeed in sports and art. Understanding, for example, that the practical route to standing still on roller skates relies on the physics of an equal pull of gravity on all parts of the bottom of the boots, is really useful. Developing even spreading of the weight across the boots, and soles parallel to the ground, is much easier when you know this is the overall aim, rather than trial and error-ing what helps you balance.

To find out how science can help you become a freewheeling Hyde Park-ite, check out my film: Wonders of the Rollerskate Park (WT) : <IN FINAL EDIT>. I'm not saying I'm a free-wheeling Hyde Park-ite. In fact I got terribly bruised.

I'm now looking at short films on brainpower and sporting ability, linked to the Wellcome Trust's brilliant forthcoming exhibitions - Brains: Mind as Matter (29th March - 17th June 2012), and Superhumans (19 July-16 October 2012). More short films coming your way soon!