Wednesday, January 11, 2006

scotland- part dundee



so it was mostly cloudy the whole time i was in scotland- but that didn't stop me from having nice, relaxing fun and taking pictures. well actually a few things tried to conspire to stop that. my camera broke. my big beautiful manual canon ae-1.

ok, i am exaggerating a wee bit, just one pane of glass involved broke, the part of a lens that screws off and so the curved ones underneath are fine. and hopefully someone will tell me how to go about replacing it, or something like that. also my memory devices were massively full. but craig allowed me to burn a disc (and leave copies- just incase!) on his laptop. and that worked-all 846 of them are on the harddrive!



scotland started off with me putting my stuff down, checking my mail, taking a shower and just generally catching my breath! craig and i also checked out all of maria's photos. if you know who i am talking about, and you got an e-mail titled "from russia with love" make sure you check out the san francisco photos...

anyways. so after some wonderful scottish tea and biscuits we started off. walked to craig's school, and the union and then on the way to the city centre we stopped by dundee's center for contemporary arts. and saw elizabeth ogilvie's bodies of water. which i must tell you was crazy. this woman is obsessed with water. and not in the somewhat endearing way that i am. she basically filled 3 gallery rooms with this obsession. in the first there were three screens projecting what was filmed at the same time- 1) this fmaous japanese percussionist playing music 2) liz reacting to his music by splashing water in a shallow pool and 3) the pool of water, being splashed by liz and vibrated by the music. yup a whole room of that. then in the 2nd room there were two huge pools of water, on the left it was perfectly still and above it was a screen where liz had videoed 3 of the main processes of water. and then in the other pool there were lights shining on it and mirrors placed within it so they reflected the surface on the walls. and then these 'secret' pipes went through cycles of rain. then there was a third room where the viewer could interact with the water for themselves.
but i guess that is part of the reason i love modern art- the insanity within every artist.

after that craig and i walked into the city centre, saw some sculpture of a cartoon named dan and some cathedrals then we stopped in marks and spencer- i LOVE it! they have yummy carmelized nut/seed bars, and smoooothies and candy. oh and also everything else, but i only care about the foodstuffs mentioned above. then we walked a bit, attempted another museum, but guess what- it doesn't open until 2008. how far away is that!?

then craig remembered that there is actually a used bookstore (i had requested that we go to one!). and it was pretty cool, small and clean- but with a nice selection. and a whole section of scottish books, and i got a cool one about highland faerie tales! but then a strange man poked my side, on purpose, as he walked by. so we paid for our books and left!

and that was basically my first day in scotland!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so i'm commenting per your request and as i said i would before i last left you, but you rather led me to believe there was more than just this one entry i hadn't read! anyway, scotland sounds like it was loads of fun (told you!) and i am really excited about going there this weekend.

i am curious to know what masha did in San Francisco...be sure to let me know about that.

ms. margaret said...

WOW! sounds great...i'd pee myself with glee if i could go to mark's and spencers!