Illarterate.co.uk » Illarterate

Replay Expo 2011, Blackpool: An illuminating experience [Vlog]

Illarterate — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:57:56 +0000

Harry Yack takes a trip to the home of donkeys, expensive lighting and billions of bed and breakfasts. No time for sausage ‘n’ chips or walks along the promenade, however, as the 2011 Replay retro video game type thingy was also taking place just down the road at Norbreck Castle.

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Super Mario Bros. [NES] video game review

Illarterate — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:52:14 +0000

Well, this isn’t a proper ‘review’ as such, but an exercise in taking video games far too seriously.

Critical piece discussing the fungus fancier’s first console outing, chronicling the conception, controversies and downright LSD-fuelled insanity of Brooklyn’s most prominent pudgy pipe plunger. Nah, not really. I just reiterate the really obvious, half-humorous observations of other people.

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Who Wants to be a Millionaire? UK [PSX] video game review

Illarterate — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:00:12 +0000

Harry Yack takes a look back at a game so culturally significant it hardly matters.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire stood proudly atop the video games sales charts for weeks, nay months, after its release. This delivers false promise, for due to the unbelievable popularity of the TV show, every other parent who got their kid a Playstation for Christmas went out to Dixons and bought a copy. For 35 quid. In actuality, all you get is a bog-standard question and answer affair, and you know how fantastically those types of games translate to the Playstation. Exactly, they don’t.

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‘Teleglitcher’ featured in Dick Whyte’s “Detournement: Critical Cinema and The Internet”

Illarterate — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:52:02 +0000

Teleglitcher, an early video from my 2007 Pixel is Power project, has been featured in a special presentation at the New Zealand Film Archive. Kiwi visual artist Dick Whyte, with the help of Mark Williams, put together a screening of various experimental media, described as such:

“What do Miss Piggy, Britney Spears, Mussolini, Super Mario Bros., Charlie Rose, John Key, Ruth Richardson and Buster Keaton have in common? They are all the subjects of avant-garde films on YouTube. Film maker and academic Dick Whyte presents a screening of recent avant-garde films he has curated from YouTube. All of them re-purpose existing material into new works.

“Whyte says, “Technology has taken a long time to get to the point where video makers can sample with the same abandon as musicians and still image makers. YouTube heralds a new age in avant-garde cinema which is fully engaged with popular media.” The screening will be accompanied by short introductions to the films and their particular strategies, looking at the function of avant-garde moving-image at the beginning of the twenty-first century.” — New Zealand Film Archive

The show was screened at the Film Archive Mediatheatre, Wellington, in January of this year. See all films from the presentation at Whyte’s blog.

Sketchbook art: Venice & Verona, 2005

Illarterate — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:05:50 +0000

I always promised myself I’d get round to archiving my old sketchbooks, and this Easter weekend has given me the opportunity to do so. I’ve got about five years of stuff in the attic to go through, so that might take a while but to start, here’s a selection of the best artwork from my trip to Venice in 2005. Reflecting on some of these quick sketches and overpaints, I’m left wondering how I managed to put pen to paper during that week, which seemed to pass by in a sleep-deprived blur.

This was the view from our hotel. I was stupid enough to neglect noting the exact location

Some of the architecture around the city is amazing

View from the entry to the city of Verona

St Marco's Square

One of the many waterways which permeate the city

Good fun, just wish I could remember more about it!

Good Copy Bad Copy: Creativity on the line [The VHS Project]

Illarterate — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:09:33 +0000

Personally, I am not a fan of copyright licenses. Oftentimes I feel restricted in my work, unable to sample almost anything at all for fear of infringing copyright laws. This comes as no real surprise, me being of the mass media Internet generation who doesn’t much care for the mainstream music or film industries and all.

That said, I still enjoy a good album or movie in much the same way I like lighter, DIY user created content such as video mashups, and respect peoples’ rights to make money from their creations. Heck, it would be nice to one day make something out of what I do, but of course it’s never the primary motivation. People motivated by money may be rich but, on the whole, aren’t very nice individuals, and I’d hate to become one of them.

Good Copy Bad Copy is a Danish documentary offering some hope for the future, a utopian world where individuals are free to express their creativity with as wide a range of media as is available without fear of censorship. It’s a great watch for anyone interested in such things, covering copyright laws in the United States, Europe and even Nigeria. Here’s a bit of taster, the final minutes of the film:

Watch the film on YouTube, or download it from the official website.

Teletext: The Life and Death of a Medium

Illarterate — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:58:09 +0000

Clearing out some of the bulkier files on illarterate.co.uk, I came across a timeline created for my final year Graphic Arts Research Project (GARP) I’d completely forgotten about. It may be text only, but wasn’t teletext? Well, I know it incorporated some primitive artwork, but wasn’t the text the bit you were interested in? No? Forget it.

Anyway, with Teletext all but dead now –I believe a small percentage of the UK still have access to digital signals– I thought it an appropriate time to repost this. The top half relates to teletext-specific landmarks whilst the lower portion outlines related technology in other areas such as video gaming and computing development.

Click here or the pic for supreme quality pdf (70kb, right click > save as to save to disk).

The Super Mario Challenge [TCC, 1991] TV show review

Illarterate — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:34:42 +0000

Hey, would you look at that. It’s the Yak’s first TV show review, and pretty pants it is too! Well, I had some fun making it so I suppose that’s all that matters. Erm, I mean, it’s awesome and should be watched right away!

Footage mainly grabbed from The Children’s Channel. More info can be found here.

A load of old Babel: Illarterate hits the back pages! Sort of

Illarterate — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:37:33 +0000

Anybody who’s bought a newspaper and looked at the back page today will probably have noticed a particularly poor Photoshop of Howard Webb wearing a Manchester United shirt. This one, in fact:

The image that launched a thousand smirks. Maybe.

Well, guess who made it? That’s right, some fool whose text you are reading right now. Namely myself. Feel free to peruse the gallery below, which I am compiling in honour of this moment of (anonymous) fame for Harry Yack.

See here for a brief background on the image’s origin and why it’s such a poor Photoshop. Though I guess anyone with eyes is able to see that.

Fantastical gallery

Click an image for full size version.

Monday 10 January:

The Sun

The Metro

The Guardian

The Daily Mail

Tuesday 11 January:

Daily Sport

The Metro

Oh yeah, and it isn’t ‘mocked-up’ or ‘faked’, it’s a real photo!

Merry Christmas from Illarterate!

Illarterate — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:01:42 +0000