Sam Redlark

Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 17th July 2022. The comment has since been deleted from the website. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented under the terms of fair use. ~ Which species exhibits the most diverse physical characteristics? image generated by Craiyon In the summer of 1976, Victor Wijngaarden, on holiday with his family in Cawdale, North Yorkshire, ran from the back door of the house that his parents rented for two weeks every June or July, to a nearby stretch of river. In his hands he clutched a bamboo pole, holding it across his chest as if it were a rifle, and he a solider charging across no-man's land, with the red fishing net at one end substituting for a bayonet. His heart was set on the tiny black fish that he had observed, during previous years, moving in procession upstream, each migratory c...

I made a short film about the fall of the Ceylon Match Company and the Two Elephants brand of matches. The video should hopefully be embedded below. For anyone who is unable to suffer through my voice and questionable editing, I have also included the script. Highly Synchronised – A Tale of Two Elephants image generated by Craiyon [OPENING SEQUENCE] [A landscaped video montage of me sliding open a box of Two Elephants matches, striking a match, and using it to light a candle] ~ [INTRODUCTION] These are the books of matches that my grandfather, Owen Heald, accumulated from hotels, bars and restaurants, both at home and abroad, mostly while on business trips on behalf of the Shell Oil Company. In each of these short films, I will select a matchbook at random and then scour the Internet for information regarding its place of origin. [This is accompanied by a montage of three or four landscaped images of the big plastic tub containing my grandfather's matchbook collection, with each im...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 25th September 2022 The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site. I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it? This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ How might things have turned out if the Romans had stayed in Britain? image generated by Craiyon There is a story regarding the village of Perdwell, which is situated on the Combe Down, south of the city of Bath; how it came to acquire its name: In the 14th century, a girl named Lonore noticed water bubbling up from the corner of the meadow, where she had been tending livestock. Further investigation yielded a cluster o...

[Spoilers lie ahead] image generated by Craiyon It is difficult, these days, to read a review of Morrissey's recorded output that isn't also a review of the man and his opinions on hot-button political and social issues, from which his art, we are told, is inseparable. Among these commentators, you will find a coterie of middle-aged journalists and bloggers whose callow teenage years are immutably anchored in the mid-late 1980s and the early 90s; men and women who are now putting down roots in middle age, whose personalities, social conscience, sense of aesthetics, and even their vegetarianism were informed by the charismatic Smiths frontman. When speaking of Morrissey, these writers will often convey a wounded sense of betrayal that is either tacitly admitted, or that simmers just below the surface – a resentment that someone who exerted such a profound influence over their formative years now no longer feels as they do, if indeed he ever did. Morrissey's devotees are fewe...

image generated by Craiyon Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on the 24th July 2022 The comment has since been deleted from the website. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented under the terms of fair use. ~ What qualities should we look for in a leader? Recently, Walter Searle sent me (and I would imagine others in his email address book) a Warhol-esque montage of the outgoing British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, suffering from what he referred to as “tie wilt”. “Whenever he deigns to wear a neck tie, it inevitably comes to resemble a weed that has been strangled by the gardener who attempted to uproot it,” he added, by way of commentary. I am unsure what he meant to achieve with this observation, beyond adding to an expansive list of competencies where Johnson has fallen lamentably short. It actually rather depressed me,...

image generated by Craiyon This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website, on the 18th September, 2022 The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site. I am replying here instead because it is too good a writing exercise to give up: How quickly can you go from a prompt, a blank mind, and a blank page to a finished piece? And how good can you make it? This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ Are there any foods that have not at some time been considered harmful in a study? This happened back when Wiggins was still serving God in a professional capacity and I was still capable of washing down the red meat with red wine, without risking jaundice and/or a sudden floor-bound collapse from ensuing abdominal pain. Time has caught up with both of us, and has laid down a few clause...

The sun is setting on the unintentionally Dadaist / avant-garde phase that has been a hallmark of creative A.I. for several years. We are graduating into an unsettling era of machine learning, where software is eminently capable of generating meaningful art and literature that doesn't trip over it's own digital feet. Still, at the lower end there are publicly available options such as Craiyon / DALL.E that will draw often surreal images from written prompts. These composites are based on an analysis of millions of images on the Internet along with their associated captions. Evidently the key to defeating Skynet is for everyone to start adding the tag 'Uzi 9mm' to online photographs of kittens. Recently, I have been using Craiyon to generate artwork for my blog, and I will also be making use of it in my next London, building by building video. I like the imperfect and otherworldly images that it generates. Another point of interest is how easily it is able to render some...