You’ll be ecstatically happy to hear that since I last posted I’ve been on holiday to Portugal to see my best friend getting spliced to his most excellent girlfriend. It was grand to see them do that, and even better that I got to be the best man without having to give a speech! I did get one ready last-minute, but there was no call for it, so in my pocket it stays. Shame, it was bloody brilliant.

Last night I went to the ScreenEdit’s Sessions event. It was a good event: I caught up a bit with somem people I haven’t seen in a while, drank some free beer, and saw a couple of good talks.

The first was by two Mark and Tim from AllofUs. They went through some example of the work that that agency does and told us about the time they spent in Seattle working at Microsoft’s HQ as part of MS’s Artist in Residence programme. The second talk was by Brendan Dawes of mN. I’ve seen him speak once before, at Adobe Live last year, as you may have read on this blog. He was brilliant again: he’s just got that certain charisma that you need to get the crowd on-side with you.

Brendan talked mainly about some of his personal projects and showed some of his early work for club 18–30. It was shit. Thankfully he’s improved somewhat, and talked us through some of the experiments he went through to get to his Cinema Redux prints. These are where he processes a film and converts it into artwork. A couple of them are exhibited in MoMA in New York. I was very impressed with that, but also slightly scratching my head. I always do that when I see project of this nature. It’s not something that is totally inaccessible: for example, you don’t need to be a fine artist or sculptor. The whole thing hinges on the idea, that’s the key, not the execution. The reason I’m scratching my head is because I haven’t had that idea and wonder what might be if I ever had that inspiration. Would I actually follow it through and do something about it, or would I just file it? Anyway, Brendan inspired as he did last time I saw him talk, so I think I should go and see him talk once a month, just to keep that energy going.

A successful night, then, it seems for ScreenEdit. If they have more events like this, I will definitely go. I suggest you do, to.