Badaude

Tentative d'infographer un Petit-déj

I had fun working out the perfect formula for breakfast for the London Review of Breakfasts. 

(The fact that I wrote it in Paris is neither here nor there.) 

Here's an excerpt - if you'd like to find the solution to breakfast, read more here.

Breakfast is a matter of proportion.

Any proportion can be expressed and analysed mathematically.

Take the four basic breakfast ingredients: egg, bacon, tomato, sausage.

The first thing to notice is that they can be eaten in various combinations. The taste of each ingredient is enhanced by combination with another. This is one of the chief pleasures of breakfast. Some people prefer the taste of sausage with egg; others, bacon with tomato. Fewer will eat sausage with tomato, and almost none, tomato with egg or sausage with bacon. This can be expressed thus:

Interesting results can be gained from converting this into a Venn diagram showing the most popular combinations, which expresses a fascinating and pleasing circularity accounting, perhaps, for the continuing popularity of the four basic ingredients (please ignore the central shaded area on the diagream below, which we shall come back to later).

 

Un voyage vers...

"Something you never thought might happen: after a certain number of years the being who has read all these neglected books will step from your bookshelves, will sit down at your table (conveniently adjacent), will make a cup of coffee at the machine, having seen you use it so many times, especially when about to tackle a book, and will light a cigarette, insubstantial as steam, the odour of which will affect neither your carpets nor curtains. It will be the opposite of you, your inverse."

On 11 March I talked a bit about Oulipo with Lauren Elkin and read a story (extract above) at Shakespeare and Company Bookshop Paris. My story was inspired by George Perec's Voyage D'Hiver and its many responses, some of which can be found here, and also by Perec's and contemporary Oulipian Anne Garréta's essays on bookshelves. Referencing the Voyage D'Hiver tradition as well as hinting at Oulipo's obsession with 'potential' literature, I called it 'Un Voyage Vers...' (A Journey Towards...)

I made a limited edition of signed and numbered prints of the story, hand-lettered, with the above illustration. A few of the sepia edition of 10 are still available at the till at Shakespeare & Co. I also have an edition of 10 in rust as shown above. The print comes in the form of an A4 size booklet with the pic on the front so you can put it on your wall when you've read it if you feel inclined. If you'd like one, they're £7 - or a if it's easier buy me a book from here. The price includes postage anywhere in the world. Please get in touch by leaving a message below or emailing badaude-at-gmail-dot-com. 

Here's pic from the event. Seems like we had a lot of fun.

(thanks to Shakespeare & Co for the photo)

 

Bookgame, Berlin!

I ran a bookgame at the wonderful English language bookshop, Dialogue, Berlin, last weekend.

The principles behind the game are here. 

I had an impressive list of contributors: as well as friends of the bookshop, writers Jenny Diski, Olivia Laing, Ben Moor, Masha Tupitsyn, Suzanne Joinson, Clare Wigfall, Drew Minh, James Hopkin, Abigail Docherty, Susana Medina, Nicholas Royle and Tod Wodicka, sent 5-part pieces. Many many thanks!

Darran Anderson, who also contributed, called the game, Cutups, which is such a good title I think I'll steal it...

Here are some photos:

I will be running another bookgame in 2013. 

If you're a bookshop - or other book-related organisation/event/whatever - and would like me to run the game with you, please email badaude-at-gmail-dot-com. 

I drew a New Button for 3am Podcasts

You can see it about half-way down the right sidebar on this page.

But here it is too...

It's a 1930s Dutch parabolic listening device.

Maths Cabinet

Here's a taster of my contribution to the Whipple Museum, Cambridge's, first art book, The Rules of Form: Sonnets & Slide Rules

'It is certainly true that, as the nineteenth century progressed and the British Empire expanded across the globe, a very ugly fascination with power, domination, and force increasingly crept into British culture, culminating in the preoccupation of many fin-de-siécle thinkers with the proto-Fascist philosophies of eugenics and social Darwinism. In this sense, both the poem and the paintings can be seen as expressions of a kind of psychopathology of technical mastery, in which the artist’s mastery of form – superbly evident in all these works – becomes contorted into a fascination with its power to set restraints and limits on other people’s bodies and minds.' 

-- From the Whipple Museum Art Book, essay by Dr Joseph Crawford

 

The book will be published in November 2012 and is available from the Whipple Museum, Cambridge. 

 

 

 

A Bigger Bang #4

...long shots, last...

scroll back to previous posts for details.

 

A Bigger Bang #4

...long shots, last...

scroll back to previous posts for details.

 

A Bigger Bang #3

...close-ups. See last post, and the one before...

Bigger Bang #2

...in progress

A Bigger Bang

Work I did at the new Big Bang restaurant, Oxford, last weekend...

 

sketches...

...more tomorrow