Mail Boxes Etc. Izzy Bocchetti

The highly individual installations for The Rose Street Project create a public gallery right on the high street, providing public art open to everyone visiting the city, day and night until early January.

The project is a result of measures put in place by Essential Edinburgh to improve Rose Street’s identity and community engagement. Nestled between George Street and Princes Street, Rose Street and its independent retailers are often overshadowed by the major retailers nearby. This project aims to help put Rose Street on the map by boosting footfall and increasing activity there.

Murdo Maclean’s Anupa Gardner

Social Bite Louise Smurthwaite

The result has been less about traditional Christmas display, but instead has created highly individual installations in a new, public context, demanding new and fresh approaches to the invited artists’ creative practices.

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The Listening Boothhas been created to provide a dedicated space for contemporary sound based art and a platform for experimental music. Traditional art galleries can be problematic spaces for hosting none visual works; however The Listening Booth allows the listener to experience the work in their own time. Along with a downloadable track many of the artists have included listening instructions, for example an artist can specify their work is best experienced at night, in the bath or on a commute. The listener is then able to embrace or ignore these instructions. This allows the artist and the listener to create their ideal gallery space.

The Listening Booth was created by artist Katie Tindle, ‘The Listening Booth reflects how we consume audio culture, through download and streaming. The Internet is the perfect space for a project of this kind because it bypasses the physical limitations of a gallery. It also allows us to play with the definitions of sound art, music and writing. The Listening Booth will host a lot of work that defies or straddles definitions. I felt it was important that the work be available for free so that it can be as widely accessible. By allowing their audience to download their work there’s a very intimate situation created between the artist and their listeners.’

Confirmed contributors include JDA Winslow, McGilvary/White, Eden Mitschenmaker, Taxi for My Uncle, Charles Verni, Nouria Bah.

A 30 minute preview of The Listening Booth was broadcast on Radio Anti during the Art Licks weekend, an arts festival held in October 2015. The preview can be heard here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Formerly The Scottish Screen Archive, the resource has a vast range of footage from documentaries to home videos. Using the search tool you can explore films made for public information, industry, and entertainment.

If conducting research you can call up particular films or use a keyword filter, and browse information on specific filmmakers and film productions. Alternatively, simply browse through genres, subject, place and decade to while away the hours!

Register free online to access the archive and even create a ‘My films’ list, request a copy of films or buy DVD compilations.

Whether the landscapes and architecture is familiar to you or not, this is something that everyone can appreciate having right at their fingertips.

Explore the NLS Moving Image Archive here.

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Catriona provides a useful resource to those seeking hidden gems and well known works. A good example of this is her familiar stomping ground in Edinburgh. Want to take in all of the Antony Gormley series 6 Times? The blog shows all six, including the striking cast Number VI standing at the end of an abandoned pier in Leith.

Antony Gormley, 6 Times cast Number VI

Among the more mainstream or historically significant pieces on the well-tread tourist trail, the collection highlights hidden and temporary works that could easily go unnoticed. Temporary sculptures The Leaf People, situated near Deanhaugh, have been appearing for years now and are there to be appreciated by local passers-by.

The Leaf People

Find locations of the Shutter Project, like this one by Fraser Grey, giving a new lease of life to the shop fronts after hours.

The Shutter Project, Fraser Grey

Art on Your Streets reflects on each city having an aesthetic and gives the reader the insight and tools to explore what each city has to offer. Check the site for all locations including Glasgow, Amsterdam and Singapore.

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The digital realm is so bombarded with images that the original photograph has perhaps lost its initial charm and distinction. Consider the sheer amount of photographs discarded in family albums, personal archives and simply thrown out. The Photo Fostering Project aims to look after these photographs which have lost their place in this world.

All photographs that come through the project are scanned at high resolution and are free to use under Creative Commons licence. You can also re-home a physical photograph for just £1 with free postage. See what’s available here and give a photograph a new home.

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Drawing on FVU’s extensive history of commissioning, producing and supporting artists’ film, White Screen enables important works to be accessed afresh by a generation who might not otherwise have encountered them. Reflecting on the changing role of artists’ moving image in the digital age – its production, consumption and dissemination – each new essay provides a contemporary response to a historical moment.

Marxism Today by Phil Collins

At the time of writing, Phil Collins’ Marxism Today, 2010 was up on White Screen. This film tells the stories of former Marxism-Leninism teachers in Communist East Germany. Nina Power Philosophy teacher at the University of Roehampton and Critical Writing in Art & Design at the Royal College of Art has written a response to Collins’ film, which you can read here.

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Artist, writer and educator Måns Wrange along with architect and designer Igor Isaksson are the Stockholm based duo behind Bibliotheca Non Grata which has been commissioned by the city of Umeå in Sweden, in memory of journalist, activist and author, Stieg Larsson’s work. Bibliotheca Non Grata is a public art project in the form of an imaginary library of rejected and thus non-existent books from across the world.

The library as an institution has played a crucial role in defining what is to be considered as knowledge, culture and identity in our society. Countless rejected works throughout history may have been thought of as unsuitable for the literary market, too radical for the thinking of the time or too provocative. What stories and ideas never saw the light of day?

The final commissioned work will be placed in Umeå city library in the newly constructed cultural centre Väven (”The Weave”) designed by the internationally acclaimed architect’s offices Snøhetta and White. The artwork will be placed right at the entrance to the library, hidden behind frosted glass. When visitors approach Bibliotheca Non Grata, the glass section transitions from frosted to clear, so that the hardbound ‘rejected’ books in various languages are revealed.

Wrange and Isaksson are inviting contributions to Bibliotheca Non Grata from established and emerging authors. You can submit your own unpublished work which has been rejected by a publishing house or an institution. A selection of submitted titles of rejected manuscripts will be printed on the spines of 365 hardbound empty book covers — one for each day of the year.

To submit your entry or find out more information about Bibliotheca Non Grata, visit their website here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Rosaline Shahnavaz

Rosaline Shahnavaz

Take a look at photographer Rosaline Shahnavaz’s article on Personality where she explains her intention in reflecting her subject’s inherent character.

“As a female photographer, I don’t really feel a massive obligation to produce portraits of women looking strong, just like I don’t have the need to produce portraits of males looking strong. I take portraits of both males and females for who they are.” – Rosaline Shahnavaz

“Khaled Barghouthi” image from ‘Looking for Palestine’ by David Brunetti

Read an interview with award-winning portrait and documentary photographer David Brunetti on his work documenting Palestine.

“When I think of Palestine, I…remember the people I’ve met, the food, the music, the culture and how beautiful it is.” – David Brunetti

For more, explore On A White Wall online here.

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It contains classic and contemporary, hand-picked from our festivals, cultural programme and the BFI National Archive. The site works on desktops, android and apple devices with a downloadable app from iTunes.

You can choose from thousands of beautifully preserved films, documenting 120 years of Britain on Film all searchable on an interactive map. If you only have 5 minutes, why not watch footage from BFI’s Film Festival such as Director Peter Strickland and editor Nick Fenton’s Q&A on Björk: Biophilia Live, 2014. Alternatively if you’ve got a bit more time, try a more recent feature such as Appropriate Behaviour, 2015 by Director and star Desiree Akhavan which is a comedy about a bisexual Iranian-American woman.

With so many films to choose from, the BFI have helpfully created a Collections sub-menu which helps direct you to your perfect playlist. They include exclusive features about the films or the people who made them. Collections include Hitchock where you can view classics like The Birds or Psycho for £2.98 or watch Martin Scorsese discuss Vertigo for free.

Explore the BFI Player here but we warn you – you may just lose a few hours.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Embracing the concept of street art, The City Centre Regeneration team has created the very first City Centre Mural Trail, all contained in one easy walking route.

One of the first murals was painted by street artist Sam Bates (aka Smug) in celebration of Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and features swimmers underneath the Kingston Bridge, Anderston Quay. Another one not to miss by Smug is Five Faces which represents comical expressions of people playing with yoyos under the Caledonian Railway, Broomielaw.

A favourite with taxi drivers is Rogue-one’s The World’s Most Economical Taxi on Mitchell Street. The artist actually painted the wall to look like a brick wall with incredible attention to detail. Whilst on Mitchell Street, you can’t miss Smug’s huge Honey I Shrunk the Kids photo realistic piece. The immense image depicts a larger than life girl with a magnifying glass studying an object off the street. At the right angle you can line yourself up for a photograph of this girl picking you up off the street.

Follow the mural trail online here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.