Diversions

I myself am quite a fan of puzzles, and all during the time that my children were growing up, I constantly 'challenged' them with quizzes and questions about the things around us. I have no idea if I got a similar 'treatment' from my own parents, but in any case, I do take a fair pleasure in trying to 'figure things out'.

So every now and then I prepare a small 'quiz' about my work, and include it here in the website. None of these are very complex, and nothing that needs any specific printmaking knowledge or ability. They are just a light diversion ... To save you from hunting around the site to find them, here are links to a few of them ...

The first one is a set of ten questions that I posed in an issue of my Hyakunin Issho newsletter many years ago:

A couple of years ago I made a short appearance on a television quiz program. I had been a bit surprised when the producer phoned me, as I knew my Japanese ability wasn't good enough yet for me to join such a program, but it turned out that they didn't want me as a panel member, but as a 'topic' for the quiz. There are a number of aspects of traditional printmaking that seem a bit puzzling to the layman, and they wanted to try and stump their panel members.

Just what were they interested in? Well, rather than tell you directly, I thought that maybe we should have our own quiz, right here in 'Hyakunin Issho'. That program only used one point from my work, but I have prepared a small group of ten questions concerning my printmaking work and some of the materials I use. Some are quite easy, some might seem more difficult.

The next one came about due to something I was puzzled with during the time that I was working on my Beauties of Four Seasons series:

But what to make of this particular print series? At first glance the images are no more or less 'decorative' than any other prints of that era, but each one carries a very short descriptive caption implying that we should be looking deeper. Obviously then, these prints cannot be looked on as just decoration.

I tried a little experiment with a few friends. I showed them the five images, and asked them to match the pictures with the descriptive titles. I wanted to see if there actually was enough 'feeling' visible in the finished work to enable them to be correctly matched.

The experiment was so enlightening I made an online version.

This next one came about by mistake - an actual mistake during my work. I had left the Woodblock Webcam on 'archive' mode one day with the intention of putting together a short QuickTime video of the work. At the end of the session, I prepared the video as planned, but just as I was about to upload it to the site, I realized that I had neglected to trim out the section of the video where I had had a 'senior moment' during the work that day and done something rather silly. Rather than go back and re-edit the video, I decided to leave the error in, post the file as planned, and see if the viewers could find it.

It turned out to be surprisingly difficult for them to do so, even though the error was nothing specifically to do with printmaking, and anybody should be able to see it with no problem.

Can you spot my mistake while watching the video?

And finally, not a 'quiz' per se, but a chance to win a prize nonetheless! This one is also related to the Woodblock Webcam. Over on that section of the website, I introduce 'Boots', the cat who lives down the street, and who spends many hours here every day ...

Because the webcam only catches one shot every ten or twelve seconds, she sometimes comes and goes without viewers noticing. Occasionally though, she gets 'in the picture' ... (she's difficult to see, but her white feet are the giveaway ...) A bit difficult to see her? Hmmm ... That gives me an idea ... Let's have a bit of fun with this! Announcing the "Where's Boots?" contest.

Yes, all you have to do is spot Boots-chan on the Webcam screen, let me know, and I'll send you a free print! More details are on the Where's Boots contest page.

Unrelated to those quiz-type diversions, but perhaps of passing interest, is the page showing how I built the teleprompter that I have used to make some of the video clips on this site ...

Even more unrelated is a page of instructions on how to replace the hard drive in an iPod!