La Paresse: Nino Paulito Vacation '17

What am I looking at? 
La Paresse by printmaker Felix Vallotton.

Why? 
Today marks the start of Nino Paulito's annual autumn vacation. We'll be using this time to relax, refresh and unwind. Pretty much everything this picture exemplifies.

Any other plans? 
Yes. We are moving to Tooting which according to Lonely Planet is one of the top 10 places to live in the world. After that we are taking a round trip to Singapore and Penang. We're especially excited about Singapore airport as everyone tells us it's quite a location itself. Also, all the food and randomly flavoured snacks.

Anything else? 
Nino Paulito is now on Instagram.

Great. Thanks. Bye. 

Festival of Unfinished Things

What am I looking at?
The Fish King & his Mermaid creation.

Please explain.

Nino Paulito recently performed in the Festival of Unfinished Things, a cabaret-style event created by Will Tribble and Ellie Scanlan. An unfinished thing could be in any format including, music, an art, a film, a recipe, whatever... Each contributor presented their unfinished idea to a live audience who would then provide feedback/ comments which would hopefully help them complete the work.

What did you propose?

We arrived with our unfinished puppet Mermaid and asked the audience to draw some ideas on how to complete her. We then picked out our favourite idea which was Frogmaid with a Beenus and sculpted it live on the day.

Wonderful.

There were some other brilliant ideas. Our actual favourite was a shell house that the mermaid could crawl back into. We only had a very limited time to complete the work so went with the simplest idea. We'll probably explore this again in the future though.

Great. Thanks. Bye. 

Robots @ The Science Museum

What am I Looking at? 
Robots at the Science Museum. This exhibition documented the history of robotics from the clockwork automatons to the modern inventions containing super advanced AI.

What were the most interesting robots? 
The Milo robot by RoboKind was designed to help autistic children recognise different emotions. It could accurately read, mimic and respond to your facial expressions. Also impressive was the iit robot designed by iCub. This robot that could learn manual movements by watching a demonstration then repeating the action afterwards.

What were Nino's favourite robots? 
The famous movie robots were the most intriguing for us. This included the T800 endoskeleton and the Maschinenmensch from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. These are the archetype robots of our childhood. Seeing them live produced some confusingly profound emotions. 

Should we be concerned about super advanced AI taking over? 
We put this question to a robot at the exhibition and it assured us that there is nothing to worry about now. Thinking again, it did say so with an antagonistic and condescending tone. Those vacant eyes didn't fill us with much confidence either...

Great. Thanks. Bye. 

Kingston Karnival 2017

What am I looking at? 
It's Kingston Carnival!

Jamaica? 
Surrey...

Hmm. No wonder it looks so lame. 
We missed the real Notting Hill Carnival last week so had to make do with this suburban alternative. It wasn't all that bad actually. Was really nice to see Kingston's diverse inhabitants get together to parade and share their many cultural customs.

Such as? 
We had flamboyant costumes, g-strings, Samba and jiggling cellulite from Brazil. The Chinese did a lovely ribbon dance. There was live music from Senegal on the main stage. Bhangra and Bollywood style entertainment from the Punjabi quarter. Reggae soundsystems from the Jamaicans. Our favourites though were the Fortaleza dancers of Kingston's Bolivian community group. Their costumes were fantastic. Also, food. So much tasty food.

Still sounds shit. 
See more of our photographic highlights on the Nino Tumblr page.

Great. Thanks. Bye.