Our rooftop garden project known as 'The Plot' is based around the idea of urban gardening mixed with a splash of digital technology which utilises social networking to its full and most exciting potential. Ever wondered how your cabbage is getting on whilst you're on your summer holiday? “I wonder if the hosepipe ban is affecting the growth of my chrysanthemums?”. 

Harnessing the wonderful (and self proclaimed 'geeky') technology of Arduino, our vegetables will now Tweet us with varying degrees of information. So, if our mint leaves are in a morbid state of dehydration they can now inform us that they need watering (“Water me please i'm thirsty!”). If there is a severe lack of light or the temperature drops, an instant message can be forwarded to a personal computer, smart phone or whichever new device has cropped up on the market.
 

So, why are we doing this? Well, the project is a collaboration between FACT and the Merseycare NHS Trust Early Intervention Team and with 2010 being Liverpool's Year of Health and Wellbeing, what better time to jump aboard the urban gardening bandwagon with a refreshing and inventive approach?
 

Participants have been working alongside artists Jackie Passmore and Ross Dalziel to create a roof-top haven of greenery and growth, whilst also dabbling in a variety of digital media techniques. Ever tried to connect a potato to a mixing desk and see what sound it makes? Well we will! The results are being documented and will be displayed for your pleasure (or displeasure depending on how you feel about potatoes).
 

In the meantime all at FACT and the participants who meet weekly will be working hard getting grubby in the plant pots, building up a healthy appetite for what should be one hell of a vegetarian curry!

 

On Tuesday 10 August FACT will be screening your choice of the greatest English-language film of all time. You can cast your vote here where we have also provided a few suggestions.

 

“Ever see Casablanca?” asks Tommy Lee Jones of Will Smith in 1997’s Men in Black. He’s explaining the Earth’s policy towards extra-terrestrial immigration, and why the authorities are willing to accept inter-galactic asylum seekers;  “Same thing, just no Nazi’s”.

Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz) is loved primarily because Humphrey Bogart’s immortal Rick (the role he is perhaps best remembered for) represents what is best about the human condition; the capacity of mankind for self-sacrifice, especially when faced by pure evil.

Adapted from a play (Everybody Comes To Rick’s), the script emerged as America’s involvement in the Second World War escalated following Pearl Harbour. The film can be read as an allegory about the America’s growing involvement in world politics, and it’s turn away from the generations-old Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States should not involve itself in the politics of European states.

Beginning as an isolationist expatriate businessman (though one with a previous history of fighting Fascism in Spain), Humphrey Bogart’s ‘gin-joint’ owner is drawn into the murky world of espionage by a chance encounter with Peter Lorre’s conniving Ugarte, from whom he receives two letters. These letters promise safe passage through Nazi-occupied Europe for whoever bears them (an extremely unlikely plot device). Rick’s comfortable life is thrown further into turmoil by the arrival of an old flame (Ingrid Bergman), and he is subsequently forced to choose between personal happiness and the ‘doing the right thing’, which in this case involves helping Bergman escape with her new lover, a French Resistance leader played by Paul Henreid.

If you would like to show your support for the UK Film Council, which is due to be scrapped by the government in the face of the economic crisis, sign this petition at GoPetition.com. The following statement is taken from the UK Film Council’s website

On Tuesday 10 August FACT will be screening your choice of the greatest English-language film of all time. You can cast your vote here where we have also provided a few suggestions. Today’s Blog topic comes with a side order of fries, and a Sprite.

 

We open in a diner. A bubbly American lass (Rosanna Arquette) is chatting away with her Limey boyfriend (Tim Roth), about the relative dangers inherent to the different locations where one might like to commit armed robbery

 Young Woman: ‘When you go on like this, you know what you sound like?’

 Young Man: ‘I sound like a sensible f***ing man, is what I sound like’

YW: ‘You sound like a duck. Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack…

YM: ‘Well take heart, ‘cause you’re never gonna hafta hear it again. Because since I’m never gonna do it again, you’re never gonna hafta hear me quack about how I’m never gonna do it again.

The dialogue bounces along like automatic machine-gun fire, and sets the tone for the cut to those opening credits. Pulp Fiction (dir. Quentin Tarantino) is the film that fans of that most referential of film-makers will hark back to when he finally hangs up his film-almanac and becomes a professional critic (as opposed to just talking like one). As a chase film, and as a piece of comedy, and action, and weirdness, it is flawless.