Heart of Darkness offers ground-breaking “dark bedroom simulator” at Tate Modern

Heart of Darkness, the latest art installation in the great turbine hall at Tate Modern has been heralded as being an artistic triumph and an artwork that can at last bring the experience of a darkened room within the reach of the common man.

“Marvellous, stupendous, a triumph!” exclaimed art critic Septimus Billingsworth. “You go into the huge container and it is dark. How else could we experience darkness?”

Not only is the installation the first, and so far only, way for anyone to experience a dark room, or hall, the technology behind it has baffled critics and visitors alike.

“You have to wonder how it is done, like that tap that floats on the water pouring from it's own spigot,” said Billingsworth. “Just how is darkness created? It has influenced me deeply, just this morning as I awoke in my blacked out bedroom I was once again thinking just how impossible the experience had been.”

Visitors are being asked to prepare themselves for a visceral spiral of emotions as they visit the huge container.

“I spoke to one of the curators before I went in, as part of the training, for no one can be expected to know what to feel,” said Billingsworth. “He said to imagine a darkened hall. I couldn't. Who could? What a torture this triumph is. Then he said 'Imagine a box containing the impact on the country if Tracey Emin left' and I was there – truly feeling nothing.”

Art expert and layman alike have responded warmly to finally being given the ability to stand in the dark, something that only perhaps a few billion people have ever experienced in the last 24 hours. This has led to the work gaining affectionate nicknames such as 'The Box', 'A Load of Nothing' and 'A Black Hole For Our Money'.

Tate Modern says that it is currently in negotiations with the Lottery Fund for the Arts for a series of replica installations across the country as part of a programme of events entitled “Living with Energy Saving Light-Bulbs”.

Riots in the streets after Ikea changes its catalogue typeface from Futura to Verdana

Residents of affluent suburbs the world over were today warned to stay in their homes as middle class areas were consumed by another day of rioting following the news that Ikea had changed its catalogue typeface from Futura to Verdana.

“There is carnage everywhere, I can barely bring myself to look and am shuttered in doors shaking,” said Callum Billingsworth, a graphic designer from Camden in London, via Twitter. “Have you seen page 213? They have used red, bold Verdana, for God’s sake.”

The same story was repeated the world over. In the Mission area of San Francisco the early morning sun rising across the bay shone on rows of burnt out cars and overturned buses.

“It’s worse than the Facebook riots of ’08, and the changed layout,” said one resident who did not wish to be named, since she had not painted her front door to complement her fence. “People were just torching things, and chanting ‘Move this a little bit to the left then!’”

In a bid to bring order to a world ripped apart as another pillar of middle-class society undergoes the inevitable pressure of change, an online petition has been created to allow people to anonymously assert their right to have no absolutely effect on a huge international corporation and its typeface.

“People think we can’t but we can really make a difference with this petition,” said Billingsworth logging into his iMac to sign-up. “We just need to raise the issue above other petitions, like this one about Blood Diamonds, which sounds like a horrific clash of styles.”

Bloggers in the United States of America have been hit hardest by the change as the US economy is extremely vulnerable to changes of style, over substance. One noted sagely that “Ikea, they are Swedish aren’t they? I know that is in Norway so we need to picket the Swiss embassy right away.”

Verdana is a font designed and optimised for display on satirical websites that are only occasionally updated. Ikea is said to be leading the world in using such a font in print but the chaos brought about by the change has forced politicians at the highest level to wade into the debate. And MEPs.

“This issue, whatever it is, is an important issue, and one that I shall go onto Fox News and talk about,” said Daniel Hannan, MEP for Shitting in His Own Bed in South East England. “Ikea is a 60 year old mistake of immigration. Enoch was right when he said ‘Chuck out the Chinks’”

Tate Modern announces results of accessibility trial

The Tate Modern gallery, on the South Bank of the River Thames in London today announced the results of the first stage of its trial into making art available to the disabled.

“Often art needs to be viewed in lighting or from angles that not everyone can appreciate, “ explained Sir Marmaduke Billingsworth, a trustee of the gallery. “We set the artistic community the challenge of making pieces that were as meaningful for disabled visitors as for others.”

The first installation in the trial has been a spiral staircase for the disabled (pictured).

“The results have been marvellous, “ said Sir Marmaduke. “Although admittedly better coming down, than going up.”

British film-makers call for re-introduction of the death penalty

A petition signed by the great and the good of the British film industry was presented to 10 Downing Street today in the ongoing campaign for the re-instatement of the death penalty. This followed yesterday’s similar move by the screenwriters’ guild petitioning for police to be armed as a matter of course.

Lord Winningsworth, famed director of films such as ‘Electric Death’, ‘The Trial of Dr Jones’ and the controversial ‘Kill Rage’ series spoke outside the famous black door.

“British filmmakers, some of the finest writing and directing talents in the world, are currently hamstrung by the UK’s lack of a death penalty,” he explained. “They are limited in their work because a tense courtroom drama doesn’t work if the denouement is a sentence of ‘twenty years with time off for good behaviour less time served on remand’. I mean where is the drama in that?” he said.

When asked about the inevitability of miscarriages of justices with the finality of a death sentence, Lord Winningsworth said that was part of the consideration.

“Indeed, that too is another rich line of drama. Films exploring the tragic mistakes of the justice system are much loved by writers and actors – they all love those powerful speeches.”

Anne Corman, award winning crime fiction writer, expressed similar sentiments being felt by a large number of novelists and those working in television.

“Police dramas in the UK are never going to be able to compete against those from the US, there is not enough gunplay – rarely can we write a believable shoot-out, no car is ever likely to get its tyres shot out by pursuing Police officers.”

The death penalty is a controversial subject that has divided the nation. It was abolished in 1965 after pressure from the print media, concerned that they can never match the drama of such a live event and therefore moved to try and stem the growth of television news. With the advent of 24 hour news, the broadcast media has backed the writers and filmmakers.

“We can’t always rely on the US and Iraq for such wonderful live drama” said a source at Sky News.

Tomorrow Andrew Stevens of Channel 4 television will be presenting a petition for the jury system to be replaced with a system of text voting.

REVIEW : “Handbook for the confused”

A new publication aims at helping those confused by today’s fast paced media driven lifestyle. The "Handbook for the Confused : Voices to be heard other than those in your head" is priced at £14.99 from all good bookshops.

The book is aimed at all of us who struggle to tell the difference between the talented and the trained monkeys that we see on television and in the newspapers each day "to separate out Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee". It contains sections on politicians, sportsmen and women as well as media celebrities. An indicator of our times, it devotes a whole chapter to Reality TV Stars and the porn actors and actress that they would aspire to be.

In the political chapter it explains that, despite the easy confusion over the fleet-of-footedness to avoid all trapdoors across either wing of the political stage, it is Tony, not Lionel, Blair who is the Prime Minister. The book provides a good explanation that whilst he always appears on TV as an authoritative and patriarchal figure, It is John, not Mike, Reid that is the Home Secretary.

It isn’t always successful - the profile of David Cameron does its best to distinguish the Conservative Party leader from a shape-shifting chameleon not of this world, but fails at the final hurdle.

It is a well paced tome, using straight forward language without pandering to the hyperbole of the tabloids nor the snootiness of satirical websites. Indeed within its 500 pages you will find answers and explanations to most of your questions regarding the "Who?" and probably more importantly the "Why?" of British society. Although needless to say it contains no explanation for "Ant & Dec".

Indeed a triumph of the husband and wife authors, Howard and Hilda Bigglesworth is their explanation that the reason that the heavyweight, overbearing, opinionated and bumbling Deputy Prime Minister manages to get himself into such bizarre and embarrassing scrapes is that he is in fact Oliver Hardy.