2B or not 2B?

Ever wondered how a pencil is made? Then watch this fascinating video!



Via Core 77

R.I.P Gil Scott-Heron

Really, really sad news.

Bloody graphic design gits

The Artist Taxi Driver

Remix, everything everything

This is part 1 of Everything Is A Remix by GoodieBag, and focusses on music. Well researched, argued and produced. Part 2, focusses on films and part 3 is currently in production. Head on over to their website to watch part 2 and find out more about the project.

Links

Everything Is A Remix

You don't have to be Prince

In a less than regular feature highlighting the album sleeves currently residing in the Album Art frames on my landing, I've just recently been up in the loft to choose 3 new LP sleeves to showcase there, and here. This is my current selection:

According to Andrew Sherman's blog, Age Of Chance did three things right:
1 they wore cycling clothes,
2 their artwork was done by the fledgling Designers Republic,
3 they did a great cover version of Prince's Kiss.

I have to agree with all three. Looking somewhat dated now, (see video for Kiss below), it is impossible to gauge the reaction I had to seeing them live at Essex University in 1986, as I was just starting to pick up on hip hop, sampling and ironic intent in music. They went a little too pop for me later on in their short lived career, toning down some of the sonic guitar frequencies they were keen on dropping into the middle of their songs and polishing up their drum sound. I liked the fact that rawness and technology gave them an industrial bite to their hybrid pop sensibilities.

All very 1980s. If you wonder what Wolff Olins researched in order to design the 2012 olympics logo, then I think you'll find a few pointers in that video.

On the subject of Designers Republic, for whom Age Of Chance were one of their first clients, they have an exhibition coming up in Croyden. Details here.

PS—Since my last post on Album Art frames, the Wire triptych of Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 have been displayed. These regular favourites will return and I'll post about them then.

Weekend roundup

A quick round up of things seen on my weekend in Brighton last week. Briefer than I would wish, but time's pretty restricted at the moment.

First up is a statue of Max Miller just outside the Brighton Dome. I didn't really register the statue until Claire pointed out that it had a piece of knitted graffiti attached to it. Apparently this is quite trendy.



We saw the statue on leaving the ever excellent Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. I posted from our B and B last week about how much I enjoyed the Capturing Colour exhibition at the Museum, but haven't really had a chance to talk about the rest of the venue. There are some great exhibits of modernist furniture and paintings, as well as really well put together displays about Brighton's social history, of which it has plenty. There's too much to go into here, and needless to say photos will be up on Flickr over the coming week, but this quote on the wall near a section about cycling has to be posted, (excuse the poor image quality).



The other aspect of the museum I want to mention is the fashion section. What I like about this is the fact that much of it is about street fashion, and lots of the clothes are donated by locals, with back story.





On some items they even has responses from local school children. I wonder whether Tony Lord ever did use his belt to repel vampires?





On the return journey, we decided to take in the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, another modernist masterpiece.



Apart from the fact that it's always good to pop into this magnificent building, one of the things that drew us on this occasion was the Moving Portraits exhibition.



While I'd seen several of the pieces on display before, particularly Sam Taylor-Wood's David and the Gilbert and George Living Sculptures, what I wasn't expecting was to be bowled over by anything by Andy Warhol. His Screen Tests 64-66 gave an eerie sense of voyeurism as I looked at famous icons from the 60s who were all staring back at me, in complete silence. Wondering what was going through their minds is a natural reaction, steeped as many of them are with cultural significance, but I found them strangely powerful as well—the addition of motion seems to have given the traditional portrait not only life (obviously), but somehow made the subjects more tangible and ordinary, given that our relationship with these people is usually through the eyes of the media. I got the feeling I was being given a very personal and intimate audience with them. Particularly when, (spoiler alert) unexpectedly one of them, Susan Sontag I think, starts to cry. Very powerful stuff.

Other highlights included Margaret Tait's Portrait of Ga in which the unwrapping of a sticky sweet seems to suggest more about the personality conducting the action than seeing her going about her daily routines in the rest of the film. She wants the sweet, the simple pleasure, but is so very careful not to get her fingers sticky. I also enjoyed Candice Breitz' Factum Misericordia, where two identical twins are interviewed on camera, asked exactly the same questions and sat in exactly the same chair so that the only difference you could tell was in their narration, their individual take on their experiences as one of a twin, and how they felt they related to each other. The editing of the interviews, shown side by side, and the sound track running out of sync and switching screens added to the draw of trying to relate to these two people as individuals talking about their collective experience.

Highly recommended, and free.

Links:
Knitted graffiti

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
De La Warr Pavilion

Capturing colour

I visited the Capturing Colour: Film, Invention and Wonder exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery today. If you're planning a trip to the Sussex coast before 20 March, it is well worth a visit.

Tracing the history of colour in early photography and then into film, it takes you though all the technological advances from early monochrome tinting right through to capturing colour motion on mobile devices today. A fascinating story that, in equal measure, is a display of the technical, the scientific and the artistic.

It also has the potential to be one of an important double bill of motion/photographic exhibitions if you also take in the Moving Portraits show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, an hour down the coast by car from Brighton. I'm hoping to visit that tomorrow.

Link:
Capturing Colour online.

Hyper upload

I've just added two videos to Vimeo, Aggressor and Hyper Reality. Both were made in 2009 as additions to the projection Jason and I performed in front of for the last Pindown live outing in Colchester in the same year. The rest of the backdrop was made up of older pieces of motion I had made for a gig the previous year, as well as footage by long time collaborator Richard Rasu.

Of the older work I had produced for the backdrop, these were mostly culled from my existing foray into experimental film making; Back Chat, Contractual Freedom, and DigiDigitDigital, all of which are available to view on Vimeo in their original state.

These two pieces are not intended to be viewed as 'music videos' as they were created to be seen in a live environment, partly to add another dimension to the aural assault that was Pindown live, but mostly to take attention away from the fact that Jason and I weren't exactly a dynamic presence on stage. They have been added now, with the original recordings of the tracks as they appeared on our 2004 Democracy In Action release, as a document of work I've done to date. While this is something I've been meaning to do for ages, now that I look at these out of context of them being designed for a live environment, I'm not particularly keen on them although I do feel they suited their purpose at the time of their production.

Production note:
The reverse type in the Hyper Reality video is due to the fact we needed to project with the use of a mirror in order to get the visuals to fill the wall behind us when performing on such a small stage.

Link:

Dubdog on Vimeo

Dubdog on Vimeo

I've been meaning to set up a Vimeo account for a while after I realised a few months ago that my Ourmedia files had broken links. Currently uploaded are Contractual Freedom (2006) and the second film I ever made, Back Chat (2005) which hasn't previously been available to view since it appeared in an exhibition 6 years ago. Unfortunately I've had to remove the audio from Back Chat for legal reasons, which makes it less effective, but as an exploration in the process of filming then refilming footage, it just about holds together.

In the near future I plan to post DigiDigitDigital, my 2007 film exploring digital delay, as well as films I made in 2009 that formed the backdrop for the last Pindown performance Jason and I did in Colchester.

These works are being posted to document an explorative process I went through several years ago. I currently have no plans to make any more films, although as I start to investigate MA courses to do in September, this may well change.

Link:
Vimeo

Drux Flux Test Dept remix

Caught this on SkyArts the other evening.

Drux Flux, 2008

It's got the lot; brooding crescendo laden music, industrial landscapes and constructivist references abound; it's dark and grubby and doesn't so much press my buttons as smash them over the head with a piece of lead pipe and a lump hammer. Got me coming over all sentimental about Test Dept.

Test Dept, sometime in the 1980s

Try watching them together. It works.

Try turning the sound off of Drux Flux while Test Dept plays. It works.

Try turning the sound off of Test Dept while Drux Flux plays. It works.

Now this is what I call a 1980s revival. I just wish I could find YouTube footage of what Test Dept did to Jools Holland's car on The Tube.

Links:
National Film Board of Canada

Test Dept