Idris Vicuña(aka Eyedress) keeps making a lot of noise each week, this time by releasing new video to add to his collection of soft & punchy clips. And after last month’s collaboration with Skint Eastwood for Salaamin, Eyedress brings us now a voyeuristic clip filled with stolen footage and forbidden substances.
A new digital release available for download on his bandcamp, which isn’t taken from his self-titled EP…. more material coming ahead?
Belgian animation school La Cambre have been uploading some of their students’ works lately and we always welcome the unlocking and uploading of shelved stories that otherwise we wouldn’t probably see. Like Johan Pollefoort’s Le Voyageur which won Krog festival animation prize back in 2007 as well as a few other awards and mentions (Anima, Annecy..).
Le Voyageur is Johan’s personal adaptation of Charles Baudelaire’s “Voyage” poem, willing to condense in 6 minutes without dialogues the adventures of a young African girl who after leaving her own village and continent will have to face new horizons, jumping from owner to owner like a doll.
Quite interested in the way we relate with death and its iconography, Johan experimented with macabre dances in his latest film “Bal des Pendus” which also received quite a few good critiques when it was presented a couple of years ago and that we’re still awaiting its full on-line release…
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Last year Mazes’ guitarist & songwriter Jack Cooper decided to launch his “Art is cheap” project asking people with song titles, guitar parts, drum beats… so he would then write, home-record and deliver each song for £10. He didn’t become rich… but still earned a few £££ with over 30 pieces (although he selected half for his collection).
From “cheap” songs to recording albums in 24 hours, as in “Cape Clear“, his new adventure he’ll be spending the whole day of tomorrow (21st Nov) creating, mixing and delivering a new piece of sound.
As he puts it himself: The rules I’ve set myself is that the record will be written and recorded over a 24 hour period and for some synergy it’ll be available to buy and listen to the following day. I’ve been reading a lot recently about sleep and its 5 stages so the music I intend to make will reflect those 5 stages… music that you could perhaps listen to whilst asleep or at least on the verge. It’ll be mainly improvised, based around drones and loops.
One day later the album shall be available on bandcamp (as in… Thursday)… and we’ll get to judge if all those improvisations and somnolent decisions made for a coherent experiment. More info this way … and how about streaming it next time?
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British guitarist and songwriter Neil Halstead released his third solo album ‘Palindrome Hunches’ over 2 months ago and today we’re getting this first single “Tied to you” released via Sonic Cathedral for some digital love… and as an excuse to remind us of his UK tour which shall be bringing him to Brixton’s Windmill this Wednesday.
To spice things a bit “tied to you” gets an “almost” trip-hop remix by electronica producer Mark Van Hoen and one of those scary vintage clips we love so much directed by Mark himself.
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He is not a mere machine artist, Roland Wetzel wants to clarify that, Tinguely is so much more….
After our quick encounter last month with Jean Tinguely’s recently finished Méta-Matics, Méta-Reliefs expo @ Gallerie Vallois, we were left wondering the endless possibilities and shapes his works could adopt… and it magically turns out that the Basel-based Museum Tinguely just opened their most ambitious retrospective of the Swiss artist a few days ago…
16 years after the museum opened its doors, their collection has grown considerably and it seemed likemaking an updated museum catalogue was an urgent imperative… much like organising an exhibition of the Tinguely Collection, the first for a considerable time, spread over the entire display area. 20 years after Tinguely’s death, the new presentation will also reflect a revised view of his oeuvre.
The nice people @Vernissage TV went there a couple of weeks ago to talk with the museum director Roland Wetzel and to take a few photos… (more info on the expo this way).
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This one is certainly getting many views as anything that uses vintage eroticism gets the approval of cultural authorities everywhere. Paris-based studio ILL have carefully selected & mixed nearly 4 minutes of welcoming fantasies from hundreds of late night “chat lines” clips, not an easy task we can imagine… so Para One’s “When the Night” (from his Passion album out on Marble/Because Music).
The clip is supposed to be paying homage to those much-needed 80s services, just before the internet killed them, and features motorbikes, whips, and bananas. “And if that doesn’t get your engine purring, also featured are sex icons of yesteryear Amy Lynn Baxter, Brandy Ledford, and Janine Lindemulder, of Blink-182 album art fame“.
One of the big names in the French design industry passed away last year, a big loss especially considering Arnaud Mercier was one of the youngest and most successful interaction designers from the hexagon.
While the agency Area 17’s created a dedicated design timeline with some of his latest works Parisian gallery Since have decided just put together a dedicated retrospective of the artist: “This is definitely not a website“.
Known for his meticulous interactive design systems, it is little known that Arnaud was a developer with a degree in computer science. His belief was that in order to design, one must intrinsically understand and master the medium before it can truly be explored, reinvented and used as a means of expression.
Having worked with some of the most important brands on the planet Mercier became one of the most prolific designers over the past few years and really inspired many people with some of his latest website creations like the cultural mag “Slash” or Ora-ïto’s website. “This is not a website” will try to act as a retrospective but also as an exploration of all those ideas that guided him throughout his life, and you’ll be able to visit it until December 7th. More info this way.
MOME omnipresent cartoonist, teacher and Uncivilized Books founder Tom Kaczynski is back to the market with a new piece of civilization-system discussion out next month on Fantagraphics: Beta testing the Apocalypse.
BTTA compiles most of Tom’s work from MOME but as most of his work was in b&w BTTA has a colored flavor being printed in two-colors throughout with a different Pantone color for each story. Plus, “The New,” a fresh story created expressly for this book which also happens to be his longest story to date.
“The New” is set in an unnamed third-world megalopolis, the city creaks under the pressure of explosive growth. Whole districts are built in a week. The story follows an internationally renowned starchitect as he struggles to impose his vision on the metropolis. A vision threatened by the massive dispossessed slum-proletariat inhabiting the slums and favelas on the edges of the city. From the fetid ferment of garbage dumps and shanties emerges a new feral architecture.
All the architectural & political love from Tom to question a few things and praise others. More info and pre-order this way… a few more images this other way.
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We’re still trying to figure out why some games are classified within the FPS category… guess anything with a gun automatically belongs to that universe. Deadlock, a good mix between a colosal shooting arena and a complex yet charming puzzle-platform game like portal, has recently launched it’s own crowdfunding page on the French KS equivalent “Ulule” (probably because the game is French-developed and KS still doesn’t exist outside the US-UK?).
Originally appeared during last summer’s “7DFPS challenge” the French group of developers is willing to make a bit more than half an hour of neon entertainment, that’s why they’re testing the crowdfunding waters, see if the gaming community are willing to fund a 1-2hour polished version of the game and if everyone feels generous… why not a full solo version… or even a multiplayer one?
Jumping in an endless void trying to climb a mysterious tower, much like Roland in Stephen King’s novel you’re invited to fight the structure’s cleaning system to avoid disintegration. The good thing is that they’ve made available a demo version for us all to judge whether to support or not. The bad thing is that the link is broken. Keep clicking until you get your own switch gun! More info on their ululepage.
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If they can guarantee a free and clinically tested pill that clearly works without secondary effects… then we will buy. The best thing is that Byetone and Alva Noto’s new 12″s is already commercially available for everyone to buy and from what our first previews… it works!
Late September saw the release of Carsten & Olaf’s (aka Diamond Version) first of five 12″ Eps: Technology At The Speed Of Life / Empowering Change, a collaboration between mute & raster-noton. At that time we learned that the experimental duo would be releasing 5 eps that would culminate in an album next year (the bundle of all 5 is set to be released March 2013).
Now we get this clip to announce the arrival of their also miraculously efficient second ep by the end of the month, which shall once again include those overused marketing slogans and transform them into their synthetic dancefloor equivalents, hoping kids and adolescents will internalize these messages way before they hear them on their local mall.
American political cartoonist and Pulitzer nominee Matt Bors is currently trying luck in the crowdfunding space by launching a book publishing adventure with a collection of his best political cartoons and essays. And because he doesn’t have a $250 million fortune and the political cartooning freelance market isn’t as stable as it used to be, crowdfunding seems the only way. Well guess what.. he has just succeeded a few hours ago!
But $25K is only the first step. As it usually happens with other successful campaigns, stretch goals get bigger and bigger to make the projects more “awesome and awesome”. In the case of Matt it will simply help to print a second collection of his works… (or even get him to poop his pants!). And because there’s never enough political satire in this world we thought you may want to grab one of his pdfs or printed copies, filled with robot death planes, avenging uterus or spoiled new generations. More info on his KS page.
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Self-produced piece “New Tokyo Ondo” by Misaki Uwabo is one of those “once in a million” student pieces that make a personal statement while leaving an unforgettable sweet taste in your long-term memory.
Re-Uploaded to youtube a few days ago but gone viral today NTO was presented last year as one of the graduation films @ Tama Art University which entered last year’s Creators Festa 2011. Also earlier on this year it was screened at the Ginza Apple store. Misaki is certainly willing to go back to Tokyo and its shopping jungles.
This is how Misaki summarized her story last year… “This is the nonsense animation conceived and made from the idiom “it reaches.”His hand is so long that almost reaches the NEW TOKYO night view. They run on their arm to aim for NEW TOKYO”.
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The precious and bizarresque world Dimlite presented in his forth full-length record “Grimm Reality” ( Now-Again-2011) was intelligently reused by Ripl earlier on this year when they decided to release “Abscission”, aka the illegitimate baby or “compilation” of discarded tracks from GR.
His very capricious world full of sound labyrinths and kaleidoscopic waves is ambitious in the form and message and emphasizes drafts and unpolished creations… so it’s great to open this week with one of those “unfinished” clips by Ripl collaborator “Crôucéd Tif”. We should end just like him…
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Contemporary alchemist and garbage collector Richard Stone opens a mini-mini show tonight @ Galleries Goldstein on the end of things as we know them, the end of myths, reality… even prophecies?
“The end of England”, an exhibition curated (and partially inspired) by Daniel Barnes is conceived as an installation of previous works by Richard Stone and a series of paintings that aim to deconstruct the English landscape.
His lost & re-built melted pieces masked with wax may be willing to hide from the rest of the semi-apocalyptic exhibition… and we can’t blame them; the voracious (and ambitious) storm presented tonight will try and to consume all there is, mixing fantasy and reality… but us humans love to cross this fine line constantly, don’t we?
More info on the vernissage & expo this way.
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