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I feel like I’ve been out of the graphic design news loop lately, and I just discovered that UK design kings Blanka issued a print by one of my graphic design heroes, Amsterdam’s own Wim Crouwel. It’s a meticulously restored edition of Crouwel’s 1968 “Vormgevers” poster. The reprint was overseen by Crouwel himself, and he’s signed the first 50 copies. Get one while they’re still around.
-Gary
Categories: Design News, Musings
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It’s funny, but there’s been almost as much written about the Objectified logo, created by British graphic designer Michael C. Place of Build, as has been written about the film itself. Michael has just posted a piece about the design on his smart new blog, and included dozens of images of the different variations of the logo as it evolved (click the images to magnify).
Categories: Design News, Musings
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In non-Objectified news: I’m currently producing the first ever authorized DVD release of Andy Warhol’s films: 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. The DVD includes 13 of Warhol’s classic screen tests, including Nico, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed, and more, paired with new soundtracks by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (the original screen tests are silent… you can watch them that way too). Warhol made over 500 of these four-minute screen test films, and I think they’re some of his most subtly brilliant work.
I’ve been collaborating with the folks at the Warhol Museum to produce the DVD, it’s been an amazing project to work on. I also did a little filming as part of it, interviewing Dean & Britta about the new soundtracks and shooting some behind the scenes stuff. That footage will be included in the DVD extras. And this Friday the screen tests will be projected with a live soundtrack by Dean & Britta at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh. They’ll be touring the live event across the US and Europe early next year.
Plexifilm has just made the DVDs available for pre-order, in a normal edition and a deluxe limited edition that includes a gelatin silver print of the screen test star of your choice. That’s Jane Holzer, above. I wonder what kind of toothbrush she’s using?
Cheers,
– Gary
ps - Watch the trailer.
Categories: Musings
0It’s not enough to make a well-designed product. The product also has to make well-designed sounds. Science Daily looks at industrial designer Elif Özcan Vieira’s PhD thesis on the subject:
I’m a huge believer in this theory; there’s not enough thought put into how we interact with objects sonically. When we were filming Chris Bangle and got to drive around the new BMW X6, I actually commented on how beautiful its fasten-your-seatbelt alarm chime was. Yes, I know those alarm chimes are supposed to be annoying in order to force you to buckle up. But can’t they be pleasantly annoying?
Speaking of sound design, I’m obsessing over Bloom, Brian Eno’s new iPhone application. [Available in the iTunes App Store.] “Part instrument, part composition and part artwork,” Bloom is a generative ambient music synthesizer (you can make pretty sounds with it). It’s addictive, and it’s especially amazing when you plug your iPhone into your stereo system and crank it up. Best four bucks I’ve spent in a while.
[Thanks to Joshua Simmons for the Science Daily story.]
Categories: Design News, Musings
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Attention voters! A Helvetica fan has nominated the movie for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards People’s Design Award. So please take a minute and vote, the deadline is October 21st. Yes we can (beat Design Observer)!!!
Categories: Musings
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If you’re in New York or London, be sure to check out this weekend’s premiere of Wild Combination, Matt Wolf’s excellent new documentary about seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Plexifilm is hosting cinema screenings at the IFC Center in New York and the ICA London. There will be loads of special guests, after-parties, etc., on both sides of the pond this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
“This story begins, as many good ones do, with a gay man from Oskaloosa playing cello in a closet in a Buddhist seminary. It ends with a gentle and brilliant musician dying in New York long before his time. In between, the cellist, Arthur Russell, wrote orchestral music, produced disco hits, and recorded a body of solo cello-and-voice songs that fit somewhere between lullabies and art songs.” –Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
There will be more cinema screenings over the next few months, and a DVD release in November. Watch the trailer, or get on Plexifilm’s email list for details.
Categories: Musings
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My OCD-propelled obsession with finding the Braun record has finally come to a conclusion. Last month I swore I remembered a techno record made from Braun appliance samples, but couldn’t find anything about it online. Well, a copy of the Braun record arrived in the mail from Objectifier Bharani Padmanabhan, and the mystery has been solved.
Braunmusic was actually an art project released in 1996 by Köln-based painter/sculptor Johannes Wohnseifer and a group of musician friends going by the name Diverse. Johannes has gone on to quite a successful art career in the 12 years since braunmusic. So what does the record sound like? Well… it sounds like 12-year-old German techno.
Here’s an MP3 track from the record (digitized from my turntable, excuse the sound quality). I think the lead synth sound is maybe sampled from a Braun world travel alarm clock? Or maybe not, who knows.
Johannes is currently traveling in Ethiopia, and emailed me: “I wasn’t a musician, I just had the idea for the record’s concept and cover. Then I asked my friends (including Thomas Schaeben and Heiko Voss) to do the music. For all of them this was their first record release. The German publisher Tropen Verlag released it.”
Thanks again to Bharani for finding a copy of this long out-of-print record, and to Johannes for letting us give away a track from it.
Now I’m free to obsess about something else…
– Gary
Categories: Musings
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Yesterday, The New York Times published another profile of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch and his new film distribution company, Oscilloscope Pictures:
Hmmm… that sounds familiar. Not the green tea part (straight espresso for me, thanks), the film-company-as-record-label part. Oh, it’s because that’s what I’ve been doing for exactly seven years today!
On Monday, September 10th 2001, we switched on the lights at the offices of Plexifilm (okay, it was the living room of my Brooklyn apartment). I was obsessed with these shiny new discs called DVDs, but I had no idea how the film industry worked. I had worked at an indie record label before (SST), and I’d been involved in various DIY media projects for over 15 years, so I wanted to start sort of a record label, but for films. On that first day it was just me and my first employee, Sean Anderson, who’d recently left the Criterion Collection, and ironically had also produced the Beastie Boys video compilation Criterion put out. Day One was uneventful; we worked on a press release that we were going to send out to the world the next morning. I spent Day Two on the roof of my building, looking at the smoking wreckage of the World Trade Center and watching thousands of ash-faced people walking slowly back over the Manhattan bridge. We had to wait a few months before sending out that press release.
Seven years after our chaotic beginnings, together with a band of revolutionaries who joined me, we’ve managed to release about 40 incredible films (above), produce a half-dozen original documentary projects, and get these films in front of millions of viewers. We’ve thrown countless parties and premieres, and only been thrown out of a couple of them. We’ve pissed some people off, but hopefully inspired a lot more. But most of all we’ve been honored to have met and been able to work with so many great filmmakers. Being involved with their projects pushed me to make my first film a few years ago, Helvetica, and has set me on a course of documentary filmmaking that I hope to continue for the rest of my life.
Looking back, it’s all a blur, maybe because there has never been any time to relax and take in what we were accomplishing. Running a small, totally independent (i.e., no corporate backers or investors) film distribution company is a constant, stress-filled, cash-starved struggle. In some ways, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But we’ve had a lot of help over the years, from far too many people and companies to list here, and somehow we’ve managed to keep it going. And I’m extremely proud of all the films we’ve released.
Back to Adam Yauch. Seven years ago when I launched Plexi, I was convinced that a few months later there would be dozens of other indie DVD labels sprouting up, that DVD technology and DIY philosophy would produce an indie music-esque DVD revolution. It hasn’t exactly panned out that way… so it’s nice to see another label like Oscilloscope out there that shares our philosophy, and I wish Adam the best of luck. Although, has Plexifilm ever received a New York Times profile? Or any profile for that matter? Nope. But I’d like to think that by helping all these films get distributed, we’ve changed people’s lives just a little bit, as I’m sure Oscilloscope will with the films they release.
So thanks to Matt, Chris, Brian, Laurence, Leslie, and everyone who’s worked for, or been involved with Plexifilm. Who knows what the independent film business will look like seven years from now, or what we’ll all be doing then, but the past seven years have been the best and most inspiring of my life.
– Gary
Categories: Musings
0A fellow Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker, Andrew Berends, has been arrested in Nigeria on suspicion of espionage while working on his new film about the troubled Delta oil region.
From AP: A U.S. documentary filmmaker was arrested along with his translator and accused of spying after he filmed soldiers in Nigeria’s troubled oil region, a military spokesman and media rights organization said Tuesday.
Nigerian Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said the military handed the American to state security operatives for questioning after arresting him in the southern oil center of Port Harcourt. He said investigators were seeking “to ascertain his mission and why he intruded in our operational area, snapped video shots of troops and their deployment without clearance.”
The Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders identified the filmmaker as Andrew Berends, from New York. Berends was arrested with his Nigerian interpreter and a local bar owner on Aug. 31 in the southern city of Port Harcourt, the group said in a statement.
Ways you can help: if you’re in the states, contact your representative in Congress and ask him or her to take action on Andrew’s behalf. You can also call Andrew’s representative, Yvette Clarke, at 718-287-1142. Or write New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer. If you’re not in the US, please try and spread the word about Andrew’s situation to your local government officials and media. Any pressure we can apply on the Nigerian government this week may help get Andrew released quickly.
Update: Friends have now started a blog to post developments in Andy’s case.
Bigger update: Yes! Andy was released September 10th, thanks in part to the actions of his fellow filmmakers and a group of US politicians. But there is still concern for the two Nigerian citizens who were arrested along with him, and are still being detained. Get more info.
Categories: Musings
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You may recall that in an earlier post I thought I remembered a techno record made up of Braun appliance sounds? I’d wondered whether it was a figment of my imagination, since no amount of googling could turn up any mention of it. Well I wasn’t crazy, it exists! Braun fanatic and Objectifiers member Bharani Padmanabhan actually has the record in question, and sent me photos, above. He says there are no markings anywhere on the record, no artist name, no record label name, nothing. But it looks exactly as I remembered it. Why would I have that image stored away for 15 years? The brain is a strange instrument…
Bharani is lending me the record for a few weeks. To be continued…
– Gary
Categories: Musings
