0I’ll try to put aside my reservations about wasted electrical power on this one. Not to mention unnecessary material consumption (what did they do with all those microwaves afterwards?). Happy Holidays!
-Gary
Categories: Musings
0Attention graphics geeks: Graham Wood, a founding member of design group Tomato and now with JWT in New York, will be doing a Q&A with director Stephen Kijak at this Friday’s screening of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. Graham did the motion graphics and animation for the film.
Graham and Stephen will be doing a Q&A after the 7:40pm screening. Get tickets.
Categories: Musings
0
As a lot of you know, I’m a big music documentary fan. There’s an excellent one premiering here in New York this week: Scott Walker – 30 Century Man. Walker was a teen heartthrob in Britain’s swinging ’60s pop scene (with hits like “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”) but then completely withdrew from the fame game and for the last 40 years he’s been making dark, dense, complex solo records. Oh, and did I mention the movie stars David Bowie (who also executive produced the film), Radiohead, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, Damon Albarn, Neil Hannon, Marc Almond, Alison Goldfrapp, and Sting? All big Walker fans. If you don’t know his music, you need to. Now.
It’s playing at the IFC Center Theaters for one week only, starting tonight. If you’re here in NYC, check it out… it’ll also be playing in a dozen other US cities in the next few months. Here’s the trailer. I love the snippet from his Jacques Brel cover Jackie. I remember when I first heard it, I thought he was singing, “…about the time they called me Shaggy.” Heh heh.
Cheers,
-Gary
Categories: Musings
1
I did some street shooting here in New York over the weekend, getting some b-roll footage of shopping/consumerism. I took a break to get some lunch, and when I sat down at a table, I stood my camera tripod up and leaned it against the wall of the restaurant. While I was eating, a little boy probably three years old walked up to my table, staring at the tripod. It was about the same height as he was, and he was really fascinated by it.
Then, cautiously, he asked the tripod, “Are you a robot?”
The tripod did not respond.
“Hi there,” I said.
He looked up at me for a second, then back at the tripod.
“Are you a robot?” he asked it again.
“Yes, he is a robot,” I told him. “But he’s taking a nap.”
“Ohhhhh,” the boy nodded. He stared very intently at the tripod-robot for another minute, then his dad came over and got him and they left.
-Gary
Categories: Musings
1
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
0
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
1
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
0
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
7
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
