I just love this. Worth a look at...
www.radiohead.com/worms.php
Friday, January 18, 2008
Computerlove {cpluv.com}
Computerlove {cpluv.com} is a unique social platform and source of inspiration for talented creatives.
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Computerlove is an alternative platform, curated by Christophe Martin. The platform was originally created with the technical help of Henrik Rypkema (XHTML Developer), and Man Hoang (Developer).
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Thursday, January 17, 2008
Celebrating Jan Švankmajer
Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others.
Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague at the time of writing.
Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.
A lot of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar, are made from a child's perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature. In 1972 the communist authorities banned him from making films, and many of his later films were banned. He was almost unknown in the West until the early 1980s.
Today he is one of the most celebrated animators in the world. His best known works are probably the feature films Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), a surreal comic horror based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Also famous (and much imitated) is the short Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies ("exhaustive discussion"); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp ("passionate discourse"); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise ("factual conversation"). His films have been called "as emotionally haunting as Kafka's stories[1]."
He was married to Eva Švankmajerová, an internationally known surrealist painter, ceramicist and writer until her death in October of 2005. She collaborated on several of his movies including Faust, Otesánek and Alice. They had two children, Veronika and Václav.
Read more:
www.jansvankmajer.art.pl/
www.imdb.com/name/nm0840905/
www.keyframeonline.com/CastCrew/Jan_Svankmajer/4297/
Winterwolken
Artist: Nils Rainer Schultze
+ schultze-krause.de
Brown Paper Bag
Artist: Pablo Guardiola
+ littletreegallery.com
Jaime Wolf on Mumblecore
Mumblecore—the label attached to the current wave of lo-fi, micro-budget American indie films about 20-somethings—is a somewhat misleading term. Hearing it, one thinks of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, or Michael Stipe, interring comprehensibility deep in the mix on R.E.M.’s first records. But mumblecore movies are actually quite voluble, their soundtracks a series of halting announcements, doubtful questions, proclamations fueled by false confidence, drunken blurtations, and sad confessions. Making eloquent use of inarticulacy, films like Hannah Takes the Stairs and Mutual Appreciation happen to be precise (and to the extent of their precision, thrilling) depictions of post-collegiate flailing. They are set in a world populated by overeducated, unaccomplished, chronically ambivalent people who are starting to take grown-up jobs but still need a roommate to pay the rent; whose unfocused ambition and vague sense of artistic integrity propel them to pursue creative endeavors, even as they remain mystified by how a book might actually get published or a CD get made.
It’s rare to watch a movie and believe it could have been made by one of the characters in it, but mumblecore films have a documentary intimacy and rawness, a level of self-examination that feels new.They’re products of the thinner art/life membrane that affordable digital production tools have made possible, and which the imperatives of self-presentation on Facebook, blogs, and MySpace have made ubiquitous. Of course, it’s not all new. The dialogue in J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey is pure mumblecore; so are the conversational erotics in Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s and the characters’ ditherings in his Boyfriends and Girlfriends; the perpetual hangout milieu of Richard Linklater’s Slacker; and the diaristic songs chronicling Liz Phair’s sexual, emotional, and relationship crises on her album Exile In Guyville.
The handful of young directors actively cultivating this aesthetic have accumulated buzz on the festival circuit, but the selection earlier this year of Hannah Takes the Stairs, the third feature by the prolific 26-year-old Chicago auteur Joe Swanberg, for national distribution (as part of IFC’s First Take series, which offered the film via OnDemand parallel to its art-house run in selected cities), represents a breakthrough moment. A small miracle of close observation, Hannah follows its title character—played by the New York-based playwright Greta Gerwig in an effervescent star-making performance reminiscent of the young, Woody Allen era Diane Keaton—as she makes her way through three different boyfriends over the course of a summer.
Swanberg and the 29-year-old, Boston-based Andrew Bujalski (Mutual Appreciation, Funny Ha Ha) are mumblecore’s leading lights. Bujalski is a writer of subtle grace, the only director of the bunch whose movies contain quotable lines. In contrast, Swanberg barely writes at all, evolving stories in close collaboration with his actors, who extemporize scenes while the camera rolls. He has found that in such situations, nonprofessional actors start drawing on their own autobiographies, discovering and contributing intimate, even mortifying material that Swanberg can then fold into his scenario (typically, all of the actors in his films also receive a writing credit). What this lacks in literary wit, it more than repays in terms of emotional revelation. Swanberg’s work is also noteworthy for its explicit presentation of contemporary sexuality—the daisy-chaining hookups of the characters in his Nerve.com web series Young American Bodies feel like a series of American Apparel ads come to life, while LOL (which also features Gerwig, in a series of arrestingly emo phone-cam pix and voicemail monologues) is a pitiless examination of a trio of guys whose obsession with elusive relationships conducted via cell phone and computer sabotages their chances with the flesh-and-blood hotties who are actually interested in them.
Embracing mumblecore demands a willingness to forgive a certain cinematic inelegance—wonky sound mixes, awkward acting, uneven, rushed, or unremarkable composition and editing—and to indulge sometimes exasperating, acutely self-conscious characters as they figure out their way, seemingly in real time. When it all works, this rough-hewn approach to situations that don’t admit easy answers makes more slickly self-congratulatory Hollywood versions of the same material—Garden State, say—feel just about worthless.
It says something about the evolution of film’s place in our culture that 13 years ago, Kevin Smith could make the semi-competent mumblecore movie Clerks (wisecracking script, wildly uneven acting, and Smith’s stunted camera sense—which has persisted through all his movies even when Oscar-winning cinematographers shoot for him) and get a career out of it, while Hannah Takes the Stairs so far has yet to earn $100,000, and Swanberg continues to be supported by his wife’s salary as a public high school teacher. “I’m still sitting in Chicago wondering how I’m going to buy groceries,” he recently told The Chicago Reader. “I’m not getting phone calls from agents or studios saying, ‘What are you up to?’” (Bujalski is—he’s been hired by producer Scott Rudin to write a script adapted from Benjamin Kunkel’s novel Indecision.)
It’s a classic mumblecore dilemma—deciding how to proceed in a world of diminished possibilities and expectations. And while you can only wish a happy Hollywood ending for Swanberg, and Bujalski and other directors in the genre, such as the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair) and Aaron Katz (Quiet City), you also have to hope that dedicated artists with such idiosyncratic talent continue to remain as far away from Hollywood as possible.
Mumblecore through the ages:
J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (Little, Brown and Company)
The original mumblecore text; a spiritual quest framed as a series of lengthy conversations, alternately exasperating and riveting, about academics, poetry, theater, ambition, literature, faith, sentimentality, ego, holiness, and, most important, how to separate the phony from the authentic.
Eric Rohmer, Boyfriends and Girlfriends
Blanche, a young City Hall bureaucrat, befriends a computer-science student named Lea, who tries to fix her up with her boyfriend’s friend—only Blanche finds herself attracted to the boyfriend, while Lea develops a thing for the friend. Trivial and self-centered, these characters can be stupid and shallow and annoying … and yet, in the end, incredibly, radiantly human.
Liz Phair, Exile In Guyville
The lo-fi, livejournal-style indie rock version of a Joe Swanberg movie, Phair seeks self-knowledge via a diaristic series of regrettable hookups, disappointing boyfriends, unattainable fantasies, false hopes, fleeting erotic fulfillment, and meditations on the dichotomy between observer and participant.
Andrew Bujalski, Mutual Appreciation
Seeking new bandmates, Alan, an indie-rocker from Boston, relocates to Brooklyn and causes tension between his best friend and the best friend’s girlfriend. Another friend’s impending wedding starts to feel increasingly ominous as Alan’s dad keeps calling, ever so reasonably suggesting that Alan get a job. One boozy night after a gig, Alan looks into the eye of the aging former music-biz insider who has offered to help, and asks, “Do you want me to end up like you?”
Joe Swanberg, Hannah Takes the Stairs
Over the course of a sweltering Chicago summer, an aspiring playwright named Hannah dumps her boyfriend and takes up with one, and then another, of the writers she’s assisting on a web-based video show. A collection of carefully husbanded moments combine with a star-making performance by Greta Gerwig in the most exhilarating mumblecore picture to date.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Bright Orange
Bright Orange Detroit Words By Eva Steele-Saccio Photos By Object Orange Video By Lindsay Utz, Bristol Baughan, Jeff Becker, Tom Van Buskirk, Ian Walsh
It began with a sign: a bright orange traffic detour sign standing next to one of Detroit's thousands of abandoned houses. Four local artists, a group who call themselves Object Orange, realized they could use the shocking color of the sign to draw attention to the city's pervasive urban decay. With up to 15 volunteers they staged clandestine predawn painting expeditions, covering blighted houses in buckets of "Tiggerific" orange paint. "People become blind," says OO's Mike, who, like other members of the group, prefers anonymity for legal reasons. "We want to make them take note." Out of Detroit's more than 7,000 abandoned buildings, fewer than 2,000 are slated for destruction, leaving a long waiting list of properties that have become drug dens, prostitution hubs, and dangerous neighborhood playgrounds.
Commuters have begun to notice the orange houses, as have unhappy city officials. "They may believe they are making artistic statements," says James Canning, communications coordinator for the Mayor's office, "but they are just trespassing and adding to the blight of the buildings." Eyesore or not, the orange is noticeable. Four of OO's first 11 orange houses were almost immediately demolished. Canning attributes this to coincidence and careful calculation (demolition plans are public record); the artists see it as a critical step toward re-invigorating their deteriorating city. "Our part is starting conversations," says OO member Jacques. "Some people do outreach. We paint houses orange."
Object Orange is a group of artists based in Detroit.
What is the graphic thought facility ?
Graphic Thought Facility
By defining a distinctive graphic style to a diverse range of projects, GRAPHIC THOUGHT FACILITY has emerged as one of the UK’s most influential – and productive – graphic design teams. Founded in London in 1990 by Andy Stevens and Paul Neale, GTF now works for such clients as Habitat, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Design Museum.
The work of Graphic Thought Facility is defined less by a distinctive visual language than the rigour with which the designers approach the process of developing and executing graphic projects. The defining characteristic of GTF’s finished work is its eclecticism. Drawing on a diverse range of typefaces – from robust use of Helvetica in the Digitopolis gallery at the Science Museum in London, to the curlicue lettering in marketing material for Habitat – printing techniques and materials, GTF reinvents its graphic style for each project.
Founded in London in 1990 by Paul Neale and Andy Stevens after they graduated in graphic design from the Royal College of Art GTF has since combined cultural projects – for Manchester Art Gallery, the Frieze Art Fair and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre as well as the visual identity of the Design Museum – with commercial commissions from Habitat and the design of graphic-based products such as the MeBox storage system. Huw Morgan is now a partner of GTF alongside Neale and Stevens.
Visit GTF's website at graphicthoughtfacility.com
Q. What were your early design influences? What drew you to graphic design?
Andy: Malcolm Garrett’s Simple Minds sleeves and TDK cassette packaging.
Huw: Printing. My mother had friends that were printer-makers - in the fine art sense - and I used to watch them avidly. They taught me about litho, we used stones and wax crayons instead of metal plates and films. I liked the process.
Paul: Probably the books and toys I had as a child.
Q. Do you feel that your education (design or otherwise) influenced the way you work now?
Andy: Leeds was very social and unpressured, I aspire to a working day that is like this! I found Derek Birdsall a big influence at the Royal College of Art.
Huw: In all honesty, probably not. It’s a crap cliché but I’ve learned more since leaving, although I’ve probably retained a methodical way of working that comes from learning chunks of exam revision verbatim.
Paul: Yes, it's the same pattern of “discuss, go-away-and-do-a-bit, then come back and discuss” that began in my A-level art group. Our art teacher, Mrs Savage didn’t follow a particular curriculum.
Q. Where did you meet and how did you start working together?
Andy: At the RCA from 1988 to 1990, I shared a studio with Paul and other founder member Nigel after Johnny Barnbrook moved out.
Huw: Paul was my tutor at Central Saint Martins (art school) and three years later I worked with Paul and Andy on an exhibition at the RCA.
Q. What were your earliest design commissions?
Andy: A logo for my best friend - a mobile hairdresser (stolen from an ERCO ad in Blueprint magazine) and local stuff in Leeds, then friends of friends’ shops and bands.
Paul: At school we found a group of break-dancers in an underground car park in Derby. We asked them to come into our school and do a gig. I designed the flyer - heavily influenced by the constructed typefaces in The Face, complete with halftone dots rendered in gouache.
Q. How would you characterise the perfect relationship between designer and client?
Andy: Mutual respect, un-bullshity.
Huw: One that trusts your opinion and appreciates that you are doing everything in your ability to give them the best job you can.
Paul: Relaxed, trusting and with no hidden agendas.
Q. What, if anything, do you consider to be your trademark?
Andy: GTF’s trademark would be the thoughtful consideration of purpose and production.
Huw: It would be good to think that it wasn’t as mannered as a trademark, but in reality, although you might try and avoid it, there are always going to be comfortable places that you go back to.
Paul: Unavoidable as it is, I hate the idea of having a trademark. I think our’s are self-evident.
Q. What would be your ideal job?
Andy: A Camper van concept for the new Volkswagen microbus.
Huw: Ever - in graphic design?
Paul: Probably something geeky.
Q. What is your favourite piece of your own work?
Andy: The Royal College of Art prospectus
Huw: Plenty of things still look good. A selection to follow, though I can’t necessarily take credit for them:
- a Jo Gordon Christmas card that was die-stamped through the envelope to make the card
- the Macbeth poster that Paul and Andy did before I knew them
- Oki Nami neon sign
- the Science Museum Digitopolis EL's
- The Globe publicity from 2003 with Nigel Shafran's photography
- various Habitat press releases
- Design Museum logo
Q. What is your favourite piece of graphic design in general?
Andy: Nothing stands out, I won’t try and force it.
Huw: Today it’s the General Electric logo and the deli just off the Ramblas in Barcelona with the full-bleed-product window.
© Design Museum
FURTHER READING
Visit Graphic Thought Facility's website at graphicthoughtfacility.com
For more information on British design and architecture go to Design in Britain, the online archive run as a collaboration between the Design Museum and British Council, at designmuseum.org/designinbritain
© Article - Design Museum
• www.graphicthoughtfacility.com
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