A short preview of the artwork, music and artists to expect this summer – at We Love… Space, Ibiza. Music from Omar, Henrik Schwarz, PBR Streetgang and Soul Clap & Catz n Dogz as Clapz n Dogz.
Archive for the ‘Art’ Category
We Love… Space 2010 Summer Preview
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
Klip Kollektive – Projection Face Test
Friday, June 4th, 2010Sometimes we find something that is so excellent it requires no introduction, but we’ll give you one anyway. It’s from a group of filmmakers, photographers and interactive artists who create high-end, large-scale and unique video installations. The track is the Soulwax remix of LCD Soundsystem’s Daft Punk Is Playing At My House.
Field Notes
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
From a cultural history of hearing, we know that hearing, as a sense of information and orientation, was ranked before seeing. The gods, first and foremost, could be heard (if one could set eyes on them at all). From the sounds of thunder and lightning – though one can not see their origin – one reads the wrath of the gods. The invisible fires one’s imagination. Ulysses does not succumb to the singing of the sirens since he has allowed himself to be tied up at the mast of his ship. He does not see the sirens, he only hears them. Its invisibility renders the singing dangerous. It is the potentiality which the invisibility attributes to it, that which is not used, the innominated attender. It is this which drives Ulysses wild. Cristoph Korn
What is the difference between noises and music? Does every sound that is not recorded for scientific purposes automatically become music? Field recordings have only recently been recognized as a bona fide artistic genre. A field recording is generally used to describe any recording captured outside of a recording studio, it often involves the capture of low level, complex and ambient noise. Field recordists and sound artists listen to sounds of the world and record them. They can present their recordings unedited or sometimes collage and manipulate them – arrange them into compositions, create installations and sound sculptures.
Our series on online PDF magazines continues with a publication which focuses solely on the subject of field recording. The first two issues have many interesting articles and essays from a diverse range of artists, philosophers and academics. It also contains some pleasing pictures of locations in which field recordings take place. So go ahead and download those first two issues here. Or check out their website if you would like to download the German version.
Invisible City
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Invisible City Issues 1 - 6
Invisible City is an online magazine in the vein of Cuemix and Romka which we have featured previously. It’s an online magazine in .pdf format showcasing contemporary art and writing by emerging artists from Australia and around the world. Each issue explores a contemporary theoretical idea through images, poetry, creative and critical writing. It’s curated and run by Marlaina Read, an emerging artist from Sydney. You can read her honours paper here. It’s a good read if you are interested in the super-modernity of post-industrial non-places such as airports and how to travel and take photographs which convey a personal, reflective intimacy for distances travelled and places seen. She’s also got a blog, so you can check out her more personal and rarefied musings there.
Each issue covers a different topic, such as blindness, mapping or bodies (in issues 3, 5 and 4 respectively). It’s free to download and definitely worth a look so we’ve compiled the first six issues for you to download here.
Download – Invisible City Issues 1 to 6
Invisible City – Official Site
Ralph Steadman – Alice In Wonderland
Friday, March 12th, 2010Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
Gonzo In Wonderland
While most children derive pleasure from the pure prose of Lewis Carroll’s most well known work, adults try to decipher the reputed use of complex mathematical codes in the text or debate his alleged use of opium. Among the multitude of of characters – extinct, fantastical and commonplace creatures brought to life by Ralph Steadman’s frenzied, ink-splattered illustrations, Alice journeys through this Wonderland, trying to fathom the meaning of her strange experiences – turning “curiouser and curiouser”, seemingly without moral or sense. At every turn, Alice’s new companions scoff at her traditional education, readers can revel in the delightfully non-moralistic and non-educational virtues of this classic, this gives some insight to Steadman’s notoriously iniquitous illustrations in itself. The Mock Turtle, for example, remarks that he took the “regular course” in school: Reeling, Writhing, and branches of Arithmetic-Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
Steadman’s Alice In Wonderland was first published in 1967 and is a remarkable departure from the original illustrations, remaining faithful to the book’s satirical tone while revealing the artist’s own passion for irony. Through his audacious and dynamic images, he breathes new life in the classic story with a modern illustrative approach. Steadman explains, “It is difficult to explain in words what the pictures are trying to say, and therefore my explanations are not precisely what I had in mind because they add shades of meaning which are not there. The reader can only interpret them in his own way, bringing his own observations to bear on the image he is looking at, so that he may agree or disagree with what I have tried to convey. When I set out to draw an idea, part of that idea is not yet formed and only takes shape and reveals itself as the drawing progresses. Consequently, the drawing acquires a life of its own and virtually takes over the direction it will follow – or so it seems.”
The Kind & Queen of Hearts by Ralph Steadman
Steadman describes the picture above as, “The Monarch having evolved or developed into a shapeless mass of hangers-on, the State, H.M. Forces, the Church, the establishment walking on one pair of very well-worn legs. The King and Queen born into it and enveloped in it and lost in it, obliged to go through the motions automatically but surprising even themselves by their own outbursts.”
The White Rabbit by Ralph Steadman
The artist says that his inspiration for The White Rabbit comes from todays commuter, “worried by time, hurrying and scurrying. Sane within a routine, slightly insane but more engaging when the routine is upset.”
A Mad Tea Party by Ralph Steadman
He describes the Mad Hatter as, “the unpleasant sides of human nature. The unreasoned argument screams at you. The bully, the glib quiz game compère who rattles off endless reels of unanswerable riddles and asks you to come back next week and make a bloody fool of yourself again,” and says the March Hare “is always standing close by. The “egger-on” urging the banality to plumb even greater depths. He always seems to be around to push someone into a fight.” As for the Dormouse, Steadman says he’s, “Harmless and nice. The man anyone in the office can take a rise out of. If you tread on his face he will smile right back at you.”
The Card Guards by Ralph Steadman
Taking inspiration for his Card Guards from British workmen, “Bickering about who splashed who and standing in the stuff all the time anyway.”
The Pool of Tears by Ralph Steadman
Steadman explains that the animals in his illustration of The Pool Of Tears “remind me of people I know, rather as Lewis Carroll apparently created them around friends and associates. The reader can place his own interpretation on them. It was never my intention to set everything in concrete.”
Advice From A Caterpillar by Ralph Steadman
And finally, defining the Caterpillar as a “young intellectual. Smoking hash, pedantic, who thinks he has something to say and sheds his opinions as easily as his skins.”
Check out some more Alice illustrations by Salvador Dali here. And more about our obsession with line drawing in general here.
BLDGBLOG
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010In other words, forget academic rigor. Never take the appropriate next step. Talk about Chinese urban design, the European space program, the landscape in the films of Alfred Hitchcock in the span of three sentences – because it’s fun, and the juxtapositions might take you somewhere. Most importantly, follow your lines of interest. Finally, I want to reiterate that BLDGBLOG is fundamentally about following, and not being ashamed by, your own enthusiasms, whether or not they are rigorous and appropriate for the academic mores of the day, or even interesting for your family and friends. – Geoff Manaugh
High Houses are proposed as part of the reconstruction of Sarajevo after the siege of the city that lasted from 1992 though late 1995.
BLDGBLOG (pronounced “building blog”… maybe) is written by Geoff Manaugh, it’s subject matter is “architectural conjecture, urban speculation and landscape futures.” Read by millions since its launch in 2004, BLDGBLOG is a leading voice and uniquely futuristic vision, offering and enthusiastic, idea-filled guide to what lies ahead in our built and technological environments. With stunning images and original content, BLDGBLOG is part conceptual travelogue, part manifesto and part sci-fi novel. Under the guise of writing his blog about architecture, Manaugh has crafted a tribute to the world-transforming power of the imagination itself. Along the way, he incorporates some of the most ambitious minds of our time involving everything from urban design to climatology, music, astronomy and pop culture. On reading the blog you start to interrogate everything you take for granted about the environments we create for ourselves.
Arctic glacial core samples
Geoff Manaugh has provided the reader with an excursion into a new world – part digital fantasy, part reality at the intersection of art, technology, design and pure ideas. The blog is personal, idiosyncratic and, best of all, incredibly interesting. It uses architecture as a lens for delving into related aspects of society and takes enjoyable turns into the stretches of imagination. It’s an urban fantasy made from the remainders of a very large equation. The modus operandi of his work – the fervid linking between seemingly disparate realms of emotion, experience and academic discipline feels appropriate for our densely networked, accelerating, neurotically twittering era…
LOMO LC-A
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
Snap out of it
In 1982 a phenomenon began in St Petersburg. On examining a Japanese compact camera called the Cosina CX-1, an engineer at the Leningrad Optics & Mechanics Amalgamation saw a compact automatic format which could provide to the masses a reliable workhorse for everyday photography. An order was given that an improved copy should be produced on mass for the Soviet peoples snapshooting pleasure. With greater potential of a sharp glass lens developed by Professor Radionov as well as an extremely high light sensitivity and robust casing the LOMO LC-A was born. Within a year the camera quickly found its way into the hearts and camera pouches of the enthusiastic proletariat in Communist states such as Ukraine and Czechoslovakia and even as far as Cuba and China. After a ramp in production there were 1200 people working solely on production of the LC-A, 500 of whom were assemblers.
Optical genius – Professor Radionov!
Fast forward to 1991 and two Austrian marketing students are holidaying in a newly liberated Czech republic and bought a camera in Prague as they forgot to take one with them. Their eye fell on a certain 35mm compact produced in the Soviet Union. They bought it, experimented with it, hyped it… By this time the LC-A’s market share had been weakened by flashy imports from Asia and production was grinding to a halt. Being marketing students, they kept tight control over their hype as it developed – founded the “LOMOgraphic society” to preach their gospel and made a deal with LOMO to become the sole worldwide dealers of the LC-A. To find a solution to the ever-expanding demand and diminishing supply of the LC-A, the marketeers travelled to the LOMO Optics factory in St. Petersburg. The society heads managed to convince the factory heads (and Vladimir Putin – Vice Mayor of St. Petersburg at the time) to begin full production of the camera once again.
The marketing students started a genre of photography built around the LC-A – LOMOgraphy. They orchestrated get-togethers and happenings at trendy places. They started a website early on while the web was still fresh. They made sure every LOMOgrapher passed through their society. And all the time with cash flowing in. They currently charge €250 euros for the basic model, a large markup on what is essentially very simple technology. Similar products, with similar results (genuine Soviet cameras included) can be found for less than half the price. LOMOgraphy is a profitable business, making money on everybody’s desire to be part of the in-crowd. The LOMOgraphy company has branched out to include clothing, hip gallery stores and the aforementioned parties and get-togethers. More and more it’s encapsulating it’s customers with a prefab lifestyle of which it is the only supplier with an admission fee of €250.
The intent of LOMOgraphy is to let go the burdens of traditional photography, to capture life as it is, spontaneous and from the hip. To be wild, young and free. To translate freedom into pictures. It’s not a bad philosophy, but it can lead to pictures being shot with the least possible brains in order to impress others with said spontaneity. When a philosophy becomes less of an ideal and more of a business it inevitably loses its shine. Among some photographers, LOMOgraphy has become a byword for debasing of their craft, a synonym for bad pictures, for seeing things that are not there and labeling everything art.
In 2005 the LOMO optical factory ceased all production of the LC-A camera. Their overall production had become more specific and high-tech to optical instruments such as gunsights and microscopes. Perhaps they didn’t want the insinuation that they were associated to lo-fi, low tech photography. The LOMO LC-A+ is now made-in-China, but according to it’s makers, delivers 98% the same results as its original.
Despite the undeniable guilelessness of the photographs it can produce, as well as the product’s usability and universal intentions – everybody can be a LOMOgrapher and with some practice everybody can do it well – it’s very democratic. As much as LOMOgraphy can claim to be beyond the realm of traditional photography, it remains photography nonetheless. LOMOgraphy is special because it is very individual but it takes no specialist skill. It plays on the notion that everyone is special, even if we are all alike – selling exclusivity, but with the whole world as their market. It’s only business, after all.
Be sure to check out the galleries on the official website.
Franklin Booth
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Easter Prayer, 1925
At Prayer, 1925
He developed a style composed of thousands of lines, whose careful positioning next to one another produced variations in density and shade. He was largely a commercial artist with illustrations appearing in Cosmopolitan, Good Hosuekeeping, Ladies Home Journal and Harper’s.
General Electric Company, 1912
The characteristics of his art were large scales in extremes, with large buildings and forests looming over tiny figures. He also created advertising art for Rolls-Royce, Paramount Pictures and Bulova Watches among others.
Garden Font Delgada, 1925
Booth contributed to the Great War by illustrating recruit posters, the Red Cross, US savings bonds envelopes, booklets and death certificates for American soldiers who parished in France and Belgium.
Hand Of The World, 1925
Despite the laboriousness of his technique, Booth’s compositions were characterised by a grand sense of space. As a result, his drawings were often well-matched to poetic or editorial entries. Two wonderfully done books of his illustrations have been published and has helped to bring back the memory and incredible output of his work.
Harvest Time, 1925
Mr. Booth possesses to a rare degree the power of expressing in design or picture an idea, an abstract conception. He illustrates not so much things as thoughts.
Norman Rockwell
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Disco Burger
The above photograph depicts a favourite lunchtime haunt here in Ibiza – the legendary Disco Burger “Va Bene”. As well as having possibly the largest TV in the world – they also have a fine collection of Americana in the form of prints by Norman Rockwell. It fits the ambience and taste of American life so well, more research had to be done…
Piggin' out
These rosy illustrations of American life look so realistic because the artist’s method was to copy photographs which he had conceived and meticulously directed. He worked with various photographers to compose the shots and used friends and neighbours as his models. It obviously harks to a simpler and admittedly unrealistic time. The reality is when Rockwell was at the peak of his career, McCarthy era show-trials, religious and racial intolerance, and rampant bloody American wars were rampant.
Well trained eye
However, objectively and aesthetically the transformation which takes place from photograph to finished painting is remarkable. Faces become more mature, expressions more complex and even more quintessentially American. Such meticulous attention to detail could only take place through careful planning. There are plenty of artists who tap into our dark side, one could say it is easier in many ways. Rockwell has always been the man to show us light and beauty to complement the darkness, showing the humour in life’s simple conflicts.
Barber shop duet
Rockwell deserves our undying admiration for painting an America that was grand, grateful, respected its God and had it’s flaws. His work shines a spotlight on the decent moments in life and on moments that cause a little chuckle.
Disco Burger photos by Julie
LSD Blotter Art
Thursday, December 10th, 2009First synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1938, the hallucinogen LSD emerged as a recreational drug in American cities in the early 1960s. Widely available until criminalized by the US government in the autumn of 1966, the drug – which typically left the laboratory in liquid form – was initially distributed in a number of ways, from large pills (nicknamed “barrels” for their shape) to acid-infused sugar cubes.
Alice goes through the looking glass
The development of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, in which penalties were linked to the weight of the confiscated substance, changed the way LSD was disseminated. An average active dose is in the range of .05 to .1 mg – since the laws considered the legal substance in which the drug was infused part of the total weight of the illegal substance, a single sugar cube might increase the overall weight by a factor of 100,000. New lightweight “carriers” that added less extraneous volume to the small doses of the drug they held were developed, ranging from colored gelatin chips to sheets of perforated paper known as blotter. First seen on the streets of San Francisco in the early 1970s, blotter acid soon began to be decorated with printed designs and images – ranging from smiley faces to Hindu Gods to cartoon characters – identifying it by dealer or potency, while at the same time vastly reducing the legal liability of those who possessed it.
Mad Hatter design by Mark McCloud
Mark McCloud, who, with the possible exception of the FBI, owns the world’s largest collection of (now LSD-free) blotter was recently acquitted by a jury on charges of conspiracy to distribute the drug. He is notorious in the annals of psychedelic art for his 25 year quest to compile a complete collection of LSD blotter art. US Federal authorities spent millions on conducting wire-taps, monitoring mail and surveillance of McCloud. During a SWAT style raid by an FBI/DEA task force, police seized 400 framed LSD blotters and 33,000 sheets of McCloud’s own blotter art. Designs ranged from a print of Peter Rabbit from the early 70’s to a recent example from Europe showing two lesbian aliens. None of the material had any traces of the drug. McCloud’s attorney argued that McCloud wasn’t resposible for the use of his prints by others as a vehicle for illegal drugs. Among McCloud’s defence witnesses was New York art critic Carlo McCormick, who told the court that McCloud’s work is an important part of an American folk-art tradition.
Blotter Designed and Signed by H.R. Geiger
Mark calls his collection the “institute of illegal art”. There are designs ranging from psychedelic fractals and religious imagery to portraits of counter-cultural icons such as Timothy Leary and the inventor of LSD himself – Albert Hoffman. And Albert Hoffman’s story…? Let’s leave that to another day. There are the famous ones: Felix the Cats, red and orange sunshines, Mad Hatters, Beavis and Buttheads, and McCloud’s most famous personal design: Alice Through the Looking Glass, a double-sided sheet with Alice climbing through the window into the psychedelic realm. His collection also contains rarer blotter art like the ones signed by Tim Leary and Albert Hoffman, ones with images of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the inflammatory series with the FBI seal stamped on it. Some of these sheets even came with elaborate envelopes designed to match their contents.
Originally the paper used to distribute LSD was chromatic paper used for litmus tests in laboratories. The acid would turn the pink paper blue giving it the nickname – blue dot acid. That was the first commercial enterprise of LSD on paper. Then in the early 70s someone had the thought of not just putting dots on paper, but dipping whole sheets. The scientists calibrated the absorption rate of a sheet of paper and how much of a gram of acid could be absorbed by it. They surmised that blotter paper would be best because it had a high absorbency rate as it was used to absorb ink after signing a document. But acid could technically go on anything – some of the first commercial enterprises even put it on string. The anthropologist Claudio Naranjo took some LSD on paper to a shaman in Central America around 1965, the story goes that he drew some stars and a crescent moon on the paper – this was perhaps the first imagery on blotter paper.
Gorby
What happened to Mark McCloud was a “death-rebirth” experience on LSD in 1971 which took him around ten years to integrate. He saw collecting blotter paper as a way of “paying back the debt”. He thinks that by keeping examples of acid sheets, they can be part of a history that children can see, so the radical change in the 1960s can be understood as a renaissance. He believes LSD to be a “renaissance pill” – a substance that has affected consciousness, and the arts in an incredible way. It can be seen as an alchemical artform, which, once consumed affects consciousness by taking the image into themselves. McCloud says he could have easily gone from parish to parish, collecting hosts from a Catholic mass, where blank sheets of bread are stamped with an image of what appears to be the Holy Ghost, a dove flying and on the other side the name of the parish – “but since they don’t work anymore, I thought I’d collect an active host – the one that is bringing mysticism back to the people.”
Doll Face
