July 27, 2012
Wayne White is an American artist, art director, cartoonist, and illustrator. He started his art career working as a cartoonist and illustrator for a number of publications including ‘The East Village Eye,’ ‘Raw,’ ‘The New York Times,’ and ‘The Village Voice.’ In 1986 he worked on ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ where his work for his set and puppet designs won three Emmy awards; he also supplied a number of voices on the show.
Other television credits include production and set design for ‘Shining Time Station,’ ‘Riders in the Sky,’ ‘The Weird Al Show,’ and ‘Beakman’s World.’ He art directed two seminal music videos, Peter Gabriel’s ‘Big Time’ in 1986, and in 1996 he designed all the Georges Méliès inspired sets for the award-winning video for the Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Tonight, Tonight.’
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July 26, 2012
It Couldn’t Happen Here is a 1988 musical film starring the British pop duo Pet Shop Boys and based around their music. It was originally conceived as an hour-long video based around their album ‘Actually,’ but it turned into a surreal full-scale feature film directed by Jack Bond and co-starring Barbara Windsor, Joss Ackland, Neil Dickson and Gareth Hunt. The original idea of making a film emerged from the band’s immense reluctance to go on tour.
The band hoped that a film would satisfy the fans’ demand to see them in live action. Neil Tennant subsequently commented that making the film made him realize one thing, that he couldn’t act. When the film premiered in London’s West End, a crowd of fans were standing outside the cinema, waiting for the duo to arrive. However, as both Neil and Chris approached the crowd, they went completely unnoticed thanks to their anonymous appearance, and managed to walk past them.
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July 24, 2012
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. The idea of altering an instrument’s timbre through the use of external objects has been applied to instruments other than the piano, including the guitar and harp. Richard Bunger wrote a book ‘The Well Prepared Piano’ in which he explains how John Cage prepared his pianos and even which pianos are suitable, because of the deviation of string lengths within different brands.
Bunger also clarifies why the preparations were done in such ways; in other words, which adaptation creates which sounds (harmonics obtained, timbrel effects, etc.). The timbre of the instrument changes dramatically when preparations are introduced. Much of the technique is related to the harmonic positions of the strings. For instance a preparation on 1/2 of the string length causes a different sound than on 1/3. The preparations don’t cause a random sound, as is often assumed.
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July 23, 2012
Inherent Vice is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, originally published in 2009. The term ‘inherent vice’ as a legal phrase refers to a ‘hidden defect (or the very nature) of a good or property which of itself is the cause of (or contributes to) its deterioration, damage, or wastage. Such characteristics or defects make the item an unacceptable risk to a carrier or insurer. If the characteristic or defect is not visible, and if the carrier or the insurer has not been warned of it, neither of them may be liable for any claim arising solely out of the inherent vice.’ The phrase appears often in William Gaddis’ ‘The Recognitions,’ a novel that influenced American post-modern literature and Pynchon. Gaddis’ novel uses the term to refer to defects in works of art.
In a generally favorable review, Michiko Kakutani of ‘The New York Times’ called it ‘Pynchon Lite,’ describing it as ‘a simple shaggy-dog detective story that pits likable dopers against the Los Angeles Police Department and its ‘countersubversive’ agents, a novel in which paranoia is less a political or metaphysical state than a byproduct of smoking too much weed.’
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July 23, 2012
‘The Recognitions,’ published in 1955, is American author William Gaddis’s first novel.
The novel was poorly received initially, but Gaddis’s reputation grew, and the novel received belated fame as a masterpiece of American literature.
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July 23, 2012
Rodney Greenblat (b. 1960) is an American graphic artist known best in the United States for the visual style of the computer games ‘PaRappa the Rapper’ and ‘UmJammer Lammy,’ and in Japan for his comic ‘Thunder Bunny.’
He was also the character designer for the ‘PaRappa Rappa’ anime that was released in Japan. He also designed They Might Be Giants’ self-titled debut album in 1986. He is currently an abstract painter in New York.
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July 23, 2012
Gitaroo Man is a 2001 rhythm video game developed by iNiS and published by Koei for PlayStation 2. The game features visual design by pop artist 326 (Mitsuru Nakamura) and an original soundtrack by Japanese band COIL. The player character is U-1, a young boy who finds out he is the last legendary hero of Planet Gitaroo, and the possessor of the Last Gitaroo, a legendary guitar.
Despite a number of positive reviews, the North American and European versions of ‘Gitaroo Man’ were produced in very low quantities by Koei and, as a result, have become somewhat rare; it is regarded as a cult video game. Around 2005 in North America, copies began popping up in GameStop game stores. This was due to a reprint by GameQuestDirect, similar to their previous reprints of PlayStation RPGs ‘Persona 2’ and ‘Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure,’ both of which were previously very rare.
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July 17, 2012
Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: ‘The Answer’) is a South African rap-rave group whose style draws from the Zef counter-culture movement. Its lead vocalists are Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er. DJ Hi-Tek is commonly referenced as a third member of the group, although the band blends reality with fantastical elements for artistic effect and they do not acknowledge whether DJ Hi-Tek is a real person or a character played by a variety of musicians and actors.
Die Antwoord lead vocalist Ninja was part of the South African hip-hop scene for many years, fronting acts such as The Original Evergreens, MaxNormal.TV, and The Constructus Corporation. Ninja told ‘Rolling Stone,’ ‘Everything I did before Die Antwoord was me experimenting, messing around and trying to find die antwoord… Everything before it was disposable. It was all throwaway.’
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July 17, 2012
Zef is a South African counter-culture movement. Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: ‘The Answer’) is a South African rap-rave group whose style draws from the movement. The word ‘zef’ stems from an Afrikaans word, which roughly translates to the English word ‘common.’ South African rapper and Die Antwoord collaborator Jack Parow, describes the movement as ‘It’s kind of like posh, but the opposite of posh.’
It differs from the Australian term ‘bogan’ (pejorative f0r those from a low-class background) and the related British term ‘chav’ in that it is mostly a positive term used to describe oneself, rather than a derogatory term for someone else. It is also not typical of the poorest classes of the society, but rather a mostly white, lower-middle class subculture, albeit one that glorifies cheap stuff. Yolandi Visser of Die Antwoord is quoted as saying, ‘It’s associated with people who soup their cars up and rock gold and shit. Zef is, you’re poor but you’re fancy. You’re poor but you’re sexy, you’ve got style.’
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July 16, 2012
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by a Canadian company of the same name. IMAX increases the resolution of the image by using a much larger film frame. To achieve this, 65 mm film stock passes horizontally through the cameras. Traditional cameras pass film vertically. In order to match standard film speed of 24 frames per second, three times the length of film moves through the camera.
There are 583 IMAX theaters in 48 countries (China is the second largest market after the US with roughly 25 theaters). The desire to increase the visual impact of film has a long history. In 1929, Fox introduced Fox Grandeur, the first 70 mm film format, but it ultimately lost out to 35mm film, which remains the industry standard. In the 1950s CinemaScope and VistaVision widened the image from 35 mm film, following multi-projector systems such as Cinerama. While impressive, Cinerama was difficult to install, and the seams between adjacent projected images were difficult to hide.
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July 12, 2012
The Evolution Control Committee (The ECC) is an experimental music band based in Columbus, Ohio. The ECC was founded by Mark Gunderson (a.k.a. TradeMark G.) in 1987. It typically uses uncleared and illegal samples from various sources as a form of protest against copyright law.
The ECC also produces numerous audio experiments, such as the disfiguring of compact discs in live performance, known as ‘CDestruction,’ and has produced a few video works as well, ranging from re-edited 50’s corporate shorts to a Teddy Ruxpin reciting the works of William S. Burroughs. Other activities include culture jamming.
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July 12, 2012
Negativland is an experimental music and sound collage band which originated in San Francisco in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! song. The current core of the band consists of Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, Don Joyce, David Wills, and Peter Conheim. Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure sound collage to more musical expositions. These have mostly been released on their own label, Seeland Records.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for SST Records, most notably ‘Escape from Noise,’ ‘Helter Stupid,’ and ‘U2.’ Negativland were sued by U2’s record label, Island Records, and by SST Records, which brought them widespread publicity and notoriety.
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