In a new series titled Machine Punk, artist Laurie Lipton (previously on Coilhouse, with a cameo appearance by Caryn Drexl) skillfully renders a series of cumbersome, beautifully sprawling machines whose tangled wires and polluted textures conspire to create a sense of unease. Lipton states that the series was inspired by steampunk, but notes that the machines in her images run on “madness and electricity” rather than steam. “I was vacuuming one day, and noticed the amount of plugs and cables on the floor… a veritable wasp’s nest of wires and sockets connecting a hoard of gadgets and doo-dads intertwining around the house and my life. I was trapped like a fly in an electrical web. What had happened? Were these things making my life easier or more complex?” The resulting series features contraptions ranging from rickety flying machines to torturous exercise equipment, and critiques – among other things – CCTV surveillance, a broken recycling system, and the empty thought-calories of spending too much time online. Most of the images in this series are best enjoyed at a larger size, so click here to see them all.
Machine Punk will be on display at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles from November 5 – 28th in Gallery 1, side-by-side with artist and Coilhouse collaborator Jessica Joslin in Gallery 2. Also, if you’re a fan of Laurie Lipton’s ghostly older work, it’s worth mentioning that she recently collaborated with clothing company AllSaints to produce a line of t-shirts featuring the wraiths and skeletons of her previous work, and that some of these shirts are now on sale. [Many thanks to the awesome Coilhouse reader who sent this in - I received your submission a while ago, but can't find it now to credit you! Was it via Twitter?]
A frantic time-lapse of artist Meer One creating images for his mono-distortion series Sketches of Babylon. A set of 33 individual paintings sharing a common style, Sketches of Babylon depicts the rising, skeletal spires of a totalitarian society on an alien world, rendered in fiery oranges and yellows. They make me think of 60s-era science fiction paperback covers. Baurmann Gallery is going to begin selling them today at 1pm PST for $500.00 apiece. If you’re interested and have the cash you can email them.
A collaboration between Interpretive Arson, False Profit Labs, Gray Area Foundation For The Arts (GAFFTA), and Illutron, this 2.5-ton, 60-foot sculpture will act as a giant electronic musical instrument. Designed as a traveling installation, Syzygryd will debut at Burning Man in under a month. The Syzygryd user experience, as explained by Interpretive Arson’s Morley John, will be as follows: “Three strangers [will] come together and visually compose a unique piece of music. The beauty of Syzygryd is that the entire sculpture responds to what you’re creating in sequenced light and fire. Each touchscreen controller has a grid of buttons which allow you to input musical patterns.” The initial Syzygryd proposal elaborates further:
Syzygryd is a collaborative musical instrument for three non-professional players. We are not naive. We’re not shoving guitars into the hands of novices and expecting symphonies. This is a very carefully designed canvas that guides beginners to harmony (in fact, discordant notes are literally impossible.) The interface is rhythmic, visual, and dead simple. We’ve been meticulously developing the software for months, playing with iPhone prototypes on busses, tweaking sounds, testing it out on our friends. We knew we were getting warmer the first time that three people, with no formal training in music, got bystanders grooving involuntarily…
Though most of the heavy lifting takes place Oakland, people from around the world are invited to contribute to the build.
How can you help build Syzygryd? By submitting sound sets. You’re basically submitting 3 (or more) types of sounds that mesh well together, and people will make music with them. For Syzygryd’s sound palette is not limited to the three electronic tones you hear in the software demo above. You can make it play anything: chirping bird noises, breathing, machine/factory sounds… the more creative the combination, the better. To submit a set, all you need to do is have Ableton Live, download Syzygryd’s MDK (Musician Developer Kit), and consult this handy video tutorial for extra help as needed. There’s also a forum where you can ask questions and get advice. All submitted sets will be reviewed by Syzygryd’s Music Team, and a selection of the top sets will played by the sculpture.
Having observed and participated in the Syzygryd project build, it’s clear that everyone involved is deeply invested in crafting an experiential zone that will be the first of its kind. As the proposal states, “[Syzygryd is] the most beautiful expression we can imagine of the joy we take in community, music, technology, fire, sculpture and architecture. We have assembled an international team of artists with extraordinary talent and experience. All of us are in love. Every day we see things that no one has yet imagined, and it’s been our delight to work within a community to make them real. We’d like to create a space in our city where others — people who don’t normally do this sort of thing — can feel at least a little of that.” That’s a wonderful thing to be part of on any level, and in Syzygryd’s case, people from around the world can get involved.
The deadline for submitting sounds sets to Syzygryd is Tuesday, August 24th. More info on the sculpture and music submission process, after the jump!
Donald Weber takes a heart wrenching look at the city of Zholtye Vody in Ukraine. Located near two nuclear waste sites and an enrichment factory in the hub of the Soviet Union’s uranium mining and enrichment area, the homes were built using highly contaminated materials. With a higher radiation level than Chernobyl, over half the population of 60,000 people suffer from some sort of radiation sickness.
Upon first viewing this slide-show I was immediately struck with the strangest memory. Specifically, a memory of being a child, sitting in the ophthalmologist’s office and leafing through a copy of National Geographic which contained a large article on the Chernobyl disaster. The same hollow and broken faces are here in Weber’s essay. There is some joy here too, but it never seems to truly outshine the pain.
The image below was especially affecting and I had mixed feelings posting the set. It struck me that my vision of these post Soviet states is largely informed by images like this — a collection of gnarled women in babushkas, all furrowed brows and vacant stares, and emaciated youths, bald and hurting. It’s a world where lives are lived entirely within tiny, cramped apartments in stark, concrete tenements whose facades and walkways are slowly succumbing to an inexorable army of vegetation. I find myself thinking that there must be more to these people’s lives than this and fearing that there isn’t. I worry that I am passing on a misconception; proliferating a stereotype. I suppose that if the purpose of art is to make us question then, at least in my case, Daniel Weber has succeeded.
Since Ross has been on a bit of a John Hurt kick lately, writing up both Jim Henson’s The Storyteller and Krapp’s Last Tape in recent editions of FAM, this week’s better-late-than-never Better Than Coffee follows up with Hurt’s more musical side: his turn as an experimental composer in Jerzy Skolimowski’s 1978 horror drama The Shout. The above is a scene from the movie with absolutely no spoilers; just a tactile landscape of metallic noise. [Via Wobbly]
And so, with a melange of yellow cards, red fury and vuvuzela farts, the World Cup has come to a close. In adjunctive honor of the ensuing global FIFA spaz-out, here’s the raddest Swedish synthpop football anthem ever made, courtesy of Tyskarna Från Lund. (Extra points of awesomeness for that Nina Hagen reference.)
Memorial Day is almost upon us in the States, and we here at The FAM have chosen to begin our long weekend with sex, drugs, and violence, as is our wont. Today we present 1971′s Get Carter, directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine; quite possibly one of the greatest gangster movies of all time, British or otherwise. Based on the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis — which took its inspiration from the “one-armed bandit murder” in the north east of England in 1967 — it tells the story of one Jack Carter as he weaves his way through Newcastle’s seedy underworld in search of the truth of his brother Frank’s death, supposedly due to a drunk driving accident. In his wake he leaves a trail of bodies and a river of blood.
There is an image of Michael Caine for many people, greatly influenced by The Cider House Rules and his role as Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, of a kindly, wise, and lovable older man with a cockney accent. For this audience Caine will be almost unrecognizable here. His Jack Carter is a ruthless man; death in a well-tailored suit. Carter’s rampage through Tyneside is relentlessly brutal culminating on a lonely, gray beach and ends on a note that takes the viewer completely by surprise, though the more astute will recognize the players from an exceedingly brief appearance at the very beginning of the film.
Get Carter is a highlight in a storied career and it remains one of my favorite movies. To be sure Caine has played many memorable characters besides Jack Carter, but few have had that kind of presence on screen. It’s a role almost completely devoid of pathos. Jack Carter is out for revenge, and he really doesn’t care how you or anyone else feels about it. All that’s certain is that he’ll get it, one way or another.
Tom Tom Crew is, from the looks of their website, a hip-hop flavored circus troupe originating from Australia, that den of murderers, rapists, and thieves that lies adjacent to the place where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed, where everything is upside down and roaming gangs of wallabies rule the streets. Tom Tom Crew’s website bills them as the future of Australian circus, a claim I can neither confirm nor deny, knowing as I do, absolutely nothing about Australian circus [Editor's Note: or Australia for that matter]. What I can say is that they possess something called The Wheel, an ominous contraption consisting of a metal frame which holds a number of plastic vessels.
Into this insidious device, it seems that the Tom Tom Crew places a single percussionist. Where they come from, I can only guess. Perhaps they are merely street performers, shanghaied from the city squares and subway stations they usually occupy. Regardless of their origins, these poor individuals are forced to drum, seemingly for their very lives within the confines of The Wheel. Who can say how many of these performers perished in their attempts to conquer The Wheel before Ben Walsh. Possessing a skill that could only have been born from sheer terror, Walsh attacks the walls of his prison with astounding gusto and an effortlessness that belies the horrific reality.
It’s thrilling to watch, this battle for survival, hearkening back to the days of the Colosseum, when men lived and died for the entertainment of the masses. I pray the gods have mercy on Ben Walsh should he ever stop drumming. Certainly, The Wheel shall show none.
And so another week comes to an end. Time to wrap up those last few loose ends in your in-box and head home for crazy a weekend of amphetamine-fueled debauchery. I mean, it’s Mother’s Day this weekend and all… No? Well, maybe just a weekend of yard work and staid outdoor activities like barbecue and bocce. Pro Tip: a few uppers could enhance said activities. Just sayin’. What? Don’t give me that look. You think you’re better than me? I will cut you! God, why is it so hot in here.
Whew, ok, let’s all just take a deep breath and try to discuss today’s FAM while ignoring the sounds of grinding teeth. Today’s film, no doubt soon to be yanked from YouTube, is Dark Days the documentary by British filmmaker Marc Singer from 2000. It follows a group of homeless people who make their homes in the abandoned subway tunnels beneath New York City, specifically The Freedom Tunnel under Riverside Park. His first film, Singer made Dark Days after moving to New York and making friends with number of the people who made up the Freedom Tunnel community.
For my part I found Dark Days by way of journalist Jennifer Toth — another British immigrant, coincidentally — whose book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City Mr. Singer may have read as well. Published in 1993, it is perhaps the best known book on the subject, and also happens to feature residents of The Freedom Tunnel. It’s an engrossing read and has perhaps done the most to fuel the urban myths of organized, underground tribes of homeless. This is no doubt due to the sensationalistic nature of Toth’s account, much of it relying on unverifiable claims. Her credibility was not helped by what turned out to be a laundry list of geographical inaccuracies relating to almost every location she describes.
Surely then, Singer’s film does a better job of showing the reality of the situation. Despite the hip-hop aspirations that coat every surface — from the preoccupation with graffiti to the DJ Shadow soundtrack — the focus is decidedly on the individuals who make up this small community; shot in stark, grainy black and white that perfectly suits the subject matter. It’s a story simultaneously bleak and heartwarming. Such is the nature of all stories that are true.
Just in time to put you off your lunch, the Friday Afternoon arrives with 2009′s Food Inc, the scathing documentary/critique of America’s food industry. Directed by Robert Kenner and co-produced by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, Food Inc is of the variety that both infuriates and terrifies in equal measure. It must be pointed out, however, that if you are already up on the subject matter, or have already read Fast Food Nation, there isn’t a whole lot that is new here. Still, for those uninitiated in the horrific practices of companies like Monsanto and Tyson it can be an eye-opening experience.
Recently, it was shown on PBS for their POV segment — it can be viewed on their website until this coming Thursday, should the YouTube version get pulled — and was followed with the delightfully Lynchian Notes on Milk (Click that link to watch. Do it!) a short film looking at the rise of milk in America.
So get to watching, dear readers, and get a better picture of the horrible stuff we put into our bodies everyday. In the meantime I’ll get back to my Big Mac, because nothing tastes quite like Creutzfeldt–Jakob.
Update: Reader rbk points out that PBS is not viewable in America’s hat, Canadia. Therefore, filthy Canucks should go here.
