Santiago Mostyn Directs Thurston Moore

"Don't let the dark get you lost.
Your freedom has come,
Fire and frost."

Directed by Santiago Mostyn, built on his own memories of first coming to San Francisco after growing up in Zimbabwe getting happily lost in the park with his mother...

Amon Tobin Finger Painting

Yes, musicians make 'art'!

 This unnamed beauty is the result of Amon Tobin donating his finger print to artist Greg Angus, who then rendered the print creatively in oil and melted wax. To its credit it does look like the effect of sound on water, and that's intriguing. But it also looks like a tie-dye finger painting made on a computer. As it's the great electronic visionary producer, responsible for the likes of ISAM and other wonders however, you might not be satisfied with CDs, downloads, tee shirts, baseball hats and concert tickets...you might want to take your adoration up a notch. Here's the press release which makes some amazing claims:

In anticipation of Greg Angus’ upcoming Los Angeles exhibition, ‘electronic’, Verve Projects is pleased to release Amon Tobin’s fingerprint painting.

Purchase: http://verveprojects.bigcartel.com/product/greg-angus-amon-tobin

These prints are based on Greg’s original encaustic paintings featuring the top electronic musicians in the world. The prints are a closed limited edition of 100, at 36” x 36” each, and they are hand signed by the artist Greg Angus and printed on the highest quality archival (museum quality) paper. Subsequently, the original paintings that these prints are derived from will be unveiled at an exhibition reception in Los Angeles in 2015. Exploring themes of identity in his work, the inspiration in Angus’ paintings are derived from fingerprints. In 2013, Angus met with Amon Tobin to collect his actual fingerprints. He subsequently manipulated them, developing interesting contours and shapes that he used to guide his painting. In his original paintings, his technique involves mixing oil paint with melted wax, (encaustic) and layering a myriad of colors over one another. He then scrapes and carves out his patterns creating texturally complex works. Earlier works have a close relation to the fingerprint Angus begins with, while more recent works have a looser, more organic interpretation. The work is rich with tactile detail, peaks, valleys, and ridges that characterize our distinctive physical stamp. Kinetic use of color is signature in Angus’ work. The high-saturation and brights vibrate with energy drawing us through many pathways in the image. Our natural inclination for individuality and our need to investigate and celebrate the diversity of experience on which we build our identities is reflected in Angus’ works, and reflected in his desire to honour truly exceptional individuals who have left their creative mark on the world.

The Music Video and Art

Labor45 - Electronic Toys

We're loving German experimental artists Labor45, who collaborate here with Spenza to create this u:ber video to Take Me To Your Leader. As nostalgically 80s and so German as it is, flashing influences of the visual aesthetic of Kraftwerk and sounding like something you couldn't quite put in a box. Following is their video and a little about them but first here are some thoughts their video has raised:

With new media art moving in a wider, yet more confluent direction and with viewing platforms diversifying all the time, the rise of MTV in the late 80s and capitalists like Lady Gaga who claim to create "art" in their music and videos has done little to influence the genre. Instead the area in which video art and the music video have blurred is one which was touched by enduring acts such as Kraftwerk and in the art world, and by the work of Nam June Paik of Fluxus in the art world who was part of a movement challenging conventions of art and music in public space. Didn't John Cage say that one way to write music was to study Duchamp? While the music video generally tends to allude to or add to the narrative, it can also transpose a music video from the realm of 'music' to 'art', and vice versa while contributing to a growing pool of work that celebrates and aesthetic driven by current trends in technology (going right back to Channel 4's The Chart Show, 1986 where videos were linked by their then state of the art computer graphics).

As the conventions of viewing video art change, moving out of the gallery online to anywhere one can fix a screen (recent 'public art' projects for London regeneration saw our own video streamed on loop in a run down estate in North London), the language of video art also changes. Yet is has never quite broken away from convention or explored the possible enough. Only new developments in technology and the occasionally brilliant directive (see Michel Gondry's video for Bjork's Declare Independence - which we post on here some years ago, who also plan to screen their new 40 minute 3D film in museums rather than any other kind of venue) push the medium of music video into the realm of art. Still, it is a blurred line that is as yet unexplored in any conclusive manner.

Labor45 are Barbara Herold, Katrin Petroschkat, both living in Munich . Their work is often about music, the reception and production of as well as where new date formats and digital advancements are heading:
"LABOR 45 is about artistic research on today's technical features and aims to find new possibilities for usage and expression from within the medium."

Spenza on the other hand are interested in sound, with limited but early work in visuals seemingly led by algorhythmic pulsing and basic visual programme coding, going back to 2010:
 

'The Monitor Lizard' Vs. Preslav Literary School

In the second half of May 21st's programme we have an exclusive live in-studio session and interview with Preslav Literary School (Adam Thomas).

Adam talks to Chris Weaver about his transition from performing as a poet using backing tapes to becoming the Preslav Literary School,. They also ponder the rise in popularity of the tape medium in the audio arts and the release of Thomas's latest record Veer.

But for the first hour we take you up to midnight with sounds inspired by The Monitor Lizard, Korean artist Seung Pyo Hon, showing at Deptford's Bearspace gallery, which Fari Bradley will be DJing for at the South London Art Map afterparty this coming Friday.

The Monitor Lizard exhibition concerns itself with that eternal topic of evolution, man and machines, and so requires those songs that describe the ever continuing struggle between our electronic and human lives.