everynone: symmetry.

April.20.11 By 4 Comments

In the middle of watching Everynone’s lovely Symmetry, the thought that overwhelmed me was “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That Newton, he was a smart cookie. I love the philosophy of science; that is, that Newton’s Law of Motion is much more than a scientific truth (though it definitely is that). It’s also karma. It’s kindness. It’s what goes around comes around. It’s how the transference of love and respect is a psychological action that, like ripples in a pond, created a tangible, physical reaction in those who experience it from you.

In a whiplash, purely visual style that reminds me a lot of one of my fave short vids, Chris Milk’s Last Day Dream, the vid starts out light-hearted, but further in I realized that was just part of its elegant ploy. Start with simplicity, entice us to watch, and then the symmetries become harder and more thought-provoking.

Symmetry is filled with a deep ease, a contemplative review of questions asked but not answered. Because each of these truths – the steak-eater or the cow, the light bulb or the sunshine  – will be different for each of us. The power is not in that we agree, but that we recognize and understand what they mean to us. Are you a consumer or a creator? A destroyer or a deliverer? For everything you do, each of your action, what reactions are you sending back into the world?

+ via kateoplis

Filed Under: motion Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

matt pyke & friends: super-computer-romantics.

April.19.11 By 1 Comment

Any time Matt Pyke is about to release new work feels like Christmas Eve. My favourite digital artist and motion designer ever, Matt’s simply unbeatable at creating innovative, organic and jaw-dropping work for his own studio, Universal Everything, and some of the world’s biggest brands. (You may have heard of them: Nike, Chanel, Nokia, MTV and the London 2010 Olympics. Whatever. NBD.) He’s also the mastermind behind my favourite motion design project ever, the inimitable Advanced Beauty. If you haven’t seen it, get it. Buy it. Find it. Watch it. It’ll change your life.

One of my fave facets of Matt’s work is how it never seems forced or even “created” – somehow it feels like everything he does (“organic digital” is what I like to call it) just comes into being. It flows as easily as if it washed up on a shore or floated in on a breeze. Plus I’ve emailed with Matt a few times and he’s also a really stand-up guy and a class act all around.


In his first ever solo show, Matt’s taking over Paris’ La Gaîté Lyrique with Super-Computer-Romantics. Guest-curated by Charlotte Leuozon and with sound design by Matt’s brother and frequent collaborator, Simon, the exhibition features 8 separate environments covering more than 26,000 square feet. Pyke says “The approach is one of a romantic view of technology and of really kind of being optimistic about what you can do with technology and how you can create beauty with super-computers, how you can create pieces of video work and pieces of audio-visual work.”

Reading La Gaîté Lyrique’s extensive info on the event, I started to get light-headed and giddy: “Here, a 3 meters high walking monster, endlessly transforming itself. There, a monolithic block invites viewers to peek into a singular experience – witness the birth of materials at a molecular level. On the mezzanine, stands a crowd of generative living sculptures, grown from code. Facing them, a huge projection of a never-ending procession of bodies, struggling against a hurricane of sound. Each piece can be considered a supercomputing beauty seeking emotional sensations and feelings whose magic breaks with rational functionalism. Remixing primitivism, minimalism, pop culture and 19th century landscape painting, the exhibition Matt Pyke & Friends takes us to a romantic theatricality reaching a subtle and meaningful relationship between technologies and the viewer.”

Opening this Thursday and running until May 21, 2011, the show will also feature a full-sized theatre screen with a retrospective of all of Pyke’s commercial and artistic work to date as well as a public lecture, from Matt himself, on the subject of “creation.”

Getting me all hot and bothered for the upcoming show, today Nowness debuted a stunning teaser vid for “Supreme Believers”, one of the installations from Super-Computer-Romantics. The Universal Everything Vimeo channel has also released a teaser for the exhibition. Both are classic Pyke and I want more, more more.

Here’s a video of Matt himself talking about his vision for the exhibition (and giving some visual glimpses into what he’s got planned). 

I need to see this show. I NEED IT. If anyone would like to take me to Paris to see Super-Computer-Romantics, I’m not above begging. I’m a pretty decent conversationalist, I sleep well on planes and I know some French. I’ve also never met an escargot that I didn’t like. Just putting that out there.

If you want more Matt Pyke (and why wouldn’t you), here are past posts on Forever, a video installation for the Victoria & Albert Museum; the new brand identity they created for MTV International; their gorgeous 2010 reel; and here’s one of Universal Everything’s most recent works, a series of digital installations for Chanel:

+ via @universalevery

Filed Under: art, art: installation art, motion, motion: digital animation Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

marc quinn: self.

April.18.11 By 2 Comments

I’m fascinated by the limits to which some artists push the envelope. Not only the message or appearance of their works, but also the possibilities for finding new extremes to use as the medium itself. A contemporary of Damien Hirst and one the legendary YBAs of the early 90s, the work of British sculptor Marc Quinn makes Hirst look like nothing more than a really enthusiastic taxidermist.

Most recently getting media and art-world buzz for his solid gold sculpture of Kate Moss in a revealingly contorted (and sublimely absurd) yoga pose, Quinn has long-since gone to an extreme of using his physical body as material that would make Marco Evarissti proud. Quinn’s famed 1991 work “Self” is a frozen sculpture of his own head, made from 4.5 litres of his won blood which was slowly taken from his body over a 5-month period. Now that, calling a spade a spade, is really fucking hardcore.

self

Sure, I get that there’s an immediate, visceral reaction to something made from human blood. The sculpture itself, though well done, is fairly unremarkable except for the material it’s made of. But that’s precisely the point: the brilliance of the statement is in heightening the meaning of our desire to catalogue and honour and document our physical selves from clay and marble to our very own blood. A sculpture from our own DNA.

Then the over-reactions begin: it would be easy to freak out, be grossed out, and call Quinn crazy. But why? This is a study of how the medium of a work of art can not only equal the statement of the work itself, but completely eclipse it. And why should we be so repulsed by something that flows so critically and intimately inside each of our bodies anyway? Similar to the use of shit or piss in art (though I would defend it as equally meaningful as a statement if done by an artist of this calibre) the use of bodily fluids as an artistic medium usually raises similar ire. The difference for me is that those are things our bodies regularly gets rid of. Aside from menstruation, our bodies never intentionally discrete our own blood (and even then I’d argue there’s a difference between the monthly cycle of menstruation and the over-riding vitality of our regular blood). Blood is vital and universal and holds our entire health within it. Blood is as natural as tears, yet still people can have such abhorrent reactions to seeing it.

Kept in a refrigerated case where it must be constantly maintained at -12˚ Celsisus, “Self” was sold to an anonymous U.S. collector in 2005 for £1.5 million. Not a bad profit for its first owner – global advertising legend, renowned art patron/gallery owner and husband of Nigella Lawson, Charles Saatchi, who reportedly first bought “Self” in 1991 for “only” £13,000. That’s an 8666% return on investment. Not too shabby. Not that he does it for the money… I’m just sayin’.

Since 1991, Quinn has cast a new version of “Self” every five years. That means that there are 3 out there and one more (hopefully) on the way in the near future. And, with any lucky, many, many more to come… long live the art, and blood, of Mr. Marc Quinn.

Filed Under: art, art: artist studies Tagged With: , , , , ,
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