Category: Art

YOU determine Radiohead's Album Cost

The NYTimes is reporting that Radiohead’s upcoming album “In Rainbows” will be available for download Oct. 10. Only the entire album, in non DRM audio files, will be available for download. At the same time they are selling a box of vynl, cds, etc from their website.

Nothing new here ‘cept they will, “allow fans to decide how much to pay for it, if anything.” WOW.

I think this amazing. Not because I could get this bands music for free. Been there done that. Yawn… But because a major famous ‘recording artist’ is making a move AWAY from the middle man, aka record labels.

We all know how often the middle man rips off creative people. (not every time mind you) Oh yeah they give you money but do you really get what your creativity is truly worth from them? Can you own all of your intellectual property and its entire set of rights? What about creating personal relationships with fans? Record labels don’t foster that at all. Not in a sustainable or healthy way.

I got involved in the web and learned HTML to help artists promote themselves. Now many years latter we see our famous creative brothers are helping to remove the shackles. Radiohead may not be as altruistic as I. They may actually be able to make more money with this method of distribution. Perhaps the street creed and good PR will sell more record company produced CDs later. Regardless I hope they succeed so other artists will be inspired to remove the middle man!

3D Paintings of van Gough: Virtual Dreams come True in Second Life

When I studied Sculpture and Painting in college I thought a lot about the intersection of painting and 3D objects. Combined was my dream of creating video as moving paintings. This video above, aka Machinima, called Watch the World(s) documents the creation of a virtual 3D copy of Vincent van Gough’s painting Stary Night.

This video is a work of art in of itself. To watch the 3D peice in Second Life appear is so moving and beautiful. Not to mention the song by Don McLean called Vincent (aka Starry Starry Night) as the sound track. What a perfect choice! Its all the work of Robbie Dingo. (that’s his “digital alter ego” a Second Life avatar..)

Cory Doctorow mentions another famous artist who attempted something similar,

What Robbie Dingo has done is something Akira Kurosawa only envisioned: brought Van Gough’s masterpiece to rich, three dimensional life, and for a brief moment, recast it as a living place.

This is a reference to a part of Kurosawa’s movie Dreams called Crows. (This movie is in my top 5 favorite movies of all time)

A brilliantly-colored vignette featuring director Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. An art student finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh’s artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him. Van Gogh’s painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in this dream.

Now we have a 3D world, Second Life, that made it easy to create a film/art PLACE you can exist in. Ever dream of living in a painting? Well now you can. Wow!

via Boing Boing and The Official Linden Blog

Listening to "Spirits in the Material World"

Got my record player hooked back up. The first album I randomly selected to listen to was The Police’s Ghost in the Machine. The first song Spirits in the Material World strikes a cord with me. Here are the lyrics.

There is no political solution
To our troubled evolution
Have no faith in constitution
There is no bloody revolution

We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Our so-called leaders speak
With words they try to jail you
The subjugate the meek
But its the rhetoric of failure
We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

Where does the answer lie?
Living from day to day
If its something we cant buy
There must be another way

We are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world
Are spirits in the material world

This whole record is pretty socially conscious. Reggae overtones through out. Reggatta de Blanc (White Reggae) of some quality for sure. “One world is enough – for all of us!”

Creativity from Distruction – Public Art

We just learned that a popular and beloved peice of public art in Carrboro, North Carolina is gone. It was painted over suddenly. Read all about this on Orange Politics, The News and Observer, and The Carrboro Citizen. Here is my idea of what to do next. (cross posted from the comments on OP)

In light of the fact that the old mural is gone this is an excellent opportunity for the Town to make lemon aid outa’ lemons. (sorry for the tired analogy) 🙂

I suggest that ya’ll create a official town graffiti contest. (YES embrace the word graffiti. Contradict the negative connotation that graffiti is only for gang bangers) Identify some talented local spray can artists who will have a “battle”. They can compete on creating two separate pieces of street art at the same time. They would have a time limit. Say 48 hours.

In conjunction with this contest you could set aside a piece of the wall just for random graffiti and stencil art (etc) by anyone. It would be painted over every two weeks or a month. That way you get lots of interesting art over time, cover over offensive gang stuff, and teach people about the beauty of change.

This is a constructive way to get creative kids involved in their community instead of “defacing” property. I think we may even be able to get the police involved in working with the kids on making some spray art. That is the kind of out reach that could work and the Town of Carrboro could pull off.

I realize this would require property owner permission. If not at the mural across from the century center then else where.

Lets embrace the art of youth!

Graffiti IS Art

Mark Schultz over at the N&O’s Orange Chat blog writes:

Graffiti or Art?
So we sent staff photog Leslie Barbour to shoot a town worker painting over some gang symbols at the Chapel Hill Community Center this morning.

I was talking to Leslie about the story later this afternoon, and she said we shouldn’t call the gang symbols “graffiti.” Graffiti is art, she said, and added that we should call it what it is: “tagging.”

I got where she was coming from. But I don’t think the average person on the street makes the distinction or is up on the word “tagging.” Was I wrong? Is it inaccurate or worse to label the “LBU” tags showing up on more than a dozen locations in Chapel Hill and Carrboro this past week “graffiti”?

Leslie is right. That bit of paint is tagging. It has a very different purpose than graffiti. Graffiti is “mainstream” art now. Some people put graffiti in the category of Street Art. Check out all the wonderful photos of street art on Flickr.

From today’s Chapel Hill News article Gang signs on the rise:

Graffiti — how gangs mark territory and send messages to rival gangs — is a growing problem. McKinney called it a newspaper of the streets.

This is incorrect. I would use Tagging instead of Graffiti. I hope the Chapel Hill News writes a correction. This could seriously misinform people. Ignorance of the details isn’t going to help a community come to terms with its growing pains. Informing people about the seriousness of gang violence is important. But using graffiti as a visual shorthand for gangs isn’t going to help. It will only narrow people’s fear and cause them to “know it when they see it”. The whole issue is much much more complicated.

The article did later include,

Not all graffiti is gang-related, Cousins said. Three young men were charged with defacing the bridge on Umstead Drive with graffiti. Someone also defaced the new Army recruiting station. Neither incident had anything to do with gangs, she said.

I’d like to see the Chapel Hill News do a story on the artfulness of graffiti. Its culture is diverse and does have its dark parts. Many forms of art have similar issues. But this doesn’t diminish the importance of this form of expression.

I’m really concerned that the newspapers misrepresentation of Graffiti as solely a criminal act will cause locals to become prejudice against this art form. Many large cities with wonderful artists working in the streets have very aggressive scrubbing campaigns that destroy public beauty. A balanced story must be told.

(Comments are broken on Orange Chat: I tried to leave a comment on the N&O site but had no luck. Even attempted to register. Once I was supposedly logged in I still got an error. So I gave up and posted my comment on my blog.)