So, Thomas Gayno (@thm_a) at Creative Lab here in New York has been spending too much time with his friends at Larva Labs (they're the guys with whom we created the original Androidify app).
They've been messing around with Kinect and their Androidify avatars. This short, scrappy experimental film (below) points to the magic that is possible. We're working out how we might use this in some fun ways.
Any ideas?
A good day to dig this one out of a dusty crate and loop it in the background as you watch NASA coverage of the last voyage of Endeavour. 'Space' - an LP by the KLF in 1990 (actually, at the time, Jimmy Cauty and The Orb's Alex Paterson). Produced in a week. Reproduced here in six parts, but available on the web in various places as a complete single free download.
Space takes the listener on a voyage through the solar system from Mercury outwards, with vast distances of empty space between worlds represented by periods of minimalist ambience and near-silence. Synthesisers, excerpts from classical compositions and nursery rhymes (including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), sinusoidal loops, and communications from space flight controllers are among the sounds used to describe the voyage. Cauty has called Space "a record for 14-year-old space cadets to go and take acid [to] for the first time". (source: Wikipedia)
Select 720p HD and hit full-screen.
'Music is not, by its nature, rational or analytic; it offers us not argument but experience, and for a moment - for moments - that experience involves ideal time, an ideal defined by the integration of what is routinely kept separate - the individual and the social, the mind and the body, change and stillness, the different and the same, already past and still to come, desire and fulfillment.'
~Simon Frith, in 'Performing Rites; On the value of popular music' (1996)
I fulfilled an ambition of mine last weekend when I saw Pogo (aka Nick Bertke, aka Fagottron) perform live in NYC. Pogo remixes movies, messing around not just with the picture (usually compressing an entire film into 3-4 minutes) but also creating a new soundtrack for the edit using samples taken from the original film (both speech and ambient sounds, including music). His core work tends to focus on iconic movies, old and new, many skewed towards kids' movies. These include 'Mary Poppins', 'Pirates of the Caribbean', 'Star Wars', 'Harry Potter', 'Toy Story', 'Up', 'Terminator', 'Snow White', 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Alice', and 'Willy Wonka'. Recently he's started mixing films soundtracked from real life, including 'Gardyn', a film he made about his mother's garden (& her love for it) in Australia (more on that here). Pogo was recently featured in the YouTube Play Biennial of Creative Video, which culminated at the Guggenheim in NYC (highlights of that fairly amazing evening can be found in this video; in fact, the exterior projections were pretty special too).
Here, aside from urging you to take a look at the live show below and make up your own mind, I want to pick up on a few of the reasons why I think he's worthy of a place in the Pantheon of Awesomeness.
1. He allows us to be kids again, just for a moment. In mining some of the richest of our childhood recollections in such a powerful way, combining visuals and music, Pogo re-activates residual childhood memories that may have lain dormant for decades. Of all the arts, music probably has the strongest capacity to move us emotionally; when spliced with visuals which we all have burned into our memories, Pogo's mixes slice strait through the billions of mundane moments recorded by our brains over the years, and we're suddenly ten years-old again. Which is, of course, absolutely magic.
2. He creates completely new work but pays homage to the original. I have no idea whether Pogo's asked pernission to use any of the material he cuts up and repackage (although he's worked with both Pixar and Disney so one assumes their lawyers are not trying to destroy him; I hope not). In any case, the remixes are not just re-interpretations of pre-existing content, they're brilliant celebrations of what makes those originals timeless. Furthermore, he adds a new layer. He makes us aware of the magic within the sounds that surround us. When you've watched a few of his films you begin to re-hear reality, and hear new possibilities.
3. He distills the original films into killer bite-sized portions. The arch-summarizer at work; somehow he manages to boil down two hours worth of movie into a rich, resonant, usually euphoria-drenched 7" video single.
4. He solves the two decade-old problem of what to look at when you're at an electronica gig. Having been to more live electronic music events than I can remember (funnily enough), and certainly during the 1990s when I completed my PhD, way more than was healthy, it's always been painful to watch the clumsy attempts to entertain the swaying masses with someone resembling a 'show'. Pogo knocks that into touch. Yes, of course it's still unnerving watching him (and the support band guy before him) twitch about behind his MacBook Pro like a marionette on speed. But going to a gig to watch an hour-long video that has been put together with meticulous care and attention (versus just Mandelbrot fractals and timelapsed sunrises) is mighty refreshing.
5. He puts on gigs where kids are encouraged to turn up. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's the fact that I now have two kids (who were gutted to find they weren't allowed to come along), maybe it's because I'm a softie. Maybe all of the above. But it was a glorious sight seeing kids at a gig in the middle of NYC. It's kind of silly that this isn't more common.
Huge thanks to NinjaVanishQuickly for posting this entire Pogo show (below) from last week at the Black Cat in Washington D.C. Although in five chunks, it's high quality, and it gives you a real sense of how Pogo's work feels 'live'.
OK, I'm off to watch 'The Wizard of Oz' again.
'Helen pushed her way out during the applause. She desired to be alone. The music had summed up to her all that had happened or could happen in her career. She read it as a tangible statement, which could never be superseded. The notes meant this and that to her, and they could have no other meaning, and life could have no other meaning. She pushed right out of the building, and walked slowly down the outside staircase, breathing the autumnal air, and then she strolled home.'
~ Helen Schlegel, leaving the Albert Hall mid-way through Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, in E.M. Forster's 'Howard's End' (1910)
After seeing that, if you fancy some individual highlights, here are a few of my favourites.
More about Pogo here.
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Why's everybody acting funny?
Why's everybody look so strange?
Why's everybody look so nasty?
What do I want with all these things?
Here's a video version
(via @uberblond & @lenkendall)
And here is the inspiration, from Gondry (thanks to Elaine Ra for the tip-off).
This is from the live 1984 show 'Stop Making Sense', directed by Jonathan Demme.
It's completely ace.
More about 'Stop Making Sense' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Making_Sense
I'm just glad to say I was there . . . enjoy.
We were lucky enough to see Spiritualized play the entire "Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" LP at Radio City Hall in NYC last night. It was up there with the best live music I've seen; almost (but not quite) as good as My Bloody Valentine playing Webster Hall last year. Similarly intense at least. A bit less visceral.
They had on stage a full gospel choir from Harlem, and an orchestra. 5000 people were there.
At the end of the set they played two encores. 'Out of Sight' (see above, watch in HD on fullscreen) & then a rousing, almost overwhelming version of "Oh Happy Day" in which the gospel choir unleashed their full power.
There are a bunch of stunning stills from the live stream and a write up (that features a tweet by me!) in this Brooklyn Vegan article: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2010/07/spiritualized_p_3.html#
And the final sample, a genius slice of pseudo-Brazilian cheese from Klaus Wunderlich (can that really have been his name?) from 1976.
And the original.
Completely awesome. I defy you to find a better track.
The breakdown just after 3mins is a moment of pure genius.
Think: Terrace at Space, 6am.
(Note: ignore the cheese fest video, just turn up the music).
Disorder (2001: Space Odyssey mash-up)
Atmosphere
Dead Souls (live)
Digital
Love Will Tear Us Apart (HD video, BBC Peel Sessions version, 1979)
... and in case you're feeling dangerously suicidal by now, something special & uplifting from New Order.
Age of Consent (live, BBC studios, 1984)
Simply genius.
