ARTDICK

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“On FRAGMENTATION: This is indispensable if one does not want to fall into REPRESENTATION. To see beings and things in their separate parts. Render them independent in order to give them a new dependence.” (Robert Bresson, Notes on Cinematography)

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Part of a series of works superimposing still images from Paris Hilton’s ‘bath’ video (which has commonly been labelled a ‘sex tape’) over top of classical paintings of women bathing. See more from this series.

“Historically, the bending-bather pose goes as far back as Raphael’s tapestry cartoon. As a bodily trope, the bending single female bather traces it ancestry to Rembrandt’s A Woman Bathing in a Stream of 1654-1656 in the Nation Gallery, London… It may owe its longevity as a pose at least in part to the challenge it presents to the skill of the artist in terms of foreshortening. The bending-bather pose is picked up in the nineteenth century, outdoors, in the bending-bather figure of in Manet’s Le Bain/Dejeuner. And in the Twentieth [Century], it is spectacularly reworked by Picasso in his endlessly inventive series of grotesque variations on Le Dejeuner, which to me, at least, owe as much to Degas’ bathers as to Manet’s. Yet, while such tracing of the motif tells us about its long-term endurance and the challenge it offers to succeeding generations of artists (head low, long expanse of back, foreshortened view), it does not help us with the more difficult task of interpreting this image, of accounting for its vividness and seductive complexity…” (LInda Nochlin, Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye)

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Video mashup of Walk Disney’s speech at the opening of Disneyland, one of Hitler’s speeches and Star Wars. All footage sourced from YouTube.

“Werner von Braun entered the consciousness of America as its prophet of space travel on a Sunday evening in 1955. He had been hired by Walt Disney to develop a series of stories for his Disneyland television program With his smooth German accent, von Braun came across as foreign as outer-space; yet with Disney as his patron, he became familiar as Mickey Mouse and he seemed as squeaky clean as Snow White. We eventually learned – if we did not know already – that von Braun had designed the V-2 missile that had rained terror on London during World War 2 According to his story, von Braun had little choice but to let his genius be exploited by the Nazis. Now, in the mid-1950s, he was working for the United States Army to build rockets that would defend us from the Communists. About a decade ago, as many government documents from the end of World War II were declassified, von Braun’s true story began to emerge. The documents told of the Nazi activities of von Braun and other German scientists who came to the US after the war. It was no longer credible for them to say that they were not dedicated Nazis and only did what they did to protect their jobs They belonged to the Nazi party, the SS, and other Nazi organizations. They were honored by the Nazi party and by Hitler specifically. They were indirectly – and in some cases directly – responsible for the deaths of thousands of concentration camp slave laborers.” (Dennis Piszkiewicz, The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War)

In 1933, the German American Bund was founded by Fritz Kuhn. An association of German immigrants to America, the Bund had a definite pro-Nazi slant. Disney animator Art Babbitt claimed his boss had a strong interest in, if not outright sympathy for, the Bund; “In the immediate years before we entered the War there was a small, but fiercely loyal, I suppose legal, following of the Nazi party… There were open meetings, anybody could attend and I wanted to see what was going on myself. On more than one occasion I observed Walt Disney and [Disney's lawyer] Gunther Lessing there, along with a lot of prominent Nazi-afflicted Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to meetings all the time. The German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose documentaries in the mid-30s had helped to glorify the Nazis, claimed that “after Kristallnacht [1938], she approached every studio in Hollywood looking for work. No studio head would even screen her movies except Walt Disney. He told her he admired her work but if it became known that he was considering hiring her, it would damage his reputation.” (Marc Eliot, Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince)

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“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.” (Andre Breton)

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Minimalist musical mashup superimposing The Dead C’s “Suffer Bomb Damage” over top of Britney Spears’ “Radar.” The Dead C (Bruce Russell, Michael Morley, Robbie Yeats) are a seminal free-noise band from New Zealand. Part of the ongoing Britney Spears Best of Noise project. Many thanks to Abulafia: Electronic Folk Music for featuring this on their blog.

The first 8 tracks of this project were released on the concept album Britney Spears + Noise = HOT. Download the album for free.

“That there is an area between other forms of music where all of the “rules” which hold them apart cease to apply. All musics bleed into this Empty Quater, some exist more within, and some more without, its bounds.” (Bruce Russell, Free Noise Manifesto)

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Minimalist musical mashup superimposing Pierre Schaeffer’s avant-garde composition “Cinq Etudes De Bruits: Etude Violette” over top of Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Schaeffer is a composer and musicologist who was instrumental in pioneering musique concrete as an art form. Part of the ongoing Britney Spears Best of Noise project.

The first 8 tracks of this project were released on the concept album Britney Spears + Noise = HOT. Download the album for free.

“So these were the three circumstances that compelled me to experiment in music: I was involved in music; I was working with turntables (then with tape-recorders); I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, ‘Maybe I can find something different… maybe salvation, liberation, is possible.’ Seeing that no-one knew what to do anymore with DoReMi, maybe we had to look outside that… Unfortunately it took me forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi… In other words, I wasted my life.” (Pierre Schaeffer)

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The fourth in my series of Britney Spears experimental remixes, superimposing Sun Ra and John Cage (from the album “John Cage Meets Sun Ra”) over top of Spears’ “Piece of Me.” Sun Ra is a free jazz space traveller and John Cage is an avant-garde composer instrumental in developing the use of chance operations in experimental music. Part of the ongoing Britney Spears Best of Noise project. Many thanks to Path To Unknown Worlds and Swen’s Weblog for featuring this recently.

The first 8 tracks of this project were released on the concept album Britney Spears + Noise = HOT. Download the album for free.

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.” (John Cage)

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Concept album mashing avant-garde music (Sun Ra, John Cage, The Dead C, Pierre Schaeffer, Arthur Doyle) with Britney Spears songs. 1ST EDITION: 20 copies with hand lettered covers were given away free at Frederick Sound and Light Exploration Society art fair on October 9th (also featuring The Unknown Rockstar, The Doll, Pumice, Campbell Kneale, Matt Whitwell, Bryce Galloway, Drawing Silence and Claire Harris, among others). 2ND EDITION: 20 copies featuring the cover above were ‘sold’ for gold coin donation at the MyGalaxi art market on October 29th and 30th. 3RD EDITION: 10 copies were given away for free at Big Dick’s Best of YouTube screening at the NZ Film Archive. Subsequent editions have been produced for Wellington Zinefest and general distribution.

Part of the ongoing Britney Spears Best of Noise project. Listen to selections from the album on Soundcloud. Free download of the full 8 track album available at Multiupload (as well as here and here). There is also now a torrent on Pirate Bay. Update: Volume 2 OUT NOW!

“These are not remixes, as such, though I am interested in their relation to remixing. All I have done is superimpose well known avant-garde musicians over top of Britney Spears songs in the hope that multiple points of connection might be established between the two layers. I call this a rhimix. Remixes are are based on the “cut” (melding several tracks together, producing one). Rhimixes are based on the “caress” (mending several tracks together, producing a multiplicity of points at which they touch). The remix = juxtacomposition (comprised of different samples). The rhimix = supercomposition (comprised of different speeds).”

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Minimalist musical mashup superimposing Nam June Paik’s “Hommage A John Cage” over top of Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.” Nam June Paik is a Korean-born interdisciplinary conceptual artist who is often credited as being the “first” video artist. He also frequently worked with sound. Part of the ongoing Britney Spears Best of Noise project.

The first 8 tracks of this project were released on the concept album Britney Spears + Noise = HOT. Download the album for free.

“Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body’s new membrane of existence.” (Nam June Paik)

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In November 2010 I curated a screening of my favourite experimental videos sourced from YouTube and Vimeo at The New Zealand Film Archive with the help of the wonderful Mark Williams.

“What do Miss Piggy, Britney Spears, Mussolini, Super Mario Bros., Charlie Rose, John Key, Ruth Richardson and Buster Keaton have in common? They are all the subjects of avant-garde films on YouTube. Film maker and academic Dick Whyte presents a screening of recent avant-garde films he has curated from YouTube. All of them re-purpose existing material into new works. Whyte says, “Technology has taken a long time to get to the point where video makers can sample with the same abandon as musicians and still image makers. YouTube heralds a new age in avant-garde cinema which is fully engaged with popular media.” The screening will be accompanied by short introductions to the films and their particular strategies, looking at the function of avant-garde moving-image at the beginning of the twenty-first century.” (Mark Williams, read more)

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The screening was broken into two halves. The first half contained some of my favorite glitch and datamoshing videos (click video stills to watch).

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Atonal70 – CCD Crash (2007)

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Illarterate – Teleglitche (2008)

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Jan Dybala – VRGB 3.0 [Sequence 3] (2009)

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MySilentDawn – RUTHYRUTHRICHIERIC & NEOLIB (2010)

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Tasman Richardson – ATARI 2600 Remix [excerpt] (2007)

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Cory Arcangel & Paper Rad – Super Mario Movie (2005)

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The second half contained some of my favorite videos reworking popular media imagery, from Mussolini to Miss Piggy (click video stills to watch).

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Andrew Filippone Jr. – Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett (2008)

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Mitteo Pasin – Italiani (2007)

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Peter Rand – Double Rainbow / Donald Judd Mashup (2010)

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Salvinsa – IN LOVE (2010)

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RebelliousPixels – So You Think You Can Be President? [Debate Remix] (2008)

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Dick Whyte – Of The Refrain: Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (2010)

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Michael Bell-Smith – R. Kelly’s ‘Trapped In The Closet’ Played Simultaneously (2006)

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Waambat – Fuck the Pain Away [Sung by Miss Piggy] (2008)

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