Wrapped In Fantastic
Know what music was playing on Laura Palmer’s headphones when they found her? Wasn’t Ice-T, nor NWA. What do you think it was? (Get back to me on that ) Aside from the sound, the memorable bit about her being so dramatically discovered on that spooky Twin Peaks riverbed, was the drawled revelation… ’she’s wr-a-p-ped in plastic’. Another long-time ponderer of the mysteries implicit with such hidden shapes /forms (aside from the donut chomping David Lynch) is of course Christo, wrapper of large scale land-forms and buildings and renowned large scale environmental artist – or kookbag – depending on your take.

Sydney’s Little Bay met Christo in 1968-69 – when he produced ‘Wrapped Coast’ – completely covering a cliff-lined shore area approximately 2.4 kilometers christo_coaster.jpglong, 46 to 244 metres wide, 26 meters high at the northern cliffs, and at sea level at the southern sandy beach – with a cloth fabric!! It was all paid for – like all of his works – by Christo & his partner Jean Claude who pay for all of their multi-million dollar projects through the sale of related artwork and preliminary sketches etc. There’s more than a good dozen of these crazy projects under their belt now, with the next planned for New York’s Central Park in 2005 ( see www.thegateswork.com if you are interested in applying for a temporary job working on it ).

There’s more to these projects than meets the bemused eye, when say looking at a Miami island surrounded by kilometres of pink fabric – and friends and film-makers Albert & David Maysles have been capturing some of the fascinating processes involved with these projects for over 30 years. The fruits of this extensive documentary making are now available in a collection of films across 3 DVDs on the quite cool plexifilm.com DVD label ( distro-ed in oz thru stomp.com.au ) and include a video interview with the Christo & Jeanne-Claude, an 82 page booklet with essays, project histories and exclusive photos and a lot of behind the scenery stuff : where the real merits of the projects shine – the ways they manage to engage, provoke and interconnect communities, the ways they manage to navigate the endless bureaucracies of ze modern world to complete their projects and of course the sheer scale and spectacle of the works themselves. In the midst of passionately debating the artistic merits of the very bridge (just wrapped ) they are standing on, one Frenchmen brings a pause when he says:
“If this bridge wasn’t wrapped, we would never have spoken to each other, ever.”

www.christojeanneclaude.net

Graphic Agitation 2:
Social & Political Graphics in the Digital Age
Hair is often described as our ‘cosmic antennae’ – while this doesn’t explain much about the ebb and flow contemporary hair fashions amidst saturated airwaves and people going wireless bananas, it’s a cute idea. Similarly cute is the idea that the ‘Digital Age’ somehow finds us more politicised, more able to voice our concerns, more able to express our views, more able to mobilise communities and more able to organise and interconnect alternatives to events, decisions or power structures we may not like. I like that cute idea, but whether it is making a difference is another whole… on second thought of course it is. Liz McQuiston has just released a huge compilation through Phaidon ( in oz thru bookwise.com.au ) of the changing nature of political and social graphics as we sink into interface world a little more. Think adbusters, reclaim the streets, warstopping, animal lib, more vegans than you can poke a stick at, graffiti, schnews, mclibel, the united colors of benetton etc etc and tis easy to imagine flipping thru the 236 large full-colour pages of activist-porn.

Chapters lead us with text and themes from the last 3 decades of protest graphics, to ‘eco-wars and resistance to capitalism’, ’satire, subversion & subvertising’, ‘perceptions of war’ and ‘fighting for human rights’. It’s a powerful read, and almost heartening to look at so many people striving for a better world – though plenty of the gags reasonably just rely on taking the piss. The title is a little misleading though, for despite all of the cleverly / kookily photoshopped posters snapped on the streets, there’s little coverage of the vast body of electronic artists who aren’t using the print medium. Plenty of history and context surround most pictures and campaigns though, and so aside from finding a large picture of Hilary Clinton in bondage gear on page 99, or Marlboro man worrying about chemotherapy, or other gags, there’s much to be chewed on when you find yourself nestling in a certain couple of pages. It’s a gorgeous design book too, so if peeps be browsing through the likes of this for inspiration, the more the merrier.

Arnie Quote of the week:
Fresh from persuading US voters to re-elect Bush, Arnie took time out to send Technoscape this Rolling Stone Magazine interview snippet from his bodybuilder days:
“I feel you only can have a few leaders,’ [Arnold] says in a guttural, confident voice, ‘and then the rest is followers. I feel that I am the born leader and that I’ve always impressed with being the leader. I hate to be the follower. When I was a little boy’. I didn’t think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus . . .”

Geek temperatures be rising, if the steady stream of provocatively coded games be any indication. Portal yourself into political games thru www.selectparks.net & http://radioqualia.va.com.au/replay, or wear out your arrow keys on some of these:

War Games
Aside from the name of an excellent educational movie about the dangers of nuclear war, there’s a long list of war-related releases vying for attention. Once you’ve gagged at the Official US Army game homepage, try September 12. Over 100,000 players have now wandered here, and got the clever and simple messages embedded which you can only learn by playing. An effective use of gameplay to demonstrate some ideas. “This is not a game – you can’t win and you can’t lose. This is a simulation. It has no ending. it has already begun. The rules are deadly simple. You can shoot. Or not. This is a simple model you can use to explore some aspects of the war on terror.” And file under ‘Rumoured Political Games’? Sez Google: ‘Capcom is in talks with Michael Moore and his production company for a Fahrenheit 9/11 game based on the movie. It is expected it will be released for PC, Playstation 2, and XBox’.

www.donkeyjohn.com
Klever + kute recreation of the donkey kong console in flash, drawing attention to the quite horrible way the Australian Government is negotiating the oil between East Timor & Australia. Kodework by Kaho from Elefant-Traks ( geek-girls – apparently he’s a splendid breakdancer too ). “The evil Donkey John is laying claim to East Timor’s oil resources. Guide brave Xanana Gusmario up the oil rig using the arrow keys and jumping the barrels of stolen oil. Flick the switch to start the International Crane of Justice and use it to bring Donkey John down.”

Pixel Farmers
Graphic designer Josh On from Future Farmers has brought the world a few nifty flash games: www.theyrule.net – which maps out the incredibly interlocking directories of the top companies in the US ( recently updated to 2004), and now www.antiwargame.org – where the aim is strategise as the US President, secure offshore oil-wells and maintain popularity. Sez decoder, Josh On:
“The war in Afghanistan and the war to effect regime change in Iraq, have little to do with battling terror and everything to do with securing the interests of the US ruling class in the world. This includes controlling the world’s oil resources (the planned pipeline across Afghanistan, the abundant high quality oil in Iraq)”.

He also pointed to this great site ( http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator ) which is a game involving computers if you consider the way it might be able to help you create large scale posters on a computer for interesting public placement?
“You can upload an image using this flash app, which then allows you to decide how many pices of paper you want it printed on. It turns your images into the black and white dotted images that you see in newspapers so that it scales well. You recieve the resulting image in a pdf file. Brilliant.”

Pixelated Farmers
boldgames.com/johndeere.html
In the light of a recent BBC article pointing out that the world does not have enough water to maintain a BEEF based diet ( Animals need much more water than grain to produce the same amount of food, and ending malnutrition and feeding even more mouths will take still more water.), the fresh new ‘John Deere American Farmer’ simulation can be seen in a kinda politically motivated light. But perhaps creating and managing your own successful farm with ‘John Deere American Farmer’ could be played creatively. At any rate there’s no doubt a lot of fun to be had “Purchasing and controlling authentic John Deere branded equipment — tractors, combines, planters, cultivators” amongst other exciting farm activities.

Invader Games
Have seen plenty of variations of this classic arcade game – with George Bush, flashing 8-bit nuns, and assorted symbols / animals / fetishes, but this one is kinda cool – Space Invaders Act 1732 which lets you shoot at American corporate logos with words from a legislation Act.

Who’d have thought it’d be gamers that’d be blunting the war on terrorism? More next week..

Aside from running the wildly popular Mixmaster TV ( & now DVD ) series, regular AV nights in Paris & London, and setting up one of the world’s first VJ labels, Addictive TV have also been building Japanese bridges, getting new av artist releases ready and testing the yet to be released DVD turntables. Founder Graham Daniels explains:

How’d the classic films remix project @ Paris go?
Fantastically. We had Bruce Li the Invincible remixed by Eclectic Method; Nosferatu remixed by Kane & Fodel (Brian Kane founded the AV pioneering Emergency Broadcast Network); Vengeance Valley by The Light Surgeons; Seven Samurai by German AV act Bauhouse, and Cary Grant’s Charade remix by The Noodles Foundation was a real crowd pleaser.

What sort of work have Si Begg’s Noodle Foundation planned for their DVD?
True to their media- mangling roots, they’ll be messing with your mind. They’re shooting a lot of material, we’re clearing some old late night cult TV for them to plunder. The Noodles guys have worked together for many years, playing live, running nights in London, and share an absurd sense of humour. Robin Mahoney, who heads the visuals side of The Noodles Foundation, produced and directed Glastonbury The Movie.

What excites about the prospect of solo DVD’s by The Mellowtrons & Exceeda?
Giles Thacker was Orbital’s VJ who pioneered their whole visuals look and toured the world with them, and his Mellowtrons animation style is a little like Terry Gilliam on acid! Exceeda are heavily into AV Cutup and make original and humourous work using a hell of a lot of originally shot footage.

What’ve been interesting developments in the VJ world?
That there’s now dozens of VJ software packages all fighting for users. Visuals and VJing have become more widely accepted by a lot of digital arts festivals and electronic music events. The DVJ-X1 DVD turntables from Pioneer; they’ll radically affect the scene in time. You can pitch adjust the speed or scratch the video in time with music when VJing, but its their AV potential where they really amaze.

What’s unique/attractive about the Japanese visual scene?
People actually go along to see the VJ play. Glamoove, probably Japan’s most famous VJs, have toured across Japan with different DJs in tow. We played in Tokyo at Club Yellow and Womb, and the visuals were absolutely central to both nights, and this year at Ageha – Tokyo’s newest ’superclub’ – we played alongside 808 State using a pair of Pioneer loaned DVJ DVD decks, plus my laptop and a small DVD player.

( for ministry magazine, 2004 )
See also : another Addictive TV piece.