Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
DANDI GLAM: A Gothic/Glam/New Wave band from Canada
Flashing face-painted faces….transforming character
Through styling, photography, digital manipulation they become illusory characters:
Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
When I went to the Fashion Expo trade show I experienced this 3D Stereo vision through 3D glasses. A more interesting way of viewing fashion and illustrations…
3D STEREO VISION
The transition from film to 2D digital media is well underway and 3D technology is becoming an important part of this transition. Digital cinema has revolutionized the 3D movie viewing experience and new stereoscopic technologies have come to market. Stereoscopic imaging is a bright new landscape ready to be explored.
In the years ahead photography and filmmaking is being redefined, not unlike it was with the advent of sound, and later color.
The technology of 3D Stereo is based on binocular vision.
Here is your chance to be part of this most exciting revolution in media since the introduction of coloured TV.
Fashion Expo at Business Design Centre Islington, in collaboration with LARC
Unlike conventional flat pictures Stereo Images contain distance information. Stereoscopic images can be used to measure the depth of craters on the moon or to investigate the spatial structure of the solar atmosphere.
The Architecture of Space
The depiction of depth is known to artists since the renaissance. All artists since Alberti use monocular (i.e. one eyed) depth cues to visualise space and depth. Monocular depth cues are scale, perspective, interposition, texture gradient, shade.
In stereo vision the artists uses additionally binocular (i.e. two eyed) depth cues. There is actually just one binocular depth cue : the parallax effect, due to the shift of camera/eye position.
Below an example of Stereo Art exhibiting monocular and binocular depth information.
A 3D presentation puts your product right in front of the costumer’s eyes, leaving the client with a very powerful visual impression. The costumer can physically examine the product, enhancing the desire to get hold of the ‘real thing’.
➢ Cutting edge on-line marketing
➢ 3D: trade stands, billboards, Web based advertising, logos
3D capture of your event
3D portfolio of private/public places
3D portfolio of your collection
Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
Bowery was a performance artist, club creature promoter, alternative model, fashion designer, make up artist, contemporary dancer, TV commercial star, artist muse, band member, singer, musician, video star and living art installation. Born in 1961 – 1994
He had a colourful exhibitionist career on his arrival in London in 1980, making a name for himself by dramatic performances of dance, music and simple exhibitionism, while wearing bizarre and very original outfits of his own design. He was frequently seen performing in Taboo, a fashionable night club he operated, (after years brightening the doorways of other people’s events) near Leicester Square and is frequently identified as a key influence on the style of the New Romantic music movement that was popular in Britain during the early 1980s.
Though perhaps he is more properly placed within the context of “The Cult With No Name” as the activities of the pansexual set of young Londoners had already been dubbed. A large man, he used his costumes to exaggerate his size and the effects were frequently overpowering and unforgettable for those who encountered him, the more so because of his confrontational style. A wallflower he was not.
In the late 1980s, Bowery collaborated as a dancer with the post-Punk ballet dancer Michael Clark, after having been his costume-designer for a number of years. He also participated in multi-media events like I Am Kurious Oranj and the play Hey, Luciani, with Mark E. Smith and The Fall.
In 1988 he had a week-long show in Anthony d’Offay’s prestigious Dering Street Gallery in London’s West End, in which he lolled on a chaise longue behind a two-way mirror, primping and preening in a variety of outfits while visitors to the gallery looked on…
The insouciance and audacity of this overt queer narcissism captivated gallery goers, critics and other artists. Bowery’s exquisite appearance, silence and intense self-absorption was further accentuated by his own recordings of random and abrasive traffic noises which were played for the show’s duration. The very intimate and private was flung in the face of the public complete with a “Street Life” sound track, hinting perhaps at something still darker. In some outfits he appears like some strange roadside creature, like a cat that finally got the cream (of art world attention), in others he is the “Satan’s Son” that he would whisper, years later, on his death bed.
The difficulty of engaging in such an hedonistic and wilfully original life and artistic practice without independent financial means has long been the curse of the both the innovator and bohemian. For all his art world exposure and contacts it seems peculiar now that no-one suggested to Bowery that he might adopt the very viable strategy of Gilbert and George – an earlier generation’s living sculpture – and derive an income from selling images of himself rather than rely on occasional commissions, modelling work for Freud, or design consultancy for Rifat Ozbek. In the later years of his life the advantages of having an independent income started to become more obvious and Bowery looked to music, in the form of art rock/pop group Minty, to possibly provide this independent income stream. “I have a profile.” he confided to flatmate and fellow Australian Anne Holt “But I have no money.” Minty he hoped would provide a solution to this crux.
He outraged the London gay scene with a performance at SMact, a short lived SM Night at Bar Industria. Using Nazi costumes with a lesbian friend named Barbara, they turned concentration camp experimentation into SMart. The readers of Capital Gay, the London weekly newspaper, turned on fellow performer Berkley, who had played the victim, and Barbara and Leigh weathered the storm. He was after all, “the punk of the eighties” and longtime darling of the international avant garde.
In 1993 Leigh formed Raw Sewage with Nicola Bowery, Sheila Tequila and Stella Stein .They performed in 18″ platforms at the Love Ball in Amsterdam, but the collaboration ended in dramas. Leigh went on to appear as “Madame Garbo” in “The Homosexual (or the difficulty of sexpressing oneself)” by Copi at Bagleys Warehouse in London’s King’s Cross.
Nicola Bateman-Bowery – Model, singer, costume designer, Leigh Bowery´s muse and wife.
Nicola was usually attired in a swimming costume, laddered tights and a pair of bejewelled, bewinged spectacles, while perched on her head whould be a creation consisting of three swimming hats stuffed to make a giant helmet decorated with jewels and studded dog collars.
Boy George and Nicola Bowery
DESIGNERS:
Let it Rock, shop:
In 1969, freedom was on King’s Road when Westwood and McLaren took over Tommy Robert’s pop art inspired shop and opened the legendary “Let it Rock” shop, the template for every dodgy yet super-cool store since. At “Let it Rock,” Westwood collaged James Dean memorabilia, stills from ‘50s film and pages ripped from pin-up magazines featuring models wearing skimpy clothing. Equally iconic was Westwood’s own style. She bleached and razor cut her hair. She wore tight leopard print velvet trousers and circle or pencil skirts, which she paired with short socks and stilettos. Just as she dressed herself in dagger-length heels and femme-fatale garb, sex played a major role in her designs, where she mixed 1950’s vintage looks with forbidden clothing. Thanks to her, rubber-wear made an appearance in the office.
“Let it Rock” was the sartorial identity for the Punk Movement.
In the early summer of 1974, Westwood and Mclaren decided to invent the shop anew as a fetish and bondage outlet, inspired in part by their recent visit to New York. This trip had opened their eyes to the outsider status of sexual deviancy, which, now as then, has a far greater capacity to shock than youth cult. In that April, in a interview in the NME, McLaren talked of clothes ´´getting more transsexual´´ and mused over the notion of persuading radical psychiatrist RD Laing to design suits for the store.
The shop underwent a prolonged refit, and the fact that it was closed for months did not best please the impecunious Matlock. ´´I kept on ringin Malcolm all the time, and he told me that it was taking longer than they thought.´´ This isn´t surprising, when it reopened in September 1974, the transformation was total. Outside, the name “SEX´´ was emblazoned in four-feet-high pink rubber capitals and sprayed with slogans from Valerie Solanas´ SCUM manifesto, as well as situationist slogans and quotes from the drug addicted outsider pornographer Trocchi.
Sex was more openly provocative. above the entrance was sprayed a Rousseau maxim which had benn considered as a name for the shop. The sex shop people, untypically, have political views, of a kind which they describe as anarchic,´´ wrote Peter York in Harpers & Queen. ´
Seditionaries became World’s End, and the agressive designe of the interior became of of bizarre fantasty, with slates tiles, cuckoo clocks and a sloping floor.
Wesstwood’s collection was called ” Clothes for Heroes’ linkin with Rusty Egan’s club of the same name, whose patrons included latter-day dandy Boy George of Culture Club
DESIGNERS : KAHN & BELL / RACHEL AUBURN / JUDY BLAME / KIM BOWEN / LEIGH BOWERY / DEAN BRIGHT / JEFFREY BRYANT / MELISSA CAPLAN / SUE CLOWES / DARLAJANE / MARTIN DEGVILLE / KEANAN DUFFTY / PATRICIA FIELD / FLANAGAN / JUDITH FRANKLAND / JOHN GALLIANO / PAM HOGG / STEPHEN JONES / STEPHEN LINARD / MARIPOL / NATASHA / MIKE NICHOLLS / ANNIE LA PAZ / STEVEN PHILIP / ANTONY PRICE / HELEN ROBINSON / ZANDRA RHODES / STEPHEN SPROUSE / CHRIS SULLIVAN / / KANSAI YAMAMOTO
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NEW DESIGNERS : / BASSO & BROOKE / THE BLONDS / ONDETTE BOMBARDIER / DOMINICK / DRES / HEATHERETTE / PHILIP NORMAL / MARJAN PEJOSKI / MICHAEL & HUSHI / PYIUUPIRU / ZALDY /
Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
Director Chris Cunningham’s work in music video, commercial, and video art are well known and loved. Cunningham first made a name for himself in the early 90’s in the art departments of major motion pictures, designing robots and creatures for Clive Barker and David Fincher. His work on Judge Dredd propelled him, in 1995, to work with the late Stanley Kubrick on his then-unfinished project A.I. (which was picked up by Speilberg).
While working with Kubrick, Cunningham directed his first music video, Autechre’s Second Bad Vilbel. What followed was a series of videos with various alternative English rock bands where Cunningham learned the ropes of filmmaking.
In 1997 Chris Cunningham directed the orgiastic mind-fuck known as Come to Daddy, a video which landed him squarely on the radar of every artist on the planet — except the Spice Girls, of course. Over the next two years Cunningham directed six videos and seven commercials, each with their own brand of genius.
In 2000 Cunningham directed two short films for the Anthony D’Offay Gallery titled flex and Monkey Drummer. Those works showed a very modern and hyper-realistic take on the world.
In 2005 Cunningham released Rubber Johnny, a six-minute short that showed just how disturbing a vision Chris has. It came released with a book whose photos are definitely unsafe for work.
Since then, the Englishman has helmed a video for garage rock band the Horrors. He also famously attempted an adaptation of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, as well as an adaptation of the comic RanXerox. He is reportedly currently working on one or more feature films.
“Most video directors have one trick that they use all the time. Then there are people who build a whole world around them. Chris is like that. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with Chris.”
Bjork – All is full of love
All is Full of Love is an elegant, moving description of two Björk robots in love. As they are pieced and wired into existence, they sing to each other and fall in love. The video reaches its harmonious climax as the robots join in embrace while still being detailed by the industrial machines beside them. Each robot was designed by Cunningham, faces reminiscent of Björk’s own delicate features.
“When I first heard the track I wrote down the words ’sexual,’ ‘milk,’ ‘white porcelain,’ ’surgery.’ [The video]’s a combination of several fetishes: industrial robotics, female anatomy, and flourescent light in that order.” (Dazed and Confused)
Chris Cunningham’s first promo in 7 years is Sheena is a Parasite for The Horrors, a band that Chris picked off MySpace. The 1.5-minute clip, narrated by lead singer Faris Badwan, stars Samantha Morton as the song’s manic, transmogrifying subject, a punked-up Carrie who whips around like a banshee and spews her intestines at you. Sharply edited and shot on a low budget, the video burns on the bass’ running pulse, and provides more fleshy fodder for Cunningham fans. The video’s producer was Jim Wilson; it was posted at Golden Square.
The video was released on a DVD single on 7 August 2006 via The Horrors’ homebase, Loog Records. It was included on their following single, actually, for Death at the Chapel, in a limited edition of 1500 copies.
Dazed & Confused talked exclusively with Chris about Sheena is a Parasite in issue: Vol. 2 #40. In it Chris says, “I’d find it hard to make a video for a track which sounded completely retro. It would just make me think of old things. To me, ‘Sheena is a Parasite’ sounds very special and futuristic.” There are pictures of the video in a July 2006 edition of the New Musical Express.
On The Horrors’ myspace blog, Badwan comments about the making of the video, which was shot in Ealing on 29 April 2006. “Most of the video was shot in a massive aircraft hangar. Consequently there was plenty of climbing apparatus on which to amuse myself during breaks in filming. My personal favourite was one of the ladders that led up to a “crow’s nest” style installation. I used this platform to store my cigarettes, hip flask, and savoury snacks, safely away from [bandmate] Spider’s grasping clutches.”
Shots talked to Golden Square’s Rachel Mills, who was their Inferno artist for the vid. She said, “The main takes of the promo were filmed in a studio on DV CAM with many other elements shot specifically to fit in with the edit, at a later date, by Chris working at home.
“The post work involved multi-layer composites, seamless transitions between takes and cleaning up backgrounds. One of the challenges of working on the video is the frame accuracy of the visual/audio synchronization. This predetermines the necessity to use multiple takes for shots to sync perfectly.”
The Horrors are a garage rock band with unusual choice of apparel and obscure musical inspirations.
Band members
- Faris Rotter (Faris Badwan) – Vocals
- Joshua Third (formerly Von Grimm) (Joshua Hayward) – Guitar
- Tomethy Furse (Tom Cowan) – Bass
- Spider Webb (Rhys Webb) – Combo organ
- Coffin Joe (Joseph Spurgeon) – Drums
