music

Call a somnambulance. The multimedia goodness of the Sleepwalkers box.

Doug Aitken is up to his old tricks: enveloping museums in high-definition video projections that illuminate their facades and mesmerize passersby, which in the case of his latest project may include President Obama. The Los Angeles-based artist has transformed the National Mall’s Gordon Bunshaft-designed concrete donut (also known as the Hirshhorn) into a 360-degree convex-screen cinema aglow nightly through May 13 with his “SONG 1.” Meanwhile, the Seattle Art Museum recently commissioned Aitken to wrap a corner—the northwest, bien sûr—of its downtown HQ in a jumbo LED display that will debut early next year. The months between these Washingtonian works provide ample time to savor the Sleepwalkers box, an ultra-covetable multimedia remix of the public artwork that took New York by nocturnal storm in 2007.

Part deluxe commemorative edition, part DIY-spirited artist’s book, the Sleepwalkers box is a bold collaboration between Aitken, the Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records. The perforated cardboard cover reveals and conceals a fold-out poster of scenes from the five urban narratives (starring the likes of Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, and Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power) that were projected onto the exterior of the Museum of Modern Art. Set that aside to discover a turntable-ready vinyl “picture disc,” which the strong-willed will manage to avoid framing as an art object. A book of “fragments, markings, and images” from the making of Sleepwalkers includes breathtaking full-bleed images as well as an interview in which Aitken discusses the installation with Jacques Herzog. “Your work needs an ideal architectural conservation to unfold its quality,” advises the architect.
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Ed Ruscha has a way with words and a sharp eye for typefaces (the sleek and squared-off sans-serif that appears frequently in his paintings is “Boy Scout Utility Modern,” his own creation). He delivers thoughtful insights in a distinguished voice that shimmers with the broken short vowels and gentle cadence of his Oklahoma upbringing. Turns out he also makes a great fashion model. That’s Ruscha in the spring-summer 2012 lookbook for Band of Outsiders, Scott Sternberg‘s beloved Los Angeles-based label. The photos, shot on vintage Polaroid film, show the artist hanging around his L.A. studio: he juggles paintbrushes in a chambray shirt, studies a copy of Acrylic Painting for Dummies, dons a cherry-red anorak to attack a Sudoku puzzle, samples the contents of a ramshackle refrigerator, and points westward, to the future, where there will be a dog and a motorcycle for everyone. It’s enough to make us want to string together Ruscha’s exotic textual feats into a song that tells the world how much we want to hang out with him. Oh, wait, someone already did that. Hit it, Richard Bell and David G.A. Stephenson:

Finally—a music video starring pencils! Motion graphics wizard Dropbear (also known as Jonathan Chong, whose pseudonym is that of a vicious yet imaginary marsupial) has outdone himself with a colorful feat of stop-motion animation for Hudson. This video for the Melbourne-based indie-folk band’s “Against the Grain” will delight viewers of all ages, falling somewhere between Surrealist film festival fare (we’d put it right after Hans Richter‘s Dreams That Money Can Buy) and Sesame Street interstitia:

Wondering how he did that? Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes look at the 920 pencils and 5,125 images required:

This weekend, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston unveils its Linde Wing for Contemporary Art with a 24-hour party (“artful attire encouraged”) during which the institution will screen Christian Marclay‘s “The Clock.” The MFA acquired the work, which is made from more than 1,000 film clips, earlier this year in a joint deal with the National Gallery of Canada. Can’t make it to Boston? Get your Marclay fix at the newsstand with the October “Sound + Vision” issue of Wallpaper*, for which the Golden Lion-winning artist served as a guest editor. Marclay reimagined his epic “Manga Scroll” for the magazine, for which he created one of two October covers. The other comes from the pulsing, digital brain of Kraftwerk, who also served as guest editor. Reclusive frontman (not an oxymoron) Ralf Hutter provided the cover: a take on the band’s iconic imagery that is designed to be viewed through the 3D glasses included with the magazine. Inside, Kraftwerk devotees such as Andreas Gurksy, Thomas Demand, and Neville Brody reveal how the electronic music pioneers influenced them and their work.

(Photo: Gregory Bojorquez)

As we reported a few days back, the regrouped Red Hot Chili Peppers recently unveiled the cover of their forthcoming album, sharing that it had been designed by none other than Damien Hirst. Now they’re apparently continuing on their path of hiring celebrity artists to market their materials, as TMZ, found by way of ArtInfo, reports that they band has gotten Mr. Brainwash, aka Thierry Guetta, to promote the album by way of street art. According to the gossip site, Guetta “wouldn’t specify how much he’s getting paid for the gig, but tells us, his job is far from done…in fact, he and RHCP are teaming up on several more projects.” That extra income is sure to be good for the artist, made famous in the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, following the recently-lost copyright suit against him brought on by photographer Glen Friedman. So why did the band ultimately decide to go with Guetta, as his artistic brand is less than stellar following both that recent lawsuit and his not coming off so well in the very film that made him a household name? Our guess is that Banksy just decided long ago that he was a one band-that-was-at-its-most-famous-in-the-90s man and would only work with them. And after all of this hiring of celebrity artists, we think the Guardian hit the nail on the head when they write, “All they need now is a music video by Matthew Barney.”

Because the design world has been so vocal online for the lo these many years in regard to spec work (chiefly, of course, being against it), our anti-spec senses will likely now be forever heightened. So we’re not entirely sure what to do with the “Design for Paul McCartney” contest, which has just launched and will be running until September. In one sense, as it simply calls for “graphic art inspired by his critically acclaimed solo albums,” it’s a seemingly innocuous way to interact with fans and give the winners some nice prizes (which includes records, posters, tickets to shows, $1000 for the grand champion, etc.). On the other hand, the contest is helping launch a new tech start-up called Talenthouse, the top 10 winners will be displayed at Saatchi & Saatchi‘s online gallery (and if they wind up selling prints, is that $1000 prize such a great deal?), and, most obviously, used to help sell McCartney’s concert tickets and albums. So are we thinking too much into this? Or is it just your usual branded contest, like a Super Bowl commercial-making competition where, if you win, you get $1,000 for making a stellar ketchup ad, but the company in turn makes loads of money that dwarf the piddly sum they paid you? We don’t have the answer. Whatever the case, if entering this sort of thing gets you going, well there’s the link above. If it’s the sort of thing that gets you fired up, well we apologize for ruining your morning.

Damien Hirst is clearly on an album-designing tear. Well, that is if you consider designing two albums over the past three years a tear, which we, for no good reason, most assuredly do. In direct contrast to his extremely colorful, splatter paint-esque 2009 cover for the band The Hours, this week the Red Hot Chili Peppers unveiled their minimalist, Hirst-designed cover for their upcoming album, I’m With You. It features little more than a fly sitting on a pill, which symbolizes…um, that both flies and pills are always with us? If anything, it proves that while the Young British Artists movement might now be dead, Damien Hirst is still as relevant as the occasionally-together Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here’s the cover:

If you wind up learning anything from us here at UnBeige, please let it be this warning: do not, under any circumstances, build a time machine and go back in time to either the late-60s or early-70s to design an album cover for a famous musician or band and then come back to the present, broke because you spent all your money on building a time machine and request that said musician or band to give you your image back. Such has famously happened to Peter Blake of course (minus the time machine bit) with his iconic “Sgt. Peppers” album cover for The Beatles, which he was originally paid somewhere around $200 for and has fought, unsuccessfully, to win the copyright from. Now the same is going on with Elton John‘s 1973 album, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The Daily Mail reports that the artist behind its cover, Ian Beck, has requested the original piece back, believing that the musician held on to it after Beck was paid £430 for it. The law apparently won’t be on the artist’s side, as it was stipulated at the time that “in 1973 whoever commissioned it owned it.” Though that changed two years later, it appears that Beck is hoping to appeal to Elton John’s generosity. Though getting past his representatives will be something of a hurdle. Here’s what they told the Daily Mail:

A spokesman for the singer says: “I have no idea whether Elton has it, but presumably if he does, he paid for it so it is his; £430 was a hell of a lot of money back then. A bit weird, isn’t it, to ask for something back 38 years later?”

Currently making the rounds this week among the design-interested is musician Jon Brooks‘ album Music for Dieter Rams. In it, Brooks sampled the noises made by Rams’ beautiful AB-30 alarm clock which the famous and influential designer made for Braun while serving as the company’s legendary head of design. “Every sound on this record, from the melodic sounds to the percussion, the atmospheric effects to the bass lines originates from the Braun AB-30 alarm clock,” he writes. It might sound like a terrible idea, because no matter how much you love Rams’ work (like (uber-fan Jonathan Ive), the thought of sequenced alarm noises seems second only to a mashup of recordings of nails on a chalkboard. However, Brooks manages to carefully compose, arrange, and tweak the noises into lovely melodies and themes. It’s a very pleasant album, concept behind it or otherwise, and it’s available for purchase here, where you can also listen to the whole thing for free. And here’s some audio of Brooks explaining, piece by piece, how he put the whole thing together:

As we reported yesterday, after struggling for years under a mountain of debt, the American Folk Art Museum has been forced to sell their building to the neighboring MoMA, moving to a much smaller space across town and likely losing a majority of their staff along the away. So what ultimately did the museum in? According to New York‘s Jerry Saltz, architecture is to blame. The critic writes that, as soon as their building opened in 2001, “it was immediately clear to many that the building was not only ugly and confining, it was also all but useless for showing art — especially art as visionary as this museum’s.” Saltz’ comments created a bit of an internal battle inside of the magazine, with its architecture critic penning a response entitled “Jerry Saltz Has It All Wrong About the American Folk Art Museum.”

Elsewhere in lousy museum news (though this is also kind of secretly impressive in the way all true crime art heists are), despite “1,600 antitheft alarms and 3,700 closed-circuit television cameras,” a group of thieves stole more than $1.5 million worth of antique jewelry boxes from inside Beijing’s Forbidden City. The pieces were there as part of a visiting exhibit and the theft was discovered after a man was spotted fleeing the scene. “Staff at the palace museum were reported to have found a large hole in the back wall of the exhibition space. Entering through the hole, they found the exhibition cabinets pried open.”

Finally, if you read one thing today (beside, of course, this post you’re reading right now), make it Eric Wilson‘s wonderful review in the NY Times of Lady Gaga‘s first “fashion and art” column for the magazine V. However, those who critiqued our post last year about the musician’s desire to have “an All Gaga exhibit in the Louvre,” of which there were many (and of which confused us mightily), might want to avoid reading it, as Wilson gets a touch sarcastic and snarky in spots.