Contortionist Jazz Exotica, Devin Flynn

Contortionist Jazz Exotica

Contortionist Jazz Exotica is a newly debuted collaboration of a blog between Joe Legs (now of Austin and formerly of Richmond, VA) and Zak Loyd (formerly of Austin, now in Brooklyn). Zak has worked with the Eyeplug video collective in Texas and is now operating as Vid Kidz with Melanie Clemmons in New York.

Devin Flynn appeared along side his Y'all So Stupid web-video series at the Alamo Drafthouse tonight. The series, which was made for AdultSwim.com, can be seen on the bigger-than-your-computer-screen at Okay Moutain through October 31st. The show, titled SuperStupid, includes a collection of drawings and supplemental videos of Flynn's earlier work.

Art Swap seeking submissions...

The swap is hosted by labotanica in Houston. From the labotanic Blog:

"labotanica seeks artists for Art Swap, a participatory exhibition in which artists of all media can exchange art with other artists for free. Art Swap centers on reciprocity and re-negotiates value and commerce in art production and presentation...

To participate, send digital images by Sep. 27th la(at)labotanica(dot)org

Exhibition installation: Tues & Wed, Sep. 29th & 30th, 5pm – 7pm

Opening reception: Thurs, Oct. 1st, 6-8pm
Art Swap takes place: Oct. 2nd & 3rd, 12pm – 6pm
location: 2310 Elgin, Houston, Texas 77004"

The Bleeding Pixel Effect: Chairlift, Kanye, Takeshi Murata

Exploitation of "the bleeding pixel effect," now a trend called "Datamoshing," is a digital phenomenon that has been receiving attention lately. The effect, created by manipulating digital compression, was recently used in Chairlift's music video for "Evident Utensil" (above or in hi-res) and Kanye West's video for "Welcome to Heartbreak" (youtube) (hi-res).

Both Kanye and Chairlift gave "major props" to digital artist Takeshi Murata (b. 1974, Chicago) for inspiration. Below is footage from his influential 2005 piece, Monster Movie. His video work is hard to come by, but UbuWeb also hosts a quality version of his 2006 film Silver, here.



Melissa Feldman writes for "Art In America":

A main part of Murata's technique involves digitally compressing the footage so that the movement of a series of frames is reduced to a single twitching image that records only the net difference in movement from one frame to the next... The video's visual effects also evoke the way Impressionist painters broke down images into brushwork and blurriness, which similarly gave way to abstraction. For his part, Murata likens the liquid look of his digital distortions to the physical deterioration of old film stock.

Murata graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 and was recently featured in a New York Times' special report titled At Last, Artists Harness the Internet.

Austin Eddy

Austin Eddy (webpage)






I saw this dude on Fecal Face this morning. (go here). At first I wasn't really that interested, but after spending some time with the images and the interview (which is alright, not super insightful, but fecal face isn't really about critique as much as it is about exposure) now I've grown really fond. I think the style/subject mater is pushing trendy but maintaining canonical/intellectually stimulating references. Looking at a lot of the spaces he creates I get an immediate impression of compressed space and little depth, which is subverted by the textures he layers from which I feel infinite space.



I don't know, I'm not a painter but especially in this one I feel as though I'm vibing between outer space (as in the great beyond) and a tiny cabin. I like his working with the 'mystical' and 'magical' in subject and imagery. Its dark, humorous, and tender. And the colors aren't fluorescent, which is nice.
Also, Eddy is 22 years old. And he's also done an interview with beautiful decay (can be found here) "foremost on my agenda is defeating Gannon, closing the portal to the dark world and bring peace and happiness to the light world"





A funny thing happened when I binged his name, this guy's website came up first and got to experience a whole lot more magic than I originally anticipated. Both Austin Eddys show incredible promise.

Eric Wareheim

Flying Lotus "Parisian Goldfish" from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Just Thinking About the Internet Yall

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2009/09/it-takes-a-socially-transcendent-moment-to-remind-us-what-makes-life-worth-living-kanye-west-is-a-valuable-member-of-society.html

also, this

http://oonce-oonce.com/

When I say 'the internet,' I mean 'culture'

Michael Bell-Smith

Stills from Michael Bell-Smith’s Up, Up and Away (2006)

"I don’t think I’m entirely anti-narrative. I like to play with gestures of narrative (change, conflict, progression) without necessarily engaging in its structure and the pleasure that comes from it. I like to think I’m working in a tension between something pictoral, something narrative and something atmospheric, trying to create work that a viewer engages a bit differently from most time based media art."
(MBS in Artfagcity.com interview for Geeks in the Gallery exhibition)

Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously (2006) by Michael Bell-Smith. Courtesy EAI. from Why + Wherefore on Vimeo.