drones and pulses

Arvo Pärt

2008-12-12T22:40:00.003Z

Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935 in Paide, Estonia), (IPA: [ˈɑr̺vɔ ˈpær̺t]) is Estonia's most renowned composer, working in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabulation and hypnotic repetitions that is also influenced by the intellectual counterpoint elements of European jazz, but fits a European-American post-modernism rather than an example of so-called world music.
Continuing struggles with Soviet officials led him to emigrate in 1980 with his wife and their two sons. Pärt lived first in Vienna, Austria, where he took Austrian citizenship, and then he re-located to Berlin, Germany where he still lives.

www.arvopart.info

Ryoichi Kurokawa

2008-12-07T14:50:00.008Z

Japanese audiovisual artist. His works take on multiple forms such as screening works, recordings, installation and live performance. Kurokawa composes time based sculpture with digital generated materials and field recorded sources, and the minimal and the complexities coexist there. Kurokawa accepts sound and imagery as a unit not as separately, and constructs very exquisite and precise computer based works with the audiovisual language. That shortens mutual distance, the reciprocity and the synchronization of sound and visual composition. He also performed live-visual for musicians such as HUMAN AUDIO SPONGE(ex.YMO: Sketch Show + Ryuichi Sakamoto). In recent years, Kurokawa is invited to numerous noted international festivals and museums in Europe, US and Asia including TATE MODERN[UK], ARS ELECTRONICA[AT], Shanghai eARTS[CN], MUTEK[CA], TodaysArt[NL] and SONAR[ES] for exhibition, screening or audiovisual concert, and he continues to be an active presence on the international stage.

www.ryoichikurokawa.com

Dumb Type

2008-11-27T13:16:00.008Z

Founded in 1984, the artist collective Dumb Type is based in Kyoto, Japan.
Members are trained in varied disciplines, including visual arts, theatre, dance, architecture, music composition and computer programming. Their work ranges across such diverse media as art exhibitions, performances, audiovisuals and publications.
Dumb Type is known for portraying a dark, cynical, and humorous world in which technology is a way of life--if not necessarily a welcome one. In a 1990 interview in High Performance, the late Teiji Furuhashi, one of Dumb Type's founding members, described their work as political in nature. "Something Japanese theater never does. Japanese audiences don't want to see that. They want to avoid it. They just want entertainment. Yes, I think we should always have a political view. We should represent that this is Japan." Notable in a country plagued by political apathy, the group has played the unpopular role of AIDS activist, organizing symposia and other events, motivated in part by the fact that Furuhashi died of AIDS in 1995.
While based in Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, Dumb Type is oriented more to the global than the local, the contemporary over the traditional. Dumb Type members claim that Japanese art movements have had little influence on their work. Furuhashi explained that the core group--Furuhashi, Toru Koyamada, Yukihiro Hozumi, Shiro Takatani, Takayuki Fujimoto and Hiromasa Tomari--began working together in 1982, while still students at Kyoto University of the Arts. "We were frustrated artists, and wanted to start creating something new with our skills. Most of the time we spent discussing society or whatever, not specific art things. When someone had an idea it would be presented on a piece of paper. If the group was interested, we made it come true. At first the idea would be really open, then gradually it became something very specific. In that way, we're really democratic. Dumb Type is a collaborative group; we don't want a king."
Their work has been exhibited and performed at notable venues internationally.

www.dumbtype.com

Donald Judd

2008-09-04T14:15:00.005+01:00

Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928 - February 12, 1994) was a minimalist artist (a term he stridently disavowed). In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. It created an outpouring of seemingly effervescent structure without the rigor associated with minimalism proper.

www.juddfoundation.org

Stanley Donwood

2008-08-20T00:09:00.005+01:00

Stanley Donwood is the pen name of English writer and artist Dan Rickwood. He is probably best known for his close association with the British rock group Radiohead, having created all their album and poster art since the My Iron Lung EP (1994). Since 1996, he has also collaborated with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and others on the band's websites, and appeared in the occasional band webcast and the 2001 Grammy Award ceremony.

www.slowlydownward.com

M.C. Hesher

2008-08-05T20:30:00.004+01:00

Maurits Cornelis Escher (June 17, 1898 – March 27, 1972), usually referred to as M. C. Escher (IPA: ['ɛsxəɾ]), was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations.

www.mcescher.com

Robert Rauschenberg

2008-07-30T16:59:00.004+01:00

Robert Rauschenberg (born Milton Ernst Rauschenberg; October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.
Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg has also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg had a tendency to pick up the trash that interested him on the streets of New York City and bringing it back to his studio to use it in his works. He claimed he "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."
In 1953, Rauschenberg famously erased a drawing by de Kooning. In 1964 Rauschenberg was the first American artist to win the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale (Mark Tobey and James Whistler had previously won the Painting Prize). Since then he enjoyed a rare degree of institutional support. Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida until his death on May 12, 2008, from heart failure.

www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_133.html

Mark Rothko

2008-07-29T09:57:00.005+01:00

Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz (Latvian: Marks Rotko; September 25, 1903–February 25, 1970), was a Latvian-born Jewish American painter and printmaker who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being called an abstract painter.

www.nga.gov/feature/rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

2008-07-24T10:43:00.001+01:00

Hiroshi Sugimoto (杉本博司, Sugimoto Hiroshi), born on February 23, 1948, is a Japanese photographer currently dividing his time between Tokyo, Japan and New York City, USA. His catalog is made up of a number of series, each having a distinct theme and similar attributes.

www.sugimotohiroshi.com

Joshua Davis

2008-07-22T01:02:00.006+01:00

Joshua Davis (born June 13, 1971) is an American web designer, author and artist in new media. He was an early pioneer in the use of Macromedia Flash. He is the author of Flash to the Core (2002) and was featured in the seminal book New Masters of Flash (2000).

www.joshuadavis.com
www.once-upon-a-forest.com

Ryoji Ikeda

2008-07-09T01:51:00.004+01:00

Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966 in Gifu, Japan) is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in New York City. Sometimes harsh, sometimes remarkably gentle, Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. The conclusion of his album +/- features just such a tone; of it, Ikeda says "a high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance" (from the CD booklet). Rhythmically, Ikeda's music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.
In addition to working as a solo artist, he has also collaborated with, among others, Carsten Nicolai (under the name "Cyclo.") and the art collective Dumb Type. His work matrix won the Golden Nica Award in 2001

www.ryojiikeda.com

Jean-Michel Basquiat

2008-07-02T13:47:00.006+01:00

Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960, Brooklyn - August 12, 1988, New York, New York) was an American artist. He gained popularity, first as a graffiti artist in New York City, and then as a successful 1980s-era Neo-expressionist artist. Basquiat's paintings continue to influence modern day artists and command high prices.

www.basquiat.com

Richard Serra

2008-07-02T00:02:00.007+01:00

Richard Serra (born November 29, 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.

www.moma.org/exhibitions/2007/serra

Jackson Pollock

2008-07-01T23:50:00.003+01:00

Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major force in the abstract expressionist movement. He was married to noted abstract painter Lee Krasner.

Frank Gehry

2008-07-01T23:27:00.006+01:00

Frank Owen Gehry, CC (born Ephraim Owen Goldberg, February 28, 1929) is a Pritzker Prize winning architect based in Los Angeles.
His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. Many museums, companies, and cities seek Gehry's services as a badge of distinction, beyond the product he delivers.
His best known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Experience Music Project in Seattle, Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, and his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture", a phenomenon which many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years.

www.foga.com

David Carson

2008-06-30T18:03:00.007+01:00

David Carson is an American graphic designer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the nineties. In particular, his widely-imitated aesthetic defined the so-called "grunge" era.

www.davidcarsondesign.com

Piet Mondrian

2008-06-29T10:38:00.001+01:00

Pieter Cornelis (Piet) Mondriaan, after 1912 Mondrian, (pronounced: Dutch IPA: [pi:t 'mɔndria:n], later IPA: [pi:t 'mɔndɹiɔn]), (March 7, 1872–February 1, 1944) was a Dutch painter.
He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the use of the three primary colours.

www.pietmondrian.org

Chris Cunningham

2008-06-29T02:13:00.002+01:00

Chris Cunningham is an acclaimed English music video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1970 and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk.
His film The Work of Director Chris Cunningham was released in November 2004 as part of the Directors Label set. This DVD includes selected highlights from 1995-2000.

www.director-file.com/cunningham

Matthew Barney

2008-06-28T12:04:00.001+01:00

Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967 in San Francisco, California) is an American contemporary artist who works with film, video, installations, sculpture, photography, drawing and performance art. Barney has described himself as being primarily a sculptor. New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman called Barney "the most important American artist of his generation." Barney's work has been described as being part of "the legacy of the performance art of the 1960s and 1970s. "Barney lives with his partner, Icelandic singer Björk and their young daughter, Ísadóra, born October 3, 2002.

www.cremaster.net

Pablo Picasso

2008-06-28T11:16:00.003+01:00

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) was a Andalusian-Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. As one of the most recognized figures in twentieth-century art, he is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica (1937).

picasso.tamu.edu/picasso

Alex Grey

2008-06-27T16:59:00.001+01:00

Alex Grey (born November 29, 1953 in Columbus, Ohio) is an artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art (or visionary art) that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Alex Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His oeuvre spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. Grey is a member of the Integral Institute. He is also on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, aka CoSM, a non-profit institution supporting Visionary Culture in New York City.

www.alexgrey.com

Salvador Dalí

2008-06-27T15:12:00.001+01:00

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Salvador Dalí's artistic repertoire also included film, sculpture, and photography. He collaborated with Walt Disney on the unfinished Academy Award-nominated short cartoon Destino, which was completed and released posthumously in 2003. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on the dream sequence from his 1945 film Spellbound.
Dalí insisted on his "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors who occupied Southern Spain for nearly 800 years (711-1492), and attributed to these origins, "my love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes."
Widely considered to be greatly imaginative, Dalí had an affinity for doing unusual things to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork. The purposefully-sought notoriety led to broad public recognition and many purchases of his works by people from all walks of life.

www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/dali/

H. R. Giger

2008-06-26T00:25:00.001+01:00

Hans Ruedi Giger (born at Chur, Grisons canton, February 5, 1940) is an Academy Award-winning Swiss painter, sculptor, and set designer best known for his design work on the film Alien.

www.hrgiger.com

David Lynch

2008-06-25T18:01:00.003+01:00

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American director, screenwriter, producer, painter, composer, video and performance artist. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). He has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Lynch is probably best recalled as the director of The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. and as the creator of the Twin Peaks television series.

Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed a distinctive and unorthodox approach to narrative film making (dubbed Lynchian), which has become instantly recognizable to many audiences and critics worldwide. Lynch's films are known for surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulously crafted sound design. His work often explores the seedy underside of "Small Town U.S." (particularly Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks), or sprawling California metropolises (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and his latest release, Inland Empire). Beginning with his experimental film school feature Eraserhead (1977), he has maintained a strong cult following despite inconsistent commercial success.

www.davidlynch.com

Hello World

2006-11-11T03:10:00.003Z

"The sensory weight of a unit is affected by its proximity to other units, their centres and their boundaries. Metaphorically, sensorially, every observed particle of energy, whatever its form, has a gravitational field or, better, each seems to bend the space in its vicinity. The signifigance of any event is not constant; it varies with location, with circumstances. It is relative. Therefore, when apparent duplication occurs, there cannot be sameness but only similarity.

If a musician sounds three brief notes, perhaps repeating middle C upon a piano, the three notes cannot be the same. The first will have surprise, even shock if unexpected. The second note, anticipated or not, will produce some resonance in the listener who is carrying a memory of the first note. Whereas the first note was a sound and, if brief and staccato, not fully comprehended as a note, the second note can be savoured, studied and recorded in its fullness. This applies even more distinctly to a third note, which becomes confirmatory. Timing, the relative length of notes and intervals to the intrinsic time of the audience, perhaps their very heartbeats, will suggest whether the third note is a repeat, an echo or a full stop. By inversion, current (published 1980) experiments in the fine arts are exploring the subdivision of a current experience, such as a sustained musical note, a sheet of color, a 'wrapped' landscape, into the discontinuity of the observer's timescale: his beginning, his middle, and his end, which is all one. Ultimately this becomes a passive vehicle for audience participation and is not unrelated to traditional programmes for meditation, both philosophic and religious."

- Krome Barratt in "Logic and Design"