When a writer creates his medium is rather straightforward. The finished product may may be a movie or a graphic novel or even a radio play, but the starting point is always a blank page. Artists, on the other hand, have much more freedom to create and their medium is virtually anything. Performance artists use their own bodies in the execution of art, sculptors use any manner of materials, and musicians can make music from the sounds found in everyday life. The freedom available is amazing.
I wanted to share a couple of artists that caught my eye with the way they used common mediums to create uncommon pieces of art. One works in video games and the other in music, but both their portfolios display an intense level of creativity combined with a constant need to push boundaries.
Paul Robertson
Paul Robertson is a pixel artist who has worked on some great properties like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game and Gravity Falls. I first came across his art when I saw Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006. Yeah, it’s a mouthful. This was Robertson’s attempt at creating the side-scrolling fighting game he always wanted to play. It’s hyper-violent, extremely tongue in cheek, and filled with an insane number of references. I was immediately hooked. His art style isn’t for everyone due to its occasional NSFW nature and weird melding of images, but his raw creativity is apparent in everything he produces.
What inspires me about his work is that he released it into the wilds of the internet completely free and without DRM. He even provided multiple locations where you can download the films. This was done before it became vogue for musicians to do the same thing. The last full length animation he created was Kings of Power Four Billion %. It’s even more hyper-violent than Pirate Baby and also has NSWF elements, so be careful where you click play on this one.
Kings of Power 4 Billion % on Vimeo.
Sound Taxi
Make The City Sound Better was a project put together by headphone manufacturers AIAIAI and sound artist Yuri Suzuki. Using a heavily modified—and incredibly awesome—black cab they recorded the ambient noise of London and turned it into a soothing score for the city which was then projected through the 67 speakers installed onto the cab’s exterior.
People tend to drown out city noise through their iPods or smartphones and create audio “blinders” to the world around them. This project transformed what is typically an ignored component of urban living into an engaging experience. It pulled the citizens of London out of their usual routine and gave them a moment of unexpected art. I love this concept and wonder if they are considering it for other cities as well. Comparing the sonic footprint of major metropolitans would be a great extension to this already unique project.
Here’s a behind the scenes teaser about the project.
Yuri Suzuki x AIAIAI Sound Taxi Preview from AIAIAI on Vimeo.
Here’s one of the tracks created while driving around London.
Where have you unexpectedly found incredible art? Let us know in the comments or shoot me a tweet @gabrielnovo. If you enjoy these articles then feel free to have them delivered directly to your inbox or share them with a friend using the buttons below.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You seem to say that writing is not art, I’d dispute that. I think any definition you can come up with that encompasses the other artforms you’ve listed will also include writing.
It may not be as glamorous as the others, but it certainly follows the rules to be considered ‘art’.
As for an unusual meeting with art, I have a great story about that. I once met a Chinese artist who was forced to spy for his country (although I never did learn what the Chinese authorities were holding over him). Several months of the year he lived in a small village in Germany, where nobody understood his art except for one family. That family would vacation there, and the father had business with the Chinese military, so the artist was sent there to spy on the father of the family, to make sure he was clean.
This is one of the top artists in China, and any Chinese art collector would know his name, but I won’t go into names, because I’m sure the artist would be ashamed of what he did, even though it never hurt the father, in fact it helped him, because he was the only one the Chinese military would trust to work with, and when other European companies wanted to do similar business, the authorities insisted they get the father to represent them.
Anyhow, the father and the artist were good friends for a long time, until the father retired and the artist packed up his house and returned to China (leaving many valuable antiques behind, which he gave to the father to assuage his guilt).
Touring through the barn attached to his house, which he’d turned into a gallery, and knowing parts of the story (I didn’t know the whole story at the time), I could see his feelings on the canvasses. It was completely different from the work he created in China, very melancholy.
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Twitter: gabrielnovo
October 15, 2012 at 1:35 pm
I’m not debating whether writing is art (it most certainly IS), I’m just discussing the freedoms found in other mediums. Writers write on a blank page and use words. We can’t get around that functional limitation of the medium. Other artists have much more freedom with where they can start and what they can use.
Chinese artist as a spy. That must have been a very interesting double life. I would love to see an in-depth comparison between his Chinese and German works with commentary from the artist himself if he’s still alive. It all sounds like the start of a very interesting thriller. There’s a story bone in there somewhere.
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He’s still alive AFAIK, he’d be about 50 now, I think. He wasn’t exactly a spy, he was just told by the Chinese government to go and make friends with the Father and report back everything. Not stealing state secrets or anything like that.
All media have their limitations. I think this is a ‘grass is greener’ thing, personally I’ve worked professionally as an artist (in a highly commercial setting, so it may not be a fair comparison) and I find writing gives much more freedom of expression. You can make anything from a concrete poem to a 2,000 page epic novel, Dada poetry, screenplays, or even a name (did you know that, by the letter, the most highly paid writing ever was “Exxon”?)
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, what is a 100,000 word novel worth?
Mark Fenger´s latest post ..Orphans of the Celestial Sea, E-3, C-3
I just looked the artist up, he’s in his early 60′s, still painting. One of his works just sold at Christie’s for $250,000.
Mark Fenger´s latest post ..Orphans of the Celestial Sea, E-3, C-3
Wow, I wish I could go back and edit that, there’s a huge run-on sentence in there. That’s what I get for writing stream-of-consciousness I guess.
Mark Fenger´s latest post ..Orphans of the Celestial Sea, E-3, C-3