radarboy

I’ve always been fascinated by the flickering light a TV gives off. I am also concerned with my art being experiential – to create a place for visitors to interact with, hang out and make their own. Thus the idea of The Living Room was born.

A TV remote control could be used to control the “channels” on the TV and hence the lighting of the room. The channels were actually various sound reactive applications running off a laptop. The computer was connected to an Arduino with an infra-red sensor to communicated with the remote control.

Featured was also a knitting channel which showed visitors how to knit, with wool and knitting needles provided.

The installation was part of the Mind The Box launch event held at the amazing Mind Pirates building in Kreuzberg Berlin.

One of the major sources for discovering music, when we were growing up had always been TV shows. In South Africa we had Pop Shop, in the UK, Top of the Pops. If you got on TV you were guaranteed a rush of sales the next day and a surge in demand for live appearances. Today, it’s YouTube. If I’m looking for a track, especially an oldie, I’m more likely to head for YouTube to check it out, before heading to ther iTunes store. When hanging around with mates, YouTube too is often the place music invariably gets played and new things are discovered. In the old days we used to go over to mates houses and watch VHS tapes of those shows).

The shortsightedness and greed of the record companies and artists (like Prince, see here and here) is definitely not in the spirit of the joy of music and what it represents. Ye olde record industry be gone with you I say! Be gone!

In a side note, I saw an interview with Depeche Mode the other day, where they recounted how they. lugging their heavy synths, took the Tube to their first Top of the Pops appearance. Ah, the age of innocence.

Depeche Mode, Somebody, complete with VHS tape fatigue:

Beautiful station ID for Finnish TV by Jopsu Ramu and Tokyo artist and designer and Shun Kawakami.

Check out Shun Kawakami’s other great stuff on his personal site: www.shunkawakami.jp.

Kawakami’s work if very much based in electronic music. And reminds me to an extend of another artist I really admire and have been meaning to post for a while – Carsten Nicolai who is exploring similar themes to myself in his artwork – light, sound and minalism.

Nicolai is well known in Germany for his sound and light specific installations, and his giant dream machine – called Rota, which has recently been turned into an iPhone App. Nicolai is also part of the pioneering record labelRaster Noton. I was recently lucky enough to attend their label showcase night at the WMF in Berlin to witness the future sound of music – a hybrid of dancefloor friendly electro and electronica that made the room and your body vibrate.

Here is Aoyama Spaces, spaces illuminated through a play of sound and light:

http://www.carstennicolai.de
http://www.raster-noton.net/