Dundee Masters Show After Party 02.09.11

This Friday from 10pm, GENERATORprojects and Yuck 'n Yum present the Dundee Masters Show After Party at Union 39. Featuring your favourite DJs Peg (n_ilk), Il Discotto (Zazou) and Baba Gogo!

LINK

AGK video makers Q+A 5

AGK Video Makers Q and A -5

I hope you are all putting the finishing touches to your videos in time for the extended deadline Aug 29th.

Any questions please drop us an email: agk@yucknyum.com

Need some more inspiration?

Here is a Q and A from last years winner Rachel Maclean:

Can you briefly explain the video that you made last year?

Using Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’ as a sound track, I made a piece that explores the saccharine toy towns of childrens TV through the lens of a rapid cut MTV pop video. I am the only actor in this work, cloning and distorting my image to present a grotesquely glamorous space in which babies hatch from multi-coloured eggs, decapitated heads spill from the heavens and a spotty Lady Gaga writhes within the shell of a giant egg.

How did you decide upon your chosen track?

I often work with a specific celebrity as a starting point for my videos and was interested in Lady Gaga’s self-conscious presentation of fame in ‘Paparazzi’. The track has hundreds of responses and parodies linked to it on ‘Youtube, and in turn I was keen to explore in the way in which karaoke could comment on this culture of imitation.

I use cheesy pop like ‘Paparazzi’ that has the potential to be warped and turned on itself, pushing a hyper-saccharine aesthetic to the point that it morphs and begins to reveal it’s darker and more grotesque content.

How did you make it? What hardware /software did you use?

I designed a variety of costumes and face paint, then dressed up and filmed myself against a green-screen set up in my flat. I then used a mixture of ‘After Effects’ and ‘Final Cut Pro’ to key out the green and edit it together. The background elements were created on Photoshop using a variety of found images and then composited in with the live footage.

Did you use the actual song as a soundtrack or another version?

I using the original song for the first part of the video, then I used a version of the same track sung by a man for the final section.

What technique did you use to add text?

I used ‘LiveType’ which is part of the ‘Final Cut’ package to create text and then imported this into the final video.

Did you perform the song on the night? How did it go?

Alas I was too much of a wimp to perform on the night, but the girl who stepped up to the task did a really good job. I did feel guilty that I hadn’t made the text particularly easy to follow however.


Did you have any technical problem making your video? How did you overcome this?

I had a bit of trouble syncing audio on ‘After Effects’ as it is not a programme designed for that kind of work. To overcome this I synced on ‘Final Cut’ and then exported the footage to ‘After Effects’, which is a bit time consuming. I’ve recently found ‘Adobe Premier’ is easier if you want to work between editing and compositing in ‘AE’.

Did you enlist any help?

No I didn’t enlist any help I can think of, as I filmed and edited it by myself. Lady Gaga did help however, she may not be aware of her contribution, but she played her part nonetheless.

Are you entering again this year?

Maybe, I would really like to, but only if I can manage to get it finished in time. I’m working on quite a time consuming video at the moment, which has a good musical section, but I’ll have to see how it goes with the edit.

Any tips on how to make an AGK vid?

Costumes, everyone loves a costume!

LINK

receipts

Got paid last week so I bought a few things:


Current 93 - Imperium‏ CD, €12.00


Henry Green - Loving, Living, Party Going, £10.87


Andrea Dworkin - Our Blood, £3.00


The Last Days of Disco DVD, £11.67

all tomorrow's Yards of Fun

To the Tin Roof Yard of Fun this evening. Sadly I'd been at work all day, and so missed most of the fun. Anyway I had a burger and a wander round, and what follows is a few photos that I hope might adequately capture the "after the party is over" mise-en-scène:


Welly Ping


Highland Coo Hoopla


Assorted skittles


Gull Cull


People, packing up


A stallholder in reflective mood


This was once an exhibition


The colouring-in contest


It's a way of life


Rachel culls a gull


A gull, culled

Ben 'Jack Your Body' Robinson Zazou playlist 26.08.11

The enigmatic Ben 'Jack Your Body' Robinson

Not everyone in Dundee last night was taking part in the Generator's Twenty-Four Hour Football event. Some people were at Zazou, where I played some records. Clicking on the titles will take you to the associated Discogs page for each release:

Rude 66 - Images
Tangerine Dream - No Man's Land
Arthur Russell - Let's Go Swimming
Chrisma - We R.
Seebach Band - Bubble Sex
Geneva Jacuzzi - Love Caboose
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Computer Game
Red Lipstique - Drac's Back (Dub)
Mr. Fingers - Stars
Klein & M.B.O. - The M.B.O. Theme
The Creatures - Machine's Drama
Smiles - Pendulum
Robert Lawrence + Mark Phillips - Computer Bank
Nine Circles - Twinkling Stars
Atmosphere - Swede's Scandal
Yoko Ono - Let The Tears Dry
Chris & Cosey - Walking Through Heaven
One Two Three - Midnite Fantasy
Marcus Mixx - Without Makeup (Ron Hardy Mix)
Jamie Principle - It's A Cold World
Denise Motto - Tell Jack (Jack The House)

Twenty-Four Hour Football @ Generator Projects

To the Generator last night, for the opening of Twenty-Four Hour Football.

For the final instalment of the Summer Programme, MacDonald&Jeans will hold a twenty-four hour performance within GENERATORprojects large gallery space, designed to encourage viewers to participate as artists in a performance through an internationally familiar medium; a game of football. The football match will act as a catalyst to examine participation in an interactive artwork within the context of a contemporary gallery. The smaller gallery will be transformed into a changing room, with the option of either red or blue bibs given to participants, who then substitute themselves into their chosen team. A series of films will be visible from the changing rooms, functioning in football terms as a pre-match team talk, and in art terms as an instructional performance manifesto. The performance will be streamed live on the internet, and compiled with documentation into a publication to mimic a football match programme and sticker album. A cast Adidas Samba will be presented by the GENERATORprojects committee to the winning team.
http://cargocollective.com/generatorprojects#1634168/Twenty-Four-Hour-Football


New media coverage


How tactics work


THIS IS FOOTBALL!


Changing room chat

Tin Roof / Yuck 'n Yum - Yard of Fun

This coming Sunday Yuck 'n Yum will team up with leading Dundee art studio Tin Roof to bring you the YARD OF FUN. There'll be an array of art and activities on offer, so support your local art scene and be sure to come along.

i/ndex

A selection of tasty links from my Delicious page:

Conrad Schnitzler (1937–2011) | Blog | Frieze Publishing

Cut Hands: Afro Noise I – FACT magazine: music and art

From Goblin to Morricone: the art of horror movie music | Film | The Guardian

Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire: Language teaching (for Hannah Nicklin)

Yuck 'n Yum website relaunch

The Yuck 'n Yum website has had a makeover and been relaunched as a super-smart, user-friendly, easy-to-navigate source of fun and delight: LINK

If you head to the zine page, you can view every issue since summer 2008 and even search for your favourite featured artist: LINK

Yuck 'n Yum / Tin Roof FUNdraiser deadline extension

The deadline for the forthcoming Yuck 'n Yum / Tin Roof event
has been extended to the 24th of August:

SMILE @ Embassy, The Skinny

My review of the Embassy's SMILE show has appeared in The Skinny: LINK

lowering

Extract from Wayne Koestenbaum, Humiliation:

To be assembled in an imaginary library: a canon of humiliated literature, or of literature that embodies - in its aesthetic premises - a state of being humiliated, or of intentionally or unintentionally humiliating the reader. (Also, to be gathered: a canon of humiliated film and visual art.) I prefer literature and art that seems to have been humiliated - where the material texture (paint, imagery, narrative, words, allusions, gestures, color, composition) attests to a robbed or lowered condition. The writer has experienced debasement; words reverse that state. Or else words enact and continue it. And so the reader feels, I guess it's not a nightmare to be debased, or else it's a bearable torment, a daily condition. I don't like confident literature, or literature that seems immune to self-incrimination; literature should bear witness to the fact that the writer was humiliated by the very process of making the work. The production of language - making words happen - is a lowering act, like revealing my sperm-stained dress at a trial, or showing the judge the inside of my mouth. Language isn't transcendent. Every sentence, however stuffed and upholstered with confident maturity, attests to that earlier, infant time when we couldn't master words.

http://www.HumiliationBook.com

Smile @ Embassy Gallery

Ronnie Heeps, Kaleidoscope 2

A spaced-out cosmic bliss suffuses much of the work at the Embassy’s new show. Channelling the spirits of Sienna Miller and the 21st century satirist Michel Houellebecq, we’re promised a trip in search of enlightenment and oblivion, the artists drawing “poi patterns across a melting sky.” It seemed quite apt for Smile to open in a week when riots were splashed across the front pages, as hippiedom and social unrest have shared a bed throughout pop cultural history. Warhol’s would-be assassin Valerie Solanis makes an appearance in Sach Kahir’s film Mick Jagger Hates You, and Charles Manson is namechecked in the gallery handout, haunting the shadows of the psychedelic haze. The inquisitive search for belief informs many of the pieces here. Circular Kaleidoscope paintings by Ronnie Heeps flank a photo self-portrait by Sophie Lisa Beresford, her face painted blue and displayed high up on the wall as a Hindu Goddess. The depiction of multiple deities might be a symptom of celebrity or it could just be schizophrenia. On the opening night Beresford staged a performance upstairs in the ‘Meditation Room’, leading the crowd in a "Rave Meditation Dance" with the aim of freeing up their energy. Seeing the Edinburgh art audience shed their inhibitions to a soundtrack of Spanish Makina Techno music certainly made for a memorable experience. It did what art can only very occasionally do, transcending the everyday and making us all smile.

Sophie Lisa Beresford @ Smile, 12.08.11

To the Embassy in Edinburgh last night for the opening of Smile. Upstairs from the gallery the mighty Sophie Lisa Beresford led the crowd in a "Rave Meditation Dance" to free up their energy. I took a few photos and here they are:
























































The Edinburgh art crowd after the event

For more about Sophie Lisa Beresford and her work, see _B_A passim.