Pachelbel’s Chicken: Your Favorite Classical Pieces Played Masterfully on a Rubber Chicken

in Comedy, K-12, Music | November 16th, 2018

Music lovers brac­ing against the annu­al onslaught of the Singing Dogs’ “Jin­gle Bells” may find their sav­age beasts soothed some­what by Eddy Chen’s per­for­mance of Pachelbel’s Canon, above.

Nev­er mind that the instru­ment on which he plays four dif­fer­ent tracks is a rub­ber chick­en… or more accu­rate­ly, as per Ama­zon, a Scream­ing Yel­low Rub­ber Chick­en Non Tox­ic Bite-resis­tant Squeaky Toy.

It retains its relax­ing musi­cal­i­ty. Chen, one half of Aus­tralian duo TwoSetVi­o­lin, plays that bird like the dis­ci­plined, clas­si­cal­ly-trained pro he is.

Clas­si­cal chick­en cov­ers became a sur­prise hit for Chen and his part­ner, Brett Yang, vet­er­ans of the Syd­ney and Queens­land Sym­pho­ny Orches­tras, whose vir­tu­al­ly sold out world tour was the first of its kind to be entire­ly financed by Kick­starter dona­tions.

The duo describes its mis­sion as “uphold­ing the integri­ty of clas­si­cal music” while mak­ing it “rel­e­vant to the mod­ern gen­er­a­tion through fun, humour and sim­plic­i­ty,” not­ing, in a joint inter­view with Violinist.com:

There are peo­ple out there who are ready to love clas­si­cal music, and we have to active­ly find them. It is the way clas­si­cal music has been pre­sent­ed so far that makes it so aus­tere. We were lucky that we learned the instru­ment for 20 years; if we were not musi­cians, it would be very hard to get into.

Every­one has the poten­tial to like it, but some­times musi­cians alien­ate and scare poten­tial lis­ten­ers with our pride.

Back when clas­si­cal music was new, it was not ‘clas­si­cal’; it was just music.

Today our (clas­si­cal music audi­ence) is very small, but there are many great musi­cians

 Grant­ed, the stan­dards for clas­si­cal music are there for a good rea­son: peo­ple want the best art, and that is a stan­dard we should uphold. At the same time, some­times we see peo­ple break­ing down and freak­ing out because of those stan­dards. It is sad to think of all that lost poten­tial and love for music. We feel we are los­ing audi­ences; we are los­ing peo­ple who used to love music.

The chick­en def­i­nite­ly appeals to young lis­ten­ers, though sure­ly there’s no age lim­it for enjoy­ing its take on Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1…

Or Johann Strauss’ “The Blue Danube” Waltz, where­in Yang squeezes a chick­en in each fist whilst Chen mans the vio­lin…

Or the open­ing trum­pet solo of Gus­tav Mahler ‘s Sym­pho­ny No. 5…

Or Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” a favorite first clas­si­cal piece for pianists and chick­en play­ers alike…

Oth­ers on TwoSetViolin’s clas­si­cal chick­en playlist include Handel’s “Hal­lelu­jah” cho­rus and the “Waltz of the Flow­ers” from Tchaikovsky’s Nut­crack­er Suite.

Catch up with TwoSetVi­o­lin on the final leg of their Amer­i­can tour and sub­scribe to their YouTube chan­nel for their insights into the clas­si­cal musi­cian’s life and the impor­tance of prac­tice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the World’s Old­est Vio­lin in Action: Mar­co Rizzi Per­forms Schumann’s Sonata No. 2 on a 1566 Amati Vio­lin

Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Print­ed Vio­lin

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hear How Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Would Sound If Sung by Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra & 38 Other Artists

in Comedy, Creativity, Music, Technology | November 2nd, 2018

I con­sid­er Fred­dy Mer­cury and Michael Jack­son as the great­est per­form­ers of all time. Their vocal abil­i­ties are what I look up to as a vocal­ist.  — Antho­ny Vin­cent

Antho­ny Vin­cent, the cre­ator of Ten Sec­ond Songs, has a flow­ing mane, a lean physique, and the cock­sure man­ner of a 20th cen­tu­ry rock god.

He also spends hours in his home stu­dio, peer­ing at a com­put­er mon­i­tor through read­ing glass­es.

His lat­est effort, above, Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in the style of 42 oth­er artists, could seem like a gim­mick at first glance.

Con­sid­er, how­ev­er, all the research, time, and musi­cian­ship that went into it.

The YouTube star dis­ap­peared from the inter­net for a month in order to tack­le the beast that fans had long been beg­ging him for.

He emerged from this self-imposed sab­bat­i­cal refreshed, rec­om­mend­ing that per­haps “every­one should start pro­duc­ing songs in mul­ti­ple styles just so they too could take a vaca­tion from social media.”

Good idea, though I doubt many of us can mim­ic the wide range of vocal styles the large­ly self taught Vin­cent does, from  Muse’s lead singer Matt Belamy’s fabled high notes to the late Joe Strummer’s extreme­ly Eng­lish punk atti­tude to Janis Joplin at her most unfet­tered.

He also dis­plays an impres­sive facil­i­ty with a vari­ety of arrange­ments and instru­ments, though a cou­ple of off-hand­ed com­ments in the Mak­ing Of video, below, may not endear him to drum­mers, despite his obvi­ous respect for the essen­tial role per­cus­sion plays in struc­tur­ing his projects.

Var­i­ous ele­ments sug­gest­ed which artist to pair with each bite-sized sec­tion of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” includ­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty of lyrics, notes, and arrange­ments. (“Mama mia” was a no brain­er…as was “Mama, didn’t mean to make you cry.”)

By def­i­n­i­tion, the mul­ti-style “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” required him to look beyond his own per­son­al favorites for artists to high­light, a process he applies to all of his mash ups. As he said in a 2015 inter­view with Radio Met­al:

Obvi­ous­ly I don’t lis­ten to Enya in my free time, I don’t go and put on a Gre­go­ri­an chant and lis­ten to it to relax. If I’m going to put an artist in there, it’s because I have some kind of respect for them in some way… At first my inten­tion was to pro­mote my busi­ness and now my inten­tions are to show that there are dif­fer­ent ways that a song can be heard and that there’s noth­ing wrong with lik­ing dif­fer­ent things. You shouldn’t be afraid of what you don’t under­stand. Just because some­one is growl­ing doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a way of express­ing a song, there is real­ly noth­ing else to it.

His “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” trib­ute is com­prised of over 1800 care­ful­ly labelled tracks, an inspir­ing dis­play of dig­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion as well as tech­ni­cal prowess.

While some of Vincent’s cho­sen 42—David Bowie, Dream The­ater—did cov­er “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in its entire­ty, an unfor­tu­nate side effect of his imper­son­ations are the way they whet our appetite for full cov­ers we’ll nev­er get to enjoy from the likes of John­ny Cash, Prince, Frank Sina­tra, Aretha Franklin….

Ulti­mate­ly, no one can hold a can­dle to the orig­i­nal, but there’s no harm in try­ing.

Read­ers, do you have a favorite from the line up below? Any­one you wish you could add to the list?

01. Queen

02. Me

03. The Chordettes

04. John­ny Cash

05. David Bowie

06. Ozzy Osbourne

07. Frank Sina­tra

08. Sam Cooke

09. Boyz II Men

10. Daft Punk

11. Janis Joplin

12. Scott Joplin (King Of Rag­time)

13. Skrillex

14. Hen­drix (Michael Winslow Ver­sion)

15. Ken­ny G

16. Bob­by McFer­rin

17. Star Wars

18. N.W.A.

19. Kendrick Lamar

20. Sys­tem Of A Down

21. Elvis Pres­ley

22. BOLLYWOOD

23. Bad Reli­gion

24. Bruno Mars

25. Death Grips

26. Chuck Berry

27. Michael jack­son

28. The Clash

29. Ray Charles

30. Aretha Franklin

31. Sog­gy Bot­tom Boys

32. Death

33. ABBA

34. Ghost

35. Muse

36. Vitas

37. Medieval Music

38. Frankie Val­li and the Four Sea­sons

39. Tool

40. Prince

41. Nir­vana

42. Dream The­ater

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Played by 28 Trom­bone Play­ers

Watch the Brand New Trail­er for Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the Long-Await­ed Biopic on Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Lenny Bruce Archive: Brandeis Digitally Preserves the Legacy of the Pathbreaking Comedian

in Archives, Comedy | October 24th, 2018

Edgy, smart, aggres­sive, unapolo­get­i­cal­ly Jew­ish, Lenny Bruce mixed Yid­dishisms, hip­ster slang, col­or­ful terms for var­i­ous sex acts, and social, polit­i­cal, and reli­gious satire in a high-wire impro­visato­ry act he thought of as “ver­bal jazz.” Mar­ket­ed as a “sick come­di­an,” Bruce got his start play­ing strip clubs, and end­ed up—bitter, defeat­ed, black­list­ed, and addicted—ranting and read­ing court tran­scripts from his var­i­ous obscen­i­ty tri­als. It was a sad end to a bril­liant and too-short career.

When Bruce died of an over­dose at 40, “his wid­ow and their daugh­ter,” Kit­ty, “start­ed archiv­ing all that he had left behind,” notes NPR. Now that archive resides at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, acquired in 2014 by librar­i­an for archives and spe­cial col­lec­tions Sarah Schoe­mak­er. An episode of The Kitchen Sis­ters Present pod­cast called “The Keep­ers” tells the sto­ry of that col­lec­tion, kept for decades in Kitty’s attic, with back­up copies in Michi­gan and L.A. in case of fire. “10 lin­ear feet” of mate­r­i­al, as Kit­ty Bruce remem­bers it.

The sto­ry of that archive involves not only Bruce’s daugh­ter and Shoe­mak­er but also one of Bruce’s biggest cham­pi­ons, Hugh Hefn­er, his daugh­ter Christie, and his lawyer Mar­tin Gar­bus. It also fea­tures Steve Krief, who wrote the first Ph.D. the­sis on Bruce. When Krief vis­it­ed Kit­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, she told him “you know what I don’t know what I’m going to do with my father’s things. They’re going to get destroyed.” Krief advised her to call Hefn­er, who even­tu­al­ly made a dona­tion to Bran­deis to fund the archive.

Some of the mate­r­i­al, the col­lec­tion notes, “has been pre­vi­ous­ly released in edit­ed form. Most of these record­ings are of Lenny Bruce’s stand-up com­e­dy per­for­mances…. Some of the record­ings are of a per­son­al nature, such as the ‘phone let­ters’ and pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions between Bruce and his friends and fam­i­ly.” At the collection’s site, you can hear frus­trat­ing­ly short, 10-sec­ond clips of sev­er­al rou­tines, but to hear the tapes in full, you need to con­tact the uni­ver­si­ty and set up an in-per­son appoint­ment. But the archive is ful­ly open to the pub­lic, and Bruce’s con­sid­er­able lega­cy is secure. Note: you can hear some longer record­ings on this page: Click here and then scroll down.

It’s a lega­cy that real­ly should be bet­ter known. Bruce con­sid­ered him­self “a sol­dier fight­ing for the Con­sti­tu­tion” and against gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship. With­out him, it’s hard to imag­ine the careers of George Car­lin or Richard Pry­or ever hap­pen­ing, and he even left his imprint on Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture, as Gar­bus tells it. At his obscen­i­ty tri­al in New York, for which he was giv­en two years pro­ba­tion, a sen­tence only over­turned after his death, Philip Roth sat in the court­room. Roth lat­er said that with­out Bruce, he couldn’t have writ­ten Portnoy’s Com­plaint.

“Lenny broke down so many bar­ri­ers,” says Gar­bus, and though his humor may seem tame today—though his com­e­dy still holds up—in the ear­ly 1960s few peo­ple dared to say the things he did, the way he did. Bruce railed against the hyp­o­crit­i­cal puri­tanism of Amer­i­can cul­ture and paid a heavy price for telling truths we might take for grant­ed now—and many we still don’t want to hear. (See Dustin Hoff­man doing one of Bruce’s more seri­ous bits above in a clip from the 1974 Bob Fos­se biopic Lenny.) Browse the con­tents of the Lenny Bruce Audio Files here and learn more about Bruce’s life and influ­ence at his offi­cial web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Bill Hicks’ 12 Prin­ci­ples of Com­e­dy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The 10 Commandments of Chindōgu, the Japanese Art of Creating Unusually Useless Inventions

in Art, Comedy, Technology | October 11th, 2018

Back in the 1990s I’d often run across vol­umes of the Unuse­less Japan­ese Inven­tions series at book­stores. Each one fea­tures about a hun­dred osten­si­bly real Japan­ese devices, pho­tographed and described with a dis­arm­ing straight­for­ward­ness, that mash up oth­er con­sumer prod­ucts in out­ward­ly bizarre ways: chop­sticks whose attached minia­ture elec­tric fan cools ramen noo­dles en route to the mouth; a plas­tic zebra cross­ing to unroll and lay across a street at the walk­er’s con­ve­nience; an invert­ed umbrel­la attached to a portable tank for rain­wa­ter col­lec­tion on the go. Such things, at once plau­si­ble and implau­si­ble, turn out to have their own word in the Japan­ese lan­guage: chindōgu (珍道具), or “curi­ous tool.”

“There’s an essence to chindōgu that can’t be ignored,” writes Michael Richey at Tofugu, where you can view an exten­sive gallery of exam­ples. “They need to be use­ful, but only just so. Some­thing peo­ple could use, but prob­a­bly won’t because of shame,” a famous­ly pow­er­ful force in Japan­ese soci­ety.

They also adhere to a set of prin­ci­ples laid down by Ken­ji Kawaka­mi, for­mer edi­tor of the coun­try house­wife-tar­get­ed mag­a­zine Mail Order Life, who first revealed chindōgu to Japan by show­ing off his pro­to­types in the back pages. These ten com­mand­ments of chindōgu are as fol­lows:

  1. A Chindōgu Can­not be for Real Use — They must be, from a prac­ti­cal point of view, use­less.
  2. A Chindōgu Must Exist — A Chindōgu must be some­thing that you can actu­al­ly hold, even if you aren’t going to use it.
  3. There must be the Spir­it of Anar­chy in Every Chindōgu — Chindōgu inven­tions rep­re­sent the free­dom to be (almost) use­less and chal­lenge the his­tor­i­cal need for use­ful­ness.
  4. Chindōgu Tools are for Every­day Life — Chindōgu must be use­ful (or use­less) to every­one around the world for every­day life.
  5. Chindōgu are Not for Sale — Chindōgu can­not be sold, as this would go against the spir­it of the art form.
  6. Humor is Not the Sole Rea­son for Cre­at­ing a Chindōgu — Even if Chindōgu are inher­ent­ly quirky and hilar­i­ous, the main rea­son they are cre­at­ed is for prob­lem solv­ing.
  7. Chindōgu are Not Pro­pa­gan­da — Chindōgu are, how­ev­er, inno­cent and made with good inten­tions. They should only be cre­at­ed to be used (or not used).
  8. Chindōgu are Nev­er Taboo — Chindōgu must adhere to society’s basic stan­dards.
  9.  Chindōgu Can­not be Patent­ed — Chindōgu can­not be copy­right­ed or patent­ed, and are made to be shared with the rest of the world.
  10. Chindōgu Are With­out Prej­u­dice — Every­one should have an equal chance to enjoy every Chindōgu.

These prin­ci­ples result­ed in the kind of inven­tions that drew great fas­ci­na­tion and amuse­ment in their home coun­try — you can watch a short Japan­ese tele­vi­sion broad­cast show­ing Kawaka­mi demon­strate a few chindōgu above — but not only there. The Unuse­less Japan­ese Inven­tions books came out in the West at just the right time, a his­tor­i­cal moment that saw Japan’s image shift from that of a fear­some inno­va­tor and eco­nom­ic pow­er­house to that of an inward-look­ing but often charm­ing nation of obses­sives and eccentrics. Of course such peo­ple, so West­ern think­ing went, would come up with fash­ion­able ear­rings that dou­ble as earplugs, a cup hold­er that slots into a jack­et pock­et, and shoes with toe-mount­ed brooms and dust­pans.

Kawaka­mi has con­tin­ued to invent and exhib­it chindōgu in recent years, and even now his work remains as ana­log as ever. “There’s always some process in ana­log prod­ucts, and these process­es them­selves can be their pur­pose,” he told the Japan Times in a 2001 inter­view. “If you look at dig­i­tal prod­ucts, they all iso­late peo­ple and leave them in their own small world, depriv­ing them of the joy of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with oth­ers… I can’t deny that they make life more excit­ing and con­ve­nient, but they also make human rela­tion­ships more shal­low and super­fi­cial.” Those wise words look wis­er all the time — but then, you’d expect that degree of insight into 21st-cen­tu­ry life from the man who may well have invent­ed the self­ie stick.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Tsun­doku,” the Japan­ese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the Eng­lish Lan­guage

“Inemuri,” the Japan­ese Art of Tak­ing Pow­er Naps at Work, on the Sub­way, and Oth­er Pub­lic Places

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A Liv­ing Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Oth­er Epic Cor­po­rate Fails

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Banksy Shreds His $1.4 Million Painting at Auction, Taking a Tradition of Artists Destroying Art to New Heights

in Art, Comedy, Life | October 8th, 2018

The first time van­dals defaced his sculp­ture, Dirty Cor­ner, at Ver­sailles, artist Anish Kapoor wrote an essay in which he con­sid­ered his options:

Should the paint that has been thrown all over the sculp­ture be removed? Or should it remain and be part of the work? Does the polit­i­cal vio­lence of the van­dal­ism make Dirty Cor­ner “dirt­i­er”? Does this dirty polit­i­cal act reflect the dirty pol­i­tics of exclu­sion, mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, elit­ism, racism, Islam­o­pho­bia?

The ques­tion I ask of myself is: can I, the artist, trans­form this crass act of polit­i­cal van­dal­ism and vio­lence into a cre­ative act? Would this not be the best revenge?

Some­times artists are the ones behind the van­dal­ism.

Ai Wei­wei starred in a 1995 black-and-white pho­to trip­tych that doc­u­ments his inten­tion­al destruc­tion of a Han Dynasty urn from his pri­vate col­lec­tion.

Broth­ers Jake and Dinos Chap­man pur­chased a mint con­di­tion set of Goya’s The Dis­as­ters of War, painstak­ing­ly re-ren­dered the vic­tims’ heads as grotesque­ly cute, col­or­ful car­toons, and exhib­it­ed the altered etch­ings under the title Insult to Injury.

Robert Rauschen­berg sought and received per­mis­sion to erase a draw­ing that his fel­low Abstract Expres­sion­ist Willem de Koon­ing had giv­en him, at his request.

Cer­tain­ly, artists of all stripes have been known to erad­i­cate their own work in fits of pique, pas­sion, and self-reproach.

But until last week, no artist had ever van­dal­ized their own work with such a dis­pas­sion­ate, pre-med­i­tat­ed sense of fun as Banksy, the anony­mous clown prince of street art and mas­sive scale pranks.

As you’ve like­ly heard by now, with­in sec­onds of his icon­ic Girl With Bal­loon (2006) sell­ing at Sotheby’s for £1,042,000—$1.4 million—the paint­ing began to self-destruct, thanks to a cus­tom-built shred­der the artist had pre-loaded into its frame.

No one seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­tressed about it.

Auc­tion atten­dees quick­ly scram­bled to cap­ture the moment with their cell phones.

Auc­tion­eer Oliv­er Bark­er looks on in admirably mild con­fu­sion.

No self-appoint­ed hero rushed for­ward to jam the works with an umbrel­la or broom han­dle.

The as-yet-uniden­ti­fied buy­er was not in the room, no doubt to their ever-last­ing regret. Imag­ine los­ing out on those brag­ging rights!

While Sotheby’s and the buy­er ham­mer out their unprece­dent­ed next steps, some art experts have stat­ed that it would be pos­si­ble, giv­en the clean geom­e­try of the cuts, to restore the can­vas.

Though who would want to, giv­en the spec­u­la­tion that this stunt imme­di­ate­ly increased the val­ue of the work, any­where from 50% to near dou­ble the pur­chase price?

Per­haps the buy­er will choose to fin­ish the job and sell it off strip-by-strip.

Office sup­ply stores will see an uptick in shred­der sales to ven­dors sell­ing Banksy knock-offs sten­cilled on sub­way maps.

Sotheby’s senior direc­tor, Alex Branczik, insist­ed that no one there was in on the joke, but The New York Times smells a rat:

The frame would pre­sum­ably have been rather heavy and thick for its size, some­thing an auc­tion house spe­cial­ist or art han­dler might have noticed. Detailed con­di­tion reports are rou­tine­ly request­ed by the would-be buy­ers of high-val­ue art­works. Unusu­al­ly, this rel­a­tive­ly small Banksy had been hung on a wall, rather than placed by porters on a podi­um for the moment of sale. 

The fact that Girl with Bal­loon was the final item on the block is either a great piece of luck, or a bit of can­ny stage man­age­ment on the auc­tion house’s part. Recap­tur­ing the atten­dees’ atten­tion after that stunt would be an uphill bat­tle.

It’s doubt­ful that buy­ers will shy away from Sotheby’s as a place where high­ly val­ued art­work starts to devour itself the moment the gav­el comes down. That kind of light­ning strikes but once.

What may cir­cle back to bite the ven­er­a­ble firm in its well padded rear is the ease with which some­one in the crowd was able to acti­vate the may­hem, using a device con­cealed in his bag. What’s worse, lax secu­ri­ty or maybe lying about fore­knowl­edge of the prank? It’s hard not to raise those as pos­si­bil­i­ties.

The man with the bag was escort­ed out. Not even the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists are peg­ging him as Banksy.

As for the steady-hand­ed fel­low anoth­er attendee caught calm­ly zoom­ing in on his phone from the per­fect angle… well, let’s just say the tabloids have picked up on his resem­blance to Robin Gun­ning­ham, oft thought to be Clark Kent to Banksy’s Super­man.

Banksy’s post-mortem, unlike Kapoor’s, does not sug­gest a man tor­tured by unre­solved ques­tions.

“A few years ago I secret­ly built a shred­der into a paint­ing, in case it was ever put up for auc­tion,” he wrote on his Insta­gram. “Going, going, gone.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Robert Rauschen­berg Asked Willem De Koon­ing for One of His Paint­ings … So That He Could Erase It

Watch Dis­ma­land — The Offi­cial Unof­fi­cial Film, A Cin­e­mat­ic Jour­ney Through Banksy’s Apoc­a­lyp­tic Theme Park

Pat­ti Smith Presents Top Web­by Award to Banksy; He Accepts with Self-Mock­ing Video

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Joy of Experiencing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reaction Videos

in Comedy, Life, Music, Web/Tech | October 1st, 2018

Remem­ber when you first encoun­tered Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”?

I sus­pect many of us don’t. It’s not the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. Nor does it take long for Fred­dy Mer­cury’s soar­ing vocals and mon­u­men­tal lyrics to leach into the blood stream, cre­at­ing the impres­sion that we were born know­ing every note, every word, every stag­ger­ing tran­si­tion…

(Note to those unfa­mil­iar with this impos­si­ble to cat­e­go­rize 1975 mas­ter­piece: Go give it a lis­ten RIGHT NOW, while the rest of us wait for you here. Here’s the offi­cial video. But first, set up what­ev­er equip­ment you need to film your reac­tion in real time, as Penn­syl­va­nia based YouTu­ber AFRO REACT, does above.)

He’ll def­i­nite­ly remem­ber where he was when he first heard this won­der­ful, sem­i­nal song, as will over 1000 view­ers, most of whom gave him an encour­ag­ing thumbs up.

So what if he mis­pro­nounces both “bohemi­an” and “rhap­sody”?  That he’s unclear whether Queen is the name of the singer or the band? He can cringe later…or not. Such doc­u­ment­ed boo boos may be a gen­er­a­tional haz­ard, the way crimped and moussed 80s hair was for mine.

(I was sur­prised, and grate­ful, that nei­ther he, nor any of the video reac­tion mas­ters fea­tured today, sniped at the ridicu­lous coif­fures of the artists they were watch­ing.)

Per­haps AFRO REACT’s appre­ci­a­tion will lead him to inves­ti­gate those unfa­mil­iar words and more: Scara­mouche, Bis­mil­lah, fan­dan­go (No, not the pop­u­lar movie time site…)

I appre­ci­at­ed how he con­sult­ed his mom pri­or to lis­ten­ing, to see if she thought he’d enjoy the full song as much as he liked the snip­pet he’d heard in a movie trail­er.

My son nev­er asks my opin­ion like that.

Hold up a sec there, AFRO REACT. Why not leave Mom out of it and just give it a spin (as we used to say)?

I sus­pect what he was real­ly eager to find out was whether she thought this track would be wor­thy of a reac­tion video.

The answer, resound­ing­ly, is yes.

I con­fess that his habit of paus­ing the video to inter­ject his own thoughts was dri­ving me out of my gourd. My son does the same thing.

I have since learned this is more than just a symp­tom of being born into a world where pret­ty much every­thing can be paused and restart­ed at will, at least as far as prac­ti­tion­ers of the reac­tion video arts are con­cerned.

Tak­ing fre­quent breaks like that is a sol­id way to get around copy­right claim when includ­ing the offi­cial videos along­side the reac­tion. (Oth­er tech­niques include low­er­ing the vol­ume while offer­ing one’s response or fast for­ward­ing 5 sec­onds a cou­ple of times per minute.)

I sus­pect many old­er fans will feel a lump at the 4:15 mark, as the appre­cia­tive first-timer mus­es, “This man has a beau­ti­ful voice. Like, what hap­pened to him?”

Ask your moth­er, kid.

The real treat comes at 6:15. Scara­mouche, scara­mouche, what­ev­er our young lis­ten­er was expect­ing, it sure­ly wasn’t that!

Thus­ly anoth­er Queen fan is forged. Just a few days ago, he shared his vir­gin response to “Under Pres­sure (Live at Wem­b­ley)”

Tuscaloosa-based musi­cian Joey Da Prince takes a more under­stat­ed approach to reac­tion videos. Watch­ing him bob from side to side, brow fur­rowed, appre­cia­tive invol­un­tary smiles bloom­ing now and again, reminds me of com­ing home, strip­ping the cel­lo­phane from a just-pur­chased album (or CD) and giv­ing it a good hard lis­ten, eye­balls glued to the lin­er notes.

He only hits pause once, shocked by the open­ing line of the famous first verse:

Mama just killed a man…

Oh, wait a minute. In a just post­ed 25-minute lyric break­down, Joey reveals that he mis­heard that line, and was, under­stand­ably, tak­en aback by the idea of the singer’s moth­er mur­der­ing some­one.

(Mercury’s tech­nique was impec­ca­ble, so let’s take this as proof that com­mas are eas­i­er to see than hear…)

Like AFRO REACT, Joey quick­ly queued up the live ver­sion of “Under Pres­sure”…and “Some­body to Love,” “Fat Bot­tomed Girls,” “We Will Rock You,” the list goes on…

He’s obsessed to such a degree that he’s even filmed his reac­tion to pop cul­ture essay­ist Polyphonic’s The Secrets Behind Fred­die Mer­cury’s Leg­endary Voice, below. This is what life­long learn­ers do.

It’s worth not­ing that Joey Da Prince tried “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” on a commenter’s sug­ges­tion.

At the rate he’s going, he’s going to burn through Queen’s siz­able cat­a­logue pret­ty quick­ly, so toss him some sug­ges­tions, peo­ple!

I’m gonna go out on a limb and nom­i­nate Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights.”

Gamer Qua­max, aka Qua, did not come to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” as a total Queen new­bie. By his own admis­sion, he was some­what famil­iar with “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Cham­pi­ons,” “Anoth­er One Bites the Dust,” and “Under Pres­sure” from their appear­ances in movies and “oth­er pop cul­ture” (which pre­sum­ably does not cov­er some­one else’s reac­tion videos.)

As he lis­tens in an intent for­ward-fac­ing hunch, he seems the most keyed-in to the humor that is a def­i­nite part of this song’s lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence (and pos­si­bly per­for­mance). He laughs mer­ri­ly at the phrase “Mama Mia, Mama Mia” and avails him­self of some tru­ly delight­ful after effects in the edit­ing process. (Those in a rush may fast for­ward to 4:32.)

Final pro­nounce­ment? It’s “dope and fun­ny” and he real­ly liked the tran­si­tions from one musi­cal style to anoth­er.

Wel­come to the Queen Army, Qua­max! You should try lis­ten­ing to “Under…” oh, you already did.

Read­ers, if these young men’s open-mind­ed­ness and open ears have inspired you to shoot a reac­tion video of your own, you’ll find a good primer here.

What haven’t you heard?

And what do you wish you could hear again for the very first time?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hip Hop Fan Freaks Out When He Hears Rage Against the Machine’s Debut Album for the Very First Time

Hear Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals on Their Endur­ing Clas­sic Song, “We Are The Cham­pi­ons”

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Played by 28 Trom­bone Play­ers

Watch the Brand New Trail­er for Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the Long-Await­ed Biopic on Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Jurassic Park Without Dinosaurs: Watch Humans Stare in Amazement at a World Stripped of CGI Creations

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Software, Technology | September 28th, 2018

How many times have you encoun­tered an oth­er­wise per­fect view spoiled by a new­ly erect­ed high rise, a con­struc­tion crane, or a CGI bra­chiosaurus?

Con­stant­ly, right?

Video edi­tor William Hirsch makes light work of Juras­sic Park’s pri­ma­ry attrac­tions’ first appear­ance, lit­er­al­ly eras­ing them from the scene.

Hirsch esti­mat­ed that it took him about a week to get rid of those pesky ‘saurs using noth­ing fanci­er than After Effects’s built in tools, which include the motion track­ing soft­ware Mocha.

It’s equal parts ridicu­lous and love­ly to see humans sud­den­ly thun­der­struck by the unspoiled land­scape they’ve been dri­ving through.

These days, of course, Lau­ra Dern would have to glance up from her phone, not a paper map.

Though it’s not such a stretch to imag­ine Juras­sic Park’s author’s suc­ces­sor, the late Michael Crich­ton’s lit­er­ary heir, hard at work on a dystopi­an nov­el titled Park.

At the time of its release, Juras­sic Park’s dinosaurs were a spe­cial effects game chang­er. Their num­bers were sup­ple­ment­ed by some non-com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ani­ma­tron­ic mod­els, though no doubt Spiel­berg was appre­hen­sive giv­en the way his robot­ic sharks act­ed up on the set of Jaws. The human play­ers may have had more screen time, but the dinosaurs’ 15 min­utes of footage has result­ed in a last­ing fame, extend­ing decades beyond the expect­ed 15 min­utes.

Unex­pect­ed­ly, Hirsch’s dinosaurs, or rather, lack there­of, have gen­er­at­ed the most excite­ment with regard to his project. But his atten­tion to detail is also laud­able. Above, he reveals how he tweaked the access badge dan­gling from the rear view mir­ror of the park’s all-ter­rain vehi­cle.

Are we wrong to think that John Williams’ swelling orig­i­nal score feels more organ­ic in this dinosaur-free con­text? Rivers, trees, and vast amounts of skies have been known to spur com­posers to such heights.

The poten­tial­ly lethal pre­his­toric beasts are out of the way, but that line “We’re gonna make a for­tune with this place” retains an air of omi­nous fore­shad­ow­ing, giv­en the plen­ti­ful nat­ur­al resources on dis­play. Some­times humans can do more dam­age than dinosaurs.

If that feels too intense, you can also retreat to the escapist plea­sures of the orig­i­nal, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cap­ti­vat­ing GIFs Reveal the Mag­i­cal Spe­cial Effects in Clas­sic Silent Films

Game of Thrones: A Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Show’s Visu­al Effects

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Hieronymus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spotted Riding the New York City Subway the Other Day…

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Life | September 21st, 2018

To me, the great promise of home­school­ing is that one day your child might, on their own ini­tia­tive, ride the New York City sub­ways dressed in a home­made, needle­felt­ed cos­tume mod­eled on the ice-skat­ing bird mes­sen­ger from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Temp­ta­tion of St. Antho­ny.

Rae Stim­son, aka Rae Swon, a Brook­lyn-based artist who did just that a lit­tle over a week ago, describes her upbring­ing thus­ly:

Grow­ing up I was home schooled in the coun­try­side by my mom who is a sculp­tor and my dad who is an oil painter, car­pen­ter, and many oth­er things. Most of my days were spent draw­ing and observ­ing nature rather than doing nor­mal school work. Learn­ing tra­di­tion­al art tech­niques had always been very impor­tant to me so that I can play a role in keep­ing these beau­ti­ful meth­ods alive dur­ing this con­tem­po­rary trend of dig­i­tal, non­rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al, and con­cep­tu­al art. I make tra­di­tion­al art­work in a wide vari­ety of medi­ums, includ­ing wood­carv­ing, oil paint­ing, etch­ing, nee­dle felt­ing, and alter­na­tive process pho­tog­ra­phy.

Not every home­school­er, or, for that mat­ter, Wal­dorf stu­dent, is into nee­dle felt­ing. It only seems that way when you com­pare the num­bers to their coun­ter­parts in more tra­di­tion­al school set­tings…

Even the tini­est crea­ture pro­duced by this method is a labor inten­sive propo­si­tion, where­in loose woolen fibers are soaked, soaped, and jabbed with a nee­dle until they come togeth­er in a rough mat, suit­able for shap­ing into the whimsical—or demonic—figure of its creator’s choos­ing.

Stim­son matched her full-head bird mask to the one in the paint­ing by equip­ping it with gloves, a blan­ket cloak, long vel­vet ears, and a leaf­less twig emerg­ing from the spout of its hand-paint­ed fun­nel hat.

An accom­plished milliner, Stim­son was drawn to her subject’s unusu­al head­gear, telling HuffPo’s Priscil­la Frank how she wished she could ask Bosch about the var­i­ous ele­ments of his “beau­ti­ful demon-bird” and “what, if any, sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance they hold.”

The answer lies in art his­to­ry writer Stan­ley Meisler’s Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine arti­cle, “The World of Bosch”:

…a mon­ster on ice skates approach­es three fiends who are hid­ing under a bridge across which pious men are help­ing an uncon­scious Saint Antho­ny. The mon­ster, wear­ing a badge that Bax says can be rec­og­nized as the emblem of a mes­sen­ger, bears a let­ter that is sup­pos­ed­ly a protest of Saint Antho­ny’s treat­ment. But the let­ter, accord­ing to (Bosch schol­ar and author Dirk) Bax, is in mir­ror writ­ing, a sure sign that the mon­ster and the fiends are mock­ing the saint. The mon­ster wears a fun­nel that sym­bol­izes intem­per­ance and waste­ful­ness, sports a dry twig and a ball that sig­ni­fy licen­tious mer­ry­mak­ing, and has lop­ping ears that show its fool­ish­ness. All this might have been obvi­ous to the artist’s con­tem­po­raries when the work was cre­at­ed, but the aver­age mod­ern view­er can only hope to under­stand the over­all intent of a Bosch paint­ing, while regard­ing the scores of bizarre mon­sters and demons as a kind of dark and cru­el com­ic relief.

A field guide to Bosch’s bizarre images in the same arti­cle gives view­ers leave to inter­pret any and all fun­nels in his work as a cod­ed ref­er­ence to deceit and intem­per­ance… per­haps at the hands of a false doc­tor or alchemist!

Not every sub­way rid­er caught the arty ref­er­ence. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, some even refused to acknowl­edge the strange being in their midst. Those folks must not share Stimson’s ded­i­ca­tion to exam­in­ing “that which is unfa­mil­iar, seek­ing out all that is yet unknown to you in both art and life.”

With­in 24 hours of its Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­i­ty adven­ture, the one-of-a-kind demon-bird cos­tume was sold on Etsy.

(Holler if you wish Stim­son had kept it around long enough to take a spin on the ice at Rock­e­feller Cen­ter or Bryant Park, where the major­i­ty of patrons would no doubt be glid­ing around in igno­rance that, as per Meisler, Bosch equat­ed skates with fol­ly.)

See more of Rae Stimson’s nee­dle-felt­ed cre­ations, includ­ing a full-body alien robot cos­tume and a sculp­ture of author Joyce Car­ol Oates with her pet chick­en in her Etsy shop.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a New York City-based home­school­er, author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her at The Tank NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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