Music is an incredibly powerful medium in the media. Used to strengthen emotion, link us to the metaphysical, and particularly the physical aspects of our world. It’s a drug, and we love it. Melodies, chords, beats, harmonies, time signatures, that one note, and line; the motif after you press pause on your iPod that circles your head for the rest of the day. Musicians are artists, and the only difference between them and their visual counterpart is that they have the potential of getting paid a fuck load of money before they die - and arguably: rightly so.
With the introduction of the music video, and MTV, we see a potentially incredible step forward in music. Ever since the 1980’s, music has been formally married with images, videos, and now fast cars and loose women. Putting the latter aside, the music video is not only a financial benefit for the artist, but it is also a fantastic tool. A nice video to refer to here, even though it’s pre-MTV, is Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Directed by Alan Parker, a founding member of The Director’s Guild, the 90 minute film makes use of vivid, ambiguous metaphorical imagery - not unlike that found in good literature. Not only this, but it’s also exercised with almost no dialogue - a story completely driven by the music of Pink Floyd. Now for the pretentious bit: the film is completely based upon the existentialist philosophical work, The Wall, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Suddenly, seemingly meaningless rock and roll doesn’t seem so meaningless anymore. Maybe, just maybe, it’s artistic.
2010 sees the release of ODDSAC by Animal Collective, the revered avant-garde musicians from New York City, definitely the new Paris in terms of the art world. The film, also 90 minutes long, also lacking dialogue (and, incidentally, a coherent plot), also driven completely by Animal Collective’s music, is a collaboration with visual artist Danny Perez. It’s difficult to describe Perez’s work. It’s the stimulation of the eye with various textures, aural and physical, into a solid, sometimes frightening, environment. When asked where he got his inspiration from, he replied “I'm reminded of a low-scale abortion clinic in my neighbourhood where the main practitioner is being charged with various counts of gross misconduct, the idea of the ultimate womb being damaged by what it was creating...” Destruction at its core. So, what better place to exhibit such a show than at the Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side alongside the works of Kandinsky, Warhol, and Baldessari? Well... none is the answer. The exhibit (well, a ‘site specific performance’ if you must) featured earlier this year in the rotunda of the gallery with white, horned creature, psychedelic video projections dripping from the wall, and the odd addition of the art student who took one too many tab of LSD. Entitled Transverse Temporal Gyrus, the ‘live’ performance of ODDSAC was a stepping stone for the four musicians into a deeper form of expression.
"I don't consider writing a quiet, closet act. I consider it a real physical act. When I'm home writing on the typewriter, I go crazy. I move like a monkey. I've wet myself; I've come in my pants writing." Well then, fuck me once over. It’s no surprise this was written by Patti Smith, that crazy ass heroine (now grandmother) of punk rock. In her free time, Smith not only wrote but also painted... I guess one can assume she found it a “real physical act” as well - oi oi. Her art is executed in an incredibly iconic style, on aged papyrus and stencil, with experts form poetry and spoken word - drawing a huge influence from Allen Ginsberg. She is featured in a permanent collection at Museum Of Modern Art in New York where her visual art is seen as separate to her music and of it’s own merit.
The relationship between the visual and aural spheres of artistic expression is truly everlasting. Radiohead and Stanley Donwood; The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol; The Sex PIstols and Jamie Reid; The Beatles and Peter Blake; Animal Collective and Danny Perez... in all honesty the list could extend all the way down the page. The day should come when I can go to the Tate Modern, plug in, sit down, and listen through a Mogwai album. But, for now, my iTunes is a pretty well stocked gallery, and there are no tourists.
Written by Peter Keffer
Edited by Joe Thornalley
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