Hasta La Ideas

For the video for his new single What’ll It Take, Graham Coxon invited his fans to be the stars…

Coxon requested help via the film below, which he placed on YouTube at the beginning of February. This explained the moves that fans should record themselves making, before uploading their films to Coxon’s website.

The resulting video, shown below, sees the uploaded clips animated into the promo by director Ninian Doff. The project has similiarities with Japanese band Sour’s video for track Hibi no neiro and the crowdsourced video One Frame of Fame for C’mon & Kypski, though the Coxon promo uses the footage in a more unusual manner by the end. Check it out below:

Credits:
Director: Ninian Doff
Producer: Stacy Vaughan
Production Company: Pulse Films
Label: Parlophone
Commissioner: Oliver Hammerton

CR in Print

Thanks for visiting the CR website, but if you are not also reading CR in print you’re missing out. Our March issue is an illustration special with features on Clifford Richards, Pick Me Up, the relationship between illustrators and writers, the making of the cover of the New York Times Magazine and a powerful essay by Lawrence Zeegen calling on illustrators to become more engaged with the wider world and accusing the profession of withdrawing “from the big debates of our society to focus on the chit-chat and tittle-tattle of inner-sanctum nothingness”.

The best way to make sure you receive CR in print every month is to subscribe – you will also save money and receive our award-winning Monograph booklet every month. You can do so here.

On Kawara, One Million Years, installation view at David Zwirner, 2009. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Twenty exhibitions and 70 events, including concerts, films and walks will take place in the north east of England this March as part of the multimedia AV Festival 12. And this year’s theme is ‘as slow as possible’…

From the expansive compositions of Phil Niblock, who’ll be performing The Movement of People Working, to the slow motion car crashes of artist Jonathan Schipper, the latest AV Festival promises to celebrate the beauty of slowness.

Participants are being sought to take part in live readings at the Baltic of On Kawara’s 20 volume work which contains typewritten dates spanning one million years; while the aforementioned Schipper will run two cars into one another, almost imperceptibly, at the Saville Row gallery over the course of several days (it’s a great piece, there are some time lapse films of various installations, here).

Slow, reclaiming forces of nature are also explored in the work of artist Cyprien Gaillard whose films of architectural ruins depict various structures being taken over by plant life. A Slow Cinema season will also screen 20 films devoted to stillness and contemplation from a range of filmmakers including Ben Rivers and Fred Kelemen.

So if you like to take things at a measured pace and appreciate art that indulges a sense of slowness, get along to AV Festival from March 1. For a full, detailed list of exhibitions and events go to avfestival.co.uk.

On Kawara, One Million Years, installation view at David Zwirner, 2009. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Cyprien Gaillard, Real Remnants of Fictive Wars (Part V), 2005 © the artist. Courtesy Laura Bartlett Gallery, London

Mark Formanek, Standard Time, 2010 © the artist

Torsten Lauschmann, House of the Rising Sun (Panoramic Version), 20/08/11 © the artist. Photo © Ruth Clark

Turn your iPhone into a racing car, ice cream van, or river boat with Chris O’Shea’s first app, Makego. Then, if you like, give it to your children to play with…

First off, you will need to download the Makego app and select your vehicle. Then you’re going to need to house that car, van or boat accordingly – a Lego construction for cars is good (see above), while a pencil case makes a great boat. Then you can interact with the drivers via some very cute animations and sound.

There are currently three different modes of transport in the first version of the app with more promised. According to artist and interaction designer O’Shea, the app “encourages fun, open-ended collaborative play between parent and child.”

The racing car, for example, features motion-activated engine noises, a ‘turbo boost’ option, a speedometer and a petrol gauge which you – obviously, I mean, your child – can refuel when the tank is empty.

The ice cream van (above) has a bit more interaction to it as users can also serve customers and work the till, while the river boat model (below) chugs along nicely, lets you feed passing ducks, and even has a tendency to spring a leak mid-journey (leaving you to fix those holes).

Here it is in action:

Download the app at makegotoys.com. Sound and music by Repeat to Fade, repeat-to-fade.net. There’s also a Flickr group where users can add images of their own vehicles, flickr.com/groups/makego.

More of O’Shea’s work at chrisoshea.org.

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. From the meaning of beans to the power of love, the February issue of Creative Review features our 20 favourite slogans of all time and the stories behind them.

What makes a great slogan? We investigate the enduring power of these clever little phrases in our special slogans issue, dedicated to our choices for the top 20 slogans.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

On January 31 five up-and-coming animators were given the chance to have their work run on the digital display at the top of London’s BT Tower thanks to somewhereto_ , a nationwide 2012 Olympics legacy project to help young people in sport, culture and the arts

Somewhereto_ funds ‘ideas and local talent to inspire creativity across the UK’. Its mission is to help young people realise their ideas by providing them with the resources and spaces to do so. The project, which is run by ‘youth engagement agency’ Livity in partnership with Channel 4, ran a contest asking for submissions from young animators for work to appear on what is Europe’s largest digital display. The five young animators chosen were Dean Wright and Emma Wilson, Joe Collins, Lawrence Simpson and Will Adams (more here).

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. From the meaning of beans to the power of love, the February issue of Creative Review features our 20 favourite slogans of all time and the stories behind them.

What makes a great slogan? We investigate the enduring power of these clever little phrases in our special slogans issue, dedicated to our choices for the top 20 slogans.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK,you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

Namechecked on butdoesitfloat and boingboing earlier today, this 1961 reel from motion graphics pioneer John Whitney is well worth a look. Whitney’s home-built analogue computer famously made use of parts from an anti-aircraft gun sight…

Collaborating with Saul Bass on the title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo in 1958 possibly brought Whitney’s work its largest audience.

But since the early 1950s he had been using his homemade animation techniques on TV commercials and, prior to those films, his experimental work in the 1940s (notably Five Film Exercises) had already marked him out as a master of progressive animation.

Whitney produced further title sequences using his analogue computer and founded Motion Graphics Incorporated in 1960 – a year later he compiled a record of his visual effects in the short film, Catalog (below).

According to Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema, Whitney’s experiments with the mechanism of a second world war M-5 anti-aircraft gun director were integral to his creation of such a range of effects. Whitney later reconfigured the mechanism, apparently creating a machine that was 12ft high in the process.

In 1975, embracing the potential of digital effects, Whitney created the motion graphics for this film, Arabesque.

CR in Print

If you only read CR online, you’re missing out. From the meaning of beans to the power of love, the February issue of Creative Review features our 20 favourite slogans of all time and the stories behind them.

What makes a great slogan? We investigate the enduring power of these clever little phrases in our special slogans issue, dedicated to our choices for the top 20 slogans.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.