Today we began our penultimate studio practice brief for the year. We will have multiple weeks on this project with 9 allocated for the module in general, giving me optimism about the ability to fully articulate ideas within the time span. However good time management will be key especially over the Easter research period so I'll need to set out a time plan for at least two of the 3 weeks off.
The task today was to thoroughly select a micro-genre of music from the everynoise website. The genre selected should then be followed up by extensive research, with the intention of becoming an expert in the genre. The micro-genre will then become the focus for the design and production of 3 deliverables:
1. A cassette compilation, with screen printed inlay card and packaging: You must create a compilation of tracks for a cassette tape. The inlay card will be screen printed in 2 colours - either as a 2 colour separation or as an overlay. The choice of paper stock, imagery, colour and typography should be determined by your genre and research.
2. An A1 size Flag: Printed digitally onto fabric or through screenprinting using simple stencils. The method chosen must relate to your chosen micro-genre.
3. An object that celebrates an aspect of genre's specific characteristics: This could be anything political, aesthetic, production methods, audience demographic, key intentions or its connection to place.
So as a starting point I began searching the Everynoise website for genres of interest. It was suggested by Ben that we could pick a genre we haven't heard of before and try to research and brand that. However I know that for me picking something too abstract might mean I lose interest because there is no real drive behind the project. With this in mind I started to pick out my 'obvious choices' of genres that I know and know will have a lot of good research behind them, and then finding sub-genres or similar genres. I started with contemporary artists and genres such as electronica and I looked into synthpop and therefore Swedish synthpop, however in Swedish synthpop the artists I'd heard of tended to be contemporary and therefore fairly contextually boring. However I know 70s/80s synthpop in the UK is a very interesting culture as explored by a number of documentaries. I knew synthpop followed New wave which is another genre I'm interested in and has a very rich interesting history. However again New wave had a host of very very recognisable names listed and is such a big well know genre that my research might be too broad and therefore saturated. As a suggested sub-genre of New wave, No wave appeared, a genre that I have heard mentioned in the past but would necessarily be able to describe or recognise. When viewing the new wave page a few names stuck out as bands I had heard played by King Krule on a 2012 Rinse.fm show, Suicide and Arto Lindsay are artists I've subsequently listened to often sparking an interest in the genre. After briefly comparing the genre to other favourites such as trip hop, wonky and chill hop it was decided that no wave would spark the most interesting contextual research and be an interesting topic to pursue.
No wave was a short-lived avant-garde scene that emerged in the late 1970s in downtown New York. Part of its origin is a reaction against punk rock's recycling of traditionalist rock and roll clichés. No wave musicians would experiment with noise, dissonance and atonality in addition to a variety of non-rock genres, including free jazz and funk, while often reflecting an abrasive, confrontational and nihilistic worldview. In its latter years, the scene adopted a more playful, danceable vibe inspired by disco, early hip hop and world music sources.
The term "no wave" was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. The movement would last a relatively short time but profoundly influenced the development of independent film, fashion and visual art. Just as the punk movement rejected mainstream culture I find it fascinating that the No wave movement rejected the rejection in a sense and created a new counter genres against sub-genres of the time. I also found a few documentaries to watch which should ease me into the research over the coming days:
- Céline Danhier, Blank City (from the trailers this looks very promising)
- Coleen Fitzgibbon & Alan W. Moore, X Magazine Benefit
- Ericka Beckman, 135 Grand Street, New York, 1979
There is also an already very established link between No wave and graphic designs with artists such as Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, John Fekner and many more. Visual artists played a large role in the no wave scene, as visual artists often were playing in bands, and/or making videos and films, while making visual art for exhibition. An early influence on this aspect of the scene was Alan Vega (aka Alan Suicide) whose electronic junk sculpture predated his role in the music group Suicide. The scene included punk visual artists, graffiti artists, feminist artists, political artists, Xerox artists and performance artists. It will be important to surround myself with artwork from the era not just from the movement in particular, so I can compare and contrast and build a visual understanding of the 1970s.
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