Elliott Earls @ The Apollo Program Blog

Superman Shot Himself Today

Elliott Earls — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:31:30 GMT

Possibly the most moving moment I have witnessed on television was a Meet the Press interview with Aaron Broussard President of Jefferson Parish Louisiana, immediately after hurricane Katrina. I was brought to tears by Mr. Broussards' impassioned plea for help. I was overwhelmed by a sense of rage and empathy. As ridiculous as this may sound, my sense frustration was so profound that I was driven to express this through song. In frustration and sadness I sat down and wrote this simple refrain.

I heard that Superman shot himself today
I guess he finally woke up, and it just blew him away
what should I say to my son when he asks?
It's Killing me...

The video posted above is cut together from footage taken this friday evening at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. The video was shot from stage left by Benjamin Teague the mandolin player in The Venomous Sons of Jonah. The video attempts to show how the song I Heard that Superman Shot Himself Today is incorporated into the performance.

Click here to watch the video...

On a side note
This piece addresses a number of issues that are very important to me and yet potentially problematic within my work. As I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, first and foremost I see my work as a form of cultural criticism. This piece seems to foreground issues that deal with the efficacy of the aesthetic in the social realm. The work is plagued by questions such as: In a very real way how effective is "art" in dealing with political or social issues? Is this piece opportunistic? Does it fetishize tragedy? Does this type of intervention supplant true activism? in other words, if the goal is to be a social agent, wouldn't it be more advantageous to travel to New Orleans and volunteer for real labor?

I believe I have answers for most of these questions. Not to be coy, but I belive the answers are in the work.

The Wolfsonian Museum Lecture

Elliott Earls — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 05:50:42 GMT

After an extremely intense week of work on The Saranay Motel, I spent a few days with the family lounging around the pool. This week as I prepare for a performance at Ball State University, an exhibition at University of Georgia and a lecture at The Wolfsonian Museum, I find myself reexamining my Heroes series. My lecture at The Wolfsonian Museum will deal with the importance of the post world war I avant-garde to contemporary graphic design. The lecture coincides with their John Heartfield exhibition. What I will be attempting to articulate is a vision for contemporary graphic design practice that draws more from John Heartfield than it does from Paul Rand. I will attempt to make a case for work that descends from a genealogy rooted in post world war I art practice and rejects corporate hackerey. Of course I will be using examples from my work as a vehicle for discussion.

The image posted above, first appeared in Emigre magazine as part of a serial examination of the idea of hero worship, as seen through portraiture. In preparation for the Wolfsonian lecture I've been looking at my older work. Click on here to see a larger version of the image.

(Re)shooting "Garage Dentistry"

Elliott Earls — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:34:18 GMT

Kosta Stratigos, Joshua-Ray Stephens, Kei Shiraishi and I spent sunday night attempting to reshoot the "garage dentistry" scene. After a very intense and draining shoot, it was a bit disappointing to role off the HD footage and find problems with the audio and exposure. However as with almost all of the scenes in the film, the set was also used for purely photographic purposes. A suite of large scale photographs is being produced along with the film. These photographs are not the traditional stills drawn from the actual scenes, rather the sets are used to produce a suite of tangentially related photographs. By contrast, this element of the evening – the photo shoot – was a success. The results are posted here.

Ed Fella joins the cast of The Saranay Motel

Elliott Earls — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:52:48 GMT

On sunday afternoon American graphic design legend Ed Fella joined the cast of The Saranay Motel. Ed dropped by the studio for our annual "coney island" lunch, and was persuaded to assume the role of cultural critic M. Lazzard. A brief clip from the shoot is posted above.

The Selection process for triptych #2

Elliott Earls — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:52:38 GMT

Friday was spent at Walkabout Farms shooting HD footage of the Unholy Seer (Joshua-Ray Stephens) in rapture. This morning as Benjamin Teague and Joshua-Ray Stephens sleep, I've begun the process of attempting to systematically evaluate the photographs from Thursday night. The goal is to compose another triptych for The Objects from The Saranay Motel. This composition should relate to triptych #1 as well as the film.

Kei Shiraishi joins the cast. Photo shoot and (Re)constructing the triptych

Elliott Earls — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:49:34 GMT

Last night saw the beginning of the fourth full session of principle photography In a seemingly never ending push to flesh out the narrative arc of The Saranay Motel. Kei Shiraishi joins the cast as a rather impassioned fashion and image consultant. Kei is the gentleman with the yellow gloves in the photo above. The focus of the day was placed on both photography (above), and HD video (below). The shoot continues with a B-roll footage shoot at Walkabout Farms. Images and video from the shoot should be posted in the morning.

Clay on board #1 from The Saranay Motel is completed

Elliott Earls — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:21:33 GMT

Although aproximately fifteen objects from The Saranay Motel exist in various stages of completion within the studio, Neotestudina Rosati 01:11:03:01 is the first outside of the photographs to be completed. Measuring 10"x13" and fabricated from clay on hardboard, this piece appears within the current edit of the film at timecode 01:11:03:01. A larger photograph of the object is posted here.

Information on the complete suite of objects is posted here...

Is God Afraid of Monsters?

Elliott Earls — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:25:52 GMT

During the week of August 21st 2007, Horst Schicklegrüber and the Barbecue Army will enter the studio in an attempt to finish their long anticipated release Is God Afraid of Monsters? This record is the follow up to their underground doom-metal sensation Tyran-O-Coitus Rex. In anticipation of this momentous event, Cash Advance Records has allowed us to release the single Re-Arrange Yer Face Fer Free... fer free. The video above is the video single from the record Tyran-O-Coitus Rex.

Get the MP3 Single Free for a Limited Time Here

Add Re-arrange Yer face Fer Free to your mp3 collection (Fer Free!)

"Manipulations," the re-shoot and constructing the triptych

Elliott Earls — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 13:23:13 GMT

Preparations for Athens Georgia

The images above are from a photo shoot that took place on Sunday July 8th of this year. I've finally had an opportunity to begin to manipulate them. The three smaller images across the top represent the overall final composition (a triptych). The larger image on the bottom is the center photograph reproduced at a larger size. These photographs are the base plates for further digital manipulation. If you look at the original shoot you can get a better handle on where the final image is headed. Each image is 86"x42."

These photographs are actually from the second shoot for this piece. I got excited by the initial photographs but felt that the work could be more powerful. Even though during the first session we shot 900 images, I felt that there were technical issues with image sharpness and formal issues with the tenor of the image. And even though I've begun the digital manipulation of the triptych, I've scheduled a third session for the week of August 21st to make absolutely certain the image is dialed in.

This triptych will be one of the pieces in my upcoming exhibition at the University of Georgia.

October 15th through the 19th of this year I will be in residence at the University of Georgia. The university has planned an exhibition, lecture, workshop and a performance in a local Athens club. I'll post more information here as the date approaches.

Making preparations

Elliott Earls — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:30:00 GMT

I learned a difficult lesson on April 20th of this year during my performance at Detroit's Music Hall. It never quite dawned on me to structure the song order (the "set") based on something as simple as weather a song requires finger picks or not. These are precisely the kind of details that remain elusive in the face of an insane schedule, and the lack of a full dress rehearsal. The Fringe Festival was a festival – hence the name – with about twenty acts performing. This simple fact precluded a full dress rehearsal of a brand new performance. As hilarious as this might sound, repeatedly putting on and taking off five finger picks between songs is a recipe for disaster.

With this in mind I'm currently making preparations for a performance at Ball State University on September 14th, 2007.

I'm working diligently in RealBasic attempting to continue to fine tune the performance piece. Among other things I'm grouping the songs by tuning and picking style. The Music Hall gig utilized the whole band with a special guest vocalist. For the evening at Ball State, I'm restructuring the piece for just two musicians.

The first trailer for The Saranay Motel is posted

Elliott Earls — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 06:01:42 GMT

In December 2005, I spent two days in a flea-bag hotel on Detroit's famed Woodward Avenue with three digital video cameras, three actors, Sean Rhodes, a Range Rover and a grinding wheel. The goal was to produce a short digital film to be incorporated into my latest performance piece. Drawing inspiration from this experience, in late June of 2006 I "retired" to Hilton Head Island South Carolina in order to hammer out a screen play and a plan. Two weeks later with the assistance of Gary Wasserman, I drew together a loose network of stooges, flunkies, aspirant actors, graphic designers, yes-men, filmmakers and itinerant musicians. Over the course of four sun-baked days and five alcohol soaked nights (I was the designated driver), we managed to shoot over twenty hours of digital video footage. During this same four day period, my new band "The Venomous Sons of Jonah" cut two tracks with Timothy Day at Detroit's' Sonic Orchard Studios, Cluck Old Hen - a traditional clawhammer banjo piece - and Can't Nobody Flow. The former track takes this hyper traditional clawhammer sound and fuses it with hip-hop rhymes, beats and late 80's style production.

Over the course of the past two years I've been working diligently on this film this is the first trailer for the film.

For comprehensive information on The Saranay Motel click here...

Play the trailer in Flash Video format

Play the trailer in Quicktime Format (Highest quality option)

30 Second TV Spot for Comedy Central Posted

Elliott Earls — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:34:04 GMT

In an attempt to hype the upcoming Detroit Fringe Festival at Music Hall, I was asked to produce a thirty second TV spot to air on Comedy Central during the John Stewart Show. The spot features a voice over by Gary Veneble. While cutting the commercial to Gary's vocals, I decided that I needed to write additional material for him and incorporate his powerful voice into my latest project. Subsequently, Gary and I have been working together on voiceovers for The Saranay Motel.

Given the extremely short turnaround on the project I brief snippets of footage from Ambient Composition in G and live footage from last years' gig.

Play in Flash Video format

Play in Quicktime Format (Highest Quality Option)

New video posted of The BBQ Army live at Music Hall

Elliott Earls — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:20:45 GMT

In Mike Faulkner's new book VJ Audio Visual Art + VJ Culture. I wrote an essay entitled "Have you seen the Messiah" where I suggest that at the periphery of graphic design culture there resides a kind of "movement" that is just beginning to appear on the mainstream cultural radar. The movement seems to be fueled by refugee's from the service based culture industry. Kids that work at ad agencies, branding firms, record labels, tv stations, graphic design firms and post-production houses, are routinely creating a hybrid form of artdesign that fuses music, sophisticated motion graphics, typography, branding and performance into a cohesive and powerful form that harkens back to the Cabaret Voltaire.

On Saturday Night April 14th, I curated an evening at the Detroit Fringe Festival in an attempt provide a platform for this kind of work. In selecting acts for the evening, I placed the emphasis on performers with a very strong connection to graphic design culture. The evening opened with DJ Kosta Stratigos The Goose Commander on the wheels of steel. Among other things Kosta is an amazing graphic designer and graduate of the design department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. SuperiorBelly then took the main stage with a really beautiful performance piece. After my performance, London based electronic music and video collective D-Fuse closed the evening. Mia Makela a.k.a "Solu" from Barcelona was also supposed to perform, but due to a medical emergency she had to cancel.

Click here to see a brief vignette from my performance. In this clip we find Elliott Earls and the Venomous Sons of Jonah joined on stage by Les Griffin for "Re-arrange Yer Face Fer Free." Les is one half of America's preeminent doom-metal band Horst SchicklegrŸber and the Barbecue Army. Les (and his band) are characters from my latest film The Saranay Motel. Les is played by another amazing designer and comic book artist, Joshua-Ray Stephens. The music was written idiomatically for the film and the performance.

Elliott Earls film "Catfish" re-released as a DVD-9 disc

Elliott Earls — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:15:02 GMT

In 2001 in association with Emigre Inc., I released "Catfish." Part narrative film, part documentary, "Catfish" was an attempt to incorporate motion graphics, typography and spoken word, into a kind of experimental digital film that traced my work from the lab to the stage. Last month in preparation for my performance at Music Hall, I re mastered the DVD as a DVD-9 disc which gave me room to add two new pieces, "Ambient Composition in G" and "The Saranay Motel Trailer."

"Ambient composition in G" (referred to as "ACG" here forward) is a two hour animation and ambient electronic music piece designed for flat panel TVs and LCD computer monitors. In ACG I wrote a two hour electronic down tempo score in the key of G, and micro-edited most of the animations from both of my recent performance pieces into a new work. Given the preponderance of massive flat panel displays within our domestic environments, I see this piece (ACG) as form of contemporary painting.

Click here to see a 30 second clip from ACG...

The new pressing also contains a high resolution version of the trailer for my latest piece "The Saranay Motel."

Elliott Earls on Design Matters Live with Debbie Millman

Elliott Earls — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:07:57 GMT

On June 14th I traveled to San Francisco to be interviewed by Debbie Millman on "Design Matters Live: Life, Love and the Pursuit of Graphic Design." The event was sponsored by Adobe and the S. F. chapter of the AIGA. Before the actual live interview I sat down for a comprehensive pre-interview with producers from Magnet Media who will be working with Debbie and the people at Adobe to produce a fairly comprehensive video podcast/interview. Over the course of the next two months Magnet Media will be working with most of the images and film clips referenced by hosted by Debbie Millman.

I was also interviewed by Debbie on February 11th 2007. The podcast is available here.