Is God Afraid of Monsters?
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Play the video in Quicktime Format (Highest quality option)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 9:22 AM |
Download and Recording Session |
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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!)
IMPORTANT DOWNLOAD NOTE:
Right click on the icon above to download the file to your desktop. Macintosh users "control" click.
"Manipulations," the re-shoot and constructing the triptych
Saturday, August 11, 2007 8:53 AM |
Photo Shoot |
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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 with Matthew Biro (the subject in the photograph), 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
Saturday, August 4, 2007 2:30 PM |
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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.
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Design Matters Live in SF
Thursday, June 14, 2007 8:00 PM |
Interview |
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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.
Catfish is re-released on a DVD-9 Disc
Friday, April 20, 2007 5:00 PM |
Product Release |
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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."
Play in Flash Video format | Play in Quicktime Format (Highest Quality option)
Video posted of Elliott Earls and The Venomous Sons of Jonah Live at Music Hall
Friday, April 20, 2007 9:00 PM |
Live Performance |
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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.
Play in Flash Video format | Play in Quicktime Format (Highest quality option)
TV Commercial for The Detroit Fringe Festival
Friday, April 13, 2007 10:00 AM |
Tv Commercial - click on the image above to view |
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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)
The first trailer for The Saranay Motel is posted
Friday, January 26, 2007 1:01 PM |
Trailer |
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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 in Flash Video format | Play in Quicktime Format (Highest quality option)
Rick Poynor profiles Elliott Earls in this latest book Designing Pornotopia
Friday, December 8, 2006 10:01 AM |
Book Profile |
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"Developing the discussion of Poynor's previous anthology, Obey the Giant, Designing Pornotopia covers a wide area of subjects, from magazines, billboard advertising, branding, illustration, photography, tattoos, and music graphics to architecture and includes interviews with architect Rem Koolhaas and maverick American graphic designer and performance artist Elliott Earls. Along the way Poynor reassesses the early work of Peter Saville and tracks the unstoppable rise of Stefan Sagmeister, among others. Poynor's concise, riveting prose constantly challenges the reader with strong and thought-provoking arguments. In its timeliness and poignancy, this anthology is a truly indispensable addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in visual culture and its effects on our daily lives."
Elliott Earls writes essay, and is profiled in VJ Audio Visual Art + VJ Culture
Friday, December 8, 2006 10:01 AM |
Book Profile |
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"A major change has taken place at dance clubs worldwide: the advent of the VJ. Once the term denoted the presenter who introduced music videos on MTV, but now it defines an artist who creates and mixes video, live and in sync to music, whether at dance clubs and raves or art galleries and festivals. This book is an in-depth look at the artists at the forefront of this dynamic audio-visual experience."
– from Laurence King Publishers
The book includes a 130 min DVD which combines documentaries, videos and images from live performances by VJs and artists, including: The Light Surgeons, Actop, D-Fuse, UVA, 8gg, Elliott Earls, Coldcut/Hexstatic, Visual Kitchen, etc.
Read a review from We Make Money Not Art here...
-Concerning the importance of the graphic designer within "Video Art and VJ culture." An excerpt from Elliott's Essay:
"The art world lags far behind the design world or the VJ culture with regard to treating the 'film plane' as an aesthetic object with all of its attendant ramifications. Educated sculptors and painters come from traditions that have been slow to adopt new technologies. Go to any art school in America and I guarantee you that the most sophisticated multi-media and video work being done will simply not be in sculpture or painting. It doesn't connect to their history and tradition. 'You blasphemous ass! What about Bill Viola or Nam June Paik or Laurie Anderson or Paul McCarthy or Matthew Barney or ... ?' Given. My point is not so much that the work of Bill Viola or Matthew Barney is not brilliant. My point is specifically that there is something else happening with video art that has been flying completely under radar for quite sometime..."- from Have You Seen the Messiah
The score to The Saranay Motel begins to take shape with the recording of Rearrange yer Face for Free
Thursday, November 9, 2006 8:07 PM |
Update on Film |
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The Saranay Motel is a feature length digital film project written and directed by Elliott Earls. Production continued this week with progress on the score. Two central characters in the film are Horst Schickelgrüber and Les Griffin. Horst and Les are members of a skinhead thrashmetal band eponymously named Horst SchicklegrŸber and the Barbecue Army.
This week the song Rearrange yer Face for Free was written and recorded for incorporation into the score. The music was written, played and recorded by Elliott Earls, with brilliant lyrics and vocals by Joshua-Ray Stephens ( Joshua plays Les in the film). Click here to listen to the track. The entire song is an excellent (and frightening) example of the paradoxical nature of contemporary fundamentalist ideology. The song really embodies this kind of contemporary religious thinking. Below is the last verse of the song...
God is almighty, He don't make mistakes
Keep preachin' atheism
and I'll re-arrange yer face.
Famed Detroit blues man and radio personality Reverend Robert Jones joins the cast of Elliott Earls new film The Saranay Motel
October 27-30, 2006 |
Update on Film |
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Production on The Saranay Motel continued this week with filming at Peoples Records, Walkabout Farm and at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Famed Detroit blues man Reverend Robert Jones joined the cast, and among other things contributed a truly haunting performance of "Amazing Grace." Reverend Jones is host of the public radio program Deep River with Robert Jones. It airs on WDET on Sunday afternoons.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 10:00 AM |
Podcast Interview |
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Elliott Earls spent an hour speaking with Debbie Millman on Design Matters. Design Matters is a live radio program that is similar to Fresh Air, however it focuses on design, branding, and cultural anthropology. Elliott and Debbie discussed Elliott's work philosophy, the Cranbrook design studio and Elliott's film Catfish. f you are a perspective candidate for the Cranbrook grad studio this is suggested listening. After each live broadcast, the show is presented as a podcast on itunes.
Click here to listen. The Podcast is dated 2.14.07.
A selection of recent lectures and workshops held by Elliott Earls.
Venue |
Event |
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Cal Arts - Valencia California |
Lecture |
Monday April 30th at 7PM |
Maine College of Art – Portland, Maine |
Lecture & Workshop |
March 21-24, 2007 |
What Matters, International Design Symposium. |
Lecture |
Saturday March 17th, 2007 |
Otis College of Art and Design |
Lecture |
Friday March 16th, 2007 |
Debate at Mu Gallery concerning VJ Culture |
Debate |
Thursday December 7th, 2006 |
| University of Texas – Austin Texas | Lecture | Friday, September 15th, 2006 |
| University College Designers Association – Austin TX | Keynote address | Saturday, September 16th, 2006 |
| University College Designers Association – Smyrna Tn | Juror | Thursday July 6th, 2006 |
| Art Institute of Chicago – Chicago Il | Lecture | Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 |
| Maryland Institute College of Art, AIGA Portfolio Day – Baltimore, MD | Keynote address | Saturday, April 8th, 2006 |
| Art Directors Club New York City | Juror | February 8-11, 2006 |
| ID Magazine New York City | Juror | Tuesday February 7th, 2006 |
| Oregon State University | Lecture | January 12-14, 2006 |
| Centro Diseño Cine Televisi›n – Mexico City | Lecture & Workshop | November 10-13, 2005 |
For a reasonably complete list of lectures, workshops, exhibitions and performances click here