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TECHNO&DIY CULTURE
Daniel Rybakken ,
The new media, rising, sembler, James Blake, Fabio Engarato, Kilian Eng, carnovsky, shyukin, Martin Stillhart, fillerkill, Kinetic, Shackleton
STRANGE
01’11
STRANGE MAGAZINE
EDITOR
DISTRIBUTION
Vegard Alsaas
Ole Ødegaard
WeShip Ltd.
WRITERS
PHOTO GRAPH Y
WeCopy Ltd.
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Charles Aldershot Guri Velheim Nils Lie
L AYO U T/ D ES I G N
Caroline Grape I L L U S T R AT I O N S
Francois Percê Peter Grant
ARTICLES
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The New
Media
04
The New Media
25
Indifference
41
Rain comes sideways
48
Life in the freezer
61
I say no
PEOPLE
10
Daniel
Rybakken
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Daniel Rybakken
18
James Blake
25
Kyle McDonald
30
Axel Peemoeller
44
The Spaceape
MONTHLY
20
New
04
1 new Message
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Rising
41
Playlisted
64
Next issue
Movements
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you have 1 new message THANK YOU for purchasing the first issue of Strange. In Strange you should come to expect a further push
in finding the new movements in culture, focusing on the very people who go out there and change it themselves. In this issue the focus is on the the implications of new media and the Internet. sincerely, management.
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one world
This is a map consisting of dots. Each dot represents a location where people has uploaded data to Wikipedia, the worlds largest encycliopedia with it’s 3,5 million user articles. It remains free to use.
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TEXT / OLE-MORTEN Ă˜DEGAARD
The future came yesterday. The Internet has changed our complete view on what a medium is. We can now instantly share our ideas. How does that change the face of modern thinking?
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New media is a broad term in Media Studies that emerged in the later part of the 20th century to encompass the mix of traditional media such as film, images, music, spoken and written word, with the interactive power of computer and communications technology, computer-enabled consumer devices and most importantly the Internet.
LOOKING at new media, it is easy to see that there are some powerful forces driving huge changes across our cultural, our social and even our political landscapes. These points are a broad summation of the impacts. Socially you see experts coming under pressure from new voices who are early adopters of new technology. (Reference today; Wikileaks.) New organisations emerging to deal with the social, cultural and political changes. There is a struggle to revise the social and legal norms, especially in relation to intellectual property. The concepts of identity and community are transformed. New forms of language come into being. Educators have to change their ways to prepare their students for the newly emerging world. Now while this seems obvious, pause for a moment. This list comes from Elizabeth Eisenstein on the invention of the printing press, and while it speaks to us in our current state, these changes have actually been underway for hundreds and hundreds of years!
“The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.�
reaction to the new medium remains the same. Make no mistake about it though, the impact of the Internet can in the long run prove to outweigh that of the printing press. You can already see the global implications of social netsites like Facebook or Twitter. The latter is said to be a mayor factor in the recent Tunisian revolution. SO THE WORLDS
Adoptation in industry
The new media industry shares an open association with many market segments in areas such as software/video game design, television, radio, and particularly movies, advertising and marketing, through which industry seeks to gain from the advantages of two-way dialogue with consumers primarily through the Internet. The advertising industry has capitalized on the proliferation of new media with large agencies running multi-million dollar interactive advertising subsidiaries. Interactive websites and kiosks have become popular. In a number of cases advertising agencies have also set up new divisions to study new media.
New media design
NEW MEDIA DESIGN constitutes things like
web design and interaction design. Social netsites is the biggest thing currently out there. With it comes a whole world of technology that allows for a mixup between programming and design. People have become more open with their work. Open source and instant sharing allows any designer to collaborate with anyone around the world. New Yorkbased programmer Kyle McDonald is proof of this concept. McDonald has developed a way of 3D scanning with projectors and webcams. The program can then place points in a 3D environment, much like professional animation studios, but with a much rougher output and style. His open source code was then picked up by London-based Sembler which built on his code to direct a music video for the duo Darkstar.
Bill Gates
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Norwegian Design at its finest TEXT: MONDOARC PHOTO: PROMO
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AS ALL GOOD DESIGNERS should, Daniel Rybak-
ken likes to question accepted norms, breaking them down into their essential elements and building up fresh approaches to everyday problems. Though only recently graduated, his work with lighting – or perhaps more ac-
curately, his obsession with light – has brought this young designer to the attention of top name decorative lighting manufacturers, garnered an international design award and more recently led to the completion of an impressive lighting installation in Stockholm, Sweden.
DAYLIGHT ENTRANCE. Photos are taken from Rybakkens commisioned installation in an office building in Stockholm. The over 3000 LED lights give an illusion of daylight in an otherwise dark office hallway.
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“I wanted to design the light and not the lampshade�
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Beaming forward
RYBAKKEN’s interest in lighting
was sparked over ten years ago while sitting in the lounge at his mother’s house in Oslo. He was intrigued by the way the ambience of the room could change from pleasant and airy during the day, to restrictively claustrophobic by night. By placing a fluorescent lamp behind the lounge’s closed curtains, he experimented with recreating the daytime feel of the room, which was more usually lit at night by a couple of traditional incandescent lamps. He concluded that by introducing false daylight he was creating the suggestion of a wider world behind the curtain, he was able to establish a conncection between his mother’s lounger and the wider world beyond – introducing a psychological sense of space. Rybakken started to think about how he could create a lighting object that would suggest extra space, rather than highlighting the limitations of the existing room. He wanted to step away from the reductive approach of most decorative lighting.
Recognition
His first success came with the creation of Daylight Comes Sideways*, a wallmounted panel that used 1,100 LEDs behind a frosted screen to simulate daylight falling through a blurred semi-transparent ‘window’. By programming these dimmble LEDs, dynamic artificial shadows were made to move across the screen. The mesmeric effect impressed the judges for the 2007 Red Dot Awards and it was named Best of the Best in the Design Concept category. Next Rybakken looked at the shadows cast by direct light. The Subconscious Effect of Daylight is a table into which a projector has been fitted. Light is thrown onto the floor in a pattern that mimics the shadows that might be cast if daylight were to fall onto the piece. It was a prototype of The Subconscious Effect of Daylight that was seen by an art consultant working for Sweden’s largest property management company, Vasaskronan AB. Vasserkronan were in the process of redeveloping Vasagartan 7, an
old 1970’s office building in central Stockholm, and wanted to commission a light art installation for the entrance lobby and the three-storey stairwell which was set to replace the already exisiting elevator shaft.
Vasagatan Project
This allowed Rybakken to try a new design, bringing together the LED backlighting of Daylight Comes Sideways* with the illusion of direct sunlight created by The Subconscious Effect of Daylight and incorporating them directly into the architecture of the building. Using over 6,000 OSRAM Backlight LEDs (more commonly used in commercial signage), Rybakken created a series of parallelogrammic LED sheets mounted on aluminium frames. These were installed behind the Corianpanelled walls of the lobby and stairwell - placed at regular intervals rising through the three storeys. Rybakken also hopes to translate the Daylight Entrance concept into a marketable, out-of-the-box product for smaller scale installations. As work has already brought him to the attention of big name manufactures, like Artemide it seems certain we will be hearing more from Daniel Rybakken in the future. 13
RIGHT A num m N G L E M I R ROR: ir A t h e re r o r w a s a n flectio u n ex p b y p r o d u c t n e c te d of an Right a n d s aes An ha a lu m i these gle mirror c dows cast o t h et ic d im e eleme ontinu n surr nt s a s oundin n s io n , es this ing th integr e wall g wall theme al t s. c re a t e , s the il o the desig incorporati n n. Cur lusion ve s to g of disp uchension in spa ce.
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m irla s s a n d o lo re d g in aligment c e h T : placed M IR RO R objects l a w a re T IN T E D eperate s a s p a c ia irrors. o s tw te a re c m r ror are is la h u o th e r. T seen with reg to e a c h erwise th o t o n ness
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Into the Dark: Interview
Twenty-one-year-old Londoner James Blake makes dubstep music, but he’s not your typical dank, dark dubstep dude. His songs creep forward and there’s lots of heavy bass, yes, but there’s also a unique and playful soulfulness to Blake’s tracks, which often feature his own singing voice slowed down by intense digital effects.
TEXT: PITCHFORK PHOTO: PROMO
Blake is currently busy lining up new releases and talking with labels, all while getting ready for his final performance at Southeast London’s Goldsmiths University, where he’s studying contemporary music. So far, he’s released the single ”Air & Lack Thereof” on Hemlock along with the recent Bells Sketch EP on Hessle. He’s also got a few impressive remixes for sonic brethren Untold and Mount Kimbie (who he performs with live), and some unreleased rewrites of hip-hop tunes like Lil Wayne’s ”A Milli” and Snoop Dogg’s ”Drop It Like It’s Hot” under the moniker Harmonimix. And that’s only the beginning. The ambitious producer has an R&B-sampling EP due out on R&S this month as well as a more ”introspective” release in the pipeline that’s based on Macbook recordings of his singing and piano playing. In the following interview, we chatted with Blake about his ”ultimate calling,” D’Angelo’s spirituality, and Lil Wayne’s loneliness/sadness.
Pitchfork: Your music contains elements of dubstep, but it’s unique from other artists within that genre. James Blake: I don’t mind people calling it dubstep, but if somebody wants to call it something else, I’ve got no problem with that either. The beauty it is that if you try and write in a certain way, it goes through this kaleidoscope and comes out as something completely different. I’ve also been doing stuff as Harmonimix, which is me putting a spin on R&B or hip-hop tunes. So I tried to write hiphop but it came out sounding completely warped and quite excitable. Pitchfork: I’ve heard your Harmonimix remix of Lil Wayne’s ”A Milli” (embedded below). Why did you redo that track specifically? JB: I just wanted to make Lil Wayne sing. I came across the vocal and I actually only really heard the original after I did the remix. When I was writing the remix, I wanted to bring out the sadness and loneli-
ness in his voice, but when I play it out at clubs people go mad to it, so there’s no right way to look at it. Pitchfork: It’s funny, when people like Lil Wayne or Kanye West use Auto-Tune it sometimes sounds like the sloweddown vocal samples you use in your songs. JB: I think we’ll look back on Auto-Tune as an effect. Sometimes it’s just the only way that you can achieve a certain sound. I can sing, but I like to treat my vocals anyway. I can’t distort my voice without the use of a distortion unit, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing something unnatural. Pitchfork: I originally assumed most of the effected vocals on your songs were based on samples, but a lot of them are actually your own voice, right? JB: Yeah, all of the vocals on The Bells Sketch EP are me. They’re just chop ups of various things, like me playing the piano and singing. But I have an upcoming EP on R&S
which features almost solely R&B samples from people like Aaliyah, Brandy, and R. Kelly, though they’re not that recognizable. I went through a phase of wanting to sample stuff to see what kind of quality music I could make out of something that is essentially a quite tired technique. And I’m a sucker for hearing recognizable samples just as much as anyone else and I’d like to put my own spin on that. Maybe it’s cathartic, too. Like I remember when ”Ignition (Remix)” by R. Kelly came out and just being absolutely embarrassed to love it. For me, it’s an exorcism of all those old melodies and voices. Pitchfork: ”Ignition (Remix)” is a classic song. Do you still feel guilty for liking it? JB: No, because now it’s cool. I always loved Destiny’s Child and R. Kelly but, for a lot of people, maybe it takes 10 years for pop to become cool. The other day I played the original ”Bills, Bills, Bills” during a DJ set and people
loved it. The production was so tight in that Timbaland era. Those “ tunes sound better in clubs than dance music that is made for clubs today. Pitchfork: I read that you’re a big fan of D’Angelo’s Voodoo. What is it about that album that stands out to you? JB: I’m not a spiritual person, but that album is deeply spiritual. It gives you a real insight into his mood at the time. And there’s something about the male falsetto that I’m really interested in. And when he just played piano and sung, he was incredible. That’s what I wanted to do-- play the piano and sing. Nowadays, although I’m making this heavy dance music, I sometimes just sit down at the piano and just sing. It’s like that’s my ultimate calling. It’s a strange feeling to have a lot of electronic music out when all you really want to do is sing. I have a lot of piano music ready, but none of it is released so far. My debut comes out on the 7th February 2011 in Europe.
KLAVIERWERKE EP. This photo has been used on several of Blake’s releases, including the debut LP.
“I have an upcoming EP which features almost solely R&B samples from people like Aaliyah and R. Kelly.”
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Rising:
new movements TEXT: OLE ØDEGAARD
What’s going on out there? We reveal this month’s favorite up and coming designers and artists.
Kilian Eng Swedish illustrator Kilian Eng has mastered just the right amount of noise to give his images that soft-airbrushed throwback feeling yet he manages to keep a modern contemporary twist to his work. Most his work got you feeling that you are watching an eighties cartoon. www.behance.net/kilianeng
sembler Darkstar’s last year’s single ’Gold’ was backed up by an most impressive video. For it the London-based producers met up with Sembler. Sembler is a design group focused on sound and vision in a spatial context (theatre, music concerts, festivals, installations, etc.) using the latest in human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer vision technologies. Combining their interests itn narrative structures and cutting-edge technology, they construct new forms of story telling, blurring the line between the virtual and the real. www.sembler.co.uk
Shyukin On his website Mischa Shyukin states that he is into design, old cameras, videos and cats. A recent graduate from University in Aachen, he labels himself as an artist. However he is exploring the thin grain between design and art, and design as art. Getting known through new media, he processes and designs digital videos, some of which are really rough. His graduate project ”Shyscapes” however is not. Shyscapes is a dark but beautiful journey through different landscapes with a gloomy design twist. www.shyukin.com
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ILLUSTRATION OLE ØDEGAARD
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The slow rise of noise
We speak to the frontmen of glitch. We take a look at Greg Kowalsky’s musicianship. The DIY scanners of Kyle McDonald. The video for Radiohead’s House Of Cards. Laser cameras. The wavelength.
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