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Chris Cunningham: jaqapparatus1

Redruth

By Redruth
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Redruth Grand Master

Redruth

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"From his formative years sculpting alien heads to his recent "jaqapparatus 1" robotic performance-art installation, seminal music video director-turned-artist Chris Cunningham retraces his varied and critically acclaimed career in this personal, self-directed short. One of an elite group of directors alongside Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Jonathan Glazer who redefined MTV in the 1990s, Cunningham elevated the pop promo to a burgeoning art form with daring and disturbing music videos for the likes of Aphex Twin, Björk and Madonna. While his peers graduated to the big screen, Cunningham went underground, quit making promos and commercials, and spent the best part of a decade experimenting with fusions of film, music, art and technology that culminated in a string of live audio-visual performances at festivals in Japan and Europe. For "jaqapparatus 1", his first installation unveiled last month at the Audi City London high-tech concept store—a shadowy, sci-fi set involving two laser-firing robots locked in what seemed like a brutal mating ritual-cum-war—Cunningham cast two Talos motion-controlled camera rigs as his anthropomorphized protagonists. “Mounted on the robots heads are powerful lasers which they use to attack, repel and communicate with each other,” explains Cunningham, “a kind of duel, a surreal mating display which sees each machine trying to dominate the other."


http://www.nowness.c...m-japapparatus1

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beerwolf Grand Master

beerwolf

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The first post sounds very arty-wank imo. It could be good but I lost interest about half way through and sort of slumbered into an pretencious-art-wank induced hazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze.

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patternoverlap Grand Master

patternoverlap

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most wasted potential of the last decade.

 

i'm afraid i have to agree with this. still love his work though.

 

indeed. would be great to see his work put toward some sort of interesting narrative, but that doesn't seem to interest him much.

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beerwolf Grand Master

beerwolf

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how can you slumber when robots with frickin laser beams are battling eachother? that shit is idm

 

Quite easy I'm afraid. Though not a dead-cert I think I am the least 'idm type' person on this forum. Proof you say! I have only played one computer game in my life, that being Resident Evil 2, and I only played it because...ah its a long boring story. But true. So robots with lasers does send me to sleep I'm afraid. Sorry. I got over that kind of stuff with Star Wars when I was a child. That's not meant to sound conderscending.

 

Yes Mr Beerwolf is definately the least IDM out of all of you. But the music runs deep in my veins and imagination.

 

Yawn.

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ghOsty Grand Master

ghOsty

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What the fuck ever happened to that album full of remixes and originals and video mash-ups he was supposed to be working on following that little stint of touring he did?! I fucking want that! Especially if it is more like his take on Gil Scott Heron's "New York Is Killing Me"... God, I fucking love everything about this video.

 

 

I remember someone saying somewhere once (probably on here) that Cunningham was probably a trust-fund baby, and uses that wealth to fund a lot of his stuff whenever he feels like making something and actually finishing it, I'm inclined to believe it. It would certainly explain how he takes such a long hiatus between projects and still seems to afford quite the budget for the next especially with his habit of starting and abandoning projects.

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Nebraska Grand Master

Nebraska

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most wasted potential of the last decade.

 

i'm afraid i have to agree with this. still love his work though.

 

indeed. would be great to see his work put toward some sort of interesting narrative, but that doesn't seem to interest him much.

 

i don't think it's all his fault. i know cunningham was at one point attached to filming 'neuromancer', and even with gibson's support, that doesn't seem to be happening anymore. i don't think it's "talented wasted" since he seems to really be into his new art thing with grace jones etc. so who knows?

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zazen Grand Master

zazen

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It does seem like wasted talent cos he was all hyped about 10 years ago and then hasn't really done anything

 

So I was thinking 'y no feature films?'

 

But in the linked video he says 'I got into making music and film together and that interested me much more than feature films so thats what I've been doing'

 

On reflection, I'm not sure a Cunningham feature film would necessarilly be good. His frenetic style in 'Come On My Selector' is fun for five minutes, but over 90 minutes wouldn't it be like watching a slightly more classy michael bay film? His creativity works better in shorts I think, he'd have to make too many compromises in a feature film.

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Guest jasondonervan

Guest jasondonervan

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most wasted potential of the last decade.

 

Such a shame that Neuromancer didn't happen. Instead we get a robotic punch and judy show.

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ghOsty Grand Master

ghOsty

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I still want that audiovisual album, but this does look pretty sweet... is it only an installation though or wil he release a DVD like he did for Rubber Johnny?

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blackdust Mentor

blackdust

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Interesting live stuff, i agree with the rest of you he is wasting his talent little by dripping out new stuff every 2-3 years. But his live tour he did was amazing and had some new/unreleased stuff to look at.

 

If he ever did a feature film im sure it would be amazing, he was rumored to be doing one with Samantha morton about 5 years ago, nothing has come of that, like all the other projects .

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