It’s catch-as-catch-can this Saturday on Ectomo. Strolling through the fields of internet, harvesting what we could, no particular theme presented itself, no one flavor stood out. So today it’s a stew of animation goodness, a hodgepodge of styles and tastes; because sometimes you have to make the best of what’s lying around.
Dr. Tran “Dickable Afternoons”: “Remember those good times at home, in the 1800s, back when you and the neighborhood rowdies would romp around, kicking an old piece of rope? And then Mom would call you inside, where you’d all gather at the dining-room table, while she served up a steaming hot plate of Dr. Tran’s Old Fashioned Peppermint Dickables.”
Ark: In the future a mysterious pandemic has decimated the population of the world. Survivors have retreated to huge ships and set out for uninhabited lands. The exodus has begun, under the leadership of one man.
Log Driver’s Waltz: I was reprimanded for not including this in my Canadian themed SMCs of a few weeks ago, so I include it here now. Chicks dig log drivers.
Strange Invaders: Some couples want to have a baby so badly, they don’t care how they come by it, even if it falls, glowing, from the sky. Watching this, an episode of Invader Zim featuring space aliens who resembled human babies came to mind. Could this have been the inspiration for Vasquez and Co.?
The Tick “The Tick vs. The Tick”: It was mentioned in the ectochat earlier this week that the SMCs needed more Tick, and I agree. In this episode, The Tick and Arthur go to a superhero nightclub. However, it seems that there is already another gentleman who goes by The Tick, and he’s not ready to give up the name. Also, “I’m the Evil Midnight Bomber, What Bombs At Midnight!”
In a few days I will be retracing the path of thousands of ancient conastogas, puttering up Shasta and down Grant’s, charring and grimacing under the Oregon blaze, just to get to my homeland of Seattle, Washington.
It’s very rare that I show my art publicly. After last time, when an angry mob showed up early with torches and pitchforks and ate all the cubical cheese, I had really lost hope in the Seattle art scene. I tried showing down here in the Bay Area, where I now reside, but had to take down early due to hippies protesting a yeti that had climbed one of the campus trees.
It is for this reason that I would be terribly obliged if only you’d find some way to drop in at either one of the art shows I’m launching this weekend.
As a nearly mute, painfully shy child I always dreamed of a future filled with polished chrome, hover-boards, pill food, and high-minded people that knew better than to natter on endlessly. One out of four isn’t bad, even if it’s not quite what I expected.
Ray Bradbury, distinguished author, visionary, and crusader for personal travel via pneumatic tubes helps the disembodied voice of Stan Freberg pimp Sunsweet Pitted Prunes.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), literacy rates rose at a faster rate in the 1970s than in any other decade. Meanwhile, in the new millennium, the American Library Association fights for funding with grim desperation. We here at Ectomo would like to suggest a correlation between those two data points with the help of the above advertisement for a 42nd Street Library, circa 1976. Seems like the solution to both problems in one deft stroke, doesn’t it? Or more, I guess, depending on the collaborative skill of the seven librarians and whether or not they are working simultaneously, or in shifts.
Watching this collection of 70s commercials for mostly sci-fi themed toys I am struck by how little has changed in how they are marketed. A child — or children — playing with whatever object is being peddled with as much excitement as they can muster while a disembodied adult voice breathlessly lists each product’s amazing features, although modern commercial narrators have taken excitement from breathless to something approaching apoplectic. The exception here is the ad for the Shogun Warriors™ toys which feature a waxy, leering gentleman in a dingy, dimly lit basement hovering over a display case, perhaps to foreshadow the kind of adult a child collector of such trinkets might grow into. If anything his descriptions of the figures’s abilities leave something to be desired. I’m not sure we needed to be told that Gaiking™ allows us to “aim him” or that the Shigcon Tank™ has “The Drill”, as I’m sure both of these could be inferred, although being able to take the aforementioned Gaiking™ apart to make “The Skull” is a most exciting feature. Also of note is Suckerman™, who is covered in suction cups. “You can even stick him to himself!” Mr. Disembodied voice proclaims, in a way that is decidedly not age appropriate. Suuuuuuuuuuuuu-ker-man
There’s two ways you can take this advertisement for Fred’s “Video Movie” and animation services. The first is as a hilariously perplexing display of the kind of human tragedy lurking within the seething morass of “normal” people. That interpretation is really more than enough to keep you amused as you watch the rest of Fred’s inexplicably edited and composed videos.
There is however, a second, far more insidious (and I think more accurate) interpretation. You see Fred is no ordinary Canadian man with a video camera, computer, and delusions of film-making grandeur. Fred is a monster, an evil man that has conducted horrific experiments in the unspeakable regions of science that no self-respecting man or woman gives any thought to lest they run shrieking into the night. That lifeless lump of audibly monotone flesh is not his wife, but an automota created in his hideous lab simply to see if he could accomplish the feat.
She was probably once a beautiful woman, rife with vim and vigor, full of the promise and untapped potential our parents and Disney have led us to believe we all have inside. Now the poor thing is nothing more than a shapeless mound atop a wheeled stool (adjustable in height of course, even mad scientists need their rocks off once in a while) shuffled around to be put on display as Fred’s greatest accomplishment. You can almost hear the screams of a shattered psyche echoing in her mind as she mumbles the speeches Fred has programmed her prior to show time.
The bunny is coming for you. He knows where you live. He knows where your family lives. He is watching you all the time. His time is nigh. Beware the bunny.
Making a social statement via graffiti is nothing new, people have been scribbling on walls to express their views since man first realized he could make his mark. However, the popularity of the medium has decreased the frequency of pieces that are both thoughtful and artfully executed. Enter The Decapitator, an artist in London who is applying his own fiendish take on advertising, replacing the heads of the ad’s subjects with decapitated stumps. Each piece of subvertionist art is carefully crafted, and blends perfectly with the original advert making them seem like the work of a renegade marketing peon, bent on bringing down his corporate overlords.
At first glance these may just seem like wacky, but unsettling, commercials for potato chips featuring a small boy and a creepy anthropomorphic dog….thing. It’s only after watching it a few times that one gets the impression that this is a recurring, if not daily, situation and that, perhaps, Mr. Dog has informed his young friend to never tell his parents about it because they would be very mad. Indeed, it appears that Mr. Dog and his young friend have a secret. At least there are potato chips though because, as Mr. Dog seems to know all too well, kids will do anything for potato chips.
The trend by couture designers to take inspiration for their advertising campaigns from surreal art is a most welcome one. Prada’s Spring-Summer 2008 line is advertised with the work above, which while beautiful, at times suffers from the translation of static image to dynamic. Artist James Jean produced the storyboards for the film, which are more stunning than the video by dint of not having to move. Particularly interesting are James’ flower/insect concept sketches, the delicate petals of each blossom supported on the shelled stilts of a beetle; so alien they seem to have sprung from Alice’s Incongruous Wonderland, in which the fields of chittering tulips scuttle and sway with the wind.
Not being of an age to appreciate Star Trek: The Motion Picture when it was released I can’t help but wonder the effectiveness of this commercial. Surely a man, dressed up as a Klingon and garbling in a fictional tongue was most likely a fairly good way to market to kids. That is until they actually saw the movie and, lobotomized by an eternity of watching the Enterprise inch it’s way through space, were no longer capable of consuming solids. Perhaps the milkshakes still sold well.
Aaron Cole is a photographer friend of mine who is showing his work at Berkeley’s famous Pub for an undisclosed amount of time, starting Sunday, February 17th, at 5pm. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect there will be refreshments. This is par for the course with art shows.
EDIT: This just in. Apparently there will be celery. The Pub also serves a wide variety of beer, tea and coffee, and tobacco.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
