Spring 2006
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HelioMag.com
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The partnership betwee n art and technology is ever evolving, but this mome nt, here and now, seems ripe with possibility. No oth er time has provided so fertile a ground for both the creation and dissemina tion of art, music, film and cultural give and take. Helio hopes to showcase som e of the most inventive new work coming out of thi s digital age, while simulta neously providing a revela tory look back into the history of artistic and social expression—because wit hout the past, the present is a pretty blank page. In this premiere issue you ’ll find interviews, essays , art and fashion—as wel l as articles on the histor y of pranking, the union of fine art and video games and how mobile technology is transforming the fac e of South Korea. By focusing on the art, culture, technology and the ways in which the Internet affects our glo bal social consciousness, we hope to create an insigh tful, intelligent platform for new work. We also wan t to entertain, educate and look really damn good in the process. The future is now—enjo y it!
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PREMIERE ISSUE
SPRING 2006
r of MySpace 8. The Creato 12. the Devil and Daniel Johnston 14. Steve Buscemi
16. John Cassavetes 18. Fashion
king ry of Pran to is H e h T 24. 30. Video Games by Mark Allen 34. The Streets 38. The Presets 40. Bobby Darin 42. Dzine a South Kore m o fr r e tt e L 46.
50. The Flaming Lips vs. The Rob
Photography by Jeaneen Lund
ots
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On Cover and at right: Jenni wears a red lurex halter top by Grey Ant at Aero & Co.; black shorts vintage at Wasteland; and rhi nestone fishnets by Lenny of Paris; Thorn earrings from Pal ace Costume.
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a Los Amter is Charlie arman is a r. His te ri w “Joshuah Be ased the Angeles-b The Believer, in to ed tor bu ar tri con s appe work ha d Editor-inavel & an Tr s, , ey’ es een m Sw Mc les Ti Los Ange ancisco Researcher. He Fr i n Yet of Sa e ief Ch d th Leisure an ories, somecurrently has many the Charlie little data. Weekly. America on ir sed A ba r es fo tim nt books tale m, The entist, much sci ra a og t no pr is t He wes Radio’s ne rnation of his after two to the conste on Show, Marc Mar feigning s ar r.” ye he g fat in soul-crush Lindsay all things interest in E! at d late Lohan-re ter.com charlieam
l, photograIn high schoo Lund, would pher Jeaneen ds and up her frien ss dre and Los tures of them, es is a pic el e Ap tak a to Teen r and it would be fun sed write ed cid ba de sle ge An Turning covering for a living. o enjoys it do wh r ito ed ogs and ots into slums, underd her photo sho subculture wrote nce parroes. She parties and da he r be ng su un it into y book she has made pop histor s, tie ry ve e th shoots ntures eer. She now riors: Adve car ar r W he en om W es as Greatest such magazin story¹s Hi for om s, fr Pres d Dazed and ters (Seal Teen Vogue an Female Figh d.com cently d she re sed. jeaneenlun an nfu Co ), 04 l 20 journa e literary th d ite , ed andist ive Propag The Freshj Summer (Freshjive, Number 2 2006).
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Chad Brown lives in towns Los Angeles now / When to sun goes down / He’s there on his plow / Praying to the golden crown / And the buck breathing on the ridge / That the world keeps on spinnin’ / And there’s a Tecate in the fridge / He lives well, laughs often, loves always
UPSO is a graphic artist He based in Toledo, Ohio. works regularly for a shit also load of magazines, and al publishes his own annu art rag “Faesthetic.” This of spring sees the launch rd his (and his buddies) reco label, Pretend Records, which will be putting out , electronic, electro rock tape dance and psychedelic, op discs. upso.org
Ryan Kewley is a Los Angeles-based artist and designer. Her most rece nt work, rendered as eleg ant, intricate wallpaper desi gns, has been featured in various magazines as well as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times newspapers. Check her out at ryankewleydonegan.com.
Nick Miramontes (aka Stix) is a Los Angeles-based photographer originally from the great city of Milwa ukee, Wisconsin. Rather than being limited to a single commercial photographic category like FASHION or PRODUCT, Nick’s shooting philosophy follows a “jack-of-all-trades” menta lity, whose unifying theme is its unique, unexpected perspective in pursuit of the exciting and unknown. Nick realizes that sounds pretty lofty, but believes that some of the best things come from the setting of lofty goals. nicholasmira.com
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PUBLISHER StreetVirus CREATIVE DIRECTOR Random von NotHaus OM HELIOMAG.C RE PICKS UP WHE AG THE PRINTED M LEAVES OFF
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jessica Hundley ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Dr. Romanelli CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Ann Miller, Joshuah Bearman, Charlie Amter, Chad Brown CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS: Jeaneen Lund, cc Studio, Nicholas Miramontes CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS: Upso, Ryan Kewley
No portion of this magazine may be reproduced, in whole or in part without the written consent of the editor. Any material sent to HELIO Magazine becomes our property. We do not necessarily advocate or agree with the beliefs, expressions or opinions of our writers or advertisers, thank you. © 2006 Street Virus HELIO Magazine is published by StreetVirus 6725 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 270 Hollywood, CA 90028 323.465.9784
HELIO, the “HELIO” logo and any other product names, service names or logos of HELIO used, quoted and/or referenced herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of HELIO LLC. All other product names and/or company names used herein may be protected as trademarks of their respective owners.
6 spring 2006
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APPAREL * PAINTINGS * STICKERS * PHOTOGRAPHS BUFFMONSTER.COM
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Mi Space Es Su Space MYSPACE AND THE EVOLVING INTERNET
Questions compiled by Sebastian Kaufmann and Steve Salardino
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n just over two years, the creators of MySpace have spawned a massive Internet community, a thriving online world where local garage bands can become rock stars and the goofy kid down the street can boast of having 30,000 “friends.� The site has, over a remarkably short period, become a place defined by its residents, a constantly mutating realm that has and will continue to transform the ways in which we relate to one another, both online and in the real world. HELIO spoke with MySpace President Tom Anderson about the creation of MySpace, from concept to its continuing evolution.
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What was the inspiration for your original concept? What were the details of the original concept and whom did you want to market the site to, originally? I’d used a lot of community sites since I was a teenager. I drew inspiration from all over. Friendster blew me away when it came out. I was using other sites like it, but they took it to the next level. But I quickly saw the limitations of what they were doing. I thought we could do something different that would appeal to more people. I knew if we took the focus off dating and tried to give a place for everyone, we’d have something really interesting. How did that original concept transform as the site evolved, and the demands of the users change? It’s pretty close to what I planned out on paper from day one. The big features were something I had in my mind, but the tweaks and the ins and outs come from watching the users play with the system. Being the first ‘friend’ means I get a lot of e-mail. It’s easy to know what users want and I can modify it to fit their needs. How many people were involved with the company at its inception? In the beginning there were two or three programmers and a few guys finding us advertisers. We’d all been working together at other companies, so we sort of hit the ground running from the beginning. Who is your "typical" user? That’s a hard question, but it’s probably safe to say that they’re all young at heart. The 35-yearolds on the site have typically got a young, open or creative or playful spirit about them. We have 280,000 people signing up a day, so it’s pretty clear that you’re going to get people from all walks of life.
If they’re conservative or liberal, black or white, I think all share an openness to having fun online and connecting with people in a way that wasn’t exactly expected or normal just a few years ago. What is the goal of most people who have a profile on MySpace? The #1 thing people are doing is socializing. MySpace is like IM, e-mail or a cell phone. It’s a new medium of communication. Once I got IM, I stopped making so many phone calls because IM was easier. Lots of people have just found it to be a better way to keep in touch with their friends. Sharing pictures, videos, blogs and bulletins in a public space makes it easy for all your friends to interact at once. You can’t do that with e-mail, or IM. You can’t do it on the phone easily. The only other way to do that is to get everyone in a room, which only happens at the occasional party. And even an in-person meeting doesn’t leave a record for other people to comment on or interact with later. Why do you think the site elicited such a massive response? MySpace isn’t like a normal Web site where you go and grab a piece of info and log off. MySpace is a part of people’s lives. It’s central to their daily routine. Take the cell phone analogy again. Before you had a cell phone you could have asked yourself, do I need one? Now you feel cut off without it. You don’t want to get in a car without the ability to make a call and change your plans or call someone while you’re away from your house. MySpace makes life easier for people and it’s not just a utility—it’s really changed the way in which people socialize. That’s why people are crazy about MySpace, because it’s altered the way they socialize with each other. Interaction with each other is the most important thing we do as human beings, so anything that touches on that in a positive
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MYSPACE
“We have 280,000 people signing up a day, so it’s pretty clear that you’re going to get people from all walks of life. If they’re conservative or liberal, black or white, I think all share an openness to having fun online and connecting with people in a way that wasn’t exactly expected or normal just a few years ago.” way is going to elicit a response. What are you offering that no one else is; what makes this site so unique? The MUSIC part of MySpace seems to be very successful and not just a place for fans and bands to connect but also a place for networking between bands for tours, etc.—what is the future of this and how will this effect the music industry? (And now the movie/TV industry with MySpace Video.) I was in a band for most of my life before MySpace. If you met me 10 years ago, I wasn’t the Internet guy, I was the guy working on songs and never coming out of the rehearsal room. I didn’t really foresee how much MySpace would change the music industry, but it’s been amazing. MySpace has made it possible for bands you’ve never heard of to make a living, making music. They can book tours, find producers, record deals, publishing deals, get their songs placed in movies, television, etc. Big-name artists and small artists have all been impacted by MySpace. I think at some point we’ll begin selling music on MySpace. It’s hard to say how we’ll fare against iTunes or if we’ll partner with iTunes. Is there ever going to be something better than the iPod? That will play a crucial role in how music commerce plays out on MySpace. Recording costs have come way down, and now MySpace has virtually eliminated distribution and marketing costs. A band can get recognized without spending a lot of money and this has truly
democratized music. If you are good these days, you will find a fan base and you will make enough money to support yourself. That’s a great thing for artists and creativity. The industry itself will have to adapt to this. Major labels can’t operate the way they did before, because bands have too much power. A band doesn’t need a major label for the early and middle part of their careers. Major labels still have a lot to offer, but indie labels may be a better fit for most bands. Putting out a CD yourself may be the best fit for a band. The industry has changed and that’s taken dollars from some people’s pockets and put them in others. I think you’re going to see a continued trend where the money ends up in more and more people’s hands and it becomes a less profitable business for the major labels unless they adapt and partner with independents and bands in ways they never have before. What does MySpace want to see happen next and in which direction does MySpace want to develop? Anything you do on the Internet, I want you to be able to do on MySpace. That’s pretty general, but that’s the goal and ambition. Almost all the things you do online can be enhanced by the social structure of MySpace. Look at every Web site out there and imagine how that could work in the MySpace community. That’s what I do. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. We just need to hire a lot of engineers so we can execute on these ideas.
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The
Devil and
Daniel
Johnston AMERICA’S INDIE FOLK INNOVATOR FINALLY GETS HIS DUE Writer: Jessica Hundley
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I
t’s not often an artist tears open his skin and shows us his soul, but Daniel Johnston has managed to do so continuously—peeling away the scab again and again to give us a raw glimpse of his wounds. Since emerging from his parent’s basement with a stack of cassette tapes in the early 1980s, Johnston has become both cult phenomenon and anti-hero—a folk artist of the highest order. Wandering the fringes of the Reagan-era underground, Johnston spread the word through fuzzy, hiss-filled dubs of his work, his homemade tapes accompanied by vibrant comic-book-influenced artwork. He wrote and sang and drew his obsessions— his unrequited love affair with a girl called Laurie, his adoration of Casper the Ghost, his fixation on fame and his sordid fascination with the devil, were only a few of the topics mined for inspiration. After dabbling in art school and working a stint as a carnie, Johnston settled in Austin, Texas, and became a local legend. His raw, lo-fi sound and revelatory lyrics eventually ignited a prolific if somewhat doomed career. Clinical manic depression, bouts of erratic, sometimes violent behavior and numerous nervous breakdowns would only feed the myth, however, and by the early ’90s Johnston became a bona-fide star. Bands like Sonic Youth and Nirvana sang his praises and MTV featured a swaggering Johnston on its “Cutting Edge” series. Over the past decade and a half Johnston’s psychiatric problems have sadly inhibited his creativity, but his cult has continued to spread through the advent of the Internet and the rapidly growing market for his artwork. Musicians such as Yo La Tengo, Beck and Tom Waits have covered his tracks and Johnston songs have been included on soundtracks for films such as Kids and TV shows such as My So Called Life. This spring, the celebration continues with the release of Jeff Feuerzeig’s insightful, moving documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
fault. But at that time, there was a network of people who were sharing things that were off the radar as far as commercial culture was concerned. Not only was there a lot of great music being made, but there was wonderful art and independent publications and literature and ideas being exchanged. And Daniel Johnston had made a splash in that world, and rightly so, because what he did in 1981—’83, when he was in that basement in West Virginia, was unique, singular and different. And the greatest part was how raw the emotions were that were being expressed and how honest and how beautiful. His songs touched me. He created a world for the audience to get sucked into. He made art out of the minutiae of his life.
"...because Daniel didn’t let lack of technology or money get in the way of expressing himself."
When did you first have the inspiration to do this documentary? I got the idea to make this film in 1990. I was obsessed with Daniel’s music and art and comedy. I got ahold of his homemade cassette and that was it. I was hooked. How did you get the cassette and where were you at the time? I was in Jersey, doing college radio and writing for fanzines. The underground was truly underground back then. It was before Nirvana broke and exposed Daniel to the world and ruined the underground. Nothing against Nirvana, it wasn’t their
And there’s a purity to it that is incredibly compelling. I think that’s what touched all of us. The medium was not the message. It wasn’t about the hiss on the tape; it was about the fact that they were field recordings. They empowered other people as well, because Daniel didn’t let lack of technology or money get in the way of expressing himself. The music he recorded on those little Radio Shack cassette tapes is no less important than the Hank Williams or Johnny Cash or Billy Holiday catalogues. To me, I was reacting to this beautiful voice, a voice that sounded like Daniel was reaching to God, in the same way that John Coltrane played a saxophone. That’s how I took it. His raw voice and his incredible piano playing that was a breath of fresh air to my ears. And his life’s journey was as equally extraordinary as the art he was creating. His life was cinematic, in part because he was playing it all out in public. And he wrote so openly and honestly about himself and his mental illness, as well. I found that fascinating. The art and music was so fragile. It was like watching this amazing circus performer on the tightrope without a net. And somehow he made it across that high wire and there’s a visceral thrill to that, to witnessing his victory. You can experience the phenomenon that is Daniel Johnston via the cyber-realm at hihowareyou.com. spring 2006 13
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ELEVATING THE EVERYMAN Writer: Ann Miller | Illustration by Ryan Kewley
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teve Buscemi is the unlikeliest of movie stars. With wry humor and an eternally beleaguered demeanor, he’s managed to carve out a place for himself among the Hollywood stereotypes, becoming our onscreen “everyman” in the process. No one does “down-beaten” with more grace, style and wit. And while Buscemi’s characters may carry the weight of the world on thin shoulders, they do so with a resigned self-respect. They may be the losers, the pushovers, the invisible cogs caught in the wheel—but, somehow, Buscemi imbues them with a faint, but potent, thread of hope, the small possibility of eventual redemption. “I’m drawn to characters that are searching,” says Buscemi, “people who are lost or struggling and are not always likeable.” Buscemi began his acting career in the theater, winning his first starring film role in 1986’s Parting Glances. Twenty years later, he’s been etched indelibly into our cultural subconscious. He’s the anxietyridden “Mr. Pink” in Reservoir Dogs, the inept kidnapper of Fargo, the dim-witted and doomed bowling buddy in The Big Lebowski. And since 1996, he’s been one of cinema’s most intriguing directors as well. Buscemi’s “behind the camera” feature film debut was the cult classic Trees Lounge, a hilarious, painful take on suburban decay that managed to make even its most despicable characters poignantly human. Buscemi wrote and starred in the film as a woefully alienated small-time schmuck who inherits a job as an ice-cream-truck driver. At the bottom of his own barrel, Buscemi’s character eventually makes his own meek, half-hearted way toward the light. Since Trees Lounge, Buscemi has continued to balance his acting career with occasional directing gigs, including his sophomore effort, Animal Factory (a prison drama starring Willem Dafoe), and as a regular helmer for HBO’s The Sopranos. “Directing is something I love to do, in part because I love working with actors,” says Buscemi, “and I think I recognize that each actor works differently and I try to be sensitive to that. And it’s interesting to work on the other side too—to be dealing with costumes and cameras and editing. As an actor, I have no control over those things.” “I’m in a unique position because I’m not forced to direct for the sake of directing,” Buscemi continues. “I’m lucky enough to make my living as an actor, so when I do direct, it’s for projects that I care about.” Buscemi’s most recent project is Lonesome Jim,
a slouching, melancholic comedy starring Casey Affleck as a failed writer returning in defeat to his dying hometown. In many ways, the film returns to the themes of Trees Lounge, to the suffocating numbness of American small-town suburbia, to the bleak landscape that both suffocates and slowly seduces. The characters here embody a blissful complacency, a resignation that has long since set into the bones. “The script was written by a young writer named James Strouse, explains Buscemi, “and in many ways it’s based on his own world. He actually moved to New York and got some stuff going on, unlike Casey’s character, but all the characteristics from the film come from his family. They’re very exaggerated of course, but it’s that kind of humor, where you’re right on the edge of exaggeration. But for anyone who has grown up in these sorts of places, there’s a resonance there that’s truthful. We never wanted to make fun of the characters or make them into caricatures. I wanted to root it all in reality.” Shot on video through the Independent Film Channel’s digital features wing, InDigEnt, Lonesome Jim is in many ways an actor’s movie. Deftly penned and poignantly performed, it relies on the intense intimacy between Buscemi and his cast. Instead of hiding behind the high-gloss frills of a genre film, Lonesome Jim’s stars had to embrace a sort of willful vulnerability. “I’m a stickler for good writing,” says Buscemi, “but I like to give the actors freedom within the structure. With Lonesome Jim, we began with the script as written, but then we moved on from there. On any film, you’re constantly working on the story, it’s constantly evolving throughout the whole process.” Even from behind the camera, Buscemi has exerted his own unique influence on Lonesome Jim. No other director could have possibly captured the film’s particular mix of self-pitying woefulness and tentative optimism. “Casey plays a character who’s not always easy to sympathize with,” admits Buscemi, “but somewhere along the way he’s touched by the things around him and he makes the right decision for himself. Not to say that everything’s going to be OK, but at least he’s trying. For me, that kind of continues the themes from Tree’s Lounge, where, at the end of the film, the character has gained some awareness and has finally taken responsibility for his actions. It’s not a happy ending maybe—but there’s hope.”
“I’m drawn to characters that are searching, people who are lost or struggling and are not always likeable.”
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THE ARCHIVES: MINING THE VAULTS OF FILM HISTORY
Under the Influence JOHN CASSAVETES AND THE BIRTH OF INDIE FILMMAKING
“His scripts were the culmination of his actors’ brilliant improvisations, and his films were living, breathing things.” THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976) Ben Gazzara gives an unforgettable performance as a down-on-his-luck gambler faced with a harrowing moral dilemma. Alternately gritty and poignantly sensual, Cassavetes turns the crime drama into something far deeper.
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974) Gena Rowlands is stunning as a woman slowly destroyed by a series of nervous breakdowns. Peter Falk shines as her loving, long-suffering husband. An intimate, devastating exploration of marriage and mental illness.
I
n the history of outsider artists, John Cassavetes was a renegade of the highest order, a highly respected Hollywood actor who moonlighted as one of the most compelling directors of all time. Balancing stellar roles in films such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Dirty Dozen and The Killers, with his own cinematic explorations, Cassavetes defied convention and paved the path for the future of independent filmmaking. Working with a core group of collaborators that included his wife, the great Gena Rowlands, as well as brothers in arms—Seymour Cassell, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk—Cassavetes’ produced some of the rawest, most riveting dissections of American society ever manifested onto the screen. His scripts were the culmination of his actors’ brilliant improvisations, and his films were living, breathing things. Below are some gems from a man who understood that the revelation could be found in even the most basic of human interactions.
HUSBANDS (1970)
FACES (1968)
SHADOWS (1960)
When a mutual friend passes away, three longtime pals escape into an extended drunken melee. Hilarious, touching and beautifully human, this is one of Cassavetes’ finest films and finest performances.
Cassavetes takes on the dissolution of a middle-class marriage and blows the world’s minds in the process.
Cassavetes comes out of the gate with a multi-racial romance in the form of a Beatinfluenced experimental improv. Nothing could be finer or more culturally resonant.
Cassavetes’ legacy continues to resonate. This spring, his son, Nick, will direct his fifth film, Alpha Dog, an intense take on teen-age corruption. His daughter, Xan, just released the stellar documentary Z Channel, A Magnificent Obsession. His youngest, Zoe, will direct her first feature next year.
Also out this spring is a new book from Miramax, Accidental Genius. Penned by Marshall Fine (the current president of the New York Film Critics Circle), the bio details both Cassavetes’ vibrant life and amazing body of work.
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Midnight Sparkle
PHOTOGRAPHY: JEANEEN LUND FASHION STYLING: ALEXANDER GUTIERREZ AT WORKGROUP-LTD.COM MAKE-UP: KERI ANN LUEVANO HAIR STYLING: VANESSA PRICE FOR THE REX AGENCY USING RENE FURTERER MODELS: JENNI B AND SERENA BOTH AT CLICK MODEL MANAGMENT
Serena wears handpainted Turkish rope and broach necklace by Show Pony; Vintage faux pearl gold bracelet; Gold sequined hot shorts at Playmates; Socks and stockings throughout by Lennyofparis. com. Blue sequined shoes by Moschino at Diavolina, shopdiavolina.com.
18 spring 2006
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Black velvet jumper with brushed gold lame´ neckline and belt by custom order Grey Ant, greyant.com, at Aero & Co.; Red fabric belt worn as choker at Show Pony.
20 spring 2006
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Serena wears black and gold dress by Show Pony; Gold belt by Sir Heffington, sirheffington.com; Tulle, stone and ribbon necklace by Lanvin Paris at Satine. Nude lace ruffle heels by Pierre Hardy at Diavolina; socks by Lenny of Paris. Jenni wears brown wool and gold leather dress by Miss KK at Show Pony; Butterfly belt by Meghan at Diavolina; Gold web necklace by Han Cholo, hancholo.com; Earrings by Sid Vintage at Show Pony; Socks and Pumps vintage.
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Grecian dress by Sir Heffington; Mint fabric necklace by Stella McCartney at Satine; Kelly green wedge heel by Laurence Dacade Paris at Diavolina; Stockings Lenny of Paris; Headband hair stylists own.
22 spring 2006
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Pink and blue Kimono as cape by Sir Heffington; Gold lame bikini American Apparel; Earrings Sid Vintage. Painted and long charm necklaces from Show Pony; Pink glass ring by Molly Jackson at Aero & Co.; Fuchsia sandals Jean-Michel Cazabat at Diavolina.
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The Joke’s On You!
THIS ISSUE HELIO EXPLORES THE COLORFUL HISTORY OF PRANKING, HOAXING AND FAKE IDENTITY Writer: Jessica Hundley | Photographer: Nick Miramontes
F
orget about whoopee cushions, chattering teeth or flaming bags of dog crap left on the neighbor’s doorstep, the most creative of pranks become art unto themselves, a means of disrupting crusty societal restraints and outdated codes of edict and a valid method of upsetting the dreaded status quo. The problem with protest is it ain’t always funny. But over the years radical artists, political dissidents, social activists and those bent on undermining the strangle hold of corporate homogenization have used a potent dose of humor to make their voices heard.
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HISTORY OF PRANKING
Pranks of the Past 1722
A series of scathing letters appearing in the New England Courant (supposedly penned by a Ms. Silence Dogood) began to gain attention due to the author’s particularly outspoken views. Claiming to be a middle aged widow, Silence was disparaging and acid tongued, using the newspaper to voice her dissatisfaction with the cultural and political state of 18th Century Boston. Mocking everything from the ridiculousness of hoop skirt style to the rampant and insufferable elitism of Harvard students, Dogood became a well-loved figure in the local press, with several male readers going so far as to offer her their hand in marriage. In actuality, however, Silence Dogood was merely the pseudonym for a particularly precocious 16-year-old named Benjamin Franklin.
1869
An imaginative farmer in Cardiff New York discovered a piece of gypsum, which resembled a ten-foot man, and through good press and a gullible public the legend of “The Cardiff Giant” was born. Although the chunk of rock was obviously not a man at all, the story piqued enough interest to arouse the curiosity of prankster godfather P.T. Barnum, who knew a good show when he saw one. When the group of investors who had purchased the “giant” refused Barnum’s healthy $60,000 offer to buy the piece, the great entrepreneur went ahead and built one for himself. The replica earned Barnum big bucks and a snarled aside from one of the original’s investors concerning Barnum’s business savvy, “there’s a sucker born every minute” became the mantra for hoaxers, pranksters and politicians everywhere.
Barnum went on to found the Barnum and Bailey Circus and to mastermind some of the greatest hoaxes ever, including his infamous exhibition of Joice Heth; a woman he claimed was the 161-year-old former nanny of George Washington.
1910
Six (including the young Ms. Virginia Woolf) of the wild and wooly Bloomsbury group, (the neo liberal literary movement that was practicing free love and hot sex long before the hippies were even a glint in their daddies eyes) decided to pull a prank that would mock the intricate formalities of England’s ruling class. Dying their skin and hair and conversing in an improvised nonsense language, the crew boarded a ship to London, convincing crew that they were in fact, the Emperor of Abyssinia and his entourage. The press was notified and the red carpet rolled out in the form of the British Navy, regaled in full colors and kowtowing to what they believed to be foreign royalty.
1970s
John Draper, aka Cap’n Crunch, a teen phone prankster with a knack for electronics, built several “Blue Box” tone generators with allowed him access to telephone routing systems. Eventually connecting to the Presidential line of the White House, Draper and his pals bombarded then-President Richard Nixon with calls such as the following; “We have a crisis here in Los Angeles!” “What’s the nature of the crisis?” “We’re out of toilet paper, sir!”
“What’s the nature of the crisis?” “We’re out of toilet paper, sir!”
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Alan Abel Interview In the early 1960s, writer, jazz drummer and all around Renaissance man Alan Abel decided to spoof the growing number of “censorship groups” (hysterical societies reacting to a progressively more visible liberal underground) with a hoax known as, S.I.N.A., (or the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals). With young actor Buck Henry (who later went on to pen “The Graduate) as its spokesperson, S.I.N.A. claimed that the nudity of pets and barnyard animals was slowly eating away at the foundation of American morality. Advocating clothing for any animals “that stand higher than four inches or are longer than six inches”, SINA brought their “A Nude Horse Is a Rude Horse,” manifesto to countries around the world. Remarkably, the ruse gained the organization thousands of members and media attention in hundreds of newspapers, magazines and TV and radio talk shows. Abel buoyed by his SINA success, subsequently went on to embark upon a long and rich career in media pranking. Over the years Abel has appeared in a number of TV talk shows and newspaper features in a variety of guises, claiming at one point that he was eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes and later taking on the identity of Omar the Beggar, a professional homeless man who had started a “school for panhandlers”. Abel’s hoaxes are meant to expose the media’s innate fallibility and in his own words to provide us all with “a kick in the intellect”. Veteran hoaxer Alan Abel shares his thoughts on the fine art of pranking. What would be your advice to someone who wanted to pull a prank? Well, first of all, you have to ask yourself what you’re motivation is. I don’t condone mean spirited revenge pranks. You should always have a sense of humor about what you’re doing and you should try to avoid anything that might result in legal action or arrest. The trick is to act crazy while thinking rationally. So first of all, try to have some motivation that is relevant, even if it’s relatively vague. The idea is to make a point with your pranks. Can you give an example? For instance, I had nine people planted in the audience of the Donahue show who pretended to faint at a particular moment in the program. It caused all sorts of chaos, Donahue, who’s been doing television forever, lost his cool and all hell broke loose. When they asked me if I did that because I bore some sort of ill will toward Donahue, I told them, “not at all” I said I had attempted to ‘bring consciousness back to television by going unconscious’, which I think made the point. Another bit of advice it make sure to involve the media in some way, make sure you’re prank gets the attention it deserves. It helps if you catch them on a slow news day. Which will be difficult now. If you had asked me this same question before September 11th, I would have answered it differently. Pranking is definitely difficult right now. The world needs to laugh, but it’s losing its sense of humor. I was going to try to use my daughter’s airplane ticket by dressing in drag, but I’m sure that wouldn’t go over too well now. You have to be careful. False identities aren’t tolerated and you can get yourself in some hot water. Which is not to say that pranking will stop, it’s just that you have to plan more carefully. I’ve managed to avoid jail this long, I don’t intend on going there now. What is the greatest prank ever pulled? I love the Cardiff Giant. And P.T. Barnum? He was a genius. Alan Abel is the subject of wonderful new documentary, directed by his daughter, Jennifer. For more info, see alanabel.com.
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HISTORY OF PRANKING
Hoaxing Today Some of the best purveyors of contemporary pranking RTMARK. The encouragement of humorous corporate sabotage is the primary pursuit of the jokesters at RTMark, the popular Internet site devoted to pairing pranks with willing and able pranksters. RTMarks’ contribution to the world of socially constructive hoaxing has been immense. Take for instance the organization’s SIMCopter hoax, where the site managed to convince a programmer to manipulate the popular video games’ climax, exchanging the buxom and bikini clad women who cheered the victor at the game’s end for two sashaying muscle men clad only in their skivvies. RTMark were also integral in organizing the hilarious stunt of switching the voice boxes on a Christmas season shipment of GI Joes and Barbies. The result; GI Joes who coyly chirped, “Let’s go shopping” and Barbies who growled, “Dead men tell no lies ” made a powerful statement about corporations’ role in gender politics. RTMark is also responsible for the immensely popular “Call In Sick Day” where employees ‘round the world are encouraged to ditch work one day every year in favor of spending an afternoon immersed in political protest, social upheaval and some well deserved sensual decadence. By linking willing volunteers with a wish list of pranks and providing funding for many of their proposed hoaxes, RTMark has succeeded in undermining the image of major corporations with little more than verve, imagination and a fine tuned wit. rtmark.com
NOEL GODIN Known poetically as “The Pie Guy”, Belgian journalist Noel Godin has been baking up his own unique brand of social activism for over three decades.
His recipe for civil disobedience is “pastry terrorism”, which consists of throwing cream tarts into the deserving faces of the media and political elite. Victims of Godin’s patisserie activism have included the French novelist Maguerite Duras, (“Because she has a kind of intelligence and cleverness that serves only her own vanity,” Godin explains), the French minister of Culture, Philippe Douste-Blazy and most infamously, Microsoft head honcho Bill Gates, who was hit with a total of four pastries before police put a halt to the “attack”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No%C3%ABl_Godin
THE YES MEN A loose coalition of pranksters who have specifically targeted the much-loathed WTO, the Yes Men have erected a parody site and crashed various corporate conferences in the guise of WTO representatives. Recently, the Yes Men managed to infiltrate a gathering of world textile industries in Finland, snagging a speaking engagement for one of their imposters. Posing as WTO exec “Hank Hardy Unruh” the Yes Man delivered a straight-faced lecture which blamed the American Civil War for “depriving slavery of it’s natural development into remote labor” and accused Gandhi of being a “a well meaning guy” who “did not understand the benefits of open markets and free trade. Unruh went on to unveil WTO’s “Management Leisure Suit,” a gold, skintight spandex unitard. Despite the ludicrousness of the “leisure suit” and the obvious sarcasm inherent in Unruh’s “pro-remote labor” speech, the audience of industry heads listened with rapt attention, buying the Yes Men’s hoax, hook, line and sinker. theyesmen.org Check out their documentary!
“The trick is to act crazy while thinking rationally.” 28 spring 2006
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Video Games AN INTERVIEW WITH MARK ALLEN Writer: Joshuah Bearman | Photographer: cc studio
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ark Allen, the finely-tuned mind behind L.A.’s CLevel and Machine galleries, has been an integral force in the transforming of the fundamentals of gaming technology into high art. Raised in Vermont and schooled at Cal Arts, Allen has instigated a number of unique installations, including live volcanoes, a working whiskey still, and a simulated video cockfight, where participates donned rooster suits and fought their opponents via onscreen avatars. Joshuah Bearman gets the scoop.
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in the Gallery At C-Level, you did several projects relating to art and video games. The first was called Tekken Torture Tournament. The exploratory idea there was the avatar, and what directional control you have over it. The avatar is a representation or stand in for yourself that you acted upon. But what happens to you, or your avatar, only returns to you in the form of visual stimulus. So the idea with Tekken Torture Tournament was to make a closer bond between you and the avatar. Hence the electric shocks. Yes – we created a system where you personally would get a shock to your arm when your character gets hit in the game. The shock was strong enough to make your arm pull your hand off the controller, so you literally lost the ability to fight back as you got injured in the game. It stung that much? It’s not that it stung that much. Your body is an electrical system. So your muscles move automatically when given a charge. We placed two electrodes on the arm, so the charge would go across your bicep.
Did you have to figure out the right charge? It pretty much works that if you turn it up, it hurts more and you get a stronger contraction. It was very intense. It could actually lock your arm into place. It was a hard involuntary contraction. How did that system interact with the game? We wanted to get the data out of the Playstation without getting into the code or anything like that. Instead we kind of hacked a solution by placing photo sensors on the TV screen, setting the screen to black and white, and reading the hue value changing as your energy bar went down. As you became more injured, you’d get pulsed more and more. The system was reflecting the lack of ability to fight back as you’re dying. How did it play out? We were interested in the basic relationship. But we hadn’t thought about the relationship between the players, and what wound up happening is that the participants got very aggressive and played with this incredible showmanship. It was like they were performing the piece. That was unex-
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MARK ALLEN
“Games add a new perspective, because people lose their sense of self-consciousness when they’re playing...they no longer think about whether or not they look like an ass.” pected, and a great result. We wanted the audience to become the performances. There’s a great tradition of that in art. Yes, but games add a new perspective, because people lose their sense of self-consciousness when they’re playing. Because they’re so focused on a task, they no longer think about whether or not they look like an ass. The experience of being in a computer or video game space is disembodying. You’re consciousness moves out of your body and into this fantasy space that’s electronically mediated. Because of this effect, people become very detached from what they’re doing and they wind up performing in ways they never would otherwise. So it’s interesting as an artist to use these tools to set up a framework and see what happens. It’s almost like you come across the art. If you’ve ever watched much Dance Dance Revolution, the execution of a game task erasing whatever inhibition goes along with self-consciousness is clear. People look nuts when they’re playing DDR. They’re focused solely on the screen and furiously trying to get their feet to hit the arrows in time, but from the waist up they’re arrhythmic and slack jawed. It’s very strange. Yes, that effect is really interesting, and the next piece we did -- Cockfight Arena -- was engineered to directly manifest that phenomenon. Cockfight was a game we built, based somewhat on Joust, a classic we all loved. Continuing to look at the use of the avatar, we thought there would be a poetic justice by reversing roles a bit. The first time around, your fate is tied to the avatar’s fate via the shocks. In this game, we wanted to make the physical player the avatar, so we made these bird suits for the players to wear. Two artists, Jessica Hutchins and Karen Lothgren, worked on them. I developed the hardware. Eddo Stern wrote the software.
How did that reverse the roles? The idea was that you had become the avatar, and what was happening on the screen was more of a shadow representation of your actions. You flap the wings in real life and the bird on the screen flies. You step on a pedal and the bird caws. We had these ridiculous hats and this magic birdseed and you had to move your head really fast to get the birdseed and, again, the players got really out of control in the performance. But we were not only trying to directly entangle the visitors into an absurdist experience; we wanted to draw in the entire audience. So Daniella Meeker wrote some gambling software that allowed visitors to place wagers on the individual matches. The odds were adjusted in realtime, so that got lively and we even made some money off that. But more importantly, the audience became very invested in the matches. There’s a great video of spectators going crazy, shouting, “Peck harder!” at the players and stuff like that. As you can tell, the relationship people have when they experience events together is really important to me. That’s one of the things I always try to do with Machine. I create events that have a specific experience. Instead of being one of the million people who saw a movie, you’re one of the handful of people who showed on a particular night. I like the bonding that surrounds that. It develops my idea of community. Just listening, I feel like I missed out not seeing the Tekken Tournament and the Cockfight Arena. Yes, then there’s that feeling. There’s video of it for documentation purposes, right? Yes. But it’s not the same as being there. It never is. Learn more at machineproject.com
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THE STREETS’ MIKE SKINNER CLAIMS HIS NEWFOUND FAME Writer: Charlie Amter | Illustrator: Upso, upso.org
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THE STREETS
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“It took me 10 years to get to the point where I can make a living doing this. The mad crazy thing is— you can make more mistakes when you’re successful.”
uch has been made of the differences between American and British hip hop, the divergence between the Jamaican dance hall and garage influences which thread through English-made beats and the blinding bling and gangsta strut that marks the Stateside sound. But perhaps the most potent representation of transcontinental disparity might just be the sounds manifested by Mike Skinner – the moon-eyed creator of The Streets; undoubtedly one of Britain’s most innovative and esoteric urban acts. Skinner is not the rapper you’d expect – he resembles a pre-adolescent soccer hooligan or a stray extra from Quadrophenia – and his style of rhyming stops short just this side of plainspeak. He’s an experimenter, an outsider working within the most widespread of musical genres. He clings to the very edges of his beats; fearlessly blends chaotic drum machine mixes with ethereal balladeering, and pens lyrical content that is unabashedly autobiographicalthe day-to-day elevated to art. Accolades have been unrelenting since The Streets 2002 debut, Original Pirate Material. With his new album, The Hardest Way to Make and Easy Living, the acclaim will only grow louder. Although Skinner makes a quintessentially English sound – experimental lopes through the life of the average (or not so average) Londoner- his music resonates potently with audiences across the Atlantic. Differences aside, it’s inevitable that the lines between Brit and American hip hop will continue to blur and combine - with Skinner one of those rare breeds continually pioneering into the new communal realm. Helio’s Charlie Amter discusses fickle fame with the main man from The Streets.
Mike Skinner is bored. Speaking to music journalists from his suite at New York’s Rivington Hotel isn’t the way the rapper is used to spending time in hotel rooms. The U.K.’s best-known rap export (better known as The Streets) usually prefers to party. He even devotes an entire song (“Hotel Expressionism”) off his new release, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, to smartly arranging suites while on tour (“Throwing a TV out of the window is nothing clear of weak cliché,” according to the track). “I only ‘express’ on tour,” Skinner deadpans in a thick accent immediately familiar to fans of the rapper. “I need the gang mentality behind me to fully do it right.” Easily his most confessional collection of songs to date, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, offers a peek into the madness of Skinner’s life since he’s become famous in the United
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Kingdom (The Streets have sold over 3 million records and Skinner signed a six-figure advertising deal with Reebok last year), and the havoc it can wreak upon the unsuspecting. From the album’s opener, “Pranging Out,” it’s clear that Skinner isn’t holding anything back on The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living. Over a dark, menacing and impossibly catchy beat, the 27-yearold comes clean on the track with tales of crippling paranoia brought on by a brutal touring schedule and the prototypical rock star “aides” to help deal with the demands of being everywhere, all at once. “I probably lost the plot a bit,” Skinner says of his occasional episode of ill behavior since hitting it big with his 2004 release, A Grand Don’t Come for Free. To be fair, he wouldn’t be the first rap star to give in to a hedonistic lifestyle while on the road. “It’s already out there, to be honest,” Skinner says of his reputation the way British newspapers see it. “[Now] I’m gonna give my side of the story…if you just put all the worst things that happen out there, all they can do is repeat what you’ve said.” While Skinner’s fondness for the occasional pint (or worse)should come as no surprise to followers of the MC—his 2004 track “Blinded By the Lights” explores a night of partying in a London club - the fact that he chose to begin and end The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living with tales of excess cannot be ignored. Not that Skinner is a lager lout—he’s too busy making tracks on his own and producing other artists in his studio to let anything get in the way of his impending takeover of the U.K. charts. The Birmingham native is a workaholic when it comes to coming up with mind-blowing beats on his Macintosh. Utilizing Logic, the same software tool the Chemical Brothers employ to create their dense, multilayered sound, Skinner says he has no fewer than six different laptops with him at any given time. “I go through ‘em at quite a rate,” he says. He’s just hoping he won’t lose any of them on the road this summer—lest his competitors catch a glimpse into what he’s working on. ‘“Hopefully I won’t be living ‘Pranging Out’ on the road” he says. “I work harder than anyone I know.” Indeed, the success The Streets is no fluke. Rapping and making his own beats for the better part of the
last decade, worldwide recognition finally came in the form of his U.S. debut, Original Pirate Material, four years ago. The disc, which has sold over 700,000 copies worldwide since its release, was lauded by critics for its meshing of smooth U.K. garage beats with insightful rhymes in startlingly original fashion. Two years later, A Grand Don’t Come For Free raised the bar, yielding Skinner a #1 single (“Dry Your Eyes”) in England. While, “A Grand Don’t Come For Free”, and especially “Original Pirate Material” drew inspiration from London’s once red-hot Garage/House music scene, this new album sees Skinner largely abandoning lush synth sounds in favor of ever sparser and harsher beats – perhaps in an effort to set himself apart. As a “famous boy” (in his own words), Skinner has certainly earned the right to do what he pleases. “It took me ten years to get to the point where I can make a living doing this,” he says. “The mad crazy thing is - you can make more mistakes when you’re successful.” Luckily for Skinner, “The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living” is virtually mistake-free—unless you happen to be P. Diddy—who deemed one of the disc’s best tracks, “Two Nations,” unsuitable for inclusion on a recent Notorious B.I.G “Duets” record. “I don’t know what I was thinking to be honest,” Skinner says of the track, which jokingly features the anti-American lyric “We were the ones who invented the language.” “I don’t think [“Two Nations”] was deemed suitable [for Duets] because [breaking] American radio is hard. I hear he liked it, actually, but you can’t take too many risks in the States…you got to get so many people to decide they can support a certain track to make it work over here.” Whether “Two Nations” failed to make duets because of The Streets’ failure to follow American hip-hop production trends or because Diddy perhaps took umbrage to Skinner pointing out on the track that the difference between the U.S. and England is that “We gave you John Lennon and you shot him” is irrelevant--Skinner does things his own way in the music business. The hardest way to make an easy living indeed, but Skinner wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Crazy on the Dance floor
THE PRESETS TAKE US BACK TO THE DISCO Writer: Jessica Hundley
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“...it came out of a desire to do something together that was immediate and a bit fun and not too clever or pretentious.”
T
he last few years have seen the hairspray glory days of early ’80s new wave mined for all its skinny-tie splendor, but few modern acts have done it with more panache than The Presets. Spawned in Sydney, Australia, the duo of Julian Hamilton (vocals/keyboards) and Kimberley Moyes (drums/programming) met while attending the city’s esteemed Conservatorium of Music. Schooled in the classical manner, the two forged a friendship through a mutual love of synth sounds and high style. With Hamilton’s aching, Morrisseyinspired vocals and Moyes’ frantic, manic live drums, The Presets add a sensual, primal rock backbone to the slick neo-new wave renaissance.
You met in school? Moyes: We weren’t in the same classes, but there weren’t many other people we were drawn toward. I liked Julian’s shoes a lot and his pants. Hamilton: And we both liked Pet Shop Boys. So we developed a friendship from there, from those very deep, philosophical foundations. Moyes: We just naturally gravitated to each other. It wasn’t quite the Fame school, you might imagine—people leaping down the hallways or starting jams in the corridor. It was actually a bit boring really. It was more like people hanging out in the common room watching reruns of Ricky Lake. What is the scene like in Sydney? Moyes: It’s an interesting scene because it’s so cut-off in some ways from the rest of the world. I think, in a way, quality is kind of incubated there. It’s a good size and it’s so isolated that you can’t get away with as much crap as you can other places. There’s very little pretense. You can’t pass over bad music; the audiences won’t stand for it. There are just not enough people to sell bullshit to. Hamilton: It is sort of an incubator. We’ve been fed on bands from America and the UK and we’ve just been quietly doing our thing down there. I think now that we’ve honed it, we’re ready to unleash it on the world!
Moyes: It’s a nice community down there of people supporting each other. It’s intimate. Julian: Yeah, there’re actually not a lot of cool people in Sydney. There’s about three besides us and two of them did film clips for us and one of them is our designer! Tell me a little about your intentions when you first started the Presets. I know you both had been in other bands and obviously been playing music for a long time. Hamilton: When we first started doing the Presets together, it came out of a desire to do something together that was immediate and a bit fun and not too clever or pretentious. Something that was a bit stupid and that you could dance to, that was the original idea really. We started listening to records that we liked that had good grooves; songs that just made us feel good. It didn’t matter if they were guitar bands or techno acts, we just wanted to interpret certain sounds in our own way. Moyes: Add we’d been friends for so long, there was a lot intuitive stuff, just kind of understanding how each other worked. Hamilton: Our friendship, from the start, was from making music together. So we knew how to work together, we knew what to expect. We had gone to school and learned these skills, a lot of analytical skills with classical music, which were wonderful skills to have. But they were also getting in the way a little bit, inhibiting us. We just wanted the Presets to be totally unashamed and crazy. Moyes: We wanted to be primal. We wanted to make people go nuts on the dance floor when they heard us. That’s one of the reasons we have live drums. Hamilton: It’s the most basic, simplest way to energize the crowd. Moyes: Its like a handclap, anyone can do it, anyone can slap something. Hamilton: For us, it’s about tapping into that energy on the dance floor from the crowd and feeding off that as well as feed it. Moyes: Yeah! We want the party to last forever!! The Presets’ new album, “Beams,” is out on Modular Records this spring.
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DIGGIN’ IN THE CRATES: GOLDEN NUGGETS FROM MUSIC’S PAST
e n a p o r P o t hampagne
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SUR LAY-LOW IG B ’S IN R A D Y n BOBB Writer: Chad Brow
obby Darin exploded onto the American music scene in 1958 with the smash hit “Splish Splash.” From then on he never looked back, becoming a dynamic and smooth nightclub performer, actor, tunesmith, and one of the biggest draws in Las Vegas history. His 37 years on the planet were a meteoric, complicated trajectory. Then he headed for the country… Reeling from personal/professional trials and saddled with the shock brought on by the death of his close friend and political heir Robert Kennedy, Darin cashed out in the fall of the last year of the Sixties and rented a piece of farmland in an area of Big Sur known as Pfeiffer’s Beach. Plopping down a wheeled 14-foot tiny home on his parcel, Darin shut himself off from the outside world. Friends didn’t hear from him for months at a time, his manager paid the bills as usual and the rugged coastline became his new home amid the hundreds of monarch butterflies that hung out in the area. Many cuts of wood splintered in the fresh air from swings of Bobby’s axe and, from the vantage point in the doorway of his trailer, Bobby could look across the vastness of his surroundings, be small for a while and then stoke the campfire. You see, worry can’t live in the woods for long. After settling into his new routine, he one afternoon wandered down to the post office and dropped a line to his newly discovered mother, Nina, in the “Stamped Letters Box.” In it he wrote: “I am now a turtle. Virtually everything I own is on my back and
suffice to say I am one ton lighter and therefore 2,000 pounds happier. All houses are gone. All extraneous (everything except LPs, tapes, books and personal doodads) items have been sold and I am out from under. I wish all of you the serenity of this area and the peace of the mountains.” Two of the records Bobby had on rotation inside the trailer were his own. After forming Direction Records in September of 1968, Darin recorded two albums of material that reflected his departure from the sharkskin style that made him famous and opened the door to music that made a statement about the views the talented performer and songwriter had on the turbulent world around him. The brassy Vegas studio arrangements and shrimp cocktail belches from the V.I.P. tables at his live shows moved aside as “Bobby Darin Born Walden Robert Cossotto” (released September ’68) and “Commitment” (released July ’69) poured out of the speakers of the trailer’s record player, through the now bushy sideburns, and into the ears of Bobby as he played along on his guitar, flushed with the quiet satisfaction and ongoing confusion the records represented. They weren’t commercial success but they were personal triumphs. Solitude and reflection enjoyed at Big Sur helped Bobby reemerge and shape his last years of performing. A back-cover passage on his first Direction album lets us into his head: “I will be me in a world full of us.” Find these albums and you’ll find Bobby Darin.
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Sound an DZINE PAINTS BEAUTIFUL MUSIC
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or painter and producer Dzine, music and image are irrevocably interlinked. Born Carlos Rolin in 1970, Dzine creates art that culls its inspiration from both his travels and his musical collaborations, utilizing sampling and juxtaposition—references to architecture, design motifs and patterns. The result is repetitive, obsessive, multilayered paintings that deal with themes of sensuality and color. In addition to his painting, Dzine also creates large, site-specific wall installations that incorporate soundtracks by an international array of DJs and producers, including the likes of Gotan Project, Guidance Recordings and Yellow Productions. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Palais De Tokyo, Paris, and Institute of Visual Art Center, Milwaukee, among many
others. His most recent solo exhibition, entitled “Punk Funk,” was shown at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. The exhibit included a site-specific installation accompanied by an exclusive soundtrack produced by DJ Cam from Paris. In addition to producing various releases and CD compilations for his own label la la Productions, Dzine has collaborated on an array of unique projects, including an exclusive line of fabric, clothing and accessories for the Japanese clothing giant World Inc. (spring/summer collection 2006) and a hand-painted guitar commissioned for rock legend Eric Clapton. Dzine is represented by: Scai the bathhouse/Shiraishi Contemporary Art Inc., Tokyo, Japan scaithebathhouse.com dzinechicago.com/site/
Above: Dzine joins the likes of Josh Wisdumb, SP ONE, Blake E. Marquis with Shepard Fairey, Anthony Lewellen, Coro, Rostarr, PNut, Caleb Neelon and Buff Monster in making murals for HELIO.
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nd Vision
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DZINE
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MOBILE CULTURE MUTATES, IN SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA Writer: Kim In
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he world is getting smaller. Technology is affecting culture—and vice versa, the planet spinning simultaneously toward both uniqueness and uniformity. This issue, HELIO features a letter from a friend in Seoul, South Korea, where the “mobile generation” is slowly transforming the face of the city and the future of the country itself.
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It was only a matter of time before “human” and “machine” began to blend and mutate. Walk among the modern city and you’re bound to observe the so-called “Mobile Generation,” a massive population between the ages of 14 and 35 for whom the mobile phone is not only lifeline, but also cultural identity and accoutrement. And nowhere is this burgeoning generation more apparent, more visible, than in Seoul, South Korea. Seoul is now home to what is essentially a new cultural topology, a fad/fashion/way of life, which has been generated by the volatile mix of mobile technology with the youth of Korea—a country that leads the planet in mobile culture. On February 10, 2006, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, a young couple held a wedding ceremony in a Seoul subway train. A young man told passengers that he and his girlfriend were too poor to have a proper wedding ceremony, as they were both raised in an orphanage. He asked someone on the train to officiate, but got no takers, so he recited a short vow and a put a ring on his bride’s finger as she wept. The ceremony was shot by another subway rider on his camera phone, posted on a private blog on Valentine’s Day and began circulating immediately. Before long, this clip caused a buzz among Internet
users and thanks to that, two massive media stars were born. Ultimately, it made no difference that the ceremony was later found to be a guerilla play by students of the theater and film department at a Korean university. These Valentine’s Day nuptials were just the kind of happy accident that could not have become such a publicly celebrated affair without the close cooperation between mobile technology and the new mobile generation. Today, the cell phone is, so to speak, the other self of the youth. There are numerous reasons why the mobile phone has become such a potent totem of youth culture, specifically within Korea. Korean young people, under the direct influence of Confucianism, have been obliged to observe certain proprieties since childhood. They have been controlled by a strident, established moral system, and as a result have strived to create their own code of conduct and form their own topological space. Undoubtedly Korean youth have a strong desire for re/de-organizing of the established system, as well as the establishment of a new culture all their own. Perhaps those possibilities could be accelerated with mobile technology.
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SOUTH KOREA
"Undoubtedly Korean youth have a strong desire for re/deorganizing of the established system..." To today’s youth, the cell phone is simultaneously their identification card and the fashion expressing their own individuality. Phones provide access to the world, as well as serving as camera, MP3, TV, Internet, movie theater, and even living spaces such as hospital or a bank. Moreover, Korean youth sometimes uses the ‘back light’ function of mobile LCDs instead of candlelight in candlelight rallies held to support social or political movements. Teen-agers often use the same function in place of upheld lighters at rock concerts. The so-called CY-holics of CYWORLD, Korea’s top online community site, are so devoted to their mini-home pages that they are increasingly willing to use virtual cash named ‘Dotori’ (the Korean word for
acorn) to dress up their sites. Dotori (which cost 100 won—10 cents each) is also payable through a user’s cell phone bill. And Korea’s mobile generation utilize the camera or MP3 phones perhaps the most creatively of any mobile culture. Since camera phones became popular, even those shy of cameras have begun to enjoy taking pictures, especially of themselves. Audiophiles sometimes hold personal concerts at parties; all the music downloaded from their MP3 phones. Among some male users, 3-D game phones have become increasingly popular. T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) phones are the hottest sellers these days. It seems that the demand for them is increasing with marketing of major sporting events such as the World Cup. It is becoming not only the industry standard to provide mobile TV service but also part of daily life for many South Koreans. Eventually, it seems, many will prefer watching hand-held TVs to reading books and newspapers. But one hopes instead that these phones will serve as outlets to the larger world and more eloquent communication. If used creatively, the mobile phone could provide an expressive, potent method of human interaction. Perhaps mobile culture can someday facilitate face-to-face communication as well, creating a more vibrant youth culture and simultaneously, a bright hope for Korea’s future.
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Blind Date:
The Flam Meet Dor HELIO PLAYS MATCHMAKER窶認LAMING LIPS FRONTMAN WAYNE COYNE GOES HEAD TO HEAD WITH ARTIST/MUSICIAN/ROBOT-MAKER DOUGLAS REPETTO Writer: Teena Apeles
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ming Lips rkbot S
ince the 1980s, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne spent his time performing bizarre stage antics and writing quirky optimistic songs about such varied subjects as bedbugs, Godzilla and Vaseline. Despite his eccentricities—or perhaps, because of them—he and fellow Lips’ members, bassist Michael Ivins and instrumentalist extraordinaire Steven Drodz, have found success (even winning a Grammy in 2002 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance) in the “alternative” music scene with the Flaming Lips’ signature psychedelic sound and Coyne’s consistently off-key, but charming, vocals. The band is currently promoting its latest album, “At War With the Mystics” (atwarwiththemystics.com), a follow-up to the Flaming Lips’ best-selling record yet, 2002’s “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.”
While Coyne was making his way in the music world—often dressed in furry costumes or covered in confetti or both—multimedia artist Douglas Repetto (music.columbia.edu/~douglas/) has been toying in the art world with computer programs, living organisms, LED panels, experimental music, various light sources and lots and lots of machines. He is also the founder of “ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show” (artbots.org), an annual art show in New York; dorkbot (dorkbot.org), a community of DIY inventors who meet all over the globe; and organism (works. music.columbia.edu/organism), a weblog featuring art made with living systems. HELIO brought these two innovative artists together to talk about art, weirdos and the union of music and technology.
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THE FLAMING LIPS / DOUGLAS REPETTO
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Opposite Page: Painting for the cover of At War With the Mystics by Wayne Coyne. This Page: Top: foal, a newborn walking table. Bottom: Slowscan Soundwave (III), large scale installation with soundreactive mylar columns. Photos by Douglas Repetto
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THE FLAMING LIPS / DOUGLAS REPETTO
“In a way, rock ‘n’ roll wants that kind of participation. When it’s at it’s best it’s really a kind of communal. I want to present concerts that are unlike anything that ever happened in any realm.” -WAYNE COYNE ON THE FLAMING LIPS LIVE SHOW Repetto: Well, to introduce myself, I am an artist. I work at Columbia at the Computer Music Center. Coyne: What’s that like? Repetto: It started out as a very stodgy old ColumbiaPrinceton Electronic Music Center back in the day. And has since, thankfully, broadened a bit, so we do a bit of everything over here. I make a lot of sculpture and installation using robotics and plants and all kinds of stuff. But I also run a number of organizations. One is called “Dorkbot,” people doing strange things with electricity… Coyne: Dorkbot? Repetto: Yeah, it’s a monthly meeting that we started here in New York and now it has actually spread all over the world. There’s something like 50 of them now and it’s basically an open forum for people doing strange things, basically a show-and-tell for adults. Coyne: That’s cool. What is something interesting that someone would bring to the table there? Repetto: Well, it’s hard to—it’s all interesting, it’s very varied. For me, that’s what’s exciting. It’s always a glimpse into the strange world that other people inhabit, whereas what is this person obsessed about? It’s kind of like to think about it as going to a dinner party with a bunch of weirdos you have to sit next to and say to someone, “Hey, what are you doing?” And they tell you about it. A couple months ago there were a couple women who had just, it’s not about robotics specifically, but they had built five robots that were part of a Henrik Ibsen play, an Off Broadway play, that were actually characters in the play. So they brought one of them in and talked about how it worked and talked about the experience of doing that. Lots of times it is art-
ists doing strange things, other times, it’s a hacker or an engineer. I also do this thing called “ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show,” where every year we have an open call for people around the world specifically making art with robotics. Coyne: That sounds cool! Repetto: There are musical robots, painting robots and more abstract stuff like sculpture that is robotic—rather than outputting something, it is art itself. I kind of float around within those worlds and often do a lot of art with biology and science. Coyne: Well, a lot of what I do, even though we can say it is art, really falls into the category of just dumb entertainment. And dumb entertainment is a great thing. I know for myself, me and my wife go into a museum, we’re looking at paintings, we’re looking at great art, but to us, it’s just dumb entertainment. We’re not really there saying that it’s better than a football game. We just like it so we’re going to a museum to be entertained by it. Repetto: I know that you’ve done a number of things, one of which involves robotics, but what’s more interesting to me is this idea of losing control a little bit and I know you’ve done a lot of things that have involved this interesting mix of control and not so much control. Like the multi-boom box thing you did. Coyne: Yeah, where you involve the audience as part of the entertainment. My philosophy is—we might as well put them to work. Sometimes this divide— between ‘here is the performer and here’s the audience’—that divide becomes ‘something’s happening here.’ I love that. I like it when something happens, some element of it is interrupted and freaky because you never know how they’re going to react and a
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THE FLAMING LIPS / DOUGLAS REPETTO
“I kind of like to think about it as going to a dinner party with a bunch of weirdos you have to sit next to and you say to someone, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ And they tell you about it.” -DOUGLAS REPETTO ON DORKBOT GATHERINGS lot of people at rock concerts are attention-seekers themselves. They’re in rock bands or they’re weirdos themselves. I just like the idea of ‘well, you guys are going to help me make this piece of music.’ In a way, rock ’n’ roll wants that kind of participation. When it’s at its best it’s really kind of communal. I want to present concerts that are unlike anything that ever happened in any realm, even experimental shows where it’s really something utterly unique. I am playing to an audience that is full of artists themselves. I’m lucky that the Flaming Lips’ audience is like that—they’re up for a little something different. Repetto: So you’ve sort of got a built-in goodwill? Coyne: I think with the element of surprise and a bit of chaos, I think that’s when the Flaming Lips work their best. We really seem to shine in that moment where everything is going wrong, whereas when everything is pristine and perfect, we don’t really look like a magnificent peacock. Repetto: I’ve kind of moved away from music and performance. I work a lot more know with machines and things like that, but what compelled me to do that is because it brings me to these questions about what does it mean when it’s not a human being doing these things. B ecause that’s certainly a part of contemporary life, a sense of loss of control, a sense of hoping that there is some goodwill in these systems that you have to give your life over to. What I’m doing, I’m not making paintings [with this giant painting machine], I’m not making claims like I would be if I were a painter. Rather, I’m making a system that’s doing this thing that looks like a painting, but it’s doing something quite different. I think it draws people, thinking, what is this thing then? How can it be expressive? What would it mean to be expressive? Or what would it
mean for it to touch me? For me it could still be very touching, and it could be very expressive. Coyne: Or do you just like building them and let that be what it is? Repetto: It is very expressive to me, but for me, more often than not, it’s not the final product—it’s the process itself. Coyne: Being in a rock band, it is a sort of multilevel sort of thing because you’re presenting a song that people are going to know when they get to the show. But then, while you play the song, you do yet something else that is just another level within their mind, and then when they go home, they have yet another experience attached to this night and this song. Rock ’n’ roll allows you to do so many different levels of where it is expression and where is it performance. Repetto: You could just retreat into your studio at this point for the next 20 years and just release MP3s over the Internet, but that’s not a very attractive option to you. Coyne: I don’t think a lot of people would understand the music unless I’m there presenting it. There’s a reason why politicians go from city to city talking to people, because it really makes a difference. So part of what I’m doing is, ‘here’s our music, but I’m gonna come right here and stand in front of you and let this performance happen, whether it’s fantastic, mediocre or a disaster, I’m going to stand right here with you.’ I think regardless how many great artists have lived in the past we’re always going to need some living, breathing example right in front of us living through the same times we’re right in. And I’m just lucky that I get to do that.
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