imomus | Flash flood

Flash flood

Back in February, you may remember, I asked Click Opera readers (a creative class so rich in cultural capital, so effortlessly superior, that jealous outsiders now refer to this place as "Clique Opera") to make Flash pieces for songs from my Otto Spooky album. Quite a few chose titles and started work. The Lady Pat was the first to finish, with an amazing video for Your Fat Friend. Then... well, then, to be honest, things went incredibly quiet.

Five months later, the second piece has been completed. It's The Artist Overwhelmed by Blayne Greiner. Blayne has the perfect excuse for his tardiness: he relocated from North American to Berlin while he was making this piece. In fact, I bumped into him in the first week he was here, in the treasure trove of the Treptower flea market. He's very tall and handsome, with a mane of brown hair. My favourite part of his piece for "The Artist Overwhelmed" is when the two elderly gay lovers kiss, and the table they're standing on breaks. Oh, and the single green-coloured cypress tree which appears briefly during the word "eternally", the only coloured object in the whole piece. Blayne has asked me to tell you that if you're interested in commissioning Flash work, you can reach him at: derhutgeist@gmail.com. He's also "been thinking about making t-shirts in the same style of things like monks riding giant turtles and whatnot, so if people are interested they should e-mail me as part of a survey."

The Artist Overwhelmed (Flash media, 4.7MB)

The next Flash piece due, and already hotly anticipated, is Lord Whimsy's presentation for the eunuch-friendly supermadrigal "Bantam Boys". All seems to be progressing well on that front: in a recent e mail, Whimsy told me "I've recently turned you into a calligraphic deep sea micro-organism. Hope you don't mind."

Speaking of Whimsy, art lovers will be delighted to hear that our very own "affected provincial" is featured in an article in the current edition of Frieze magazine, the Slow Issue. (Those desperate to read the article, about intellectual whimsy, might like to cast a glance at The Importance of Being Earnest.) I also spoke about him as an example of "successful self-mediation" during a radio interview I did for BBC Ulster's Arts Review programme yesterday, so perhaps Whimsy can expect to tread red carpet on his next visit to Belfast.

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I saw the Frieze piece yesterday? on Lord Whimsy's journal. I am so glad things are coming to such fruition for him. I can't think of someone who deserves it more. His almanack is brilliant, and I hope Bloomsbury gives him the freedom to expand on the ideas...the final third makes you feel like the world is luminous. "Successful self-mediation" is a great way to put it...there is such a strong theme of balance in his work (be it the diagrams or the essays) that I can't help but think of how well much of him as a greek statue...so finely constructed and balanced that it can stand on its own...most unlike the crude Roman marble reproductions that relied on carefully placed tree branches to support the figure.
The flash piece is beautiful...and is strange because I was thinking of the greek statues before I even watched it. I agree that the tree is lovely, but I find the clouds moving between forground and background utterly enchanting as well.

It is nice to see so many terrific things going well for Lord Whimsy. I'm glad to see that the world at large is starting to appreciate him as much as we do.

My thoughts exactly.

The animation for "The Artist Overwhelmed" suits the piece quite well. Worth a five month wait!

i'd rather like to make a Flash piece for this project but i'd have to learn Flash first. maybe i'll stick to making cheap tape recorder collages and sharpie tattoos and eating chocolate mousse. but i'll play Lute Score and think about digi-pandas as i'm doing it.

i do like the green tree.

that's a great FLASH piece!

this makes good reading. michael mattis on whimsy.

http://www.dandyism.net/thediabolicalmon.html

Good reading if you enjoy laughing at Mr. Mattis for both his vulgar lack of wit and his complete inability to perceive clever nuance. "The Affected Provincial's Almanack" is genius. Just the type of clever, subtle, literary genius to fly completely over the head of poor, befuddled Michael Mattis.

don't be so precious, butter.

i must admit i broke the rules for the competition. now i'm 30 seconds into a proper video (not flash) for 'sempreverde'. i'm compositing in after effects because i had too much photographic ideas about the song. the process however is quite slow and my life is giving me less and less time (and brain energy) to work on it.
anyway, i like what i'm doing and that's a good omen i think.
the only thing that scares me is the final size of the video, but we'll see.

I asked Click Opera readers (a creative class so rich in cultural capital, so effortlessly superior, that jealous outsiders now refer to this place as "Clique Opera")

Momus, you are the rare creature that inspires most of your fans to go out and start bands and flock to galleries. Though you may never appeal to the majority of the masses (though occasionally appealling to sections of them), you attract fellow creatives like flies to honey.

And wherever creatives "gather" on the internet, cynics also gather to try to dampen the creatives' surreal nature, particularly yours, being the bandleader so to speak. I think you are brilliant for allowing the "anonymouses" to post at all.

you attract fellow creatives like flies to honey

Thank you for the judicious phrasing there!

I think you are brilliant for allowing the "anonymouses" to post at all.

Oh, no question of disabling Anon posting. The spiteful ones make me chuckle most of the time and there are many great and positive Anon posts which educate me.

I had to sound judicious to give poor, bored anonymous from Herefordshire something to do.

You don't need cynics, you're already beyond parody with your embarrasingly brown nose.

*chuckle* Hi Mr Ross-on-Wye, how's the weather in Herefordshire?

It's been edited out now, but I notice that the cached Wikipedia entry (http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:yCw2t1cnK6kJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross-on-Wye+%22ross-on-wye+is%22&hl=en&client=safari) on Ross-on-Wye ends with the line "Ross-On-Wye is also very boring".

I've been searching for the link to the Radio Ulster thing with no joy.

Should it be in an archive - or is it yet to go on air?
If so, do you know when?

barry cullen
dodgy stereo

It aired last night on the BBC Radio Ulster show 'Arts Extra', broadcast between 6.30 and 7pm. I don't know if they archive the show.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4720863.stm

*sniff* It's like a little bit of my childhood disappearing..

(though occasionally appealling to sections of them)

*snort* Could've sworn you said "Though occasionally appalling"...

Aren't all quality artists occasionally appalling? The masses certainly bear such a tendency.

Dark and sombre, just the way I like it. It reminds me of some Residents' early videos by Graeme Whifler and their early attempts at primitive CG. Think skulls and slow zoom-ins.

Anyway, on a tech note, the clip is a bit snippy and discontinuous. Flash is a great animation tool but has a problem rendering a lot of information especially in full screen mode, so it's recomended to make it in a smaller resolution (even then it renders not smoothly).
Momus, If you'd like I can make it into a movie (AVI MPG or even MOV for you trendy Mac people) which is a good solution. It will do it more justice. Leave an e-mail where I can send it to, in case you're interested.

max

Well, maybe Blayne might want a movie file of it, his e mail address is above.

The Flash works fine on my iBook, though!

A video would be really nice, actually. It's all those little curvy lines. Please e-mail me!

The flash piece adds to the song. I like the poofiness of it, are they 2 tradesmen on vacation or is 1 a hairdresser/stylist.

I see them as antiques dealers with shops on the New King's Road or Melrose Avenue, I think.

The breaking news in Belfast is welcome.

On a cultural tangent relating to my home town, the Momus radio link.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/ulster/aod.shtml?ulster/artsx_wed

barry c
dodgy stereo

But I didn't find the blogging item in that one, did you? Maybe that's still last Wednesday's show?

Ah, I've just heard from the producer that it's expected to air on Monday.

Blayne brought a promising unfinished version of this to practice. It's fantastic. I realized after seeing his completed piece that I hadn't connected The Artist Overwhelmed with clarity, but with obfuscation. I wonder why I interpreted the song that way.

My apologies, I didn't intend to be mistaken for an anonymouse.

Great flash animation... makes me want to add that to my already insurmountable list of learning objectives. Beautiful song, as well.

When is the kind and sensitive Whimsy expecting to be finished with his?

Hello,
I'm currently doing a GCSE Art project that you're the subject of, (it's a long story but basically it's an interior design project where we pick someone famous/well known, design a room for them and make a model of it) and I tried emailing you on the momus@t-online.de email address I found on the momus website but it wouldn't work. I was wondering if you'd answer one or two simple questions for me to help me with my project?

Thanks!

momasu(a)gmail.com

It's coming, I swear...I just need to get through this hectic time-sink of a week!

I tend to work in fits and starts on these projects, so it's hard to say when it will get done, but get done it shall. Educated guess is in a couple weeks, but it may be sooner or later than that.

Thank you for the kind mention, Nick--would love to hear the program. I'll check in on the BBC Ulster website.

W

Is it comfortable to sleep on a futon on a tatami mat?

http://www.mit.edu/people/patil/yatta.html uhhh yuuup

Will it ever "date"? It doesn't seem so. The piece for "The Artist Overwhelmed" really complements (and compliments) the music.

Momus, listing to "Your Fat Friend" made me want to ask you what you think (if anything) of Morrissey's "You're the One for Me, Fatty"? And on that topic, years ago you said "[Morrissey] is always searching for his sexual nemesis". I've wanted to ask for a while if that was simply based on his lyrics, or did other things inform that statement?

I like Morrissey's song. I think it's part of a genre which calls the bluff of a certain strand of political correctness which, under the banner of sensitivity, draws a veil over problematical and sensitive issues. In other words, Morrissey's song mocks the idea that it's better not to talk at all about a subject which might inflame passionate feelings, than even to talk positively about it. Or, as Seinfeld once asked, "What, is it even racist to have positive feelings about a race?"

I think the "nemesis" comment was probably just a reference to Morrissey's songs and sleeve imagery, the suedehead, delinquent teen fetish he refers to, a proclivity his erstwhile record label Rough Trade named itself after.

Cheers for that. Yes, I'm sure Mozzer had a few Richard Allen books on his shelf as a lad.

. I think it's part of a genre which calls the bluff of a certain strand of political correctness which, under the banner of sensitivity, draws a veil over problematical and sensitive issues.

What other good songs fit this "subgenre"?

Great blog. Too bad about the jealous types, but you probably wouldn't have it any other way.

The August 1st program on blogging in which Momus appears has been posted, and you can now listen to this interview here. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/ulster.shtml) The interview starts about eight minutes into the program.

W

"even in your day i have many imitators and admirers"

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Flash flood

wow...

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hmm...

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Where's Mollie Weir

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friends in low places etc

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Really really nice!

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Random question

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Flash animation...

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