Notions on sci-fi, horror, psychedelia & other phenomena from the edges of reality in graphic arts, literature, music & film. Follow us on Twitter. Custodians: Jacqui Oakley artist, illustrator Jamie Lawson artist, designer at poly The Open Window Society would like to acknowledge the following: William S. Burroughs / J.G. Ballard / J.L. Borges / Brion Gysin / Athansius Kircher / Philip K. Dick / Alfred Bester / Cordwainer Smith / Aleister Crowley / Wallace Berman / Arthur C. Clarke / Ray Bradbury / Andrei Tarkovsky / Syd Mead / Hans Belmer / Max Ernst / Francis Bacon (both) / Arthur Rackham / Aubrey Beardsley / Austin Osman Spare / Wassily Kandinsky / HP Lovecraft / Algernon Blackwood / Arthur Machen / Jack Vance / Stanislaw Lem / Franciszek Starowieyski / Gustav Meyrink / Jules Verne / HG Wells / John Wyndham / Franz Kafka / Amos Tutuola / Robert Anton Wilson / William Blake / Frank Herbert / Frater Achad / Lewis Carrol / Winsor McKay / Josef Albers / Goethe / Làszló Moholy-Nagy / Edgar Allan Poe / Mary Shelley / Ingmar Bergman / Federico Fellini / Aldous Huxley / James Joyce / Odilon Rédon / George Orwell / John Varley / Delia Derbyshire / György Ligeti / Wendy Carlos / Karlheinz Stockhausen / Jan Švankmajer / Max Fleischer / Augustin Lesage / Ray Harryhausen / Isaac Asimov / Buckminster Fuller / Marcel Duchamp / Man Ray / T.F. Marinetti / El Lissitsky / Fortunato Depero / Fernand Léger / Robert Delaunay / Robert Desnos / John Cage / Tex Avery /
Jacqui's awesome compilation for designers.mx, an unlikely mix of Krautrock, Ethiopian Jazz, Cambodian Pop, Surf Rock, Exotica & Louisiana-swamp-voodoo-chants, combine to conjure rhythms of a primal journey – sometimes fragile, sometimes violent. One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula - Dengue Fever Dancing Drums - Ananda Shankar Love Dance - Les Baxter Yègellé Tezeta - Mulatu Astatqé Oh Yeah - Can Misiriou - Martin Denny Sleepwalk - The Ventures Danse Kalinda Ba Doom - Dr. John The Three - Secret Chiefs 3 I Put A Spell On You - Screaming Jay Hawkins
Jamie's second mix for designers.mx. Some quieter & prettier tunes here, but still alien, psychedelic & cinematic* enough to keep your brain kindled. Lots of strings, twangs, la-la-las & ooo-ooo-ooos. Was looking to get some of that weird dreaminess across in the art too – apologies if anyone was expecting something a little more proggy… *Les Fusées by Alain Goraguer is from the awesome animated movie Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage), Come Maddalena by Sun City Girls is a cover of Ennio Morricone's Come Un Madrigale from the soundtrack to Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Quattro Mosche Di Velluto Grigio) and J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) is the dude who scores the cartoon masterpiece The Venture Bros. Black Shabbis: The Trail of Libels - Jamie Saft The River - Ananda Shankar Les Fusées - Alain Goraguer The Yelm Sessions - Eyvind Kang Daily Living - Kaada The End Times - Secret Chiefs 3 Marcha De La Santa Sangre - Orthodox Habibaty (My Beloved) - Omar Khorshid Come Maddalena - Sun City Girls O Putrid Sun (For Yuko) - Foetus
Listening to this song, you wonder if the Brothers Four are in on just how goddamn creeepy it sounds. Amazingly haunting vocals and strange, menacing lyrics (something about the way they sing, "until you learn" is rather intense).
Doesn't seem like often Eyvind Kang pulls out the synths, but man, they absolutely kill on this song. Not one prone to hyperbole, I can assure you that this is the best thing ever.
Jamie made a badass mix of psychedelic metal madness for designers.mx. 1. Cross Builder - The Secret 2. A Rush of Blood - Cleric 3. Exterminating Angel - Secret Chiefs 3: The Holy Vehm 4. The Crystal World - Locrian 5. Dub kuolleen porton muistolle - Oranssi Pazuzu 6. Mysteries of the Organ - Burning Star Core 7. The Invisible Mountain - Horseback 8. Vastness and Sorrow - Wolves in the Throne Room 9. The Antique - Kayo Dot 10. Alice - Sunn O)))
Nels Cline / William Winant Duo - Wrong Path In A Garden Maze Amazingly spooky & engaging improvisation between Nels Cline (Nels Cline Singers, Wilco, etc.) & William Winant (John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, etc.) - sounds more like badass soundtrackery than any other improv noodles you're likely to hear today. Outtakes from the documentary The Reach Of Resonance by Steve Elkins. Candela Films
Milton Glaser, Beatrice, from Dante’s Purgatorio. 8. "Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is." Milton Glaser, from Ten Things I Have Learned, part of AIGA Talk in London. November 22, 2001 Image courtesy of This Week in New York.
“And now came this Isabel with that red smear for a mouth…” The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov was a gift from a good friend - the inscription reads, “…the best Russian synæsthete for Jamie and Jacqui…”. I’d somehow never read Nabokov before, and I chose this book to use for this piece as a good excuse to correct that. I flipped to the page my magical musical process determined, and was floored to find such a comically colour-evocative sentence. I almost didn’t use it, thinking it would be a bit obvious (& therefore difficult), but decided that it was worth pursuing… Later that night I read Wingstroke, the short story that contains the line and the whole thing came together. Naked City’s Grand Guignol soundtracking lent an even more ominous and quietly violent aspect, perfectly twinning the vibe of the story. This quickly became one of the more expressive pieces so far in the STP series. The dominant reds and blues really took over, not just due to their inherent visual potency, but from the power given them by the words themselves. The words Isabel, red smear & mouth all containing a good proportion of reds & blues, loom large compositionally as well as conceptually. Below is the letter/colour breakdown – each square corresponds with one of the letters in the phrase (for example: A=blue; N=brown; D=brown &c.). In the final art I try to represent the effect that I perceive from the combination of letters. The initial letter of each word having a pronounced sway over the rest, the secondary colours become hazy echoes.
OCTOPUS BALLET Beautiful & eerie clip of a deep sea octopus complimented by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” performed by Bryan Verhoye. Little is known about the deep-sea octopuses that live in proximity to the hydrothermal vent fields associated with the underwater volcanoes of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. This white octopus was filmed with a high-definition underwater video camera at 6600 feet depth 200 miles off the coast of Oregon in September 2005 as part of the VISIONS '05 expedition led by Professors John Delaney and Deborah Kelley of the University of Washington. via Dangerous Minds & Unique Daily
Alvarius B (Alan Bishop of the immortal Sun City Girls for the uninitiated) covers Ennio Morricone... I don't really need to write anything further to impel you to give a listen, except to say that it's even more beautiful than one would expect. AB turns down the snide, amps up the "lonely organ" (as Byron Coley aptly calls it) and sends shivers up me timbers. Unfortunately limited to 300 pressing upon release. No, I don't have one either.
“All these motions meant parts of time and fate.” From Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha Von Dechend Synæsthesia Text Projects are an ongoing series of text-based posters revolving around Jamie’s experience of grapheme (letter/number) - colour synæsthesia. Grapheme - colour synæsthesia on Wikipedia Below is the letter/colour breakdown – each square corresponds with one of the letters in the phrase (for example: A=blue; L=light brown; T=orange; H=dark orange; &c.). In the final art I try to represent the effect that I perceive from the combination of letters, the initial letter of each word having a pronounced sway over the rest.
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