{"id":194,"date":"2012-04-06T23:12:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/?page_id=194"},"modified":"2012-04-06T23:27:53","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T23:27:53","slug":"dont-you-wonder-sometimes-about-sound-and-vision","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/?page_id=194","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t You Wonder Sometimes, About Sound and Vision?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in <em>URB<\/em>, May 1999<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JAt6jpBmHHM\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Director Chris Cunningham\u2019s openly calibrated marriages of audio and visual codes lead to a new synthesis of video communication.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Words: Daniel Chamberlin<\/p>\n<p>Chris Cunningham is a director who works best when he doesn\u2019t have to worry about other artists\u2019 personalities interfering with his vision of sound. His images come from what he repeatedly refers to as \u201cthe pictures in my head:\u201d images of sound divorced from the performers\u2019 personal emotions. It\u2019s made a bit clearer by comparing two of his most commercial and antagonistic efforts.<\/p>\n<p>With Madonna\u2019s \u201cFrozen,\u201d Cunningham is in top form for effects, helping the Material Girl escape the material plane as she shatters on the ground into a flock of ravens and morphs into triads of herself all the while singing about cold hearts, sorrow and generic pop sentiments. \u201cI wanted to see how you could get her across, how you could apply . . . style [but] get her image across,\u201d the director explains from the RSA Films\u2019 London office.<\/p>\n<p>Besides the uncooperative sandstorms of the Mojave locale, it\u2019s obvious Cunningham has sublimated his vision to his subject \u2014 not William Orbit\u2019s pop-trance beats, but Madonna and her feelings. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the time to be flexing my muscles as a conceptual artist,\u201d he concedes.<\/p>\n<p>Cut back several stages of commercial success. Cunningham\u2019s obnoxious band of child-hooligans, all wearing the same Richard James grin, are rampaging about a council estate in complete and total synchronization with \u201cCome to Daddy\u201d\u2019s brutal spasms of thrashed techno. A granny cowers and yuppies flee as the children frolic violently and pay tribute to Videodrome by coaxing an albino demon \u2018daddy\u2019 from their television. \u201cYou know with the Aphex video,\u201d he continues the comparison, \u201che doesn\u2019t want to be in the video. I\u2019ve got a fucking playground to run around in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham developed a keen eye for music while growing up in the English countryside. Both his father and stepfather introduced him to audio\u2019s visceral pleasures. \u201cAll my [step] father listened to was electronic music . . . from [musique] concr\u00e8te to Kraftwerk to Donna Summer.\u201d With these early electronic music pioneers scoring his childhood, he quickly gained an appreciation for new textures emanating from metal machine music culture. \u201cI spent so much of my childhood laying by my dad\u2019s speakers with my eyes closed listening to music . . . trying to imagine stuff. My earliest memories are of doing that, you know.<br \/>\n\u201cBecause my real dad was a classical music obsessive,\u201d he continues, \u201cI had these two weird influences as a child: classical and electronic.\u201d While his choices in contemporary sonics belie his synthetic sound preference, the appreciation of classical form attests to his ability to develop complex themes set to the intricate stylings of Autechre or Squarepusher. \u201cThe thing I loved about classical music was the structure; it was very fluid, the way it evolved,\u201d he says. \u201cThe way I make music videos is to break it down the way a choreographer would break it down to a tempo so the whole thing evolves purely from music, rather than being a filmmaker who is working in music, imposing his ideas onto tracks. My ideas [are] determined completely by [the] structure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham took a less lucid journey in the early \u201990s through the music of the Pixies and Nirvana, only to return to his roots upon hearing Aphex Twin. Like the audio components of his childhood, experimental techno\u2019s more abstract sounds weren\u2019t explicitly linked to instruments, helping to re-initiate the birthing process of musical images in Cunningham\u2019s fertile headspace. \u201cSome music I love, but it doesn\u2019t put pictures in my head at all,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I listen to music which is played [with] bass, drums, guitar and a singer, all I can picture is four people standing there playing instruments.\u201d It\u2019s the disembodied spaces between the sound and its source that Cunningham is quick to fill with his crisp visual manifestations of the audio codes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWindowlicker,\u201d his second collaboration with Aphex Twin, focuses on a cluster of polysexual \u2018women\u2019 with James\u2019 face graphed on, groping with James himself during a limo ride to the beach. What follows is a choreographed dance sequence involving suggestively handled umbrellas, overhead shots of twirling dancers and the exotic gyrations of the production\u2019s focus \u2014 a mutant hybrid of James\u2019 face with buck teeth and a voluptuous female body. \u201cShe\u2019s been locked in the cellar for four years,\u201d he laughs. \u201cShe has finally been let out and she has no concept that she is actually ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham\u2019s perverse prima donna is only rejected by the machismo-steeped parodies of LA homeboys \u2014 they ogle her from behind but flee once her visage indicates that she\u2019s outside their strict boundaries of sexuality. The rest of the dancers showcase and celebrate her difference in choreographed exaltation echoing vintage Busby Berkeley.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham\u2019s understanding of the visual possibilities of electronic music is so on point that the tracks he uses sound incomplete without their visual accompaniment. \u201cWith \u2018Windowlicker\u2019 . . . when [the music] opens out and turns pretty and [James] fucks around with the drum sounds, slips in and out of time and stuff, it really sounds like they\u2019ve been done quite wildly, quite off the cuff,\u201d he says of the naked audio. \u201cBut if you put an image to them, they suddenly seem completely, utterly ordered . . . by putting an image that syncs well with the sound you can make the sound seem intentional, even if it was some weird audio accident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dictated by Cunningham\u2019s psyche, it\u2019s often an order of unrestrained, youthful unraveling of sexual expectations. Focusing on two copulating robots, his video for Bj\u00f6rk\u2019s \u201cAll Is Full of Love\u201d gently rewrites the phallocentric world of pistons, gears and engines into a more androgynous act of synthetic love. In others, undaunted youth takes center stage: Both \u201cCome to Daddy\u201d and \u201cCome On My Selector\u201d revolve around headstrong youngsters running the grown-ups around in circles. These images of chaos are told through his synthesized language of digital media, his synchronized choreography of both sound and image. The music is sutured to the stream of visuals, whether it is a guard banging on a cell door according to Tom Jenkinson\u2019s stuttered breakbeats or a flowing kerchief changing direction to Portishead\u2019s slow scratches.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham refuses to make claims about the ideological bent of his sometimes-controversial stories. \u201cWindowlicker,\u201d in particular, probably won\u2019t be aired on MTV anytime soon. His Leftfield video, \u201cAfrika Shox,\u201d is open to various racial interpretations: A black homeless man\u2019s body crumbles as the citizens of New York look on. A white breakdancer accidentally kicks the frantic man\u2019s leg off. Afrika Bambaataa offers a helping hand. The director shrugs his shoulders, content to focus on the structure of his work and leaving its politics up for discussion. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard for me to have an opinion because the way I\u2019m working, I\u2019m reacting to sound on different levels, making links, almost a circle out of it\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost for other people to decide what the end product is. I\u2019m always very suspicious of artists who say, \u2018It was supposed to be this or that.\u2019 How can they know exactly how something is going to trigger someone else\u2019s mind?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the very least, the tales he tells communicate an abstract subversiveness, at times obnoxious but never superficial. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in shock value,\u201d he asserts. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in going out of your way to upset people. I find that really insulting when people say, \u2018You\u2019re just trying to shock people,\u2019 just because it upset you.\u201d In an industry rampant with Marilyn Mansonesque shock-chic, Cunningham manages to make you think about what you\u2019re seeing. His focus on the relationship between sound and image yields unstable effects, not calibrated to provoke specific reactions. His hybridized, surreal characters are open fields for cultural theorists trying to instill an ideological order in much the same way that Cunningham\u2019s images have applied order to the sound.<\/p>\n<p>For the time being, Cunningham has halted directing music videos. He\u2019s working on an Aphex-scored short film \u201cthat\u2019s much more abstract than anything I\u2019ve done,\u201d as well as two more film scripts which he stresses are \u201creally, really music-based.\u201d Next comes the daunting task of adapting William Gibson\u2019s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer to the big screen. He\u2019s currently mulling over a script with the author, well aware of the challenge. \u201cWhen I read the book I was flabbergasted to find out how far removed all these films were,\u201d he says, making references to the glut of sub-par Gibson-inspired projects. \u201cI suddenly realized why this book had been so big. I think that all the films based on this genre have sort of given it a bad name.\u201d Of the directors that come to mind, Cunningham seems contemptuous enough of Hollywood\u2019s lowest-common-denominator output that he might actually pull it off. His assertion that Hollywood\u2019s standards have dropped holds up (his catalog of videos easily outdistance the current sci-fi special effect gimmickry of The Phantom Menace or even The Matrix upon repeated viewing).<\/p>\n<p>As Cunningham moves into the limelight, mainstream and underground critics are more than willing to attribute hallucinogens as his muse. And while they have served as a tool in his visual constructions, it seems highly derivative to attribute his aesthetic strictly to the same drugs which have also produced endless black light paintings and nouveau-hippie\/raver products, more surreal for their enduring popularity than for any actual psychedelic properties. Instead, he seems far more interested in talking about the influence of Lucas (think Stormtroopers, not Jar Jar Binks) and Ridley Scott or hours spent as a child imagining pictures to accompany Donna Summer and Stockhausen. \u201cMusic is the most important art form in my opinion, but I think the only thing that can be superior to it is when an image and a sound come together perfectly. Something new is created out of it. Some weird trigger happens and it makes you feel like you\u2019re experiencing emotion, but you\u2019ve almost been tricked by the[ir] marriage.\u201d Stanley Kubrick on acid? It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 which may eventually fit (he designed several robots for the recently deceased auteur\u2019s unfinished A.I. project), but with the emphasis firmly on Kubrick.<\/p>\n<p>Videos:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z_SkJb7LPYE\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nSquarepusher<br \/>\n\u201cCome On My Selector\u201d<br \/>\nCunningham was awarded three 1999 Music Video Production Association awards (Video of the Year, Best Alternative Video, Best Editing) for his work on Squarepusher\u2019s \u201cCome On My Selector.\u201d In this short film, a young Japanese girl escapes from a mental institution, swapping the brains of a pursuing guard with her dog in the process. Cunningham\u2019s cutting is synchronized to the point where the girl typing commands into a computer interface is choreographed with Jenkinson\u2019s slap-happy bass kicks. \u201cIf there is any kind of music that you should not bother doing the video if it does not fit the music perfectly, it is drum &amp; bass,\u201d he says. \u201c[Jenkinson] is someone who understands structure and timing so brilliantly. I almost couldn\u2019t listen to other electronic music for quite awhile after hearing [his] stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ohDDxCdm9Oo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nPortishead<br \/>\n\u201cOnly You\u201d<br \/>\nOne of Cunningham\u2019s more subtle explorations of desire, \u201cOnly You\u201d is no less intense. A young boy gazes at Beth Gibbons as she croons in a dark alley and sinister faces peer from windows far above. Both the boy and Gibbons were filmed in submersion tanks, so the water pressure on their entire bodies forcibly expresses Portishead\u2019s suffocated torch songs. \u201c[\u2018Only You\u2019] is my favorite thing that I\u2019ve done,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most important aspect of that video to me was getting the atmosphere of the music across.\u201d With virtually no storyboarding, it was a freeform effort. \u201cIt was such a nice surprise that that chaotic experience which was considerably less controlled than the other videos, ended up being closer to what was in my head than on the ones where I\u2019m a control freak.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in URB, May 1999 Director Chris Cunningham\u2019s openly calibrated marriages of audio and visual codes lead to a new synthesis of video communication. Words: Daniel Chamberlin Chris Cunningham is a director who works best when he doesn\u2019t have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/?page_id=194\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-194","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/194\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielchamberlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}