Fortunately Bertram Ritter will keep care of the soundtrack again, and hopefully the first clip will be online for you before summer 2013. In between, here are some sort of online postcard flyers for any kind of distribution.

Through the very precise and lovingly work of Tommi Brem and his Houdini Nation webpage, all SF book covers of turkish born Eyke Volkmer can be watched at the link below, and even better, there’s also a book out covering this work. Volkmer produced 162 covers for Goldmann’s SF series during the 1960s and 70s, and most of the puristic, abstract minimal artwork still has this special modern touch that is so unique to his style. Wilhelm Goldmann himself must have known that he had a very talented man at the right place – it is delivered that he once commented on Volkmer’s work that “It doesn’t look like that in outer space.” At the same time, he encouraged Volkmer to keep on, knewing no one else was doing the same style at all.

www.weltraumtaschenbuch.de
 
more great sf book covers:
www.houdinination.de
 
 

Now, for the 3rd birthday of the “small world” clip, here are the original scans of all images in the album – most of them weren’t used, so there’s a good chance for a follow-up at some future day.

And please don’t throw away your old images, send them to the Playroutine office instead, OK?

While collecting experimental video clips for the first Desert Dust Cinema in Lobo Texas, I somehow stumbled across the clip “EDVARD GRIEG – Morning mood from ‘Peer Gynt’ Suite N°1” by French guy Alden Volney, of which I never had heard before. At first, I had the impression that this was a treasure of a long forgotten past of the early film age, and Alden had just put this found footage on the web.

But as there was more to watch on his Vimeo page, I soon noticed that I was entering the own visual aesthetics of a true original artist. It felt like stepping into a new and strange but somehow also familiar world, filled with the color palettes of the past. Aldens animations in combination with classical music instantly brought the work of Oskar Fischinger to my mind, a perfect transformation of music into a free visual style, not tied to any rules of storytelling.
 
 

This work is even more compelling with the background knowledge that the artist’s audiovisual skills are all self-taught, as he states to never even have set a foot in an art school. The fascination of 70s and early 80s aesthetics combined with an oldschool animation style that seems to refuse modern influences – in a good way of course – forms an atmosphere that has is own special magic style.

Alden claims that his inspiration comes from the overall atmosphere of a lost age and not particular works of particular artists: “I suppose that the key element that made me the person I am today is the fact that ever since my life begun, I’ve been exposed to great music and movies that clearly weren’t meant to be watched by a very young boy. When I was a kid, my father used to rent movies pretty much every week at the video store, and he was very interested in genre films, so this is how, by the age of 8 I had already seen stuff like Videodrome, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Midnight Express, Phantom of the Paradise, Akira, 2001: A space odyssey, Alien, The Dead Zone etc etc.. I think that when your brain is exposed to such works at a time when it’s still going through the process of growing, it has to leave deep traces, I think it explains why, to me, moving images are a powerful tool.”
 
 

His video intro clip to the British band ‘Plugs’ was the perfect closing at the end of the Desert Dust Cinema film festival in Lobo Texas 2011, and the sheer beauty of this warm, abstract and colorful animation in combination with the cool music left the audience totally amazed, to say the least.

Surprisingly Alden Volneys work is almost ignored in France, but in my opinion this status won’t last long. Working mostly abstract for years, he just has written and directed a music video with filmed live action (fortunately using his very own colorgrading style), and hopefully more will be published in the near future.
 
 

 
Check out his site on vimeo and his blog – highly recommended.
 
Alden Volney on Vimeo
Alden Volney on Tumblr
Alden Volney on Soundcloud
Alden Volney on Facebook
 

“They have retired” – now in the phase of preproduction – will be finished sometime during 2013. At the moment, this is planned to be a series of clips to be released in yet unknown intervals. Generally speaking, these animations will deal with the interchanging pathways of technology, society and work. But don’t ask how at this time..

If things are going good, each animation will be accompanied by the release of a limited large-scaled silkscreened print – so stay tuned.

www.desertdustcinema.com

Happy to announce that the music video for Berlin’s Non Standard Institute will be part of the new showreel of Maxon Cinema 4D, my favorite choice of tools whenever 3D gets involved. The salt and pepper motive had been already included in Maxon’s calendar for 2012, and some illustrations also found their way into the Cinema 4D online gallery – curious what comes next.

Maxon Cinema 4D showreel

ISO50 is the playground of San Francisco-based graphic designer and electronic musician Scott Hansen. I became aware of his work via the vinyl version of his latest album “Dive”, noticing that he was also responsible for the nice cover. One can lose oneself in his neverending inspirational blog, and I can really recommend to give every link a click.

He says: “I am no idealogue, and certainly not an intellectual when it comes to design. I hold no college degrees and have never studied design. I have, however, independently practiced graphic design for almost ten years and at this point I feel I have a good grasp of what types of design I enjoy and what styles inform my own work. Obviously I do a good deal of looking back when it comes to inspiration. I feel the design that blossomed from the Bauhaus movement and came of age in the 1960′s was the Zenith of an art form whose importance would fade away as Television, and later the Internet, took over the reigns of visual communication thus effectively transforming the medium.”

Scott Hansen’s band Tycho reflects the visual output: the music is filled with warm mellow grooves, and all who are surfing on the chillwave sound and all fans of Boards of Canada should give it a listen. It reflects the relaxed feeling of a warm sunset without getting cheesy…

ISO50 blog
Tycho website
Tycho on Soundcloud

copyright for all images by Scott Hansen

A few words about Lobo:
Lobo is a very small desert town that was abandoned by its last residents in 1991. Ten years later, three desert-loving individuals and some of their friends started the process of rebuilding the former ghost town. Along with the work of reclaiming the houses, the motel (and its great pool), the town hall and the former gas station, their goal was to make Lobo a meeting place for all the people in the area. During the last few years, several nonprofit art, music, and just hang-around-in-the-sun related events took place that are still fondly remembered by its participants.

During the days of the Desert Dust Cinema Festival, our small town wants to create a unique atmosphere for anyone interested in today’s wide range of short films. Of course, Lobo does not have what others may call a typical cinema venue, but we will do our best to make this location and the festival a special one. All screenings will take place in the area of the former Lobo gas station. Depending on the weather it will be either open air or indoors. After the showings there will be music and refreshments (Saturday: live music “Quiet Please” from Tucson, Arizona). There is no cover charge. Please bring your own chairs. Hope to see you around!

Here’s a very short documentation of the Desert Dust Cinema 2011:

But now, for nostalgic reasons and as sort of a last farewell here’s a final screenshot of the old Playroutine website for you and me: