Added on Mon 7 Jan 2008
The prime time of your life
The very first one!
I was actually going to reorder these not in the order I had painted them, since it seemed they were getting better as I went. (a little secret… I’ve already done a few ahead of time). But I figured to see them in the same order I do them is probably more interesting.
The 1st track off the album Human After All by Daft Punk is actually the title track! Well you would think that meant it was a bit more important than the rest of them… well wouldn’t you think so?? So I decided it should be the last picture to be painted. By that time, I figure I will be at saturation point and sort of ready to do that one-footed karate kid kick to the picture. HAA will be in my veins. (Actually, since my foot is actually broken atm, that makes more sense than you may think!)
The prime time of your life; a very crunchy sounding song. If you open this link (it will be in a new window) a streaming video clip for the song start playing. Big bass thump thump thumps in. I wasn’t sure either at this stage how I was actually going to do this whole song to art thing? So I started as simply as possible, which seemed to mean leaving the actual lyrics alone and just concentrating on the sounds and progression of the track. For whatever reason, I did this as if travelling from left to right across the paper as the song progresses. Everything is wide open in the start, the beat gradually raises, the tempo increases and everything intensifies. Over all this are the words “the prime time of your life” ringing in waves. What starts out open and definite gradually bears in on being closed and cluttered cramping down to pure noise, which shatters suddenly leaving that a smooth wake of sound. The harmonics of the previous deafening noise is all that remain and green felt right for that. In the song that happens right at the end, just in the last few seconds. But in terms of presence I had to give those few seconds much more room on paper, in order to match how much space it takes up the song really.
As I was finishing it, I decided that at some stage I had to leave the song behind for a moment and see what the picture wanted. I’ll admit, at that point I felt rusty as I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Extra red dots went on, the one in the middle had been there right from the start… I guess that is the prime time red dot, but I thought it to need company. I’m not so sure about it even now. But when I listen to the song it makes more sense.
Hope you like it.
It will be on eBay for the next 7 days find it here, starting at $1. (And as it turns out it finished at $1! as well, well my fears of having an initial success with this only to have it followed by a deflating slide into obscurity have gone unfounded!) I’ll be sending it off unframed, just gently rolled up.