Robert Sharp

A portrait by friend and collaborator CJ Clarke. Magic Party Place is his ongoing project on contemporary Britain.

While waiting for the Wisconsin and Hawaii primary results to drip in, I thought I would have a look at the various presidential candidate websites:

• HillaryClinton.com
• MikeHuckabee.com
• JohnMcCain.com
• BarackObama.com

Its striking how similar they all are in layout. Indeed, the sites for Clinton, McCain and Obama are so alike I thought they might have been created using the same software, but this isn’t so. All have the candidates name and logo in the top-left corner of the site (in common with most websites these days), an e-mail sign-up form in the top-right, and a donate button right below that. All have horizontal menus, a three column layout, with a large graphic element accorss the first two columns, below the menu. While this might demonstrate to some people that the candidates are clones of one another, I’m inclined to see it as proof that all the politicians recognise the value of good design. Following a recognised and established layout allows users to navigate the site quickly and efficiently.

There is, I think, a cliche of the ‘Presidential Candidate Logo’. The surname, of course, coupled with the year digits and then some flag-like representation in red, white and blue. Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich come close, but its Hillary Clinton who takes the prize for the most obvious logo in the field. What’s quirky about Senator Clinton is that her logo is derived from her first name.
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The prolific Daily Dish links to a willfully provocative art exhibition in Los Angles, entitled “Merry Titmas”. Andrew makes the point that such ‘provocative’ shows are actually pretty run-of-the-mill and lacking in real bravery.

My general rule with “brave” outsider anti-religious art is to ask if they’d do to Islam what they do routinely to Catholicism. Most don’t. Poseurs are often cowards.

This is a surprisingly immature comparison to make, given the two religions’ very different attitudes to icons and imagery. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, makes no bones about exploiting the images of its deities. The powerful and often visceral images of Christ, and the invariably erroneous images of the Madonna and Child, are central to the Church’s propaganda. By contrast, Islam guards against such crassness by forbidding any visual depiction of Mohammed, Peace be Upon Him, in any form (be it High Art, cartoons, or the modern medium of teddy bear).

So creating a disrespectful image for one religion is not really comparable to creating a similar image for another, because the critique and satire that underpins the artist’s intent in one context, is not always applicable to another. I agree with Andrew that these artists tend to be ‘poseurs’, and in other areas, I’m sure that one can make the “would you do it for Islam?” comparison. But unfortunately, that argument doesn’t hold for icons and iconoclasm.

I was in the Royal College of Surgeons for a conference the other day, and wandered past this vast canvas.

It is one of a number of paintings hanging around the place, depicting various committees and groups of Fellows of the Royal College. The other pictures depict small groups of people in natural looking poses. The result is a convincing ‘action shot’ of the Great and the Good, and they look quite dignified. This one, however, is clearly a composite of dozens of individual portraits, and the inaccuracies of scale and sightlines make for a slightly disconcerting effect. It was surely conceived as a pacifier to satisfy the members of some bloated committee.

Most bizarre is the inclusion of a tea-lady, centre-right. She has a neat plait, and her head turned shyly away from the viewer. Even so, she towers above the Fellows she is serving, and is by far the most compelling figure in the image.

I meant to post this image yesterday. A few people commented on the (in)appropriateness of the Prime Minister giving his speech set against a lush Tory blue.

The choice of blue is unwise not only because of the political symbolism, but because of the technological implications too. The even blue is the perfect colour for CGI work. Anyone with the most basic CGI software can take an excellent ‘key’ from that blue, and will be able to add Gordon to any number of amusing or satirical locations - the most obvious being the Tory party conference. In this, the age of the ‘mash up’, I do not doubt several such projects are already underway, in upstairs bedrooms in cul-de-sacs up and down the land.

The Zidane footage from the World Cup last year had similar benefits. The assault was filmed against the green grass of a football pitch, and easy to replace with whatever the comedians wished.

The satirical mash-up, perfectly given a platform due to the wonders of YouTube and its ilk, will only become more common as time passes, and more and more people become more and more savvy with software that is less expensive.

Update

Compare the pictyure above, with this one from later in the week.

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The artists/musicians from FOUND remix some of the melodies created by Kimho Ip’s Yang-chin, a traditional chinese instrument.

We were at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith for a content gathering event, watching a chef prepare some Dim Sum (which we then ate). FOUND will use the audio and video they captured for a new composition, to be performed at the end of the Fringe Festival.

In the meantime, they will be launching their Ettiquette project at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop this Saturday. I can’t make the event, but it will apparently feature an entirely new set of music. Its always fun to see what these aimiable and slightly hairy “pop chancers” come up with…

One interesting (although highly incidental) aspect of FOUND’s various projects is their use of a blog to document their activities. The advantage of this is that they do not need to write a lengthy essay at the end of each project, justifying their activities to their funders and sponsors. The blog acts as this documentation.
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[photopress:200px_TintinCongo.jpg,full,alignright]I usually baulk at the idea of banning books, but I do find myself in favour of the CRE’s suggestion that Borders bookstores ban Tintin in the Congo.

Now I do consider myself something of a Tintin expert. A few years ago I was even an avid contributor and fact checker on the Cult of Tintin website, now defunct, but partially resurrected at Tintinologist.org. I’ve read Tintin in the Congo, and it is indeed appalling. In addition to the obvious racism, it is also distinctly environmentally unfriendly. Tintin blows up a rhino with a stick of dynamite, shoots an entire herd of impala by accident, makes a snake gobble its own tail, performs a summary execution of a chimpanze, attempts to shoot a crocodile in the face, and poaches an elephant for its tusks.

Where to begin with the racism in the book? Throughout, the Africans are portrayed as simpletons, who idolise Tintin and Snowy and fetishize anything western they can get their hands on. The chief of one tribe has a rolling pin for a sceptre.

The book’s only redeeming feature, and the only possible argument for it being on my shelf, is that it clearly demonstrates the change and improvement that Herge and Tintin underwent in the years following its publication. Congo is a meandering, incoherent story, where the latter books have carefully plotted story arc. Congo is dull and flat, where the latter books are rich and detailed. Congo is a stereotype, whereas the latter books were carefully researched, with artists from Herge’s studio sent all over the world to make sketches that could serve as a primary source. And the character of Tintin himself morphs from a patronising colonialist in Tintin in the Congo, to a character with much more empathy later on. In the early books he is an agent of governments. By the later books, he is a revolutionary, a subversive. In the early books, he desecrates tombs and customs with impunity, whereas the later books warn against such disrespect for other cultures.
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Its very good news that Alan Johnston has been released from captivity in Gaza. Today would be a good day to remember that five Britons are still missing in Iraq (why do we not hear much talk about them) and that captured Israeli Gilad Shalit is still being used as a bargaining chip by Hamas - the same organisation which secured Johnston’s release.

I did notice a strange similarity between one of the frantic snaps of Alan arriving (or is he leaving) in a car, and the iconic image of nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu after his capture in Rome. Two balding men with their hands up against the glass - one man on his way to freedom, the other on his way to captivity.

One striking aspect of Taking Liberties was the art direction. There’s a lot of computer generated imagery, which has been beautifully designed by Nexus Productions. Much of it is inspired by 1930s propaganda imagery and the letterpress aesthetic of printing and pampleteering (a visual style I’ve been toying with on this blog too, to much derision).

The Nexus animations are very effective at conveying the sense of oppression and fascism that the film-makers want to hint at. As an added bonus, it is also a very effective means of covering vast chunks of screen-time. Finding the right film footage to get your point across is often very difficult and always costly. Even stock footage from the BBC and similar organisations is incredibly expensive. For a film-maker working to a tight budget, animation can be a very useful method of getting your point across.

A good example of this is the short film What Barry Says by Knife Party, which is similar in style to the Taking Liberties animations… both in visual style, and in the manner in which they ‘illustrate’ what is essentially a political essay, ‘telling’ rather than ’showing’.

Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan was struck by the aesthetics of What Barry Says too:

It contains Chomsky-esque platitudes about a new American fascism blah blah blah. 9/11 is a response to American imperialism; North Korea is a victim, etc. But its use of graphics and editing is extremely skilled propaganda: Nazi-like in its concern with aesthetics. Somehow I feel the irony was lost on it creators.

I totally disagree. Andrew acknowledges that the film-makers are seeking to establish a conceptual link between the facist regimes of the past, and the US Government under President George W Bush. It is entirely appropriate that they choose an aesthetic that is reminiscent of fascist designs. The self-awareness is definitely true in the case of Taking Liberties: When the messages turns from what negative things have happened, to what positive things could be done in response, the design becomes flourescent and modern instead.

So, a new logo has been launched for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Lord Coe says it was designed to appeal to young people. I can only assume he means the knife-weilding, feral youths we hear so much about, for the logo resembles nothing so much as a pile of broken glass.

I do applaud the London Games’ committment to inclusivity and the inspiration of youth… but it is cringe-incuding to read the attempts by Tessa Jowell, Ken Livingstone, Lord Coe, Colin Moynihan (the Chairman of the British Olympic Association) and the IOC President Jacque Rogge to claim that the Olympic values are somehow embodied in the graphic design. A new logo can never do that - especially one as simple as that unveiled today. In fact, logos and brands only accquire their wider meaning, only become symbolic, after the organisation proves to the public what its values are, through its deeds. The colourful rings already have those positive associations, so it is odd that they are sidelined in the London 2012 logo, and that the bold colours are abandoned in favour of a tasteless blue.

The logo also comes in ugly pink, violent orange, and bogey green, but all versions carry a clashing yellow border. Lord Coe says that the logo will ‘evolve’ between now and 2012, and I predict that the demise of this outline will be the first ‘evolution’. This would leave a monochrome logo, which will become instantly more versatile.

And I don’t like the font either.

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