While I was painting today, I first listened to a slightly underwhelming Q&A from MIT with Otto Piene and Hans Haacke, which was short, and so my iTunes started shuffling, which never happens. I don’t really listen to music, so iTunes ends up being a repository of things I wanted at one point–but then pretty much didn’t listen to. Like the audiobook version of Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father, 2-3 min. segments of which would turn up at random every few tracks.
Which reminds me, kind of hilariously, of what, for me, is one of the most remarkable artistic achievements of the year, the awesomeness of which may actually push me to make a best-of list, which I don’t like to do, just so I can put it where it belongs, near the top.
I’m talking, of course, about Dan Warren’s remix masterpiece, Son of Strelka, Son of God, a surreal, mythological epic about a dog-headed demigod who destroys, and then recreates, the world, which Warren created by stringing together 3-10 second snippets from Obama’s recording. Here’s the synopsis:
Our hero’s name is Stanley, but he doesn’t really show up until Chapter 3. Stanley’s father is the first proto-man, who fell as a fruit from the first tree. He found the world an empty and desolate place, so he climbed to the top of the tree and began creating animals and plants and whatnot just by speaking their names. He gets really excited about the process, and accidentally creates a monkey in thin air, which promptly plummets to his death. He realizes that he needs to be a little more thoughtful about this process, and finishes by creating many of the beautiful things in the world. Then he disappears.
The first of the story’s nine chapters was animated by Ainsley Seago; the whole thing is pulled together nicely by Atlanta DJ EBA’s soundtrack. The whole project’s just extraordinary and feels like the future.
Son of Strelka, Son of God audio odyssey, links + a synopsis [sonofstrelka.com]
download Son of Strelka, Son of God for free from Warren’s site [dannwarren.net]