Relentless

In the pre-Pixar days of making movies, post-production and special effects weren’t done digitally, they were pain-stakingly produced by hand.

Giant gruesome monsters were, in actual fact, beautifully made small models. Models that were made, manipulated, re-made and re-manipulated to make stop-frame animations.

The process was long, laborious and often very very monotonous. However, it often produced something exceptional.

In comparison to today’s blockbusters and big budgets, some of those same effects do look simplistic, clumsy and even unbelievable. But there is something genuine living in those plasticine models; something which is too often missing from today’s pixelated pictures.

The time taken, care and craftsmanship add an analogue warmth which no amount of digital wizardry can re-create.

A master of this lost art was Ray Harryhausen - the man behind the killer skeletons in Jason and The Argonauts and many other pieces of cinematic magic.

With his 90th Birthday approaching, Harryhausen is finally getting the recognition he deserves. The London Film Museum has launched an exhibition in his honour called Myths and Legends.

For more info click here

In the most recent issue of our magazine, This Is The Order, we dissected the complex world of sound in its many different forms. If we were to do the Sound Issue 2, then Robin Fox would almost certainly feature.

Based in Melbourne, the sound artist uses Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes to describe the geometry of sound. Come again? Basically, it's using lasers to bring sound to life visually. In his own words:

"The same electricity generated to move the speaker cones is sent simultaneously to high-speed motors that deflect the laser light on an x/y axis converting sonic vibration into light movement."

Much clearer. All this is perhaps best explained by seeing it for yourselves. Here it is:

There is beauty everywhere. However, it’s not always present at first glance. The key is persevering when looking for it.

Proof of this is can be seen in photographer Kevin Bauman’s Abandoned Houses Project.

Bauman has taken a series of 100 photos of derelict houses, each one hauntingly beautiful in it’s own right, but each as easy to miss as it is enchanting.

Take a look for yourself

Pre-Banksy street art was less about status and more about subversion. It was built on the foundations of graffiti, and its roots were in letting the world know you – the artist – existed, which fast became letting the world know what you – the artist - stood for. Now it has turned into a lucrative commercial opportunity there are many who are init for the fame and very few who are still pushing boundaries and pioneering. This is not true of Skullphone an artist who has persevered working through paste-up posters and spray stencils to something newer, more exciting and digital.

What constitutes suffering for your art? Quite a few things actually, but having an axe thrown at your face is definitely one of them. It happened to Alan Vega, a man best known for laying down sinister, caricatured howls, screams and tales of American dreams over Martin Rev's repetitive, skeletal electronics as Suicide, one of the most influential bands of the last 50 years. But they're so great, then why the axe?

Suicide emerged out of the New York art scene in the 70s and released their eponymous debut album in 1977. If the music on that was hard to swallow, their live shows were even more so. Eschewing the traditional setup of drums, guitars and singer, Vega and Rev plumped for synthesisers and thunderous rhythms and were routinely booed — or forced — off stage. Let it be known, though, that if you ever need to remove Alan Vega from a stage you'll need more than an axe: he continued with that solo performance in 1985 despite the medieval weaponry narrowly missing his head.