The Fine Print

“Art Director Jopsu Ramu from Musuta Ltd. (a multidisciplinary design agency based in Helsinki & Tokyo) has created together with Shun Kawakami (artless Inc) an artist and designer from Tokyo - a piece titled Urban Abstract. This digital art piece is being shown as the November break bumpers on one of the biggest commercial TV channels in Finland: TV Nelonen.

Urban Abstract -piece was born in Tokyo during 2009. It consists of 40 X five second clips or it can be viewed as a one 200 second journey.

Urban Abstract is a first piece created in collaboration with Ramu and Kawakami. The artists have plans for new pieces and are currently looking for interesting projects to work on and to continue this Helsinki - Tokyo collaboration.

The website urban-abstract.com works as a part of the piece and creates an extra dimension for the clips shown on TV.

URBAN ABSTRACT - About the concept:

Urban Abstract is a journey across urban space that unfolds in forty, 5 second parts. The journey, in one, two and three dimensions, is a bit like abstract surfing in which the original destination is only reached after a number of seemingly random yet linked detours occur. Points , lines, planes and other abstract elements create a journey through an Urban Abstract.
The space between things is as important as intended space, perhaps creating a fourth dimension. Meaningful shapes and purposes occur in this dimension’s reality as well. The concept of negative space has meaning here.
Nature plays a part as well. To be able to understand and differentiate what is urban one has understand what is nature.
The style of the shorts is fluid and, though seemingly random, stream into a cohesive whole. Perhaps watching them in a different order would be more like seeing the same journey from another point of view. The sound world is also very important — movement in space is sensed even if watching the shorts with eyes closed. Sounds overlap, fade, come and go.
Architectural, abstract, someway minimalist and abstract with a touch of humanity.
This feeling is reached through mixing techniques such as vectors , hand drawn lines and painting.
Urban Abstract was realized in Tokyo by a team of artists, designers and animators from Finland and Japan. Urban Abstract was created by Jopsu Ramu from Musuta Ltd, a concept, art & design -studio based in Tokyo and Helsinki.”

The Smashing Pumpkins - “Perfect”

From Wikipedia — “To expand on the similarities between “Perfect” and “1979”, the band released a music video which continued the story of the characters in “1979”. They were able to find and use 4 out of the 5 original actors from the “1979” video, including Giuseppe Andrews. The fifth was in jail. The same crew of directors was hired, which consisted of husband-and-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. It was the fifth and final collaboration between the two and The Smashing Pumpkins.”

The Smashing Pumpkins - “1979”

Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet
Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we’d never see an end to it all
And I don’t even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don’t know
Just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below
Double cross the vacant and the bored
They’re not sure just what we have in store
Morphine city slippin dues down to see
That we don’t even care as restless as we are
We feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts
And poured cement, lamented and assured
To the lights and towns below
Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we’d go, beneath the sound of hope
Justine never knew the rules,
Hung down with the freaks and the ghouls
No apologies ever need be made, I know you better than you fake it
To see that we don’t even care to shake these zipper blues
And we don’t know just where our bones will rest
To dust I guess
Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below
The street heats the urgency of sound
As you can see there’s no one around

Even though I’m a 1991 baby, I still feel a connection to the 1990’s as a decade through it’s lasting music and culture.  The song and music video for “1979” basically portrays a group of teenage kids in suburbia just living life in a constant restless, yet completely care free state of mind.  The track’s title comes from the year most teenagers in the 1990’s would have been born.  Corgan’s lyrics give the song a very nostalgic feel, leaving listeners to fondly reminisce about their respective adolescences and the 1990’s as a decade in general.  However, for people like me with some years of youth still left in the future, this song also heeds a warning - we’ll go “faster than we thought we’d go” through our youth, so enjoy it while it lasts.  Don’t look back on your past and regret the time you squandered

The Smashing Pumpkins - “Disarm”

Disarm you with a smile
And cut you like you want me to
Cut that little child
Inside of me and such a part of you
Ooh, the years burn

I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what i choose is my choice
What’s a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you
My love
I send this smile over to you

Disarm you with a smile
And leave you like they left me here
To wither in denial
The bitterness of one who’s left alone
Ooh, the years burn
Ooh, the years burn, burn, burn

I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what I choose is my voice
What’s a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you
My love
I send this smile over to you

The killer in me is the killer in you
Send this smile over to you
The killer in me is the killer in you
Send this smile over to you
The killer in me is the killer in you
Send this smile over to you

Billy Corgan always appealed to me because he sang his lyrics with such genuine feeling and emotion that you knew he wasn’t putting up a facade.  Every scar on paper was a scar on his skin, and every heart-wrenching cry not only came from his lips, but from a place of pain in his past.  No bullshit like the other guys.  And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a listen to Corgan’s vocals in the last verse of “Disarm”. 

“The killer in me is the killer in you.”  Putting aside the endless debates over nature vs. nurture, it’s undeniable that who we are as a person is shaped and molded constantly by outside influences when we’re first experiencing the world as a child.  As our clay hardens with time, we can look into a mirror and see what society has created of our flesh.  For some, the face gazing back at them is one they are content with, but for others like Billy Corgan, the face is a monster.  Only three years after his birth in 1967, Corgan’s birth parents underwent a divorce.  Throughout his childhood, Corgan lived in Illinois under the custody of his father and stepmother, a flight attendant Corgan’s father soon married after parting ways with Billy’s mother.  The relationship between Billy and his stepmother was reported to be dysfunctional, resulting in Corgan being “subject to much physical and emotional abuse” through the course of his childhood years.  “Ooh, the years burn(ed)”.  Or perhaps those years still burn in Corgan’s mind. 

Studies have shown that physical and emotional abuse is often passed down generations of a family.  In other words, people that were abused as a child are more inclined to abuse their own children later in life due to the psychological repercussions of such molding.  Corgan wrote “Disarm” in response to this disturbing pattern, showing concern for his own childhood development in fear that his past experiences would influence his own fathering approach.  Yet Corgan didn’t want to simply lie down and become another statistic – he refused to let his stepmother’s actions define his own future actions.  Instead, he disarms the “killer”, or the abusive nature, in him by neglecting the past’s influence and leaving the psychosomatic imprint of his adolescence to “wither in denial”.  When Corgan says, “cut that little child inside of me and such a part of you”, he is in a sense killing off the abusive disposition associated with his childhood self and stepmother.  Throughout the song, the “you” Corgan continually refers to can be interpreted as Billy’s stepmother or the malignant nature within himself.  By breaking the trend of abusive parenting, Corgan disarms himself “with a smile”.  This “smile” can be interpreted as Corgan’s happiness at his self-improvement, or as a metaphor for a calm, caring fathering approach he hopes to embody some day.

“What’s a boy supposed to do?”  Rather than looking in the mirror and accepting his disposition, Corgan decides to break free from his premeditated mold.  He saw what he was and realized it wasn’t who he was.  So he didn’t let the outside world define who he was– “what I choose is my choice… what I choose is my voice.”  Every one of us is the product of influence– and that is, the majority of the time, an absolutely beautiful thing.  But when you look into the mirror and see someone different from who you want to become staring back, change your mold.  Mold yourself and be an individual.  What you choose is your choice.  What you choose your voice.

Beck - “Run, Run, Run”

Beck’s Record Club’s rendition of The Velvet Underground & Nico’s “Run, Run, Run”.  Beck Hansen got together a group of assorted musicians including Devendra Banhart, Jamie Lidell, Nigel Godrich, and MGMT, to record an altered version of an album in a day.  According to a statement on Beck.com, the aim of the project was to “reinterpret” an album and “use (it) as a framework”.  None of the tracks were “rehearsed or arranged ahead of time.”  The rest of the album and other Record Club work are equally worthy of checking out - http://www.beck.com/record_club

The Velvet Underground & Nico - “Sunday Morning”