Edamame girl
I've been working on my ambient television project. Basically, I like having a TV on in the room, but the less it's doing the more I like it. There's nothing worse than a TV clamouring to fit as many dramatic incidents into each second as possible, or demanding to be watched by getting increasingly violent and strident. ( Trailers are the worst for this, cramming the most melodramatic, life-threatening moments from a drama into a few seconds.) What I've found is that the less a television does, and the less it demands to be watched, the more charming it becomes.
It's hardly a new observation -- artists like Warhol, Cage, Eno and Satie have been telling us that boredom can be interesting for the past century. What I've noticed with my latest piece -- a Japanese girl seen on a site called Girls On Air, eating edamame peas while she waits for someone to pay 100 yen per minute to chat with her -- is that other people's boredom can be interesting too. And, if you slow it down enough, rather sexy.
The edamame girl forms the eighth chapter of my growing collection of ambient pieces, and I'm currently putting them together on a DVD which I might make available if I can find a way to do it that doesn't involve queuing at the post office. That kind of boredom I can do without.
It's hardly a new observation -- artists like Warhol, Cage, Eno and Satie have been telling us that boredom can be interesting for the past century. What I've noticed with my latest piece -- a Japanese girl seen on a site called Girls On Air, eating edamame peas while she waits for someone to pay 100 yen per minute to chat with her -- is that other people's boredom can be interesting too. And, if you slow it down enough, rather sexy.
The edamame girl forms the eighth chapter of my growing collection of ambient pieces, and I'm currently putting them together on a DVD which I might make available if I can find a way to do it that doesn't involve queuing at the post office. That kind of boredom I can do without.