10 Friday, December 9, 2011 www.thenational.ae The National thereview The National thereview Friday, December 9, 2011 www.thenational.ae 11 this week’s essential reading ‘Artistic licence to kill’ London’s Design Museum has added the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle to { by Jonathan Jones, music { The Guardian its collection. But can a killing machine be a design classic? asks Jones playlist From Dubai Dream Tone to Billy Bragg’s Abu Dhabi moment and DJ Stex’s Ajman opus 21st century Billy Bragg Last Flight to Abu Dhabi (2011) The second track on Bragg’s latest collection of pared down protest songs finds the Essex artist in typically punchy mood, musing over the plight of “Jonty the Banker” who creatures went from boom to bust betting on derivatives before catching a plane to our capital. I don’t fancy Jonty’s chances of getting residency, do you? The Establishment & Sal Davies Back in Dubai (1984) Andy Battaglia looks at two avant-garde American artists Regarded as something of a “lost” mid-1980s classic, who use surreal musical and video landscapes to draw this song is sure to induce a attention to the foibles and absurdities of the digital age tremor of nostalgia in all but the most restrained of long- Virtual sushi in Dubai, beguiling For those with no sense of what term expats, even if it does fashion in New York, a repurposed that might mean, a clue arrives in sound like Davis is either a mansion in the California hills – the next song, in which a stilted poor man’s Neil Diamond or a what do all of these have in com- computer voice asks, “Sir, would rich man’s Joe Fagin. mon? Everything and nothing at you wish to receive The New Yorker once. on your iTablet?” It’s a consumer They’re all sources for fantasy, query for a heady old-fashioned of a sort. Each is tantalising on its magazine to be delivered in a dis- The concept for James Ferraro’s album stems from the virtual worlds of Second Life (above) and SimCity. Adel Khan surface, a subject worthy of im- tended virtual form, presented Sharjah Sundown (2009) pulse and aspiration. But then, out-of-context enough to suggest as they linger, each begins to turn just how strange and incongruous seems to exist, stems from Second dress, with a mix of mania and sense of hapless horror at play in “I’ve been a CEO since birth.” It’s multimedia art expanded out Khan’s globe-trotting dance weird, to reveal itself as mysteri- such a query could seem to be. But Life and SimCity, virtual online glee, notions of luxury and excess, his work, which moves in a thou- “Am I over-existing or am I over- into a new form of omnimedia or, album name checks Dubai, ous or somehow void of meaning. it doesn’t come across that way; it’s worlds that play like fantasy vid- of fruitful fantasy and utter ridicu- sand different directions at once, existing, that’s my inside joke.” even more so, transmedia art. Hollywood, Malaysia and What is “virtual” sushi? In what more natural and familiarising, in eogames while focusing on such lousness. Ferraro himself seems but there’s also a radiant and in- “I’m going to name my first-born The same applies to James Fer- Sharjah in the course of scheming or devious ways might fact, than any contrived song lyr- mundane matters as the accumu- simultaneously critical of and con- fectious desire for more, more, VISA and then I’m going to aban- raro, whose music is understood the 14-tracks that make fashion beguile? How could any- Far Side Virtual ics could hope to be. It’s a mode of lation of status and goods. This sumed by such ideas, to the point more. don her.” best in a context wider than just thing in California be anything James Ferraro communication we have all come leads Ferraro, followed by compu- where easy interpretation proves His videos are put up for view “I need to feel endless in both di- music itself. The cover for Far up Kuala Lumpur, his other than really weird? Hippos In Tanks to know, intimately. ter voices cooing updates and invi- elusive. His music is at times online (including on the avant- rections.” Side Virtual hints at a sort of all- 2009 debut. And just The essential vacancy of them all Dh23 It’s also disarming for the ways it tations, on trips through inner and pointedly gaudy, tacky, and cheap, garde art site www.ubuweb.com), everything, post-taste aesthetic like the northern emirate makes each more tantalising still, plays as both surreally funny and outer worlds. made with hokey keyboard pre- but a new book, Any Ever, takes on On the page, the disjointed that plays out for him visually it references, Sharjah until a feedback loop sets up an al- sad. More than we might like to ad- A short song called Dubai Dream sets and sounds that could fit into the daunting task of translating lines of dialogue make up a ka- as well as aurally, not to men- Sundown is well worth a ternately fascinating and dispirit- impressionistic, with a collage-like mit, as early 21st-century creatures Tone summons a rapturous sense theme songs for TV sitcoms from their frenetic energy to stillness. leidoscopic tome that reads like tion through a beguiling fashion visit. ing link between desire and repul- aesthetic guided by esoteric ges- we are wowed by means of technol- of drama with gleaming sheets the ’80s. At the same time, it’s elab- Page after page is slathered with a freakish transcription of what sense that finds Ferraro in real sion, serenity and despair. tures and marked by an obscurely ogy and modes of communication of sound from synthesisers and orately imagined and composed, layers of stimuli, from actors in zings through the ether in any life sometimes sporting ludicrous This might be the resting state lo-fi sense of sound. Some of it has that are certain to prove dated with keyboards, all made to sound very turning notions of artful evocation attractively monstrous makeup given moment in any given day. moustaches or talking about the for some of us living in the modern been beautiful and moving, to be time. Even the most high-tech of much ephemeral and manufac- and “taste” inside-out. and farcical clothes to settings in- Fed through the post-production significance of Carrie Bradshaw DJ Stex world. Most certainly it is a subject sure, but none of it would be mis- our advances are fated for anach- tured. In Palm Trees, Wi-Fi and Another young American artist, side the California “McMansion” prism of the videos, they work on the TV show Sex and the City. Ajman (2009) for some very interesting art. taken as a soundtrack for realms ronism, so that voice-controlled Dream Sushi, Ferraro is treated to a Ryan Trecartin, guides a similar that Trecartin took over and as well as a sort of human-alien The cover art features an iPad James Ferraro, a musician con- outside the most patient and at- requests for directions from an fancy meal by way of awkward robo project by way of a strange and ap- turned into an outlandish home music. In an essay in the book, and a bad-bit-rate photo of a New Culled from Lounge in nected to New York and Los Ange- tentive musical underground. iPhone or halting conversations voices speaking as ambassadors pealing form of video art. Shown for him and his friends. On top of Linda Norden, a curator and crit- York street scene from Google Emirates Palace, Stex’s nine- les, writes pop songs about such For Far Side Virtual, he cleaned on Skype will come to sound, some for iCuisine. “Please take a look at to great fanfare this summer in the images are bits of surreal and ic, considers ways that Trecartin Earth. It looks both dated and track album cites no less than a state, to resounding effect. His up, comparatively. The welcom- time soon, like a 1920s character the virtual sushi menu,” a waiter New York and on view overseas strangely poetic dialogue, deliv- “intends his viewers to be listen- conscripted by the here and now. six emirates and the garden music is bright and approachable, ing strains of the opening track in- barking commands for the trans- says. “One has chosen California now at the Musée d’Art Moderne ered in the videos in fitful bursts ers as well, something a younger It serves as a tribute to a contem- and his ambition to entice and en- clude heartrending trills of piano, mission of a telegram. roll, right away sir.” A voice that de la Ville de Paris, his wonder- of sped-up or otherwise distorted generation may be better primed porary moment that is fleeting city of Al Ain in this distracting dear a listener is clear. Or at least bouncy rhythms from a chirpy Ferraro doesn’t labour to force identifies itself as Virtual Chef #2 fully ostentatious videos collected voices: to embrace”. but also totemic to our time. Is collection of chilled dance they are on Far Side Virtual, a new drum machine, and synthesiser such associations, but part of the urges Ferraro to “try the masterful under the title “Any Ever” address That multimedia aspect of there really any difference? music. Oddly, Umm Al Qaiwain album that is as irresistible as it is tones tuned to woo.