Welcome to your Halloween-themed fun pot! It's the Weekender

Date
31 October 2014

The Weekender is like the online equivalent of the bucket full of sweets that your mum keeps next to the front door on Halloween to hurl at the kids who come trick or treating. Except we’ve replaced the treats with art and design, so you’ll have to get your calories elsewhere. As the Criminologist says, “I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.” Off we go then!

– Just when we thought OKGO had exhausted music video-making possibilities they upped the stakes yet again with this flabbergastingly elaborate production.

– As part of Back To School season, CSM’s programme director of graphic communication and co-founder of GraphicDesign& Rebecca Wright wrote a very well-informed Opinion piece on the discrepancy between the number of girls studying Graphic Design at uni and those in the industry’s top jobs.

– This week’s Studio Audience podcast sees (hears?) us discuss the aforementioned opinion piece, along with a chat about the success of the Graphic Design Festival Scotland and a satirical art installation about pocket money loans for kids. Have a listen.

– This week we had a rummage around the editor of Lives and Works magazine John Holt’s bookshelf, and came across some suitably under-championed but brilliant publications in the process.

– Hover States proved themselves to be the unconquered winners of Halloween-related stunts with this website full of ridiculously entertaining interactive games and visuals.

– And speaking of Halloween, we made a spooky 1960s mixtape for you to listen to while you slather on your facepaint ready to go out and embarrass yourselves tonight. As we most certainly will.

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Aries Moross: Self portrait aged 16

Throughout October we’ve been running a whole load of features all based around the theme of Back to School. Here are some of this week’s highlights:

– We have some friends in experienced places – photographer Cait Opperman, Swiss Miss and Alma Haser among them, so we called on them to share some of the things they wish they’d known when they started art school.

– STUDIO MOROSS director Aries Moross shared some of their first ever experiments with digital media, including some rotoscoping and a self portrait made aged 16.

– If we’ve learnt anything this month it’s that you don’t have to go to art school to succeed in your field; Carl Kleiner is excellent proof. He explains why he’s glad he didn’t here.

– There are art school films, and then there is Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential. Here are a few lessons we learned from the cult hit.

Maisie Skidmore

If Halloween isn’t a time to mull over the sheer brilliance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with sweet transvestites, golden and glittering ensembles and a young and naïve Susan Sarandon, then frankly I don’t know what its purpose is at all. Enjoy.

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Susan Hiller: Resounding (Infrared), MIRRORCITY at Hayward Gallery 2014

Emily Gosling

I can’t help but wonder if my enjoyment of gallery shows is informed by comfort and/or laziness. This occurred to me at the Hayward’s fantastic MIRRORCITY show last week, where I was most blown away by Susan Hiller’s incredible Resounding (Infrared) installation, where viewers sit or lie on lovely beanbags in front of a huge expanse of screen, showing visuals that mimic the patterns of radio waves emitted by the Big Bang. She’s created a soundtrack that mixes these sound frequencies with snippets of chatter from those that claim to have witnessed extra-terrestrial goings on, making for a piece that’s at once very relaxing and also quite terrifying. Another work that I utterly adored at the Hayward was the one in Pipilotti Rist’s 2011 Eyeball Massage show which involved sitting down on lovely big cushions made of trousers. Coincidence? Possibly not.

Liv Siddall

My housemate Doug showed this to me last week, it’s the original 1979 trailer for Alien. Everything about this trailer is utterly, debilitatingly terrifying. The sound effects, the typography gradually building to signify a birth of something new, the screams and the darkness… Perfect. Totally groundbreaking at the time and possibly never bettered. Puts modern horror film trailers to shame a bit really.

It’s 1958, and Alfred Hitchcock decides he fancies making an album. Trust him to do an unconventional, terrifying album starring himself. Music to Be Murdered By is an extraordinary album in which Alfred narrates over some spectacular music by Jeff Alexander. Alfred’s booming, authoritative voice guiding the listener through a rather gruesome horror story is rare, weird and spine-tingling. I highly recommend a listen, perhaps with the curtains drawn and a candle lit…

James Cartwright

I genuinely find this film hard to stomach. I haven’t really go the chops for horror, but it’s halloween so I guess I’ll just have to toughen up. Trick or treat!

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