It seems that our contemporary culture has become so accessible that stealing and copyright infringement seems like a thing of the past. It’s so easy to log onto the internet, scan through a bunch of images, click, drag, and manipulate. And with technology being pushed to the absolute brink, it’s now easier to “slightly alter” content to make it your own. Visual mixing for the digital age, so to speak. I began thinking about this as I was developing a poster for a group that I play drums with called The Zygoteens. The idea was to craft a visual representation of our band all while being as obnoxious as possible. This meant borrowing from a plethora of subculture references and themes. The executed piece was more meant as an amusing collage with no real sense or reason. But really, isn’t that what rock n’ roll is all about anyway? Reckless abandonment for a design revolution!
Here, you’ll find everything from pop culture icons, psychedelic manifestations, and childlike aesthetics. All with a naïve disregard for structure or stability. But that was point. Breaking down all rules for amusement. The story behind the poster goes as follows: The guitar player in the Zygoteens had a definite vibe that he wanted to perpetuate and gave me a wide variety of subjects to choose from. I collected all images relevant to his vision and tried to somehow make it all fit. How in the hell can you make freddy Krueger, a gameboy, a hamburger, grape ape, and bob saget all fit in the same context? Obviously, the collage element would really be the only solution. I began thinking back to a poster that I had hanging on my wall as a teenager. It was a movie poster for the documentary, HYPE. It depicted a photo of tangled up bodies dancing at what appeared to be a show. I would often stare at this poster as there were so many elements represented that I always found something new in it. Sort of like Sgt. Pepper for a degenerate breed. Armed with this as a starting point, I began to craft the poster.
I started with the logo (which is another parody derived from the nickelodeon logo). Because of its splatter-like shape, it was easy to puzzle the other images together around it without seeming too boxed in or rigid. One after the next, the images started to sew themselves together. Layering was the major challenge in that nothing had to overshadowed or hidden. All the images seemed to intertwine themselves like thread and fabric. It almost felt as though I was throwing hierarchy out the window, although one could argue that the entire piece itself acted as a whole. The object wasn’t to start in one area and then move to the next. It was about getting lost in a sea of ridiculousness and finding the secrets that lied within. And those secrets, as ludicrous as it sounds, were rooted in utter distrust of conventionalism and rational. Here’s a little game to play while working yourself through the visual maze. Find these objects:
1.)Pabst can
2.)The Millennium Falcon
3.)Robocop
4.)A hot dog
5.)A Fender Telecaster
6.)Three eyeballs
7.)Joey Ramone
8.)Artie, the strongest man in the world.
9.)Jonathon Richmond
10.)A boom box
11.)Cartoon cowboy
12.)Kiss’s ‘hotter than hell’ record cover.
