Origamibiro & The Joy of Box have teamed up with the Malt Cross again to host a bimonthly night audio-visual evening. We have been known to show live multi media performances, music, films, installations, oddities and indulgences.
The November line up consists of a live truly multimedia performance by Relmic Statute from Leeds an interactive surround sound installation by Robert Squirrell and Origamibiro & The Joy of Box, back and fresh after their recent european live dates with their reworked live av set.
Come down, have a drink and indulge your senses. See you there!
Zappa, Origami Biro, Vastik Root, Bury and Disinter, Risotto Breeze, Cut Chemist, Hunter Musket, DJ Krush, In Flux-Shadow, Spooky Tooth, Bent, Nottingham's very own buskin blues man..
Movies
Golden Door- Emanuele Crialese, Stalker- Andrey Tarkovsky, Dial History- Johan Grimonprez, Paris,Texas- Wim Wenders, Half Nelson- Ryan Fleck, anything by Guy Sherwin, The passing- Bill Viola, Blue Thunder "COME ON YOU TUB A SHIT!", The Village- M Night Shamalan or whatever-I was totally sucked in, Junebug by Phil Morrison-so understated and seemingly insequential but says so much at the same time-more please! The Ratcatcher by Lynne Ramsey-beautiflul, (+Morvern Callar too actually), No-Domain visuals-great ideas.
Television
Quincy, Walker- texas Ranger, Garth Merengi's Darkplace, Father Ted, Battle of the Planets, Top Gear (yeh i know)
Books
Reasons For Knocking At An Empty House- Bill Viola, A Crack Up at the Race Riots- Harmony Korine, The Time Traveller's Wife- Audrey Niffenegger, Bukowski, Oh Yeh definitely Vonnegut, A Drink with Shane Macgowan-a very underrated man. more to come..
Heroes
I think this article about cinematographer Christopher Doyle says it all.
Also-this interview with David Byrne is a real gem. I love the way he says so much and so little..
Should 'visuals artists' or VJ's be considered as instrumentalists? go here for more info and some interesting interviews around A/V circa 2008
For classic 60's and 70's soundtracks and trailers to play online go here. There's some absolute gems. Genius!
A long interview with Guy Maddin-director of 'The Saddest Music In The World'-very funny, dry and beautiful stuff here
These are a small random selection of things I want to show right now. More coming very soon...
"ORIGAMIBIRO & THE JOY OF BOX ARE PART OF THAT NEW BREED (THAT) BRING THE BEST OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES INTO THEIR SETS AND THEIR SOUNDS, ENLISTING LOOPING RIFFS AND ELECTRONIC WONDERS AND TONIGHT THEY SHOWED MUCH OF THE BEST THAT SUCH AN APPROACH CAN BRING.
ITS NOT JUST GUITARS AND BEATS THAT FIND THEMSELVES LOOPED UP BY THE TRIO, BUT THE TEAR OF PAPER, THE FLICKED CORNER OF A BOOK AND THE RIP OF STICKY TAPE. AND AS IF THE PLETHORA OF SOUNDS WERENT ENOUGH, THEY COME PACKED WITH LASHINGS OF VISUALS." BBC Manchester Online
Origamibiro and The Joy of Box Live is a collaboration between video artist The Joy of Box (Jim Boxall) and musicians, performers and producers Origamibiro (Tom Hill and Andy Tytherleigh). Jim and Tom have a long history of collaboration: Tom has provided soundtracks for Jim's experimental short films and audio for Jim's live visuals work as part of av_dv. In turn, Jim has provided visuals alongside Tom for both Wauvenfold and Penfold Plum live performances.
The BiroBox project is a culmination of ideas that Tom and Jim had started to discuss in their previous projects concerning ways to perform music and visuals live. Tom wanted to find ways to produce intimate music based on live generated loops without the audience barrier of laptop screens. Jim wanted to produce visuals that could utillise a whole range of different techniques and approaches that could explore emotion, narrative and spectacle through high and low end technology and audience understanding/expectation of what was happening in front of them. In the process of developing ideas and techniques, they enlisted the help of Andy Tytherleigh, a musician also very interested in live multi instrumental looping methods and its relationship to moving image.
Origamibiro's first album 'Cracked Mirrors and Stopped Clocks' was an ideal springboard for Tom and Jim's original ideas. Whilst recording the album, Tom recorded not only the songs and melodies on his classical guitar, he also captured the creaks and groans of it, the chair he was sitting on, even his breath (for more info on how Tom wrote the album 'Cracked Mirrors & Stopped Clocks' go here) . Jim began to do the same thing visually-looking for ways to create visuals organically-filming dust particles, moisture from his breath and extreme object close ups as well as explorations into live camera feed techniques and experiments with live generative visuals. Jim and Tom also began to explore narratives inspired by the new material they were generating and how they could combine these elements into an intimate, engaging and beautiful av performance.
Origamibiro & The Joy of Box Live is essentially an organic project-its content continues to change and readapt as new ideas present themselves. Ultimately, it is three people's attempt to create a multi media performance that can move, challenge and entertain its audience.
This is an extract from the live audio-visual set of Origamibiro & The Joy of Box.
Based on the track of the same name from the album 'Cracked Mirrors & Stopped Clocks' by Origamibiro (expanding records), this is the result of a development of ideas between Biro & Box for a short horror narrative that could be edited live by The Joy of Box (me) as part of our touring audio-visual live set.
As BiroBox are based in Nottingham, it seemed only right that this sequence was shot in the real Sheriff of Nottingham's private office. It also stars fellow Nottingham musician, producer and artist Andrew 'Fear' Fearn a.k.a Infant/Pony Gear (Neo Ouija, Musik Experience) as the main protagonist- caught between his fascination of the unnatural sounds he is drawn to and the horror of the situation he finds himself in as a result. Thank you Fearny.
"VIDEO ARTIST JIM BOXALL AND SAXOPHONIST JAN KOPINSKI MANIPULATE AND WEAVE AN INTRIGUING AND ORIGINAL EXPERIENCE. THE MIXTURE OF SCORED AND IMPROVISED MUSIC SET TO VIDEO PROJECTIONS IS A PERFORMANCE OF ELOQUENCE AND INTENSITY"
Jazzwise:Jan 2007
Over the last 10 years or so I have produced a range of works including live visuals, av performances, over 40 short films, installations and art objects. I have worked on projects under my own name as well as av_dv, Biclops, eyelidnod and now The Joy of Box.
I have collaborated with Internationally renowned multimedia artist Raphael Lozano-Hemmer on the biggest video installation of its kind in the world. I am also proud to have collaborated since 1999 with Active Ingredient, Nottingham based pioneers and experts in new arts and technology.
In collaboration with fellow video artist and painter Jon Gille and under the name av_dv, I fell into performing live visuals back in 2001.
We performed alongside VJs such as Hexstatic, Addictive TV, Eclectic Method, D-Fuse and The Light Surgeons.
We have performed at five of the Big Chill music festivals since 2002 and upheld a long term residency with North London's Soxan club nights and Manuva Manuva (deceased) at the Nottingham Rescue Rooms.
We have provided visuals for Wauvenfold, Nitin Sawney, DJ Krush, Susumu Yokota, Mixmaster Morris, Autechre, Plaid, Co-Op, Do Make Say think, Charlie Dark and Geiom amongst others. We even played a John Peel special with The Bays live on Radio One. Work that one out.
Together and separately we have screened, performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, including the UK, USA, Greece, Finland, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy and France.
Over the course of our av_dv adventures, Jon and I explored, exploited and exhibited various approaches to the application of visuals to music and music to visuals. These projects became increasingly more complex and involved. Man it was fun. I decided to take this further with my solo work.
In 2005 I went and studied an M.A. and got myself into three projects that demanded a much longer term and more complex approach to the art of live visuals performance. Or whatever you choose to call it.
The first of these projects was with Cipher and Steve Hubback to produce 'Elemental Forces '. This took two and a half years from the outset to the first gig. The technical setup involved bespoke surround sound software, reactive video software, live digital and analogue audio looping and live camera feeds. We also used Steve's one off sculptures, gongs and percussion instruments. Not to mention three very skilled and experienced musicians. And me. We also had extensive software and technical help from Noel Murphy aka the good looking half of Wauvenfold and his own solo stuff Bury and Disinter . He's a good man to have on your side.
The second of these projects was with Jan Kopinski and Reflektor. 'Mirrors' took a year to develop and gave me the opportunity to work with very accomplished and extremely generous musicians as well as more than 20 years of footage shot by kopinski in Poland. Working with Jan is quite frankly an inspiration. I hope to work with Jan again very soon.
The third, most recent and for me the most exciting project is my current collaboration with long time friend and musician/producer Tom Hill aka the other half of Wauvenfold, also known as Penfold Plum and the reason for this new project- OrigamiBiro, as mentioned at the top of this panel. We have gigged together a lot over the years and in various guises, and accumulated ideas concerning how not to do live av shows. I initially decided this warranted a new name for me: eyelidnod. But no. After the release of the debut Biro album I changed my mind and have decided to call myself something which to me seems much nore appropriate:
The Joy Of Box.
..So. We set out to find means of performing the music and visuals in an intimate, generative, idiosynchratic, fallible, spasmodic, beautiful and wholly collaborative way. And I believe we really have found some. We've been lucky enough to enlist the extensive skills of Andy Tytherleigh: a fellow Nottingham man and also bassist for Dave Blayze and the Reservations, Brazilica, The Ben Martin Quartet, and former bassist for Schmoov (his cv is too big for this page-believe me). He can make a double bass cry and growl at the same time.
We have also enlisted the help of gifted illustator Gemma Latimer to help us redesign and remix a book which includes poetry by origamibiro as part of our live show. The book itself will continue to grow and change throughout this year. I'm hoping we can incorporate more of Gemma's work into this project as we progress.
We are playing out as much as we can and working and refining what we do as we go. Already the live set has grown as Andy has brought his own looper to the mix as well as a plethora of new instruments: ukelele, fender rhodes and glockenspiel. Ive got a feeling it wont stop there. We've also added a typewriter as part of our live audio and visual palette. Of course this all means that we are constantly reworking the set to adapt to these and many more changes to come.
Btw, for those of you who bought 'cracked mirrors', apologies for the confusing eyelidnod weblink on the Biro album inside cover but I guess it sums up what we are trying to with BiroBox- that is keep working on what we are doing and stay organic and open to new ideas. I'm hoping that it shows in the shows. If you catch my drift.
The Joy of Box
Who I'd like to meet:
Enthusiastic Multi Millionaire Art Sponsors. That baby from 2001 A Space Oddysey. My new laptop wait a minute-HERE IT IS!!!!
AUDIO/VIDEO Festival Visionsonic - October 29th to 31st 2009 visit our website for more info!! VISIONSONIC Digital art festival from October 29th to 31st in the centre Madeleine Rebérioux (Créteil) and le Cube (Issy-les-mlx). Show for youth audience, A/V performances, installations, workshops, ... every performances will be streamed live on the web. The VisionSonic festival is an initiative of the Pixels Transversaux, the label V-Atak and the center Madeleine Rebérioux All the line-up and information : VISIONSONIC Website
Video documentation of a performance piece by my friend Nate Kassel who rode around on his bike slapping high-fives to people who were trying to hail taxi cabs in NYC. Enjoy!
