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Chris Cunningham 

(*1970) is an English music video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading, Berkshire and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk.

In 1989, Cunningham worked at Spitting Image, building animatronic robot arms and sculpting caricatures for the TV series. In 1990 he worked on sculpture and animatronics for the film Alien 3.

After seeing Cunningham's work on the 1994 film version Judge Dredd, Stanley Kubrick head hunted Cunningham to design and supervise animatronic tests of the central robot child character in his version of the film A.I. Cunningham worked for over a year on the film A.I., before leaving to pursue a career as a director.

Earlier work in film included model making, prosthetic make-up and concept illustrations for Hardware and Dust Devil with director Richard Stanley, as well as Nightbreed. In 1990–1992 he contributed the occasional cover painting and strip for Judge Dredd Megazine, working under the pseudonym Chris Halls, the surname of his stepfather.

 

Cunningham has had close ties to Warp Records since his first production for Autechre. Videos for Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy and Windowlicker are perhaps his best known. His video for Björk's All Is Full of Love won multiple awards, including an MTV music video award for "Breakthrough Video" and was nominated for a Grammy for "Best Short Form" Music Video. It was also the first ever music video to win a Gold Pencil at the D&AD Awards. It can still be seen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His video for Aphex Twin's Windowlicker was nominated for the "Best Video" award at the Brit Awards 2000. He also directed Madonna's Frozen video.

 

In 2005, Cunningham released the short film Rubber Johnny as a DVD accompanied by a book of photographs and drawings. Rubber Johnny, a six-minute experimental short film cut to a soundtrack by Aphex Twin, remixed by Cunningham was shot between 2001 and 2004. Shot on DV night-vision, it was made in Cunningham's own time as a home movie of sorts, and took three and half years of weekends to complete. The Telegraph called it "like a Looney Tunes short for a generation raised on video nasties and rave music".

 

The video collection The Work of Director Chris Cunningham was released in November 2004 as part of the Directors Label set. This DVD includes selected highlights from 1995–2000.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

 

Chris Cunningham, *****

Reading

Synesthesia: A Union of the Senses (2002) by Richard E. Cytowic disposes of earlier criticisms that the phenomenon cannot be real, demonstrating that it is indeed brain-based. Following a historical introduction, Cytowic lays out the phenomenology of synesthesia in detail and gives criteria for clinical diagnosis and an objective test of genuineness. (MIT Press)

Rewind, Play, Fast Forward (2010) – The Past, Present and Future of the Music Video by Henry Keazor, Thorsten Wübbena (eds.) brings together different disciplines as well as journalists, museum curators and gallery owners in order to take a discussion of the past and present of the music video as an opportunity to reflect upon suited methodological approaches to this genre and to allow a glimpse into its future. (transcript Verlag)

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SEE ALSO

La Fura dels Baus is a Catalan theatrical group founded in 1979 in Barcelona known for their urban theatre, use of unusual settings and blurring of the boundaries separating audience and actor. La Fura dels Baus is a company in a permanent process of transformation that, since it was founded in 1979, has approached new challenges in the field of the performing arts. Its occasional shows and events have had an enormous impact on both international critics and audiences. It would be no exaggeration to say that since Actions (1983) La Fura dels Baus can be considered as a cult group for its thousands of followers all over the world. La Fura has developed its own language, style and aesthetics over the years based on collective creation. (Wikipedia)

Ohi Ho Bang Bang (1988) - The music in this video was created from the sounds being played live during filming. The film actually shows what you hear. It is a collaboration between Holger Hiller, Akiko Hada and Karl Bonnie. (Holger Hiller)

Peripetics (2008) or The installation of an irreversible axis on a dynamic timeline. Zeitguised made a piece in six acts for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. It entails six imaginations of disoriented systems that take a catastrophic turn, including the evolution of educational plant-body-machine models and liquid building materials. Sound design by Zeitguised with Michael Fakesch. (Zeitguised)

Carsten Goertz (*1981) works in interaction design, graphic design and media scenography projects. International practice as designer, lecturer and media artist in high profile design studios and institutions. Experimental and interdisciplinary orientation with strong conceptual skills and technological affinity. (Carsten Goertz)

Tina Frank started up her own business as a designer in 1995 and was soon referred to as one of Austria’s shooting stars in web design. She designs packing for music. Many of her cover designs, especially those for music labels Mego/ Editions Mego (AT), Idea Records (US) have been published in numerous design reference works and are considered influential. The book Graphic Design for the 21st Century (Charlotte & Peter Fiell, Taschen Verlag) listed her among the top 100 graphic designers worldwide. (Tina Frank)