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Pure dopeness (the work)

"One day… I should hope I will truly be able to crank out the 'pure dopeness' that Francis Bacon spoke of way back when."

A brief critique of a few of Stone's more recent projects will enable all to understand the "pure dopeness" that Stone is referring to, and how such dopeness can help bring happiness to us all.

One of Stone’s recent works is a site promoting the singer/songwriter Billy Harvey (billyharveymusic.com). Upon entering the site one is confronted with a hodgepodge of Polaroid and flat, cut-out paper elements, floating in space, scribbled with sloppy hand-written text, and loosely held together by masking tape. The images on the Polaroids are not real images as expected, but also consist of flat, cut out pictures of the objects represented, placed in 3-dimensional space and photographed in such as way as to create a convincing environment. A paper floor, sofa, and bookshelf fill out a miniature room probably constructed in a shoebox.

In walks cut-out paper Billy, his body shuffling into the foreground of the centered Polaroid. Behind the cut-out of his long unkempt hair, streaming video of Billy's real face, eyes blinking and with a casual, deadpan approach begins Adressing the visitor. "How's it going? My new record is out. It’s called Pie…and, uh…you can get it at the store if you want. You click…uh, click store or something like that…" Upon clicking on one of the neighboring Polaroids (representing a different room of the paper house), paper Billy follows, shuffling his rigid paper body around the house, his video head commentary continuing. Within 3 minutes he goes through several failed introductions, and the tone of the work becomes quite clear: casual, fun, not taken too seriously, maybe even stupid, but certainly funny. The intentionally sloppy look and casual subject matter is contrasted by the fluidity and precision of movement, providing enough elegance and polish to make the whole presentation very convincing, immediately drawing the viewer into this paper cut out world, where one can’t wait to see what they'll find next…

I don't want to ruin the experience by describing every detail, so I invite you to:

Go to www.billyharveymusic.com. Spend at least 15-30 minutes there. I'm serious. Listen to the entire intro, some of his songs, and visit each room. Then come back and we'll talk.

Did you make it back alright? OK Good. What’s that?…Yeah, sure you can go back. Spend as long as you like. No worries.

OK, we really gotta get back to this paper thing. It’ll take all day at this pace. (But I forgive you…I spent hours looking at Stone’s creations when I should have been writing this paper). Now, before I talk more about this site, I’d like to introduce a few others. Then, taken together I can analyze the work as a whole.

Another of my favorite of Stone's sites is amplifier.com. Upon loading, the Amplifier site begins similarly to Billy Harvey's, with poorly lit and poorly shot video of employees talking casually about working at Amplifier. When one clicks on a link to the left, the frame zooms upward and outward as if the viewer was holding a camera and could pan and zoom effortlessly around the giant construct of cut out and drawn elements. The "story" link takes one to a conversation between figures of Plato and Aristotle cut out from Rafael's School of Athens. Aristotle says in a speech bubble, "Amplifier, tell me, is it not dope?"

"Aye, it be dopeth," replies Plato, "…but without thou bomb clients it doth mean much, not." A few clicks further and Plato and Aristotle, in humorous, almost childlike voice impersonations, discuss back and forth the services Amplifier provides. Female characters above and below chime in with ridiculously stupid and funny remarks, all the while the view fluidly panning and zooming to frame each character.

Stone's most recent work, matthewmahon.com
(a wefail preject, co-created with Martin Hughes), is the simplest, most elegant display of his fluid navigation effects. This site consists of many images by the photographer Matthew Mahon scattered at different angles about a white backdrop. When one clicks on any image, the view immediately rotates and zooms so that the image fills the frame. Many images have video that can be loaded where cut out animations of Matthew and his assistant slide themselves into the photograph itself and comment on the circumstances of the particular shot. Their arms sway side to side hinged on their stiff cut out bodies, giving their seemingly serious commentary a painfully awkward feel. But the most impressive aspect of this work is not this subtle humor but the fluid interactive movement within the frame.

Please visit amplifier.com and matthewmahon.com and explore a bit. The entire “Story” section of Amplifier, including the outtakes, is a must.

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