Neil Cooper

Dialogues

13 Nov 2008

Informatics: it’s the future. This study of ‘the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems’ has been around since 1957, when German computer scientist Karl Steinbuch coined the word, ‘Informatik’.

Unreliable Witness

13 Nov 2008

MIXED MEDIA Who says the world isn’t flat? Not, one suspects, any of the six artists playing with personas, pseudo-science, imagined histories and parallel universes in a show that creates a set of brand new myths made in their own (self) image. The…

Vic Godard and Subway Sect/The Sexual Objects

13 Nov 2008

Citrus, Edinburgh, Fri 14 Nov; Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 15 Nov. If Subway Sect hadn’t supported The Clash at the Edinburgh Playhouse on 7 May 1977, it’s unlikely Postcard Records, Fast Product and Fire Engines would have happened. Thirty-one years on…

Cycles - Mr McFall's Chamber with Thomas Strønen

13 Nov 2008

Out Of The Blue Drill Hall, Wed 12 November. Midway through the second set of this collaboration between Scotland’s equivalent of The Penguin Café Orchestra and Norwegian percussionist Thomas Strønen, an ebullient bike instructor comes up onstage to…

Circuit training

30 Oct 2008

‘Tangerine Dream,’ Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter said to Lester Bangs in a 1975 interview, ‘although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo-American identity, which we completely deny. We cannot deny we are from Germany…

Gerhard Richter

Man for all seasons

30 Oct 2008

When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last…

The Creeping Nobodies

Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, Wed 15 Oct

30 Oct 2008

Back in the dark(er) ages, The Creeping Nobodies were an imaginary indie band immortalised on a demo tape which adorned the typically slap-dash front cover of The Fall’s 1980 Grotesque (After The Gramme) album, addressed to ‘A Famous Ape’. Well, praise…

Sister Corita: Power Up

16 Oct 2008

PRINTS If a sign points ‘Left!’, which way do you jump? For Sister Corita, radical 60s poster-maker and nun, the answer was obvious. This small exhibition, tucked away upstairs above the DCA bookshop, displays 15 of her bright, brash but not…

The John Escreet Project

16 Oct 2008

JAZZ Opening a 30-minute suite that runs the gamut of jazz styles with a sample of a disgruntled ansaphone message isn’t the normal way to open a show, but then, 24-year-old Doncastrian pianist John Escreet is no ordinary player. Returning to the UK…

Kjell Bjorgeengen/Paul Sharits

2 Oct 2008

SOUND INSTALLATION Do not adjust your sets. The 15 TV monitors arranged every which way in ‘Figment Light’, Norwegian auteur Kjell Bjorgeengen’s series of flicker-based sound and light installations, developed primarily at New York’s Experimental…

New Work Scotland Project 2008: Lila de Magalhaes

18 Sep 2008

VIDEO INSTALLATION Over the last nine years, autumn at the Collective has heralded an annual showcase for artists making their solo-show debuts under the wing of the gallery’s New Work Scotland Project. The first of three shows this year is by Lila…

Kill Your Timid Notion

18 Sep 2008

Since its first outing in 2003, Kill Your Timid Notion’s four editions have mixed and matched sound and vision and utilised the Dundee Contemporary Arts gallery space to the maximum. This year KYTN goes even further, with a large-scale exhibition…

Sonic Fusion

18 Sep 2008

CONTEMPORARY Left field music festivals aren’t exactly thin on the ground in this country. Edinburgh events, however, have had a lower profile than elsewhere, with the Dialogues weekend setting an electronically inclined tone, picked up in a more…

Euchrid Eucrow

18 Sep 2008

ALT.FOLK Two young women in full-length angel-white Victorian frocks flank a bearded young man in a tank top sitting on a stool. As he clutches his acoustic guitar for dear life, the dark-haired woman on his right puts her bow to her viola while the…

Sister Corita: Power Up

4 Sep 2008

Anti-war art is largely a samizdat operation, in which the means of production are seized via cheaply-made DIY posters and pamphlets. In the 1960s especially, pop art was imbued with a political context often left out of more hedonistically-inclined…

Missing Twin presents

4 Sep 2008

Missing Twin is the publishing empire of cartoon genius Malcy Duff. Alongside geek-soul brother and Giant Tanker Ali Robertson, Duff makes up half of premier lo-fi fidgets, Usurper. This popcorn-friendly triple feature of late-night wow-and-splutter…

Wil Hodgson

West Country boy with scabrous memoir

14 Aug 2008

Wil Hodgson is sponsored by Chippenham Athletic Football Club. For now, anyway. Because if the club's camel-coated directors ever make the Edinburgh trek to see the pink-haired chubby-chasing punk-geek tattooed love-boy, he might end up getting a…

Calvin Johnson

7 Aug 2008

When Calvin Johnson plays a booze-free all-ages show in a church hall in Glasgow this week, he won’t be attempting to be cute. Rather, it’s just one more wilfully skewed strategy in this most single-minded of mavericks’ ongoing mission of DIY…

The Golden Record - Sounds of Earth

7 Aug 2008

If the truth really is out there, the prospect of aliens landing on a planet populated by posh comedians would be enough to send them zapping back beyond Uranus in double-quick hyper-drive. The comedy aspect is one of the more worrying premises of this…

Richard Wilson

Feats of engineering and derring-do

7 Aug 2008

A man burrows his way out of the back of a black hackney cab that’s still in motion, looking like he’s tunnelled his way out of Wonderland to avoid paying his fare. The same hole-in-the-wall gang appears to have turned the brutalist façade of an office…

Bill Drummond - 17

7 Aug 2008

MUSIC ANALYSIS (Beautiful Books) When Bill Drummond started a choir called The 17, the audience became its members, performing his text-based scores, then having the result played back to them once before being deleted forever. Screw documentation…

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

Between the wars, the world changed. European cities were rebuilt taller and denser than before, with new technology giving rise to an industrial and creative hub. More than half a century on, this major touring show originating from Washington’s…

I Went to the House But Did Not Enter

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

A collage-based approach to theatre from maverick creator. Heiner Goebbels’ latest work may be in the Edinburgh International Festival’s drama programme, but the scope of this maverick composer and theatre maker is far more expansive. In 2001…

Bittersweet symphony - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Brecht and Weill’s Mahagonny has inspired an artistic generation. Neil Cooper analyses the pair’s enduring appeal.

Momus

17 Jul 2008

PREVIEW POP Stereo, Glasgow, Sun 27 Jul When Nick Currie named himself after the Greek god of mockery, being clever, like ridicule, was nothing to be scared of. Edinburgh-based Currie had already fronted The Happy Family, a band that featured half…