Archive for the ‘cc’ tag
Shephard Fairey, NIN, and Big Brother
I’ve recently begun work on a Bradley Theatre production of George Orwell’s “1984″. I’m working as the Multimedia Creative Director/Producer and I’m getting excited about it! We’re trying to update the feel of the play to make it seem a little bit more modern, and I’ve been looking in various places for inspiration. Some of the things I’ve been looking at are the art work of Shephard Fairey and the music of Nine Inch Nails.
Shephard Fairey has been known for quite some time in the art and skateboarding world for his Obey Giant campaign, which uses a propaganda style inspired heavily by 1984. During the past year he became famous for creating the iconic “Hope” image of Obama, which was reprinted on just about every surface and material imaginable during the election.
Nine Inch Nails’ highly under appreciated album “Year Zero”, which came out in 2007, was based on a dystopian culture similar to the one in 1984, although in this case, the year is 2022. It presents a dark picture of what NIN visionary Trent Reznor sees as the future of the world if the politics of today continue into the future. This was the last album NIN produced before splitting from Universal Music Group and making future releases (“Ghosts” and “The Slip”) available under Creative Commons licenses. Luckily for our sound design team, those CC licenses mean that we can use the music of those latter two albums in the production.
Keep checking back for more updates about filming as we continue working on the play. It will be performed only twice in Mid-April by Bradley Theatre’s Ministry of Experimental Theatre.