Chris Milk is...

one of my greatest inspirations when it comes to visual media. He used to be known to a select group o people for work he submitted to festivals and some other experimental media, but now Chris Milk is a household name. He's made music videos for Audioslave's "Doesn't Remind Me" and The Chemical Brothers' "The Golden Path" and he's done commercial work for Nike. Lately, he's done The Johnny Cash Project and The Wilderness Outside, which  are two very ambitious and successful media experiments.

The Johnny Cash Project is an interactive project in the prospect of making a music video. Since Cash is no longer living, there was no way to represent him in video, so Milk set up a website dedicated to the crafting of the video. Do you remember Facebook's "graffiti" application? Where you drew on your friend's walls using your mouse, a variety of opacities, and brush sizes? The Johnny Cash Project was something along the lines of that, allowing its users to pick a frame of the video and represent it through drawing. I'll admit, I made mine while I should have been writing a paper, but (WORTH IT!) it was selected for the finished product (it's frame 1109).



So an interactive music video? That's new. And awesome. Well, Milk knew all of this and his latest project, "The Wilderness Downtown" uses all the capabilities of Google Chrome and HTML5 to showcase what the internet is capable of and how new media, and better yet, artists that use new media, can use the information superhighway to their advantage. If you don't have Chrome, get it. Even if it's just to check out the coolest music video since sliced bread.  Here's the preview:


Arcade Fire - The Wilderness Downtown from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

The Johnny Cash Project started in 2009, but in 2010 (this past semester, to be accurate), my Visual Issues class was assigned a group project in which we had to deconstruct visual media in one collective paper. My team chose a music video, but not just any music video, Chris Milk's collaboration with Audioslave for "It Doesn't Remind Me."

Audioslave - Doesn't Remind Me from Chris Milk on Vimeo.

Chris Milk overload, you say? Well, yeah, but looking for new ways of doing things is half the battle.
And the whole point of this post, titled "Chris Milk is..." is to say Chris Milk is
- an inspiration.
- a new media genius.
- an artist
and best of all...
- fucking badass.

Also. I'll give out a prize to the first person that can name (in the comments) the other Chris Milk video that I've used in a previous post on this blog. The name of the vid, and the name of the post.
Seriously. I'll give you a prize. Ready? GO.