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Christmas on Earth Revisited
Rounding the year off properly, Men on the border and Cosmic Command with Steven Kautzky Andersson hosted a double-bill concert at Musikhuset in Gävle, Sweden on the 22nd of december.
The Artist On The Border was most definately onboard.
The show, a tribute to a concert by similar name 55 years ago saw both bands donning a brand new set of visuals created by "the artist". Men on the borders set is highly reliant on their video-backdrops, ranging from animations by artists such as Steve Bobinski to motion graphics by the artist on the border.
Contrary to prior gigs, this time we produced a semi-live video projections as well as dual oil-slides.
For Cosmic Command, which was a premiere performance with the Artist at the helm, we produced a near seamless live-mixed 70 minute concert with improvised stage projections.
The Artist himself brought a little black book of poems and told stories to keep the crowd entertained.
Upon reaching the end of the two concerts, the Artist launched a VJ-set of psychedelic 60s classics to entertain and bemuse those who stayed behind for drinks and talk. All in all it was a magical night of sight, sound and loads of colors.
Live at the Golden Circle, feb 28 2022.
This should be considered the live debut of the Artist on the border (excluding prior musical performances, see about me).
Men on the Border hosted an amazing night at Cirkeln restaurant and bar in Stockholm. The venue was once a renowned jazz club in the heart of Stockholm and was the first swedish stop for the young upcoming Pink Floyd on their first tour of europe. That show in september 1967 has since been released officially.
The artist was invited to be the master of ceremonies as Men on the border, Anders F Rönnblom and Janne Schaffer performed a night of music and memories. Little did we know that artistry and reality would blend in the matter of hours.
As the artists rehearsed on friday the 27th someone said: Anders is doing his song, Europe's burning. A haunting reflection on the currently ongoing invasion in Ukraine. The artist halted all other preparations and cut a custom backdrop for this specific song. A harrowing mesh of war images, Putins evil stare, political slogans and off course the blue and yellow ukrainan flag.
The result can be seen here.
Besides this, veteran swedish rocker Janne Schaffer entertained with stories of meeting Pink Floyd, they were after all the warm-up to his band; the Sleepstones. Janne even brought his original guitar amp with him, the same amp he lended to Syd Barrett.
As encore, Men on the border helped Janne perform the song "Black Sallad", which besides being rehearsed the night before, had never been performed live. The artist was thrilled.
The show was shrouded in the ambience of 1967s Pink Floyd. Specifically and thankfully due to the official premiere of the Kenneth Ekberg collection, a photographic exhibition of 25 previously unseen images of Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett in Stockholm. These images had been discovered during the fall of 2021 and had been restored by the great people at Rare Rock Photography, who also kindly lended us a complete set of large sized framed prints for exhibition and sale.
Artist on the border is born in 2021.
Well. The artist existed before that off course. Prior to that it would have been MMXP or MMXP Arts, or self.indulgent.films or AlexStubbe - man of many traits. But the name, and the brand, was formalized in a silent baptism in mid-2021.
The story goes....
Alex and Göran is talking. They talk a lot. Sending ideas back and forth. When Alex is asked to make the music video for "Holding out" he is nicknamed "Director on the border" by Göran, the man on the border. When the two discuss live show opportunities, Alex is nicknamed "Promoter on the border" and ever so often the nickname "Artist on the border" comes up and it stuck.
I even briefly made a handful of calling cards with my falling artist logo which I exclusively handed to the Sauceful of Secrets and Nick Mason, when we met in Oslo.
That is how the artist on the border was born.
Holding out video
Göran contacted me. Alex, we're released a cover of one of Anders F Rönnbloms songs. (Who?) It's called "Holding out" and we ought to make a video ... sure. We talked about the song, I listened. We also talked about Roger Barretts post Pink Floyd fame and after a while I said to Göran "Listen, gimme til' tomorrow and I'll think about this.
So I listen a couple of more times to the song and slowly my mind's eye began to show what the video could look like. A tale of an old man on a bike, buying paint, painting, destroying his paintings and then heading off to the paint store to buy new material.
I wrote a two page breakdown with sound cues and sent it to Göran.
Göran replied "Love it! Well do that!" and I said...ok.. That's nice.
Three weeks later Göran sent me at link to a dropbox hosting 600 gb of raw video footage and said: "Can you cut this for us?" I hadn't expected that. But when the man on the border says jump, you take a leap of faith into the air, hoping to land safely on four paws.
I cut the video over the next three weeks, including color correction, grading, visual effects and more work than I had anticipated. But I do hope that the outcome reflects the time and effort put into the video.
Helping us out was Ian Barrett, nephew to Roger Barrett, artist and jeweller, who lended us a couple of abstracts that I could track onto filmed canvas. As well a the songs composer Anders F Rönnblom, making a cameo at the very end of the video.
The video can be seen here.
Apples and Oranges
This blew up more than I had expected. I was curious to try out AI coloring. Actually it was a bit more than coloring. It was artificial sharpening, rescaling and increased framerate. I think that Apples and oranges had been living in my mind for quite a few years.
The infamous clip is of the Pink Floyd miming their latest single on Dick Clarks American Bandstand in november 1967. Syd being in a less playful mood.
The first attempts was completed in time for the Dark Globe event that Men on the border hosted in april 2021. It was a handful of brief clips demonstrating the look of a colourised version.
The response was lukewarm. Some were for it, some against it.
Using Topaz AI I began restoring the video to knifesharp black and white in the proper aspect ratio. At the very end I teased that there might be color too.
The later part of coloring the footage was extremely timeconsuming.
Techno babble follows:
The video itself is shot at 16 frames per second. This is nearly doubled to 30 frames per second meaning that each image is duplicated, sometimes trippled. I exported the best source I could find to raw PNG. Indexed every shot into 27 seperate folders. The entire video, including post performance interviews consist of 40 shots. After removing duplicate images I ended up with 4400 individual frames.
Each frame was processed five times, including duplicate removal.
Second step was rescaling. This was done in Photoshop using macros. Rescale to proper size. Set black and white. Adjust levels. Save and close.
Third step was done by batch in Topaz AI where the image was enhanced and sharpened.
Fourth step, coloring, was done using the webservice HotPot.ai
The reason for this choice was based purely on the end result. The vibrance and color felt rich. This step took ages because it consisted of uploading a single image, setting the right color, processing and saving, renaming the output to be in sequence. 3314 times.
The fifth and final step was to first bring the frames together as 16 fps film and then interpolate the number of frames to 60 frames per second using Flowframes Video Interpolater.
All of these steps had to rely on connectivity to the HOTPOT engine, and my old laptop holding together without overheating.
Techno babble stops.
Artist on the border is born in 2021.
Well. The artist existed before that off course. Prior to that it would have been MMXP or MMXP Arts, or self.indulgent.films or AlexStubbe - man of many traits. But the name, and the brand, was formalized in a silent baptism in mid-2021.
The story goes....
Alex and Göran is talking. They talk a lot. Sending ideas back and forth. When Alex is asked to make the music video for "Holding out" he is nicknamed "Director on the border" by Göran, the man on the border. When the two discuss live show opportunities, Alex is nicknamed "Promoter on the border" and ever so often the nickname "Artist on the border" comes up and it stuck.
I even briefly made a handful of calling cards with my falling artist logo which I exclusively handed to the Sauceful of Secrets and Nick Mason, when we met in Oslo.
That is how the artist on the border was born.
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