Scott Pagano & Jochem Paap:
Hi-Fi Fusion
Mash a Kandinsky with a Duchamp, crumple one of Zaha Hadid’s smaller architectural experiments with H.R. Geiger’s eerie organic forms, cram the whole thing into a high-definition television, and you might end up with something like the art of Scott Pagano. Grind down the gritty, industrial detritus of Rotterdam — one of the world’s largest port cities — and process it in a digital audio factory and you may, if you’re lucky, get something that sounds like the mechanized mayhem of Jochem Paap, a.k.a. “Speedy J.” Blend it all together in a high-fidelity digital soup and you get, well, you get something entirely new.
Known for melding mind-bending graphics with edgy stills, Pagano has crafted pieces for musicians like BT and Richard Devine, but he’s also worked on international ad campaigns for the likes of Nike and XXX. Paap churns up dance floors across the world and is one of Europe’s hardest-working DJs. He’s also a prolific producer who has remixed Depeche Mode, Bjork, the Shamens, and many more. As if that wasn’t enough, he has formulated sounds for Native Instruments, television commercials, and major motion pictures.
The filmmaker and the musician have merged their separate but surprisingly similar talents into a synthesis of audio and video. They’ve slammed music and motion together to create “Umfeld,” a surround-sound DVD that remixes the very notion of digital art. And they’ve made the new medium mobile, storming dance clubs and multimedia laboratories worldwide with a live version of their creation, fusing sight and sound on the fly.
What instruments do the radical artists turn to when they conduct their audio-visual experiments? “It’s a no-brainer for me to pick the Mac,” says Pagano. “Production has to be transparent. It is critical that I have as few technical problems as possible. On the Mac, technical problems have been stripped away.”
“I’m addicted to the Mac because it’s transparent,” says Paap. “I’m a musician. I want to get my idea across and I want the line between the thought and the result to be as short as possible. And there’s only one computer that allows me to do that and it’s the Mac.”
Perfection Meshed
The line that wired Paap and Pagano’s thoughts together was, in actuality, a world-spanning filament of optical and copper cable that ran from California to the Netherlands. The two connected via email and created their first music-motion chimera by exchanging information through the electronic ether. “I got an email from Jochem, asking if I would be interested in working on a new project with him,” says Pagano. “I have been a big fan of his music for a long time and I had thought about working with him.”
“I wanted to accompany my music with visuals and I knew Scott from looking at his website,” adds Paap. “After seeing his work I thought that his style would match mine.”
To comprehend why Pagano and Paap experienced this mutual artistic magnetism, it helps to understand their work. Stripped bare, Pagano’s work reveals a fine-art aesthetic that was cultivated in galleries, museums, and photography exhibits. He was reared on art as a kid and dabbled in photography, painting, music, and ultimately video. At Brown University he deconstructed the art of signs and symbols, a field known as art semiotics. “It was basically the department at Brown that had all the good video equipment,” he says. “So I did some abstract video work with all these new and exotic tools like non-linear editors and computer graphics programs.”
As Pagano’s multimedia lab evolved, so did his artwork. He later put out a few DVDs and crafted motion graphics for commercial customers. The artist worked with international design firm AKQA to craft a Nike ad campaign featuring basketball legend Lebron James and built motion graphics for yU+Co, an effects and graphics house known for its stunning movie title sequences, visual effects, and innovative network branding campaigns. “I’ve learned a lot from the commercial environment,” he says. “There’s a certain level of polish and refinement that are pervasive in the industry and it’s important to know how to produce it.” Major studios also guide the filmmaker in his quest to create a more efficient studio. “I can see the workflow of the big studios and apply that to my small studio and my own projects,” he says. “That really helps me work faster and better.”
Most recently, Pagano wove two stunning cinematic pieces for “This Binary Universe,” an epic DVD-surround sound project by electronic music maestro BT. His work was, and is, precise, exacting, and cutting-edge.
Paap is one of Europe’s most venerated electronic musicians. On vinyl and in clubs he’s known as Speedy J, a wickedly precise and mechanically driven DJ. “Rotterdam is a very industrial city, a pretty rough place,” he says. “And the environment always has a big influence on the artistic product.” In Speedy J’s workshop, Rotterdam’s factories, refineries, machine shops, and all things mechanized get quantized into meticulous beats. The musician also tinkers with popular musical releases, tuning them to create unique Speedy J remixes. His audio workshop also cranks out handcrafted sounds for Native Instruments Reaktor and other sound studios worldwide. “I consider working with programmers and instrument manufacturers equally important as putting out material,” he says. “I feel this is necessary and will contribute to sound design in an important way.” Paap is a meticulous sonic craftsman, one who only settles for the best.
Pagano and Paap’s exacting styles meshed and together they created “Umfeld.”
