Ruff, Rugged & Raw - An interview with RUFFMERCY

As part of an interview series exploring the relationship between design and music, PAPER have spoken to several artists whose work is heavily influenced or connected to music. First off is visual artist 'Ruff Mercy'. In the interview below we are discussing his background and breaking down his work methods and inspirations. This interview series will be featured in the forthcoming PAPER issue 'Music and Architecture', set to be released this autumn.

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PAPER: What’s your background, how did you get into visuals and graphics?

RUFFMERCY: I have always been into art since I was small, and as I got older I discovered that I was pretty good at it (and not much else). I don't think it crossed my mind to do anything else, I just knew I wanted to follow that route. After school I went to university to study illustration, whilst there I dabbled in animation, mainly stop motion stuff.

P: How would you describe your style?

RM: RRR: Ruff, Rugged & Raw.

P: You’ve done some work for Ministry of Sound Australia, and electronic music seems like a fitting genre that is open to visuals accompanying the beats. Most of the work in your portfolio however are music videos for Hip hop artists, do you think that certain genres or musical styles translate into visuals better than others?

RM: I would love to make more videos for electronic artists, it's something I plan to do. I listen to that genre quite a lot and at the minute I play Shigeto almost once a week. I would love to work with him. The reason that I've done so many urban videos is because I've had a passion for Hip hop since I was 13 years old kid blasting Public Enemy's 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show'. I listen to a lot of different genres but Hip hop was the first one that hit me like 'POW' when I was young, and it stuck with me to this day. I didn't plan on doing mainly this genre but when you do one and you're lucky and people like it you get asked again and again. The first video I came out with as RUFFMERCY was for Blu x Flying Lotus, this was a perfect track for me. I loved the combination of Hip hop and Electronica. I'm drawn towards heavy tracks with that kind of energy.

Blu x Flying Lotus - BNG

P: In many of your videos you highlight certain words and phrases from the lyrics. In your video for ‘Numbers On The Boards’ (Book & Bronze Bloodsport Remix) by Pusha T for example, I find it interesting that some of the vocal samples in the beat appear alongside the lyrics. This way they play a part of the song in a way that they hadn’t if they weren’t visualised. It reminds me a bit of screwed and chopped music from Houston as well as Ghetto Tech from Detroit where elements in the music (lyrics usually) are repeated and chopped up so that they are imprinted into the listeners ears. I guess in a way you’re doing something similar but visually through graphics. What can great visuals add to a track in terms of depicting the mood and atmosphere of the beat and lyrics? (‘Blue Daisy presents Dahlia Black - Fuck A Rap Song’ for me is a great example of the visuals doing just this).

Blue Daisy presents Dahlia Black 'Fuck A Rap Song'

RM: Yeah, I love picking out the words from tracks that stand out to me. I love drawing them, as I'm always doodling words on my desk and napkins. The rise of the 'lyric video' however, has ruined that for me. I hate the idea of a lyric video (haha). Also, a lot of people have been trying to get me to stop writing lyrics in my videos which pisses me off. So I'll probably keep doing a little here and there, fuck 'em. Love your chopped and screwed analogy though. I never thought of that before, but yes, it's the same thing, tapping into the subconscious. I also love dropping in words not from the song, and even lyrics from other songs. Possibly the geeks and heads will see it and get the references.

P: When I first saw your visuals I thought of Basquiat in some respects. A lot of his work is covered in fragmented writing which gives the impression to have been painted almost effortlessly, similar to the way your graphics are depicted in the videos. I read in another interview that you never redo a line or a stroke but move on to the next frame, do you think that this way of working is vital to achieve the final result?

RM: It goes without saying that i'm a huge Basquiat fan. I didn't set out thinking 'yeah I love Basquiat, let me copy that', I saw an exhibition some 13 years ago and was blown away. I think his images have stuck with me since then and have definitely influenced my work. I don't know, I'm feeling like a cheap knock off right now. I think the main thing that I get from his work is seeing all the fragmented images and text together, it feels like seeing my brain on paper and also the looseness of it all. It's very graphical but oh so loose.. Can't beat it! 

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Yeah, I try to stick to that rule of not going back and correcting anything. I have broken that rule a couple of times but I have always been happier with the ones where I stuck to the rule. You ask whether it's vital to achieve the final result - I like to think that it is, but for me it's more important to feel loose and not so precious about it, that mistakes are okay. I have spent a lot of time in the past trying to be a perfectionist with work and I wanted to break away from that. I hope that the viewer feels the looseness but I reckon a lot of people (especially cell animators) probably think I'm a bit shit (haha).

P: When re-watching your videos I tend to pause and play every other frame to see the graphics as still images and to study them in detail. After I started an animation and 3D graphics course at college I began to really appreciate frames and understand how they finally become a sequence. The fact that every second in an animation is built up from 24 or 25 frames (depending on the format) is something that one rarely reflects over, but for you and many others in this field this is the reality in which you work. Still, in your creations, the fluidity and flow of the graphics is vital. How do you manage to keep the whole picture in mind whilst working at such a fragmented level?

RM: Ah, welcome to a world where 10 seconds can mean a day. I'm both lazy and hardworking. I'm lazy in the sense I can't be bothered to plan, yet I'm hardworking in the sense I'll sit for hours upon hours drawing. So how do I keep the whole picture in mind? With the hand drawn stuff I don't, I just draw what I feel that day till it's done.

House Shoes - Danny Brown

P: What other artists inspire you?

Right now I'm thinking: Basquiat, Keith Haring, Blu, Run The Jewels, David M Helman, Steve Pilling, Kaws, Cleon Peterson, Jason Jagel.

P: What makes the music video such an interesting platform for you to work with?

RM: Freedom, especially on the low budget ones, the ones where no one tells me what to do. They are my favourite and funnily enough, they seem to be the ones people like the most.

P: Would you consider moving into a different format in the future, maybe a short film or something completely different?

RM: Yes, I really want to make a mini series based around music. That's the goal, I'm just trying to find the time to do it. Watch this space!

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Ruffmercy was interviewed by Samuel Michaëlsson.

Have a look at RUFFMERCY's work on his website.

Visualising Architecture - call for papers

On May the 24th the exhibition Visualising Architecture will be opening at Frilagret in Gothenburg, Sweden. It is organized by PAPER magazine and will exhibit a wide typology of architectural visualisation, exploring and analyzing the current climate.

We have collected material from writers, students and tutors, as well as interviewed several leading artists in the field such as Peter Guthrie and RIBA bronze medal winner Ness Lafoy. This will all be featured in a publication that is to be sold in various architectural bookshops after the exhibition.

There is still space for more contributions however, so if you are interested in architectural visualisation in any form: renders, models or drawings, please get in touch to be a part of the exhibition catalogue.

Word limit is between 500-1500 words and the topic is architectural visualisation.

Deadline for submissions are at end of March.

Please email samuel.michaelsson@gmail.com if you're interested.

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A London Trilogy: The Films of Saint Etienne

If you haven't seen the films by Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne, please do watch them. The films explore and document the ever-changing nature of London over the span of nearly 10 years. The films are beautifully shot and accompanied by the music of Saint Etienne, they also explore film as a medium and music's role in how we perceive and remember spaces and places.

Finisterre (2003)
What Have You Done Today Mervin Day? (2005)
This Is Tomorrow (2007)

Visualising Architecture - an exhibition by PAPER magazine

coming in 2014.

Composition and materiality - An interview with visualisation artist Peter Guthrie.

Interview coming soon.

Call for PAPER!

PAPER is slowly starting up again this autumn! We're now looking for contributions from students and other people interested in writing about architecture, art, design or music.

Deadline is at the end of the year, 21 December 2013 so there's plenty of time.

These are the proposed topics for this autumn/winter:

• Music
• Illustrating the city 
• Visualization in architecture

Email samuel.michaelsson@gmail.com if any of this sounds interesting and you'd like to contribute!

Exercises in Style - Reworked

In the 1930’s Raymond Queneau got the idea for his seminal work Exercices de style, while he was listening to a concert in which Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge was performed. He realised that the piece was divided into segments, which were all variations of the same theme. He was convinced that the same logic could be applied to a literary piece, and around 1946 he had composed 99 variations of the same theme. The story is simple; on a crowded Paris bus the narrator observes a funnily dressed man accusing another passenger of deliberately pushing him. A seat becomes empty and the man sits down. In the second scene the man is in a different part of Paris once again spotted by the narrator. He is advised by a friend to sew on an extra button on his overcoat. This story is then repeated 99 times in 99 different ways and styles. 

Rather than looking at these literary exercises as purely an experiment in style, I believe that it is more interesting to analyse them from a perspective of limitations. By representing a scene, whether it is through drawing, collaging or other  ways of visualization, we are constantly limiting ourselves through these tools and methods. Many times limitations are considered to be negative, but I think that Raymond Queneau shows in his book the wonderful potential of restricting yourself when telling a story. It allows you to focus entirely on the idea that is being conveyed. This way of thinking can be extended to situations where limitations are not self imposed. Whether these limitations are geographical, economical or practical, it is equally important to see the potential in them and use that to your advantage. In the context of the architectural publication, it is the way that each zine individually tackle these conditions that really define them and make them unique.

The two scenes are here interpreted by PAPER from an architectural point of view, loosely based on the work of Atelier Bow Wow’s Pet Architecture and Bernard Tschumi’s The Manhattan Transcripts. Below is the first chapter (Notations) from Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau:

In the S bus, in the rush hour. A chap of about 26, felt hat with a cord instead of a ribbon, neck too long, as if someone’s been having a tug-of-war with it. People getting off. The chap in question gets annoyed with one of the men standing next to him. He accuses him of jostling him every time anyone goes past. A snivelling tone which is meant to be aggressive. When he sees a vacant seat he throws himself on to it.

Two hours later, I meet him in the Cour de Rome, in front of the gare Saint-Lazare. He’s with a friend who’s saying: “You ought to get an extra button put on your overcoat.” He shows him where (at the lapels) and why.

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Samuel Michaëlsson is a co-founder and editor of PAPER and is currently studying architectural visualization in Sweden.