Visual and Conceptual Elements
Many noise rock groups have a confrontational performance style which mirrors the aggression of their music. This reaches back to The Who and Jimi Hendrix, who were famous for destroying their instruments on stage, and Iggy Pop, of the Stooges, and Darby Crash, of the Germs, who lacerated their bodies in a spectacle comparable to the performance art of Chris Burden and Vito Acconci. Acconci was also a significant inspiration for no wave. Some performers, such as Black Flag and the Birthday Party, for example, also physically assaulted audience members, on occasion.
1980s noise rock musicians tended to adopt a Spartan, utilitarian mode of dress following the hardcore punk ethos and in partial reaction against the more ostentatious elements of punk fashion. Steve Albini articulated an ethical stance that emphasized restraint, irony, and self-sufficiency. The Butthole Surfers were an exception in their desire to dress as bizarrely as possible. Several bands also made public reference to drug use, particularly LSD (Jimi Hendrix, the Butthole Surfers) and heroin (the Velvet Underground, Royal Trux). Many contemporary noise rock musicians, such as the Locust, Comparative Anatomy, and Lightning Bolt, have a very theatrical mode of presentation and wear costumes. Some bands incorporate visual displays, such as film or video art.
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Famous quotes containing the words visual, conceptual and/or elements:
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics; we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“An illustrious individual remarks that Mrs. [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton is the salt, Anna Dickinson the pepper, and Miss [Susan B.] Anthony the vinegar of the Female Suffrage movement. The very elements get the “white male” into a nice pickle.”
—Anonymous, U.S. women’s magazine contributor. The Revolution (August 19, 1869)