Tag Archives: Mail art

Mail Art

Direct mail is it art?

First page of a 1928 direct mail marketing adv...
Image via Wikipedia

It has been the fashion in recent years for businesses to abandonn direct mail (using the traditional postal mailing service) in favour of online marketing and email campaigns. Companies are however returning to this marketing tool and being more creative using shaped flyers. These not only get the recipents interest, but some businesses are doubling response rates with these shaped mail drops.

Companies that attempt to generate sales entirely through indiscriminate direct mail, cold calling or email campaigns are going to find the going tough. Unique leads for your niche market are the best leads and by targeting the people who really need your product you stand a better chance of getting the positive response you require. It is important to know who your clients are.

Art by mail or mail art?

Mail Art in Wisconsin

Mailart in many respects pushes the boundaries of what can be considered art, it has a surreal or Dada quality about it. Mail art sometimes reaches the mainstream gallery audiences but never really reaches the greater highs.

Mail art is a worldwide art and music movement that began in the early 1960s. the principle is simple you send visual art (but also music, sound art, poetry, etc.) through the international postal system. Mail Art is sometimes known as Postal Art or Correspondence Art. Mail Art is a network, based on the principles of barter and equal one-to-one collaboration.

After a peak in popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Mail Art phenomenon has gradually migrated to the Internet, whose “social networks” were largely anticipated and predicted by the interactive processes of postal collaborations. Nevertheless, Mail Art is still practiced by a loose planetary community involving thousands of mailartists from the most varied backgrounds.

All my love Marni
Biography Postcards

Postcards from…

Another postcard to Hungary and visits to other places

Road trips, journeys, and speed inspire. The image below was taken on a road trip I did in 2007, with stays in Brussels, Zurich (it was going to be Prague – but the German authorities banned us from their country on the outward journey) Zagreb, Munich, Ipers. Going through France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Germany. We did this in six days. Click on the image for more photographs of our ‘Cannonball’ journey.

Mark et moi at the Cannonball 8000 ball, The Regent, Esplanade, Zagreb….be very scared

Biography Cassette Culture

Music and art

There is a brief retrospective interview looking back at the early days and the origins of ‘This Window’ in the November 2009 issue of ‘The Living Archive of Underground Music’.

“I think my first exposure to Peter Bright’s This Window project came with this tape on the IRRE label from Germany. Peppered with experimentalism and a sense of wander and wonder” Don Campau – Read more…

 

The early experiences of the audio mail art scene by Peter Bright (artist, This Window)

Published on: ‘The Living Archive of Underground Music

If you sat me down and asked me what were the main reasons for getting involved in this emotionally draining and sometimes very unrewarding ARTFORM called ‘home taping’, then I would say two things:
  • In the early 1970’s when I was about 13 or 14 years old I loved ‘Motown’ and ‘Led Zeppelin’ (my music tastes were very eclectic). In the UK there was a TV show called ‘Top of the Pops’, which shaped the adolescent pop culture.  The stars appeared on a Thursday night and lip-synched to their hits. Then one night (1972) a band called ‘Roxy Music’ appeared and turned the whole thing on its head. I can still see the performance in my mind’s eye. I had suddenly been exposed to ‘Art School Rock’. They were remarkably radical, different musically and visually.
  • Around the same time (1973) an album was released on ‘Virgin Records’ called ‘The Faust Tapes’.  This was a marketing experiment which had a retail price of 49 pence (UK) – so lots of people bought it and a lot of people threw it into the trash. The German band Faust were without a record deal and their producer Uwe Nettlebeck gave these tapes to Virgin for free. These apparently thrown together bits of tape noises, sounds, songs etc. were all mangled together – well, that is what most people thought.  In reality it was an exceptionally well crafted piece of work and was the inspiration for my EEtapes release ‘Extraction’ in 1989.
These two things combined with going to Art School eventually got me involved in experimenting with recorded sound. The first machines I used were a Phillips reel to reel and a budget priced cassette recorder.

Read More…

 

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This%20Window

Biography

International Union of Mail-Artists – IUOMA

Mail-Artist since:
1986
My Website:
http://www.thiswindow.org
Why I am involved in Mail-Art:

Was involved in the cassette / music side of mailart in the 1980’s /90’s. The whole idea of a network of artists connected by the postal system appealed to me and was an antidote to the stranglehold the ‘Art / Music’ establishment had over my creativity.

I have always considered mailart to be one of the major unsung heroes of Art History and every effort should be made to raise its profile.

Here are a few network related things I have done this millennium. http://www.thiswindow.org/Mail_Art/?cat=3

From profile page on: International Union of Mail-Artists – IUOMA