Grunge Art in Digital Space

An Extension of Grunge Culture in Visual Art

Submitted by:

Gunjan Chowdhary
PGDM (C), 2006 - 2008 200618

Submitted to:

Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad

In partial fulfillment of requirements of the Post Graduate Diploma in Communications Management

Dissertation Guide

Prof. A. F. Matthew, MICA

 Copyright 2008 Gunjan Chowdhary

and

Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)

Prof. A. F. Matthew: For his trust, guidance and support, and for cigarettes and coffee. Nupur Goyal: For continuous support, help, and for just being there. Thank You for everything. Nikhil Goyal: For the music, patience, and cigarettes among other things. Spandan Mishra: For long chats, discussion, help in structure and research, and cigarettes. Brother-in-Arms... Ravikant Kisana: For helping in research and analysis, for cigarettes, for the boat. Channan Sawhney: For helping with research and literature review. Arjun B.: For all of those things that could not be mentioned here due to lack of enough space. Dalzeen Minocher: For tips and support.
Apologies to anyone I have missed out upon, I remain grateful for whatever it is that you did.

1. Chapter 1 : Executive Summary 2. Chapter 2 : Introduction 3. Chapter 3 : Literature Review a. on Art b. on Grunge 4. Chapter 4 : Objectives 5. Chapter 5 : Research Design / Method 6. Chapter 6 : Analysis 7. Chapter 7 : Conclusion 8. Chapter 8 : References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The language of visual arts is perhaps the most potent language known to mankind, and has been so for quite some time. In fact the oldest documented piece of art, a humanfigurine, 'The Venus of Tan-Tan' is dated at around 70,000 B.C. Even today, most of the communication that we are exposed to consist of images. From the most mundane thing like a tube of toothpaste, to something like the magazine section on the latest in technology, from daily comic-strips to company annual reports, we are surrounded by images that communicate to us, and form a bulk of our experiences. Even in the online space, we are primarily guided by images, icons and designs. Given the fact that art has also adorned the digital platform, the internet has become a huge art gallery in itself. There are number of websites that act as platform for exhibition, selling and sharing of art and ideas. As I am involved in creation of digital-art myself, I keep exploring the online space for emerging styles and forms. A particular style of art, popularly called the 'Grunge' style of art, captured my interest and provoked further exploration. However, further research into it was only hindered by the lack of definitive material, in terms of solid research and literature. In fact, whether or not this style is justified in being called 'Grunge', and whether it can be given the status of a genre has remain unexplored to the best of my knowledge. In this paper, I have attempted to answer these very questions. For the purpose of answering these questions, I attempted to understand art in general, and then apply the same to some popular images which have been labeled by their creators as grunge. Here, I have first tried to establish the importance of visual art, thereafter proceeding to understand 'Grunge' as a culture. Further I have applied the method of form and content analysis to three pieces of art, which I found were representative of this style, and tried to understand the mindset and the attitude that they represent. Thereafter, I have tried to establish a relation between the 'Grunge' attitude and that represented by these three images, and hence, proceeded to justify the name that this style has now assumed. Adding it all up is a conclusion that says that this style that we are exploring is indeed a logical extension of 'Grunge' culture as is popularly known, and hence, deserves to be treated as an independent genre / movement like impressionism, cubism etc., and thus requires further looking-into, in terms of serious research and definition.

Images dominate our lives. They tell us how to behave, what to think, even, how to feel.
-Cited in How Art Made The World (More Human than Human; Part 1 of 5), BBC Documentary Series

art n. 1 a human creative skill or its application. b work showing this. 2 a (in pl.; prec. by the) branches of creative activity concerned with the production of imaginative designs, sounds, or ideas, e.g. painting, music, writing. B any one of these. 3 creative activity resulting in visual representation (good at music but not art). 4 human skill as opposed to nature (art and nature combined). 5 (often foll. by of) a skill, knack. b cunning; trick, stratagem. 6 (in pl.; usu. prec. by the) supposedly creative subjects (esp. languages, literature, and history) as opposed to scientific, technical, or vocational subjects. [Latin ars art-]
-From the Pocket Oxford Dictionary

Art is the manifestation of one's expression, created using skill and imagination, for the purpose of communicating / sharing with others. In its broad sense, Art encompasses all forms of expression created by human activity including but not limited to visual (painting, sculpture, printmaking, camera and computer arts, architecture), literature, auditory (music). Art also encompasses, in its completeness, the ability, the process and the product. In ability, art means the capacity to express in a way that is aesthetic and that stirs us, or in other terms, creativity. Art also denotes the very act of drawing, painting, designing etc., with the scope of this definition ever expanding as more and more materials and methods are innovatively employed to bring forth the creativity in a physical manifestation. In this, art covers the process. The end product of the ability combined with process, which we see / hear / experience, i.e. a painting, a statue, a note of music, or even a desktop wallpaper, is also known as art. In this paper however, I have concentrated upon 2-dimensional digital art of a particular style known as Grunge. While researching on the topic, I found that there is a proliferation of grunge style art on the online space. Not only executions of this style of art, but wide varieties of tools, like brushes, textures, patterns, fonts etc., and tutorials on how to use them are freely available for download and use, thus encouraging people to adapt this style, and making it more of a peoples' art rather than some elite category practiced by few. However, despite this popularity, there was a marked lack of material identifying or defining Grunge Art. In fact, there is no definitive material that even justifies this particular style being called Grunge.

Grunge style of art, as already mentioned, lacks a solid definition. But, on exploration of images that have been labeled as 'grunge', one finds a general trait and a commonality in the images, characterized by a general lack of conformation, combined with various forms of execution, mostly dirty, distorted, unbalanced and generally against the classical concept of beauty or aesthetics. The styles may vary from grayscale to full-palette art, from realistic to abstract, from amorphous to objective, from geometric to organic, but the general look, feel and content remains more or less the same. Across themselves, they reflect irreverence, unrest, dissatisfaction and a need for a counter-culture. They question our societies, our practices, our ethics and our selves. I instantly related to this style of art. I loved its versatility of form, and the freedom that it gave me to create my own style, while voicing my opinions. Therefore, I have tried to study this art further, and trace it back to its roots, and establish a connection between the style and the culture, and thus, give it its due importance and respect.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one without trying to understand them? But in case of a painting, people have to understand.
-Pablo Picasso

Art adds beauty to our lives. The standards of beauty are not universal. However, each artist tries to represent beauty as understood and idealized by him. This can also be generalized for civilizations or cultures as a whole. The Greeks for example, strived for symmetry and perfection, and hence, developed mathematical formulas to represent human body in art. Similarly, the Egyptians perfected a mathematical model based on grids, to create and represent the human body in its most perceivable form, because of which their style remained unchanged over 3000 years. Even in contemporary world, what may seem beautiful in one part of the world might seem quite out of place and ugly in another. This however doesn't qualify any form of art to be seen as superior / inferior to another. The acceptability and appreciation of art remains subjective to the society. Art enhances our surroundings. We all depend on art to decorate our bedrooms, our houses, our cities, our bodies, even our computer screens. What art does is creates pleasing experiences out of our ordinary living environments. It could be seen as frescos in chapels, or draperies in our living rooms, art makes the world more inhabitable and pleasant. Art is revealing. It is a very powerful medium that stirs people. An artist uses his art as a tool to express the truth as he sees it. This truth can be said to be subjective because the expression and the truth which is being expressed are mostly very personal to the artist. For instance, nearly all of Frida Kahlo's works reveal the angst in her life, caused by an accident when a street car slammed into the bus on which she was a passenger, leaving her with a fractured pelvis and vertebrae, and a chronic pain, and by her marriage to Diego Rivera, which she considered to be another bad accident in her life. Typically, her self-portraits [Pane 1] presented her alone, with objects important to her in life, and her face always painted with realism and in a compressed space. Art defies the limits of mortal life. Art has created immortal idols. Both the artist and the subject continue to live on, defying death in people's memories, and as pieces of art, which continue to transcend the boundary of media and form a part of our lives. Andy Warhol's pop-art reproduction of Marylin Monroe's photograph on canvas 'Four Marilyns' [Pane 2], amongst many other immortal pieces of art can be quoted as an example here.

Art is a representation of religious beliefs. The image of a ten-handed woman killing a demon at her feet, or that of a man nailed and bleeding on a wooden cross inspires awe and faith, and moves people. Human beings, across time and cultures have tried to create a manifestation of the unknown, to see the unseen, gods have been represented as men, as mysterious animals, composite man-animal beasts. E.g. Fransisco de Goya's painting 'Saturn Devouring His Son' [Pane 3], represents the Roman myth, where Saturn eats his own sons, fearing that they shall overthrow him. Art is an expression of fantasy. The French painter Odilon Redon once said that there is a kind of drawing which the imagination has liberated from the any concern with the details of reality in order to allow it to serve freely for the representation of things conceived in the mind. A detailed analysis of the same is out of the scope of this paper, however, I would like to present Salvador Dali's painting 'Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening' [Pane 4], which is his imagination of his wife's Gala's dream that woke her up. Art stimulates the intellect and fires the emotions. It has the power to make us think profoundly and to question our beliefs and challenge our own understanding of things. For example, a photograph titled 'Geometric Dream' [Pane 5], submitted on Deviant Art by 'LAdesigner' challenges our perception of light and geometry. Art brings in order and harmony. The Egyptians and the Greeks developed mathematical models to represent the human body in its perfect form. Even in the modern day of digital art, the very fact that most of the 3D software packages use triangles to create various organic shapes prove the fact that art brings in order and system. Art expresses chaos. As intellect has to be balanced by emotion, so does the existence of order assume the existence of chaos, and has been represented by many artists in various forms. Artists have explored chaos in various events like war, famine, or natural catastrophe, or have used their cultural vocabulary to represent chaos without specific content. Composition VII by Wassily Kandisky [Pane 6] would be an apt example here. Art records and commemorates experience. Photographs being the most commonly used forms of visual representations of memories, artists across time and cultures have effectively used various forms of art viz. paintings, sculptures etc. to represent their experiences, which may have been personal or shared by the society as a whole. Art meets the needs of the artist, in more ways than one. As Oscar Wilde wrote in the preface to his novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', To reveal art and conceal the artist is the art's aim. Art provides the artist with a way to earn his living, while meeting his needs for selfactualization and achievement, providing him a platform to voice his opinions, to express his feelings, while encompassing in itself the artist's social and cultural context.

Origin of the term The word grunge is believed to be a back-formation from the US slang adjective grungy, which originated in about 1965 as a slang term for "dirty" or "filthy". Mark Arm, the vocalist for the Seattle band Green Riverand later Mudhoneyis generally credited as being the first to use the term grunge to describe the movement. Arm first used the term in 1981, when he wrote a letter under his given name Mark McLaughlin to the Seattle zine, Desperate Times, criticizing his band Mr. Epp and the Calculations as "Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!" Clark Humphrey, editor of Desperate Times, cites this as the earliest use of the term to refer to a Seattle band, and mentions that Bruce Pavitt of Sub Pop popularized the term as a musical label in 198788, using it on several occasions to describe Green River. Arm used grunge as a descriptive term rather than a genre term, but it eventually came to describe the punk/metal hybrid sound of the Seattle music scene. Grunge History Its been well documented that the subculture known as "Grunge" started in Seattle. To most teenagers it started when Nirvana released "Nevermind" in September, 1991. That single record release was undoubtedly the key event in moving Grunge from subculture to popular culture. To study Grunge as a case study for the creation of popular culture though, requires a bit more historical perspective.As Spin magazine proclaimed in December, 1992, "Seattle...it's currently to the rock world what Bethlehem was to Christianity". Seattle in the north western United States is rightly regarded as the launching pad of Grunge, but why? The journey from the local scene in Seattle in the mid 80's, through Nirvana's national number one with Nevermind in 1991, to the global success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden et al is a classic example of the emergence and subsequent exploitation of popular culture. According to those who were there, Seattle in the early 80s was a fairly isolated place culturally. Major bands often didn't bother adding Seattle to their west coast American tours, and the live scene was awash with derivative bands doing their best to sound like someone else. It wasn't an environment which seemed immediately conducive to an explosion of original musical vitality. Yet environment seems to be a key concept in explaining the 1985-95 decade. The physical environment is one of great beauty, with trees and water in abundance. It has consistently been voted the most livable city in America, for what its worth. It does, however, rain a lot. An awful lot. As a result, in the words of pioneering local record producer Jack Endino, "when the weather's crappy you don't feel like going outside, you go into a basement and make a lot of noise to take out your frustration." The psychological environment is also important. Seattle is the major city of Washington State, the furthermost corner of the contiguous United States, the last stop before Canada or the Pacific Ocean. For many Americans it is the symbolic end of the line in the journey of westward expansion which is so integral to the way Americans perceive themselves. Art Chantry, graphic designer who was a key figure in the early grunge scene pointed out in "Hype", "the north west is weird. It's the flying saucer capital of the US, serial killer capital of the US, the Manson

family used to vacation here." From this environment emerged a music scene of real vitality. It's easy to see the musical ancestry of British punk in the Seattle music of the mid eighties. It was a style which had never been popular in mainstream America, but had obviously found a niche in the youth of the isolated north west. Bands formed, playing gigs they arranged themselves, to an audience that Kim Thayil of Soundgarden pointed out, was "usually just other bands". It was a friendly, incestuous scene powered by an everchanging collection of bands playing for the main reason, fun, an escape from an America dominated by the socially barren policies of Ronald Reagan. It's the classic local scene, thriving completely independently of any corporate power structure. Local photographer Charles Petersen, who chronicled the emerging scene with his camera summed it up best in "Hype", "we were all so f...... bored out of our heads it was get drunk, fall down and throw your body around. And all the bands that came through Seattle at that time said Seattle had the most exciting live scene, and they loved to play here because the audience would get drunk and go nuts. It was this excitement which was the pinnacle of the local element of Grunge's emergence as mainstream popular culture. Along with the excitement of a self produced local live scene came the local entrepreneurs. Small, independent record companies sprung up sealing deals with friends on a handshake to produce a vinyl record of the six months they may have been together. Fanzines were the other great explosion of subcultural access, as those who couldn't play in bands showed their allegiance to their chosen favourites by producing cheap, enthusiastic magazines which helped glue the scene together. The first step towards a national level of success came with the emergence of Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavit, who founded their own label Sub Pop. Unlike their contemporaries in Seattle, they had a grander vision which spread beyond the north west. They were unashamed admirers of the 80s Motown approach to having "hit factory". After starting with the simple desire to get Soundgarden onto vinyl, they soon proved themselves masters of self promotion. In November 1988 came one of their masterstrokes. They established a "Sub Pop Singles Club" producing strictly limited editions of singles from local bands, released monthly. It started with 1,000 copies of the then totally unknown Nirvana's "Love Buzz/Big Cheese". It stimulated an artificial demand by creating an aura of desirability because the releases were so limited. As other local bands like Green River, Mudhoney, Tad and Soundgarden found themselves on Sub Pop singles, the idea of a "Seattle Sound" clearly emerged as an ideal marketing tool. The key event in Sub pop's elevation of the Seattle scene to national and global recognition came in 1989 when British journalist Andy Catlin was brought over to Seattle. Poneman and Pavit took him to a Mudhoney show, introduced him around and loaded him up with Sub pop singles. The result was a major story in Britain's influential Melody Maker on March 11, 1989, headed "Seattle, Rock City". The emergence of a Grunge popular culture was now

underway as Americans clamoured to know what was happening in this remote outpost of their own country. Art Chantry described the next few months as "an explosion of subculture", while local journalist Dawn Anderson saw everything "suddenly buzzing with activity". Many locals felt it was a short term fixation fuelled by the national media, and Anderson remembered that "about 1990 we thought good, it's over". Even Sub Pop were falling on hard times, with Poneman and Pavit creating a now legendary T shirt in 1991 which proclaimed "WHICH PART OF 'WE HAVE NO MONEY' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? Then in September 1991 they released Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind". Nirvana were still a small scale local act, mainly recognised for emerging from the mind numbingly boring small red-necked logging town of Aberdeen. Local record promoter Susie Tennant remembered that "the record came out in the fall. The video, I remember when I first saw it I thought this is so cool, but there's no way MTV will play this, and when they started going with it, it reached millions of kids instantly". The song MTV had placed on high rotation was "Smells Like Teen Spirit". It became the anthem of a generation, and gave the mainstream media a focus point to categorise that generation with. Kurt Cobain suddenly found himself not only the financial saviour of Sub Pop, but more disturbingly for one who's psyche was so fragile, the spokesman of a generation. As he said in his last major interview (US Rolling Stone issue 674, Jan 27, 1994), "Everyone has focused on that song so much. The reason it gets a big reaction is people have seen it on MTV a million times. It's been pounded into their brains." Thus in the rock world of the 1990s, the key to national and global success was high rotation on MTV. In the age of satellite TV that was enough to guarantee a global profile. "Nevermind" knocked Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" off the top of the American album charts, Nirvana toured Australia as part of the Big Day Out, and Grunge was now a global popular culture. The merciless exploitation was about thirty seconds behind. As Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam explained, "when commerce is involved, everything changes". The contribution of popular culture to social change Has Grunge changed the world? Even if it has helped its followers make sense of themselves and their world, it has contributed to social change. Eddie Vedder stated in "Hype" that "it would be a tragedy if the Seattle scene gets to the top and doesn't do anything with it". So how much have the Seattle musicians been able to contribute to social change? Certainly Vedder and Pearl Jam have done their best to live up to their ideals. Their long standing battle with the ticket selling monopolies in the United States has endeavoured to create a genuine alternative way of promoting and presenting music to its fans. Pearl Jam's last Australian tour was characterised by ticket prices around a third that of other major acts like U2, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Kurt Cobain's very public rejection of the Axl Rose school of rock manipulation and machismo also did a lot to enlighten his audience. Never comfortable with the trappings of

success, Cobain did an enormous amount to challenge male rock stereotypes. As Phil Sutcliffe wrote in Q Magazine No 93, June 1994 (P 74), "although party politics didn't engage him, sexual politics did. In interviews and song Iyrics, he espoused feminism and opposed homophobia." Cobain's relatively brief musical legacy is summed by David Fricke in Rolling Stone No 683, June 1994 (Australian edition), "Never mind all that standard issue babble about Generation X. There was nothing blank about the way Cobain articulated his broken dreams and wrapped up his discontent and, by extension, that of his audience, in roughshod song. When the shit hit the fans, they knew it for what it was -the truth". That was probably Kurt Cobain's lasting legacy, the ability to sing honestly about his own life. While doing that he connected with a generation who were also struggling to make sense of it all, the divorced parents, the low self esteem, the lack of employment prospects, and a government which seemed totally disinterested in considering the needs, dreams or aspirations of young people. It's probably too early yet to really ascertain the full contribution of Grunge to social change. Certainly the genuine outpouring of grief at Kurt Cobain's death indicated that he was as important to his generation as Presley and Lennon had been to theirs. The final image of thousands at the Seattle vigil commemorating his life, and the ever present TV cameras devouring every moment of private anguish to package into two minute bites to send across the world was probably a fitting summary of Grunge as a popular culture. As Jack Endino said, "symbolically, it (Cobain's death) represented the death of something". And where is it heading? The last word goes to Seattle record producer Steve Fisk, "there'll be no shortage of disaffected youth in America over the next 50 years, so there'll be some great rock'n'roll coming down the line". The interactive process between individuals and aspects of popular culture At the local level, interaction with the Grunge scene was limited to gigs in local halls and clubs, record releases on small, local labels, and the production and consumption of fanzines. There were plenty of opportunities in Seattle and nearby cities such as Tacoma and Olympia, but as Kurt Cobain's life in Aberdeen showed, by the time you were that far out, individuals started to feel pretty isolated from the excitement of the "Seattle scene. As Grunge emerged as a legitimate popular culture, complete with heroes, paraphernalia and a mythology created by those in Seattle for consumption by the mass media, interaction came much easier. As stated earlier, Grunge fashion turned up everywhere from fashionable New York catwalks to the humble K Mart or target store. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden joined Nirvana as major league chart successes, and Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder started appearing on T shirts. Geffen Records brought Nirvana's contract off Sub Pop, Alice in Chains ended up with Columbia and Pearl Jam signed with Epic. There was a feeding frenzy as the major labels descended upon Seattle looking for the "next Nirvana". Major labels meant international promotion, and in the MTV age, the Seattle sound and associated cultural attachments soon became an international phenomenon. For Australian kids, JJJ, now a national youth network, and Rage, another national show,

enabled you to see and hear what all the fuss overseas was about. Whether you lived in Gosford, Grafton or Geelong, you knew how you were supposed to look and act. Is Grunge Alternative? Grunge is a concept that is more then just dirty clothes, ragged hair, and drug abuse. While many other styles overlap with grunge, punk in particular, none have the same mindset as a "grungie". Grunge is more than a look, it is a state of mind. Followers of grunge tend to wear torn jeans, tee shirts (with their favorite band spray-painted on it) flannels sweaters. Shoes are universal to a grungie. If the shoe fits wear it, so to speak. As long as it is comfortable, it is a good shoe. "Punks" wear torn jeans and the same type of tee shirts as well, but never touch the other clothing. The only exception to this is footwear. Punks do not have the same philosophy as grungies when it comes to footwear, but because of the open view of the grungies, overlapping can hardly be avoided. While "grungies" oppose body piercing (who wants a piece a metal in their face anyway?) punks approve. Its seems like their whole hierarchy is based on piercings....the more you have, the cooler you are. Both grungies and punks listen to the same type of music. Blare some Nirvana or Hole from a speaker and watch the party liven up. That is not to say that all of their music is universal....very few grungies would ever listen to Rancid or KMFDM. To punks however, Rancid is the heart of it all. Loud, fast music sung by people wearing chains, who have multifaceted hair. When it comes to hair, the two groups rarely see eye to eye. Punks enjoy mutilating their hair...a mohawk, a glob of mousse and some pink haircolor show ones uniqueness. Grungies however, enjoy natural hair. It is not necessary to dye your hair pink. Doing so does not show uniqueness, it shows how much of an ass you are. This is not to say that Grunge overlaps only with punk. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It just seems that the two styles have much in common, and yet are so different. Lets take alternative for example. To the clueless, alternative and grunge are two words for the same thing. Far from it. While some overlapping is inevitable, then main characteristics of being a grunge are radically different then those of an alternative follower. Dress, while similar, is not totally compatible. Chains are worn by alternative people, to make them look "cool." That in itself violates Grunge philosophy. A true grungie would not do something to look "cool." Appearance doesn't matter, it is what is inside that counts. That is just a few examples of the differences between grunge and alternative. Trust me, there are many more, but I will not bore you with them all. I hope it is now understood that grungies are not just a subset of alternative, or any other style for that matter. It is a unique philosophy into itself. Grunge Isn't Dead Some people say that grunge is dead. These three last words of the last sentence were also printed on Kurt Cobain's favourite T-shirt. So here is a short theory about this subject. It is from an Internet page called the Grunge Kingdom. When I searched for it again it was gone

and so I couldn't find out the address and don't know who wrote this theory. But anyway here it is: Well I think that grunge music is not dead, it only changed its name! For example in the 80's NIRVANA was called a punk rock band and later it was called a Grunge band. People will say "alternative" now. A band like Green Day is called alt or grunge (to the limits) - for me they're good but not grunge! To be called a grunge band there is only one big rule: THE BAND MUST BE FROM SEATTLE AND PLAY PUNK/HARDCORE MUSIC! Nirvana was grunge but really (in the soul)! And for the end: The so called punk rock music cannot exist in the US! It's a kind music that comes from England and exists only there. Here in US it's Grunge the others are alternative only. Well that's it! The first three sentences are right in my opinion. Many of today's grunge bands existed and made music long before anybody had ever pronounced the word grunge. At this time their music was called punkrock, independent or alternative. So it is right to say that it has changed its name. After Nirvana's breakthrough with Nevermind all the Seattle bands and every band that sounded similar to them was called grunge. But I've never heard anybody call Green Day an alternative or even a grunge band. Although the writer restricted this by the words "to the limits" I think that it is simply wrong. Some members of Green Day have their hair dyed and they make short fast songs so they are definitely a punk band. The "big rule to be called a grunge band" is also something I can agree to only partly. That the band must be from Seattle is simply wrong. In 1992 there were already bands like the Stone Temple Pilots who were not from Seattle but from Los Angeles and today there are grunge bands from all parts of the world. Bush for example are from London and Silverchair even come from Australia. Then when you think of the original grunge sound the part that a band "must play punk/hardcore music" (lines 5 and 6) is right, but the modern sound, which is in fact the one that got so popular, is far from being hardcore. Hardcore music has got rap vocals in it but most of the grunge vocalists sing very melodious in their songs. There are still some recitative elements in some songs (in Alive for example) but they are used in a melody and not in a monotonous pitch of the voice on a single tone like in hardcore music. Then in line six the writer declares that Nirvana was grunge "in the soul". This is not right because the band never identified with the word grunge but hated it. They were labelled grunge by the music industry but in their souls they were punkrock musicians. In the last three lines the author says in a way that grunge, punk and alternative is all the same, but simply has different names and that the name is determined by the country the band comes from. This is another falseness for me. Grunge, punk and alternative have distinguishable characteristics. Sometimes the borderline between the styles isn't very obvious. There are also often mixtures between two styles so it is hard to say what is what but there are still differences. All in all I would say that this is not really a theory but rather just an accumulation of statements which are not even substantiated by any kind of measure. There have also been many people who said that punk was dead. But just recently there has been a kind of a punk revival with bands like Green Day and Offspring that hit the charts with songs like "Basket Case" and "Self Esteem". And just like there are many new punk bands there are also lots of new grunge bands. There are on the one side new bands like Silverchair (whose singer and guitarist Daniel Johns has got a similar voice to Kurt Cobain an even looks very much like him) and Bush (whose vocalist and guitarist Gavin

Rossdale resembles Eddie Vedder a bit and also sings similar to him) and on the other side there are the old bands like Pearl Jam who still exist although they have changed a lot. There is also a follow-up band to Nirvana with the Foo Fighters and members of old Seattle bands are doing solo projects (Jerry Cantrell and Chris Cornell for example). So there is already a new generation of grunge bands to make sure that grunge doesn't die too soon. But after all these arguments for and against statement that grunge is dead. I still think that grunge is alive and will live on for a long time. In my opinion any kind of music isn't dead as long as somebody listens to it. Take classical music for example. It is over two hundred years old now and people still listen to it. Perhaps it is a bit exaggerated to compare modern songs with the masterpieces of great composers like Mozart and Beethoven. The Beatles might be a better example. One of them is already dead but their songs are still played on the radio and they are idols for people like the vocalist of Oasis for example. So their music has made them immortal. And as people still listen to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and all the others grunge isn't dead but lives on in people's minds. Grunge Attitude "Grunge" is an attitude, and those that possess this attitude show it through outward means of expression. One way in which they do this is by their dress, which eventually led to the advent of Grunge Fashion. Other way to do it is to freely express themselves, bring out their angst, dissatisfaction, their deepest fears and worries and their weirdest dreams and fantasies in all forms of communication, up to and including art. Grunge Fashion The grunge fashion was somehow a rebellion against the starched yuppiedom of Seattle. There exists an unstated rule for the yuppies which says that you mustn't look town like a woodcutter if you want to be dressed properly, decently and smartly. So the denizens of Seattle's underground scene appropriated the torn jeans, bulky shoes and (often chequered) flannel shirts of Washington State's lumber country. But the grunge fashion was also a differentiation from some other musical style. The grungers grew their hair long as a reaction to the short haircut of the hardcore scene and to the clean-cut yuppies. But their clothes also distinguished the grungers from rock and heavy metal musicians with their expensive leather clothes and glamorous costumes. Rock and heavy metal musicians really fit in the image of the big stars. The whole stardom is a kind of show for them. For grungers they are poseurs. The grunge musicians are just themselves and more anti-stars with their torn clothes. None of them ever really considered this a style but later this anti-style became a product of the fashion industry. Fashion magazines took up the way the grunge musicians dressed and created a special "grunge fashion". Designers like Calvin Klein used it in their shows and the once cheap grunge clothes became more and more expensive. Grunge fashion was exploited just like the music and the young fans bought these things because they were very trendy. Some more things from the grunge fashion are chain wallets, ripped cardigans, basketball hats (preferably worn backward) and Doc Martens.

However, when it comes to design / art, Grunge lacks any related literature.

1. To establish a relation between different pieces of digital-art, done in distinctly different styles. 2. To establish a relation between these pieces of digital-art and Grunge as a culture. 3. Thus to prove and justify the importance of Grunge Art as a distinct genre and the need for serious research and understanding of this particular genre.

1. In depth study of Art and its importance. 2. Understanding art and its analysis. 3. In depth study of Grunge as a culture, thus establishing the attitude represented by it. 4. Finding the most popular websites hosting art-work by various artists across the world, based on: a. Amount of time since in service. b. Number of artists hosted on the website. c. Number of images hosted on the website. d. Number of hits generated on the website. [data available on websites themselves / google]. The top two were found to be deviantART and Flickr respectively. 5. To select the most images representing the category of Grunge style of art, based on: a. Number of views b. Number of downloads. c. Number of times added to favorites. [data available on hosting galleries / user stats]. Based on the fact that deviantART is almost double in nearly all parameters as compared to Flickr, two images were selected from dA and one from Flickr. 6. Analysis of these three images to establish the mindset and attitude represented by them 7. Establish the relationship between the images and Grunge culture.

'Alternative2Grunge' as Submitted by Ti-Fu-Tu on GrungeClub.DeviantArt

[http://grungeclub.deviantart.com/art/quot-Alternative-quot-by-Ti-Fu-Tu-12107094]

An abstract piece of art, it bears no resemblance whatsoever to nature or reality. A completely flat image with a straight-on perspective, it lacks perceived mass and volume. With a strong gray providing a neutral background to the image, the colored elements are brought out very strongly, and guide the viewer's eye so that no detail is missed out. Random text in cyan, appearing at the centre of the frame, has a very low value-contrast as opposed to the gray background, and thus, almost becomes a part of the background itself. Lack of variety in colors is compensated by the variety in elements and textures, where as the gray background and repetition of colors brings about the unification factor to this piece. A vertical balance is achieved by repetition of textured white elements in the top-right and bottom-left of the frame. The black amorphous pattern and thin blue and yellow lines on the left are balanced on the right by increasing the thickness of the yellow lines, adding a thin white line to accentuate the yellow lines and amorphous black marks on the right hand edge of the frame. However, there still is a marked asymmetry in the piece, making the left side seemingly a little heavier, than the right side. The over-all busy looking texture of what forms the ground of the image is balanced by the sharpness of the lines that guide the eyes of the viewer. While the pig-like black pattern clearly attracts attention, the line and the general direction of the pig-face lead the viewer to the centre of the image, where the attention is grabbed by the title of the image, which reads Atlernative2Grunge, clearly forming the focus of the image. The viewer is arrested at this focal point by the narrowing of the area enclosed by the lines and by a general lack of definitive elements further right. The focal-point, or rather area, of the image is further accentuated by the presence of overlapping linear patterns in yellow and blue. The focal area is clearly defined by the presence of a symbolic human silhouette, which itself is quite a representative of modern times, and clearly reminds us of the symbol that represents a male-urinal in public places. The wet looking yellow splatters on both sides form a clear frame for the title of the image. The gray background represents a plastered wall, symbolizing the urbanization of modern world, while the dry-brush textures and cracks etc. strewn across the image clearly confirm the idea of a wall. The yellow lines, coming from the top-left of the image, clearly enclose the silhouette of a human-being, showing the chin and the upper-torso. The presence of the pig and the distortion of the text in the lower part of the torso are a clear representative of the process of digestion, possibly symbolizing the assimilation and digestion of information in the present day. The white textured patterns present in the upper-left and bottom-right parts of the image have the distinct look of dry-brush stroke on a rough wall, but a closer look reveals their pixelated formation, clearly referring to the digitalization of our world.

The three textured-yellow dots pull the viewer's attention towards the upper-right corner of the image, and lead the viwer right-wards due to their increasing size in that direction, where the white texture is over-laid by another illegible block of text, again a satire on the importance that we give to textual information. The over-all feel is somewhat of confusion and chaos in the modern-world, mostly dominated by digital information, where the presence of a human-like figure gives the viewer a slight comfort from the chaos. However, the texture of the lines used to define the human form also suggests that no-one is spared from this chaos. The darkish palette used for this image conveys the mood to be that of dissatisfaction, sadness and desperation, while the streaks of yellow and blue provide the only elements of hope in the image. The very fact that this image itself has been created on a digital platform, using Adobe Photoshop, is a satire on the digitalization of our modern lives. Clearly, this image is a voice against our dependence on technology and information, and reducing importance of human beings themselves.

Untitled image, as submitted by Reggie Tyson in the Grunge Art Pool on Flickr
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/reggie_tyson/2318829890/in/pool-54286361@N00]

This is a digitally enhanced photograph of a crow in flight. The use of a completely neutral palatte brings uniformity to the image, while the textured back ground adds variety. The darker palette and well-defined texture of the lower part of the image making it denser than the rest, is clearly balanced by the dark crow in the upper part. The crow, being offset more to the right of the image, is balanced by the presence of a darker blotch towards the left of the image. The well defined outlines of the crow are in a sharp contrast to rest of the image, clearly making it the focus of the image. The motion blur in the lower part of the image, combined with the posture of the crow create an illusion of motion, representing a particular instance in the flight of the bird. The wings pointing slightly upwards, the outstretched talons, and the direction of the blur, all suggest that the time captured in this image is that of the bird coming to land. While the relative void in the upper part of the image clearly represents the sky, lower part, appearing very busy, suggests the presence of more objects than the upper half. The presences of spots, which have not been blurred, give stability to the lower part of the image, hence representing the ground. There is a clear demarcation in the busy and the void parts of the image, suggesting that to be the horizon. Blotches in the lower middle part of the image create an illusion of blurred trees, and the fact that the dark part representing the ground covers nearly half the image shows that the crow is flying quite low, thus confirming the feeling that the bird is about to land. The over all image, due to its lack of colors, creates a mood of sadness, and desperation. The crow, being a scavenging bird, is a representation of death and desperation. Thus it heightens the sense of morbidity and lack of hope in the given image. Besides, the fact the image has just a single crow, also brings in the feeling of solitude and loneliness. The top part of the image has a stark white glow. The light seems to partially filtering through and around the feathers of the crow's wing, thus suggesting the presence of a very strong source of light, viz. the sun. This part adds to the realism of the image, and also offset the negativity caused by the image, though not completely. Hence the overall mood of the image still represents a sense of isolation, desperation, death and morbidity. Due to the fact that this is a contemporary piece of art and is digitally created, one cannot help but attribute the negativity of the image to the negativity of modern times, and feel that the artist is oppressed by the modern society.

'I know where the canaries go' as Submitted by Jesskajuice on GrungeClub.deviantART

http://grungeclub.deviantart.com/art/quot-i-know-quot-by-Jesskajuice-11223955

This is a very colorful, representative artwork. It clearly depicts a girl squatting. The girl is claimed by the artist to be based on a Japanese Manga, which seem to be very popular these days. The image uses a soft palette, consisting of primary of pastel shades of blue, red, green and yellow, including a heavy use of black. The image is entirely asymmetric, and lacks balance in any form. The viewer tends to concentrate on the left part of the image, while the empty space on the right does not draw much attention to it. The ground of the image is formed by a plain white canvas1 mottled with ink-drops and splatters in soft pastel shades. The ground is also marked with random scribbling in contrasting shades, but look more like remnants of wet ink pressed against the surface, clearly not supposed to legible. Foreground consists of a young girl, dressed in a top, a short skirt / tights / pants, squatting on a surface formed by a jumbled mass of black lines varying in thickness. The features are clearly defined by non-uniform, thick black outlines, and at some points, even jumbled outlines. Phrases saying The truth is, tears in seconds, come on in, why can't, miles to inches running along the outlines of the figure are clearly legible, while some more phrases are rendered indecipherable by overlapping them together. Detailed facial features like the nose, the cheekbone and the chin and features on the hands and legs have been highlighted by thin black curves. The lips are clearly done in thick black outlines. Thin black curves and jumbled lines have been used to represent the features of the dress. The eye has been highlighted by use of thick black lines to create the eyelashes, and various other shades around it. The shapes used are clearly amorphous, and are closer to being representation of the shapes of the features than forming the actual features. The feet are not clearly demarcated, but the viewer would still imagine them to be there, dressed in black shoes, but blended in with the background. Although the palette is soft and pastel, the overall image creates a sense of confusion and randomness, reflecting the turmoil in the girl's mind. This feeling of a state of confusion is further accentuated by the use of jumbled black lines, which in their sharpness and strength form a strong contrast to the softness of the rest of the palette. The girl has been forced into a corner, creating a sharp contrast to the empty space around, creating a sense of claustrophobia. The expression of the face is set to a state of longing and desire, combined with a feeling of confusion and conflict. This is further heightened, almost to the feeling of paranoia by the presence of random snippets of text, some of which are legible, while the rest are not.

It is thus successfully established, that the three images chosen to represent the Grunge style of art, represent a similar attitude of freely voicing the opinions and emotions of the artists, while not conforming to the general sense of what is beautiful or aesthetic, while using a style that is satirical to established genres of art. This particular attitude also conforms to the Grunge attitude as established in the Literature Review. This, it follows that Grunge style of art is justified in being called so, and is a logical extension of Grunge Culture into visual art. This therefore, warrants the importance of Grunge as a genre / movement in design and not a mere style / form of art, and thus, requires an in depth study and understanding, independent of existing genres of art.

REFERENCES 1. Fichner-Rathus, L. (2004). Understanding Art (Seventh ed.). Belmont, California, US: Thomson/Wadsworth. 2. Kress, G., van Leeuwen T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (Second ed.). Great Britain: Routledge 3. (1996). The Block Reader in Visual Culture. Great Britain: Routledge 4. Subramanyan K. G. (2007). The Magic of Making: Essays on Art and Culture. Calcutta: Seagull 5. Zelevansky, P. (Writer), & Dashwood, R. (Director). (2005). How Art Made The World [Motion Picture]. USA / UK. 6. http://www.wikipedia.com 7. Http://www.deviantart.com 8. http://www.flickr.com 9. http://www.mart.trento.it