What song is this? ... Lia and @c's interpretation of a Laurie Anderson melody. Photograph: ICA
It's not often that songs paint the clearest pictures in your mind. So I was excited about the prospect of 10 rare tracks being interpreted by visual artists for the ICA's Beck's Fusions Gallery, which exhibits in a "pod" in Trafalgar Square, London, today and tomorrow, before touring to Dublin, Manchester and Glasgow.
Seeing what visions artists have for unusual songs is a brilliant concept. We're so used to films being accompanied by soundtracks, but turning this around feels excitingly experimental. Using songs as the starting point to create new visual art - why isn't this synergy more common? Promo or music videos deliver an occasional treat, but most are geared towards marketing, not art.
Unfortunately, I'm hopelessly unimpressed by some of the song choices for Beck's Fusions. These "rare" tracks (billed as rare or unheard of versions of songs) seem to reveal a dispiriting conservatism among a new generation of artists. It's going to take some visual chicanery before I can reappraise the over-familiar strains of Sigur Rôs, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay Z, Beck and Cornershop. Sure enough, the Sigur Rôs inspired film is a cliched, slow-motion, 360 degree experience of standing in the middle of a tidal wave, which would make a fine advert for a car, or Old Spice. While a version of the Chili Peppers' Under the Bridge, collaged from fans playing guitar on YouTube, is a poorly conceived homage to the rise of user-generated content.
On the other hand, the choice of Ciccone Youth, Sonic Youth's 1986 side project featuring Madonna covers, by Graham Dolphin, scores major brownie points. Hearing Thurston Moore wailing "Tonight I wanna dance with someone else," is entrancing - indeed, much more enchanting than Dolphin's visuals, sadly, which reveal myriad Madonna images flashing across a screen, vaguely reminiscent of something on TV.
There are some real works of artistic genius though. Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries' film texts musings in simple black capitals across a white screen, in tempo with Beck singing Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime, is simple, cleverly executed and effective. So is Jane and Louise Wilson's film of a deserted Tyneside shipyard, its empty waterside architecture echoing the pathos of Cat Power singing Who Knows Where the Time Goes. I'd have chosen the far-too-literal Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello for these epic scenes; this collaboration is much smarter.
Re-inventing Laurie Anderson's auteurish art-music of 1981, O Superman, is a hefty challenge, but digital experimenter Lia, collaborating with sound artist @c, succeeds. Anderson's robotic vocal, "So hold me mom/ In your long arms/ Your electric arms", is mesmerising as ever, while geometric patterns spawn across the screen as the new bass line thuds. If you arrive in the pod while this is on you're in for a treat.
It's Dutch madcap Eric van Lieshout, however, who really tests the relationship between song and film, creating a mash-up of Jay Z's Kingdom Come with a jerky documentary road-trip around Israel. There are strains of the Beastie Boys' video for Sabotage, and even Jackass, but this straddles a precarious, provocative balance of comedy and politics, and is probably the best of the bunch.
A galaxy of songs could benefit from such visual arts treatment, so why not help Beck's out with some suggestions? Given a camera and an unlimited budget, what song would you choose to make a film for and why?
