No, this isn’t an effect of my first post-pot-legalization post. They had the album encoded into DNA, then mixed that DNA into a spray paint. So it’s not just paint, it’s genetically-engineered paint. I don’t know of any technology to read the information in DNA, at least, DNA on a wall. So it could be ordinary black paint for all we know. Or perhaps it really contains “Never Gonna Give You Up” in a truly epic Rickroll.
Of course, I have plenty of reactions to this. First is a scientific amazement at the storage capacity of DNA. Then there’s the amazement at their initiative in doing something so unusual. But then that leads to the question of whether this is the best use of music-paint possibilities. It’s black paint, and Massive Attack’s music does have a darkness to it, but I’d really rather tell people that my black paint has Goth in it. Others would, I assume, prefer “Back in Black,” “Back to Black,” or either Black Album. But really, among music paints, I’m sure Purple Rain Purple would be the biggest seller. You could also have White Album White, and other colours would be mixtures of:
- Simply Red
- Orange Crush
- Coldplay Yellow
- Reverend Al Green
- Joni Mitchell Blue
- Indigo Girls
- Violet Femmes
But putting all this aside, there’s the subtext that Massive Attack member Robert “3D” Del Naja is rumoured to be infamous graffiti artist Banksy. So a big graffiti-related announcement from the group was greeted with snickers and knowing winks. To be fair, Del Naja is an admitted graffiti artist that Banksy has acknowledged as an influence, so Massive Attack spray paint is not necessarily an indication of nefarious culture jamming.
Of course, you could argue that once you’re using expensive gratuitous technology like this, we’ve left true rebellion and anarchism behind. And that’s something people have been asking about Banksy lately. His previous caper was the auto-shredding painting. That seemed like a great statement against the monetization of Banksy’s works that so often misses his point. But afterwards there were some questions about just how unexpected it was. For one thing, Sotheby’s usually puts paintings on an easel to auction them, which would have prevented the shredder from working, yet this one was conveniently on a wall at the side of the room.
I guess you could say that it’s subversive to talk a major auction house into risking its reputation by participating in performance art. Similarly, you could argue that conning people into buying expensive graffiti implements is a great satire of the economics of music memorabilia. Particularly if it turns out to be ordinary black paint. But even if it is real, memorializing electronic music with genetically-engineered vandalism is some quality cyberpunk.
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