Author(s): Klanten

Art

Television today is saturated with crime scene investigations and their ubiquitous scenes of autopsy and forensic science. Blood, guts and the Gothic are not only proliferating air time, but are influencing the current style of editorial design, illustration and photography. Against this backdrop, "Black Magic/White Noise" presents an unsettlingly but nevertheless fascinating collection of visuals that deal with the physical and with the psychological notions of horror as "filtered" through contemporary designers from around the world. The book seduces its readers into a conflicting world filled with chillingly beautiful illustration, photography, graphic design, collage, painting and installation. "Black Magic" is represented by images of darkness, mystery and horror while "White Noise" describes the concept of the unexpected infiltration of the "irrational into broad daylight" themes we have come to know and love through Alfred Hitchcock and Haruki Murakami. Not for the fainthearted, "Black Magic/White Noise" is a potent cocktail of the drastic themes and motifs that are being used and are finding widespread acceptance in today's creative disciplines and design.