Chris Cunningham is an English music video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading, Berkshire in

1970 and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk.

Chris Cunningham often works with the same types of artists and his work is very recognisable as he used the

same style throughout.

This director, in the past, has worked on films such as A.I, television ads and music videos.

Chris Cunningham generally works with the same style, breaking the common forms and conventions of nearly all of music videos today. Using disturbing images and content which has never been played with in these ways before, keeps the audience watching however can turn some viewers away. E.g. the screaming face on the television in Aphex Twin - “Come To Daddy”.

Before directing Chris worked with robotics which is obvious in some videos. This allows him to take his music videos into literally a whole other world.

The music video Chris Cunningham creates are very often edited with the music in selected areas. A great example of this would be Square Pusher – Come On My Selector where literally the whole video is edited to the track.

In more than one video directed by Chris, he has used his own head to be made into a mask for characters featured in the video.

Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”

This is a perfect example of Chris Cunningham breaking Andrew Goodwin’s common forms and conventions in a music video. This video particularly plays on the representations of women and black males in the media.

The women seen in the beginning and being harassed by two black males in their car however they are getting nowhere. A man in a limo turns up to pick the women up.

Later the women lure the men in but they turn extremely physically ugly.

The genres of music and artists usually directed by Chris Cunningham tend to be the same throughout his career. This genre being techno/electronic/ ambient. With Chris’ style this works very well as the alternative style of music matches the alternative style of editing and directing.

Techno and other similar genres are often associated with robotics and new technology which, as mentioned before, is what Chris Cunningham used to work with.

In 2005, Cunningham released the short film Rubber Johnny as a DVD accompanied by a book of photographs and drawings. Rubber Johnny, a six-minute experimental short film cut to a soundtrack by Aphex Twin, remixed by Cunningham was shot between 2001 and 2004. Shot on DV night-vision, it was made in Cunningham's own time as a home movie of sorts, and took three and half years of weekends to complete. The Telegraph called it "like a Looney Tunes short for a generation raised on video nasties and rave music".During this period Cunningham also made another short film for Warp Films, Spectral Musicians, which remains unreleased. The short film was edited to music by Squarepusher, My Fucking Sound, from the album Go Plastic and a piece called Mutilation Colony, which was written especially for the short and was released on the EP Do You Know Squarepusher.

Cunningham has also directed a handful of commercials for companies including Gucci, PlayStation, Levis, Telecom Italia, Nissan and Orange.

Postmodernism

Chris Cunninghams work is very post modern.

Chris very much goes for style over substance, the visual effects and what the audience sees is more important that what they are hearing.

Chris’ videos do not follow a major narrative. They reject the meta-narrative and what the viewer is watching usually doesn’t make sense or has a very deep meaning behind it.

Postmodernism

Chris Cunninghams work is very post modern.

Chris very much goes for style over substance, the visual effects and what the audience sees is more important that what they are hearing.

Chris’ videos do not follow a major narrative. They reject the meta-narrative and what the viewer is watching usually doesn’t make sense or has a very deep meaning behind it.