Ben Aqua is an American multimedia artist, musician, and photographer based in Austin, Texas.

Early life

Aqua was born in Brooklyn, New York. They studied graphic design at the University of Texas at Austin, where they developed their first solo music and performance art projects, ASSACRE and MVSCLZ, while organizing several DIY/avant-garde art and music events throughout Austin with the collective Totally Wreck Production Institute. Shortly after completing their degree, they began documenting their eccentric peers in photographic portraits involving "totally nonsensical, zany situations in beautifully/bizarrely decorated spaces".^[1]

Career

In 2011, Aqua founded the experimental electronic music and art label #FEELINGS.^[2] The label produced early music releases by artists Lotic and Rabit, who later released official remixes for Björk in 2015.^[3][4]

Aqua released their debut EP Reset Yourself in 2013, which Interview Magazine described as "high energy and refreshingly difficult to define".^[5] They followed the EP with official remixes for YACHT and STRFKR, leading up to the 2014 release of their full-length album Virtual Anticipation, which VICE Thump described as having a "post-human outlook".^[2] Their 2014 4C1D EP drew comparisons to Justin Timberlake and The Prodigy.^[6]

In 2013, Aqua created a graphic work depicting the words "NEVER LOG OFF" in a large, bold, and underlined font.^[7] The graphic spread widely across Tumblr, which led to their creation of a T-shirt featuring the design, distributed via #FEELINGS.^[8] The NEVER LOG OFF shirt garnered public interest and support from people all over the world,^[9] including celebrities such as Michael Stipe of R.E.M.,^[10] Porter Robinson,^[11] and Casey Spooner of Fischerspooner.^[12] In 2015, Aqua accused clothing and accessories retailer Hot Topic of stealing their NEVER LOG OFF shirt concept.^[13]

In 2014, Aqua was invited by Resident Advisor to create a podcast to accompany an article written by Adam Harper entitled The online underground: A new kind of punk?^[14] The podcast (RA.434) was met with much criticism from conservative RA readers, mostly based on Aqua's open support of controversial label PC Music and artists such as A. G. Cook and Sophie. RA described Aqua as embodying "the online underground's attitude and approach".^[15] The podcast was chosen by FACT Magazine as their "Mix of the Week", calling it "a creative, enjoyable blend of...boundary-free dance oddness".^[16]

In 2015, Aqua collaborated with Ary Warnaar from Anamanaguchi on a song called Anarchy, which launched as an interactive website that Skrillex's label Nest HQ called "the cutest dismissal of authority you'll ever experience".^[17]

Discography

References