Lady Gaga's ArtPop press release decoded

Good news: Lady Gaga has confirmed she'll have a new single out in five weeks, on 19th August. It'll be followed in November by an album - the long-awaited ArtPop. That's the artwork above. It's good, isn't it? She looks like a sexy welder.

Bad news: The whole project is wrapped up in a "high concept", which includes an app (God help us) and a whole load of mumbo jumbo about Gaga's "cultural interface".

There is a press release, which is written in that impenetrable language they use in art gallery catalogues. It is insufferable bollocks. But let's try to decode at least some of it.

"Built by TechHAUS, the technological branch of HAUS OF GAGA, the app itself is a musical and visual engineering system"

Great - the app gets top billing. Interestingly, it will combine music AND pictures. Imagine that.

"...that combines art, fashion, and technology with a new interactive worldwide community 'the auras'."

Lady Gaga already has her own social network at littlemonsters.com. This looks like an app version of that project. Interestingly, she pulled back from her Twitter account on Monday. Gaga's bio on the site now reads "This interface has been shutdown temporarily. Please check back for updates."

"Altering the human experience with social media"

Urgh.

"...we bring ARTculture into POP in a reverse Warholian expedition."

Andy Warhol was fascinated by the cult of celebrity, so what is "reverse Warhol"? Is Gaga, the self-proclaimed Fame Monster, dispensing with stardom?

Maybe she will endure a forced return to anonymity - obscuring her face, declining interviews, rejecting photoshoots - to explore whether music can exist in a cultural vacuum. In doing so, she poses the ultimate question: Can there be pop without a pop star?

"Exploring Gaga's existence as a cultural interface"

Or maybe not.

"The user will share in the 'adrenaline of fame'"

The user will post messages like "@ladygaga ¡Hola! from Spain PLEASE FOLLOW ME I LOVE YOU SO MUCH" .

"As they build and share their own projects, chat with one another, and watch in real-time on a virtual globe as ARTPOP explodes onto the physical and virtual universe at once on November 11, our 'BIG BANG!'"

The user will talk about Lady Gaga's album, and then listen to Lady Gaga's album. On a "virtual globe" - also known as "a circle".

"On this day, HAUS OF GAGA venges with forte to bring the music industry into a new age"

"Venges with forte"

"An age where art drives pop, and the artist once again is in control of the 'icon'."

Sorry, I'm still stuck on "venges with forte".

"In turn, the album ARTPOP musically mirrors Gaga's creative process"

HOORAY! Finally, we get something about the music.

But what does this tell us? Surely every album ever released is a mirror of the artist's creative process. You know, because it is the end product of that creative process.

It's like toast. Toast is a mirror of the toasting process.

"As she passes through the medium of each artist she collaborates with, scoring a blueprint of her journey."

Lady Gaga has collaborated with people on this album. The songs that she has written reflect both Lady Gaga's style, but also that of her collaborators.

"The result a "rage of electronic passion and fury, defining each artistic process from beginning to end."

It sounds like Nine Inch Nails.

"ARTPOP could mean anything."

Or, like this press release, it could mean nothing.

"But, for her, this is a celebration of obsession."

[whispers] By Calvin Klein.

"And on November 10, she will host an evening of artRave exhibiting House of Gaga's projects as well as collaborations with Inez and Vinoodh; Robert Wilson, Marina Abramovic, Jeff Koons."

This last bit is actually quite interesting... Gaga is a genius at curating artists (look at her stage designs, costumes and videos). The people she mentions are all high-profile, important visual artists - including photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, who took this incredible portrait of Mila Kunis, amongst others.

Robert Wilson is an avant-garde theatre director, famous for his "silent opera" Deafman Glance and collaborations with other artistically-inclined musicians such as Lou Reed and Philip Glass.

Marina Abramovic is a renowned Serbian performance artist. She once sat for 736 hours in the atrium of the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, becoming a real-life exhibit. Her performance inspired Jay-Z's video shoot for Picasso Baby, which took place over six hours (the wimp) at MoMA this week. Abramovic was present for the filming - an event onlookers captured on their phones.


Finally, Jeff Koons is incredible - a master of the surreal, working mostly with large-scale sculptures. His most tabloid-friendly work was a gold-plated porcelain statue of Michael Jackson cuddling his chimpanzee, Bubbles. But I've always been partial to his massive, stainless steel sculptures of balloon animals.

So, in summary: The Art side looks promising. Let's just hope the Pop isn't a massive letdown - because at the minute it seems like a bit of an afterthought.

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