Draft:Whistlegraph

Whistlegraph eng. ˈ(h)wis(ə)lgraf) is an American multimedia performance trio.

They are renowned for their concept of blending illustration with music, an art form, which they call the whistlegraph. "Whistlegraph" is also, the name that the trio goes by. They are best known for their grotesque, campy comedy horror videos on the social media platform TikTok, and have amassed a following of 2.7 million. They have also performed at major art galleries in the USA, such as the performance titled "The Longest Whistlegraph Ever (so far)" at the New Museum in New York City. They have also toured other countries, notably their performances in the Netherlands and Denmark. The group is comprised of 3 artists, Alex Freundlich, Camille Klein, and Jeffrey Alan Scudder.

The trio formed in in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when Alex, Camille, and Jeffrey, came to live together in a cabin in Ashland, Oregon, They began posting videos on TikTok during that time, which slowly built up a following on their platform. On October 24th, 2022, their account was banned for violating TikTok community guidelines, after posting a presumed Halloween special video of Alex and Camille performing a whistlegraph with blood on their hands and workspace, and following videos implying that Jeffrey was being held hostage by the group, or was in danger. The account had other community guidelines violations due to other videos of this nature, which were removed. On October 26, shortly after the ban, the account was restored after a Change.org petition was created by a fan, receiving 21 signatures.

Notable works

 * On March 14, 2021, the Whistlegraph trio released their first single, titled "What's inside your heart?", a song based off of a whistlegraph that they had wrote within the early days of their career. The song gained large scale media attention, but was later redacted from all platforms by the trio.


 * About a year later, on May 13, 2022, Whistlegraph premiered their performance art piece "The Longest Whistlegraph Ever (so far)" which was commissioned to them by the Rhizome Magazine in 2021, to a small group of fans and museum directors at the New Museum in New York. A day later, on May 14, They debuted the piece to the public at the same museum. The piece consisted of the largest "whistlegraph" they were able to create in intricacy and length, which lasted approximately 20 minutes and used the space of a 4'x6' chalkboard.




 * A month later in April of 2022, the trio had released a Merchandise shop, which quickly grabbed the attention of fans. Alex and Camille have been pictured modeling hoodies with the "butterfly cosplayer" whistlegraph printed on them. (Pictured below)


 * On December 22, 2022, Whistlegraph released a studio album which was produced by a group friend, Charlie Kamin-Allen, which was titled "Music 2 Whistlegraph 2". The group briefly sold CD s, but the trio pulled the album from all platforms around a year later.


 * On June 6, 2023, Whistlegraph created a 60-page zine in collaboration with editor Asher Penn of the art magazine publication company Sex Magazine, which contained in depth interviews from Jeffrey, Alex, and Camille, along with detailed entries from two fans. (Pictured right)

Whistlegraph (Concept)
The self-titled art concept created by the Whistlegraph trio, is a concept of combining drawing, singing, and poetry, within a single art piece. a whistlegraph consists of a minimal line drawn image, which is drawn while singing. Each line in the image is drawn while singing a line of the song that corresponds to it. Each whistlegraph contains the same song and image, which are drawn and sung in the same manner each time. The trio has also created graphic scores for others to show the exact process of each whistlegraph within a single image.

Personal lives

 * Jeffrey Alan Scudder is a digital artist and lecturer born in Assonet, Massachusetts in 1989. He attended Ringling College of Art and Design in the year 2011, and obtained a BFA in the arts, and thereafter attended the Yale School of Art in 2013, obtaining an MFA in sculpture . He began his career in 2011, with his digital imaging software "the Polygon Replicating Bitmap Authoring Tool". He later went on to create other digital art software applications such as "Shrub" (2014), "Finger quilt" (2016), and "NoPaint" (2020) . He met accomplices Alex and Camille during his online "Picture Making Internship & Seminar" in the year 2018, and invented the whistlegraph concept in the year 2019, which originally consisted of whistles that corresponded to the lines of an image. His current works include "aesthetic.computer" and localized design on "NoPaint".
 * Alex Freundlich is a musician, writer, and painter born in Los Angeles, California in 1997. He attended Oberlin College in the year 2019, and received a BA in Studio Art. His earliest public works were releases on the German audio streaming platform SoundCloud under the name "Song Hope Spring Book" in 2017, and went on to form the Whistlegraph trio in 2020.
 * Camille Klein is an illustrator and multimedia artist born in Portland, Oregon in 1996. She attended Oberlin College in the year 2018, and received a BA in studio art. She worked as an illustrator for the Rookie magazine from 2013 to 2015, and went on to form the Whistlegraph trio in 2020.

Disbandment
Sometime in November of 2023, The group separated due to a conflict in future goals as a whole. Around December of 2023, Jeffrey took access to all of the group's social media platforms and has since used them to post his own content. Their platform on Instagram was moved into an archive state, and contains only their works from after 2022, and the trio has not been active since. The trio does not plan on making content anytime in the future, as stated by Jeffrey in an Instagram direct message.