The Uni of Yorke: Art exam

As the inimitable Radiohead and Atoms For Peace frontman Thom Yorke landed on the cover of our February Issue this month, we launched our highly prestigious music school with huge names in new electronic music, including the likes of The Gaslamp Killer, FlyLo, Pearson Sound and Actress enrolling.

Now we're calling all art students and illustrators to get involved in the University of Yorke's brand new art department for an exclusive Atoms For Peace competition. This month, the supergroup will be releasing their debut single, Default, so we're inviting you to put your artistic hats on and design the most mind-blowing, inventive and trippy cover artwork for the mixtape Thom Yorke made us using the cassette tape template above - taking inspiration from the mix itself and/or the AMOK art (featured in the gallery below).

The artist and longtime Radiohead collaborator, Stanley Donwood, on the AMOK artwork:

"I’ve recently been reading about the Anasazi people, an ancient Native American civilisation that existed in the American Southwest from about the 1st century CE until the 13th century. They built the biggest structures that are known to have existed until the construction of 20th century, massive buildings consisting of hundreds of rooms, which were part of huge cities, and home to hundreds of thousands of people. Theirs was a very sophisticated culture; complex, long-lasting, technologically advanced and evidently very successful.

Although it’s difficult to be certain, it’s clear that many things contributed to the sudden downfall of the Anasazi: overpopulation, resource depletion, deforestation, pollution of waterways, climate change. It’s likely that some people could see what was happening, and equally likely that the great mass of people refused to acknowledge that their way of life was becoming rapidly unsustainable. In the end, nothing could prevent the collapse of this highly-developed and venerable civilisation. It appears that social structures broke down very quickly into a kind of holocaust. Human remains indicate violence, killing, dismemberment and cannibalism. Other evidence is arguably best interpreted as ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Whatever happened, it’s clear that the disaster that overtook the Anasazi people has many parallels in history. It’s a very ‘human’ disaster. We pay a lot of attention to kings, conquests and wars, but more often it is environment and geography that determine the fate of a civilisation, however complex and technologically accomplished it may presume it is.

Strange weather we’ve been having lately, don’t you think? And it seems that we’ve been reduced to fracturing bedrock for oil, rather than it just squirting up out of wells. Doesn’t that seem a bit… desperate? It’s probably all okay though, because we’ve got ‘technology’. Just as well, really, as our civilisation is global. And there’s only one globe."

The prize: An exclusive signed vinyl copy of DEFAULT 12" signed by Thom Yorke and an issue of the new Dazed & Confused magazine.

To enter: Tag us in your submissions on Facebook or by using #uniofyorke on Twitter. If you submit more than one tape we will only choose one to enter. 

Deadline: 6pm, Tuesday 5th Feb 2013

See the gallery below for some ideas to get started...