Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring — James Ensor
Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring — James Ensor
Digital Detox
After sitting on my computer for about 48 hours straight, I believe I should spend some time without technology. Perfect timing for my having stumbled upon the Adbusters campaign for Digital Detox Week.
Too bad I missed the exact dates of the campaign due to my lack of web-browsing.
Anyway. I’m going to turn the brightness all the way down on my screen, because I cannot part with the things on the screen at the moment and actually shut down and start back up again. Sort of defeats the purpose. :
” Take a Zen Moment
Tomorrow morning, try a little self discipline before you switch on your computer. For 60 seconds, look at the reflection of yourself in the dark, empty screen. Meditate on your relationship with this box. What is it really all about? “
I see myself in that dark empty screen, and this humidity does not bode well with my hair.
My relationship with my box is a much prettier thing when it is kept at a distance and not in my lap. It is good for watching films when I do not elect to play iMax and rest it on my chest, as close as possible to my face. When I do this, I pay too much attention to the run-time of the film I am watching.
This box has too many things I would not like to lose on it. At least these things are not material. Perhaps things I keep in the box are better than things I would not like to do without outside of box. Notice THINGS. Obviously.
I still hate you, box. I didn’t even name you anything besides “Chelsea O’Lansen’s MacBook Pro.” I don’t think I should change your name. In fact, I hate you. We have an abusive relationship. Why is there no universal file type for word, image, or video? Ugh. Everything is so frustrating within you, box. I am only attached to you due to my love for Netflix and videos of sneezing baby animals.
Carnivalesque
One of the best, and most intelligent, examples of the Carnivalesque on the Internet is The Onion. Though it began as a printed alternative weekly, the addition of a website and the subsequent satirical “cable television news stories,” have proved successful. The site also has slideshows, standard articles, and radio flashes. Some headlining videos today include “DEA Official Announces Successful Drug Bust on Son’s Room,” “Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics to Find Cause of Dorm Fire,” and something only I find funny, “Denmark Introduces Harrowing New Tourism Ads Directed by Lars Von Trier.”
A more internet-centric example of the Carnivalesque is The Encyclopaedia Dramatica, which to be honest, I don’t entirely understand due to my lack of web-savvy. Encyclopaedia Dramatica seems to be a Wikipedia run by members of 4chan, or at least run by equally offensive people. Anyway, I didn’t know what Half-Life was, aside from the fact that my 14-year-old brother plays it compulsively, so when I saw the link, I followed it. Apparently, Half-Life is “a term used to describe a first person shooter computer game, as well as the amount of life the basement dwelling nerds who play it constantly often possess. Also, how long it’ll take for that radioactive sludge to degrade into half. A first person shooter that for some reason stars film director Jean-luc Godard. The Half-Life games are universally regarded as the second best first-person shooting game ever, despite being repetitive, linear, overblown and almost as bad as Halo.”
Oh cool. I love Breathless, but somehow I doubt Mr. Godard’s computer-game celebrity…
Most of the articles are related to internet phenomena beyond my grasp of understanding, but most of the articles regarding things outside of the web are semi-funny, but of course, extremely explicit and offensive. Regarding Louisiana for example: “Tourist attractions in Louisiana include pine trees, nutria, and people with more than one tooth but less than three in their mouths.”
I found Matthew Jacobson’s project to be without a firm enough direction, though with the potential to assemble the parts into something of substance. I also believe that the media project was crying out to be done as a film, as when he combined picture and audio and created a PowerPoint Presentation, it was a bit slow, and called out for another, more dynamic medium. As a photographer, some of the pictures he took were so unprofessional I had a physical reaction to them—many were awkwardly cropped and it seems he used an autofocus setting, resulting in some uncomfortable emphases and anxious looking shots—while this anxiety would “work” if it was intentional, especially within the context of this media project in particular, it was obviously not. I need to stop being a judgmental wench.
I don’t see the connection between the discussion of Obama’s inauguration and the recession, aside from his justification of this connection with the extremely vague terms “hope and despair.” Regional disparity in economic systems was also not emphasized as much as it should have been; an economic collapse in New York is entirely different from continual stagnation in places such as Gainesville, Florida.
I am looking forward to a lecture that is being given at Loyola on April 11th and 25th regarding the contemporary French anarchist manifesto The Coming Insurrection, believed to have inspired the fire riots in Paris in 2005. Strangely, this event is not publicized whatsoever through Loyola—it is not even present on the university’s calendar. Attached is a video of Glen Beck attacking said literature. The text in its entirety is available online.
Van Helsing Boom Box
Sitting in a terminal in Houston, I realize that the airport provides an optimal viewing ground for the omnipresence of technology. There is a “charging station” directly in front of me with a tentacle network of black and white wires, a man talking about his use of Facebook to promote his company behind me, a “Best Buy vending machine” within eye-shot, and dozens of people, heads down, fingers unrelenting on the roller-balls of their Blackberrys, the touch screens of their iPhones, children tethered to Gameboys and PSPs, kept quiet and sedate.
I watch a Japanese man take pictures of the terminal—of the Jamba Juice stand, the rows of identical, Siamese, blue pleather chairs, the Frat boys eating mozzarella stick flavored chips.
I was reading shitty magazines over people’s shoulders on my first flight. Isn’t it funny how people can seemingly be classified by gender alone and sold magazines in this fashion? The only overlaps are shitty, anachronistic music magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone, sciences magazines, and collectives of news editorials. Here is the HETEROSEXUAL MALE, packaged and sold accordingly, consisting of only a passion for sports, sex, and cars. Here is the HETEROSEXUAL FEMALE. Shoes, sex, and recipes.
A friend and I were speaking recently about the way that Facebook advertisements are informed by what you list as your interests—my Facebook sidebar ads now include “American Apparel in New Orleans,” “Love Photography?” and “100% Columbian Coffee.” Facebook knows what I wear, do, and drink. Anyway, the gist of the conversation consisted of speculation as to whether this model could ever be utilized by television, or if in this manner, television will become outmoded because of such tailored advertising offered by the internet, where simple demographic prediction cannot be personalized to this extent.
Collaboration
One of the many examples of collaboration on the Internet is LookBook. I would describe LookBook as a democratic, online fashion magazine; the website’s headline is “collective fashion consciousness.” Members submit often self-photographed fashion portraits, in which they detail their color palette and the origins of their garb. There is, for the most part, a unified aesthetic, though there are many exceptions. “Looks,” are elevated to a prominent position on the webpage through “hype,” meaning that other users have clicked a link to denote appreciation of the photography and the outfit. The style created through the use of LookBook itself is an interesting concept, as it is something that has been collaborated on by hundreds of users.
Companies have realized the popularity of LookBook and the ability to directly appeal to those purchasing their clothing. American Apparel recently released a “magazine,” with photos of LookBook users wearing their clothing, while H&M held a gift-card awarding contest for users submitting looks including garments they sold.
I can’t dress myself and am semi-reliant on LookBook to help me figure out how to assemble all the weird crap I buy at the Salvation Army into what may have the potential to pass as an outfit. Though it’s a very shallow example of collaboration on the web, it does have an associated, collectively created style of photography and fashion.
Will practicality in the face of “necessary” technological regalia destroy fashion sense? It’s like a Girl Scout sash/fanny pack hybrid.
Too Much Reality
Augmented reality applications are one of those things that leave my head feeling a little numb, but not anxious about the future. This apprehensiveness is an effect the unrelenting occurence of new technologies often has upon me. I’m in constant battle with my internal senior citizen.
The augmented reality application we viewed in class reminded me of software I saw demonstrated in a TED lecture called Photosynth. Photosynth builds three-dimensional landscapes through the accumulation of photographs tagged with a certain monument or location, ideally from various websites. Unfortunately, when I attempted to use the software on the website it was extremely clumsy and non-intuitive. I could only access few of what were allegedly hundreds of photos included in a single image when I attempted to navigate through a Photosynth of an octopus, a sculpture, and the interior of a boat.
Unsatisfied, I automatically resorted to Googling “augmented reality application,” and came across a list of the “Top 5 augmented reality applications” in Telegraph. One especially unsettling application allowed users to see who was Tweeting near them using a GPS. I don’t know why this makes me uncomfortable but it does. Actually, this is likely because I find myself so fascinating that if I had an active Twitter account, I am certain that people would be so amused by my Tweets as to use this application to find me and touch my feet.
Anyway, another application was Wikitude, which allows for the Wiki update of “places and famous landmarks.” This seemed innovative, until I realized that one could simply find the name of the “place or famous landmark” in question, and look for it on Wikipedia itself, rather than holding their phone up and publicly rotating in circles. I suppose one could usually search for what could be delivered via augmented reality applications through a web browser, so these applications would only be practical and successful if they were very fluid and more easily navigable.
I feel The Books sort of embody New Media’s impact on music thus far. Their music belongs to a ludicrous made-up genre, “folktronica,” I suppose. But I’ve heard them described as “sound collage,” which I feel is a far more accurate description. Whatever. It’s electronic music with a plethora of sampling and mostly acoustic instrumentation and vocals. Once again Wikipedia explains this far more articulately than I can:
“The Books’ music usually consists of acoustic instrumentation of folk melodies usually played on guitar, cello, banjo and more, combined with a diverse range of samples obtained from cassettes found in thrift stores,[19] which are digitally processed and edited.”
Go Ask Alice
Fake diary anti-drug propaganda novel translated into a fashion shoot!
