28.2.07

Stealing my Avatar's Soul





Took a few shots of Mymeesis in the new digs.

Spent 23 years in my first life and haven't acquired a "normal" fashion sense.

Yeah, this one might take some time. For now, I like my new red jeans, Egyptian fabric top and black extensions. Black hair makes me feel tough. It's much longer than I would bother to grow in my "first life."

Many of the female avatars have very fancy outfits. I've seen women with wings, tall boots and glittery jewelry. I don't think I would feel very comfortable in an outfit that called attention to myself in Second Life. However, I think that I might fit in less right now because I'm not wearing a skirt or a different top. I want to assimilate, but I also want my character to look somewhat professional or academic. Not sure on which side of that divide my character currently resides.

Sky of blue, sea of green


"I could've sworn I saw a yellow submarine. But that's not logic now. Is it? It must've been one of them "Unidentified Flying Cupcakes." Or a figment of me imagination. But I don't have an imagination." Ringo, Yellow Submarine, 1968

In the archaeology of counter-culture, this film remains one of the most elegant fusions of the popular and the experimental.

Preview, synopsis, persuasion(?)

A read of the title sequence of one of my current film infatuations.

The dynamic of this animated film depends on the marriage of the visual and the auditory. Think adult swim inside of itunes visualizer based on Aldous Huxley's 1954 essay "Doors of Perception."

On the scene catalog screen, we are introduced to the feel of the film. A yellow submarine seemingly hovers over a background of radiating and bright color-morphing sunbursts. Spatial, ambient sounds intermittently create a still and slightly eerie tone.

After selecting "play" on the DVD, a large, blue cartoon hand sweeps across the bottom portion of the screen from the left and a colorfully attired cartoon man pops into the screen from the bottom right. The tone immediately changes from one of waiting and uncertainty to confusion and chaos.

The film begins with a black screen which reads "Once Upon a Time." A narrator then says, "Or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland," and the black screen gradually dissolves into a petri dish of swimming pastels. The language mirrors the content. The visuals and music are certainly "unearthly."

As the pastels become lighter, they transform into a cloud-covering that soon reveals a colorful landscape. Six cartoon men in tuxedos stand in two groups facing opposite directions. Chimes sound in the background. Then bands of color pour out of their top hats and form a rainbow.

The camera zooms in, through the top hat rainbow, and "Love" appears on the field behind the men. The word is striped in flashing/alternating bands of bright colors. Symphonic music plays.

The scene cuts to green tree tops. Birds striped in small bands of rainbow color perch among the foliage.

The scene cuts again to butterflies dancing among tropical-dream vegetation. A manifesto for the creative spirit.

The narrator says, "Beneath the sea it lay." The camera pans across the sky from a moving kite, to a young boy, to the people of pepperland. A pink and red reptile with yellow teeth chomps his ways across the screen from the left. On his back sits a clown-attired four-legged creature, the green trees with the striped birds and a white logo for "Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band."

The camera pans left to four string musicians playing. The camera pans again to two a piano with two men. Piano music plays in the background. A main picks flowers. A lady plays a harp. Two children dance for a woman in a rocking chair.

The scene cuts to a concert of brass musicians. A crowd sits in folding chairs below the stage.

The scene cuts again and we are introduced to the antagonists of the film, the blue meanies. The meanies resemble blue cotton balls with large claws, blue boots, and black elongated Mickey Mouse ears.

The first character dialogue begins when the chief blue meanie argues with a meanie-pawn. The chief blue meanie says, "we only take no for an answer." This scene's dialogue and the expressive, toothy-faced, swirly-eyed meanies sets up a key feature of the film. How do we interpret the meanies? What do we do with the potential Disney/commercialization/government reference? Do we take the dialoge as serious?

It's completely possible to listen to the words and watch this film without paying careful or questioning attention to the meaning or the plurality of possible interpretations the visual and auditory content potentially holds; however, by this point in the title sequence, the audience is asked to make a choice. Will the film be real or Other this time? The animated nature of the film, similar to metaphor in literature, allows for the author to safely present a message that might not be, if it were more exoteric, within discourse conventions.

Again, adult swim inside itunes visualizer based on Huxley's Doors of Perception. Though different modes, they all contain the possibility for seemingly infinite interpretations, but we are asked to choose whether or not we'll allow our imaginations to look out the periscope of our yellow submarine.

21.2.07

the sign as such: my new favorite font



Bodoni SvtyTwo ITC-TT-Bold

A clean, strong font. Reminds me of hand-written bubble letters, but it's traditional and reminscent of the high-age of print. I like the juxtapposition of the thick and thin lines.

7.2.07

a continued project



Unskilled photographer, shy subject. Mymeesis.

She's part of a project this semester.

I would like to make a short film which examines Jean Baudrillard’s argument in Simulations in terms of contemporary virtual reality, specifically the virtual world Second Life.

"And after a thousand years these and those alike come to the allotment and choice of their second life, each choosing according to her will, then does the soul of a man enter into the life of a beast and the beast's soul that was aforetime in a man goes back to a man again." Plato, Phaedrus

I plan on using my prior research on Baudrillard and Second Life and the paper I wrote in fall of 2006 “For material systems of labeling: Second Life’s players as active participants in the real.”

In the paper, I argue that Baudrillards claim that “we are in the desert of the real” and “the real...is no longer real at all” evidences the double nature of our relationship to technology. On one hand we recognize virtual reality as a “precession of simulacra,” but this system of labeling poses serious risks for us as subjects because they limit and potentially prevent our access to understanding the real, material power of images.

Examples of this material power of images in relation to Second Life includes Congress’ recent interest in taxing in-world assets and individuals’ physical, economic, emotional and mental states that have been (according to them) influenced by participating in Second Life.

I would like to expand my prior research through incorporating more scholarly material (from Greek philosophy to contemporary theories of technology), news articles, interviews with Second Life participants and the novel Snow Crash.

For the film, I plan to use clips from Second Life, segments of my interviews with gaming participants, and Short Keynote Flash segments to present text.

After the project is completed, I hope to learn more about visual design, specifically film production, the personal experiences of Second Life participants, and theories of virtual reality and simulations.

Print Advertisements (et l'histoire d'un petit journal)




Still reading Lester.

In regard to print advertising he writes, "Small newspapers with their tighter budgets are more susceptible to advertising pressures than are large-circulation newspapers...Although journalists seldom like to admit it, there is evidence of correlation between advertisers and editorial choices."

Please allow me a war story and some reflections.

In the spring of 2004 Playboy came to Clemson's campus. Before their arrival, the publication contracted with a national advertising firm, 360 Youth, to run a full-page color advertisement in Clemson's student-run publication, The Tiger.

Upon learning of the advertisement, The Tiger editorial staff pulled the ad copy. Sure, come to town, but you're not using this publication to make our students look foolish. It wasn't about being prudish; it was about preserving the publication's reputation. It was about standing up to corporate pressures to preserve editorial integrity.

Similarly, a week prior, The Tiger decided to relinquish the student activity fee that previously provided approximately $30,000 of its $150,000 budget. It was the first time in 97 years that the publication relied solely on its own generation of revenue. The paper is currently in its third year of financial independence.

I believe The Tiger's story is not unique.

Media consolidation, the acquisition of smaller media by larger corporate media and the creating of monstrous media conglomerates, makes decisions like this one more difficult. Their advertisers can afford to be much more persuasive. The large companies' responsibilities are much greater. As in the case of Knight Ridder, even once untouchable giants risk death (and rebirth?) through consolidation.

Or, as Adbusters put it. "Small is the new big." (Think zines here)

Small, niche publications can afford, because they are small, to maintain integrity. It takes less to keep them going and their clients are, in some senses, easier to replace.

It's about the study of media ecology.

From the Media Ecology Association site, "It is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs."

When we synthesize media ecology with Jameson's non-synchronous modes of production, it is possible to see that Lester has keenly observed (and maybe incorrectly labeled) the "visible antagon[ism]" between competing modes.

Maybe the digital age, which some fear will kill print, has allowed us to better recognize this competition between communicative modes and the ways in which these modes "play a leading role in human affairs" (our stage?).

Media scholar czar Marshall McLuhan used to tell the story (originally Aristotle's from On the Soul) of the fish who would not have known she was surrounded by water.

Maybe.

Or maybe it takes a waterfall, a rush of powerful moving water which surrounds the fish, before she realizes the water's presence.

KTF.