That 70's Show

After the fantastic opening shot, The Conversation flails in outdated technology and hair and eyeglasses combinations. When it ventures toward the timeless, in the form of a sad sack main character named Harry Caul, the film's emotional potency increases. Still, The Conversation is anti-drama; a hermetic study of a single, loveless man who wants only to pass through life unnoticed. Under Coppola's magnifying glass gaze, Gene Hackman portrays a man who acts only when no one is looking. Harry Caul is perpetually uncomfortable around people. You get the impression he can only relax when he is alone. He is devoutly religious and will only reveal himself to a faintly lit lattice slot in a church confession booth where hopes there is an attentive priest on the other side. Caul descends into paranoia by the film's conclusion and one is left with the feeling that he is lost forever by the time he guts his apartment trying to find a bug recording his every sound.

this week's blog

I was going 2 write a post abt our reading assignment for this week, but m rly sorry i spent the whole time on fb lol

"War is no longer what it used to be..."

Baudrillard's critique of the handling of the Gulf War reminds of Marshall McLuhan's evisceration of the televised 1976 Presidential Debates.

"In this forum of war which is the Gulf, everything is hidden: the planes are hidden, the tanks are buried, Israel plays dead, the images are censored and all information is blockaded in the desert: only TV functions as a medium without a message, giving at last the image of pure television."
-Gulf War Did Not Take Place, pg. 63

Baudrillard writes that the war did not live up to the scale and media coverage of previous wars. It seems to me that Baudrillard's experience of the Gulf War is primarily through television. In his essay he doesn't complain about how the war was written about in the press - his observations sound solely derived through McLuhan's ultimate cool medium. This is why the two philosophers remind me of each other.

Roland and Tumblr

The studium that Barthes speaks of is the knowledge of what exists apart from the photograph that had a hand in its creation. Specifically, he wants to encounter the intentions of the artist in creating the image(s). I would argue that in an endless stream of images that you can find on Tumblr.com, the intentions of the photographers are nil. I can't make a blanket generalization for everyone, but due to the glut of images on said website, certain people I know scroll through their subscriptions at breakneck speed: This is good, this sucks, this sucks, this sucks, this is good... The studium doesn't seem to matter at all, all that matters are the images themselves.

Thin Blue Line, with it's meticulous reenactments strikes me as a biased camera masquerading as an objective one. The impressive camerawork in Children Of Men seems to be a disembodied character in the film, one who moves independently of the characters at times.

Moon and Blade Runner

Self-awareness is something artists must possess. In post-modernism, the artist delves inside to come up with inspiration. What if a person learned that they were not even a person at all? This is the premise to Moon and Blade Runner. Our protagonist is a clone or a robot that doesn't know what it is. Eventually, in the case of Moon, and arguably in the case of Blade Runner, our non-human protagonist develops the self-awareness it needs to act on behalf of it's own needs. The infererence of Scott's Blade Runner is that the main character, Deckard doesn't know he is actually a robot. All of his memories have been implanted in him by a corporate magnate. This in and of itself is a concept rife with meaning. Haven't we all been programmed since youth by commercials and other TV filler? Television is a rite of passage for kids; we all spend a great deal of time sitting in front of it. Some of us outgrow the tube and others don't. If we media-brats look back to our earliest, primordial memories we may find it difficult to separate what really happened to us with something we watched on television.

Marshall McLuhan

It seems to me that the world, at least in his time, needed to catch up to Marshall McLuhan. What enamored him to me was something that seemed to puzzle his interviewers: his appropriation of vernacular to suit his ends. He co-opted the terms "with it" and "hot" and "cool" to elucidate his theories. I find that extremely effective. When I listen to McLuhan's interviews he is so provocative that his interviewers get defensive and try to force him to explain himself. But I find that he what says, which may have seemed outrageous at the time, is actually very prescient. His use of the term "high definition" struck me as particularly prophetic. I can see why people would be skeptical of McLuhan though, because he really has little data to back up his theories. He has a vast knowledge of literature and a strong interest in popular culture from his professorial background. He uses examples from literature all the time in his writings, and these analogies make his ideas even clearer. But when it comes down to it, you either agree with McLuhan or you don't.

I prefer a naked girl in my bed to Dada

That humourous quote from Ben Vautier in Nicholas Zurbrugg's essay on Fluxus quite literally "clears the ground" with it's raucous humor. I find it to be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise dry, overly intellectual landscape. John Cage's playful experiments on 1960's TV are another fun exercise that also denotes the modus operandi of Fluxus. This refreshing movement has roots in performance and action. Wouldn't we all rather have fun than interpret and process dense ideas and texts? Ultimately, the Fluxus movement gets to have things both ways. Musical pieces by Cage or Beuys functioned as entertainment as well thought-provoking art. Warhol's work appealed to people's pop culture sensibilities but the more "intellectual" audience saw the irony and the statement in what he was doing.

All Social Life is Appearance

It is made clear to me after today's lecture how I have been participating in the proliferation of my social life appearance on Facebook. I hardly ever post any honest or painful emotions as my Status Update. In fact, I see that as a weakness or faux pas. All my updates must be upbeat. I don't want my remarks to stand out as being whiny in the News feed, where they are perpetually in a forced context of the thoughts of the hundreds of mutual friends I share. Facebook isn't real friendship, and so I protect myself from that judgment by keeping things nice and on the surface. If I am having real problems and need to confide in someone, I will do it face to face with that person. Facebook is a tool that I use to build popularity and support for me and my endeavors and to network with those who can advance my career. If I want friendship, I have email and a phone and a car and those are the things that take me to a third party destination that is not my home office, where I engage in socializing that is still an appearance of sorts, but not nearly to the degree in which social networking will forever be mired.

HAL 9000, Auteur?

We rely on computers for so much in life these days. We quite literally put our lives in the hands of pre-programmed machines. They are our security systems, our financial transactions, our communication between loved ones, our entertainment, our physical fitness, etc. Do we rely on computers for art? Lev Manovich is at work on a project where video art is assembled randomly by a computer and made available for the public. Databases are an essential product of computers, and the mechanical organization of keywords is a task well suited to be accomplished by a computer, whereas it would be tedious for a person. But art is something that begs to have a human creator. The "human touch" is something we all crave. It is a sensual feeling that we cannot get from computers. Databases belong in the realm of computers, but when said computers transform that data into a "creative work of art", I turn and walk off.

Aura Seeking and Prestige Seeking - The Blurred Line

http://youtu.be/BYRWfS2s2v4

Week 2 readings

Walter Benjamin's article opens with a quote from Paul Valery dated 1931:

"Just as water, gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual and auditory images which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign."

This is a premonition of the Internet. Not to say that Valery predicted specifically what would become known as the Information Superhighway, but let's just say he could see which way the wind was blowing. He took the current state of media and advanced it to it's logical conclusion because he could see that images and audio were becoming commodified just like water, gas and electricity.

Benjamin's interest in the "aura" is something to be measured against the topic of "authenticity." Does new art suffer from a lack of aura? Do people have aura? Authenticity may have a more pragmatic connotation as opposed to aura, the latter being a transfixing quality most people seem to associate with people. If not a person, than an anthropomorphized work of art that facilitates the human connection. A photo does not have aura, according to Benjamin, but the trademark of post-WWII artists, such as filmmakers like Spike Lee, is considered to have aura, despite that they follow the mechanical production integral to the photographic arts. Spike Lee employs an artistic conceit in all his films where the actor will ride the dolly and create an otherworld effect as the camera moves. Alfred Hitchcock also places his aura on every film he ever made, by including a humorous cameo early in the film's story.

The Adorno-Horkheimer piece is a relentlessly pessimistic view of culture that struck me as being quite contemporary. I was shocked when I learned how old it was, although I shouldn't have been surprised based on the prescient reference to "Mrs. Miniver." This dynamic duo writes that "the purposelessness of the great modern work of art depends on the anonymity of the market." What a dystopian vision of art. But yet, it is true. The market is indeed a random collection of fans looking for the next big thing. Adorheimer speak of how art is no longer consumed by the connoisseur but the prestige-seeker. Dare I say that the prestige-seeker is also an aura-seeker?

Woody Allen's newest film deals with a man, Gil, played by Owen Wilson who is in love with the aura of Paris in the 1920's. Through the magic of filmmaking he can transport himself into that time to consume the artistic pleasures of a city where Dali, Bunuel, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and other luminaries are accessible to him. Gil's love extends beyond just aura as he is also a prestige-seeker, but not to the extent that his sworn enemy is. The enemy is branded by Gil as a pseudo-intellectual; a prestige-seeker of the lowest order.

The final piece of reading from Week 2 was "The Public Sphere" by Jurgen Habermas. The public spehere is defined as "a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Habermas writes: "The bourgeouis public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body..." At least this much is true of the collective of artists in Allen's newest movie. In this film, Stein, Porter, Man Ray and the aforementioned artists are a collective of public figures. Adored public figures, I might add. But their public sphere is so privileged, talented and elite that is most certainly not what Habermas is talking about. The shared experience, the collective consciousness that is a part of our social lives is not something at work.

Mindmapping!