>Synchronicity happens all the time in my virtual world (your’s too).
Below are two unrelated videos*, but after having seen them within minutes of each other, I realized are even more meaningful when set side-by-side.
The question on the table is what do we aspire too and how will we get there? Each video raises that question in a unique way.
The media and real life:
The politics of real life:
*The first of the two is probably not appropriate for children, and maybe some overly pious adults.
>YouTube has been upon us for some time. Now it is playing a big role (maybe?) in the current U.S. presidential elections. Combined with the real possibility for some changes in U.S. governance, not a few have been inspired to create videos for YouTube (et al). These videos range from the well produced, pro-Obama music video Yes we can to a lot of poorly produced detritus.
Below are two of the most creative pieces* I’ve seen so far.
Maybe we are entering the age of the “super-mashup”. Whatever it is I have to say I want to see more of this kind of thing. And yet, it will be interesting to know if the viral video will truly tip the scales to any one candidate. I have to say it must be a bit more scary to be in politics today because of the viral video.
*I know the clips and links in this post are all pro-Obama. I am not, however, intending to promote Obama more than he deserves.
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Becoming one of my least favorite brands.
I arrived home Friday night from the sales conference in Las Vegas. It is good to be back with my wife and kids, sleep in my own bed, etc.
I have to say something about my flight experience. In my previous post I mentioned how great Virgin Airlines is. Now I have to describe my overall experience on United Airlines. Here’s how it went:
Tuesday: Trying to leave town with a 6:15 AM flight. We sit on the plane for an extra hour and a half because of a hydraulics problem with the plane. While we sit there they turn off all power to the plane, which means no lights and no air-conditioning while we wait. Another airline fixes it for United and we’re off. The planes lands with a teeth-rattling thud in San Francisco. We’re late. We all miss our connections.
Friday: Trying to check in my bag. As I stand in line and watch the person ahead of me, I see a man behind the counter working on the printer for the bag-tags. He disconnects the machine and walk away with it. I step up to the counter and the ticket agent goes to print my bag-tag and is stopped short. Where is the printer he wonders. Fifteen minutes later, after getting his supervisor involved and phone calls to tech support, he finally gets a tag printed and checks in my bag. I have been standing at the counter the entire time wondering what kind of airline this is.
Friday: Flying from Las Vegas to San Francisco, trying to get home after a long week. The flight is delayed because some fuses have blown on the plane. An hour an a half behind schedule we board. We are all wondering how old the United fleet must be. My gut tells me United may not be as safe an airline as they should. I pray I see my family again.
Friday: Flying from San Francisco to Oregon. The plane was delayed over two hours because the autopilot was broken. We were told that it was likely we would have to stay the night and take an 8AM flight on Saturday. My wife tells me my oldest is nearly in tears waiting for me to get home. They did get the plane running, but we landed in Oregon almost three hours behind schedule.
Ironically, the nicest United employee I dealt with was the boarding ticket counter person for the last flight – and it was his first day on the job! The others were not so friendly. I guess once someone has worked for United for a while cynicism sets in. No surprise there.
That’s three different flights, three different planes, three different mechanical problems, and three flight delays – all in less than a week! Nice job United! Most of us that were flying United for those flights have vowed not to fly with them in the future if we can help it. Remarkably, it still could have been much worse.
It’s good to be home… finally.
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I am not the only person who has struggled with United Airlines, check out here, here, here, and here.
…or this clip from Mad TV:
*I had titled this post “United Airlines = poo” but my wise wife suggested I change the title.
>Okay, this is just too perfect.
I suppose church organists sometimes have a bit of leeway in what they choose to play during a church service, especially at the very end. Here is a young church organist playing the theme song from Super Mario Brothers at the end of a service.* You can actually hear the final payer being said before he plays. (I am taking this at face value that it is for real.)
And he gets applause!
*Note: For those of you unfamiliar with typical Christian church services, the Super Mario Brothers theme song is not really considered a hymn for solemn worship.
>For some time now my credit union has been running an add for free tunes when one signs up for their free checking. The campaign, I believe, is targeted toward college students. I mean, who else would want free tunes, or think that’s a good enough incentive to open their first checking account after moving out of mom and dad’s place?
I have to say, however, that I am curious about the visuals.
This image has been popping up on the credit union’s web site for about a year now, and it kinda disturbs me (in a humorous way, I must say). What is going on here? Along with the text I see two young hip college students apparently very happy about the free tunes with the free checking. They look like they are dancing.
Obviously their visual relationship is a construction, they are not in the same space in reality but have been manually juxtaposed by the graphic designer. So the image is a manipulation. They form a kind of visual unit that has been constructed to create a particular effect, whether conscious or subconscious. What that effect is remains to be seen.
The man stands, leaning back, pelvic forward, right arm extended outward and slightly up. His legs are spread, and he has a kind of hip college confidence. The woman also standing leaning back, also pelvic forward, her arms at her sides. She appears to be standing between the legs of the man. There is a kind of forced intimacy, forced in that the arrangement is arbitrary. The look on her face, with her mouth wide open, is one of delight, as though she is exclaiming something joyous, or maybe she is ready to take a bite of something.
In effect, without appearing to acknowledge each other’s presence, these two seem to be presenting their clothed bodies to each other.
And notice the angles. Her body position, and especially her left arm, makes a definite line angling downward to the right. That line seems to end, it would seem, at the man’s crotch. The man’s body angles up to the right. His arm and his gaze angle up to the left. If we were to draws lines to represent these visual vector forces, they might look like this below:
A triangle of vector lines is the most common of visual constructions. It mentally ties together visual elements, creating visual relationships that weave connotations for the mind to land upon.
So what does this mean? Honestly, I can’t say for sure. If I had to come up with something I would say the man is represented as being strong, masculine, and erect (symbolically emphasized by his arm thrusting outward). The woman is represented as being more diminutive than the man, not merely because she is smaller, but because she is placed in a lower position than the man. She seems to be focused on the man’s crotch, with a look of extreme delight. I don’t mean to be crude. I am just stating the obvious.
Finally, on the left-hand side of the image there is the phrase “Grab the details.” The clickable triangle/arrow that goes with the phrase is on the same visual plane, and pointing in the same direction, as the woman’s hand and the man’s crotch. Is she the one who is going to grab the details? One wonders. Again, I don’t mean to be crude.
I don’t think this image needs my interpretation or evaluation. One can make of it what one wills. But it reminds me of the advertising I studied at university in media studies. And I find it funny to see it on my credit union’s web site. I also find it rather peculiar. Why does a credit union have to use such advertising, whether stupid or sexual or both, to sell checking? It’s just checking. But, then I don’t work in advertising.
>What force is it that compels people to take found audio and create puppet interpretations of it? This is a cosmic mystery, I’m sure, but it can lead to some funny, even insightful, products. Here are three that caught my attention.
Poet Allen Ginsburg with William F. Buckley:
The infamous (but who cares) drunk David Hasselhoff video:
The Beach Boys and Mr. (passive/aggressive) Wilson:
Possibly, this puppet-interpretation thing moves along the same arc of the “making strange” function of art. That is, to create a kind of distance from the original (from the reality) to give us eyes to see the original more as it is in its essence, rather than through the common mental filters that cloud our everyday perceptions.
And then, not of puppets, but related in that same cosmic force, and rather brilliant, There Will Be Vader:
>Politicians come and go, but philosophers linger. Which one will you vote for? Remember: A vote not cast is a vote for the winner!
Below are three adds for Kant, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard respectively.
How can I not vote for a philospher who says:
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
~Soren Kierkegaard
>Every once in a while I come across something that really makes me smile, chortle even.
Thanks to the Internets I now know about Improv Everywhere, a New York based arts group that uses public spaces and a little fun deviousness to create art “events.” Below are two recent acts of art perpetrated by Improv Everywhere. There are is a lot more to see on their site.
What makes me happy about this kind of art is its subversive playfulness, and that the “viewer” is also a true participant.
Slo-Mo Home Depot:
http://flash.revver.com/player/1.0/player.swf?mediaId=81017&affiliate=33106
No Pants 2k8:
http://flash.revver.com/player/1.0/player.swf?mediaId=619852&affiliate=33106
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There is a lot of David Lynch on the Internets. Here are some clips I found interesting.
D. Lynch does not want New Yorkers to litter:
D. Lynch used an original Lumière brothers’ camera (that’s the story) to make this short:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=147636485853600786&hl=en
D. Lynch sells cigarettes:
D. Lynch almost says billion years, but says trillion years instead (pardon the language):
I don’t know if I am a fan of David Lynch, but I think he is a genius of sorts. Every time I see one of his films I feel as though there is no one else on the planet making films like his. And typically his films are truly stunning as mind-bending artifacts of his transcendental meditation activities. On the other hand, each time I see one of his films I feel as though I have not really seen anything of consequence, almost as though I have wasted my time a little bit (but not entirely). I think that is because I can never really answer the question, “what’s the point?”
I am a spiritual person. I am because I cannot help but be spiritual, and I also choose to be. I know that David Lynch is into transcendental meditation. I think that is fine of course, to each his own, and yet I can’t help myself but see transcendental meditation as a kind of low-orbit spirituality. It may be a great tool for creativity and stress reduction and other things, but I don’t see it going deep enough or high enough. Maybe that is why I find Lynch’s work so creative on the one hand, and finally so shallow on the other. Still, in our age of so much hyped mediocrity, Lynch’s work, love it or hate it, is a kind of gauntlet thrown down before the pretenders who populate much of the art world.
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As a matter of fact one is continuously anticipating expressions, filling up the empty spaces in a text with the missing units, forecasting a lot of words that the interlocutor may have said, could have said, will certainly say, or has never said.
>>Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics 1979, p. 136
After reading Tram’s post (see: A Room of One’s Own) regarding Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman (1976), I was reminded of another famous examination of domestic life, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) by Martha Rosler. The first time I saw this short film I was in college studying film theory and loving it. I was blown away by Rosler’s piece, not merely because it was an exploration of the very of the concepts I had been studying, but also that she found a way to make semiotics funny (in a dry humor sort of way). Semiotics of the Kitchen was considered a seminal work of the period and shown for years in college film departments and media studies classes, etc. I wonder if it is still watched much anymore.
Semiotics of the Kitchen
pilgrimakimbo 