| Rudy Bleu’s Cyberspace Adventures! |
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Awesome. Post a casting ad on Craigslist for all types of actors to deliver “edgy, balls-out” political messages, film the auditions, and post the results on YouTube. Starry-eyed hopefuls and seasoned nutjobs pouring their heart into x-rated political ad copy equals a rollicking Internet laugh riot! The simplest, but most captivating entertainment of this decade has come from exploiting Hollywood’s down-and-out dreamers for comic value– in you need proof, just turn on VH1. Maybe it’s the Bush administration that makes us want to laugh at people failing. We project our anxieties and frustrations on Britney Spears and the losers who try out for “American Idol,” because it’s a lot easier to impeach them from the halls of pop culture (and the chambers of our hearts) than it is to affect any real political change. Bush could care less if we hate him, he’s the most annoying kind of asshole boyfriend– he never even stops being a jerk long enough to acknowledge our anger. But the bastards of pop culture crave our attention like needy sycophants, so it’s a lot easier to take out our rage on them. In this cultural moment, we’re the child-abused high school bully, pantsing the homos in Drama Club. It’s exhaustingly self-destructive behavior, like Democrats fighting between themselves– we froth at the mouth for producers to roll the cameras in front of normal people, mainly so we can make snarky comments about them. We manifest our political rage in cultural self-hatred expressed through reality television. But it’s more complicated than that: we also want the illusion that conventionally undeserving people have a shot at the limelight, and that every once in a while (Sanjaya, Flavor Flav), they seemingly break through. We have a tenuous connection with our own cultural reflections, lampooning ourselves while quietly rooting for our allegedly undeserved success. Does that matter? It doesn’t make these videos any less hilarious, does it? I think I lost my point here. The videos are from “Sunday Knight Productions,” a fake ad agency that promises “cutting-edge, paradigm-shifting, earth-shattering marketing solutions.” They put a lot of work into their satirical website, but the humor of b.s. corporate-speak was kinda played out even before Tim & Eric started doing it. Just check out the videos: it’s funny when people are sincere. | ||||
Delaware is an heartwarmingly twee digital design collective from Tokyo. They’re a band, a video art group, a bunch of 8-bit loving graphic designers– they’re kind of like a Japanese counterpart to Paper Rad, but less ironic and more sentimental. In their own words: Delaware is a japanese super sonic group, designs music and musics design. I found out about Delaware through Momus, the genius mind behind the blog Click Opera. Momus is pretty prolific. Not only is he a renowned Scottish musician with an wide catalog of records to his name, but he also posts engrossing, polished essays almost every day, ruminating on concepts both obscure and widely discussed in the worlds of art, politics, theory and pop culture.  Recently, Momus delved into the radness that is Delaware’s YouTube Harmony project, an endeavor in understanding and manipulating the massive stockpile of video content floating around on YouTube. By remixing unrelated clips into a four-channel split screen, Delaware creates something original and meaningful, divorcing fragments of creativity from the cold ether of the Internet.
What’s more, although a lot of the source material is American, the end result is, for me, very Japanese. Delaware have reverse-engineered a final result that has a very similar information density to Japanese television. The screen crowds with details, insets, graphics, and yet somehow a spirit of bland positivity prevents all this clutter being overwhelming or oppressive. As in a Japanese city, a certain good-natured and civic-minded mood prevails, offsetting densities of information and event which could otherwise be murderously high. There’s also, here, a sort of wide-eyed romanticism about world culture which is very Japanese, a transformation of everyday activities into something graceful and beautiful, and of course robot voices and an obsession with cooking. Read Momus’ entire post on Delaware’s YouTube Harmony (which goes on to discuss the relationship between remixing and globalization, and the meaning of Morissey’s nationalist comments) here, and watch all the YouTube Harmony videos on Delaware’s website. |
Last year, Of Montreal became the subject of scrutiny when they re-recorded their song “Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)” with cheesy corporate jingle lyrics for an Outback Steakhouse ad. It was a benign, silly affair, that caused many a scoff, but was mostly forgotten by the release of their widely-praised and chart-registering new album, Hissing Fuana, Are You the Destroyer? Now, the band has taken a starring role in a new T-Mobile spot, (video below), and sparked up a fresh debate over the meaning of independent music, selling out, and the relevance of the old school punk rock ethos. Lead singer Kevin Barnes penned a though-provoking essay about the whole fiasco for the music blog Stereogum, entitled “Selling Out Isn’t Possible“. Definitely give it a read, and check out the comments on the post too, for some interesting counterpoints. But rather than add my opinion to the debate, let’s focus instead on T-Mobile’s perspective. Why did they make this commercial in the first place? Pretty blah, huh? Marginally embarrassing, but mostly boring. It doesn’t even attempt to grab the attention of anyone unfamiliar with the band. The ad’s purpose isn’t, as it would half-heartedly have you believe, to present a humorous vignette starring a popular music group, underlining the function of the Sidekick as a tool for “the superconnected to stay connected”. No, that more explicit function of the ad is a distant second to the simple effort to draw a link, however tenuous and superficial, between T-Mobile and Of Montreal. Everything else is a thinly veiled distraction from the melding of band and machine.  Fans of the band can be “slim” and “vibrant,” just like their heroes, by simply purchasing a T-Mobile Sidekick. “I think it gave us an edge,” says a band member in the context-less first line of dialogue. Not only can the Sidekick impart upon you Of Montreal’s slimness and vibrancy, it’s a microcomputer cell phone that gives even them– a band that you thought couldn’t get any edgier– a previously unattainable “edge”. None of this is new, it’s the way celebrity endorsements have worked since the dawn of advertising– but the unusual part here is that a national commercial is catering to fans of a band like Of Montreal (an indie band) whose greatest commercial success to date is an album that peaked at #72 on the Billboard charts.  Five years ago, this commercial would never have been made. Because this ad isn’t really for television, it’s for the Internet. Pay a few bucks to air it once or twice, and in no time it’ll be uploaded to YouTube and plastered on every blog the target audience reads. It’s the Long Tail effect starting to reach Madison Avenue. Ad firms are figuring out that if you throw scraps to a niche audience, they’ll do the rest of the promoting themselves without even realizing it. T-Mobile must be thrilled with the amount of discussion their commercial has sparked… maybe bloggers should go on a strike until they get their residuals, too. |
When Wikipedia started, I guess I had some sort of misconceived notion that it would become a compendium for all human knowledge. And while it started to look that way for a while, there’s a problem in that dream that is just now coming into focus, after more than two million articles have been created and most of the “essentials” have been covered. Wikipedia is not the postmodern Library of Alexandria it has the potential to be, because (according to some) Wikipedia Is Not An Indiscriminate Collection of Information. In order to be included in Wikipedia, an article must have an attribute called notabilty. But who decides what is notable? There are currently 1,360 unpaid community administrators who are given the authority to control the fate of new Wikipedia entries, as the only ones with the power to delete entire pages. They determine if a page is worthy for inclusion based on Wikipedia’s notability policy: The topic of an article should be notable, or “worthy of notice”. This concept is distinct from “fame”, “importance”, or “popularity”. A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. So essentially, on Wikipedia nothing is eligible for inclusion until it has received enough coverage from reputable outside sources. Sure, Paris Hilton is notable– she’s been analyzed from every angle on every level of culture– but what about a butcher shop in South Africa called Mzoli’s Meats?
That question seems simple enough, but has sparked a huge debate covered by news outlets from the LA Times to the English paper The Telegraph. Apparently, there are two factions of administrators, diametrically opposed on the issue of notability. From The LA Times: Inclusionists believe that because Wikipedia is not bound by the same physical limits as a paper encyclopedia, it shouldn’t have the same conceptual limits either. If there’s room for an article on unreleased Kylie Minogue singles — and a group of people who might find it useful– why not include it? What could these “Deletionists” see in the aforementioned conceptual limitations of traditional encyclopedias? What could be wrong with hosting all the information in the world on one easily accessible, searchable server? Isn’t that the vision of so many sci-fi fantasies– a world where our robot pals could answer any question in the bounds of human knowledge instantaneously, with implied access to a centralized database containing all information? Check out The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump, a blog devoted to rescuing information before it’s eradicated from Wikipedia. And for a first-hand look at the douchebag reasoning behind Deletionist attitudes, check out this Cracked.com article entitled “The 8 Most Needlessly Detailed Wikipedia Entries“. Note that since that article’s publication, several of the articles it heckles have been purged from Wikipedia– literally tens of thousands of words expunged because someone thinks it’s funny that there might be a demand– however slight– for plot descriptions of “7th Heaven” episodes!
Information is never needless! As the chart in this video explains, knowledge is power! But beyond that obvious assertion, we must come to realize that trivia is important, and beautiful. To quote two kindergarten philosophies in one paragraph, there are no stupid questions. Everything is important as long as any person, regardless of their significance, has the desire to know about it. Minutia is glorious! Divorced of the self, we are all merely information stored in other people’s brains– neurons filed away in an unknown cranial cabinet until death or senility renders those life-long memories moot. We never truly die until we cease to exist as information. Gravestones are less for presenting corpse coordinates and more for saving the names inscribed upon them from the same grisly fate that has claimed their owners. Hence, information is the same as life. Deletionism is genocide. I am a believer in the viability of Borges’ life-sized map of the world. Why not? |
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This is the 100th post on Future Shipwreck. After eight months, that doesn’t sound like a lot– but I go for quality over quantity ;) What exactly is this blog about? Good movies, new music, life in Los Angeles, rad artists– it’s mainly a forum for me to disseminate recommendations to other people, to clue others in on the things that I think are worth getting excited about. I plan to keep the site evolving in alluring and unfamiliar new directions, to keep things fresh for hundreds more entries. Will you all stick with me on this marvelous journey through the depths of cyberspace? Let’s explore the unknown together, and sail straight into the untamed heart of human nature! Or at least, you know, drool over cute t-shirts together, while listening to fun indie pop. In honor of all you beautiful strangers who some how ended up on my blog, here are some weird, scary and awesome Google search terms that people used to find Future Shipwreck. Maybe these will help you understand (or perhaps, confuse you further) about the purpose of this blog:
I just want to say to the person looking for unicorn pandas… I really hope you find them, and when you do– let me know. Also, I don’t know where your robots went, but they haven’t been this way. And to the racist wondering about the black girl from Bratz: The Movie– she has a name, you know. It’s Sasha. Thanks for reading, everyone! See you at post #200. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Eight more videos after the jump! continue reading |
Shorpy calls itself “The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog”, and acts as a catalogue of vintage snapshots and photos of little official (at least in a broad, historical sense) importance. In a time before the Internet, these sort of photos were confined to mysterious, musky antique shops, thrown in old shoeboxes with yellowed postcards from long since demolished tourist traps, and baseball cards with the smiling faces of now-unknown players adorning them. Nowadays, these ancient images are being digitally frozen, the originals left to perish at the unforgiving hands of time. So much overlooked history is being catalogued in searchable databases, in the Web 2.0 world of Youtube, Wikipedia, and Flickr– not just in the realm of antique photos, but in all forms of ephemera. Images and sounds are resurrected (Shorpy says it “brings our ancestors back, at least to the desktop”) after so many years imprisoned in desk drawers, bootleg VHS tapes, and moldy out-of-print books. Now we need not leave the comfort of our homes to seek out unique objects in foreign places. The function of said antique stores, each with their own character and atmosphere, as keeper of such artifacts, will disappear at the same rate as the already-declining record stores and video stores, as all media loses its physical nature, soon to be accessible only within in the sterile virtual space of every monitor hooked up to the Internet. Is that too much to sacrifice for glimpse of the abandoned past? Decide for yourself, by checking out the beautiful images in Shorpy’s already vast collection. Click the jump to see some of my favorites. continue reading |
Plan 59 is an online archive of vintage illustrations from the 1950’s, mostly from bizarre American advertising. Personally, I prefer the aesthetic of 1970’s advertisting, but amongst the squeaky clean forced wholesomeness of that nonsense decade, there are some fun little gems. The above illustrations of wrestling stars are explicitly homoerotic. The true American hero on the left is named Yukon Eric. I want him to be my trail guide on whatever mountain he came down from. He can probably communicate with bluejays. According to legend, Yukon Eric was a friendly introvert who didn’t drink or smoke, and once beat up a saloon full of bullies who were criticizing him for being a milk-drinker. That’s my kind of man! There’s more great pictures over on Plan59’s Pro Wrestler gallery.
Plan59 also has a hilarious and terrifying collection of images called Demonic Tots and Deeply Disturbing Cuisine. The Bad Seed, anyone? Dakota Fanning is like, seriously jealous of these freaks. The kids in these pictures are the fictional progenitors of those cuddly Aryans in Village of the Damned. Why were parents in the 50’s so afraid of their kids? I mean, it’s not like they were on the irrevocable path of growing into pseudo-revolutionary herb-smoking, free-loving hippies, and then callous coke-snorting capitalists, or something… oh wait.
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Somewhere in Malawi, the African nation most widely known as Madonna’s adoption farm, a 19 year old who couldn’t afford to attend high school, and whose village had no electricity, built a windmill with materials discarded by his neighbors and a bicycle dynamo. He had never used a computer, but after his incredible DIY windmill caught some media attention, he now has his own blog! He was even flown out (his first time on a plane) to a TED conference in Tanzania, where he gave a lecture about his accomplishment. Makes you feel kind of lazy and spoiled, huh? + William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill Blog
Fans of The New Beverly’s monthly Grindhouse night– or any fan of that sublime gray area between art and trash– should love MuderMystery on LiveJournal. This 20-year-old photo student from Illinois writes verbose essays on the best films you’ve never heard of. The obscure gems he spotlights often hail from the dusty corners of 1970s and 80s cinematic history, hiding in the oft-dismissed genres of horror, erotica, or experimental cinema. Take a minute to read his manifesto, “A Primer to Watching European Genre Cinema,” for a more thorough concept of what this MuderMystery is all about. If you ever think you’ve run out of movies to watch, check out MurderMystery’s convenient on-going list, “100 Films You Should Probably See.” + MuderMystery (NSFW)
Matthew Barnes’ graphic design work is pretty crazy rad. A recent graduate of the Liverpool School of Art, he has already worked with Anthem Magazine, Nike, Dazed & Confused, Diesel, and SXSW, among others. Check out the work he did for Arktip Magazine and his hand-customized Adidas sneakers. I also want the awesome hooded jacket he customized for the Nike “Performance Art” exhibition. The kid has talent! |
I came across two great photo essays yesterday. The first is an art project from China, called 13 Months in the Year of the Dog. Two photographers selected daily news items and recreated them with dramatic lighting and highly theatrical composition. The result is an eerie series of beautiful and surreal images that bend the brief stories into dramatic worlds of deeply resonant emotion. The set feels not unlike to the fantastic Gregory Crewdson’s work. How To Be An Alaskan Fisherman is an essay for Fecal Face by Corey Arnold, a hip young photographer who also happens to be a fearless fisherman, traversing the open sea off the coast of Alaska, leading a life of danger and adventure. With brilliant photographs, he illustrates the steps one must take to transform from a naive art school student to a toiling laborer in an exotic and incredible locale. It reminded me that I should maybe make a five-year plan towards getting my ass off the computer and out into the big wide open world with all of its odysseys and adventures. |
Also, what’s a “teleputer”? Anyway, innacuracies are to be expected from a 12-year-old issue of Time, but I only bring it up because I was obsessed with the issue as a child. I wanted to “touch cyberspace” as one article claimed I would be able to. continue reading |
“Welcome to Cyberspace!” declared Time in 1995, when they published a special issue introducing its readers to the hot-button issue of the “information superhighway”. Approaching this strange new technology cautiously, with hyperbole abound, the issue attempted to break things down with a veritable lexicon of new vocabulary that failed to catch on. For instance:
When I’m online and I see a picture I like, I save it to a huge folder full of random crap on my hard drive. I’ve been doing this for years, and that folder has amounted to a veritable gold mine of rad, covering the spectrum of everything wonderful and amazing. Sometimes I put together carefully selected mixes of these pictures on CDs for my friends, so I thought I’d try implementing that idea here. A lot of these pictures are from blogs that I frequent on a regular basis, some of which are on the list to your right. Since I don’t remember where most of these came from, I won’t try and credit all the sources. If you took one of these photos, just know that I love it/you. Anyway, enjoy! continue reading |
