Watchings

6 March 2011 • watchings
tags: activism, apocalypse, capitalism, cinema, consumism, control, copy, data, documentaries, economy, music, politics, sound, television, tv series

• The Walking Dead (2010)
Frank Darabont

• Sound in Context (2009) [watch]

• The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher

• Remington Steele, Seasons 1-5 (1982-1987)
Robert Butler and Michael Gleason

• The Eye of the Heart (2003)
Mark Kidel

• Artscape – Stephen Vitiello – Listening With Intent [watch]

• The New Sound Of Music (1979) [watch]

• SYGNOK & The War For Radical Computer Music (2011) [watch]

• The Future of Art (2011) [watch]

Who said art has to cost money?

30 January 2011 • out of context
tags: appropriationism, cinema, consumism, economy, plagiarism, politics, quotes

“I once found a little excerpt from Balzac. He speaks about a young writer who stole some of his prose. The thing that almost made me weep, he said, “I was so happy when this young person took from me.” Because that’s what we want. We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice.

And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you. And Balzac said that in his book: It makes me so happy because it makes me immortal because I know that 200 years from now there will be people doing things that somehow I am part of. So the answer to your question is: Don’t worry about whether it’s appropriate to borrow or to take or do something like someone you admire because that’s only the first step and you have to take the first step.

(…)

Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.

This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?

In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.

You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money.”

Francis Ford Coppola: On Risk, Money, Craft & Collaboration

Exponential growth of stupidity

26 January 2011 • out of context
tags: cinema, consumism, control, music, quotes, television

“I have a completely schizophrenic relationship with television. (…) The exponential growth of stupidity and vulgarity is something that everyone has noticed, but it’s not just a vague sense of disgust – it’s a concrete quantifiable fact (you can measure it by the volume of the cheers that greet the talk-show hosts, which have grown by an alarming number of decibels in the last five years) and a crime against humanity. (…) And since you are exploiting my Russian penchant for confession, I must say the worst: I am allergic to commercials. In the early Sixties, making commercials was perfectly acceptable; now, it’s something that no one will own up to. I can do nothing about it. This manner of placing the mechanism of the lie in the service of praise has always irritated me, even if I have to admit that this diabolical patron has occasionally given us some of the most beautiful images you can see on the small screen (have you seen the David Lynch commercial with the blue lips?). But cynics always betray themselves, and there is a small consolation in the industry’s own terminology: they stop short of calling themselves “creators,” so they call themselves “creatives.”

And the movies in all this? For the reasons mentioned above, and under the orders of Jean-Luc, I’ve said for a long time that films should be seen first in theaters, and that television and video are only there to refresh your memory. Now that I no longer have any time at all to go to the cinema, I’ve started seeing films by lowering my eyes, with an ever increasing sense of sinfulness (this interview is indeed becoming Dostoevskian). But to tell the truth I no longer watch many films, only those by friends, or curiosities that an American acquaintance tapes for me on TCM. There is too much to see on the news, on the music channels or on the indispensable Animal Channel. And I feed my hunger for fiction with what is by far the most accomplished source: those great American TV series, like The Practice. There is a knowledge in them, a sense of story and economy, of ellipsis, a science of framing and of cutting, a dramaturgy and an acting style that has no equal anywhere, and certainly not in Hollywood.”

Chris Marker, originally published in Libération, March 5, 2003. Documentary is Never Neutral

One big shopping mall

8 January 2011 • out of context
tags: capitalism, civilization, consumism, nature, quotes

“Obviously one of the worst predictions you can make is that things continue as they are, only becoming more and more intensified, like a J. G. Ballard-type future where the whole universe is one big shopping mall. That would be the worst. Any catastrophe might be a relief compared to that. But on the other hand, catastrophes are bad for you and me, and we don’t want to get caught in one. It might be good for history, but would be awful for individuals, especially artists, who never had that much going for them in the first place. I’m not one of these people waiting for the big ecological catastrophe. I don’t want to see it happen. I’m still hopeful. And in the end, what else can you do? You have to have, as Ernst Bloch said, revolutionary hope.”

Hakim Bey
Hans Ulrich Obrist, In Conversation with Hakim Bey / Journal / e-flux

Aichaku

31 August 2010 • out of context
tags: books, consumism, etymology, love, perception, quotes, senses

“Aichaku is the Japanese term for the sense of attachment one can feel for an artifact. When written by its two kanji characters, you can see that the first character means “love” and the second one means “fit”. “Love-fit” describes a deeper kind of emotional attachment that a person can feel for an object. It is a kind of symbiotic love for an object that deserves affection not for what it does, but for what it is.”

The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

How much is lost in waiting?

31 August 2010 • out of context
tags: books, consumism, minimal, perception, quotes, time

“The average person spends at least an hour a day waiting in line. Add to this the uncountable seconds, minutes, weeks spent waiting for something that might have no line at all.

Some of that waiting is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the faucet when we turn the knob. We wait for water on the stove to boil, and start to feel impatient. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can often be tense or annoying: waiting for a Web page to load, waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or waiting for the results of a dreaded medical test.

No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Thus all of us, consumers and companies alike, often try to find ways to beat the ticking hand of time. We go out of our way to find the quickest option or any other means to reduce our frustration.”

The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

Materialism

31 August 2010 • out of context
tags: books, consumism, perception, quotes

“The upside of materialism is that the way something we own feels can change how we feel.”

The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda

Hypnotisé par la production et le confort

25 July 2010 • out of context
tags: capitalism, civilization, consumism, quotes, situationism, texts

“Une maladie mentale a envahi la planète: la banalisation. Chacun est hypnotisé par la production et le confort — tout-à-l’égoût, ascenseur, salle de bains, machine à laver.”

Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau by Gilles Ivain

Readings

4 June 2010 • readings
tags: aesthetics, articles, brain, consumism, criticism, installations, science, senses, smell, texts

• Sensational technologies [read]
Annet Dekker and Vivian van Saaze. Digital Creativity 2005, Vol. 16, No. 2.

• Speaking of Art as Embodied imagination: A Multisensory Approach to Understanding Aesthetic Experience
Annamma Joy and John F. Sherry, Jr. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. Vol. 30, September 2003.

• The Aesthetics of Smelly Art
Larry Shiner and Yulia Kriskovets. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65:3 Summer 2007.

• (Re)Confirming the Conventions – An Ontology of the Olfactory [read]
Helen Paris.