Distributed Realities

Get on the magic school bus! Okay, it wasn’t a school bus, more like a VIP tour bus. Nevertheless, it was a full day adventure visiting an array of LA’s quirkiest museums. First we went to Chinatown, which had an air of reminiscence about it (although I’d never been there before). This feeling occurs quite often due to the plethora of films that have been shot all over this city. Our first stop was Fringe Exhibitions, which had a decrepit coy pond in front of it full of decaying quarters and pennies. I wanted to stop some of the members of our group from bombarding the surviving fish with more coinage, but I didn’t have the heart. Let their wishes come true, I say. Moving on, inside the museum there was an assemblage of breakfast pastries: chocolate croissants, an assortment of bagels, and muffins with icing. I chose the wrong muffin; it was lemony and gross. The actual exhibits themselves were intriguing. A video projector downstairs showed an obscure submerged entity in bondage just floating around. It was eerie as the human like figured jerked and twitched to electronic pulses. The upstairs exhibit was nothing special, digital photography that looked like Japanese ink paintings.
Telic Arts Exchange (also in Chinatown) had an interesting instillation by Ki Chul Kim. A series of speakers hung from the ceiling with translucent fishing wire. Each row of speakers played a different sound recording of rain falling off a temple in Korea. The wires at certain angles under the lighting gave the illusion of straight lined rain. I imagine the instillation would’ve been rather peaceful if it weren’t for the fact that 48 students were crammed into the exhibit. We tried taking turns, but that idea flopped.
Next we traveled to Echo Park to see Machine Projects, which was by far my favorite space/gallery! We watched a PowerPoint presentation of past events given by the curator, and I knew immediately that I would have to return. Some of their projects included the following: an Easy-Bake Oven contest (in which someone turned an old Mac into an oven with 100 Watt light bulb), a flower volcano and floral recreation of the Eagle Nebulae, being buried alive, a mechanical human bull riding torso, a unicorn skeleton, a medieval battle, and puppy disco ball. They also offer a number of workshops and courses for artists wishing to explore different fields (i.e. incorporating technology in their work). The food there was almost as good as the presentation. I had a delicious box lunch with a turkey sandwich, pasta salad, fresh fruit, and a ginormous, scrumptious chocolate chip cookie. They had some leftover lunches; I should’ve taken them. Foods a big deal for me, especially if it’s delicious free food.
Lastly we trekked over to Culver City to see the Center for Land Use Interpretation and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. CLUI was (kind of) cool. I looked at some images of different underground caves morphed to accommodate human viewing pleasure, and some airport information transmitters scattered across Texas. The Museum of Jurassic Technology was like getting lost in grandpa’s closet. The lights were dim and it had this air of mustiness and the unexplored past. You sort of stumble around in this half-light picking up phones, while staring at displays of some forgotten 19th century invention. Upstairs they had a tearoom, where we sipped tea (and ate cookies!) while discussing the museum’s philosophy. It really was an offbeat museum full of some of the most bizarre inventions and pastimes of the somewhat recent past. An exhibit on Geoffrey Sonnabend (“an associate professor of neurophysiology at Northwestern University”) explained his cryptic theory of memory, and how it is like a cone intersected by a plane. I kind of want to read his book Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter (catchy title), but unfortunately the library doesn’t have it. All in all a good day, full of good food (except the lemon muffin, which was nasty).

Addicted to the Taste of Freedom

It’s too late for Hollywood and the record industry. Our generation has grown up with peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing. Also note that it’s called peer-to-peer sharing, and not peer-to-peer stealing. Whoever labeled this technology obviously was chalk full of good intentions; it’s like a neighbor being able to ask for a cup of sugar from anyone around the world. And artists who feel threatened or cheated by file sharing shouldn’t worry. If we like you, we’ll support you. It’s a great way of discerning actually talent from the artists who are force-fed to us by corporations.

Why download a song for 99 cents off of iTunes, when an esoteric artist on their MySpace page is offering their music for free? To some extent, when I buy songs off of iTunes I’m simply feeding into and paying for the ideology of that artist created by the record company. In other words, I’m really spending my buck so that I can share in popularity of the artist, or the semiotic messages constructed for him or her. It’s a confusing paradox that can simply be avoided by downloading from unsponsored musicians. And if you like their work, then wire them a twenty through Paypal, altogether skipping the corrupt middleman (the record industry).
Another reason people generally like the Internet is because the services it offers are usually free. Not only that, but production cost is also exceedingly low; for example, the emergence of sitcoms on YouTube. (For example, We Need Girlfriends) Nowadays, anyone can create their own “TV” show and subsequent fan base. Individuals are (on a small scale) able to challenge the massive media conglomerates of the twentieth century. The Internet has already proven itself as a potentially great equalizer.

So, while polices about how “free” the Internet should be are being debated in Congress, people are already becoming addicted to freedom. And it’ll be a lot harder to enforce restrictive policies on individuals who have become accustomed to life as is on the Internet.

The New Charon: Steamboat Willie

This little mouse has effectively been able to shut down artistic exploration and innovation. The gatekeeper of the public domain and entrenched monarch of Disney entertainment: Mickey Mouse. Thanks to Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture, I now see this rat for what he truly is. I mean honestly it’s not like the world’s going to implode if Mickey Mouse gets released into the public domain. And are we just going to keep extending the copyright restrictions until the year 3000 when Mickey is an ancient artifact? On the other hand, many already consider him a part of the public domain. Any kid can scribble or trace a picture of Mickey absentmindedly. But then again, Andy Warhol appropriated him in his silk-screens and got sued. So, what’s the difference? Are you only allowed to breach copyright laws if the appropriation speaks in favor of the subject? And how can Disney possibly monitor all appropriations of their figurehead?
Which brings me to Japan. Lawrence Lessig talked about the relatively lax copyright laws in regards to doujinshi. Of course, he didn’t really give a very accurate description of what doujinshi is; it’s basically fan created works where artist pair characters together and write all sorts of lascivious plotlines that wouldn’t occur in the original series. A more accurate and less debauch example of lax copyright laws would be fan art in general. So, I started searching deviantART for such pieces. I found some sketches from a series called Naruto that I liked and decided to check out the artist’s online gallery. Under a particularly amazing CGI sketch (from another anime), someone in the comments acussed the artist of copying. Admittedly he wasn’t copying the image, so much as the style of another artist. I was amazed that people would brazenly accuse someone of copying, not the original anime on which the picture was based, but the style of another fan artist.

The Internet is making copyright laws considerably more confusing. Since it is essentially an open forum where anyone can post his or her work, does that mean everything is up for grabs? Can a fan artist sue another fan artist for stealing their style? When everything is a compilation and remix of many different “found” elements on the Internet, how can you discern who owns what? I view the Internet as the most tangible form of the collective unconscious. Claiming rights to certain aspects of it is like trying to own an archetype.

Fragmentation of Identity

In the future everyone will be an actor. I say this, because the Internet increasingly asks you to define yourself within the confines of social networking sites (or games). For example, I’m supposed to give a rough overview of my personality on facebook: what I like, my interests, and my friends. Not to mention, one photo (or “profile pic”) that captures my essence. Like filling out college applications, it’s hard to distill who you are down to the bare minimums. Also your identity is always changing as you’re exposed to new ideas and influential mentors and peers. If you want the world to know who you are, you continually have to update your profile, because who you are is always changing.

Let me briefly share with you a quick, little anecdote about how the Internet can capture your identity indefinitely. In sixth grade, I made a website. A pretty primitive website, but at the time it was something special. I even somehow managed to program the HTML so that my website featured pong (which was one of it’s selling points). I put all of these jumping DragonBall Z .gif files all over it and added an obnoxious .wav file rendition of Sweet Home Alabama. I haven’t messed with the site since the sixth grade, so it’s a perfect distillation of my middle school psyche.

That website represents my middle school self, but I wouldn’t say it’s a fairly accurate representation of who I am today, or at this very moment. Yet it is online, and it compromises part of my online identity. This blog too is part of my online identity, and so is everything I’ve contributed (whether it be deviantART or YouTube). All of these fragmented versions of me are available to anyone in the world via the Internet. Whether or not the consummation of these entities add up to me is completely debatable, which brings me to animosity.

The Internet can showcase who you are, while at the same time providing a convenient buffer (or mask) to hide behind. Truth is almost impossible to discern on the web. You run across this in numerous places like chat rooms and Second Life. In high school, I interviewed a silkworm farmer for a creative writing project via email, but for all I know this person could’ve been a…. well, anything! The Internet allows you to connect with people globally, but whether or not you’re actually conversing with someone from another part of the world completely depends on the veracity of the other person. And there is no way to check that veracity, or prove that the person is lying. Sure, I could’ve organized very detailed silkworm specific questions for my interviewee. But where would I learn silkworm-farming techniques? The Internet (which a dissembling silkworm farmer would easily have access too). The mendacity is frightfully agitating.
According to Sherry Turkle, “Internet role-playing allows people to create parallel or alternative personae that can facilitate their negotiation and transformation of identity in real life.” (337) This essentially is the basis of theatre. Like the Internet, the theatre was often criticized as a realm of overt mendacity. But from the perspective of the actor (at least for me), all characters originate from you; they are a mixture of your identity and imagination. From an optimistic perspective, the Internet is a new tool for self-exploration. Then again, the scary thing about the Internet is that some people are dissembling, while others are not. A hybrid form of theatre.

Celebrities, Please!

Advertisements often lead us to believe that celebrities are ideal human beings, flawless forms worthy of mass envy due to their social status. In the eyes of a consumer, they sit at the pinnacle of a capitalist society. And yet, I often wonder how these supposedly “superior beings” receive advertisements; if they have everything, then how do advertisements work their magic by proposing that their lives lack certain commodities? How do they project anxiety onto the object of perfection? And do celebrities even see themselves within altered photographs that purport their flawlessness? In other words, what are you really advertising as a celebrity: the product or yourself?

I tend towards the later interpretation, and I feel as though celebrities do receive mixed messages from advertisements. Being able to purchase any commodity that associates its usage with love, friendship, and truth doesn’t necessarily guarantee these experiences. "Money can’t buy happiness," as the old saying goes. As a result, celebrities are equally susceptible to feeling depression and low-self worth that advertisements engender in the common man; just look at how many celebrities have died from drug overdose and alcohol abuse. (Need I mention anorexia for the ladies?) They know the true emptiness of consumer culture, because they are able to buy everything. The insatiability of their desires and continuance of commonplace human anxieties showcases the hollow promises advertisers are willing to make just to make a buck.
Now maybe this idea of the depressed upper class, or bourgeoisie, is a myth propagated in order to make the proletariat more appreciative of what they have. Then again, it could hold some water. A few days ago I looked up Japanese advertisements with famous celebrities in them on YouTube. These celebrities know no shame. They are willing to sell their identities to advertisement agencies in order to push products in a foreign country full of consumers willing to gobble up anything they tout. I can only imagine what it must feel like to have your sense of self chipped away at by vulture-like capitalist societies around the world! Sturken and Cartwright say, “When we consume commodities, we thus consume them as commodity signs—we aim to acquire, through purchasing a product, the meaning with which it is encoded.” (206) Therefore, if a celebrity associates himself with a certain product, then consumers of that product are in a sense eating away at the celebrity’s identity. Before the advent of the Internet, celebrities could hide their self-defamation from fans back in the States, but now it’s out in the open. I suggest you watch some of these Japanese ads; they’re hilarious (and sort of sad), especially the ones with our esteemed governor in them.

Silenus' Worldview

Postmodernism poses the same problem that cultural relativism poses to ethics. Cultural relativism is basically this: if different societies and cultures have different practices, who’s to say that one culture’s practices are better or worse than another’s? It’s a valid point, and yet instinctively I feel as though cannibalism is a bad thing. Of course, according to cultural relativism, a culture that practices cannibalism is no better or worse than one that doesn’t. Like ethics, society has to move past the philosophical quagmire that is postmodernism.

You have to move past this way of thinking because it is stagnant. And not that stagnation is a bad thing (perhaps I’m simply holding onto a modernist concept that progress is good), but to be honest we only have a limited amount of time to live. If it’s all been done before, and there’s no way to critically analyze anything (no ‘critical distance’), then what’s the point of it all? What’s the point of life? And maybe like Silenus taught King Midas, there is no point and it would be better if we had never been born at all. But then again we are alive, we are conscious, and me must deal with it!

Modernism may have been a pipe dream, but we can't live without the hope it provides. After all, Prometheus’ gift to man (alongside fire) was blind hope. Postmodernism is an acceptance of a world without hope, without some sort of foundation (because structure and form are illusory). Is that really what we want, to keep hope trapped inside Pandora’s box? (All of these references to mythology indicate to me my own longing for some sort of historical precedent; perhaps that is because our generation rests between modernism and postmodernism.) Postmodernism, on the other hand, leaves every question unanswered and a pungent sense that originality is a fallacy.

Although I’m reminded of a lot of contemporary plays where these issues are hotly debated, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is the quintessential example. The play takes place during the turn of the millennium. There is fear that the world will end, or worse, remain as is. Many of the main characters describe life in America as evoking motion sickness while remaining perfectly immobile. Ideas on justice, history, religion, race, politics and love are challenged in a postmodern world. Harper, an agoraphobic married to a closeted republican homosexual, sits inside all day cogitating these paradoxes. In a mutual dream sequence she shares with Prior, a prophet dying from AIDs, they discourse over “the limitations of the imagination.” (I.vii.) She says, “Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions… So when we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don’t you think it’s depressing?” (I.vii.)
That’s right! Postmodernism is depressing. I’ve heard tirades similar to Harper’s from frustrated screenwriters, who claim that there are only a fixed number of plots within human consciousness and that all stories are merely remixed versions of these finite plot lines.

So, let’s say that we accept the nonexistence of objective reality (that everything is relative and originality is a myth); what does that society look like, where we no longer strive to be gods but resign ourselves to the nonpartisan position of the satyrs? Someone needs to stop this before we all become cynical Sileni!

Beware of Hikikomori!

I’d like to narrow this chapter down to one specific quote: “In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” (Andy Warhol) His prediction certainly seems to be coming true. Since the advent of the Internet in conjunction with standard modes of communication (like television, radio, and magazines), hierarchal structures in entertainment and elsewhere are flattening out. Thomas L. Friedman, who wrote The World is Flat, spoke last week about how this same trend is occurring in the buisness world as well. Anyone and everyone can compete. As a result, the media, which has generally been controlled in the past by either corporations or governments, is now in the hands of the populace (or, I’d go so far as to say the proletariat). This level playing field has advanced all cultures worldwide one-step closer to a utopian society where everyone is equal. But is equality really a good thing?

In the animated movie, The Incredibles, Helen Parr tells her son, “Everyone’s special, Dash.” To which he retorts, “Which is another way of saying no one is.” If everyone is allowed his or her fifteen minutes of fame, then stardom will cease to be desirable; communal validation of self-worth will cease to be a tenet of our modern society. Instead of self-worth being determined through meritocracy, it’ll have to be engendered internally. The noted increase in narcissism in today’s youth can be seen as an unconscious reaction to the horizontal societal structure upheld by the Internet. As this horizontal structure clashes with Western ideals of individuality, self-discovery may even be forced into realms of complete isolation. In order to preserve self-worth, individuals may close themselves off from the rest of the world, neglecting the presence of others, while clinging to an illusory notion of uniqueness.

This trend has already started to take hold in Japan. Hikikomori are adolescent males who have completely withdrawn from society, basically refusing to come out of their rooms. I watched a whole anime series on this “sociological phenomenon” called NHK ni Yokoso! Although it may sound like an amusing prospect, locking yourself away in your room (in your parent’s house, no less), it is a serious all consuming form of depression. And if my hunch is correct, this new horizontal societal structure may have something to do with it.

“Yay!” for communists. “Boo!” for capitalists. Of course, then again I could be wrong about this whole thing and simply expressing my own fears of digital Maoism. However, let me warn you by saying that Jennifer Hudson winning the Oscar for best supporting actress is only a foretaste of the feast to come.