So Glad To Meet You Angeles

Made up my mind to make a new start, Going to California with an aching in my heart. Someone told me there’s a girl out there With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
- Led Zeppelin Going to California

It’s been a whole year since I’ve lived in Los Angeles, and though it seems like such a short time, I’ve really made a home here. I feel more at home here than I do in Las Vegas, where I’ve lived for nearly seventeen years. It’s December 16th, and come December 20th, Los Angeles will become yet another place I visit, rather than call home. I’ve always had such a vivid picture of LA painted in my tiny head - - it was the place where Zeppelin made a second home, where The Doors ran mad in Venice Beach and got kicked out of The Whiskey for crudeness, it’s where Anthony Kiedis shot up heroine under the bridge, and it’s where I surfed, studied, raved and played for one of the best years of my life. I’ve had some wild adventures and have met and lived with some of the most inspiring people here, and I feel all the better for it, so I suppose this blog is about how I plan to immortalize my experience here in LA through media, but really, it’s about saying goodbye.

Media played a huge role in making me come out to LA to go to school at USC. Don’t get me wrong, USC is reason enough to go, but really, I came for the LA vision that I had in my head. This vision that was melded together with various song lyrics, rock stories and serene pictures of six foot swells in El Porto. I’m here now because I was chasing an idea of California that was influenced by images such as these:

I chased LA because of the words of Anthony Kiedis - - "I drive on her streets cause shes my companion I walk through her hills cause she knows who I am She sees my good deeds And she kisses me windy I never worry Now that is a lie", Robert Plant - - "The sea was red and the sky was grey,Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today." and those of Jim Morrison - -"Where the little girls in their hollywood bungalows Are you a lucky little lady in the city of light Or just another lost angel...city of night." I know it sounds a tad lame, maybe even contrived, but these are the guys I "grew up with" in a sense, and these are the art forms that really made a lasting impact on my perception of the world. My only hope now is that I can create something that will pay tribute to my muses, if not influence someone else's little world.

Anyways, I've learned a lot this semester working with the IML and want to create a pastiche of media images and sounds to pay tribute to my time here. It'll be a project juxtaposing images of the past with images of my experiences in Los Angeles. I've always been a bit stuck in the past, in the sense that I can't get over old rock legends and their stories. I probably know more about Zeppelin and The Doors than I do about any contemporary musician. Although they've been influential in my life, I think it's time to let them go and start living in the present - - I think making a short film including their influences with where I am today will help me transition back to Vegas without going crazy and missing this city too much. Los Angeles may have terrible air quality and it may be a place where everyone thinks that they are celebrities, but for me, it's my muse - - it's a place where I wake up feeling like crap and go to sleep feeling electrified - - alive. There's so much going on here and for those of you who get to stay - - any day here could be the best day of your life, so stop wasting time.

Jets are like comets at sunset

“…that this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world; in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror” (Jameson 31).

Quote Analysis
Jameson critiques the way in which a postmodern capitalist society has been built on blood and terror. Although the system appears to be progressive, advanced and stable, it also masks the way in which culture is produced. America has gained world power through its overt use of hegemonic bullying, military buildup, nuclear proliferation and war. However, this culture has been removed from the everyday lives of citizens. As Americans, we often feel powerless when it comes to our country’s political decisions, feeling as though we are not responsible for the spilled blood. For my project, I would like to create an environment where users could experience their direct connection with the terror that is produced in our society. The goal of the project would be to focus on our individual responsibility rather than making the outcomes of terror a global responsibility left to the government to solve.

Project Idea Take One
So for my first attempt at tackling the monster which is Adobe Flash Professional 8, I decided I would focus my argument on consumer responsibility, or rather, lack thereof. I wrote up a little blurb about it which said things like this:

In this project I would set up what looks like an online store. Users would have many products they could purchase. They would start with a set amount of money. Their goal would be to keep their money so they could spend more. However, depending on what products they buy, they could potentially loose more money. The goal would be to show how buyers need to be responsible when choosing where or what to buy. For instance I’d have some clothes from Bebe or Guess, ones that are undoubtedly made in sweatshops in low income parts of Asia. If the user decides to buy these products the environment would change and they’d be shown a clip of a horrifying scene in a sweatshop. Also, there would be a Walmart section, where users could again choose from various products. However, if they choose to buy from Walmart, the screen will then show a video or sound clip that demonstrates the effects of urban sprawl or how women who work for Walmart are still paid less than men. There could be many different products from various companies, but in every instance there would be a negative impact to them. I would hope that users would become interested in finding what products do not cause blood, torture, terror or death. However, for the sake of trying to make the site reflect postmodernism, everything would have a negative impact. Therefore making it the responsibility of the user to determine what is true and what is not, and how they can take responsibility for some of the outcomes and hopefully change the way they consume.

This didn’t work out
1. In retrospect, this idea was boring to me. It was too obvious and wasn’t getting the creative juices flowing.
2. I didn’t have the Flash skills to create this environment, let alone create it well enough to distract from the fact that my argument was so general and boring.

Project Idea Take Two
I decided to focus on the part of the quote that says “the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror.” Instead of focusing on consumerism and exploitation, I wanted to focus on “nuclear culture.” I feel that we are a society that often throws around the terms “nuclear war,” “nukes,” “a bomb,” “proliferation,” and “nuclear deterrence” without really thinking about what those words imply, let alone do to actual people, countries, and nations. I feel as though our culture oftentimes revolves around nuclear tactics, but that we have become numb to their actual meanings and functions in society. For instance, “nukes” sounds like some adorable lovechild that North Korea and Iraq have made in their spare time, when in fact it is capable of things like this. So my project aims at taking a closer look into nuclear culture, the things we justify with it, and the way in which we don’t take responsibility for its use. Nuclear deterrence is like a performance, a play in a theater – we individuals as the audience watching the state play all the parts on stage – They do this because they refuse to take responsibility for their own will to violence and for finding solutions to problems – this obsession with the state as the locus of violence precludes us from examining our own violence and actually solving the problem. Nuclear deterrence entrenches state based activism – it forces us to look to the state to solve other problems because we need an institution that is strong enough to scare other countries – This is bad because when the state has the power to save life – it implicitly has the power to take life – this mass genocide ultimately culminates in extinction. By refusing to take part in a system that justifies nuclear use through both language and action, we can reclaim our responsibility to enact violence and mobilize some sort of change. Baby steps do matter.

Challenges with Flash
Flash was the hardest software I’ve ever touched, yet probably my favorite because there are so many possibilities with it. I had a lot of trouble with the text because I was coding in action script rather than just typing words exactly where I wanted them. Although this seemed like a useless tool, action script is actually really dynamic and allows creators to do much more with text than simply typing it in where you want it. I made the mistake of driving to class the day Dave gave a Flash tutorial and incidentally popped my tire and spent that afternoon making friends with Arturo the towing and tire guy. I felt as though I had no clue where to begin with flash so resorted to some online research. For anyone that decides to use flash again, or simply has a question on any software, I highly recommend using http://forums.creativecow.net/. It has entire forums where people discuss how to do certain things using Flash, as well as other Adobe products. This site literally saved my project because I could type in something like “how to encode html script while mousing over text on Flash,” and I’d find a forum where someone already had this question and subsequently had an answer for me.

What I think of my project
I think there are a lot of shortcomings - - the most notable one being that this was supposed to be a visual representation of a Jameson quote, and I relied heavily on text. However, there is a point to my project, it is somewhat boring and has trance-like music, but it was the best way I saw fit to express an idea about being “numb to nuclear use.” Since the idea is that the underside of culture relies on justifying mass killings through nuclear weapons, and that we have become so numb to this idea that we don’t do much to prevent it, I wanted an environment that made nuclear war look pretty normal and standard. However, I relied on the text to show that we should not accept this nuclear culture. The text offered questions to the viewer, and though it did not give strict answers, it provided some food for thought so that the viewer could come to his or her conclusions. The song is from Blur’s Jets, which simply says “jets are like comets at sunset.” I thought this was the most appropriate song because it describes something that can be used as a weapon (for instance we are using jets for air raids on Afghanistan now which are killing hundreds of civilians a day) as a beautiful comet at sunset. It juxtaposes something terrifying and deadly with something magnificent and appealing. In the same effect, I think we often forget how deadly nuclear weapons are, and instead, we simply look at it as a means of protection and security. Nukes are like security blankets at sunset. For the most part, I’m happy with my project, but if I were to do it again I would try to get more movement on the page, I had a lot of difficulty with animation and the timeline and I think that really shows.

Post Paper World
Though I may not read Jameson again, I would hope that many more projects will scratch the use of paper and just be interactive assignments like this one. I think there’s a good chance that will happen, not in the near future, but sometime in the future…hopefully sooner than later. The tools we used in this class provided great new ways for learning content, and I want to continue using them in my near future.

Rabbit in your headlights

Watch this music video. Yes it is five whole minutes of your life - - but you must see the end.

Let me catch you up:
This is a music video directed by Jonathan Glazer for Unkle’s first song off of their 1998 release of Psyence Fiction. The track “Rabbit in Your Headlights” features front man Thom Yorke from Radiohead. The song alone is mesmerizing, but when paired with Jonathan Glazer’s visuals…it becomes, like nicotine coated smack syringes - - addicting - - euphoric - - mind altering.

Form and Function
The song consists of lyrics which could be interpreted as little snid bits of social commentary. Thom Yorke sings “I’m a rabbit in your headlights, Christian suburbanite, washed down the toilet, money to burn.” The chorus offers vivid picture of hypocrisy - - the “rabbit in your headlights” symbolizes the disaffected, disenfranchised broke down existence of most men and women, especially those living far below a 6 figured income. He sings this song to the “Christian suburbanite,” who in this instance, is being characterized as the wealthy people who put on a façade of good willingness and charity, but are in fact only judgmental hypocrites who do little to nothing to benefit the good of the people. The “rabbit in your headlights” can also be interpreted as being put on a spotlight and being completely vulnerable to the menacing smiles and apathy of the “Christian suburbanite.”

Jonathan Glazer’s video delivers Unkle’s message by matching the form of the video to the function of the song. The song contains some really heavy content, and instead of backing out on that message or sugar coating the meaning, Glazer goes straight to the jugular on this one and not only does he do the music justice, but he also creates an environment that supports the music’s message rather than hinder it. The video begins with a man walking through a dark highway tunnel. Cars are swerving around him, not even stopping to help him off the road or rolling down a window to see if he is okay. Eventually cars begin to hit him and drive off. The first hit nearly kills the man, but each one thereafter makes him stronger - - strong enough so that he is getting up right away. The man is speaking in what sounds like tongues, or perhaps is merely gibberish. This imagery presents him as a madman, but what is ironic is the people in the car seem madder because of their apathy at the sight of his destruction. I think the visuals here make the song even more complex because we don’t want to believe that this is actually happening, but instead we can think of the whole scene as a metaphor - - the man has become invisible to society in the same way that the poor, homeless and crazy have become invisible to society. We may make sad attempts at showing concern, but in truth, do we ever really do something about it?! We become so comfortable in our lives that the problems of other people are just things we talk about, analyze, commodify, or in this instance, write about.

Spoiler Alert
The end of the video is pure visual candy. It does something the song alone can not - - which is to redeem the subject of the song, the rabbit in your headlights. There are many ways to interpret this, especially since the man is in the position of a crucifix and there are religious overtones throughout the song. Either the man is a symbol of sacrifice for the rest of society, meaning his misery gives the Christian suburbanites something to throw their money at to feel better, or it simply symbolizes humankinds ability to overcome all of the hardships in life and still live on.

Woke this morning and it seemed to me That every night turns out to be...

A little more like Bukowski...

Adam Long's motion graphics depiction of Charles Bukowski's A Little Bomb is terrifying, depressing, apocalyptic, and down right - - Bukowski. It's disturbing form works perfectly with the meaning of the poem, thus displaying how form and content can parallel one another in order to reinforce the message of the medium.

It was interesting to see this video because I am familiar with this poem, and have always regared it as one of my favorites. However, Adam Long's work only made my experience with the text that much better because of the way the form and content work in unison rather than against one another. For me, A Little Atomic Bomb is about our maniacal desire and willingness to destroy the things in life that are either annoying, troubling, or stressful in order to increase the quality of life. Take this clip of the poem:

"o, just give me a little atomic bomb not too much just a little enough to kill a horse in the street but there aren't any horses in the street well, enough to knock the flowers from a bowl but I don't see any flowers in abowl enough then to frighten my love but I don't have any love "

The poem is asking for "just a little atomic bomb", just enough to destroy something. However, the preceding lines always reveal how we don't even have any of the things we wish to annihilate. Bukowski asks for a bomb to frighten his love, but responds by saying he doesnt have any love. The poem not only taps into the nihilistic and destructive tendencies of the human nature, but it could be interpreted as commentary on how human's have destroyed everything beauitful and are left with nothing, yet continue to act on this willingness to violence.

The text in the video works well with the poem because it is fleeting - - it comes and goes in every direction on and off the screen - - somehwat like our fleeting desires to kill and desroy. It is also written in a dark black scripted cursive text which gives off an eery aetshetic. The motion of the text is made even more interesting by the way that a horse will appear when the poem asks for enough of an atomic bomb to kill the horses in the street, or when a zeppelin flies past the screen and drops that bomb, it blows up and smears blackness all over the screen. These aesthetic variables are not only appealing to the eye, but also to the mind. It draws the viewer into the medium of the message as well as drawing them closer to the meaning of the message. Adam Long's creation also pairs form with content by having interaction between the visual icons and the text. For instance, the poem says "give me a little atomic bomb to scrub in my bathtub...like a dirty loveable child," and then the screen motions the viewer in on the child who looks disturbed and spills out the words "I've got a bathtub." The interaction between visual content and scripted content also reinforces the message. If you were reading this poem strictly out of a book, your mind could wander and interpret the message in various ways - - perhaps even mistaking the poem for something pleasant. But if you were to experience this poem through Adam Long's video, he does not leave the viewer with much room to wander or even flirt with an inkling of optimism because his form, content, sound, and visual aesthetic work in conjunction with each other to create an environment which encompasses Bukowski's appeal.