[rumori] re: Advertising

Steev [rumori] re: Advertising
Thu, 12 Feb 1998 21:40:14 -0800 (PST) (00887377214, Pine.LNX.3.95.980212211858.16116E-100000ATflotsam.detritus.net)

On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Boster, Bob wrote:


>status quo gets appropriated it does send a significantly conflicted
>message out to the audience and that conflict makes the product seem
>"cooler", but it also plants seeds of doubt and dissent. In the face of
>socialism's collapse and the media blanket's extension over every inch
>of real and imagined space a crack in the wall now and again is as much
>as we can hope for.

yeah good point. all we can hope for is incremental change. When Nirvana
hit it big, for example, and "alternative" got coopted, it was kind of noxious, but it was kinda good, cuz it really blew open a bunch of minds
and doors. Same with "electronica". Everytime some trendy beatbox jockey mentions that he likes john cage in an interview in some raver magazine,
thousands of teenagers think "who the hell's john cage?" and then 10 or 12 of them actually look him up, and then maybe 2 of them read "Silence", and their lives are changed forever. heh. no really. that's kinda what
happend to me...


>floating in it like the snow in a cheap piece of tourist schlock
>(snowball) you'd get at the Empire State Building. The whole can be
>viewed from outside as a homogenous mass of water and plastic snow, but
>from inside each of those "tchockes" is bits of plastic is coming from a
>different direction, at a different rate, with a different shape. It
>may be top down, but it doesn't feel that way when you're in it.

i dunno bob. who's outside? it may feel that way to you, but i'm in it
too. and it feels awfully topdown to me. I mean, not in freaky san fran,
sure, but most places, barnes & noble & "Friends" is the height of culture. C'mon, think back to your North Carolina roots!


>I agree again, but the farmboy's take on MTV is inevitably distinct as a
>result of his own experiences, even if those are from other points of

yeah, sure. everyone is an individual, and everyone has their own
experiences and interprtations of those experiences.... i like to talk in
general trends tho... he will fall into "alienated middleamerica youth" demographic, and mtv knows it, and (most importantly) so do their
sponsors... which brings us neatly back to the topic of advertisting! wow.


>>think maybe the answer to this used to be yes. But now appropriation is
>>simply another tool, not even avantgarde anymore, and so the task for
>>people trying to do something subversive is to actually make the contents
>>of the work do the subversion, rather than the technique or form.
>
>Here here. Although the idea that simple juxtaposition calls the
>audience to a critical relationship with the subjects probably isn't
>even enough anymore either.

I thought that's what i was saying. Juxtaposition is the form. But I think
if the elements justaposed are carefully chosen enough, it can still be
powerful. To some at least...


>started at all. I'm a bit worried about the fact that sounds tend to
>make people shut off their thinking and just get caught up in the ear
>candy and that some composers set up for this by eschewing any attempt
>at clear message construction for pure sonic abstraction (Songlines this
>at Mills last night for example).

hah! yup. yup. that's a struggle i've been in for sometime. I had trouble
with that at CalArts too. Composers and musicians, for the most part,
just want to jam. Don't let em tell you otherwise.... ;-)

best,

smh

p.s. congrats, list. this is the first Rumori extended discussion!!

Steev Hise, Subversive Radical Hippy Hacker
steevAThise.org http://www.cyborganic.com/people/steev new recycled art site: http://www.detritus.net -----------------------------------------------------------------
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