The frailty of megavisual flow

[imomus]

When art critic Peter Fuller talked about the "megavisual tradition" -- meaning television, advertising, billboards and so on -- he seemed to take it for granted that no art could ever be that huge and powerful. Artists like Victor Burgin could spoof advertising, but advertising would never concern itself with anything so small as a visual artist.

And yet in retrospect we see the utter frailty of the mega-visual tradition. Part of a flow-culture, anchored in the ephemeral moment, bound up with products long-since forgotten, these seemingly-omnipotent posters and TV ads have mostly been swept away. It's now much easier to find a Victor Burgin image on the internet than, say, a 1970s Stork SuperBlend ad. The tables have turned -- posterity gives art the last laugh.



Or does it? Something extraordinary is happening in the age of Web 2.0. The ephemeral is gaining the upper hand again. When YouTube first went up, there was hardly anything there. But amazingly quickly this empty larder has been stocked with increasingly obscure snippets. Not only can anyone with a computer now see rare clips of David Bowie (at the height of his beauty) on the Dinah Shore Show in 1975 -- something you could once only see at some friend's house, a friend who'd ordered the tape from a bootlegger -- but there are dozens of, for instance, 1970s Japanese TV ads. Once these rarities would have been less accessible than, say, David Bowie's 1975 album or the Toshiba TVs they advertised. Now they're much more accessible than the art or the products of the day. The once-ephemeral flow of long-forgotten TV is being restored, here and there, in dots and spots, like a long-lost Renaissance mural. We'll never get the whole picture, of course, but it's a glimpse.



This megavisual flow is still a frail one. The tape wobbles, the colours bleed, the businesses advertised have long since gone belly up. And it's precisely this frailty which makes many of these ads so attractive. They need us now, more than ever, to save them from death, oblivion, obscurity. Like pathetic ghosts clad in the absurd, tattered fashions of another age they call to us, ask us to give them a second life as curios, souvenirs, comedy turns, anything.



Japan National Railway campaign "Discover Japan"

Misono restaurant, Osaka (wonderful experimental music)

Kimono Musume

Lotte Chocolate

Nozawana Chazuke

Various ad reel

Sun TV ads (businesses too small to be able to afford today's TV ad rates)

Takarazuka Onsen (Western men in the sauna, someone tell Debito!)

Sake Ohzeki

Shihokaku Tourism

[Error: unknown template video]

Kao Popinzu detergent comparison (Mary Poppins reference? This detergent doesn't exist any more; it became New Poppins, then disappeared, washed clean out of the market.)

Toshiba's corporate anthem, which goes:

Flashing, flashing, Toshiba
Spinning, spinning, Toshiba
Running, running, Toshiba
Singing, singing, Toshiba
Everything is Toshiba, the mark of Toshiba!

All these videos are hosted by just one YouTube user, Dorataro. So I suppose the internet revival of flow is even more frail than the original television flow used to be. Dorataro would just have to pull the plug on these ghosts and they'd fly away back to their electronic graveyard.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This megavisual flow is still a frail one. The tape wobbles, the colours bleed, the businesses advertised have long since gone belly up. And it's precisely this frailty which makes many of these ads so attractive. They need us now, more than ever, to save them from death, oblivion, obscurity


for a moment, i thought you were talking about yourself. sorry, i mean ourselves.

[(Anonymous)]

and this notion of web 2.0, please it's pathetic

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I´m still rubbing my hands over the fact that those Dinah Shore shows with Bowie are now available to everyone. Let Bowie try and deny he and Iggy Pop were doing it nooooooowww! Mwahahahahahahahaa!

That clip where he´s being taught karate is brilliant, too.

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. As a person who responds largely to sound rather than visual cues ("He's a great singer who is attractive" rather than "He's very attractive and a talented singer"), I appreciate your directing me to YouTube as a well of cultural iconography, not just in this post but in many others. I wouldn't have thought to look there.

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

stop being an anonymous cunt.

"Et Tu, YouTube?"

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

I fear this may be coming to an untimely halt, in whole or at least in large part:

THis is my most recent post on the matter:

I really really hope the "ride" isn't over. This newfound freedom from joyful yet really really open media like Youtube--they've started to give into intimidation.
Which is to say, I look through all my favourited-videos only find dozens and dozens 'mysteriously' missing in gaps all throughout. "Video unavailable" they say each above them in a red font as merciless as it is bracketed, which is to say, completely and utterly. Unabashedly evil and incomprehensibly brutal.

Things which technically don't even belong to anyone's real copyright anymore are ostensibly being taken down because the user accounts with which they were uploaded have been "suspended", ie. pulled in sheer fear of the music/entertainment/movie industry's bugfuck insane class-action lawsuits and overall violent attempted "cleansing" of all infringers.

They traffic in art, but they are by no means of it.

Somebody had better show the system itself crumbling before they make an arbitrarily, technically irrevocable dent in the freedom of film clips and all else they signify, that we have come to love as embodied by the zeitgeist of sites like YouTube.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Poor Henry Winkler.

Bowie makes a couple interesting observations on being self-invented here.

Mega-Ephemeral

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

Maybe all the interest and infringements will motivate someone to create I'm sure! Nastalgic emotions are a strong escape to that sweet feeling.

How tasty, an evening of Paganini!

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

It's funny how Bowie claims to not be a good singer.

At a time (the 70's) when a singer hitting the high note was replaced by a guitar solo he stood out as one of the few great crooners of the time.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

All the great crooners were "actors".

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

[(Anonymous)]

Est-ce qu’il y a une version française de vous?

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately for user Doritos, and all of us, Youtube pretty much purges any content that vaguely resembles non-user generated now that Google has purchased it.

All my favorite weird music videos are gone, even if they aired on totally obscure and defunct music shows and networks - apparently they didn't feature enough gawky teenagers or rednecks on webcams giving their thoughts about Norbit.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh yeah, some dude already commented on that. But still - the zeitgeist is zeitgeistiër than ever.

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

traduisons-le nous-mêmes!

[(Anonymous)]

Ce serait un projet dur! Mon anglais n'est pas très bon.

Re: "Et Tu, YouTube?"

[intergalactim.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure if everyone knows about this or not,
but about a month ago i learnt about Vixy, which lets you save videos off you tube, and all the conversion is done online, which is pretty cool. (it doesn't work everytime, maybe too much web traffic??)

http://vixy.net/

[(Anonymous)]

stop being a cunt

Stay

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

I hate to niggle when it comes to St Davidus; but for me, he looks a right old nincompoop here - jigging about using moves nicked off some dick in a nightclub somewhere, in front of an appalling discofunk-lite backing band. Look at him, harnessed in the trappings of the mode!

Nah, that's not a groove; this is a groove...

[(Anonymous)]

yeah, be a registered Livejournal user cunt instead!

faceless cowards

[(Anonymous)]

who can't face up to their Livejournal arguments in real life!

Default login

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

http://slashdot.org/submit.pl (http://slashdot.org/submit.pl)

Re: "Et Tu, YouTube?"

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

Thank you so fucking much!!

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

Haha That dude was me, and I'm not a dude.

I feel recognized.

How come google is doing that when it's supposed to be all "don't be evil" and "fight the power"...? Sigh

Naive dreams are mine.

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

All my favorite weird music videos are gone, even if they aired on totally obscure and defunct music shows and networks

Not all! THey just keep on coming.

Can't stop the zeitgeist, yo.

Re: Default login

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

Ahahah!

Re: faceless cowards

[beketaten.livejournal.com]

my "real life" arguments can get pretty violent, actually.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link to the ads !

discover japan is my favourite. and in a way that's my favourite era. though i was only a baby i remember the sunshine.

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

i was watching these a couple of days ago!
love these kizakura sake ads most:

[heliumflash.livejournal.com]

> but about a month ago i learnt about Vixy, which lets you save videos off you tube, and all the conversion is done online, which is pretty cool.

that sounds interesting, thanks.

> Est-ce qu’il y a une version française de vous?

je crois que tu peux traduire web pages avec google, ici:

http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools?hl=en

(mais de temps en temps les mots ne sont traduiee correctement et sont tres amusant!)


> They need us now, more than ever, to save them from death, oblivion, obscurity. Like pathetic ghosts clad in the absurd, tattered fashions of another age they call to us, ask us to give them a second life as curios, souvenirs, comedy turns, anything.

beautifully put. i love the basic premise of this piece, imomus. at the time of their creation (not forgetting the work environment in which adverts are created - ad agencies) adverts seem to possess some inherent power and importance, but with hindsight they seem almost quaint.

i think this is because the raison d'etre of adverts is purely financial. at the time, power emanating from money seems important and to have influence, but no one is ever remembered and revered after their death for being rich.

the bowie interview was interesting. i liked what he was saying about stripping yourself down and examining what you like and dislike about yourself, and his subsequently realising that he didn't like his shyness, and so he deliberately set up situations where he would have to confront that shyness.....