Edamame girl

[imomus]

I've been working on my ambient television project. Basically, I like having a TV on in the room, but the less it's doing the more I like it. There's nothing worse than a TV clamouring to fit as many dramatic incidents into each second as possible, or demanding to be watched by getting increasingly violent and strident. (Trailers are the worst for this, cramming the most melodramatic, life-threatening moments from a drama into a few seconds.) What I've found is that the less a television does, and the less it demands to be watched, the more charming it becomes.

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It's hardly a new observation -- artists like Warhol, Cage, Eno and Satie have been telling us that boredom can be interesting for the past century. What I've noticed with my latest piece -- a Japanese girl seen on a site called Girls On Air, eating edamame peas while she waits for someone to pay 100 yen per minute to chat with her -- is that other people's boredom can be interesting too. And, if you slow it down enough, rather sexy.



The edamame girl forms the eighth chapter of my growing collection of ambient pieces, and I'm currently putting them together on a DVD which I might make available if I can find a way to do it that doesn't involve queuing at the post office. That kind of boredom I can do without.

Comments

Watching waiting

[(Anonymous)]

I love the ambient TV project. And watching waiting too. Perhaps you could make one of yourself waiting in line at the post office. Frustration slowed down is maybe not as sexy as eating edamame, but definitely captivating. Here are two waiting videos. One I shot in Hong Kong in airport at 6am when it was practically deserted....

http://www.condensate.net/kimpo_m.html

One by a mate who also makes videos..this one of people being frustrated at not being able to wait in a post ofice queue.

http://www.catherineross.net/Post_Office.html

Re: Watching waiting

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, love the "estranged" Moon River playing in the background in the first one! "The loneliness of lift music"...

Re: Watching waiting

[(Anonymous)]

It's from the musak inside the plane the wee one was waiting to board, so it foreshadows her next bout of waiting I suppose...

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the challenge of art, this century, is somewhere in the middle? Not 'heated up' or 'cool', 'high' or 'low', but looking at how and why identical and repeated drama - of porn, of the sports match, of politics, moral binaries and war (on one level all as changeless as a river) remain compelling, at the core of the human race?

[(Anonymous)]

So where can I download this Momus Ambient TV?

[(Anonymous)]

I just stare at a wall. Imagery itself I find invasive, transcendent and a part of George Bush's war machine. Any use of electricity is a nasty punk spit on green movement and the better future we're all trying to build.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

lol

[(Anonymous)]

I just stare at a wall. Imagery itself I find invasive, transcendent and a part of George Bush's war machine. Use of electricity is a nasty punk spit on the eco movement and the better future we're all trying to build.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

That kind of boredom I can do without.

Kurt Vonnegut disagreed. (http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/18751.html)

It looks like you have some kind of .mac/iweb thing going on. Do you have a url or is it not ready for prime time?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different."

That and puttering about.

If you're in natural settings a lot, ambience is a way of life. No plots, just infinitely complex textures, sounds, forms and light. If you grow up amid such ambience, you need 'supplements' to get you through the day when you live among the humans. Like field recordings of frog calls.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"artists like Warhol, Cage, Eno and Satie have been telling us that boredom can be interesting for the past century"

Artists like me, myself and I are gonna tell you "OMG NO SHIT, SON". replace the word "boredom" with "relaxation" because thats technically what it is -- People enjoy gentle imagry and relaxing to it, It's been like this since the dawn of humanity. Boredom is a state of unrest and unsatifaction, it therefore cannot be interesting, no matter how many over-rated artists try too hard to make something out of nothing and tell you otherwise.


Someone's beat you to the whole ambient DVD thing (oh noes!)...


...and everyone enjoys watching Fishbowls, especially cats. Cats enjoy boredom too! Genius.


Here we see "Hanami" or as I like to call it "Boredom Season". People sit under blossoming trees and watch them... How relaxing boring is that? Those crazy Japs, whats will they think of next eh?

[jimyojimbo.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - Have you ever sat in a room with the girl one on for a long period of time, when you have been trying to do something else - i.e. tested it out as an ambient "thing"? I'd wager that it might start to make you feel creeped out - like you're being stared at, like a painting except more though, because she's moving - so you're more likely to (psychologically) recognize her as "person" not "image", and feel like she's constantly peering at you.... Interesting to see what you think...

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

Tech note: there's a preference in iDVD for turning off that Apple logo if you so desire.

Also, interested in the relationship between resolution and ambience, how more or less compression artifacting works for the slow stuff.

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

http://media1.vcoe.org/eaglecam1

The EagleCam is watchable. Two eagles hatched a baby about two weeks ago.

Something Might Happen

[(Anonymous)]

Something might happen
Something might happen
Something might happen

Re: Something Might Happen

[(Anonymous)]

(iv) I'm glad nothing happened

From "The Metaphysical Impossibility of Living in the White Middle Class Mind"

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure if Satie, Warhol, Cage and Eno were extolling the virtue of boredom per se, they were more perhaps indicating how and why art can be subdued and secondary, a peripheral backdrop to a prosaic activity.
The sleeve notes for Eno's 'Discreet Music' refer to Erik Satie and explain Eno's ambient aesthetic rather well.
'Music For Airports' is of itself somewhat boring but as an accompaniment to a quietude benefiting secondary activity the art's real worth, real use becomes apparent.
Regards - Thomas S.

[(Anonymous)]

All but Cage were bald. Is hair ego? Does hair say to a composer 'Stamp your personality on this thing', baldness say 'Leave it kinda empty, let the listener fill in the meaning, they're probably bigger, smarter and hairier than you anyway'.

[(Anonymous)]

The more obvious message of baldness is "look, I've lost my hair!"

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, if Cage's message is "silence is music too", couldn't he also be saying -- in a very real sense -- "baldness is hair too"?

[mr-ladyfag.livejournal.com]

this reminds me of a part from the unbearable lightness of being (i don't have the book in front of me, but i'll try to get the gist): the beautiful is not in the people cheering and screaming at the may day parade, it's what's happening quietly behind the scenes. your girl eating edamame is a perfect example.

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

i made some stop motion paintings (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TgSrGpd8NOo) inspired by fischinger and the gaps in the action resulted in a series of images illustrated the drying of paint. they ended up being my favorite parts!

maybe you should do a color field painting with really wet paint (i used watercolor) and just film it drying. itd be beautiful and beyond banal!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Those are lovely stop motion paintings, Adam!

Has anyone released an album called "The Sound of Paint Drying"? They should...

[telephoneface.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Wow, and now an article on McLaren...I had no idea he was Scottish. 'Neighbors' is brilliant!

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Lovely article. I want that DVD.

But, edamame isn't peas...

[shadowshark.livejournal.com]

You have to include one of the old Kinetograph recordings that Edison played on loop in the 1890s. Here's a nice one I found:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQBuSFL7Kkg&mode=related&search=

though I sure wish I could find the ones that came right after, when rich people started commissioning 'moving photographs.' The family would get all dressed up and pose for a family portrait, not quite getting the idea of film, so the cameraperson would tell them to move, and the result is these very strange loops of a family all dressed up in the height of fashion, with the mom just walking in circles, the oldest daughter doing some kind of weird robot dance, and the the father marching in place. I have a very vivid memory of what these look like, but I can't seem to find anything on youtube.

I guess you kind of get the idea with the beginning of this one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6oaJ2lm5yV4

Somebody! Find it!

[(Anonymous)]

Momus the thought that instantly cames to my mind is the issue of sustainability. Why don't you save electricity and creative energy by not using your television at all instead of using it and not engaging with it? I saw that Fellini movie 8 1/2 the other week and a point from that movie jumps out at me. Marcello Mastroianni's character is reflecting on a poet whose ideology is basically - if an artist can not create art then the most socially responsible thing to do is to create nothing so at least society will not be filled and polluted with more garbage.
Sorry if I am not terribly articulate *blah*.
-Marc.