Catch a falling mag and put it in your pocket

[imomus]

It's amazing how quickly iPhone / iPod Touch apps are evolving. It reminds me of the early days of Macintosh, when everyone was coming up with new extensions and control panels (they'd load across your screen with app-like icons, or billboards popping up on a highway), or the early days of the web, when there seemed to be a new gimmick for loading a webpage every week (for a while we were all making our pages flash like lightning as they loaded up). Apps, though, have the potential to be much more useful than either.



Already, musician friends are thinking in terms of iPod apps the way they once might have thought of releasing albums on labels. Who needs a label when an app could be a worldwide delivery system for people interested in your music? Or how about keeping up with Japanese magazines? I've already mentioned Nakatree Viewer, a free app that lets you look at the paper ads for magazines that hang in Japanese subway cars.



Nakatree Viewer began as the ad sheets themselves (typically showing a modified version of the mag's latest cover), then added pop-up QR codes allowing you to access some of the content of the magazines. Now there's talk of the Viewer actually taking you to online versions of the magazines, either reduced versions (like Courrier Lite, a standalone application for one mag) or full ones.



At a time when magazines are dropping like flies, giving them a new distribution platform is giving them the chance of new life. Whether the iPhone is the ideal reading environment for magazines is another matter. I have a digital subscription to The Wire, but prefer to read it on my big computer, or on paper. But when Apple releases its iPhone-OS tablet computer -- rumoured either for next month or early next year, depending on who you believe -- who knows?



Now Nakatree Viewer is joined by a similar app, Pick-Up Museum Cafe, which allows you to see posters for the art, design and museum shows currently on in Japan. The shows themselves, of course, will never be shrunk down to pocket-size. Or will they?

Comments

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I think what you see in this video is the start of the future of books & magazines. The ipod isn't the right platform for reading material because it's too small, but if you make a device like that bigger you end up with a clunky slab that isn't particularly tactile or appealing to read from. With an ultra-flat, ultra-light and slightly flexible display, it would be like carrying around a piece of laminated paper (I imagine they'll have invented lighter, flatter and more efficient batteries in the future). You could store thousands of books and magazines on this one LCD "sheet" of A4 no thicker than a piece of cardboard.

[loveishappiness.livejournal.com]

I like that. It's one of the few things I've seen that improves on paper technology rather than just imitating it. It has the same problem as the paper imitators though; it's more comfortable to read off of paper that off of a back-lit screen. Especially if your job is to look at a back-lit screen all day.

[(Anonymous)]

Who needs a label when an app could be a worldwide delivery system for people interested in your music?

So much new music sounds like shite because it's been poorly recorded - and/or mastered to be played on a phone. The craft of making records (and the ability to listen to music) has been lost.

[(Anonymous)]

“Who needs a label?” has been on the cards for 15 years (?) or so. And as false as it is true.

False - because the notion that you can get the audience (or the fun) bands had when labels existed has never been achieved. You need marketing, cash for hotel bills and parking tickets. Arctic Monkeys had a quarter of a million pounds spent turning them into “MySpace success stories”. But if you want the dole and to be a name on a playlist on iPhone, you got it!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you'd probably be better off, pound for pound, doing your own promotion with a bank loan -- which is what a record label is anyway, but you also have to pay rent for their offices and subsidize their other artists.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Record labels are essentially just banks with music distribution connections. They don't perform any ultra-special function that the average person, with enough time and some extra resources, couldn't do him/herself.

[(Anonymous)]

But does the bank loan culture produce music that is less commercially driven, or more? Will spotty 17 year olds dressed like the Jesus and Mary Chain get them - or just some Simon Cowell character? And can bands be bothered to fill tax returns. They whole point of the maligned music industry was to let artists get on with their thing!

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

I think artists have only gotten more involved, generally speaking, in all of the various processes (songwriting, production, recording, promoting, distribution) that were once farmed out to agents working behind the scenes. So yeah, I think that artists can fill out their tax returns, or at least hire a proper accountant on their own to do it for them.

[(Anonymous)]

I was talking less about recordings, which have been homemade and web distributed for years (where did "Peoplesound" go?) than about live tours, promotion and marketing, becoming a household name, affecting the national or global culture - the stuff that traditionally prevented people needing a second job.

I'm possibly suggesting that the punk ethos is reversed now - we have TOO MUCH do-it-yourself and not enough svengalis who want to effect national or global culture.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

So independent music hasn't affected global culture at all? That's a laugh. It doesn't need to be one guy working out of his garage to be DIY. All the tiny indie labels around the globe are part of that ethic too. And to argue that nobody coming off an indie label has had an effect on global culture would be asinine at best.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes it often happens when they come off the indie label! Did indies shock, get talked about, spread new ethics as much as glam, punk, new romantic or hippy movements? Certain artists at certain times maybe. Even acid house depended to some extent on the publicity of the national newspapers.

I guess I've always been fascinated at the point where an inclusive movement catches on and affects 'the public'. I get the feeling that someone like Momus might disown a movement precisely at that point; try to stay aloof from it or ahead of it. But it is an important emblem of the national mood, which uncountable independent creators all in their little cells might not be able to paint. It takes artists and journalists too. And even, yes, weasly business people.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

You're right, the largest portion of an indie label's "success" will tend to be regional. The proliferation of indie labels in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. is a great example. I would argue that there exists a proud aesthetic tradition of rock in that region (though not one that I personally find very alluring), and it doesn't come directly out of anybody "breaking" on a major label (though several bands have broken out to a larger audience over the decades).

I think the problem with your line of thought is that it still takes the linear progression model of success as a given, i.e. you start local, then become regional, then national, then international, etc. But it's entirely possible now, more than ever, for a person in Japan to be listening to American bands that most Americans have never heard of before. I saw a band here in Korea that mixed several Teenage Fanclub covers in with its originals, and seemed to be particularly influenced by them. Who knows what that influence can lead to, and the kind of non-linear audience building it could do for a band in an entirely different part of the world?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

So I guess the point is that the definition of "breaking big" will likely change for the lion's share of musical acts in the future. But honestly, who cares? Why does there always have to be a big wave?

I think one of the larger problems with the "big wave" idea of popular music is that it forces us at once to conceive of something fresh and new, but also to recreate that which we already know to have happened (like the "rock renaissance" of the late 60s, or whatever). We're always asking the question "What is this generation's such-and-such moment?" But at the same time, we want everything to be original and surprising. The "big wave" notion just pushes us into this troublesome contradiction, and one which rarely has interesting results.

[(Anonymous)]

"The craft of making records (and the ability to listen to music) has been lost."

I think you are confusing two seperate issues. The fact that we have access to more music, means that of course some of it is going to be dreadful. But there is still plenty of beautifully conceived, recorded & produced records being made, and if you arent hearing them then perhaps the problem lies with you?

[(Anonymous)]

Not so sure about that. Please list some beautifully conceived, recorded & produced records released in 2009. Most new releases have been compressed to death and have no dynamic range to speak of.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus (and anyone else out there who would like to share) - being a well informed fellow, was there ever a point when you found yourself having to consciously take a stance on capitalism and its proliferation of amazing new commodities?

Is it possible to separate the excitement that comes from new inventions (which in itself may be an entirely 'innocent' enthusiasm that is merely exploited by State ideology) from the awareness that all these new inventions are part of a larger dysfunction?

I'm just intrigued about your stance on this, as I'm sure you're well read on the revolutionary avant-gardes, Marx, etc. Do you seperate the two in your mind, or do you even find yourself having to?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't think new inventions are capitalist per se. Leonardo da Vinci's inventions and the Sputnik are both exceptional and exciting technological developments which come from very different social systems.

It's interesting that the American gadget I talk about today -- the new Apple Tablet (http://www.slashgear.com/apple-tablet-september-launch-reiterated-by-chinese-leaks-2850502/) -- is a joint product of the USA and Taiwan: "Foxconn is the manufacturer tipped to be assembling the device, the same company – Hon Hai Precision Industry – as manufacturers Apple’s existing iPod range." Taiwan's own political status is complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan), to say the least.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, new inventions are really nothing per se: a collection is atoms is neither capitalist nor an invention, depending on how reductionist your angle is. What I'm getting at is how these commodities are used by the system; how they direct energy down certain channels; how they get us looking in a certain direction, or thinking in a certain way. This is not, of course, down to the invention (I'm sure if it could talk it would assure us it had no ulterior motives). Do you think about this, have you ever thought about this, and if so how does it fit into your politics/philosophy?

Are you suggesting that you see the invention outside of the system of production in which it is proliferated?

I'm sorry, I realise this line of inquiry is an old saw to many, but I thought you may be able to provide an interesting slant, being well read and conscientious whilst also very enamoured by new technology, advertising, etc.

(I should point out that I'm not attempting to push some sort of Marxist agenda, and, having not read any Marx I wouldn't even know what that is. I am, perhaps, looking for counsel from someone who has lived a little longer.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I certainly don't see the invention outside the system of production which creates it, but neither is it determined by that system of production. Sorry if that's a wishy-washy answer!

I think great tech achievements can generate charisma for the culture that produces them: Sputnik was a great boost for the Soviet system, and the moon landings gave the US an aura which pretty much offset its appalling behaviour in Vietnam at the time. This charisma is used to generate legitimacy, which can spread across the whole spectrum of a state's actions. Technology is properly classed as "hard power" -- and it so often takes the form of weaponry -- but it can also generate a lot of "soft power" for a state, making it seem popular, competent, advanced and just even if its other actions don't bear this out.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Well, in the case of Apple, if you look at the history of the company, it really does embody the spirit of entrepreneurship and *gasp* capitalism.

In my view, I think we need to look at what capitalism produces, and to what extent capitalism is capable of producing social "evils," and judge it on those grounds. I don't have a significant problem with Apple products, but I'm not so enamored of, say, the F-22 Raptor from Lockheed Martin/Boeing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor), which even the U.S. military doesn't want (apparently it doesn't work in the rain), but which a few corrupt politicians in the pocket of the military industrial complex are trying to ram down its throat at taxpayer expense.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Great NOVA episode on the behind the scenes of the making of the F-22 -- Battle of the X-Planes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNszWU7hTw&feature=fvw)

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

I'll have to watch that. I think it's really sad how many politicians deplore federal make-work programs, but because this fighter jet that the Pentagon doesn't even want creates jobs for people in 46 states, we must plow on ahead and waste a ton of money. You know, we could just as easily employ people in (at least) 46 states doing make-work jobs building mass transit systems, and this would have the added benefit of actually being able to use the resulting product.

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps it's also about what the system encourages, as well as produces.

When we become enamoured with ads, it is probably the case that we are enamoured by aspects that are unrelated to their instrumentality; in other words, we like them because they've been made by creative people who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do; just as the people they make the ads for are genuinely enthusiastic that the ad will generate sales.

It is pushing us in directions, and some of them might be 'positive', some may be 'negative'. For example, a lot of ads appear to promote the idea of the individual; the individual goes on a magic quasi-spiritualistic journey that is somehow connected to the commodity (or sometimes not at all). The individual gains ascension through technology. Where is the community? How does the individual share this experience?

If it is not the individual, then it is often the conventional couple (male/female), ensconced within their journey. I realise this isn't all ads, but I just use this as an example. Directions, and motivations for directions.

Where are apple taking us?

[(Anonymous)]

Where are apple taking us (and why are they taking us there?)

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Well, I think that relating the experience of an individual is probably the best way to sell a product to an individual. If everything were purchased with a collective wallet, I'm sure ads would be geared toward relating group or community experiences.

But the interesting thing about ads for Apple computers--and this has been the case for decades now, with their products--is how they focus on their technology allowing individuals to create things that they can then share with larger communities. They focus just as much on their software offerings--the uses of which are illustrated via the hardware--as they do on the hardware itself. Which is why I think Apple has a distinct advertising advantage over, say, Microsoft, or dedicated computer hardware companies. Dell cannot, for instance, guarantee that Microsoft Windows will have built-in features that allow users to create sharable experiences for friends, family, community, etc. Apple, on the other hand, can guarantee a sort of software/hardware unity, and really sell the entire experience to the customer. I think that's what makes Apple feel like a more consumer-friendly company, because they're making entire experiences, not just a single cog in the workings of one.

[(Anonymous)]

That is an interesting observation.

I can't help but feel that, with a lot of the creative software that is pushed onto us (software that makes 'creativity' ever easier, and that seems to bring us closer to what D.W.Winnicott described as 'creative living') we are being sold the tools without the underlying framework that would guide us in using these tools.

In other words, we are sold the tools of the creative life, but we are unprepared for how to use them. 'Creativity' is conventionalized, and becomes anything but. So the system talks creativity, whilst continually directing our energies away from self-development, the very thing that would enable us to truly 'live creatively' rather than live the facade of creativity (which is really just another lifestyle option). Creative living goes hand in hand with psychological maturity, not with products that make the motions of creativity easier.

And it may well be that often these products can distract us from ever looking inward; they become part of the continual motion of modern-living.

Surely the best thing you can create, and share with the community, is yourself? Self-development is, in the last, an act in service of the community.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

But that's not what Apple is saying. They're not saying "Our product will make you creative," but rather "You can be creative with our product, and you don't need tens of thousands of dollars in order to own it."

I don't think it takes real in-depth observation to make the claim that technological development, over time, has given regular individuals without access to massive amounts of funds or gatekeeper-protected institutions, the ability to create more and more things on their own. It used to be, for example, that video production was a pretty niche thing, because you needed a room full of expensive equipment to do it all. But now you have completely "normal," otherwise lay members of the larger community (in video production terms) putting together videos for everybody to see on sites like Youtube. There can't be any argument that these systems--cheap PC-based video editing platforms, cheaper digital camcorders, and a free, highly accessible online community--don't foster creativity in a larger segment of the population.

[(Anonymous)]

You can be creative with a sheet of A4 paper and a pen, and you don't need tens of thousands of dollars to own them.

I think you're right, that the ability to get involved in certain creative endeavors has increased with the proliferation of enabling technology. Perhaps what concerns me is the motion that all this technology creates, that creation is now a part of the wider distraction; the constant beat and thrum of the fast paced, creative existence. Now you have no excuse not to be going through the motions.

I guess we need to define 'creativity'; Eric Berne, in describing his idea of the creative life said "Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way, and not the way one was taught."

I'm not against all this technology. But I think that you can appear to be creative whilst acting mindlessly and conventionally; in other words, whilst not being truly creative (where creativity is a product of awareness) at all.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

But the problem is that one can always act mindlessly and conventionally, while appearing creative, whether one does it on Apple hardware or with a simple paper and pen. I think it's a bit of a cliche to pull out that argument when talking about technology, because the implication is that technology causes this problem, when this is pretty obviously not the case.

[(Anonymous)]

Technology does not cause the problem; it is inert and without motive or intention. If there is a problem, then it is undoubtedly 'caused' by a number of incremental factors; advertising, unconscious ideology, etc. If people don't want to grow up and take responsibility for themselves then they won't, and the State will provide them with all the distractions that they need to not have to. I guess this comes down to the individual level.

Again, sorry, I realise I'm not saying anything you probably haven't heard a thousand times before. Is it boring and old-hat to talk of the State now? Are we 'over' that one now?

Incidentally, what do you mean by a cliche? Is a a bad thing to pull out a cliche? If we cannot talk cliches, what does this imply for discussion?

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Well I think the problem is that we're talking about technology and you're dragging out the old luddite arguments about technology stifling "real" creativity, or whatever. I mean, even if you say you're not making that argument, it certainly sounds like are. But I think it's an entirely different topic altogether. People can and do produce conventional crap under the guise of creative genius in all media, high-tech or low-tech. So what's your argument? That high-tech gadgets exacerbate/accelerate the problem? That they don't do enough to solve the problem? I don't think I'd get behind either of these arguments if you made them, but at least we'd be talking about the same issue.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I didn't really intend to construct an argument. That would probably involve being assured of my position, and I'm certainly not. But I still like to air ideas, even if it does mean looking like a luddite.

If we take a photographer like William Eggleston; William Eggleston could not be William Eggleston these days (in other words, if he was to emerge now, he would not become well known in the way that he is) because his style has been territorialized by the masses. With the advent of the digital camera/camerphone, everyone is shooting like Eggleston. But what makes Eggleston great is that his shots come from a genuinely skewed and idiosynchratic view of the world, even if they do appear rather mundane at times.

It feels like we are sold the illusion of creativity. You have individuated because you have a flickr page. I don't know if there is even a problem here; maybe the illusion of creativity is a positive advance, maybe its all that most can hope for: we can't all be Eggleston.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Of course Eggleston couldn't be "Eggleston" these days. Nor could you be "you" these days (i.e. whatever you were 10, 15, 20 years ago). I'm just not sure that, with technology, we're actually losing anything that we haven't always lost with the passage of time, i.e. the ability to be exactly what we were, back whenever.

Who is "selling" the "illusion of creativity"? Is it Apple? Are we still talking about them? I think Apple sells their computing products as tools that make many types of creativity possible, not as wonder devices that will make you into an awesome artist. I don't think I've ever seen an ad or promotion for Apple products that comes even close to doing such a thing.

And I'm not sure a flickr page means anything more than that you want to store/share photos with others. I don't see flickr going out of their way to promote their service as something which inherently makes its users into creative heavyweights.

[(Anonymous)]

With Eggleston, its more the point that technology has allowed a type of creativity to be territorialized. It has become very easy, and more democratic. But Eggleston was an unconventional individual. So we see a million people who shoot like Eggleston, but its largely just facade. We become aware that, as a nation (I can only talk about Britain here), we are becoming much more creative; lots of creative magazines, photographers/ illustrators everywhere, etc. It looks like, from the outside, we've reached the kind of society that those involved in Fluxus dreamt about.

But what they were largely getting at was mindfulness. The ability to slip and slide between categories, to not get caught in mindless assumptions and conventions. Yet it seems that the tools of the creative life (which, at one point in time, would have been viewed as the mindful life) have been territorialized and recuperated into the mindless flow of events.

No-one is selling the illusion. Noone is responsible. How does ideology build up? Apple don't sell ideology (i think), but they reinforce it and contribute, if only incrementally, towards it.

It could well be that the makers of Flickr have absolutely no idea how their invention will impact on society. Its down to the critical theorists to explain it to them years later. How they sell their site doesn't necessarily seem to matter here. Also, a Flickr site can be many, many things; at best perhaps, a way to share and store photos.

Twit Opera

[(Anonymous)]

My enjoyment of adverts and magazines has now been shrunk down to pocket-size!

Re: Twit Opera

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hmm, not really vicious enough for Twit Opera. How about:

"Can you read these Japanese magazines? I sure as hell can't. But they're great."

Re: Twit Opera

[(Anonymous)]

not all the twit entries are vicious. plenty of banal shit about knowing other c-list celebrities, etc.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Kindle and the future of reading (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read that already. And I'm tempted to agree with him about the iPod beating Kindle hands down -- even without using the Kindle!

This one goes up to 11

[(Anonymous)]

The Kindle is the Spinal Tap of electronic devices.

Re: This one goes up to 11

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

yeah kindles are retarded (I havent touched one though).
I do like the idea that multiple sources are avaliable. Like you can read a book, or choose a kindle or iphone etc...

[(Anonymous)]

Is it good to be able to get whatever book we want, whenever we want it? Now that we've booted God out the door, are we making our way closer to his throne?

Click your fingers, and you shall have it!

Nothing to do with Japan

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Momus, would you agree or disagree that Edinburgh is "the chaotic, and smelly, Athens of the North"?

"Scotland's capital needs rescuing from tram barricades and a rat infestation, says Alan Cochrane":

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/alancochrane/5967023/Welcome-to-Edinburgh-the-chaotic-and-smelly-Athens-of-the-North.html

Re: Nothing to do with Japan

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Edinburgh is often described as "the Athens of the north" because of a cluster of 19th century white elephant projects up on Calton Hill, budget overruns which far outstripped the trams and parliament that columnist deplores, and which ended up serving no good purpose. I'm all for both the trams and the parliament.