The world after 800,000,000 years

[imomus]

The lecture I gave on Tuesday at Future University was about sound and music, but mostly about frames; how a lot of 20th century art was about repositioning frames. Someone asked why I was so interested in John Cage, and I described how I'd first encountered Cage -- at a Cage festival in Rome. It was under the Capitol Hill, in the open air. David Tudor came out to play the piano, but instead of opening the lid and playing notes, went round the back and ran a microphone up and down the strings. Cage and Tudor literally framed the piano for me in a fresh way that evening; they put a frame around the back instead of the front.

I illustrated the lecture with the piece I made (in collaboration with Florian Perret, currently teaching in China, as you'll see if you follow that link) for MoCA's Digital Gallery a couple of years ago, Suffusia. I picked Suffusia because it shows a lot of different frames. There's the slide projector screen, the framing device of the people watching (a masai tribesman, a woman scratching her bum), the looming presence in the background of Mount Fuji. By zooming the Flash file and dragging it around, I kept changing the context of the zany lecture depicted by changing the framing. A whole vista of topics opened up: context, irony, the relativity of meaning, whether the boundaries between different contexts are hard or soft, hostile or friendly, and so on.



The newest piece for MoCA's Digital Gallery is by Aya Takano. It's called The World After 800,000,000 years. (Switch off pop-up blocking when you go there, and switch up the sound, which, like the sound on Suffusia, has been compressed too much and is a bit woolly.) The plot is... well, I'm not quite sure. Aya says "After 800,000,000 years mankind was included too, all the creatures whom we knew fell for a while. However, the follows the way of the evolution agein. Curious things were done, and it evolved even to the creature who was about the same as the human being of the spider present." You just have to click through it, making sure you hold the mouse button down for a while (stuff happens). I like the alternative world it takes me into, a world where dreamy skinny girls seem to be the only remaining humans and sexy whimsy rules the planet. (No, not you, Lord Whimsy.) Wait 800,000,000 years for the real thing or live it now in Flash.

Speaking of Flash, I'm happy to hear that the first couple of Flash animations -- in which Click Opera readers animate Otto Spooky songs -- are nearing completion, 'Robin Hood' and 'The Artist Overwhelmed'. Expect to see something by the weekend or shortly after that.

Finally, as part of this journal's ongoing mission to convince everybody that Japanese women are the coolest people in the known universe, here's the Paris Hilton video by Mu. (As for Paris Hilton herself, I really have no idea who she is, what she looks like, or what she does. Let's reposition the frame to the song about her.)

Comments

Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

isn't it just the objectification of Japanese women if you're not engaging them in their own native language? are they "the coolest" only because they look good and like you?

Re: Objects.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You really think language changes everything? All the communication that shoots out of Aya Takano's Flash piece, or the Mu video, or a Yoko Ono performance like "Cut Piece" or the clothes worn by the girls at Cafe Soso, you think all that can be discounted? That a few words of nihongo would not only be more 'real' than that, but would transform people from objects (bad, right?) to subjects (good, right)? My friend, you not only over-rate language, you attribute magical powers to it.

Re: Objects.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Specular Self (http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/61117.html) was rather a good entry. It makes the point that one of the places misogyny is inscribed in Western culture is precisely in our tendency to over-rate the verbal and to under-rate the 'specular'. We do this by aligning language with things like 'depth, substance, content, conviction, authenticity' and appearances with 'surface, superficiality, form, deception, inauthenticity'.

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

Why do you think the verbal has been overrated? Maybe there's a good reason for it being given primacy, and maybe it just hasn't occurred to you?

Re: Objects.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

I don't recall at the moment whether you made the distinction between verbal and written language, in the above post, but it is interesting that Socrates/Plato prized verbalization above documentation, perhaps for similar reasons to that of Anonymous here.

Re: Objects.

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

Yes, if you believe the classic work by people like Ray Birdwhistell, David McNeill, or Albert Mehrabian, who attempted to quantify such things, words convey relatively little information compared to non-verbal cues (http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/nvcom.htm) such as body language or tone of voice. Not understanding the verbal language may help to focus attention on these normally fairly unconcious channels of communication.

One needs to be aware that these forms of communication vary from culture to culture. Misunderstandings can also arise in non-verbal interactions.

Re: Objects.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

So true. And text-based mediums such as livejournal can occlude the distinction between verbal and written communication.

furtherance to a (particular) Japanese 'object'

[mongoltrophies.livejournal.com]

Was "Cut Piece" where she would invite spectators to snip off pieces of her clothing as she sat and calmly smoked a cigarette?
I had a professor who knew her and told me she based this on ikezukuri sashimi preparation, as in (culled from a random website):

The main open area of the restaurant has a huge pool stocked with fish. As it turns out, it isn't decorative. That's our lunch swimming around. We are shown to a small private room off the main room. We steel ourself with sake and soon the whole fish is brought in on a large platter. The fish has been fileted live, and the slices laid back in the fish. The fish isn't moving, so Nana pokes it with her chopsticks. It flaps its tail weakly, and she and Mrs. Yamanaka squeal. Now Nana and Mrs. Yamanaka have paid top dollar for this meal, and Nana wants to ensure it's memorable. This fish isn't moving to her satisfaction, so she pours a little sake down its throat. That gets it going.

I wonder what, if anything, she intended by the correlation.

Re: furtherance to a (particular) Japanese 'object'

[sparkligbeatnic.livejournal.com]

I've had this once. The hardest part is the feeling of being watched by the fish while you are consuming its flesh.

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

For you to call Momus' interest in Japanese women (and not just women...many things Japanese) objectification, then I think it's safe to say that you haven't interacted with or befriended many Japanese women. Even if you take away language, you can still get to know the person well through other means of communication and by their mannerisms and overall aura. Some of my most meaningful connections are with a family and friend in Japan, and my girlfriend, who recently came to America from Korea.

Besides, there's no need to pretend that you don't take physical appearance into account. What's wrong with being attracted to black hair, a slight build, and pidgeon-toedness! Everyone has their preferences. And they are "the coolest," actually.

Patrick

Re: Objects.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The concept of 'objectification' implies some things I don't agree with:

1. That people are not objects already.

2. That they don't want to be objects.

3. That you can't be simultaneously an object and a subject.

After all, an object is simply how I, a subject, must inevitably appear to others. Seeing myself as an object is seeing myself as others see me. It is a social virtue to internalize the way others see me. That, if anything, is the 'depth' of Japan; deep inside is not 'my personal convictions, which you will discover by quizzing me'. It is, rather, an internalized model of the outside world, the social world. Scratch the surface and you will find a deep version of... the way things look on the surface.

Oscar Wilde put this more wittily. "It is only the shallow who do not judge by appearances."

Re: Objects.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Apologies to Mario, but one of the ways we try to correct misogyny in the West is by making women into untamed, asocial Godzillas, as he did when he wrote "The tribal drumming got eaten by Mu, like probably everything else in this world if we let her." (Someone pointed out the other day that the MTV does a similar thing with its descriptions of female artists, portraying them as big and hard and dangerous.) This strategy actually compounds the misogyny it seeks to escape. The only way to re-valuate femininity positively is to valorise the things that women typically do. That means talking in positive ways about being oriented towards others, and towards society, for instance. It also means accepting that it's extremely important to devote a lot of attention to how you look. Thank goodness women are increasingly able to tell us directly what femininity is actually all about. Aya Takano's Flash piece doesn't show women as Godzilla-like destroyers, it shows childish, feminine characters as the sole survivors of an eco-apocalypse. That's something very well worth paying attention to, not only for what it says about feminine values, but for the survival of our planet. Let's kill this silly myth that women must be Godzillas to warrant respect.

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

But Mu is actually a scary girl though, super-scary, it feels like she would really chop your wee-wee off if you pissed her off. But it's also playful scary, and she would dress up like Lorena Bobitt while doing it. If you hear all of her music you'll see she's totally like Godzilla, though in a comic overacted kind of way, with the growl noises and cardboard buildings included
mario

Re: Objects.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

This is quite true, although I have less castration anxiety about her. What attracted me to Afro Finger and Gel was the vinyl-melting rage in her voice.

On the other hand, she's ultimately not an asocial godzilla, although she plays occasionally one on EP. Destroying Human Nature, like most of the tracks, criticise or warn against things that alienate or leave us alienated from others.

Re: Objects.

[kennithholloway.livejournal.com]

indeed...i love that one where she goes "how many people can you know, how many music can you feel to?" and she still has the scary voice but she's saying something so hippy all of a sudden
I have to admit i haven't heard the whole album yet (just about 4 tracks), but in haters and stop bothering michael jackson she totally sounds like she's about to commit a genocide
mario

Re: Objects.

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

Objectification is good as long as it does away with misogyny by causing people to value femininity? Does that mean that wanting women to be feminine is a form of objectification?

Re: Objects.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think it's more about women (and men, for that matter) having the freedom to embrace what is commonly considered 'feminine' without fear of reproach. I know intelligent, accomplished women who are disliked by other women because they are perceived as being too feminine--which seems to me a strange prejudice.

This cultural 'gender loading' is culturally incestuous and unhealthy. There is a profoundly broad continuum which exists between the sexes (this should come as no surprise, since there is just as much genetic difference between a male and female human as there is between a female human and a female chimpanzee). We should be able to embrace (or at least appreciate) every point on that continuum.

W

Re: Objects.

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

So it should be just as ok to be feminine as it is to be masculine... but I disagree that women have to be feminine and men have to be masculine. Anybody should be able to fall freely on the continuum and be accepted, wherever they may land.

Re: Objects.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

...I disagree that women have to be feminine and men have to be masculine...

I don't see anyone implying such a thing, least of all myself. I'm friends with too many people who cross such illusory lines to endorse such a thing.

A fellow wiser than I once said that nature has no laws, only habits.

W

Earth needs women!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

A subject about which I feel quite strongly. Couldn't agree more.

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

I welcome objectification. Without it, I never would have spoken to many of my favorite girls. I'm so shy that I'm unlikely to approach a girl that I am attracted to. But, seemingly without fail, they have overcome any shyness they might have and approached me. Was it because of something profound I said? Obviously not. It was based solely on my startlingly good looks. Women are just as guilty of objectification as we are. I don't know how many women have told me that they throw out from the dating pool balding men in their '20s. Man, I'm trying to hold onto my thinning hair--I really am.

Momus, I am thankful that you've had consistently tasteful album art as of late. It allows me to be certain that I will enjoy the music contained within before I get my hands on the album.

Patrick

Re: Objects.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do I detect just a tiny whiff of sarcasm here? I do, though, believe that good graphic design and good pop music are quite reliably correlated. Not infallibly, though.

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

My comment couldn't have been more accurate or sincere!

'Journey' had a naked Kahimi illustration and the music inside is glorious Midieval Prog Pop.

Patrick

Re: Objects.

[(Anonymous)]

*Medieval

Re: Objects.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

No? How is it any more flattering to their worth as humans restrict your contact with the wild Nipponese Josei to select island game preserves in the sea of Japan?