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

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.