Let’s See How Far We’ve Come…Literally.

Although this video may not be as technically advanced as others are in this day and age, it serves a purpose. The title itself “How Far We’ve Come” states the purpose of the representation Matchbox Twenty strives to portray. The images are the message almost as much as the lyrics are, both in fact parallel each other. Video clips ranging from the first man on the moon, to JFK, to the Woman’s Rights Movement, to Ali, to Pele (the Brazillian Soccer Player, hailed as one of the greatest players ever) to the ancient computers, to Live Aid, to the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall to images of Princess Diana, to President Clinton meeting with Yasser Arafat, to Y2K, to last year’s Live Earth brought about by Al Gore and his strives to address the changing climate, to this year’s biggest story, Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton being two of the front runners for the Democratic Party in the 2008 Presidential Election…whew. See how far we’ve come? For the most part, the video is a performance video, at least whenever the band is shown playing in the studio or on rooftops.  Besides Matchbox Twenty playing along, the main focus is on the events of the past 6 or 7 decades. It goes to show just how far our society has advanced. For example, in the beginning of the video, a clip is shown of women marching for equal rights. President John F. Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women in 1961 and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman. The Equal Rights Amendment was passed in 1972 by Congress. Now in the year 2008, Hilary Clinton is running for President. That’s less than fifty years since women have been discriminated against because of their gender. Let’s just think about this for a second, what if Senator Clinton becomes president, won’t she then be in the position to meet with other world leaders, men no less, in countries where women are still experiencing prejudice? I think it’s safe to say that Matchbox Twenty might have to reshoot their video in the next decade, because times are changing, fast. I know I’ve said this in my first blog, but think about the computers that used to be the size of the room, and now Apple introduced MacBook Air..which is thinner than any other laptop on the market. How ’bout them apples?

Burning Questions..

Burning Chrome… the first image that popped into my head was a motorcycle “burning chrome” towards the sunset. The first paragraph of the text however, totally contradicted my initial thoughts and made me feel like an idiot. The main difference between my preestablished ideas and the actual storyline were the characters. Whereas I thought about two Harley Davidson -leather-wearing-bicyclist-tough-guys, I came to the realization that Bobby Quine and Automatic Jack were hackers, a pair of so-called “lowlifes” who spent their afternoons in a gloomy and stuffy apartment in front of monitors looking at matrices all day long. Is this what the future has in store for us? If it is, then I won’t mind not being there.

As I read further into the story, aside from being totally confused by the words describing the plight of Jack and Bobby, I noticed that the story, like many others, had a subplot. Jack was in love with Bobby’s girl, the girl who in the end craved money, only to spend that money on Zeiss Ikon Tally Isham baby blues, but I guess that’s a storyline for another blog. The linguistics of the story however, are somewhat of what the future holds. When the world turns into this shady Matrix-like universe, we’re all going to start using words like “ice[1]” when talking about software, and not referring to “bling”, or rather, jewelry. Another instance of futuristic language, or maybe just something that struck me on a personal level,  is “Waldo”, and kids it does have anything to do with “Where’s Waldo” except maybe when Jack can’t find his ‘techy’ arm appendage and calls out for it. The terms used throughout “Burning Chrome” serve as a boundary between the old and the new, the old being people who don’t understand that lingo, and new being those who do. The hacker world is so involved and detailed that it can be categorized as it’s own era, one which the older generations won’t be able to comprehend, or adopt as their own.

On a much larger scale, the overall picture paints a realization for us. Technology is the key factor here, technology is on its way to becoming the universal language on earth. F. T. Marinetti’s The Futurist Manifesto delivers a striking proclamation of futuristic ideals. His 8^th point states a bold outlook on the coming years,

We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

I take that as an optimistic look toward the future, to leave the past and all its glory alone and move towards new and better ways. Marinetti shares the belief that the future holds tribulations and obstacles but the sense of history cannot be left out of the equation. Moving forward is a special moment, many things are going to change into new forms and new contents, but man will be able to pass through these variations, bringing with himself what comes from the beginning of civilization. This ties in with last week’s topic of the Age of Electronic and Mechanized Media, change happens, and so far for the past two thousand years humans have managed to survive and thrive in these new eras.

“Burning Chrome” was a truly futuristic tale, but it did not have the gusto of F. T. Marinetti and his “stick-it-to-the-world-attitude”. Both, however, succeeded in painting a visual of a different world, mainly contrasting the world in which we live in today.

 

 

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[1] Ice is security countermeasures software. The Net runners spend most of their time in the matrix encountering, evaluating and evading these countermeasures. The encounters with ice are brilliantly described in many of Gibson’s books.

From the article “What is Cyberspace?” by David G.W. Birch and S. Peter Buck <http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/whatis_cyberspace.article.txt>

 

Look out, a new era of art is emerging!

Art owes its widespread diversity to the people who create it, the people who critique it and those who simply view it, regardless of its location. Every decade, a new art form escalates from a previous technique; it’s modified to establish a different effect and generate an entirely new response.  Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction has an “aura” based on an old belief and understanding of what art ‘truly’ is. I’m not saying he’s wrong by any means, but his views are dated, if not totally outdated.

 

It’s the year 2008, that fact alone stands to prove a point; we’re no longer in the “middle ages” or in the midst of greats such as Rembrandt and Titian, we’re in the Age of Mechanized Media and Digital Art. The Middle Ages, The Renaissance, The Baroque, The Age of Enlightenment, of Romanticism, all the way to the Impressionism to Post-Impressionism, to Art Nouveau to the Modernist Revolution…you get the idea, my point is, no one woke up one morning and said, “oh February 6^th, well if it isn’t the very first day of The Renaissance, let me grab my paint set and start painting like the true Renaissance Man” Yeah? No. That didn’t happen and you can’t expect everyone to welcome the age that we’re in now and embrace it for the true advancement that it is.

 

In his essay, Benjamin outlines a couple key facts to base his argument on. He states that replicas, rather the results of the easy reproduction era, lack the presence of space and time, two aspects that determine the artworks history. True, there’s no arguing that, but the same can be said for the artwork of this generation, it will date back to the 21^st century. Another aspect he points out is ownership, which I don’t think will be an issue for us as far as documenting goes. I mean, yeah there are scams on the Internet and identity fraud, but if you’re careful enough to sign and copyright your work, ownership won’t be a problem. Back in the old days, ownership WAS a big problem. There were countless works whose artists were anonymous simply because they never signed their work. Many artists had apprentices and to this day, we don’t know whose painting it is, the artist or their helper’s. Douglas Davis makes a point in his rebuttal essay that I think summarizes a key fact about Benjamin, he states “Walter Benjamin saw accurately the logical implications of mechanical reproduction, he erred only in assuming that the world would bow to this logic, that the endless reproduction of a painting, for example, or a photograph, would diminish what he called the “aura” of the original.” People still value the works of famous masters and bid top dollar for them at auctions, but the point I’m trying to make here, is that we need to give this new age a chance.

 

Let’s face it, it’s a new day and we won’t know how successful “our” age will be until our computer babies write about us in those imaginary floaty super invisible computers like a hundred years from now. I think we need to look at it as a phenomenon. Change is good; this is a way for our generation to prove that we have actually achieved something. There’s always been a lingering thought in the back of my mind whenever I was asked to invent something. I always though, “Oh great, how can I invent something on the spot, everything’s already been invented!” That’s when you need to step out of the box and realize that you need to look beyond the things you know and are familiar with. You need to think of something so totally ridiculous because that’s how inventions start, as an off the wall idea. Maybe that’s what this era is, an off the wall idea that we just have to get through and perfect and maybe then the followers of Walter Benjamin will think, “Hmm..This isn’t so evil after all.”