Month: March 2012

Categories
Music

Katy Perry trades in her whipped cream rocket launcher bra for rifles but misses the target

  

Katy Perry’s songs are produced to sound like Pop Rocks and taste like Orange Crush. While her songs messages lack intellectual merit, the production quality of her videos have actually been beyond impressive, though always candy sweet. Until now, the fiercest thing she’s done in a video is whipped cream and flames from her breasts.

In her latest video, Part of Me, Perry cuts her hair, tapes down her breasts, paints her face and joins the Marines. In an interview with MTV she says:

It’s an affirmation of strength, so I wanted to go the strongest route I ever could. Literally, I was like, ‘I’m gonna join the service. I’m gonna join the Marines.’

I wanted to celebrate this video, I really did. Besides it being a blatant PR piece for pro-war America, I wanted to be happy about a visual message showing a strong, hardworking women supporting a cause they believe is just but the whole message is rooted in 2nd wave feminism.  And she was so close with this video, so close.

Did she hit or miss?
But the narrative completely falls apart in the first scene. Perry only joins the Marines because a dude breaks her heart. She trades her pink cotton dresses for commando boots as a way to overcome pain of a a cheating boyfriend. To prove her strength she pursues something that’s a predominantly male activity and outside of something the main character’s desire.

Second wave feminism looks at sex and gender norms asking for equal parts of the same pie, essentially protesting stereotypes about women imposed by men. Whereas third wave, in this case, ought to seek a different pie all together and motivate actions outside of the gendered ideals from the beginning.

Does all the power she think she holds actually still belong to her ex-man? Challenge me on this one. How would the video’s message be different if she had chosen to join the Marines she believed in serving her country not her broken heart? So close, Katy. So close.

But she got some things right. Perry three days of intense training at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in Oceanside, California to get her flips, jabs and underwater wrestling right. Minus the b-roll of her prancing under the flag like a country star (which is actually quite fitting), the color schemes, the angles and shots, the costuming are done quite artistically and thoughtfully.

What Katy Perry’s does well
It’s not popular in my community to like Katy Perry. Which means we don’t spend much time queuing up her videos on youtube. But they execute the philosophies of artistic (versus technological) remedation exceedingly well [Bolter & Grusin, MIT Press, and an excellent read].

In her videos we see cultural icons and old media imagery better than anything I’ve seen from pop media in the last decade and the production value is sky high compared to a Bieber video. Let’s look at her production team’s work:

California Gurls brings Candyland and, Willy Wonka, Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz new life.


ET is like a morphing of Erasure’s Always video with etherial creatures crawling around a futuristic snowy, Japan, Bjork’s All is Full of Love video with robot romance and costuming inspired by the children’s dystopian movie, Wall-E  and the psychological thriller The Cell. The female pop icons of my childhood could have never dressed, artistically in full, space cadet uniform in a beautiful way. The closest we got was Britney Spears in a red pleather jump suit.


Teenage Girl, maybe the best video of them all, is no question a homage to the part of the 80s era that her fans are just a few years too young to actually remember the epic teenager tale 16 Candles or the social makeover Cher gave Ty in Clueless.

So, dear Katy, while I hope to never hear any of your songs while I’m out dancing, I do love muting your videos and queuing up a Brahms sonata and while Snoop Dog pimps out ice cream cone buffets.
Categories
Design HCId Language

We’ve become lonely, it seems

Jim Campbell
It sometimes seems feels like we can have anything we want, especially as it comes to information, shopping and now even tasks. Google it, get it on Amazon prime, send it to Taskrabbit. And there are mountains of ways to touch base with people we love (and also the people we just kinda like). I’m writing this to introduce an open topic and conversation.

We’re spending more time heads down than ever before. Hands to keyboard, finger to swipe, eyes to screen. It’s a remarkable tradeoff because we get to feel like we can have whatever we want, whenever we want at the cost of becoming screen zombies.

The New York Times posted an article today about the new slew of apps that help us find and discover people we know and people we could meet. Have we become so lonely that we need computers to help us do something as primal as sharing presence with other people? Why these apps now? Are the apps easier to build, are people needier for people, has it become more difficult to find people we love being with?

Finding friends online
Facebook, Twitter, Email and Instagram have specifically helped me stay tethered to people I care or want to care about. Sure. But they just as well create friction and false senses of closeness that do not replace natural interactions among people. I’m not sure we’ll ever create a technology that an replicate the experience of being physically near a person. But I do believe travel and city design will make it easier, faster and cheaper to be near people.

Finding love online
Online dating has become the second most common way to start a relationship, second to meeting through friends. I’m debating whether or not dating has become more difficult and how that’s related to technology because it also is inclusive of cultural and gender norms.  I’m in the throws of reading Marriage, a History that so far suggests in the last half decade our communities have put more pressure on our partners and marriage than ever before in history.

What next?
I’m not sure we’re lonelier than before? Studies have shown that people do retreat to their computers and social communities when they’re most sad (and I think lonely). So whether or not we’re net lonelier, looking back, it will sure seem like we were and we’ll say, what changed, what was the variable? More screens, less skin and bones.

Categories
Design Language Music

A minimal design’s voice

white.

Design always has perspective and voice. It is always saying something and a good design’s message is intentional and thoughtful.

Three white canvases hang on a white wall aligned side by side at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This installation could be making commentary on negative and additive space, on shadows, on meditation or virginity, or sound or color. The artists could be saying something about potential, beginnings and opportunity or the intimidation of working with huge spaces or the fear of having nothing to say. Though some would say say, these are just 3 pretentious white canvases in a famous museum and nothing more.

I visited the Pompidou twice during this trip in 2007 and neither time gathered the name of the piece. So if you know the artist or if this is actually an unfinished piece, please share.

Minimal design is not a shortcut
Minimalsts celebrate critical editing and their ability to sensitively the balance between form and function. Design should not be sparse or naked just for the sake of attempting a minimalist aesthetic. Blog themes are the worst offenders.

Dieter Rams MoMa

Minimalist designers edit for voice
We celebrate minimal design in product, layout, architecture, photography, music, dance, writing and fashion. The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams exhibit at the San Francisco MoMA did exactly that.  Minimalists pride themselves on their ability detatch themselves from their work to critique and edit. Omitting what is superflous, removing what is not required and stripping down the design is intended to result in a final product that is an exquisite sum of its best parts.

The b side of design editing is about maintaining voice. Design should still say something. Both commercial and artistic design is still about communication: what it is, where it lives, who it is for, how it can be used or and what it may be. The voice can easily be muted when essential factors are over edited.

We have more access to design software and likely more designers. Minimalist design looks easy to a novice: give it extra white space, switch the font to Helvetica and draw a thin hairline. These designs lack form, structures and constraints and therefore structure, a perspective, a voice, shape, color and membership to a system.

Minimal design executes details
Let’s analyze the Diynamic Music label art from Hamburg, Germany that does an excellent job executing a minimal design.

The records are all designed within a system; each sleeve is precisely and exactly the same as those in its family. The typography, shape, language style and material are consistent. Only the color of the sticker label and artist and track listing changes.

It’s designed with solid color blocks and matching typography. The design system is linear and predictable and its form factors are intentionally basic shapes. Minimalism gives more by challenging to the design to work with less.

Dinaymic Records

So with all of these constraints, the sleeve design still has a very distinct perspective. It speaks with a voice and attends to a message. The reel in motion would move forward voicing process and progress, the dissected shapes speak to the technical sounds of the label, the analog imagery is in conflict with synthetic electronic sounds on the record and the large black blocky image is softened with the gray background. But then all of this is disrupted with a vivid round block of bright color. This design is making an explicit statement with a unwavering perspective about what kind of music is within.

The designer here has also fantastically played with numbers:

  1. There a single main image, the audio or video reel. One.
  2. The audio reel requires a second circle to serve as its border, so the singular main image is comprised of a circle pair. Two.
  3. The rounded rectangles and punched out medium sized circles are intentionally only in tryptich. Three
  4. The reel is cut into 4 slices at shifted on the y-axis at half and fourth heights. Four.
  5. The last detail works in a partnership of 5. Three bullets run vertically down the lower spine of the reel and two stack next to each other like a set of eyes on the top right section. Three and two: Five.
These are subtle, intentional decisions designed in a rhythm. It is beautiful because it is edited and thoughtful. Minimal design especially in art and music does not usually command bold attention. The consumer can easily disregard and let the design go unnoticed or be be very cerebral and studious about its form and function. But to do the latter, you the participant has to bring something to the design conversation. Without a voice, there is no dialouge.
Minimalist design websites with perspective:
Minimalism in Web Design: 20 beautiful websites
If This Then That: ifttt.com
Google.com

[Afterword]
I am aware this blog does not have an applied theme.
I’m working on my editing skills. I’m quite aware this post’s length.
I must share the first minimal tech house track I fell in love with. From the Mobilee Back to Back Volume 2 Compilation on the second disc, produced in Berlin, enjoy Pan Pot – What is What Remixed by Gummihz.