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hello, hello, hello, hello, hello........
with the lights out yes it's less dangerous
here we are now,
entertain us,
I feel stupid and contagious, here we are now entertain us,
a mulatto, an albino,
a mosquito, my libido,
yay, yay,........
Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nevermind, Nirvana, 1991
We are inhabitants of a semiotician's paradise, 'the information
age', a period which has become synonymous with the proliferation
of visual candy: we can drive-thru, scan, download or hack
together a montage of disparate images, sounds and words from
our everyday and digital worlds. It is in this realm that
we are starting to witness or experience a dissolving of outside
and inside, public and private, fact and fiction, reality
and illusion. We are literally living on-line.
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Charles Baudelaire's
flaneur, whose meandering through a nineteenth century Parisian
mise-en-scene, watching, recording and projecting himself
into the everyday, is the odyssey we now live. Today we can
tune-in/out to reality from the comfort of our living rooms.
We have become stationary flaneurs watching bite size portions
of 'reality TV', programmes where competitors are put in foreign
or controlled environments and are presented with a series of
tasks which they are subsequently judged on and against each
other, with a competitor being removed each week, or a winner
who has endured the most public humiliation announced.
We have ultimately become voyeurs of survival, watching in
a suspended state of disbelief as 'normal' [demographically
friendly] people: sleep, eat, fight, have sex, cry, lie, commit
crimes and are tried before us on the screen. It is in this
live morality play that we assume the position or are placed
in the position of peeping tom, eavesdropper, snoop, judge
and jury.
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Like Baudelaire's
male flaneur, who swaggers through seamy back alleys for entertainment/enlightenment
and recognition, we are a society which is increasingly finding
sanctuary in the spectacle of other people's lives. We find
solace in watching from a distance [behind a screen] and measure
our pleasure/distaste [can be one and the same] through remote
control [play a part in the rating game by watching], as we
flick from channel to channel. We are becoming night surfers,
dropping in and out of the digital soup, as we wait for the
next instalment of someone else's life. In this state of perpetual
daydreaming the spectator takes on a primordial existence, staying
semi-awake through the routine of their lives in order to 'switch
on' when it is entertainment time. |
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Objectivism constitutes the social world as a spectacle
presented to an observer who takes up a 'point of view' on
the action, who stands back so as to observe it and, transferring
into the object the principles of his relation to the object,
conceives of it as a totality intended for cognition alone,
in which all interactions are reduced to symbolic exchanges.
This point of view is the one afforded by high positions in
the social structure, from which the social world appears
as a representation (in the sense of idealist philosophy but
also used in painting or in the theatre) and practices are
no more than 'executions', stage parts, performances of scores,
or the implementing of plans.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice
(1972; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
Signs are produced to make the public aware of their responsibilities
or the rules which are associated with any actions they might
make in that particular area. Signage is designed both linguistically
and visually to give clear instructions and guidance to the
public. Of course there is a nationally recognised set of
codes or a formula by which this information is to be set
down. This distillation of information into a set of standardised/recognisable,
objective/authoritative and logical/modernist texts exists
to be followed and not questioned or, more precisely, to be
invisible. In many respects it is produced in such a way that
what it is stating and how it looks should be accepted as
a given. These social markers are produced for our benefit.
They help us navigate through the world safely, continually
reminding us where we stand, or more particularly, where we
should not.
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I have found
it an increasingly satisfying form of spectator sport to locate,
document and ponder on the occurrence of what is invariably
accidental or lost signage. It is those instances where the
context which surrounds the sign, or the environment that it
establishes, plays a key role in shifting the meaning or legibility
of the text. What a committed signspotter is able to record
is the inherent disorder or irony in the seemingly most stable
system, and subsequently invest a new form of interpretation
(a 'point of view') into this impenetrable form of language.
The more trivial end of this activity is simply adjusting the
way we read or decipher what a sign is saying. For example:
No Dogs
Skateboarding
Scatting
Seems inherently obvious if it is read as a series of points.
But if we read this list as a sentence, the sign takes on
a slightly surreal edge - I have not witnessed dogs skateboarding
or scatting, for that matter.
This is a Smokefree Building
Surely a smoking building is either a foreboding sign or
a chimney. And are not all buildings designed to be smokefree?
The process of encoding public signage is the next phase
of signspotting. It is when contextual slippage starts to
impinge or undermine the authority of a universal message.
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Slippery
When
Wet
The classic road sign or cautionary temporary signage with
the generic figure sliding on a puddle of goo always offers
the intrepid signspotter the key parts to represent and act
within the everyday world. It is the temporary nature of the
slippery series, which opens up the public spaces which they
inhabit, or more particularly those sites which they are shifted
to, when form doesn't equal function, which provides the perfect
stage. Subsequently, slippery resides under a set of stairs,
against the pot plants, in the dusty recesses of the building,
on the burgundy and grey tartan (circa 1970) carpet.
Of course in taking up a search for the unplanned or random
aspects of public signage the signspotter is setting up an
observational activity which is formed according to the rules
structuring theoretical operations - one will find what one
is looking for. In the everyday locus: the mall, drive-thru,
side-walk, motorway, corridor, bank queue and food hall the
haphazard and chance are real. That's why the DANGER KEEP
OUT tape wrapped around a series of stanchions in an ordinary
shopping mall is not to warn you about falling debris, instead
it is designed to ward you off entering Glassons.
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About a year ago I heard a medical historian discussing on
radio how he could diagnose the various ailments that were
perceptible in famous works of art. The speaker waxed lyrically
about his various discoveries, becoming particularly animated
when he started analysing the various physical and psychological
states he associated with the self-portraits of Rembrandt.
In his hands these works became a repository of biological
information, which he proceeded to unpack - prescribing a
series of late twentieth century remedies. The interviewer
did not at this point find it prudent to point out that her
medical professional had just treated a canvas for early signs
of Alzheimer's.
Please hold ........
break on through to the other side, break on through to the
other side...
Your business is valuable to us, you are now in a priority
queue.......
........ha, ha, haa, haaa, heeyyy..!!!
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Maybe I would
wait to break on through, but I already know what is on the
other side. The sweet sound of customer service boredom, speaking
with a smile and staying loyal to the company motto:
Remembering Our Goals,
Keeping Our Word
Keeping Our Promises.
Poor Jim, little could he have known that his stadium rock
anthems would be reduced to a 'remember this' nostalgia slot
on easy listening radio, or streamlined into muzak, that intensely
nauseating sound now filtering down the fibre optic cable.
The irony of listening to a dead rockstar's requiem to a drug
addled spiritual ascendance is not lost on me as I fall in
and out of a phone-induced psychosis. And they know that you
will hold on, numbed into a state of subservience or agitated
into a state of phone rage. Inquiring about a gas, rates,
electricity or phone bill has become an exercise of Kafkaesque
proportions; one must wait to be served to pay for something
that has not been used yet, and all to the sound of LA
Woman.
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This type of
situation smarts of the 'in your interest' policy decisions
which were instigated in the late eighties and became routine
parts of daily experience in nineties New Zealand. For example,
under the auspices of the Health and Safety Act it became mandatory
for every public and private business to predict any accident
that might occur in the work place. This was instituted as a
way of minimising dangers, but it smacks of all care and no
responsibility - because if you point out all possible risks
to your employees then accidents should not happen and the individual
becomes liable. But what has not been noted is that if you can
foresee all possible dangers, then when something goes wrong,
having predicted the unpredictable, it cannot be an accident.
In a society that has become increasingly designed around notions
of the individual it seems we are becoming victims of our own
making.
accidents will happen,
but only hit and run,
you used to be a victim,
but now you're not the only one,..
Elvis Costello, Accidents Will Happen
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In a world that is becoming more and more paranoid about
privacy there is something kind of refreshing in sharing an
email site. This is a voyeuristic experience which sets up
an interesting set of issues about what is personal or public
material, as the temptation to read becomes a spectacle in
itself. Usually you read in the knowledge that the writer
is addressing a broad nebulous mass or directing their correspondence
to a particular individual on a private or familiar level.
The fodder email correspondence offers quite a different opportunity,
here one can eavesdrop from the safety of one's office or
peep through the digital keyhole into other people's amended/abbreviated
lives. I would probably term this condition amateur/naive
hacking - the ability to play in someone's privacy.
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Hacking seems to be a condition associated with a growing
computer-literate but disaffected youth - a version of teen
angst which has traditionally been filtered through or conditioned
by pop culture, or more recently mass media, as a representation/reflection
of a dysfunctional social system. However, with hacking you
have a situation where a group of individuals can subvert,
convert or enter the domains which represent a traditional
'authority' [CIA, NASA, banks] and subsequently dictate the
terms and conditions of those sites.
Breaking the code or entering the site through the backdoor
has become the ultimate expression or indication of one's
computer skills - it is a by-product of learning to navigate
the web or manufacturing information - it is, in a word, temptation.
Of course the uncontrollable and random nature of these 'attacks'
has demonised the act and those who participate in it. Just
the language, which is used in association with this practice
- sabotage and vandalism - indicates how the media perceives
these actions.
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This media-hunt
for the perpetrators of these cybercrimes reeks of paranoid
vigilantism of days gone by. The idea that the participants
in these episodes might be playfully acting out a series of
experiments/challenges to those who claim domain authority seems
lost on most reporters who cover this phenomenon.
It seems ironic that authorities will use these invasions
into personal material as sensational flag bearers to delve
deeper into your individual records. What they are saying
is that 'Private and Confidential' should only be the domain
of those with your interest in mind, as long as you do not
mind that they do it without your consent.
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