New Media: Layers of Sound and History
by Emily Hooven
In thinking of how to begin this ‘manifesto of new media’ I guess I decided
to start with what has been inspiring me lately. His name is Steve Ellison, but
I’ve always known him as Flaying Lotus. Flying Lotus is a contemporary music
producer who also dabbles in rap and multi media, among other things. His
project, “Layer 3” is a multi-media spectacle of light, color, movement, and
sound.
While he performs his music, two projectors project images onto two
transparent scrims – one is in front and one behind the artist. The images are
controlled by two different visual artists (one for each screen) real time while the
show is occurring. Admittedly, a simple set-up; however, in an interview about
the project, Flying Lotus championed the simplicity.
I think that new media allows for us as viewers to continually be surprised
by how simple it is to transport us from our everyday awareness. I can’t help but
think of Lozano-Hemmer’s Sandbox piece, which despite its simple set-up and
concept was able to open up the participant’s mind to new ways of thinking
about space and interaction. One, therefore, cannot equate complexity with
effectiveness.
Perhaps in the future, viewers will have been exposed to many different
kind of set- ups, but for right now I believe that people aren’t used to being
challenged in this way when they view art. Thus there is a childlike joy and an
easy awe for the viewer that is made possible by installation and
interdisciplinary media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rbuQuvoc0YE - !
Flying Lotus says in the interview that he wants people, when they look at
his show to be transported and to question, ‘how is this happening?’ He also
goes on to say that the two screens plus his space, work together to build a
unique ‘world.’ Flying Lotus, in between his two screens, is separated from the
world of his audience. He describes this separation as being unfamiliar to him,
but enjoyable nonetheless.
In contrast to this, I would like to look at Lev Manovich’s text on new media.
In his slide, The Language of New Media he writes that, “the individual layers
can retain their separate identity rather then being merged into a single space;
the different worlds can clash semantically rather than form a single universe.” I
feel that Manovich would perhaps disagree with the cohesiveness of Flying
Lotus’ world and his attempt at trying to create only one world for the viewer to
experience. To please Manovich’s aesthetic, Flying Lotus could perhaps show
his audience the two visual guys as they select images and respond to Flying
Lotus in real time. For Manovich, this would add a meta layer that he seems to
prefer.
I think that these are two different ways of approaching new media work –
to either create something seamless that the viewer can enter, or to create a
world that highlights its inconsistencies and exposes its process – but that
neither way is right or wrong and that the choice to use either is only as
efficacious as it is relevant to the particular project at hand.
What I find most interesting about Flying Lotus’ 3 Layer is that it is an
audio-visual piece. In the film and media world, I feel that audio is generally an
afterthought. While everyone makes sure to have a quality recording, few think
of sound as a tool on equal footing with the power of the image for conveying
meaning and driving story.
Flying Lotus is an anomaly in the exact opposite way. Being a laptop
musician, producer, and rapper, he is immersed in a world that is driven by
sound. The only common visual component that these types of artists engage
with would be music videos. But few, if any besides Flying Lotus, think of
performing their music in such filmic terms. In the interview, Flying Lotus refers
to his shows as feeling, “cinematic and danceable,” and cites a main source of
inspiration for 3 Layer as the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Manovich talks about the significance of merging two things into a new
form (his two things are database and narrative). Personally, I think that
narrative and sound need to be explored more and given the chance to
become a unique category of art, and I think that new media definitely has
room to realize this. One film that I think really combined narrative and sound
in a new way was the film Punch Drunk Love by Paul Thomas Anderson. He
definitely writes with sound in mind, and uses sound to explore the space, and
the psychology a space has with the characters in it.
Shot from Punch Drunk Love, 2002.
Anderson uses sounds of the warehouse and a syncopated musical/ rhythmic track
to express the psychology of Adam Sandler’s character and to drive the story
forward.
But new media oftentimes has more of an idea than a story or narrative. And
Punch Drunk Love while however creative, is still a film. So how does narrative exist in
new media? Is it at all interactive? And can it meet sound somewhere more equally
than how other forms of narrative meet sound?
One type of new media that has a lot of potential to accomplish all of these things
is locative media. Locative media is very much story based; you can give your
participant a reason for why you’re moving from point A to point B. It is also responsive
in that you react to those unpredictable occurrences within the frame – a businessman
walking past, a man on the corner rapping, a toddler falling down and crying – and
incorporate them into the story that you are trying to tell. The participant can watch the
video on his or her ipod/iphone, with the intention that they follow the exact route being
displayed on screen. Headphones are needed to help immerse you in the story.
I followed one locative media project that was made by a Temple student. The
walk began on Liacouras walk and went behind Maxis, down into a pocket garden.
There was a narrator telling us that something awful had happened here, and music
that heightened the sense of danger. In the video a hand came into the frame and
placed a note in the garden, and I was asked to do the same. I still think of this project
every time I pass the garden, as it has changed my perception of that space.
Another interest of mine has been psychogeography. This is the study of the
influence that space has on us especially in cities. Guy Debord played a huge
role in this field of study/ learning. I think that new media has the potential to
really make some of Debord’s theories and ideas active. One word that I was
introduced to through Debord is the word, dérive, which roughly translates in
English to “drift.” A dérive, “[…] is an unplanned journey through a landscape,
usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding
architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travelers, with the ultimate
goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience”.
This type of walking can really open you up to experiencing a space in
different ways. I think it is very interesting to be hyper aware of your environment
as you move through it. On a note unrelated to new media, I think that in order to
change the world around you, you must train yourself to be aware of how a
space is affecting you, even subtly.
I remember I had a professor who once told me to try to take a different
route home every day. I think he said this so that we wouldn’t think of space or
mapping as concrete. In doing this I realized that we bypass a lot of potential
new experiences for the sake of convenience or familiarity. I think that
psychogeography and locative media has the potential to defamiliarize one with
the space around them and in so doing create a change in the way that they
think.
Taking a locative walk, therefore, is interesting in that you are walking in
somebody else’s subconsiousness. If in a dérive you drift according to what forces
are pulling on you, in taking a locative walk you are almost ‘drifting with direction’.
While the creator of the walk may have a route in mind, which corresponds with the
story they are trying to tell, we still must follow their drifting thoughts and see what
pulls on them. In a way you are experiencing a dérive through someone else. This
may be a good way to introduce psychogeography to those who have never
thought in these terms before. The feeling of “being in someone else’s skin” is
important in locative media, especially if that ‘someone else’ knows something you
don’t know, or has a courage or insight that you don’t quite possess yet.
I think that locative media is artistic, but could also serve other purposes as
well. A girl in another class of mine made a “locative media” project in which she
filmed herself running across the Ben Franklin bridge. She then formatted/ edited
the video so that it could function as an exercise app, which would motivate its
watchers as they ran.
Also, my professor in that class is exploring the use of Google map
photography technology to create an interactive learning app on the iphone/ipad for
a national park in Hawaii. The app is being used for learning and recreation. It can
teach about the park. It can also be useful for people who would never get the
chance to go to the park to see how it looks, and also for people who are planning
on going to the park to get another layer of information before they start their trip.
In my locative media project I attempted to add another layer to the narrative,
which has fascinated me since my second year at Temple: History. But not history
as we think of it residing in a textbook. Instead, I wanted to examine history as it
existed in places that are familiar to us. In my project I took a walk from Russell
and Sarah Conwell’s first resting place, to their second, and ended up at their
third. There is no evidence at the first and second burial sites that they used to be
previous gravesites. Also, in my research for the walk I learned that Temple
demolished an entire cemetery and also a lot of row homes, which were located
on Broad St. Again, there is no evidence for this.
The knowledge of what existed on campus before what is there now really
made me conscious of the city and its timeline. All cities go through drastic
change in a very quick period of time. Things get demolished and new things get
put up. Always. Human awareness, however, is very narrow and I feel that people
tend to be surprised when this kind of change occurs in places they thought were
perfect they way they were.
I remember in class when everyone was getting upset at how their
neighborhoods in South Philly had become gentrified. What they may not realize,
however, is that there were probably people living in South Philly before them that
were upset that they started moving in. I wonder what new media could do for
people’s perspectives if it was able to expose the history of places in a city.
As history tends to cover itself up (Monument cemetery now a parking lot), I
have noticed that people respond really well when there are artifacts of the past
still existing in our present reality. The perfect example of this is the Divine
Lorraine Hotel, which was built in 1892 and in working order up until the 1990’s.
The hotel still sits on Broad St. in complete disrepair. It is no longer functional, and
instead has become historical. But not only historical, the hotel is almost a dead
carcass, which cannot be buried.
Many young people sneak into the hotel for fun, but why do these rebellious
youth like the Divine Lorraine so much? I think it is because the hotel is where
layers of history start piling up instead of being covered up. On the one hand, the
hotel represents 1892, on the other hand it represents the 70’s and 80’s with the
aesthetic of the renovations from those decades, and on the other hand still, it
represents today because of the graffiti tags and the stories that circulate about
young people sneaking in.
I think that new media has the potential to pile history on top of itself just like
the Divine Lorraine; however, it would be done virtually, which is a little different
than what the hotel offers to people. Also, I think that one thing that would be
interesting to carry over to a locative mode of exploring history is the sense of
trespassing that one might get. This feeling engages the participant, driving them
on to uncover something despite all odds.
Lastly, with examining history I have always been interested in the “what if?”
I took a postmodern literature class one semester, in which a lot of the authors
that we read reconstructed historical facts and weaved them into the fictional
narrative. One example of something we read was the novel The Plot Against
America by Phillip Roth.
“It is an alternative history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt
is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh.
The novel follows the fortunes of the Roth family during the Lindbergh
presidency, as antisemitism becomes more accepted in American life
and Jewish-American families like the Roths are persecuted on various
levels.”
I love the idea of the combination of fiction and fact, with the fact being
wrong. A lot of times this kind of fictitious exploration can be cathartic for
repressed social groups, which reminds me of the Wodiczko article where he
talks about history as seen/told/retold by “victors” and victims.
The “What-if” would be fantastic as an interdisciplinary media piece. Again, it
would require heavy use of the narrative as well as efforts to create a ‘world’ that
the viewer can enter without questioning what is presented to them despite its
blatant fallaciousness.
CONCLUSION
So now, “What meanings and experiences are possible with
interdisciplinary media?” I think that interdisciplinary media has the potential to
allow viewers to embrace simplicity in art as it functions to transport the viewer
to ‘another world.’ This transportation occurs mainly because the viewer gets to
question art and space and what simple set- ups do to our perception.
I also think that new media could be an effective tool for bringing sound to
equal footing with image in telling a narrative story. I think that more artists
should be able to merge two things in order to make a new form or way of
communicating.
Another meaning that new media can provide is an awareness of the space
around oneself. Locative walks can help participants to be able to think
constructively about the space around them and hopefully to critique any
existing institution or way of life that he or she discovers is just working, thus
creating change in the world around them.
Lastly, I think that history plays an important role in interdisciplinary media.
If you think about it, we all share the same broad history with one another. Some
though are more aware than others. New media might be able to teach about
history and also encourage some to rewrite history by asking “what if” in order to
more aptly look at the future.