Jacob Kirkegaard + Christina Kubisch

Jacob Kirkegaard
http://fonik.dk/

Polythera
http://fonik.dk/works/polythera.html

Broadway
http://fonik.dk/works/broadway.html

4 Rooms
http://fonik.dk/works/4rooms.html

Christina Kubisch
http://www.christinakubisch.de/

Electrical Walks
http://www.christinakubisch.de/english/klangundlicht_frs.htm

Sound Samples
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/kubisch.php

Cringe & Mock

So. . .

What is cringe?

This American Life: Episode 182 Cringe

And, now, a quick review of Todd Solondz's film Welcome to the Dollhouse

Welcome to the Dollhouse review

And a clip: Dollhouse Toilet Scene

And a later film, first the review then some clips: Happiness review

Happiness (What a Horrible Sister Clip)


Happiness (Meet Christina)


Happiness (Meet Dad at 5 min)


Happiness (Sick I)


Happiness (Authenticity at 5 min )


Happiness (How not to Wake Up 2 min)


Happiness (Police at 3 min)


Happiness (at 7 min)


Happiness (Is Ice Cream)


Happiness (Reality v Fantasy)


Happiness (Oh. . . paint on the house. . . )


and the last one:
Happiness (Happy Boy)


And then there's Neil Labute, also known for his cringe-inducing films, such as In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors

Here's a clip:


Alright, so that's cringe.

What's this?

Gamers
Gamers Trailer

And a clip: Prom Cousin Lactation

And mocumentary. . .

Christopher Guest's Best In Show (Starbucks!)


And Busy Bee:


And one more:


Then, Series 7: The Contenders:
Series 7: The Contenders

And an earlier mock-mentary:
Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

How to Irritate People: Airplane

And closer to a hoax-joke:
Zelig

And Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver
Forgotten Silver

And then back to radio:
NPR Hoaxes

Orson Well's apology:
Orson Well's Surprise

For this (at 5 min)
Orson Wells Part 1

Orson Wells Part 3

Kitsch or Camp

Let’s start with wikipedia’s common, boring definition:

“Kitsch is a term of German or Yiddish origin that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an existing style. The term is also used more loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious to the point of being in bad taste, and also commercially produced items that are considered trite or crass.”

And now some items: kitsch or. . . cool?

Elvis and Jesus

Unicorn and princess

A Skull by D. H.

Big pink clock

Glow in the dark Jesus

And more religious objects

So, where is the line? And If we’re laughing but the people who created it aren’t, who’s the elitist, racist, etc?

And one last seasonal object

Ok, and further into wikipedia one reads:Further into the wikipedia article one reads: “the word was brought into use as a response to a large amount of art in the 19th century where the aesthetic of art work was associated with a sense of exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama, kitsch is most closely associated with art that is sentimental [--] It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of creativity and originality displayed in genuine art.”

And that brings us to:

Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light


And, specifically:

His Jesus

His “Pools of Serenity”

And one more

But, there are also the people that make fun of Kinkade:


Car Crash Kinkade


Cicada (?) Kinkade

Milan Kundera “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” there’s a brief passage where he discusses kitsch.

Kundera’s character is a response, partially, to kitsch as a “word that was popularized in the 1930s by the theorists Theodor Adorno, Hermann Broch, and Clement Greenberg, who each sought to define avant-garde and kitsch as opposites. To the art world of the time, the immense popularity of kitsch was perceived as a threat to culture. The arguments of all three theorists relied on an implicit definition of kitsch as a type of false consciousness, a Marxist term meaning a mindset present within the structures of capitalism that is misguided as to its own desires and wants. Marxists suppose there to be a disjunction between the real state of affairs and the way that they phenomenally appear.”

Kundera is responding to the Soviety “art” that lacks substance. The parade that’s repeated in The Joke at the end is an example of kitsch.

Perhaps some photographs could help here in trying to understand the differences between kitsch and the avant-garde.

So, lets start with Anne Geddes:

“Born and raised in Queensland, Australia, Anne Geddes has always been interested in the strength that a photographic image could hold. In her mid-twenties, she began experimenting with the family camera, developing her signature style of simple structure and immediate visual impact.”

And a bit further down on that same page:

“One of the world's most respected and successful professional photographers, Anne has captured the imagination and hearts of people around the globe. Her distinctive, award-winning images of children have become classic icons celebrating life and birth. They grace greeting cards, calendars, books, stationery, photo albums, and an array of other fine products, and are currently published in over 50 countries. ”

This is Anne Geddes official website

Just a Baby!

Mother and Daughter

And Anne Geddes using pastels

The Onion’s jab at Anne Geddes , because I couldn’t resist

and one more

And now Jan Saudek, who was born in Prague in 1935, is contemporaneous with Milan Kundera, and, like Geddes, often takes as his subjects women and children.

His and his wife, Sara’s, website can be Jan Saudek WebSite

Jan Saudek
One Image

an other example

and one more

They both take as their subject family and use rather outlandish, excessive colors-- sometimes painted onto black and white prints. . . so what’s the difference between Anne Geddes and Jan Saudek?

And with movies? Where’s the line between the “avant-garde,” kitsch, and camp?

Let’s start with Jim Sharman’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975).

I pulled this description from a movie rental review site: “ROCKY HORROR opens with conservative young couple (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon), experiencing a flat tire on a rainy night. They are near a menacing-looking Ohio castle and stumble upon what they think are their saviors. Brad and Janet's normality is no match for Dr. Frank N. Further, the cross-dressing, mad scientist leader of this convention of deviancy (played unforgettably by Tim Curry).

The film follows Brad and Janet's descent into the world of Dr. Frank N. Further and his minions. He is building what he terms a perfect love god, in the form of a muscle bound blond named "Rocky." As Brad and Janet rediscover their own sexualities and Rocky desperately wants to discover his own, the film grows more surreal, ending in the massive revelation that Dr. Frank N. Furter's glammed out, androgynous self is more than just different, it is out of this world. However, the hunchback Riffraff (director Richard O'Brien, who also wrote the musical score) deems the Doctor's lifestyle "too extreme" and subtly takes over in a very obvious reference to the powers of conformity quashing the wildly different when it gets in the way of the greater plan.”

And then there’s also this comment:

“The definition of kitsch, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW is a campy, musical spoof on the haunted-castle horror movie, encompassing a 70's glam-rock world of androgyny with characters that are more than offbeat. Adults have been gathering at ritualistic midnight viewings of Rocky Horror across the country since its 1975 debut, contributing to its cult classic title.”

You Tube Rocky Horror You Tube Clips

Intro w/ credits:


First Scene:

]

First Song, Damn It, Janet! I Love You (Let’s Go Screw):

[]

Broke Down in the Rain:

[

Time Warp:




And Sweet Transvestive:



And towards the end, things look like this before they’re wisked away on the space ship:



So is it kitsch. . .? Or camp? or something else. . . ?

And this where we move towards discussing the difference between kitsch and camp. Both are excessive and involve exaggerations, but kitsch takes itself seriously and isn’t serious, where as camp doesn’t take itself seriously and is serious. . .

Some key points to take away from Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”

She begins, “A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. ”

Her Point: “1. To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.”

And then notes: “2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized -- or at least apolitical. ”

So, not political. But what about the religious objects?

An example Sontag cites of kitsch: The Enquirer Headlines and Stories

An other important point: “5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others. Clothes, furniture, all the elements of visual décor, for instance, make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content. ”

And why Art Nouveau is camp: “8. Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects, typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a grotto. A remarkable example: the Paris Métro entrances designed by Hector Guimard in the late 1890s in the shape of cast-iron orchid stalks.”

Has everyone seen that Metra sign down the street? With the red-lights and green, cast iron stalks?

And it’s this point that especially helps one to starts distinquishing kitsch from camp: “18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less satisfying.”

So: “24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish. ("It's too much," "It's too fantastic," "It's not to be believed," are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)”

Sontage on camp and film, “29. The reason a movie like On the Beach, books like Winesburg, Ohio and For Whom the Bell Tolls are bad to the point of being laughable, but not bad to the point of being enjoyable, is that they are too dogged and pretentious. They lack fantasy. There is Camp in such bad movies as The Prodigal and Samson and Delilah, the series of Italian color spectacles featuring the super-hero Maciste, numerous Japanese science fiction films (Rodan, The Mysterians, The H-Man) because, in their relative unpretentiousness and vulgarity, they are more extreme and irresponsible in their fantasy - and therefore touching and quite enjoyable.”

And: “41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

And last but not least: “58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful . . . Of course, one can't always say that.”

From Susan Sontag’s "Notes on Camp." Agree, disagree? Examples?

Guy Maddin has directed a number of films The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), and many and others. Many of his films are black and white with musical numbers that use turn to the century editing techniques. But they have more contemporary themes and interests:

I wanted to show Brand Upon the Brain, but the library couldn’t get it:

So, here’s a clip with some commentary


It’s interesting to note his reliance on old film and staging techinqiues and Sontag’s point that: “31. This is why so many of the objects prized by Camp taste are old-fashioned, out-of-date, démodé. It's not a love of the old as such. It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides the necessary detachment -- or arouses a necessary sympathy. When the theme is important, and contemporary, the failure of a work of art may make us indignant. Time can change that. Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility. . . . ”

And here’s a short he directed that’s a bit more “obviously” campy.

"Sissy Boy Slap Party Director's Cut" (2004)


And then there’s also:

“But I’m a Cheerleader!” (1999) trailer:



And Steven Shainberg's "Secretary" (2002) trailer



And now John Waters

Caricature, Cartoons, Comics, Comedy?

English Caricature:

"The arc of popularity for satirical prints in England began in the early 1700s, peaked in the 1790s, and declined in the early 1800s. During this time, thousands of prints were published in England. They were produced in editions of hundreds and sometimes thousands of copies. Today, the British Museum preserves 10,000 of these prints. Several thousand more in the U.S Library of Congress and other museums.

In the late-1700s, London printshops and booksellers displayed prints in their storefront windows. Crowds of customers, along with people who couldn't afford prints, crowded the sidewalks to see new works by William Hogarth, Isaac Cruikshank and others.

During this time, the term caricatura came into use in England as caricature. The printshops used the term to define a genre that included virtually any print with a satirical or humorous theme."

And, further from English Caricatures


"Today, these prints exist as one of the only visual forms to document the historical events of the day, the moods of the public, and the fashions of clothing. This era came to be known as the golden age of the English engraver."

See, for exaple: James Gillray's MONSTROUS CRAWS, at a New Coalition Feast



Or, for fashion, James Gillray's The V_____ Committe framing a Report

Or fungi, James Gillray's An Excrescence; __ a Fungus;



Now, French Caricature History:

“French political caricatures of the 19th century chronicle the gradual,
often-violent end of the Monarchy and the emergence of a democratic state. French rulers strictly regulated the popular press, especially satirical images. In a time when a large percentage of the population couldn't read, these images were seen as a greater threat to the established order than the printed word.

French caricaturists worked under government-imposed censorship throughout most of the 19th century. Artists and editors were imprisoned, fines were levied and newspapers were seized. Offenders were rigorously prosecuted for "press crimes," which authorities interpreted as alleged defamatory and subversive attacks on the government."

And, further:

“During the 1700's, the art of engraving was unrestricted but the sale of prints was subject to censorship through the lieutenant general of the police. Offenders could pay with their lives. One caricaturist was burned alive for portraying Louis XIV with his mistresses." Althought, apparently in England Gillray could get away with showing someone seeking "petticoat influence," QUESTION & COMMANDS; OR, the Road to HE_R_FORD; a Sunday Evenings Amusement


And, a bit further,

"Censors prevented the distribution of prints that were considered harmful to "religion, the general good and the peace of the State, and the purity of morals." Political prints from England were also seen as a threat and attempts were made to stop them before they entered France. But this ban on imported prints had limited effect and a large black market developed for English engravings."

All via, French Caricatures

For an example of Gillray on the French political situation, Gillray’s Destruction of the French Collossus

Later, "In the 1860s and 1870s, André Gill was the unchallenged master of caricature in France. Gill drew full-page colored illustrations of famous personalities that were published on the covers of large-format caricature journals. When displayed on newsstands, they functioned as political posters. His work for La Lune generated a circulation of 40,000 copies."

Examples, Gill’s L’Ecclise

Other caricaturists of note, Honoré Daumier's Le Charivari, Alfred Le Petit's
Le Grelot, and an example of Gill's modified and unmodified versions of Gill’s La Deliverance

Today, we have several types of caricature in America.

Political caricature: Andy And Davey Politicans and Royalty

And celebrity caricature: Gallery of the Absurd

And political or lifestyle caricatures-cartoons, New Yorker Cartoons

Most comics use caricature and can be single panels or a series of sequential panels.

Single examples, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad Cartoons

Sequential examples, Doonsburry Daily Dose http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/051_planb/maus_extract.jpg

There are also more elaborate, political graphic novels that are at times humerous and sometimes use caricature, sure as Art Spieglman's Maus Maus Panel

Then, of course, there are moving cartoons.

For example, old Disney cartoons via You tube that aren't so comic now but do use caricature:

and, not so terrible:


There are also caricatures that poke fun of caricatures, such as this Cox + Combs George Washington You Tube Vid:


Also, their are caricatures of forms, or types, of representation. So, for example, Kevin Kalliher's Home Honey, I'm High!, which can be seen here: Home Honey, I’m High

Then there are more normal forms of animation that use caricature, such as The Simpsons and Family Guy:


And then, thing, well, some other types of life-style documentation that may or may not fall somewhere else. . .

Zombie Yoga


And, last: American Furry: Life, Liberty, and the Fursuit of Happiness


Any questions?

Wiki + Gitmo + Abu Ghraib

I haven't been updating this, which should be obvious to the (maybe) two people that ever look. (Hi!)

Instead I've begun going through Wiki-- that grand open-source book of nonsense and desire mixed with cited sources and facts-- and updating, citing, and removing fallicious information that pertains to the people involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, CSRT hearings, and other fun, light topics.

Of course, you can't see my contributions but, I promise, they make all the difference because, for better or worse, people use wiki as if it were fact, so the more facts that are actually true the better.

And that's that.

Paris Hilton's 40 Days in Gitmo

I have to say I haven't had time to update this blog with information on the detainee that died. The media hasn't been much help. Instead, they have been covering Paris Hilton and her "situation."

At work today, my brother found it apt to point out that it seemed strange that the media was providing moment-by-moment LIVE coverage of Paris Hilton being hand cuffed, being driven to court in a police car, being taken into court, etc.

Letters were sent when she was released-- people got upset.

This is my question: how is it that people in North American society become civic minded and overly concerned that "justice is served" when the issue is a socialite and 40 days while remaining largely unconcerned with the 300+ people held off the coast in Cuba in Gitmo without trials for over four years? Is it just a matter of schauenfreude? Are we living through a permanent farce after the 9/11 tragedy?

It certainly looks that way. Now, watch El-P's video Smithereens (Stop Cryin) and imagine Paris in his place.

Saudi Detainee Death/Suicide in Gitmo

This post is about two news stories on the suicide-death in Gitmo-Guantanamo coupled with some Department of Defense information and general research. The first story is Saudi Detainee Found Dead in Guantanamo Cell, comes from NPR, and is by Jackie Northam.

"U.S. military officials say that a Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has died in an apparent suicide. Three other detainees at Guantanamo have taken their own lives in less than a year. Guards found the Saudi detainee in his cell Wednesday, not breathing and unresponsive.

Just under a year ago, three other Guantanamo prisoners killed themselves. That and a riot shortly afterwards in one of the camps resulted in a more rigid security situation for many of the nearly 400 detainees still held at Guantanamo.

Many privileges were taken away and what were once medium-security areas were tightened into maximum security zones.

Human rights workers and many defense lawyers say those conditions — as well as the detentions — have prompted the prisoners to take desperate measures.

Only a handful of detainees have been charged in the past five years.

On Monday, a military tribunal is due to convene to try two of the prisoners for war crimes."

Link and story here: Saudi Detainee Found Dead in Guantanamo Cell
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10571152

The New York Times ran a story via AP under the headline U.S.: Dead Detainee Was of High Value. The first thing that's striking about the NYTimes headline is that it doesn't say where the detainee died. The NPR headline is simple and to the point: who, where, what. The NYTimes headline is not and, at this point, Guantanamo is so contentious that I can only see that omission of where from a major, US News publication as a gesture intended to move information into the background and away from a more general, public audience. Now lets look at the AP-NYTimes article, with reporting by Andrew O. Selsky and Ben Fox.

"A Saudi Arabian detainee who apparently committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay had been held at the prison camp reserved for the least compliant and most ''high-value'' inmates, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

The Saudi government identified the man who died Wednesday as Abdul Rahman Maadha al-Amry. A spokesman for the kingdom's Interior Ministry, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, said it was too early to judge how al-Amry died."

Let's pause for a moment. I don't recognize that name from the list of "high value detainees" at Gitmo. The list can be downloaded as a PDF here Detainee Biographies. I imagine that file-link may go down later, so I've downloaded it but also screen captured one page of interest:




That's the only name that comes close to the one in the NYTimes report. More importantly, as the US government is constantly butchering "non-Western" names, it's the only name that comes close in the "high level detainee" section and is Saudi. I'll have to do some more research. I'll try and update later today.

Now, moving on.

"The U.S. military has not confirmed the detainee's identity or explained how it arrived at the conclusion that he probably committed suicide.

'The actual cause of death is under investigation,' Southern Command spokesman Jose Ruiz said by telephone from Miami on Thursday.

Ruiz said the man was held at the maximum-security Camp 5."

Camp 5, Camp Delta, Gitmo, and Guantanamo are all the same place, roughly. Just thought that should be on the record for anyone who was confused, because it's intended to be confusing.

"Prisoners in Camp 5, which is similar to the highest-security U.S. prisons, are kept in individual, solid-wall cells and allowed outside for only two hours a day of recreation in an enclosed area."

If you're interested in knowing what those cells look like, there are links in the previous post.

"Wells Dixon, a defense attorney who met with detainees at Camp 5 last month, said many showed signs of desperation.

''I can assure you that it is hell on earth,'' Dixon said. ''You can see the despair on the faces of detainees. It's transparent.''

Other critics said detainees are frustrated at being held indefinitely without charges.

''You have five and a half years of desperation there with no legal way out,'' said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents hundreds of Guantanamo detainees. ''Sadly, it leads to people being so desperate they take their own lives.''

Then we get this line a bit further down:

"The death came as Guantanamo prepares to hold pretrial hearings for two detainees in military tribunals."

Pretrial? The "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" are being called pretrials? That word seems to imply that these men-- who have been held for over five years before being granted these "pretrials" by the military-- are going to have actual trials. These review tribunals have been going on for years, are ongoing, and are not pretrials.

"Khadr is still to be arraigned Monday. He and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who also faces a hearing Monday, are among only three of the roughly 380 Guantanamo prisoners to be charged with a crime. The third, David Hicks, was convicted of aiding al-Qaida and returned to his native Australia."

Well, at least they can decide on how to spell David Hicks. Too bad they can't seem to agree on any sort of reasonable pattern that would make it easier to identify any of the "non-Western" detainees. One, last choice excerpt from the NYTimes article:

"The former commander of the detention facilities, Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, described earlier suicides as acts of ''asymmetric warfare'' -- an effort to increase condemnation of the prison."

Asymmetrical warfare? Suicide is a gesture of asymmetrical warfare? Five years with no trial in a high-detention, isolated facility being guarded by the military and suicide is an act of warfare? Are you kidding me? And Iraq and the ongoing violence there. . . ? What, exactly, would that be? Frankly, I don't think we need one suicide to condemn the United States government or its practices right now, I think it's doing an excellent job condemning itself in the eyes of the entire world.

Link to the NYTimes article here: U.S.: Dead Detainee Was of High Value
Please, when you click on the link delight in the fact that the New York Times turned the AP Guantanamo Suicide link into the much more neutral Dead Detainee of High-Value.

After all, it wasn't a suicide in Gitmo-- it was an unfortunate setback to the United States government's data mining of human beings.

Gitmo

Department of Defense Website & Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The department of defense website is a mess. It's hard to navigate. There are countless broken links and if you want to find any information about what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and the detainees it's impossible to find any images using their search engine.



The search engine won't even find images using the "military language" for Guantanamo Bay-- Camp Delta or Gitmo.



But if you work hard enough you can find a featured photo essay on Gitmo here Guantanamo Bay Photo Essay at http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/gitmo/

There are a few other "approved" links on Detainee Affairs, located here Detainee Affairs Links at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/detainees.html

And here are the images, you can click on the links here:



Oh, and if you want to leave a comment? That's not possible.



The detainee transcripts are located here Combatant Tribunal Transcripts Links at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Combatant_Tribunals.html

They're very interesting, well worth the read. They've even uploaded an audio recording of the most recently released detainee transcript here Combatant Tribunal Audio at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Faraj%20Redacted%20Audio.mp3

It's kind of creepy to listen to the pauses. I'll post more specifically about the transcripts soon.

I think what's most disgusting, though, is how difficult information is to find on the Department of Defense (DoD) website. In a time when we're increasingly reliant on the engines doing the searching it's of special note what cannot be found.

It's also a reminder that you still need to look to find what neeeds to be seen.

Obscene Times

The real issue isn't just the New York Times. It's the media. Blogs are now part of the media circuit that regulates that cycle, and they can be used to critique the media. And the government. And that's exactly what this project will now be: a forum to critique the media and the government.

I don’t hate the New York Times-- I hate the fact that it's obscene. Obscene. The word is tied to Greek tragedy, and wiki tells me it "literally means 'offstage' [--] because violent acts in Greek theater were committed off stage." It's latin derivation might be derived from ob caenum, literally "from filth." A few pets died in this country, so right now you're hearing all those horror stories about what's happening to your food in China. Well, we need to follow a few more bodies off stage, because there's lots of filth that needs to be dragged into the light, things you probably look at everyday.

Well, I'm going to see what I can find in plain sight, in flagrante delicto. . .

Update

I started this as a project to critique the use of photographs by the New York Times.

I didn't have the patience to keep doing it because the New York Times was so frustrating.

So I've moved on. But I'm going to leave this up, because it's a great title for a blog. And I'll come back to it.

Interactive Features: Casualties of War: Faces of the Dead

One way in which the New York Times has been pioneering is in its creation of "interactive features" for their web site. Interactive features can take a variety of forms: some look like slide shows and have audio, others are videos, charts and graphs, and still others allow you to search and manipulate information.

It's this last type of interactive feature-- the type that allows you to search and manipulate information-- that caught my eye today.

Looking for news and images on Iraq I saw a new feature about the American soldiers that had died serving our country. The reason it caught my eye was because the images were not photographs-- they were cropped, gray, pixelated-looking and abstracted images.





When I clicked on the feature to try and figure out what this was I saw this image of a single man broken into little grayed out squares.




Each square that composes the image of the single soldier one is "actually viewing" "stands" for one soldier killed. When your cursor moves over the image one can choose to see a different image of a US solider killed in combat. It's a quite literal representation of a part standing for a whole and a whole for a part, but it's also fallacious, because this image cannot possibly represent all the soldiers killed: there aren't enough squares.

What you're actually seeing is a whole image parsed into parts that doesn't even represent a third of the US war casualties.

You're also seeing how what artists do feeds into corporate design, because the parsing of the faces in this layout recalls Chuck Closes' paintings quite, quite easily.



In that image the squares are actually diamonds, but there are other images by Close which more obviously recall this sort of part-whole composition.

Yes, it's just a design choice. But it also says more, because these images not only try to speak from more than one perspective, to unify the US war dead under one cause and situation, but they also dull questions of race through the absence of color. These images also stand directly opposite the color photographs one almost always sees of living US soldiers. The use of gray, or black and white, is also a trope used to recall something past, something old. It's fallacious, too, but that's besides the point. These deaths are not old-- they are not part of the past! this is not history but what is happening now-- and are part of a collective present.

These squares may look like a collection of the present, but they are anything but present or collective.

Press the Press

Images from the 24 hours after Saddam was Executed
The New York Times
December 30-31, 2006









The press is a tool of attention that has the power to direct our personal, public, and political concerns.

The New York Times is specifically unique as a newspaper because of its revered history, its impressive access to tangible and intangible resources, and because it is pioneering web based content.

During the process of creating and recreating the NYTimes every minute, hour, and day, images rotate and disappear. Text is also changed. These changes happen invisibly without transparency, documentation, or notation.

This particular, new process of production is interesting because in looking at what disappears or is replaced one can see the bias' of the Times, its editors, and its intended audience of readers.

This blog is devoted to making the web based NYTimes’ use of visual and verbal language more transparent. It is intended to be a productive forum for understanding through critique the way new technologies and modes of production are changing the news media, our everyday language, expectations, identities, and politics.

The content will be updated almost daily, just like the NYTimes.