At 19.24 -0800 02-01-03, Bill Barowy scrobe:
>Granted, there are ads
>that one encounters on yahoo while accessing the photos, but in perspective,
>the only time i can get away from ads in the U.S. is on the top of a mountain,
>or when my head's underwater. (Prayer flags and backstroke flags don't
>qualify)
This reminds me of something that I wrote in the beginning of November,
after reading a piece by Phil Graham about the subliminalities of our
ad-saturated environment. This is, first, what Phil wrote:
***************************************************************************
Subliminal -- literally, "below the threshold" -- is a term most readily
associated with insidious advertising practices, ones that flash messages
before the eye too fast for the mind to process immediately. Other
ostensibly evil techniques of mass persuasion include sounds played
backwards in audio tracks, or pictures hidden in other pictures, or words
hidden in pictures, or pictures hidden in words. But, we might ask in
relation to practices of mediation, below *which* threshold are these
insidious practices aimed? "Consciousness" is the most usual and definitive
answer-- 'subliminal advertising' means to aim a message below the
threshold of conscious engagement, where the audience has no defenses
against absorbing or understanding meanings. Nothing could be more
ignorant of our current media environment, which has been *entirely*
subliminal until recently. Each year, as part of my advertising class, I
get students to record each and every engagement with corporate messages,
noting where they encounter them, when they encounter them, and any
reactions they have to them. The first thing they have to do each day is
write down what they remember from the previous day. The reactions are
invariably odd (if that makes sense). They are akin to my experience in
Paris. I studied French from the age of 5 until I was 17 (why? is another
matter altogether -- I wanted to study Greek and Russian, but never mind).
I first went to Paris when I was almost 40, having barely thought of or
"used" French at all in between then and the end of my school life. The
effect was this: I managed for three days to understand practically
everything people were saying --- but at huge cost of effort because I was
constantly translating. I remember the exact moment that the whole mass of
conversations going on around me collapsed into so much incoherent noise.
At the same time, the overall volume of the noise seemed to me to increase.
I was at a crowded retaurant on the Trocadero, in the middle of ordering
breakfast. It was only then that I realised how hard I had been working to
translate the social environment. I was suddenly aware of my
"outsiderness", of the alien nature of this culture to me. Similarly, my
students generally struggle for a few days to *make* themselves aware of
all the sponsored mediations they encounter: t-shirts, drink coasters,
posters, tv shows, ads, news reports, ads on hats, etc; newspapers, radio,
posters in their room; billboards, shop signs, brand names on all their
stuff, even the alarm clock they turn off first thing each day, or the
brand on their mobile phone -- incessant, pervasive, convergent --
totalitarian. They never even notice smells from, e.g., fried chicken shops
(it's an advertising technique long used in food retail by the simple means
of an exhaust fan pointing out at the street), let alone the corporate
smells we apply every day (colognes etc), which many people have no trouble
identifying if asked. Almost invariably, the students suffer a similar
collapse to that which I experienced in Paris, usually within the same
time-frame. They are shocked at the degree to which they are "switched off"
to the incredible amounts of noise in which they daily immersed. They
suddenly find themselves in a *totally alien* environment, which shocks
them no end. Very few students remember anything at all from the day
before. And what they do remember is fairly irrelevant to their needs or
intentions. They remember specific "sponsored" mediations because they are
strange, annoying, funny, or whatever, or if they appear *in conversation*,
or in some surprising part of their personal space -- not because they are
persuasive or desirable in any way whatsoever. The whole experience seems
dream-like to them. They realise they are unconscious, or numb. You can try
it if you want. All you need is a pen and paper. What I am doing to my
students is making them aware of the extreme degree of
self-anaesthetisation needed to just get by these days without being
constantly distracted by sponsored and "targeted" mediations -- i.e.,
without getting *consciously* engaged in someone else's
consciousness-gaining strategies. What this amounts to is an almost total
"subliminalisation" of all mediations, and perhaps of all our experiences:
the whole media environment, seen as an all-out, full-volume, totally
saturated competition for our attention, becomes analagous to a classroom
full of spoilt eight-year-old children constantly vying for the attention
of the teacher, or whoever might be "in charge", without any constraints
upon them at all. But we, as the "targets" of mediations, are neither
teacher nor class -- we feel ourselves to be sitting in the corner of the
noisy room, usually trying to do, or not trying to do, something entirely
outside the interactive dance between an harassed teacher and the
semi-skilled attention-getting strategies characteristic of eight-year-old
children.*********************************************************************
And this is the catalogue that I made, just of my cyborged surroundings:
*********************************************************************
Seeems to me where I sit at the keyboard (macally iKey), using Eudora, and
with the rainbow Apple at the top left corner of the menu bar, looking at
the monitor (SONY Multiscan 210ES, Trinitron, with a TCO-99-approved
sticker), wielding the mouse (Logitech) and with my favourite small sharp
scissors (Fiskars) between me and my Kodak DC280, within convenient reach
for my right hand, oh yes there's my little magnifier as well (Eschenbach)
- seems to me that I would be doing nothing much else that writing notes...
So while I wait for my Braun coffeemaker to do my Zoega coffee, let me
continue. Well, there you see: I already forget all the icons within my
view on my virtual desktop: old version of Netscape, the MACOS Face, Virex
DropScan, Acrobat reader, Stuffit Expander. And of course the home made
desktop wallpaper, which (sucker me) is a map of Katharine Kerr's Deverry
world. Thinking of replacing it with a version of a real map: I like maps
to put my stuff in. Gosh, I write slowly (cos I also went back and added
the sticker on the monitor): coffe's already done.
So, Back at the Mac with my Zoega in one of the Dunoon cups and, on a
Höganäs saucer (had to turn it upside down to remember, the Dunoons I know
without checking), two round white rye crackers (Härjedalsbröd) spread with
non-dairy margarine (Carlshamns) and hard cheese (bought at Hemköp sez the
wrapping - and the sticker from the bottom of the cheese is no longer
there, cos I peeled it off to scan it: there was a URL on my cheese,
ost.se, we get URLs on the most unlikely things these days. Well this URL
doesn't work, apparently it's been cut off when the cheese was sliced :-)
Scuse me while I finish them.
And refill the coffee.
In anticipation of what else there is to describe in terms of logos, just
on the space within reach to my right, I stretch slightly to grab my
dictionary (Norstedts) to check the English for window-cleanser. Cos I have
some Vim standing there, for cleaning the pane on my Epson scanner ever so
often. And a Chiffonnette rag, of course. Scanner is within reach to my
right, as well. I won't go into the rest of the bookshelf where the
dictionary lives. Next to the Vim there are two plastic containers (for
weed expeditions), with a drying sample of Sticky Groundsel (no TM there!!)
on top. The big container still merrily announces its origin as an ice
cream container (GB, Carte d'Or). Must be a couple of years old, from
before my dairy free days (hard cheese in the morning being as much lactose
as my belly can take - don't even think of my arse...)
Gee, it's 12.16 (yes I had a very late Sunday morning) and just barely
daylight. Grey November, indeed. The desk lamp (IKEA) is on.
So, in the desktop space in front of the scanner there's my Spiralux
cutter, another pair of scissors (Skultuna) an Artline marker by
Schachihata, A biro ;-) with the logo of the University of Linköping, a
Faber-Castell pencil, a palette knife (no logo!! bought in the sixties) and
the plastic pieces of a toy puzzle heart. Plus one of my printouts of the
weed list.
Between the camera and the scanner there's my desktop waste "basket": an
empty 500g coffee can from the eighties (COOP Brasilkaffe), and next to the
monitor there's an old plastic ruler (generic) on top of another weed list
printout. I won't dig around in the bigger chip basket with pencils et
cetera (and my old Casio on top) - and the smaller chip basket is just
filled with sea shell fragments from San Diego (no logo). At the back,
towards the wall there are two big beer glasses (Budweiser) filled with the
sort of found objects that appear on my weed pages. A small collection of
miniature keys and a dried sprig of Ternate-leaved Cinquefoil with seeds
(to be returned outdoors).
The left side of my desk is easier. There's the LaCie CD burner, which is
also the repository for all my specs: four extra pairs of glasses (two of
which I use regularly, and why do I keep the others there, I wonder) plus a
pair of hobbyist's snap-on magnifiers. No doubt branded, too, but in small
print, and stuck behind my ears while in use. Another biro (bloody
futuristic design), logo from Malmö Högskola. My watch (Swatch).
The little white shelf made by my son at school, top shelf loaded with
Fujifilm recordable CDs, second shelf holding my digipass for the SEB
Internet bank, my little case with nail care implements (bought at IKEA -
like the chair I'm in, and the new legs for the table from a couple of
years ago. The tabletop itself, a sturdy slab of pine wood, bought in -72
from a shop in Stockholm - I've forgotten the name). Two miniature lidded
boxes of turned wood, one made by my grandfather, the other by some
anonymous Asian worker. On the tabletop, under my pocket calendars for this
year and last (Almanacksförlaget), the ISCRAT leaflets. And another weed
list. In the same area, an envelope of salad seeds (Bröderna Nelson) and
the sturdy but worn spectacle case I got after my mother. A clipboard clip
(generic).
To my immediate left *Den Nordiska Floran*, Mossberg, Stenberg, Eriksson.
W&W publishers - this flora is, I think, uncommon in that it is generally
referred to as "Mossberg": the artist of the team, not the botanist. Might
be because his name is first, alphabetically, but I'd like to think it is
because of the artistry, which is really exceptional, beautiful and
informative.
Beyond that a notebook from Indiska and a ring binder with Diane's diss In
the furthest corner a Sharpo Rapid C5 punch. And that brings me to 13.17 -
but then I've had to use my dictionary a number of times.
I am reading, these days, Halldor Kiljan Laxness' *Independent people*
about the sheep farming crofter Bjartur and his children, about a hundred
years ago. Not a lot of brand names in their environment, not a lot of
variety in merchandise or diet. It is debated among the children whether
"the countries" even exist, and when a city dweller camping on their land
one summer treats a couple of children to a meal (on the wildfowl he has
been permitted to shoot off their land) that is the first time they have
ever had fried food. But COFFEE is a constant beverage, in mornings and
when there are guests in the croft.
Uhm. This cataloguing is pretty seductive. Hope I haven't bored you all to
tears - no obligation to read it all, either, of course.
*********************
And an addendum:
*********************
I didn't happen to have a token of the type there that Sunday, but they
come in very handy for keeping to the right of the keyboard for jotting
down figures and filenames and other temporary reminders, like "septus
0729" or
47 44 44 43
26 29 32 26
62 62 59 59
(hue-saturation-value for the colors in a four-color background gif, needed
on paper because I was doing some systematic variation...)
scribbled on the sheets of nice white paper (35*31 cm, folded double) that
the Post uses as a sleeve for all the junk mail of advertising leaflets
they drop through the mail slot in my door. These sheets are mostly empty
white space -
except for a banner along the bottom (front and back) with the logo of the
crowned bugle, saying: "Utdelat av Posten"
(-brought to you by the Post Office.) They've been using this for over a
year, I find the thinking behind it quite alien, boasting over their
crapping - but it does keep the logo in my view.
In the banner space, vertically along the fold there is the printer's logo,
and print that I need a magnifier to read:
Tryck: Color Print Dalarna AB.
MILJÖMÄRKT Trycksak lic nr 341 147
...so this is "environmentally approved printed matter" - produced by a
Swedish printing shop with a name in English!
********************
participantly observant regards
Eva
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