this week's favourite band: hymie's basement

[foxtongue]

365: day 4

I've spent the majority of my day dissolving myself in layers upon layers of technical writing, business plans, copy edits, consultations, proposals, and articles, anything I could use for some concrete writing examples, and you know what I've discovered? That joke I have about living the majority of my life behind non-disclosure agreements is more true than I considered. I don't think of documents as isolated work, but as it turns out, maybe I should.

Almost all of the design work I've done, the packaging, the clever promotions, even the press releases, are locked. Weeks of my life seem to have been swallowed up in what might be considered completely invisible work. Only the trashier articles are freely my copyright - the ghost-written fetish tartlet interviews, the essays on how the McCarthy Era is to blame for Japan's end-of-the-bell-curve pornography industry - very little I would be comfortable shopping to prospective employers. 'Course, I don't show them here, either, for very similar reasons. (It's the rare page that even carries my real name.)

Obscene interiors: terrible decor with invisible pornography.

Which brings me, (if sideways), to something Juan and I were discussing the other day, the self-referential use of digital cameras that's begun to quietly permeate our culture. People will go dancing, bring a camera, take a picture, show it to everyone, pass the camera around, keep dancing, keep taking pictures, keep pausing to look at them. Micro documentation, preserving a moment while living it. Especially odd considering that these pictures don't usually go anywhere and are rarely looked at again. They're hard-drive space.

What I think is interesting is how people are beginning to tailor the way they act in public for things like photos they know will inevitably end up on-line. I have articles I sign with a pen name, which I thought was almost shallow of me, but apparently I'm not as self-conscious as I thought. I overheard a woman on the bus talking on her cell-phone the other day, passionately discussing how she only wears make-up if she knows there will be "technology types" at a party. She felt "liberated" that she was going to a "hippy house" where no one would have cameras.

Spaz.Mike had a nice little essay on post-scarcity that I feel relates, about how the web is bringing around the death of celebrity, a topic we hash out together with some regularity, and I'd like to take that a little farther and say that it's taking what's left and spreading it thin, sure, but it's spreading it over us. Our personal narratives have become individual expression painted entirely by collective context. We have begun wearing the behaviour of miniature celebrities, even when we're not aware of it. Our journals are quietly expanding their borders, leaking out into full scale multimedia presentations that saturate our real life social interactions, as if our constant connection to the network is warping us from observers into the content itself. We The Public learning to manage Being Public.

Me, I like it. What about you?


---
edit: speaking of celebrity vs. real people - Go vote for Mike as That 1 Guy! He's almost at number one!

Comments

[themythicalman.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm ... I'm not so sure I like it, for a few reasons:

1) I don't believe that celebrities are real people. That is to say, what we see isn't the person, but carefully a crafted marketing strategy. Seems obvious, right? Whenever we hear of a celebrity scandal, it's almost always the person's publicist who responds, and scandals get your name out there - hardly a healthy model to which any person should aspire;

2) When I write, 95% of the time, it's just a link to something that I find amusing and/or important for some reason - a YouTube video, or a quote from a poet or author, etc. On that rare occasion when I am trying to relate an experience, it's in the hope that there's somebody out there who might understand what I'm feeling. We want to be remembered, and we write to know we're not alone. In my opinion, thanks to modern technology, as a society, we've never been more collected, or more lonely;

3) When we write, we're not necessarily putting our true selves forward, but how we wish others to view us. We are our own publicists, often perpetuating our own myths; and

4) I'm just as guilty of this one as anybody else: if I was having a real life, wouldn't I be out living it, instead of spending so much time writing about it?

I'm not sure if or where I'm going with this, but there it is: my two bits, plus spare change.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

1) Except that they are, and that's the trick of it, looking past the public face to the fact that everyone's a person. Celebrity is when people forget that, I think, when you become divorced from yourself through other's perceptions. It's like the shift from having a friend to having a fan.

2) I don't see us as being more lonely. Juan, the fellow I linked to in my post, and I never would have met if it weren't for he internet. he lives in Chili, yet we have a real connection, one that helps me rest and sleep better at night sometimes. We share our sultures, our experiences, and find comfort where otherwise there would be none.

3) Which is exactly the same as people in any public space, which is part of my point. I got into a discussion about modified behaviour New Years Morning, Alex saying something about "courting mode" how we fluff ourselves up, leave certain facts out or for later. No one questions that, though it's just as automatic. What's the difference?

4) The more we go out, the more we experience, the more we have to write about, to document, file, and share. That arguement especially doesn't work on me.

[onetusk.livejournal.com]

Picture Caption: Jhayne receives her latest visit from the biomechanical angels of the 26th Century. This one, nicknamed Ralph, is a bit of a comedian, and enjoys coming back to our time since in the 21st Century all his jokes are new. Some are so new as to be incomprehensible, but Jhayne, ever the gracious hostess, looks amused regardless.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Pity there's no behind-the-scenes. Yo would have loved it. I'm standing on a table, trying to lean into the shot without looming, hitting my head on the ceiling.

[onetusk.livejournal.com]

Flickr's new feature: audio commentary.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I've started writing tiny things under each picture again, so you may just be onto something.

.:.

[http://users.livejournal.com/___anomaly___/]

http://www.ytmnd.com/ =))))))))P

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Spaz.Mike lives there. He always finds the cruelest things.

Re:

[http://users.livejournal.com/___anomaly___/]

reeeeeeeally? like what? feeed me this curious url, //hm?

Re:

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

userpage: http://www.ytmnd.com/users/spazdor/sites

my favourites:
http://lolinappropriate.ytmnd.com/
http://shakenbabysyndrome.ytmnd.com/
http://lemmingsxp.ytmnd.com/
http://aoaoaoao.ytmnd.com/
http://lassotool.ytmnd.com/

[lucaskrech.livejournal.com]

We are The Public learning to manage Being Public.
Heidegger says just that same thing in his lectures on Neitszche. Sort of.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Kinda?

[lucaskrech.livejournal.com]

His reading of the transcendent nature of the Superman has to do with the need of Humanity to learn a new level of coping with technology as it "takes dominion over the earth." So yes in terms of the dealing with new existential realities brought on by technology, no in terms of the specifics. So, kinda.

But then he was writing before the "information age" so was still thinking of technology largely in terms of industry. He is one of the philosophical precursors to the Deep Ecology Movement.

Blah blah ramble ramble . . .

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Love the Obscene Interiors; original and very striking. But you mustn't tell anyone I liked them, so shhhh! :)


[edited to correct HTML, because I'm an idiot]

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

*grins* I liked the people, just as much, who couldn't figure out what the pictures were. There's one lass in there somewhere who thinks he put a weight on the couch to simulate the weight of a person. Occam's Razor people!

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Although the temptation was to post back to you "you mean you photoshopped the couch so it looked like there were people on it????", yeah, I read that person's comment and thought "she can't be serious, surely..."

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the idea of simply cutting out people who are actually having sex is a little too shocking...?

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Well, if people are asking whether "they did it" in Lust, Caution (Ang Lee's new film), you don't seriously expect people not to wonder - even if briefly - whether the invisible pornography pics denote people simulating it or having it, do you?

I too fail at html

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

But they're porn photos that he took the people out of! *shakes head* I don't think people bothered faking it back then. They didn't even trim!

Re: I too fail at html

[budgie-uk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found it amusing that in one exchange of comments, one person says they hate the couch, while another person likes it :)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

That was a fairly violent plaid, but I have to admit I've seen worse, though thankfully never anywhere I've lived.

[uminthecoil.livejournal.com]

Our personal narratives have become individual expression painted entirely by collective context.

I hadn't thought of it this way until now, but yeah, I've become something of a fan of an ever growing number of non-celebrities...heh

So yeah, I tend to like it too...that is, what celebrities ( at least the ones that I most often appreciate ) tend to share with those non-celebrities that I also most often appreciate are their vividness & creativity - and when that shines through on the internet, there's very little trick to it.
And it's sweet to see people shine:)

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

There tends to be clusters, too, of people, like the people surrounding bOINGbOING.

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

I overheard a woman on the bus talking on her cell-phone the other day, passionately discussing how she only wears make-up if she knows there will be "technology types" at a party. She felt "liberated" that she was going to a "hippy house" where no one would have cameras.

Back in the days when all we had was text (and we liked it!), I would often get the comment that I sounded exactly the same in person as I did online. I think this has continued well into the era of pictures, sound, and moving pictures. So what I can gather from this is that I either am completely who I am and no about of re-imaging is going to change that. Or I was already an elaborately constructed simulacrum of who I wanted people to think I was before I went online at all (assuming I generate (rather than simply reference) content in the first place).

I'm hoping it's number 1, and I that can tell the difference.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

I've got that, too, actually, except I'm occasionally told that I seem more cheerful in person. One of my better friends, though, recently told me that if they'd come across me on-line, they would have been far too shy to ever say hello, just because I would seem too "out of their league". Which has gotta be both one of the neatest and weirdest things anyone told me about how I present on-line.

Smile...

[aquadeo.livejournal.com]

"The death of celebrity" is a topic I also ponder frequently, but I want to focus on just one observation you made: micro-documentation. It's not fame, but it's the potential of fame, in the same way that a lottery ticket is the potential of wealth. No one thinks that their evening's photos are their chance to "be discovered", but it's fun to pretend for an evening. The catch is that wealth is a responsibility, and fame is a hundred times more so. Hence, people who have to worry about "technology types".

Do I like it? Sure -- it's the spread of a new type of etiquette, which could be considered the original form of "learning to manage Being Public". Conversely, that casts the citizens of the television era in the role of couch potatoes Being Private, and it's certainly worth shaking that institution up a little.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

L.A. felt like a petri dish for people waiting to be Discovered, but it doesn't really happen very much here in Vancouver, and I suspect that's not the real reason people are beginning to shift their behaviour. I think it's much smaller, and has to do with simple vanity, how people want other people to see them as attractive.

[thirteenletters.livejournal.com]

Our personal narratives have become individual expression painted entirely by collective context

I've learned so much about photography from having a Flickr audience, from the process of feedback aesthetics. In feeding their hungers, I've fed my own and learned a few tricks in the process.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

*nods* I hear that. I don't get very much crit-type feedback on my photography and even less so on my writing, but I've certainly been able to gt to know people who do both, which is important as well, maybe even more so, for me.

[jason0x21.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed that we've gotten this far without mentioning Schrodinger or Heisenberg.

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

so there's this physicist speeding along the highway when he's pulled over. The officer says, "excuse me, do you know how fast you were going?" "No," he replied," but I know where I am."

Your Journal as writing ...

[vgibson.livejournal.com]

Jhayne please note that your blog is crammed full of your writing. I've read it ... pages of the stuff, with pictures and media embedded. You could make a "demo page" out of excerpts that you want use to market your writing. I know about the non-disclosure, I've done that myself, but I did get permission to show my design as screenshots with all the data blocked out in photoshop. Not the actual brochure, guide to new software etc... but a screenshot (low rez) of the file open on my desktop, photoshopped. This wouldn't work for text of course, but the point is that sometimes you can get permission after the fact. Good luck. Love your picture, it looks like you are flying on the ceiling.

Re: Your Journal as writing ...

[porphyre.livejournal.com]

Thanks mum. I used two excerpts from HotW and part of a promo package I made for somebody else on marketing strategy.