New Media: Layers of Sound and History by Emily Hooven

1. New Media: Layers of Sound and History by Emily Hooven

2. 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.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rbuQuvoc0YE - !

4. 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.

6. 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. Manovichtalks 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

14. 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 DivineLorraineHotel, 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.