russian posters online

this russian site features a huge number of posters from the 20th century up to the present day, and even some from the 1800s.

not all are as strange as this, "A Children Meeting" (1923) by A.I. Komarav, but all are very interesting and worth a look.

the site is in both russian and english

framing photography

questions i've recently come to think about as central to my work on photographic practice by everyday folk include:

• what do we think we're doing when we make photos to share on Facebook, Flickr, or similar social media?
• what motivates someone to make images either truthfully, authoritatively, ironically, playfully, or with some other value system in mind? how does one know when or why to make images of one kind and not another? what factors contribute to that decision-making process?
  
• what factors, social, economic, or otherwise, deter people from making images in certain capacities, or from making images at all?
  
• what cultural narratives (such as those around art, science, journalism, etc.) contribute to motivating, and what to deterring, people's photographic image production?

although i think there is still rich work to be done with analysis of specific images and forms of imagery, it seems that there's still a paucity of understanding around how we come to images and make sense of them—whether we're materially making them ourselves, or symbolically taking their meaning from others.

for me, social media might play a significant role in understanding personal, interpersonal, and social behaviours surrounding how visual imagery, including photographs, are activated in everyday life. then again, and with wary attention focused squarely on the term "behaviour" and its connotations of effects-laden psychological theory, social media may not be of help at all.

still, with increasingly more individuals centering formerly isolated and private "home mode" communicative practices on networked spaces like those Facebook and Flickr provide, there must be some conclusions that can be drawn about how one makes these photos, how one makes them make sense, and where that leaves us as a society.

notes on copyright reform in canada: bring out the thumbscrews!

in a Toronto Star editorial today, proposed changes to the existing Copyright Act made by the federal minority Conservative government this week were applauded: unequivocally and, unfortunately, uncritically.

before anything, let me point out that copyright infringement has always been with us humans: whether through material forgeries, through any act of fakery or deception, or through less self-evident means like filesharing, sampling, remixing, and the like. i daresay it will always be with us, too: gucci and coach knock-offs keep on coming, that Van Gogh or Monet still graces our desktops, and our homemade t-shirts of rodent-like Walt Disney characters still keep being worn. There's a certain amount of inevitability here that seems ignored: copying will happen and, in many cases, what's really wrong with that?

of course the editorial talks about protecting the rights of businesses and artists, those digital content creators the new law is designed to protect. this certainly has all the trappings of a noble cause, as the production of a nation's artistic community creates an important cultural as well as intellectual heritage.

yet it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of contemporary artistic practice, and narrowly defines what is and isn't art in the process. for one thing, for many artists remnants of the sensory world are core elements of their work: where would the work of Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, or musicians who sample the work of other musicians be if copyright law was strictly enforced?

more insidiously, it suggests a sharp and clearly delineated divide between artists, businesses, and others occupied in the traffic of copyrighted forms and everyone else. with the proliferation of digital technologies, people of all kinds now have the ability to not only create forms (they're long had that ability, notably with cameras), they have the ability to distribute them as well.

the "erosion" of the rights of "'creators'" that the editorial mentions; the "stifling" of the creativity and innovation of "artists:" all this presumes an existing model of distribution that need not, indeed must not, be tampered with. namely, big business and mainstream media conglomerates hold and maintain copyright control, as they should, and as they should continue to do so.

some fancy rhetorical footwork here as "artists" comes to be defined (implicitly at least) as those making and distributing forms within the existing copyright paradigm (i.e. as commissioned to do so in order to earn royalties while others retain, or at least control, copyright; and commissioned with certain expectations about the quality and communicability of the final form). "artists," in other words, are not necessarily those that make images, music, etc. artists can also be big businesses themselves: copyright holders, and those holding the legal right to monopolistically distribute those holdings. this is an archaic interpretation of creative rights, one that assumes artistic production as property to be traded like any other commodity rather than the cultural and human right of any individual, whether or not she has paid to experience it.

there are other options: why not push for copyright laws that protect the rights of creators rather than the rights of their creations? fair wages, arms-length funding, copyright being retained by those who make - not those who distribute - artistic forms: why isn't this a possibility?

perhaps this is the most disturbing element of the editorial, and the legal amendment it so heartily endorses. namely, that artistic creation isn't a universal human right. the right to formulate and express local and unique ways of knowing isn't particularly valuable.

some might argue that this isn't a case about everyone making art forms, that it's about stemming filesharing and other copyright infringements. i'd argue that by taking control of the moral and ethical processes decision-making about what's fair and right in creative production, by increasing surveillance opportunities and imposing punitive policies designed to protect interests instead of empower citizens and communities - in short, by declaring what is and isn't fit for people to have autonomy and self-direction over, it certainly isn't a case of everyone making art forms.

but neither, for that matter, is it simply about filesharing or copyright infringement: instead, it's a far broader issue about what businesses and governments can do to the cultural sovereignty and self-determination of a nation when left unchecked, and about the vastly unequal means that they have at their disposal (e.g. legal systems, educational systems, networked/broadcast communication systems, and so on) with which to do so.

anyway, i'm by no means an expert on this stuff; i'm far more interested in the implications this has on how people make and do things, or are subject to the ideas and interests of those who are more leniently permitted to do so (i.e. corporate conglomerates, more often than not, in a mainstream media market). more sustained and intelligent discussion can be found in the writings of Michael Geist, to name but one:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3029/125/

Loud Music, Noise, and Environmental Alternatives

Don't get me wrong: I like to listen to loud music. I don't like all types of music, but I like many, and I do like hearing the subtleties that only close proximity (when it's live) or high volume (when it's recorded) can provide.

Music, after all, is a craft. Singers, musicians, composers, producers—each spends a great deal more time practicing than performing in order to hone and perfect their craft. So even though I cannot name what precisely marks the difference between average and more accomplished musical performances, I'm pretty sure I can recognize when something more than average is happening. I'd like to think, too, that I understand why an author would want to put in differences, subtleties, nuances, or whatever you want to call it (i.e. to stylistically differentiate from others in a highly conventionalized practice, to experiment—innovatively, curiously, and playfully—with what one does and does not know, or to push to the boundaries between what is and is not acceptable in that practice). That said, I hope you don't think me a prude for saying I typically hate other people's loud music.

Let me correct that: other people's indiscriminantly loud music.

Not that people don't have good taste in music, and not that they're not sophisticated people in many other ways (I feel like I'm going to dig myself into a hole, but here goes....) But sometimes people just need to turn it down.

I'd like to think that this rant isn't entirely subjective: I've seen trends in people's tastes for loud music, and I suspect others have seen the same. An obvious one is blaring in order to be seen: teenage boys in their glowingly-modified Honda Civics, their middle-aged counterparts in their own shiny-chromed convertibles... even hawgs on their choppers (choppers on their hawgs?) who all want to announce, in one way or another, their presence and be seen being who they are (or who they pose to be), by using the sound systems in their vehicles primarily as noisemakers. The music is thematic to some degree but, much like a national anthem, is rarely attended to, enjoyed, or studied. It's something for believers to salute; something for the rest to jeer or sit through, patiently until it's over, or when it drives away.

A less obvious trend is loud music played by those who need a constant background track to their lives. Campus bars are notorious for this: music so loud it drowns out conversations. These are places where one would assume studious conditions would be a requisite to conversation (this is an academic institution, isn't it?). Often, beer and wings can be found in place of stimulating conversation, even though they could, in fact, go together rather nicely. A counter-argument, I suppose, is that there's a certain amount of anonymity in a noisy room, where one can try on a variety of theoretical hats without fear of blurting out something embarrassing or, worse, self-implicating in a room suddenly fallen silent with no soundtrack to shield a person from questions of "who said that?!" My counter- counter-argument to this is that maybe we should be held more accountable for the things we say, in recognition that we're probably not all Leopold's or Loeb's in our hearts, even if we're fumbling with words in quite horrifying ways. The background music is padding, then, in a place where sharp corners might be better left open a little more, where thought might be usefully directed at the structures that endanger, and where theorizing about what, collectively and individually, can and should be done about them.

Radios blaring on a back deck, in a garage, or in another room are similar: noise machines to drown out conversation, albeit in our more mundane lives. Here they're more than this, however, since the conversations are fewer. An owner's habitual practice of switching one on, typically on weekends while tinkering or doing chores, makes me think that she'd would rather be somewhere else, in some alternate symbolic or mediated universe parallel to our own: in a commercial for Hawaiian beaches, perhaps, or on a train with some action-romance movie superstar of the opposite (or the same) sex, or even altogether on some entirely different planet. Why else would someone let a random assortment of melodies and banter fill up the space of their resting minutes except for an absolute and paralyzing fear of the mundane, the everyday, the picayune? Being somewhere else—indeed, just dreaming of going somewhere else, imagining being in transit is sufficient—acts to placate a fear of facing up to what habit, routine, and the everyday really are: vast unknowns of social and technological contingency, aleatory webs of massive bureaucratic state and corporate apparatuses over which we have no control, and about the mechanisms of which we have no inkling. Silence would serve to remind us that, beyond all ourselves, this—our fate—still exists, an existential horror vacui in which we play nothing but an interchangeable part for others producing and directing. Thus what might happen were there to be silence for once—paralyzing, total silence—panics a great many of us, mostly below the level of our consciousness. It's the aural equivalent of our cultural fear of the dark, our tactile fear of enclosed spaces, and a constant background soundtrack elicits the same sigh of relief a well-lit street at night, or the elevator door opening after an interminably long wait of minutes; seconds.

If the blackout of '03 taught us anything, it's that we can survive without as much noise as we thought. Or, instead, that what we put on to fill up our personal and social voids can just as easily be filled by real human voices: sing-song voices, laughing voices, passionate whispers, or defiant shouts. It is then that we realize we have more to say than we thought; more to be spoken, and more to be heard. And the silences cease to be oppressive, filled with ominous reminders of things beyond our knowing, and instead become periods of determination; moments of waiting, beautiful moments of patience, in anticipation of what human voice will next speak.

getting back to it...

after quite a break, i feel like i'm going to have some time to do some creative projects over the summer.

as of the fall, i'll be starting my PhD in Communications/Cultural Studies at Ryerson/York here in Toronto. coursework, teaching, and/or teaching assisting aside, i hope to be in the darkroom and at the keyboard creating worlds of delight once again.

time will tell. in the meantime, i have a few blog entries i'd drafting up about technology and etiquette... essentially about the unwritten rules of society as applied to things technological (and what, today, isn't even partly technological?? big fun...)

i live around the corner from "the hemingway"

Ernest Hemingway had a way with the written word that was incredible. Some might say his skill was indefinable, but that's exactly what it wasn't. It was precise—absolutely definable. Here for example is the text of his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.

To write with such clarity and precision should be the goal of every writer, in any type of writing. The reason is this: in a world of such complexity and ambiguity, it becomes nearly impossible to lay out one's thoughts so that another can grasp some of the meaning of the first. It may, in fact, be entirely idealistic: romantic; utopian. For anyone avoid this and write so as to obfuscate is not merely dystopian, but ultimately dehumanizing. The point of all human existence, in case no one has told you, is to come together in any way possible. Writing is such a way. It gets close; then it penetrates.