A Humament

In-Class Response

Question 3. "Blogs bring on decay. Each new blog is supposed to add to the fall of the media system that once dominated the twentieth century." Do you think that this is a true statement, that blogs have contributed to the erosion of mass media or are they the second step in the progression of mass media in people's lives?

First of all, i think it's pretty fucking stupid to analyze what blogs are "supposed" to do. Out of all the reasons i can think of for setting up a blog, "adding to the fall of the media system that once dominated blah blah blah" is last on a long fucking list that includes reasons like vanity, a profound desire to project thoughts and opinions to a group of people that don't matter, and being really stoned.

having said that, the only reason blogs cause the fall of the media system is that the media system is letting the blogosphere matter, when it really shouldn't. If, god fucking forbid, print media weren't an overblown, outdated and irrelevant form of media, then it wouldn't be getting edged out of the public space by a bunch of assholes with iBooks.

Newspapers have been undercutting themselves for decades by firing writers and increasing advertising space, graphics, and other "cutting-edge" shit that really only serves to magnify the fact that all the talented writers have left or been fired from journalism. papers are dying because they, like the music industry, failed to adjust to changing social climates and trends and are now reverse-engineering their own failure to make it seem like blogs were out to get them.

blogs are not out to get anybody; but if someone is writing something funny or engaging and you can get it for free, you're damn sure NOT going to pay for inferior writing. the funny thing is that most bloggers parlay their experience into books; i'm thinking about garfield without garfield or stuff white people like. this proves that the print format is still valid; people are just tolerating crap less now that better material is available for free.

print media fucked itself over by trying to cut costs without realizing it was actually just cutting quality. it's like when Coke tried New Coke to compete with Pepsi and after a colossal market failure, realized that people are more invested in the image and connotation of Coke as opposed to its actual taste.

people are attached to papers and magazines for the same reason: reading the Wall Street Journal or Rolling Stone says something about you as a person, it crystallizes a certain image people have of themselves. this is the only thing that's going to reverse the downward slide that print journalism is in.

The Machine is using us

The machine is not using us; we are trapped in its belly and it is bleeding to death. although i enjoyed the video by way of its unique aesthetics, editing choices, and overall execution, i was really pretty irritated by its message. although i, like everyone, appreciate the way the internet brings information and entertainment directly to my increasingly lazy fingers and skull, i am strongly opposed to rethinking "myself" on its terms.

One: the internet is not real. WoW is not real, Facebook is not real, hell, even half of my Twitter posts are made up to throw the Man off my back. the real world is real. getting hit in the face by a frisbee while because you were texting is real. pain is real. love, physical and otherwise, is real. physical interactions are real. conversation is real. the internet offers extensive simulations of all of these things, but they are not real. most of my facebook friends are people i've met maybe once and was socially intimidated into making friends with on the internet. a relationship cultivated on the internet may stir feelings of interest or even lust, but until you've held that person's hand or kissed them or even looked at them without a fucking lcd screen in the way, you have no idea what they're like, all you have is an idea of what the facsimile of them is like.

two: the internet is bad for you. children that are raised by computers are social misfits. this is a fact, and until we are literally living like the matrix and only unplugging from our computers to fight hugo weaving via semi-crappy CGI, the unfortunate truth is that YOU WILL HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER AT SOME POINT and then all your witty 4chan slang and funny facebook picture captions will not help you when somebody looks at you in your beady, squinting eyes and says something. kids need to get out and get dirty and hit each other and fall down and learn physics and social schemas and all that shit for themselves, they don't need to learn how to upload digital pictures and post them on the internet. if your only social interactions have been message board diatribes and chat room 'convos', then you have not learned how to properly interact with other humans, you have learned how to be a shrill, intolerant asshole unable to voice opinions with any degree of articulation or spontaneity.

look, while i might be something of a luddite, i am not against the internet. point of fact, it's pretty fucking awesome. BUT, having said that, i think it's getting way out of control and i really do worry when i see a three year old that's spent more time using windows than playing outside, and i really don't like the idea that some day i might be conducting something like 85% of my daily business through a bunch of wires and satellites gathered around in the ozone layers like a bunch of frat brothers around a passed out freshman girl. the internet needs to be used like what it is, a tool, not a way of life, not a brain, and certainly not the new be all end all of human civilization. nothing is the be all end all of human civilization, that's the fucking point of it.

Uncreative Writing Response

Not really sure what to make of kenneth goldsmith. Although his wardrobe and several of his comments in interviews are interesting, the whole of uncreative writing seems kind of like some bizarre joke. I understand the intellectual purpose of it but once again, like Flarf, there seems to be little or no overarching value to uncreative writing. i understand the idea and methodology behind creating (or exposing) rhythm in things like weather reports or creating writing so uncreative and boring that it becomes interesting and avant-garde, but...who the hell reads this stuff? does anybody pay money for it? sometimes it seems to me that people like Goldsmith are either lazy or bored with their jobs, and therefore decide to create something like uncreative writing to fuck with people. again, i support this practice, but let him inflict it on his own students and those foolish enough to pay attention to him; i don't think this practice or theory needs to be spread any farther than it already has.

i suppose it all goes back to the original idea of 'what is art' and that whole semantic masturbatory seesion, but anyone that starts invoking the nature of art itself in a discussion about something has essentially lost the argument from point of view, as they retreat down the long, comforting birth canal of semantics, making it easy for their debate opponent to get lost, bored, or pissed off. the point that i suppose i'm trying to make is that there are obviously forms of art out there that cross the gap into intellectual excercises and do not actively require any emotional connection, but this practice makes art more divisive than it does inclusive, which is ultimately defeating the point of art. it's not about making obscure intellectual divisions that serve to alienate and annoy and then provide elitist plateaus from which can look down and laugh, saying "hahaha, you don't understand Flarf? you peasant!", it's about making us feel less fucking alone when we look at a piece of art and recognizing how that artist is mired in the same shit we all are, but look what they did to alleviate that pain a little bit. i don't think that when i read uncreative writing, i think about how i want a sandwich and some well-written poetry to read. kenneth goldsmith is missing one of the prime points about life; to become good at something (in this case creativity), first you have to really suck at it, and then get a little bit better by imitating the creativity of others, and then after a long and arduous slog in which you produce a whole lot of crap, you gradually become better at it. and that's life, really.

Blackberry Thumb and Boondocks Clip

Reap what you sow...

also, this clip is not for the easily offended, but bear in mind it's written by Aaron McGruder, a black guy, and performed by Samuel L. Jackson and Charlie Murphy, both also black guys (they play white guys on the show, which is a neat twist)

Samuel L. Jackson and Charlie Murphy discuss texting.

Mobile Writing

3. How does text messaging affect the way you think? How does it affect our communication? How is the writing that happens via texting or tweeting different from writing?

Text messaging in no way affects the way i think. i have only had the ability to text on my cell phone plan for about 2 weeks last year before the phone was stolen and texting disabled on my plan. if anything, texting makes me never want to misspell a word ever again, i consider it, along with devices like AOL Instant Messenger to be one of the devices responsible for the stupidification of America. Also, the incredible obnoxiousness of people who insist on texting while attempting to engage me in conversation literally makes me want to take a hatchet to their fingers, and if one more goddamned person bumps into me on the sidewalk because they were looking at their fucking phone instead of the rapidly approaching real world, I will be forced to take Charles Bronson-style vigilante action.

Texting has its practical purposes, but it is also a bastardization of real communication. By limiting the amount of characters, it forces egregious misspellings and incredibly derranged syntax, which gradually begins to take the place of real grammatical and speaking abilities. Aside from the fact that I would rather have somebody actually speak to me than send me a truncated missive about something i probably don't care about, texting is the ultimate paradox of communication. It is an extremely efficient means of communicating information that nobody gives a rat's ass about.

If i were a teacher, i would begin deducting one percentage point from a student's GPA every time i noticed them texting in class, without telling them. As it stands, i usually pimp-slap or pinch one of my friends if they whip out a phone and begin texting while i'm speaking to them.

In class response 3/23

All of these prompts were covered by my earlier post, but for the sake of being a good little cog in the machine, i'll respond again.

1. Why is flarf not taught as a form of poetry in all schools?
Probably because Dadaism is far too advanced of a concept to be taught to bored, uninterested students, and since Flarf is essentially Dadaist, there is absolutely no room within the average poetry curriculum for a poetry that will alienate students against it even more than they already are.

2. Do you think that flarf should be in a different category than poetry?
No, since doing so would essentially also force poets like ee cummings out of the realm of poetry and into whatever realm flarf is considered, perhaps 'experimental aesthetics'. Flarf is poetry, it's just stupid poetry with little to no redeeming value.

3. I like to think of flarf as "world poetry." Do you agree or disagree?
I have no idea what 'world poetry' is supposed to mean. I feel like it's a vague and irritating tag on an already vague and irritating topic.

4. Do you think flarf shows that the world is ruled by folly?
What? i think these questions were ruled by folly. if anything, flarf shows us that it doesn't matter how ludicrous you make whatever form of 'art' you choose to participate in, some people somewhere will gravitate towards it. How else do you explain the popularity of T-Pain?

5. Is there a limit to flarf or spoetry, in terms of how bad or wrong it can get? Should there be?
No, not necessarily, since by definition it is emblematic of bad taste. Art should not be ruled by convention, so blah blah blah this is stupid i'm bored now.

Flarf Response

"I reject out of hand the notion that poets of my generation are practicing mere experimental aestheticism."
-Some dude on the Flarf page

As interesting as I find flarf poetry, I take severe issue with this quote. While the principles of flarf are interesting in the same manner that Dadaism and Situationism and Futurism and other absurd art movements are interesting, I disagree with that statement because Flarf is exactly experimental aestheticism. Perhaps the argument here is against the label "mere", but Flarf isn't poetry in the same way that Charles Bukowski or Rimbaud is poetry; it's an experiment in the same vein as The Treachery of Images is. I look at that painting and it makes me want to think, to turn things over in my head and maybe arrive at the same conclusion that Magritte did, but it doesn't make me feel anything, which is ultimately the point of art. All forms of art and self expression are really just enhanced means of communication: watch a group of musicians improvise together and it's clear they're doing a whole hell of a lot of talking without words. But looking at The Treachery of Images doesn't make me feel anything beyond vague fascination. Compare this with, say Starry Night, which is a painting that makes me want to weep, and it's clear that art can function either intellectually or viscerally, but it's much better when it functions viscerally.

This is an opinion though; i'm sure there are people for whom Flarf causes intense emotional reaction. i don't want to meet these people; their conception of art is so radically different than mine that it has defeated the purpose of art: rather than communicating, it's alienating.

But after hating on it so hard, i have to admit that i do enjoy the fact that Flarf came into being as a protest against the commodification and asinine web exploitation of poetry. reactionary art can sometimes be incredible, but i still maintain that without an actual emotional base, Flarf is exactly what the above, unnamed gentleman is claiming it isn't', experimental aestheticism. Not that this is always bad, experimental aestheticism gave us Impressionism, graffiti, etc. But to try and pass it off as a legitimate form of poetry is deceptive and to me, incredibly irritating. Of course there are considerations of form and rhythm, but, as i'm sure everybody in class is going to prove, all you really have to do is put shit into google and then randomly copy and paste it into a word document. Flarf makes poetry further and more needlessly esoteric, if it's going to survive as an art form, poets should strive for clarity and simple beauty that can be understood by people that don't necessarily understand phrases like "experimental aestheticism".

But maybe that's what they want. Maybe they want a further secret handshake into the art world, to create further exclusivity and continue poetry's already solipsistic tendencies. But my honest response towards this is aversion, because it so radically diverges from what i believe art should do. Then again, maybe that's a good thing.

McCaffery: Prompt 1

The "readerly dilemma" presented by Carnival, the first panel is not a new one. The idea that art is at its most pure when transient or on the brink of destruction has been explored by several artists in the past as well as artists working currently today.

1. French theorist and writer Guy Debord explored this idea with the publication of his first book, Memoires, which was bound in sandpaper so that every time the reader wished to view the book, the mere act of pulling it off the bookshelf would destroy the books that surrounded it. to avoid this act, one had to dedicate separate shelf space to the book. Debord's work often concerned the idea of 'the spectacle' and the resulting social alienation that derived from a media-controlled and saturated way of modern life.

2. British band the The Durutti Column released an LP that was bound in sandpaper, which was an obvious homage to Debord, but the execution of which involved a neat twist: rather than use sandpaper for the outside of the album cover, as Debord had with his book, The Durutti Column used sandpaper for the inside of the LP case, which meant that every time a fan would go to listen to the album, the very act of removing it from its sleeve would cause damage to the vinyl, gradually reducing the sound of the music to a series of pops and fuzz. This begs the interesting question as to whether the band did this to force an alteration to the sound of the record with each listen or to simply destroy the music so that each listening session would gain meaning.

3. Currently operating punk/cabaret sideshow band The World/Inferno Friendship Society bases much of their lyrical content on the idea that the best music is live, that recorded music reduces spontaneity and that "nothing bought or sold is good for posterity". A song on their most recent album, Addicted to Bad Ideas, contains the following lyrics

"Every commercial makes us die, a little bit
Every pop star makes us doubt, a little bit
Every new car makes us choke
On how little air we get and how we get it

The celebrity makes us filthy, a little bit
Every single ad makes us gag, a little bit
Every photograph makes us age
Each sound bite deafens, each sales event condemns

Because every new car you buy
It makes the poor baby Jesus cry
Nothing bought or sold is good for him
For you, for me, not good for anybody"

Reading Response: Graffiti Lives

“Since active writers are extremely secretive about their identites, the Vandal Squad has often made very public arrests of older writers who are transitioning out of crime and have begun to focus more on art.”

Reading Graffiti Lives made me how bizarre the dichotomy between graffiti as vandalism and graffiti as art is. Synder discusses the concept of graffiti as a crime came from the so-called 'broken windows' theory addressed in my last post, as well as the purported link between graffiti and gang violence. Much is also made of the transition of young artists into adulthood and their subsequent sacrifice of the graffiti lifestyle. These thoughts led me to do research on the lives of two popular modern graffiti artists, Banksy and Shepard Fairey, both of whom I discussed in previous posts.

Much of Banksy's life in public is conducted through interviews that find him wearing a mask or altering his voice in some way. Footage of him captured on Closed Circuit Television in the Louvre and other museums he has hung his own art up in usually has him wearing a mask or some other outrageous disguise, and several warrants are currently out for his arrest. Although this habit presumably allows him to operate in normal life with some degree of freedom, the idea that Banksy's identity as an artist will be forever disguised because of the nature of his art is an interesting one.

Shepard Fairey provides us with a much more timely example, and one extremely illustrative of the opening quote of this post.

As the artist responsible for the iconic "OBEY" stickers and the original "Andre the Giant Has a Posse", Fairey rose to prominence in conjunction with the skateboarding scene in and around Boston, and used the notoriety gained by the spread of the "OBEY" campaign to create a career for himself as a respected and legitimate artist, doing work for numerous bands and movie studios. Fairey is now most famous for his iconic "HOPE" poster, created from an AP image of President Obama. Unfortunately, Fairey's high profile now means that he getting arrested on decades-old vandalism charges resulting from some of his first postings of the "OBEY" art in and around Boston.

Whether this is a concerted act of intimidation and a warning to all graffiti artists that it is impossible to escape their pasts or some kind of novice hatchet job, attempting some kind of half-assed character assassination so that Fairey will always been seen as a vandalizing criminal and not a respected contemporary artist remains to be seen. But clearly the prejudice against graffiti still exists, and along with it a childish tendency to hold grudges and punish people with a bulldog like tenacity for crimes long forgotten.

Graffiti Assignment 2

Despite professing hatred for the internet, I have to confess that I spend a large amount of time browsing various image searches on a semi-daily basis, and ever since acquiring my laptop, these searches have been categorized and chronicled by subject, so when I found it was time to examine graffiti in a certain 'area', I took that area to be the saved pictures folder on my hard drive that features about 2 years of various graffiti pictures I've pulled off the internet for various reasons.

So it was this quote in Graffiti Lives that interested me most because I recognized in it my own interest in graffiti and a way to categorize my accrued collection of images.

"At the bottom of each page of a plain, black, hardbound sketchbook, which writers call a blackbook, I wrote down words that I then asked writers to represent visually in the blank space above the words. The words I chose to include came in a fit of inspiration and were based on my initial interest in the culture, which included my concerns with aesthetics (ART), vandalism (WRECK), and politics (STRUGGLE), but the overall process of choosing words was quite random.”
(pg 13)

My argument is that graffiti by nature is defined by struggle.

“Much of the effort to clamp down on graffiti writers was undergirded by the so-called “broken windows theory” …which argues that petty crime increases the propensity for more serious criminal activity…In this view, graffiti writing is regarded as creating a visible invitation to commit further crime in a given area.” (pgs 5-6)

With graffiti artists forced into the position of serious lawbreaker by police and political figures hoping to curb more serious forms of crime, the very act of creating art became protest. The idea of stylized signatures or tags as protest might seem foolish, but their status is such is created by the combination of the three elements set down by Synder. I will attempt to illustrate how each of these elements functions by itself when manifested in graffiti or street art, thus showing how the stylized signatures or 'tags' are elements of protest.

ARTThe artist responsible for this piece, Banksy, is one of the most popular and well-known graffiti artists today. His pieces have appeared literally worldwide and his real identity is still relatively secret, lending even more street cred to his anti-establishment stencil pieces. While some of his work is merely for aesthetic value, even Banksy's more surreal creations, like the one above, seem to be suggesting the same message as his more overt work. The image clash is jarring, suggesting at once the role that the service class has at keeping up a false image or facade of cleanliness for the upper class and the shaky nature of what or may not be 'reality'. Indeed, for many people passing by a Banksy work before it's painted over, there must exist a moment of pure shock at the image put together before they realize what they're seeing. Banksy's polemics are dressed beautifully, to be sure, but their aesthetics in no way decreases their power.

WRECK




The sheer absurdity of these pieces almost makes one discount the idea that it is serious vandalism, but despite the overall effect being humorous, the message of subversion is still clear and intentional. Although the main visual elements of the sign on the left are still there, they have been completely rearranged and the text of the image altered beyond immediate recognition. The subversion of this act is twofold: first there is the vandalism inherent in simply changing the sign's appearance to the point where it no longer demonstrates the message that it should, and second there is the act of appropriation; the sign has been assimilated as part of a piece of art, it no longer is part of an authority complex but an independent statement, Absurdist though it may be. The sign to the right demonstrates the same message, the juxtaposition of a religious sign with a Satanist-posturing band being not necessarily played for anything beyond laughs but having the same message as the other example nonetheless.

STRUGGLE











These two examples are demonstrative of the power of iconography and plain text as well as the ideas of appropriation as addressed with the last example.

The piece of art on the left is a simple stencil. Remarkably, Banksy's work is done primarily through stencils as well, highlighting the versatility of this format. The iconography of it is simple but eloquent, a tool of the farmer/worker is smashing a symbol of state power and industrialization. This example comes from Russia, where it is interesting to see how so much time spent under the powerful symbols and icons of Communist propaganda has influenced even the street art of the area.
The example on the right, meanwhile, is another demonstration of appropriation, in which the artist has seized the billboard in its 'natural' state, turning the image of a blank canvas into a protest against advertising. The resulting aesthetic is simple and deadpan, deriving much of its power from the contrast against the walls and presumably, the other billboards in the area.

My final example simply demonstrates the universal desires at the heart of graffiti: permanence, reclamation, subversion.
By tagging the wall with anti-government lyrics from a Western rock band, the author is not only defying the cultural bans of the government but asserting his permanence and independence in a situation in which there are almost no means by which to do so. The reclamation of this portion of the wall and the way in which simple personal expression is turned into a piece of anti-government propaganda is exactly the kind of instinct that drove the first New York graffiti
artists.

blog entry 2/23

The hypertext link as the first new form of punctuation in centuries.

On one level, this assertion makes sense, given that the point of punctuation is ostensibly to clarify and streamline prose. An alternate definition could suggest that punctuation marks are signposts on the road of linear thought provided by prose. A period means come to a full stop before continuing, a comma signifies a brief pause, etc. A third possible definition suggests that punctuation marks are what truly give speech its defining emphasis. Everybody is familiar with the scene from Anchorman in which Will Ferrell's character delivers his signature line as a question instead of a statement ("I'm...Ron Burgundy?) because of an errant question mark at the end of the Teleprompter. Are words so bankrupt of meaning that we desperately need punctuation marks to signify strong emotion?

By keeping all of these in mind, I am forced to disagree with the claim that the hypertext link is the newest form of punctuation mark. Firstly, hyperlinks do not streamline or clarify prose. Their inclusion in online articles is mainly for additional information not deemed relevant enough to be included in the main text of the article. Hyperlinks may be informative, but by clicking on one every two to three words (as in a Wikipedia page), the flow of information is not augmented but stilted by having the brain be forced to digest new and unrelated pieces of information in the middle of each sentence.

Hyperlinks do not offer clues into the meaning of prose. Although they may seek to illuminate information contained within the main body of text, it is safe to assume that if this information was relevant in the first place, it would have been included in the text. This is akin to forcing a magazine reader to skip from page to page 20 to 30 times in the middle of a 5 to 6 page article.

Response 2/16

"Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communications function and is available only to a small number of initiates."
This is the opening stage of literacy technology, according to Dennis Baron. Consider that before Gutenberg, the only class able to read and write were the wealthy educated elite and the clergy (which is why Baron refers to this group as the 'priestly class'). Baron uses the pencil to illustrate his point, claiming that before it gained such prominence as to be ubiquitous, the pencil was actually a highly refined and developed piece of literacy technology whose duplication by a hobbyist or layperson would be impossible.
Walter Ong's claim is that the basic nature of all speech is oral. This claim is backed up with the statistics I cited in my previous post, and this could lead some to the conclusion that this claim invalidates Baron's stages, since all communication is orally based and therefore egalitarian in nature.
However, Ong's argument does not necessarily extend to communication that exists for a purpose beyond communication. Graffiti as an art form, for example, closely follows Baron's stages: it experienced a rise from vandalism to legitimized art form thanks to the likes of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Shepard Fairey.
The extension of these ideas to technological literacy techniques such as blogging and texting does not invalidate them, but it weakens them. While both may have started in relative obscurity, one could not claim that texting was originally the domain of a 'priestly class' or that blogging was confined to the Ivory Towers of the higher learned.

Response to "Orality and Literacy"

Walter Ong's text on the relationship of the spoken word to that of the written is a dense book. But throughout the many subjects Ong discusses tangential to orality and literacy, none is so vital as his argument for the primacy of orality to the written word. I found the following statistics presented as part of Ong's argument to be intensely interesting:

Of all the thousands of languages that have been spoken during the course of recorded history, only 106 of them have been committed to writing advanced enough to produce literature.

and

Of approximately 3,000 languages spoken currently in the world, only 78 have produced literature.

What does this mean to us discussing writing? Are we to approach the languages that have developed literature with praise and the solely oral languages with scorn? Does the fact that a language has been committed to writing somehow gain it leverage in its 'validity' as a language? The answer that Ong gives us, and the correct one, is a resounding no, as "The basic orality of language is permanent".

This concept is also interesting when one considers its applications to music.
Oral tradition is, was and always will be a larger part of music than notation. There are numerous example of this, spanning multiple genres of music. Take, for example, the folk songs and 'murder ballads' of the Appalachian region. These ballads are Scottish and English in origin, yet have been passed down though generations solely by oral tradition. It was not until ethnomusicologists like Harry Smith, Alan Lomax, and others began swarming into the hills of Appalachia and transcribing these ballads that they were ever codified. I remember seeing a performance by a ballad singer, and she said that out of the hundred or so ballads she knew by heart, the ones that were easiest for her to call to memory were the ones taught to her by family members, orally, before she had ever begun to learn any codified method of singing or begun to read notated music.

The same is true of instrumentalists, as well. Jazz pioneer and trumpeter Louis Armstrong used the melody of a given song as a guidepoint for improvisation, keeping track of the chord changes of the song by continually recititing the melody in his head as he played. This method of ear training is all that existed for early jazz musicians; no notated system of jazz education existed until the later half of the 20th century. Jazz players were educated by recordings, pulling melodic lines from records and learning the ins and outs of chord changes only by repetitive listening and singing.

It is slightly humbling for those of us involved in the business of writing to think that our finely honed craft is and always will be inferior to a well-told story, or that an ungodly expensive education in music could be easily replaced by a couple of records and a good musical ear, but these are the simple truths that history has taught us. Although writing lends our thoughts permanence, and greatly decreases the difficulty inherent in certain tasks, time and time again it has been proven that the most effective form of communication and art is simply talking and listening to one another.

Helvetica freewrite

It’s not so much that you begin to notice text, an act akin to noticing air. Rather than the ‘what’, which is text, you begin to notice the ‘how’. How it’s displayed, arranged, formatted, what the company is attempting to get you to notice with the text. It’s very elementary at times, such as when you’re in an area where the businesses may not all have the funds to drop on a big name graphic designer to play with their logo. You begin to notice how ‘Main Street’ businesses (ie the ones that are part and parcel to any small town experience) follow a sort of cleaner, deliberate look, often cultivated through the use of Helvetica. Then you’ll get into the city and see how the clean, deliberate lines of text that were formerly thought to connote professionalism are now wrapped around some anorexcic model in an American Apparel ad. Or you’ll see how the formatting of something bland like Helvetica into a longer, skinnier font reduced to outlines will look trendy and european.
Last night I went through my vinyl collection, in part mourning how the advent of the CD drastically reduced the space available for sweet drawings and photographs availalble on album covers and in part looking for texts to analyze. My favorite examples were the cover of American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, and Abraxas by Carlos Santana. Now, aside from all being the product of the same sort of 60’s esque cultural zeitgeist (I am approximating; Bitches Brew came out in 1969, Abraxas in 1970, and American Beauty in 1972), they all feature an interesting study of text. American Beauty is fascinating because it epitomizes the 60’s psychaedelic obsession with ‘coding’ text. Psychaedelic artists were obsessed with forcing words into bizarre shapes, or creating bubbles of color that were actually words or hidden messages. The words ‘American Beauty’ on the cover of the album are a perfect example of this; they are so ornate and overly gilded that they appear to read either ‘American Beauty’ (the name of the album) or ‘American Reality’ (not the name of the album). This is possibly an example of sociopolitical commentary on the idea of beauty as reality, but more likely the artist being a huge fan of acid. Either way, it’s cool to look at.

Abraxas and Bitches Brew are both notable because of their jaw-droppingly awesome, wraparound gatefold album art, done by the same artist, Mati Klarwein. I like thinking about these albums in terms of text because, divorced of the text that accompanies them, they're pretty much the same. You've got incredibly dense, vibrant colors, complicated images, and women in various stages of undress. Klarwein's work was in vogue for much of the 60's and 70's, with his work being used for album covers by other musicians working in both the jazz and rock idioms.
BUT ANYWAY the point is to look at the text on these two albums. Miles Davis' album is afforded a clean, modern style of text, suiting both his reputation as an esoteric, misanthropic genius and the albums' groundbreaking music (Davis was well aware of this, he subtitled the album "Direction in Music by Miles Davis"). The matchup of futuristic text and bizarre tribal imagery sums up Davis' entire essence of contradiction: constantly moving ahead in music while remaining firmly attached to his roots in the only form of indigenous American music: jazz.
Abraxas, conversely, features weirdly ornate text that looks reminiscent of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha's work in the Art Nouveau movement. Santana is a well documented religious fanatic: he claims, among other things, to have spoken to the Metatron (the voice of God) and Jesus himself. Therefore, the text that is used for his name and the album's title suddenly draws the bizarre image into context. It no longer seems quite so weird and vaguely pornographic, but rather begins to resemble a drawing from the Rubiyayat of Omar Khayyam or even from a medieval tapestry. This perfectly suits Santana's music, which is very often meandering and boring, until a journalist affixes the adjective "spiritual" to Santana's music, which somehow always justifies long winded, pseudo-latin jazz guitar solos. The text lends credence to the overblown imagery in the same way Santana's well-documented spirtuality somehow justifies his fifteen minute guitar noodlings and collaborations with idiots like P.O.D. and that goateed hammerhead from Nickelback.