The Alphaville Herald

15 Responses to “The Dawn Of The New Media”

1. 

   Sanity Talking Again
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   It’s like 8-bit video games, and my childhood nightmares all thrown into one giant bowl of green jello… with a twist of lime!
2. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   OK, I’m missing the magic here. I’d really like to get on board here. I really WANT to be persuaded. But I’m not. Because whatever the techno-wiz wow stuff, it’s derivative.

   o Fellini and every other movie that uses the circus and carnival grotesqueries as images and memes for absurdity of human experience

   o The doll as the scary child-like or golem-like creature, whether it’s a modern Chucky type of movie or any ancient story where children are wiser than their years

   o icecream /I scream as not only a bad joke, but drawing on every hackneyed image in the universe, from the Emperor of Icecream (“Call the roller of big cigars…the only Emperor is the Emperor of Icecream”) to those hippie retreads singing “Today is the greatest” and riding around in an icecream truck.

   This movie owes as much to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Band, Gumby and Pokie, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Chucky, and a million other cultural memes as it does to any unique vision.

   The concept of evil lurking behind innocent doll-like creatures and fragile blue females — Virgin Mary anyone? The Fairy?, well, it’s been done.

   It most reminded me of that movie “A.I.” which I literally watched 10 times, so this movie really resonated with A.I. for me — the bots, the Blue Fairy — everything.

   That isn’t to say that it isn’t *good*. But it’s loud, screaming, repetitive, and bangs hard on cultural icons and memes and themes that are in fact very done and overdone.

   Please explain to me why you think it’s the breakthrough that you do.
3. 

   Megadot Mcmahon
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Thanks for the write up Onder! It was nice meeting you and I’m glad you liked it…

   Prokofy Neva it seems to me like your thinking a little too hard about my work… The Blue character from We are the Strange came from my animated series “Blue Wander” that I made in the year 2000 The series will be on the WATS DVD if you don’t believe me, so the character predates the film “A.I.” The character was inspired by someone I know btw… There is no carnival or circus in my film, there is an arcade… The doll in my film is not supposed to be scary like “Chucky” he is the innocent, he is the most endearing character in the film… I for one am not afraid of dolls so I don’t use them in that way in my films… The ice cream came from a true story wherein I traveled to a dangerous place in Japan for ice cream with a woman with a sordid past… The Resident Psychologist at the Capitol Hill Center for Family and Individual Therapy noticed the ice cream/i scream thing…I never noticed it myself but I thought it was cool when she brought it up so I used it to promote the film…Can’t argue with a PhD in Psychology Well at least I can’t… So from your perspective apparently its overdone but hundreds of thousands of kids on youtube seem to think there’s something new about it Your clearly quite intelligent and knowledgeable about art and film… I recommend you put that energy into making your own animated films I’d like to see them.

   All the best,

   Megadot Mcmahon
4. 

   Onder Skall
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Prok… that’s a weird take on it. I could argue with most of your points… not the least of which is that the biggest difference between this and “AI” is that Speilburg’s homage to Kubrick still managed to reach “Forest Gump” levels of manipulation and wasn’t even a quarter as exciting.

   Also – you have a laundry-list of completely unrelated things and you’re saying “it’s derivative of all this”. Ask Lawrence Lessig – all art is derivative all the time. If something’s derivative of such a wide variety of things, that only proves its uniqueness. (Not that I agree with a good 75% of your comparisons… Blue does *not* act anything like the Virgin Mary and has way more depth than some stupid fairy.)

   It feels like you’re listing what my article reminded you of, but not what the film is about. (Your take on Emmm especially.) Did you see the movie? Or are you just going from the trailer and my article? If that’s the case what hope does anybody have of convincing you of anything? See the film.

   Megadot – hey just FYI, Prokofy Neva is our resident media critic and provocateur. Thou shalt not comment on a pixel’s worth in Prok’s presence without your comment being analyzed. Kudos to you for not completely flipping out – most people seem to. The critique is valuable, however, because of what it draws out. You said some stuff in response I don’t think I would have known otherwise – you’d already mentioned that you had been to Japan a few times, for instance, but never this other back story. We all owe Prokofy for that bit of knowledge now, even if that wasn’t the intent.

   Ya gotta have thick skin boy!
5. 

   Onder Skall
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Dammit Prok, you did it to me again!

   I write my reply to your comments, go downstairs, make the little one some cinnamon toast, and it dawns on me that you lured me into a movie critique – and the movie as art is ALMOST beside the point here.

   THE REAL POINT:

   In the same way that technology has handed art and text back to the people, so now too has it handed film back to the people. So we gathered together in a virtual world from points covering the globe and watched the same film together, asynchronously, and it was better than 90% of the bullshit the box office would force down our throats. We’ve been playing a “game” for months/years to get here. The experience itself was game-like both in content and in the context we were viewing it. The film was great, and not because of budget or Hollywood actors but because it was one guy expressing his idea with beautiful clarity, and that’s what it takes to make real art. The film itself is passing into public domain RIGHT NOW. It’s going to have several soundtracks changing the entire feel/mood of the thing, again breaking with convention, because that’s what the INDIVIDUAL wants. The film maker is accessible to his audience, too.

   None of this, not one little piece, would have been possible ten years ago. This would have been a stop motion film with editing done in stolen moments at a film school’s cutting room and none of us would have seen it or shared it. The last decade and a half was compressed, hardened, and validated in that one evening.

   The world is different now.

   THAT’s the new media. That’s why this is important. The movie being mind-blowingly incredible is almost a footnote.
6. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Megadot,

   You have to learn to take criticism if you put your work up on the Intern, pure and simple. And if you put up only clips, and it isn’t available for replay in its entirety, either for free or for some payment for a download, you’ll have to understand that people will make judgements about your film anyway, judgements that may or may not shut them down to watching the rest of the film or other films, and you’ll have to live with that — it’s life in the big city.

   My challenge is to Onder to explain why he thinks this is some entire genre breakthrough definitive of an entire new stage of new media, it isn’t really directly a challenge to you. An artist puts out his work, and then the work has to stand on its own. If it needs lots of text and accompanying rationalizing commentary to justify it, it hasn’t succeeded on its own.

   Fads get started constantly in the art world; it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but people can say, oh, this is new and exciting but derivative.

   >Prokofy Neva it seems to me like your thinking a little too hard about my work…

   And you think that’s inappropriate to do with a work of art where someone took three years to make it, and it is being called a genre breakthrough and definitive of the new media?!

   >The Blue character from We are the Strange came from my animated series “Blue Wander” that I made in the year 2000 The series will be on the WATS DVD if you don’t believe me, so the character predates the film “A.I.”

   That’s interesting! But A.I. itself draws on everything from Fantasia to the Brothers Grimm, so you yourself draw on this same body of culture, too.

   >The character was inspired by someone I know btw… There is no carnival or circus in my film, there is an arcade… The doll in my film is not supposed to be scary like “Chucky” he is the innocent, he is the most endearing character in the film…

   Carnival, circus, arcade — it’s all the same thing. It’s about games, entertainment — it’s all the same genre. And the point is that by situating a movie inside a theme of carnival or circus or arcade — play, entertainment, festival, out of the ordinary experience of everyday life — films make statements about culture, about suspension of the ordinary, about exaggeration, but most of all, there is a play on the viewer of taking the things that seem innocent and fun and adding a sinister or ominous luster to them.

   Everything about this short take has the doll boy feeling very creepy — intentional or not — and his quest for icecream among a land of monsters something irrational and even sinister, not innocent — but hey, I’m happy to watch the whole thing someday.

   >I for one am not afraid of dolls so I don’t use them in that way in my films… The ice cream came from a true story wherein I traveled to a dangerous place in Japan for ice cream with a woman with a sordid past…

   And no one ever did this in literature or life or film before you, and therefore you are absolutely unique? It’s a typical adventure/quest/type of motif. Just because you yourself “aren’t afraid of dolls” can’t possibly mean that you are unaware of their sinister/scare value as manipulated symbols, a la Chucky.

   >The Resident Psychologist at the Capitol Hill Center for Family and Individual Therapy noticed the ice cream/i scream thing…I never noticed it myself but I thought it was cool when she brought it up so I used it to promote the film…
   Can’t argue with a PhD in Psychology Well at least I can’t…

   Um, I can. Your subconscious does funny things to you, and it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to see that this underlied your film, turning the innocent quest of a child into a horrible journey through monsters with screaming.

   >So from your perspective apparently its overdone but hundreds of thousands of kids on youtube seem to think there’s something new about it

   *Blinks*. Yes, uh…that’s quite an advertisement! Hundreds of thousands of kids on YouTube are always what I think should define the aesthetic lol. And define they do, and that’s interesting, but these hundreds of thousands may not have ever read literature or seen a single movie before the year 2000, for all we know.

   >Your clearly quite intelligent and knowledgeable about art and film… I recommend you put that energy into making your own animated films I’d like to see them.

   This is the usual Second Life tekkie putdown, and I’m not surprised to see you use it. “Create or die”. “Make it yourself, or shut up”. “Accept the way the software is, or get out”.

   Have you never heard of criticism of the arts, specifically film? I’m not any kind of art critic or film critic but hey…I know what I like!

   Can you grasp that just as “100,000 kids on YouTube” feel they can say what THEY like, and nobody tells them to “make the film or shut up,” others who apply more education, thought, experience to a work *also have the right to comment and criticize” without being told to “go out and make the film yourself”.

   Imagine if everyone like you had told the late Gene Siegel, whenever he panned a crappy film, that he should “go out and make one himself”.

   You seem new at the business of having your work viewed critically, and you’ll have to accept that people *will* criticize it; they may even pan it; and the response of “go make a film yourself then” is inevitably going to sound infantile, petulant, and controlling.

   Onder: if the movie as art is beside the point, is it a movie, is it art, is it a genre breakthrough as you first claimed, or is it merely some phantasmagorical “happening” that you and your pals on Second Life arrange as “something to do” online?

   >So we gathered together in a virtual world from points covering the globe and watched the same film together, asynchronously, and it was better than 90% of the bullshit the box office would force down our throats.

   Yeah, I could probably agree with you there. I just saw “Knocked Up” last night, I don’t know what possessed me, to think, I could have seen “Sicko” instead at the same time slot but I wanted to be entertained, not lectured at, after being in the SL movie so long.

   >We’ve been playing a “game” for months/years to get here. The experience itself was game-like both in content and in the context we were viewing it. The film was great, and not because of budget or Hollywood actors but because it was one guy expressing his idea with beautiful clarity, and that’s what it takes to make real art.

   Onder, Onder, Onder, why has it taken so long for you to “get it” and get it “only this way”? Can you grasp that people have this same high experience looking at a fish stick with artificially-intelligent koi fish eating at it as you move it around? I have seen people riveted in SL for hours pushing boxes around. The shared experience and the shared high of SL isn’t about art, it’s about the shared high of the hive mind thinking its doing some grand thing together. Most of the time, it’s like one of those LSD trips where you ask people to write down what they experience, and its gibberish, and they can’t tell you, so they do it again — and the exerience is less. And perhaps they persuade their critics to try it — and the experience is less.

   The shared high is a great thing, it moves mountains — but I have to say I’ve been thinking intensively about this for many months longer than you, and I think you have to be critical about this. You’ve just gone from saying the work of art as a discrete art is the breakthrough, to saying, no, it’s the shared experience of art consumption in 3-D real time that is the breakthrough genre *itself*. So which do you mean?

   >The film itself is passing into public domain RIGHT NOW. It’s going to have several soundtracks changing the entire feel/mood of the thing, again breaking with convention, because that’s what the INDIVIDUAL wants. The film maker is accessible to his audience, too.

   The individual artist or the individual consumer? What if the consumer wants to turn off the sound and put classical music on his computer lol? If media is to be malleable as it is consumed, is it art, or is it a pass-around-pack which is what I called DTV?
7. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   >Prok… that’s a weird take on it. I could argue with most of your points… not the least of which is that the biggest difference between this and “AI” is that Speilburg’s homage to Kubrick still managed to reach “Forest Gump” levels of manipulation and wasn’t even a quarter as exciting.

   I disagree. Forest Gump was also a classic for many people. Just because something is mass culture doesn’t mean you have to sneer at it — of course, you *will* sneer at it for all kinds of reasons, but it doesn’t undermine it’s classic status, which in fact was about the Metaverse and Mash-Ups.

   Can’t you see that Forest Gump, bumbling around and showing up at every single important and iconic historic event of our modern time and consuming it and participating it and making it part of his own wacky repertoire is in fact the first Metaversal film, the first Web 2.0 mash-up, is perhaps the genre-breaker you imagine? I mean, this isn’t Mad, Mad, Mad, World here.

   And A.I. may not be appealing to your demographic. I think it’s an amazing film and know others who have watched it a dozen times like me. I even joined a fan club and obsessed and tried to identify all the buildings in it — it seems the one main bulding in NYC with the gryphons has no actual RL equivalent, and it’s impossible to figure out, it’s a blend between the Jewish Theological Seminar and the Chrystler Building or something.

   >Also – you have a laundry-list of completely unrelated things and you’re saying “it’s derivative of all this”. Ask Lawrence Lessig – all art is derivative all the time. If something’s derivative of such a wide variety of things, that only proves its uniqueness. (Not that I agree with a good 75% of your comparisons… Blue does *not* act anything like the Virgin Mary and has way more depth than some stupid fairy.)

   Maybe you don’t know the Virgin Mary like I know the Virgin Mary. And the Blue Fairy in A.I. isn’t stupid at all — that is, the Blue Fairy as archetype, not that literal wooden statue. Lessig is hardly a credible guru for me. Like he’s made some original thought there that itself isn’t derivative?! All human art comes from archetypes in the culture before it, consciously or unconsciously. The best artists don’t deny this but play with it. Something because derivative in feel when it fails at recombining the memes enough to make the scaffolding drop away.

   >It feels like you’re listing what my article reminded you of, but not what the film is about. (Your take on Emmm especially.) Did you see the movie? Or are you just going from the trailer and my article? If that’s the case what hope does anybody have of convincing you of anything? See the film.

   Like I said, I’m going by a) the trailer b) what is on YouTube and the comments and c) your article. Because that’s the art you’ve put out for me to consume : )

   There isn’t any accessible full-length movie to see yet. When there is, give me a link, I’ll watch it. I have no doubt I will not be changing my mind.

   And of course I can make a judgement on *your claim that this is a genre breakthrough* on the strength of your article and a trailer because *you didn’t convince me*. Saying “go see the whole movie” isn’t the answer.

   You’ve now — finally — answered me by saying, essentially, “It doesn’t matter WHAT the movie was really, what matters is that me and my SL pals had a groovie high watching a film together that we felt had a lot of resonance for us.” Ok, then!
8. 

   Pirate Cotton
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   Mega, just ignore Prok. The rest of us do (how many of us see a long post, scroll down a couple of times and go “ahh, must be a Prok message – skip!”?). Looks like a great piece you’ve got there, quite entracning. Good luck with future projects!
9. 

   Wim Warmulsh
   

   Jul 1st, 2007
   

   I’m no movie critic – but I know what I like. I thought the film had a definite Jan Svankmeyer influence, but not even the creator acknowledges that. If he’s unfamiliar with Jan Svankmeyer’s work, he would do well to look into it.

   I thought it was an entertaining experience, albeit a bit formulaic…

   Hero meets girl, battle against evil, good prevails, the end.

   The film had a unique atmosphere and the feeling that one was experiencing something new and/or different, but the film’s lack of character development and formulaic storyline relegates it to the back-burner on my list of progressive movie experiences.

   Would I watch it again? Maybe with a friend, but it’s not one I would view again for my own enjoyment.
10. 

    like_ummm
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    is this what happens to the artist when ‘he lives in a bubble’? – the bubble eventually bursts. Art produced from within a bubble is by definition lacking in vision, short-sighted, sheilded from the outside world. Artist ‘living in a bubble’ translates to artist being self-indulgent.

    I appreciate Prokofy Neva’s analysis here very much. I certainly cannot condone the ‘don’t analyse too much, don’t think too hard, let’s see you do better’ attitude of the artist.

    ‘it was better than 90% of the bullshit the box office would force down our throats’ – given the state of box-office movies today this is not a huge endorsement. in fact from what i have read this movie sounds a lot like regular box-office fare – a cliched, childishly simplistic plot underneath a whole lot of impressive whizz-bang technology.

    However – i do not liek that movie A.I. It is a movie of two halves – the first half kubrick is quite good but the second half speilburg is like all speilburg – vomit-inducing. Thus the movie is ruined. ‘Children of Men’ – now there’s a great movie – a great story about the future with, paradoxically few whizz-bang special effects.
11. 

    Onder Skall
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Prok – ok so we’re not going to discuss “We Are The Strange” because you haven’t seen it yet and if you did you’d do a real 180 on a lot of what you’re saying, I’m sure. It’s not fair to really dive into what you think the movie MIGHT be about. It will be available for viewing on Youtube in its ENTIRETY soon, just like 4-Eyed Monsters is.

    But please, let’s talk “Gump” and “AI” for a second.

    First, I’m not going to argue with you what “a classic” is. It’s just a marketing term.

    Second, Forest Gump… I liked it at first. I guess I still do DESPITE how much it pisses me off sometimes. The fact is it’s the most manipulative film ever. Oh he’s happy! Oh he’s sad! Oh he’s happy! Oh he’s sad! Oh everything is ok! Oh everything fell apart! Over and over and over… look, stop screwing with me. I’m not your toy, I’m your audience. It’s enough that you’ve asked me to swallow that this guy partook in every historically significant moment in US history for a few decades. I’ll bite that. But for f*cks sake, stop orchestrating a contrived series of personal events to force me into contrasting how happy I am with how sad I just was, and then make me feel loss again and dig me up over and over and over… just… f*ck you, ok? It’s not respectful. I’m not your goddamn plaything. Pardon me, I’ve got to go shower… I feel dirty.

    “AI” was manipulative as well which is why I drew the comparison, although in a very different way. Visually it was brilliant because Speilburg made it, but he was intending making a Kubrick-style film here. As with most Kubrick flicks, it’s an analysis of the anatomy of insecurity. The android haters, the need to be loved, the main quest to find mommy, and the obvious beat-you-over-the-head constant film-wide parallels with “The Wizard of Oz” are… well they’re a bit of an intellectual wankfest, aren’t they? Blah blah blah people act SO BADLY because of insecurity and we all just want to be loved and the corporations would manufacture it if they could, yadda yadda. Oh doesn’t the audience think themselves clever for “getting it”. Isn’t it just f*cking brilliant to feel sad for this poor little kid programmed to feel bad forever because humanity sucks!

    Yeah. But meanwhile, for those of us who had enough of Kubrick’s fascination with isolation by the time we worked our way up to Full Metal Jacket in the late 80s, all we had left was a movie about a permanently depressed and pitiful kid. Even the gorgeous set pieces can’t carry it. Maybe if Kubrick himself had made the movie, or if there hadn’t been this weird conceit in the movie that AI’s would stop getting much smarter after a certain point, or if… I don’t know. If I want to be depressed about how pathetic and prone to disregard of others humanity can be, I’ll watch FOX news. It’s quicker and doesn’t have any teary-eyed child actors I’m supposed to care about because that’s what the director is forcing down my throat.
12. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jul 1st, 2007
    

    Pirate Cotton, get stuffed. Two other people said the same thing, only shorter. What, you disagree with them, they aren’t legitimate? Just because it’s me, it has to be undermined as expression?

    Onder, I totally agree with you about Forest Gump. I will not be watching Forest Gump *again*. Ever.

    I disagree about AI. It is not a wankfest. Yes, it has Oz parallels, but turns them on their ear. It’s not about finding Mommy, it’s about the loss of a child, of the control over the future, and an effort to regain it, not to find mommy, but to be mommy, the source of creation.

    I never saw any of it as being “about” security but I’m not a movie buff. I rarely watch movies. They are all so awful. It’s so expensive, and there are rats in the RL movie theaters these days and the popcorn is dreadful. I wait for it to be sold at Blockbusters, then sometimes buy it, or my kids download it from somewhere and I glimpse it. The only really great movies I’ve seen in recent years are “Road to Perdition” and “Cold Mountain”.
13. 

    Pirate Cotton
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    “Two other people said the same thing, only shorter”

    Yes. Shorter. And bliss it was to read too. Next time you write an essay, watch the film first, then your long, long, long posts might be worth reading.
14. 

    Onder Skall
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    Prokofy: You haven’t seen … ??? OMG. Go to the video store. There have been some amazing things over the last decade or so:

    “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” was so so SO charming. THAT I’ve watched a dozen times. The Cohen brothers also made “Miller’s Crossing”, worth a look…

    “Memento”. YOU would love it, going by what little you’ve revealed about your tastes.

    If you’re into David Lynch (did you watch “Twin Peaks”?) “Mulholland Drive” was genius but you have to watch it a few times and think about it for a week to understand it.

    I’m sure you’ve seen “Lord Of The Rings”, good despite Frodo’s stupid teary-eyed face…

    “V For Vendetta” is good debate-fodder and a good film too.

    “Snatch”. OMG. Hillarious, clever, fast-paced, twists and turns awesome.

    “Cinderella Man” was surprisingly worth seeing.
15. 

    Megadot Mcmahon
    

    Jul 2nd, 2007
    

    On the Svankmeyer tip… I have acknowledge this and the Quay’s interview in pretty much every interview I’ve done fyi… I’m a bigger fan of his newer films Little Otik, Sileni…

    Wow quite a discussion! I’m fine with taking criticism… it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it… I never went to film school or art school and if I did I probably would have gotten into a fist fight with the instructors when it was time for critiques… Whether its a good thing or a bad thing whose to say… but my attitude, this state of mind is what allowed me to even finish the film in the first place… Love it or hate it…its an alternative to the mainstream and I would like to see more animators/filmmakers do the same even if they have to argue with critics XD Here’s a propaganda video related to this discussion….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJu6uFLAqkM

    Second life human attitudes aren’t very different than those of the first…. JK ; )

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