...string theories: readings on semiotics

I just finished reading from the links on Roland Barthes and Tom Streeter and found semiotics to be really interesting and something I could understand in my own way. I remember as a kid in elementary school learning about the teqniques advertisers use to sell their products, of course I can't think of one right now...but they had to do with the association products can have with socialization, such as choosing a brand of alcohol because the people on the tv drinking it seem to be having such a good time. Third grade and I was being taught to think critically about what I was being presented on a daily basis in the form of advertising. Barthes example with the Panzini brand of pasta fixings was a good one. Although I associated the fishnet grocery bag as being more like a half-hung hammock and therefore read into it as having the connotation of the food comma that would proceed my carbo-heavy pasta dinner (because who eats pasta for breakfast?) Being it was half-hung, it gave a secondary connotation of motion, like I can't lay down on a half-hung hammock, I better get to making this dinner! All that was left would be a pair of disembodied, wine encrusted, lips, chapping and smiling in the background while a disembowled cow drags it's remains along a spiral in the shape of a meatball of which a pig, a turkey, and a chicken stand on the periphery. Joking and fun aside, semiotics does play a role in the desicions we make as consumers and when related to ideologies it has larger social implications. Both Barthes and Streeter talk about the social aspects of semiotics. Barnes young man saluting is no different than Streeters Kuwaiti kissing the flag. They're both pushing a point of view that I don't think I completely understand. Although, possibly the most sinister form of semiotics is it's use in propaganda to rally a people during war time. The connotation of "weapons of mass destruction" after 911 comes to mind...not to mention Bush jr's photo opportunity in combat gear with the banner behind him that read "Mission Accomplished". It makes me start to wonder if what Streeter was getting at was history told through the victors; how the semiotics of a photo can relate an idea, which left unchallenged or ignorant to other perspectives forms our opinions and ultimately how we look back on history. Of course in all hopefulness Bush jrs portrayal of success in the war against "evil", or one leg of the tri-pod of evil, won't factor in the same way archeologists piece together the lives of neanderthal man from cave paintings. I guess an example of what I'm trying to say is evident in an issue of "Life" magazine that I saw the other day from 1953. (Amazing printing in those magazines). "Life" seems to sum up the 50s, through it's adds targeted at the nuclear family: suited dad, two kids and smiling, slim-waisted mom. On the cover was a woman in an evening gown, open back, title reading "Bare Backs In Fashion"... while in the upper right hand corner are the article captions, two: "The Dangerous Luxury Of Hating America" and "Our Powerful Red Nieghbors In Guatemala". I just looked it up...in 1954 the CIA lead a covert operation to overthrow the then leader of Guatemala...who was democratically elected. Sure this was a publication in the height of the McCarthy era, but "Turn Your Back On Our Red (communist) America Hating Neighbors?". That's how I read it. It's silly, political rhetoric embodied in a woman's lovely back. And creepy, pairing the semiotics with reality. I guess the bottom line is what do you do with this information? I'd just take a wild guess to say that the forming of opinion through media is partially at the heart of the "spin" wars that politics in America has seen in recent years, making semiotics a point of discussion. But who's really listening anyway?

Ideas for a Geo Spacial Project

I spent some time recently messing around with Google Earth, a program that allows you to see and navigate the world via satillite photos and three dimensional renderings. I started out at home in the Bay Area and traveled south through the Americas down to Antarctica and to the edge of the Google world, a gray area (since the online program won't let you circumvent the poles). Using the hand tool, I moved across this border to the east for some time and then started moving north again, hitting random Pacific islands, then through South Africa up through the Middle East and into the north of Russia ending at a secluded port town and forest reserve. At any rate, my idea for a tour is to find out alittle something about these remote locations and build a Google Earth trip around them. I'll post locations as I find them...

A Short Responce to Sol Lewitt's Paragraphs

I wasn’t even sure if it had happened to me? A trick of memory, maybe, but while I was thinking of “conceptual art” last week I started remembering about a guy a friend of mine had told me about several years ago. I couldn’t even remember his name, but the image was clear as day, as if it had happened to me. I was sure the visuals I had in my head were connected to me, in memory, by the outrageous idea of watching TV late one night in a half asleep state and then suddenly, between commercials, comes this man in his under ware, bound with his hands behind his back, slithering on his belly, for several seconds, through broken glass! The idea still brings a smile to my face; if not making me break silence altogether. I immediately looked it up on youtube, “man crawling through glass”, no hits. Then over to the Google, adding conceptual art, I got some hits and it became apparent that Chris Burden was my man. I found an article by Roger Ebert, which had, among many other pieces Chris Burden had done, the video in question linked; the full unedited 45 second version, followed by about 2 minutes of commercials in which the actual 10 second piece was sandwiched and Chris talks over. The piece is pretty brutal. Especially watching the full version; 45 seconds to soak up the full absurdity of it all; naked man slithering on the floor. Ok, pretty weird. but it almost reminded me a scene from the movie “Freaks”, it’s TV right? Then comes that stuff he’s slithering through, glass? and, oh, he’s bound as well and grunting. It surly takes a turn towards the disturbing. At the end of it all though, it can be dismissed as Chris Burden’s willing participation to make this video. And besides people walk through fire and sit on beds of nails and shove swords down their throats for entertainment, there’s nothing new of the grotesque as a kind of theatre. But it gets to the heart, I think, of what Sol Lewitt was “striking out” with, that this art form is about ideas and those ideas need to be carried out. There’s no way Chris knows my reaction and it doesn’t matter. Ideas have power. They live with us and inform us and can give shape to things; other ideas- like Sol was saying. I didn't live it. And then I remembered, I had seen a version of the clip before; the two minute one with the 10 second spot. That was plenty enough to get the idea across; less than 5 seconds of a man in his condition and I remembered it; the idea of disruption; that for what ever reason an image as disturbing as that can completely disrupt the passive flow of information that is television; despite, then being completely reabsorbed, like it never really happened. Except for some us, sometimes I suppose, who hold on to it as the face of brutality, making us smile during commercials, the image of Chris Burden, slithering in Black and White through his broken glass.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/the_agony_of_the_body_artist.html