Title of Work: Los Angeles Times
Date: 2016
Medium: Mini DV and cell phone ringers
Duration: 18 minutes 37 seconds
In the second part of 1755’s A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of The Inequality Among Mankind, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau describes the founding of civil society as the first person who enclosed a piece of land, claimed it as their own, and convinced others to believe in it. This act brought with it a degradation of morality, narcissism, jealousy, and vanity. Moreover, human beings lost the innate feeling of sympathy and pity for fellow human beings. Rousseau points out other problems that emerge with the establishment of civil society. He states, “Every one begins to survey the rest, and wishes to be surveyed himself; and public esteem acquires a value. He who sings or dances best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, the most eloquent, comes to be the most respected: this was the first step towards inequality, and at the same time towards vice. From these first preferences there proceeded on one side vanity and contempt, on the other envy and shame; and the fermentation raised by these new leavens at length produced combinations fatal to happiness and innocence.” Human beings begin to want to appear as something they are not. They are no longer natural and genuine and instead become hypocrites, pretenders, actors for someone else. They begin to emulate other human beings who they think are better than them, and, under the influence of vanity, begin accumulating possessions, costumes, and accessories that fit their invented, fraudulent roles. These inessential accessories no longer give their owners happiness, but to not posses them would be a tragedy. For Rousseau, the increase in hypocrisy in human beings augments their vulnerability to unhappiness.
In 1852, Louis Napoleon-Bonaparte enlisted the help of Baron Georges-Eugene Haussman to redesign the city of Paris. The plan included improved railroad lines, a new sewer and water system, gas lighting, the widening of streets, and the creation of a network of boulevards to accommodate crowds of people and carriage traffic. Paris developed economic centers that people traveled to and the city became an integrated whole. It was transformed into a modern city where its dwellers had face-to-face interactions with social classes other than their own. The city also gave rise to three social types: the dandy, the bohemian, and the flaneur. The French poet Charles Baudelaire was interested in finding intense human, face-to-face interactions and experiences in modern Paris that could possibly lead to the creation of real poetry and art. In Paris Spleen, Baudelaire wrote prose poems from the perspective of the dandy, the bohemian, and the flaneur. Baudelaire celebrates them and the modern city in his quest for intensity with no regard for morality.
While Paris continues to exist as an integrated metropolis with high frequencies of human face-to-face interaction, Los Angeles exists as a fragmented one in need of an increase in public spaces, pedestrian friendly neighborhoods, and a more efficient public transportation system. Today’s dandy, bohemian, and flaneur, and other social types that have flourished since, are absent from the sidewalks of Los Angeles. They are isolated from each other in their automobiles and use their cell phones to navigate through the digital landscape aimlessly, open to suggestion and possibilities, posting images, and desiring to be seen and liked. Their claimed digital spaces include social media accounts and personal websites. In this digital terrain, new images vie for attention with a desire to upstage previous ones. Some images can experience extended viewing cycles, others do well enough until they are superseded by the new next image. Still others experience an unacknowledged death. The high velocity in the circulation of images and greater accessibility to cell phone technology has created a greater volume and variety of social types, clichés, and templates of images. Perhaps today Rousseau would point out the hypocrisy and the degradation of morality in human beings who are emulating and acting for someone else, hoping for acceptance in our digital world. Perhaps Baudelaire would be excited to navigate through our digital landscape, engage with and celebrate all social types, and find intense experiences that lead to the creation of new forms of expression.
Developments in cell phone technology include texting in the early 1990s, and the addition of cameras and access to the world wide web in the early 2000s. As access to the Internet increased, social media sites thrived while print newspaper readership diminished. In the last twenty-five years, hundreds of surrogates for the dandy, the bohemian, the flaneur, and all other denizens have been permanently installed throughout the Los Angeles landscape. Cell phone towers can be seen alongside freeways in designs resembling pine trees, eucalyptus trees, and the city’s iconic palm trees. These poor actors attempt to appear as something they are not. Others are more forthright and do not attempt to conceal their function. They are colossal steel structures measuring 20 to 250 feet in height, and assert themselves as monuments to industry and technology. Cell phone towers can also be found sharing space with storage facilities, in industrial areas, in residential neighborhoods, among the high rises of downtown Los Angeles, and in the parking lots of strip malls, gas stations, fast food restaurants, and churches. A system failure in this vast network of wireless communication could lead to an increase in human face-to-face interactions and/or boredom.
In 1964, while attending Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, John Van Hamersveld designed the movie poster for the surfing documentary The Endless Summer. The design features three black silhouettes of surfers holding surfboards overlaying a sunset rendered in orange, yellow, and red. The film, made for $50,000, went on to gross $20 million. The poster became an icon of California graphic design reproduced on officially licensed t-shirts, stickers, tote bags, and cell phone cases. It can also be found in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The omnipresence of the poster gave rise to a template: dark silhouettes in the foreground and a colorful background to suggest a sunset. Variations on the template replace the surfers with palm trees or alter the colors of the sunset. The template is used in advertisements, photographs, television, and cinema as a shorthand for, among other things, beach, surf, and youth culture or the California lifestyle; it is also used to specify locales such as Southern California and Los Angeles.
In 1913’s The Art of Noise, the Futurist Luigi Russolo advocates for a new kind of music that uses and celebrates the noises of the modern city. Before the Industrial Revolution, our world was relatively quiet with the exception of earthquakes and extreme weather conditions such as storms and avalanches. Russolo writes, “Let’s walk together through a great modern capital, with the ear more attentive than the eye, and we will vary the pleasures of our sensibilities by distinguishing among the gurglings of water, air and gas inside metallic pipes, the rumblings and rattlings of engines breathing with obvious animal spirits, the rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of mechanical saws, the loud jumping of trolleys on their rails, the snapping of whips, the whipping of flags. We will have fun imagining our orchestration of department store’s sliding doors, the hubbub of crowds, the different roars of railroad stations, iron foundries, textile mills, printing houses, power plants and subways.” Russolo invented the intonarumori, acoustic instruments that simulate the sounds of machinery, whose pitch could be changed to produce a wide range of sounds. He composed musical noise arrangements which were played by orchestras of intonarumoris. Today, cell phone ringers are one of the latest additions to the aural landscapes of cities and can be heard interrupting sleep, lectures, conversations, films, and concerts. In their abundant variety, cell phone ringers are ideal for creating musical noise compositions. Russolo states, “Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life. Noise is familiar to us. Noise has the power to bring us back to life.”
In 1852, Louis Napoleon-Bonaparte enlisted the help of Baron Georges-Eugene Haussman to redesign the city of Paris. The plan included improved railroad lines, a new sewer and water system, gas lighting, the widening of streets, and the creation of a network of boulevards to accommodate crowds of people and carriage traffic. Paris developed economic centers that people traveled to and the city became an integrated whole. It was transformed into a modern city where its dwellers had face-to-face interactions with social classes other than their own. The city also gave rise to three social types: the dandy, the bohemian, and the flaneur. The French poet Charles Baudelaire was interested in finding intense human, face-to-face interactions and experiences in modern Paris that could possibly lead to the creation of real poetry and art. In Paris Spleen, Baudelaire wrote prose poems from the perspective of the dandy, the bohemian, and the flaneur. Baudelaire celebrates them and the modern city in his quest for intensity with no regard for morality.
While Paris continues to exist as an integrated metropolis with high frequencies of human face-to-face interaction, Los Angeles exists as a fragmented one in need of an increase in public spaces, pedestrian friendly neighborhoods, and a more efficient public transportation system. Today’s dandy, bohemian, and flaneur, and other social types that have flourished since, are absent from the sidewalks of Los Angeles. They are isolated from each other in their automobiles and use their cell phones to navigate through the digital landscape aimlessly, open to suggestion and possibilities, posting images, and desiring to be seen and liked. Their claimed digital spaces include social media accounts and personal websites. In this digital terrain, new images vie for attention with a desire to upstage previous ones. Some images can experience extended viewing cycles, others do well enough until they are superseded by the new next image. Still others experience an unacknowledged death. The high velocity in the circulation of images and greater accessibility to cell phone technology has created a greater volume and variety of social types, clichés, and templates of images. Perhaps today Rousseau would point out the hypocrisy and the degradation of morality in human beings who are emulating and acting for someone else, hoping for acceptance in our digital world. Perhaps Baudelaire would be excited to navigate through our digital landscape, engage with and celebrate all social types, and find intense experiences that lead to the creation of new forms of expression.
Developments in cell phone technology include texting in the early 1990s, and the addition of cameras and access to the world wide web in the early 2000s. As access to the Internet increased, social media sites thrived while print newspaper readership diminished. In the last twenty-five years, hundreds of surrogates for the dandy, the bohemian, the flaneur, and all other denizens have been permanently installed throughout the Los Angeles landscape. Cell phone towers can be seen alongside freeways in designs resembling pine trees, eucalyptus trees, and the city’s iconic palm trees. These poor actors attempt to appear as something they are not. Others are more forthright and do not attempt to conceal their function. They are colossal steel structures measuring 20 to 250 feet in height, and assert themselves as monuments to industry and technology. Cell phone towers can also be found sharing space with storage facilities, in industrial areas, in residential neighborhoods, among the high rises of downtown Los Angeles, and in the parking lots of strip malls, gas stations, fast food restaurants, and churches. A system failure in this vast network of wireless communication could lead to an increase in human face-to-face interactions and/or boredom.
In 1964, while attending Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, John Van Hamersveld designed the movie poster for the surfing documentary The Endless Summer. The design features three black silhouettes of surfers holding surfboards overlaying a sunset rendered in orange, yellow, and red. The film, made for $50,000, went on to gross $20 million. The poster became an icon of California graphic design reproduced on officially licensed t-shirts, stickers, tote bags, and cell phone cases. It can also be found in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The omnipresence of the poster gave rise to a template: dark silhouettes in the foreground and a colorful background to suggest a sunset. Variations on the template replace the surfers with palm trees or alter the colors of the sunset. The template is used in advertisements, photographs, television, and cinema as a shorthand for, among other things, beach, surf, and youth culture or the California lifestyle; it is also used to specify locales such as Southern California and Los Angeles.
In 1913’s The Art of Noise, the Futurist Luigi Russolo advocates for a new kind of music that uses and celebrates the noises of the modern city. Before the Industrial Revolution, our world was relatively quiet with the exception of earthquakes and extreme weather conditions such as storms and avalanches. Russolo writes, “Let’s walk together through a great modern capital, with the ear more attentive than the eye, and we will vary the pleasures of our sensibilities by distinguishing among the gurglings of water, air and gas inside metallic pipes, the rumblings and rattlings of engines breathing with obvious animal spirits, the rising and falling of pistons, the stridency of mechanical saws, the loud jumping of trolleys on their rails, the snapping of whips, the whipping of flags. We will have fun imagining our orchestration of department store’s sliding doors, the hubbub of crowds, the different roars of railroad stations, iron foundries, textile mills, printing houses, power plants and subways.” Russolo invented the intonarumori, acoustic instruments that simulate the sounds of machinery, whose pitch could be changed to produce a wide range of sounds. He composed musical noise arrangements which were played by orchestras of intonarumoris. Today, cell phone ringers are one of the latest additions to the aural landscapes of cities and can be heard interrupting sleep, lectures, conversations, films, and concerts. In their abundant variety, cell phone ringers are ideal for creating musical noise compositions. Russolo states, “Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life. Noise is familiar to us. Noise has the power to bring us back to life.”
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, oil on canvas, 1877.
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Poster design for 2015's LA Art Book Fair.
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Bibliography
Anolik, Lili. “One Summer, Forever.” Vanity Fair. Mar. 2014. Web. 28 June 2016
Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen. New York: New Directions, 1970.
Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noise. Series Ed. Michael Tencer. Ubuclassics, 2004. Web. 28 June 2016.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind. France, 1755. Project Gutenberg. 17 Feb. 2004. Web. 28 June 2016.
Sandhaus, Louise. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design 1936-1986. Metropolis, 2014.
Seigel, Jerrold. Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930. John Hopkins University, 1999.
Anolik, Lili. “One Summer, Forever.” Vanity Fair. Mar. 2014. Web. 28 June 2016
Baudelaire, Charles. Paris Spleen. New York: New Directions, 1970.
Russolo, Luigi. The Art of Noise. Series Ed. Michael Tencer. Ubuclassics, 2004. Web. 28 June 2016.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind. France, 1755. Project Gutenberg. 17 Feb. 2004. Web. 28 June 2016.
Sandhaus, Louise. Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California & Graphic Design 1936-1986. Metropolis, 2014.
Seigel, Jerrold. Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930. John Hopkins University, 1999.