Foul Play Giant

I've always had a bad taste in my mouth from the folks who gush over the work of Shepard Fairey. And now I'm snickering to myself that his legal counsel is abandoning him after it was revealed that he lied about which source he stole from / traced over for the Obama Hope poster.

Fairey represents a lot of what I don't like about the art world - arrogant double-standards. His work is entirely derivative if not outright stolen, which in itself is not offensive to me. There's nothing wrong with appropriation when proper attribution is given. Yet he continually passes himself off as original, and profits from creativity that simply wasn't his - without giving proper credit where it is clearly due. In fact, he outright lies about his sources. And Fairey is clearly lying for the sake of his own celebrity and profit, not for the sake of art.

I've always insisted that the work that put him on the map, Andre the Giant has a Posse and the resulting Obey work, were obviously inspired by John Carpenter's They Live - which starred a pro wrestler and featured subliminal outdoor advertising messages that read "obey" (among other Big Brotherly imperatives). Too many coincidences.

Given that it's now common practice to sue musicians for sampling even small portions of someone else's work without permission and/or payment, Fairey deserves to be held responsible for his actions. It's clear that his primary concern is being a celebrity; perhaps his ego prevents him from being honest about his work, his process and his tremendous debt to pop and fringe culture that preceded him and all of his sordid merchandising.

Fairey is complicit in the ugly corporatization of celebrity - at the expense of honesty, integrity and authenticity. It pains me that only the Obama poster is drawing this fact into the public discourse.

Air Releases "Viral" Single Today

Watch this, then get the new Air single "Do The Joy" for free. (Click the little speaker icon below if you want to shut off the audio from this widget.)



New Air album, Love 2, drops from Astralwerks on October 6: "A viral single 'Do The Joy' will be made available digitally on July 7th, followed by a formal single release for the summery pop anthem 'Sing Sang Sung' on August 25th."

(Our) Life Inc.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

It is with some regret that I admit, I've had a galley copy of Douglas Rushkoff's new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back which I have been unable to devote enough attention. Between medical issues and my wedding, I just haven't had the time to sit and read much. Hopefully I can squeeze out a review before the book hits store shelves in just under two weeks (Sorry, Douglas, I really appreciate the advance copy and hope this doesn't negate my chances for advances of future publications). Everyone can read Chapter One here courtesy of BoingBoing, where Rushkoff has been guest blogger this week.

For the time being, I highly recommend Life Inc The Movie (above), which sets up the book's premise. In light of the current economic woes worldwide, I think it is crucial to examine the path that got us here: corporatism. You may be surprised to learn how it all began, and even more surprised to discover how much corporatism has become ingrained in the way we behave. Pre-order Life Inc. on Amazon.

UPDATE:
Great continuation of the conversation, with more excerpts from the book, here at BoingBoing: Everything's Open Source but Money.

Panic Or Something!

This one's a compare and contrast, my dear readers.

The article and essay below feel, to me, like they're making a lot of the same considerations. [Am I being too hasty, or is the impending "panic" essentially just a bad reaction to the realization that we've behaved like morons for far too long? Or is it a mixture of both?]

T.R.O.Y. claims, "I think a key ingredient is a sense of practical hope, a real feeling based in experience that what one is doing matters." I suspect Sterling might agree, since his writing seems to come from a similar sense of hope based on experience and "what matters". Read the pieces below and decide for yourself.

Bruce Sterling - "2009 Will Be A Year Of Panic"
[article]

-- vs --

T.R.O.Y. - "The Challenge Of Utopia"
[interview w/ link to .rtf]

Thoughts? (Post a comment.)

Are You Gonna Make a Best (Albums) of 2008 List?

I wasn't going to either.

But after a few recent feeble answers to that question like, "No, but if I did I'd put [Artist/Album] on there...", I ended up with a list anyway. Maybe it's my Most Referred releases, Most Shared, or simply Most Memorable of 2008. Perhaps it's Anything, Off The Top Of My Head, Released In 2008 That Had A (Somewhat) Formative Effect On Me. In no particular order. Enjoy.


Portishead - Third
While I would have bought it anyway out of long-time fandom, I really this one. I also like that they successfully tried to shake their trip-hop fan base loose by going prog. [link]


Ladytron - Velocifero
I was never all the way into Ladytron until this album. Now I am. Big sound, catchy tunes, tight production and, as Maria says, "they always have the best hair." [link]


The Duke Spirit - Neptune
This band's singer turned up on the last UNKLE album, and this album had the same producer (Chris Goss). But it's probably her voice that quickly made this standard listening around our house. [link]


Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
There's an overabundance of chimey indie rock laced with whispery vocals, but this was one of those albums that changed the trajectory of my listening habits for weeks, if not months. [link]


School Of Seven Bells - Alpinisms
Turns out the tune on Prefuse 73's last album is also on this, and it is but one of many intricately woven tunes here. Maybe you should just give them a listen. [link] [bonus]


Christian Prommer's Drumlesson - Drum Lesson Vol 1
One of the Truby Trio busts out on his own with one of the most creative albums of the year. Check out what this guy did to Kraftwerk and Daft Punk songs. Amazing. [link]


Double Dee & Steinski - Who Owns Culture? (Live)
The founding fathers of mash-ups, bastard pop, blends (whatever you call them), Steinski and Double Dee open for DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist's The Hard Sell (made even better by the Ben Stokes visuals). [link]


Instigator - Reduced Materials
Full disclosure: shameless self-promotion. However, strictly speaking, this is the music I listened to most in 2008. It's my final release as "Instigator", much as this is my final post of 2008. Cheers! [link]

The Whole Hog, In A Pig's Eye

In her book PIG 05049, Dutch artist Christien Meindertsma chronicles over three years of an art / research project, an investigation on what happens to a pig after it has been slaughtered. Specifically, the book highlights 187 products made from one pig - and BBQ isn't necessarily on the list. Today's post about it on We Make Money Not Art is enlightening. Here's the gem quote that got me reading the whole thing:

Over three years, the designer tracked the products made from parts or even tiny particles of pigs. Her quest led her to a tattoo artist, dentist, farmer and weapon specialist. She discovered that the skin, bones, meat, organs, blood, fat, brains, hoofs, hair and tail of the pig are used in no fewer than 187 products: shampoo, medicine, munitions, cardiac valves, matches, desserts and bubblegum, beer and lemonade, car paint and brake discs, pills, bread, etc.

You know you want to know more. So here's a little more from the same post:

After slaughter, bits and pieces of the Dutch pig travel around the world. Gelatin from its skin ends up in liquorices and gums, and even cheesecake and tiramisu. In the weapon industry the gelatin is used as conductor for bullets. Pork fat is one of the ingredients of, amongst others, anti-wrinkle cream and shampoo, information that producers are not too keen on admitting. The glue made from pig bones makes matches sturdier and porcelain is manufactured from its ashes. Protein from pig's hair contributes to making bread soft. Every part of a pig is either eaten or processed. Should anything be left over, it is converted into green electric power.

I am certain the vegetarians and vegans among you will be interested to know about all the pork-oriented products you're not eating but using regularly. Read more here, while I go satisfy this sudden taste for bacon...

[Photo via We Make Money Not Art]

"Fascinating."

When I was earning my journalism degree, CBS was considered the grandparents' network. Well into my professional career, CBS was still seen as struggling to shake off that reputation... their first sign of success was a little reality show called Survivor. Eight years later, CBS may be poised to become more relevant, to more people, than its Viacom sister network MTV.

This post started as a video I wanted to share (below), a video attributed to CBS. Apparently there's a division of CBS called EyeLab. The group's purpose is nebulous, according to their "about" blurb. In fact, there's nothing about what I'm about to share with you here, though there has been a smattering of press coverage for the past year or so. Regardless of the vague self-description, a few of their promotional videos are becoming successful in the much coveted "viral" way.

It all started with this drawn-out "supercut" of Caruso's cornball one-liners that open every episode of CSI Miami. It wasn't created by CBS, but it wasn't removed for copyright infringement, either. In fact, the creator is cited by CBS as the inspiration for EyeLab.

Fast-forward about a year and there's this one, an "official" EyeLab production, which promotes the DVD set of the remastered original Star Trek television series: DJ Spock. That's because CBS Home Entertainment is using its big sister television network to help move more units. We have CBS Digital to thank for the enhanced digital effects in the remastered series, too.

It'll be interesting to see if a group within a big conglomerate like CBS will be able to sustain the scrappy and nimble approach of folks like stewmurray47. I doubt stewmurray47 had a bottom line to worry about, committees to deal with, advertisers to keep happy, or investors and stockholders to appease. That said, it's kinda cool that CBS started a division that gets to jam the company culture... but I'm sure the fun little videos are just a small part of their job.

It'll also be interesting to see if this mash-up approach to promotion carries into CBS's forthcoming record label, which we should hear from early next year.

Find Some Time

This Last month's posts were almost entirely about music. Time to switch it up a bit, and what better way to do that than with a few of my favorite sites for daily "finds". Today we'll cover four sites, each focused on a different realm of "found" content. You'll want to have a few minutes to get the full effect of each.

Sorry I Missed Your Party
This blog trolls Flickr for photos tagged "party" and posts some of the more provocative ones. Occasionally there's video, but it's usually a Flickr photo - which often links to an entire set of party photos that probably shouldn't have been made public. I recommend checking this site daily, as it never disappoints.

Photoshop Disasters
There are a few sites like this out there, but this one posts the most frequently and, usually, has just the right balance of snarky and savvy. If this site proves anything, it's that having a copy of PhotoShop does not make you an art director, or even teach you anything about composition. You'll learn to spot the marks of an amateur yourself after just a few pages of this site.

The Fail Blog
Evidence of failure is what this blog is all about. The nature of the "fail" varies, and sometimes it's a little hit or miss. But, in the same spirit of Photoshop Disasters and Sorry I Missed Your Party, this blog rarely fails to entertain with frequent updates that help you laugh at others' misfortune (usually the result of their own ineptitude).

FFFFOUND!
Considerably less hilarity than the previous links, but more about inspiring graphic design and photography which the sites' contributors find around the Internet (a lot from the Behance network, as it turns out). It's a bit like a visual tappas menu, with a slew of new tastes for your eyes to sample each day. Maybe that was a bad analogy, but take a gander anyway.

Of course, these and many others are always here for your perusal. Just check the link roll to the right for new additions each time you visit.

GUNS!

This past weekend, thousands of Chicagoans brought guns to church.

6,705 guns, to be exact, as part of the city's gun buy-back program. ("Buy-back?" Doesn't this imply that the city sold the guns to them in the first place?) Everyone turning in a gun got a $100 pre-paid MasterCard, while supplies lasted. Some folks think that's not going to make a long-term difference, since no actual gun-wielding idiots were taken off the streets. Speaking of idiots, the NRA is suing the city and two suburbs to make room for more guns on the streets.

As if on cue amidst all this gun-crazy gun-loving comes a rarity from seminal copyright infringers Negativland: the New American Radio version of "Guns!". It's not the same version that appeared on the SST Records original 1991 release, which was Negativland's attempt to earn the label some revenue after the big U2 lawsuit. Download the MP3 at Kill Ugly Radio. Burn it and the U2 tracks to CD so you're prepared for any Copyright Infringement Buy Back programs that might turn up.

See also:
Negativland: U2
Negativland: Guns!
Negativland: Fair Use - The Letter U and The Numeral 2

Tuning In This Week

It's been an interesting week for music. Well, for the kind I pay attention to...



My Bloody Valentine played a warm-up show at a small London venue last week. Wired's Listening Post points to MP3's of the show (sounds like they were recorded in the room, not off the board). This tease of what's to come around Chicago in September might not be enough to make us forget that the much-anticipated MBV re-issues are delayed (again) because Kevin Shields is allegedly still writing the liner notes. Maybe he should have started those sooner.... like, in 1991?




Another bit of mixed disappointment came from Illegal Art this week: the new Girl Talk album. See, I paid for this album months ago as part of a four-release deal the label offered (I did it mainly to secure a copy of the Steinski retrospective). Well, the Girl Talk album, Feed The Animals, was delayed. Then released for free earlier this week. Hmpf! So in six weeks when the CD arrives (a schedule that still baffles me), I'll be long-since tired of an album that I legitimately downloaded yesterday. Girl Talk told Pitchfork that he pushed the release (wait, it was delayed... how can he call this a push to release it early? WTF?) because of the timely samples he's using, admitting that they'll be stale by the time the CD is pressed. Well, why bother pressing a CD at all, dude? And why ask me to pay for it several months before you're going to just give it away? You could have refunded me the purchase price, given me store credit at the label store, and made a better fan of me. Instead, I feel a bit swindled. I suppose I asked for it, but it's probably the last time I bother to buy Girl Talk's collage of what amounts to random preview clips of everyone else's songs in no apparent order. First listen: it's cute. Second listen: I think I could have done this better myself.




Things got better this morning when I was greeted with an email from Amon Tobin regarding his new online store. In addition to an official release of his soundtrack for Taxidermia, there is a slew of freebie content - live mixes and DJ sets mostly. There's also a feature called This Month's Joint, which is a new track available for purchase (MP3 or WAV) every month. This will help me keep my fix of Tobin until his Two Fingers collaboration is released. Nice. This guy is one of my favorite recording artists, and has been a big inspiration on my own recording endeavors.




Oh, yeah, there are also rumors flying about a leak of eight tracks off the much-fabled Guns-N-Roses album Chinese Democracy. If you're into that kind of thing.

It's Still Just Bud, Folks

Advertising Age this week published an article speculating that Anheuser-Busch's impending buyout by Belgian-owned, Brazilian-operated InBev would tarnish Budweiser's patriotic brand position. While Budweiser may lose the right to mix heavy-handed US patriotism into its brew of marketing, advertising and sponsorships (would this be such a bad thing, anyway?), the presence of foreign interests is nothing new to this brand. For example...

• To this day, A-B pays a Czech brewery in exchange for rights to use the Budweiser name in the US. Paying royalties to a Czech brewery for your name isn't exactly what you'd expect of this allegedly "great American brand."
• Clydesdales are another legacy in A-B branding and marketing. That's a Scottish breed of horse, for those of you keeping score. Again, not exactly Americana in origin.
• Beer is not an American invention. In fact, its origins are traced to Egypt and Iran. The word "beer" is derived from the German "bier". American beer is the Johnny-come-lately in the history of the drink.

Of the Bud drinkers I know, everyone buys Bud for two reasons: price and proximity. As long as A-B provides the same cheap, available-everywhere swill that those folks enjoy (no offense, it's just not my ale of choice), who's going to care what the parent company is? The average Bud drinker isn't concerned with these things.

Would you stop drinking your favorite beer if the parent company - and nothing else beside perhaps the amount of patriotism in its advertising - changed?

MT9 An Empty Promise?

Buzz Feed spots a new audio format out of Korea called MT9. The buzz seems to imply that this format will overtake MP3 as the format of choice, but I think that's awfully premature and more than a little naive.

A new audio file format that may come to replace MP3s — six channels of sound that the user can control. What’s the big deal? MT9 files allow you to remix them — turn up the bass, make it a capella, create a music-only version for karaoke, etc. They’re getting a big push in Korea, whatever that means.

What that means: This is most likely a novelty format which will probably be aimed at mobile devices. That's my guess, anyway. In Korea, where they are light years ahead of the US in terms of mobile devices. Otherwise, there are too many issues with this format to be practical for proper music production.

First, you have only six channels. That might sound like a lot to the average consumer, but to anyone who's produced music it's extremely restrictive. The last forty years of popular music has been made with at least eight channels, with current releases going beyond 128 channels, limited only by processor speed and hard drive capacity. Some pop songs have more than six tracks of vocals alone!

The advantage over MP3 is that MT9 is modular to an extent, but it appears to be a novelty music technology for non-musicians. Like Guitar Hero; I'm sure it's fun and engaging, but it doesn't make you a guitarist. The modular aspect is not a unique advantage, save for the fact that the whole song seems bundled into one file - but that tells me that it's not going to be a file of any high fidelity.

I am immediately reminded of the loop packs that have been available for more than a decade - the most recent being things like Apple's Jam Packs for Garage Band or Randy Jackson's Producer's Packs for Acid. Sure, it is customizable sound, but it's not going to make you a producer just for turning one of six tracks on or off. This is actually content that's already been produced, then parceled into incomplete chunks that consumers can pay to re-assemble.

Realistically, as this article implies, MT9 is probably little more than a customizable karaoke format. It's certainly no MP3 replacement, though the press seems to want to make it one. Karaoke is a big business in Korea and much of Asia, so maybe this will be a hit there.

After over twelve years of producing and mixing music, I wouldn't abandon MP3 for MT9; I do work with MP3, but prefer uncompressed formats like WAV and AIFF. If this new format doesn't work with existing software and player applications, it's going to have a hard time being adopted. We'll see if MT9 ever makes it to US shores.

No News Is The Best News

If only CNN and the other 24-7 news networks would do this instead of repeating the same sixty minutes of programming, twenty-four times a day. I'd watch the news more often, which would get their advertisers more exposure to my much-coveted "young adult" demographic. Just a thought.

June the first feels so far away.

Lately I've been rounding out my collection of my favorite J. G. Thirlwell side-projects, namely Manorexia and Steroid Maximus (thanks in part to foetus.org's digital shoppe). Listening to Steroid Maximus often turns my thoughts toward a certain cartoon I'm sure some of you know... Particularly when I hear Fighteous on Quilombo -- a track that was re-worked into the Venture Brothers opening theme. Knowing that Thirlwell is hard at work on next season's soundtrack only intensifies my craving for new Venture Brothers episodes.

Throwing gas on the fire, I read the LiveJournal lamentations of show creator Jackson Publick. Apparently, Cartoon Network aired very rough cuts of a new episode on April Fool's Day. To his dismay. Publick also reports that Kid Robot has created action figures of Dr. Girlfriend and The Monarch, to be sold in blind boxes with a variety of other Adult Swim characters. There was one other nugget of news...

Venture Brothers Season 3 June 1

With or without Stephen Colbert. In high-definition. Action figures drop April 17.
Go. Team. Venture.

Hello Muxtape, Goodbye Muxtape?

For the past couple weeks, all kinds of folks have been hyping the Muxtape. I say live it up now, because it isn't likely to last. Why? The basic-yet-totally-vague requirement that your MP3 uploads must meet for Muxtape: "Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use."

So, the first thing I think is, how do I know if I have permission to let Muxtape use a song? Apparently there's no way to know for sure. Muxtape doesn't explain itself, which could spell trouble with a capital R-I-A-A.

What was Muxtape thinking, exactly? The blog implies that it's a way for bands to post their original songs, but if you're a band you need to do more than just post your songs (you use sites like MySpace to collect fans' info, too). The majority of Muxtapes posted are begging for legal action. In fact, a cursory look at just a few random posts reveals rampant unauthorized duplication. (The only "safe" mix I can find is this genius offering from Catbirdseat.)

I'm going to get this out of the way now: Nice sorta knowin' ya, Muxtape. Find a good lawyer and make room for all the C & D's you're about to get.*

* Unless you're some elaborate means of entrapment, rigged by the RIAA, in which case I salute your sinister scheme and simultaneously shiver at the settlements you'll wring from the stupid saps who keep uploading illegally.

Will Power*

* While supplies last.

According to this New York Times article, we each have a limited supply of will power.

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

So, bolstering your will power on one initiative can deplete your will power on another, however unrelated. Perhaps this, combined with certain other factors, explains why I have such a hard time quitting smoking or drinking less while continuing to work in advertising. Or why I have less patience with the demands of my workplace when it's necessary to turn attention to my mental and physical health. Over time, this reallocation of will power is supposed to help give us more will power... at least, that's what the article suggests:

The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren’t out shopping.

I think this is fascinating and at the same time a little concerning. Have you noticed yourself slipping in one area while concentrating on another, in terms of will power? How do you compensate for any depletion of will power you might notice in yourself?

[NYT link via Kottke]

Ego, Not Infotechnology, Is Source Of Overload

This morning my inbox at work had an email from AdAge, with a link to an article by Steve Rubel called Too Much Infotechnology Can Lead To Overload. I wanted to see what Rubel had to say about it, because my opinion of this phenomenon goes against what most people in my industry seem to think. Like most of the articles about the imaginary "infotech overload" afflicting folks in their forties and fifties, is a fluff piece at best. Rubel's got it all wrong when he blames technology for the overload:

Over the last decade, Americans have become hopelessly addicted to information and busyness. We have all overheard people bragging about their back-to-back schedules and massive e-mail inboxes. We crave information and busyness because it makes us feel wanted, needed and, above all, important. However, too much of a good thing is never ideal.

So, being needy is a good thing?

I used to work with a guy whose blackberry was a constant source of self-esteem. He swore he was busy busy busy, but he never did much but fuss with that device. Take the blackberry away and he's still an asshole looking for anything to do but work (part of the reason he's no longer a co-worker). Rubel would blame the blackberry and email. The root of the problem lies elsewhere.

I bring this up whenever I read anything that claims "today's target audience leads a hurried and harried lifestyle". I have to call "bullshit" on it. We're actually less busy than we used to be, despite our best efforts to prove otherwise. We have DVRs and voicemail, Roomba's and automated bill-pay options. We can time-shift a lot of things for which we used to make appointments -- but most of us are still terrible at time management. That's why the GTD folks are making so much bank right now.

But technology is not the problem. The people who insist every little alert is an excuse to drop everything are. It's called an instant message, but you are not obligated to address it this instant. When your phone rings, it only indicates that someone is trying to call you - not that you need to stop the world to take a call. If this kind of busyness makes you feel important, consider a career as a secretary or administrative assistant. But don't blame the technology for your own inability to cope and adapt.

And maybe try not to waste article inches on this stuff, especially considering the subject matter. Rubel's entire premise is that infotechnology leads to overload -- but all of his evidence supports the notion that human ego, however enabled by information technology, is truly the source of the problem.

Would Rubel's article have the same effect if he were complaining that his iPod holds too many songs to listen to in one sitting, or that his DirecTV has too many channels? When you boil down the article, it's a bit of whining about feeling overwhelmed by all these emails one might otherwise use to validate one's own sense of self-importance. If having options is a symbol of status, the truly hip will be the ones who exercise the option to opt-out at least as often as they opt-in. But that's an idea considerably less ingratiating to the bulk of Rubel's marketing industry audience.

There is no information overload, but, as has been true throughout human history, there are a few too many egos getting in the way of common sense.

I Hate Advertising.

I used to cite this as the reason I started working in advertising over eight years ago. The day after Super Bowl XLII, however, I feel as though I am now capable of a much deeper, consuming, educated and validated hate.

Now, most of my readers know that I'm not a sports fan. The Super Bowl has never appealed to me. I simply don't care who wins what game, and never have. I've got more productive things to do. Suck it, sports.

Equally unappealing to me is the predictable practice of mindless pandering in advertising aired during sporting events. Mindless, meaningless messaging that borders on offensive. Some that goes past offensive to just plain obscene - and not in the pornographic way that can turn a guy on. I'm talking about the kind of obscene that turns your stomach because it reveals the hideous truth: brands and their advertisers believe us all to be complete imbeciles. Yes, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's essentially true.

Consumerist called last night's orgy of advertising "a tame batch of disappointment". Personally, I think it's disappointing that we still look to television spots aired during one football game as the shining moment in every year of advertising. We dutifully tune-in to watch the same formula at work year after year, spot after spot: derivative creative product aimed at appealing to the lowest common denominator.

I realize I may be echoing what Bob Garfield has to say about my chosen profession, and about the questionable merit of its contributions to society. Now, the day after the Super Bowl when I've had the chance to see the popular commercials online, I have to agree with Bob whole-heartedly. Check the reports aggregated via BuzzFeed to confirm that the over-inflated spectacle of Super Bowl advertising was, in fact, quite underwhelming.

There's an old saying in advertising: "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which half." It's probably the half you spent on that inane Super Bowl spot, Mr. Advertiser.

Removed from the over-amplified, over-hyped context of the big game broadcast, the spots I watched online failed to surprise or delight. They sure as hell aren't selling me anything, either. In fact, they're informing me which marketers are deserving of my complete desertion. If I see an ad for a product I use, and that ad paints said product's users as the too-often heralded lowest common denominator, I'm going to stop buying/using/letting people see me with that product. That's not because I work in advertising; that's because I refuse to reward insults with patronage.

But I'm a minority. That's why I shouldn't watch the Super Bowl. It only reminds me why I hate advertising.

Holy Schmap, Photo Credits!

I had no idea what Schmap was until I learned that some of my Creative Commons-licensed photography is being used in Schmap's Prague and London listings.

First, I received an email about a photo I took at Prague's Hotel Josef:



Then I got another email, regarding a photo of the unassuming front of the Maharishi store in London (it's easy to miss, tucked away on Floral Street):



What's so cool to me about all this: it's practically effortless. Post your photos to Flickr, use a Creative Commons license that permits sharing with attribution, and you could have photo credits that used to take a lot more work to achieve. That's assuming you take photos that people want to use.

What's funny to me about all this: these are both relatively high-end locations - the type of place I explore when traveling on business, but not the kind of place I typically patronize on my own dime. I'm more of a low- to no-brow league of consumer in most respects.

That said, Hotel Josef was a great place to stay near the old town square of Prague. Especially when your employer is paying for it. I should also admit that I did convince myself to splurge on a very expensive, limited-edition sweatshirt (which I am afraid to wear very often) at Maharishi - who may be best known for Sno-Pants and the Encyclopedia of Disruptive Pattern Material (which is, incidentally, one of my favorite reference works).

Album Art = More Than Mere Packaging

More people buy music digitally now than ever before. The demise of DRM-crippled product makes digital purchases all the more appealing. But some folks - the kind who make money designing static album art, coincidentally enough - complain about "loss of the importance of album artwork." But, contrary to the lamentations of these naive suburbanites, nothing is lost. I think they're simply missing the bigger picture.

Album sleeves were originally intended to protect the analog disc, and preserve the quality of the music encoded on that disc. Every release was packaged essentially as a white label until Alex Steinweiss came along. He's the guy we have to thank for album art as we know it today:

In 1939, 23 year old Alexander Steinweiss proposed to Columbia to make a change in the presentation and packaging of the 78 RPM record albums and to use original artwork (drawings and paintings) on the covers. The new look skyrocketed the sales of an already very popular composition. From that day on the artistic packaging became an important part of the record.

But it's been a long time since album art was limited to the sleeve around a disc. In fact, album art is so important that it transcends packaging. It evolved to include merchandise, concert stage sets, web sites and interactive experiences -- all of which allow an artist to elaborate on the concept(s) of an album. Consider these examples: Pink Floyd Amon Tobin, Air, Kraftwerk, or even the White Stripes. The visual art of an album can be, and for many artists already is, so much more than packaging. I would argue that it's more important than ever.