Pseudonymity Reconsidered

I've been reconsidering some of my pseudonyms lately. And wondering how far pseudonymity will take you when you would prefer that your efforts were all related, connected and coherent.

The primary moniker I use for producing music, Instigator, has proven too ubiquitous. I adopted it eight years ago and am the oldest listing for artists named "Instigator", for the record. The bigger point is that I think I've outgrown it. I argue with myself about whether Instigator was supposed to do anything but get my solo production efforts underway. Things have been instigated well enough (the ambitious "Used Materials" album, and the fruitful Noise Throng label). It's time for the name, like the creative product itself, to move beyond the beginning-stage mentality.

This is what I did with INSTILLE, a name derived from the portmanteau of Instigator and Distille.

But getting my musical monikers in order inevitably leaves me reconsidering my PYLBUG moniker, too. A misspelling of pillbug, inspired by a dream about an abundance of insects and pills as interchangeable objects, it's been my handle for extra-curricular productions since 1995. Sometimes, however, I find myself wary of the connotations "pylbug" brings.

I am not, for the record, a pill-head any more than I am an insect aficionado. [Though I'm definitely much closer to the latter.] The reasoning by which I arrived at "pylbug" doesn't always hold up now, nearly 13 years later. Many of my extra-curricular efforts now seem inspired by different things, and this makes me feel like they should go by a different name. I'm considering a revised strategy to naming my projects; a refined point-of-view. Something like that.

All of that is for me to figure out. But, here's the question for my readers: where does your pseudonym come from, and did you plan any longevity into it? Maybe this question is more for bands, bloggers, content producers in general... people with a product that needs a brand name, if you will. What thought, if any, did you put into the act of picking your favorite pseudonym?

That is, if you can reveal the secrets behind your screen names.

Zombie Products = Lazarus Taxons?

I say "products" because these, not brands, are actually what Slate's Daniel Gross refers to in Zombie Brands II. (A follow-up to Zombie Brands part one -- which is also about products, not brands). For example, the McRib is a product; McDonald's is a brand. Likewise, the Taurus is a product of the Ford brand. And Tab is a product of the Coca-Cola brand (though I'm sure Coke's marketing folks might argue that Tab is a sub-brand within Coca-Cola's brand architecture). I'm calling them "zombie products" because "zombie brands" seems less correct for the majority of Gross' examples.

Now that we've gotten that clarification out of the way, I should get to my point: These zombie products are consumerism's version of the Lazarus taxon. I make note of this because in a previous PYLB post I discussed the "comeback" taxonomy seems to be making right now.

The Elvis Taxon & Taxonomy's Comeback?

Paleontology meets rock and roll: The Elvis Taxon. [via Kottke]

Maybe this is too soon to answer, but is taxonomy making a comeback? The term originally applied only to living organisms, but there are folks who will argue what constitutes or closely mimicks a living organism's behavior (social networks, information, perhaps anything that can be categorized).

Last year, Tortoise named a boxed set after A Lazarus Taxon, now we have the Elvis Taxon. With the increasing attention paid to user experience and information architecture, especially in terms of interactive media, I think we're going to see more references to taxa (plural of taxon) in general.

"VICTOR" Frankenstein

...and other FIRST NAMES you didn't know, from ANGUS MacGyver to FRANK Colombo. My parents always called me by my middle name, which appears to be the strategy many celebrities take, too. What's most fascinating about this list, however, is the comingling of real and fictional characters.

read more | digg story

The refix is in (for now).

Refix? Yeah. Here's a fun example of a refix that follows-through on ETUC and movie remixing:

DJ Food's Raiding the 20th Century - an audio-history of the cut-up. It's a bit of a listen, but I highly recommend checking both versions - the original mix is brilliant, and the refix is true genius.

Methods of refixing in sound recording date back to Musique concrète and through early forms of sampling and dub:

Tzara, Burroughs and Gysin called it the cut-up;
Zappa called his version xenocrany;
John Oswald dubbed it Plunderphonics;
Double Dee and Steinski considered their examples "lessons";
Pop Will Eat Itself said it all in their name.

Though not the first to use it, DJ Food is onto something with the term refix. For the time being, it is a remix of the term remix - and therefore may be a better word for this discussion. Technically, I'm refixing my blog by linking to previous posts to create a richer context for this particular post and to reinforce the themes behind this entire blog.

The refix not a new tactic. It's just a new word for an old trick. We have always reappropriated cultural capital, legally or otherwise, to re-tell stories (personal experiences) within individual and institutional worldviews.

Think of all the "classic" art that is little more than a commissioned depiction of a royal family imposed on biblical or mythological scenes - notably, without the permission or consent of those who wrote the Bible. Those Bible stories are largely based on previous mythology and folklore, but "fixed" enough to support Christianity's insidious patriarchy and supplant Pagan belief systems. These refixes are traditionally maintained as classic art because they've been hanging on museum walls for centuries - but apply the same tactic to modern media and you are asking for a cease and desist order, lawsuit or worse. (That's because our permission culture is all f'd up, and our courts can't clearly define fair use.)

The refix tactic reaches into all niches of culture, not just the traditional, classic arts: ricers, bikers and gearheads refer to it as Kustom Kulture; writers know it by several names, portmanteau perhaps the most exotic of them; gamers know it in the form of cheats, mods and even machinema; programmers and hackers may consider it open source; one day soon we will refix our own genetic codes under the ideals of democratic transhumanism.

It will no doubt be outdated in a matter of months, but for now the refix is in.

"I came here for a good argument."

A Swedish library "will let curious visitors check out living people for a 45-minute chat in a project meant to tear down prejudices about different religions, nationalities, or professions". [article]

All I'm going to add is that, for me, this immediately brings to mind the Argument Clinic sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus.

[via]

Oblique Strategies

I recently rediscovered Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies when they were made available as a Widget for OSX Tiger's Dashboard. These "one hundred worthwhile strategies" are a lot like Zen Buddhism's koans - only with fewer religous overtones. You can get your hands on a hard copy via Eno's online shop, or check out several other digital versions. I've got to admit, I put them to use on some new business I'm working on, and they definitely helped get the (mental) wheels turning. You business types out there might employ Oblique Strategies to arrive at the proverbial Purple Cow that Seth Godin is always talking about. Or you could carry on being unremarkable.

Birds imitate man-made, electronic sounds

In Germany, orinthologists have determined that birds imitate mobile phone ring tones. I'm very pleased to see this article, as I have noticed birds in my neighborhood imitating car alarms (you know the tune). Bird's songs are a great example of memes occurring outside the human race, and bird's ability to mimic human speech sounds is widely known already; it seemed completely logical that they would begin to imitate urban noises (albeit in a monophonic way, since birds can't sing chords) and incorporate these sounds into their song-vocabulary.

Bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew-bew
woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop-woop
doo-dee--doo-dee--doo-dee--doo-dee-
wooooooooooooooooo-wooooooooooooooooo
errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt-errt

While my girlfriend scoffed at the thought, I insisted it was at least possible - and awfully coincidental that the birds picked up those sounds around the same time a neighbor of ours couldn't keep his car alarm (the ubiquious "song" of the city) from going off for an entire hour at a time. Some are helping to call attention to the similarities with a little clever editing, too.

Traffic alone does not a meme make.

But if you want to be successful in "contagious media", it appears that you’ll still need the help of meta-sites like Slashdot, Metafilter and Fark. This, at least, is a determination made by Mark Glasser on the heels of the Contagious Media Showdown.

While some are quick to classify “most popular websites” as memes, I would argue that these are not necessarily memes just because they are "viral" in the sense marketers use (that is, getting a lot of traffic). Truth be told, “viral” simply means that your message is talked about, or replicated, outside of the confines of your media buy; all truly “good” marketing is already viral, whether online or off, but getting internet traffic does not necessarily mean that you have a meme.

A meme has to have the right mix of fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Obvioulsy, digital media do a lot to preserve the fidelity of an idea. And longevity is why books haven't gone anywhere (your email, however, may not provide the best longevity... and your IM is terrible at providing an idea with longevity). But fecundity can be more tricky; it's not mere eyeballs you get on your site, it's how much your message sticks to existing ideas in the brains behind those eyeballs, and how likely those brains are to replicate the message. Successful memes are more culturally (or sub-culturally) relevant than a page-view; this is why they "stick" to ideas your brain is already carrying.

Here's an example of what I mean when I say traffic is not a true measure of a meme: Of all the web sites you've seen or forwarded to someone else, how many of them do you actually remember - without checking your Sent folder or your Bookmarks? Why?