Rob Horning‘s recent essay in PopMatters — called “Doomed to Dilettantism” — performs an alarming and fantastic excoriation of the trend toward substituting “professionalism” in the arts with “amateurism” by consumers. Ingeniously, Horning connects the proliferation of faux-artisan strip mall stores like Michael’s (the chain craft store “Where Creativity Happens”) to the consumerist propensity for… Continue reading Mock Band: The Simulation of Artistic Processes
Tag: commodity fetish
Gel Remote: Object Empathy and The Tactile Uncanny
Adbusters # 78 asks “What if design stood up for itself? What if instead of bowing immediately to our demands, design gently pushed back?” In the “Psychodesign” slideshow (by Sarah Nardi), products like Panasonic Design Company‘s experimental “Gel Remote” (above) are framed as a political use of the uncanny, animating the inanimate icons of everyday life in order to… Continue reading Gel Remote: Object Empathy and The Tactile Uncanny
Parade Floats and the Uncanny
Here in the USA, it’s Thanksgiving morning. The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in NYC is just getting started, and while I’ve never been a fan of parades, one can’t deny their significance in both small town culture and in big city holiday fests, alike. The news media treat them like spectator sports. For the… Continue reading Parade Floats and the Uncanny
Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection
Photoshop Disasters is a funny weblog that collects flawed design elements in advertisements and elsewhere (like the above image from a Sears Catalog). The accidental amputations, bizarre hands, and other forms of freakish anatomical blunders strike a viewer as uncanny when you spot them in what would otherwise be a “picture perfect” advertisement. We always… Continue reading Photoshop Disasters and the Fantasy of Picture Perfection
30 Rock Popularizes the Uncanny Valley
There’s a lot of talk lately about how uncanny Tina Fey’s impression of VP hopeful Sarah Palin really is, and with the next season of her Emmy-award winning TV show, 30 Rock, getting ready to launch at the end of the month, I thought the timing was right to post a consideration about this very… Continue reading 30 Rock Popularizes the Uncanny Valley
Bread that Talks
Obviously, no one believes bread can talk. But Schwebel’s ‘taliano — “The Bread with the Foreign Accent” — would like us to believe its Italian bread has an identity so Italian that it can speak to us. I used this example in my recent lecture at the Alpha Science Fiction & Fantasy Workshop for Young… Continue reading Bread that Talks