Category: media | 媒體 | 미디어 | メディア

It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.

But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.

“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”

McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.

I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.

Through a storm with Big Bird

Just when you think that Sesame Street can’t get any more awesome, you find out that they’re putting out content like this on how the characters of Sesame Street get through a storm

Jaguar Land Rover’s ‘Googly Eyes’ isn’t just a gimmick but a classic bit of human computer interaction thinking. The cars gaze passes important information to pedestrians in its ‘line-of-sight’

Hypebeast founder Kevin Ma plays blinder; offering to pick up the tab for every ticket to Hypefest.

Culture and learning shouldn’t have a price attached to it.

I will personally cover the cost of tickets to make Hypefest a free experience for all.

Over a decade ago, I began a website documenting the things we love. Next month we will be holding our very first festival @hypefest which will bring our culture to life. To celebrate this moment, I will be personally covering the cost of tickets to provide free tickets for everyone. All are welcome to come share this moment with use. Tickets available tomorrow 12PM tomorrow on hypefest.com

CHiPs ‘roller disco’ – the most Seventies bit of television ever. I’ve heard this being used as the intro track on some of Luxxury‘s mixes. It helps you get through a storm of a day with feelgood disco

Sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Hollywood studios had to get through a storm. Television had led to declining cinema audiences. Cinemas hadn’t moved to the kind of multiplex higher comfort experience that we know now, so were closing in large amounts. Some fleapits in major cities were kept open screening badly dubbed martial arts films and pornography. It was around this time that Deep Throat, The Opening of Misty Beethoven and Behind The Green Door developed mainstream popularity.

At the time you had film stars making guest appearances on television; this gave them an invaluable boost to incomes that had dried up. The movie studio system hadn’t glommed on to blockbusters yet and was in the thrall of directors of the American New Wave. There wasn’t a lot of roles at the time for stars of the 1960s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s George Peppard. Others like Lee Van Cleef and Richard Harrison went to work in the Italian and Asian film industries.

They probably didn’t know that change was just around the corner the launch of the over budget and under-appreciated Heaven’s Gate put an end to the American New Wave.

Steven Spielberg and others brought in the rise of the blockbuster and the studio system was saved. But George Peppard never made another cinematic film; instead he lives on in the minds of many people as Hannibal Smith from the A-Team.

Finally a 1970 concert film of Miles Davis performing the title track from Bitches Brew

September 21, 2018
Dawns Mine Crystal – Yunchul Kim

Dawns Mine Crystal is an exhibition on at the Korean Cultural Centre between now and November 3, 2018. I was invited to a preview of it. The title Dawns Mine Crystals a reference to the material world and its intersection with symbols and metaphors.

Dawns mine crystal reminds me of science fiction from the mid-20th century, vacuum tube based electronics and the Russian film Solaris. The chromed ray gun type appearance reminded me of everything from vintage Flash Gordon, art deco object d’art, Americana and 1950s science fiction like The Day The Earth Stood Still. I also thought about my Dad who used to visit electronics junk shops when I was a small kid that would be full of everything from valve driven circuits to wartime radar components.

The form and function of devices had a beauty to them like vintage fighter planes or the silver cathedral like structures of the chemical and petrochemical industries. I thought about Solaris when I stared into the swirling liquid surfaces of some of the installations, like storm clouds rippling across an alien planet.

It is well worth going to see, Mr Kim merges the world of art and science together in a way that is mesmerising and entertaining. It is unsurprising, given the works link to Arts at CERN, that the art pieces have a very scientific bent to them. The works will be part of a bigger exhibition that will tour venues in France during 2019 and 2020.

Be sure to catch it at the Korean Cultural Centre before it finishes. The Korean Cultural Centre does a really good job of curating exhibitions by Korean artists and promotes the works of Korean film makers with regular screenings at the centre.

Mr Kim is a Seoul-based artist, composer and founder of Studio Locus Solus in Seoul. He’s exhibited in German, Spain, China and the United States. More related content here.

September 19, 2018
Dr Eugenia Cheng & things that made last week
Dr Eugenia Cheng

Dr Eugenia Cheng talks about the key themes in her book The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn’t

Outtakes from Dr Eugenia Cheng talk:
- Pure mathematics is a framework for agreeing on things
- Pure maths is a framework for how to think
- Make progress rather than repeat things to make a better logical argument
- Logic validity doesn’t equal morally valid in analogies
- Interconnectedness is often erroneously simplified by blaming a single item as a cause
- Its easier to change actions, than it is to change feelings. Feelings just are
- Great feedback loops tied into obesity is fascinating
- Relationships between things – media affects thinking by shoehorning natural geometry into one or two dimensions
- Intelligence: reasonable – can be reasoned with, powerfully logical – not just using logic but using techniques to move an organisation further and being helpful: emotion
More ideas related content here.

Merino wool producers assume that cyber punk is a synthetic dystopia, instead of thinking abut how wool is a technical fabric by its very nature. The ad was done for the Woolmark Company by TBWA Sydney. Do humans dream of technical merino wool?

Live footage of Talking Heads performing Once in a Lifetime in 1980. The performance encapsulates everyone that I expect Talking Heads to be.

Zegna’s radical reinvention | How To Spend It – great profile of Gildo and the fashion brand that he manages. The process of reinvention doesn’t seem to create a tension with the heritage – which is a great attributed to a luxury brand. There isn’t that much difference between Zegna and Stone Island in terms of innovation.

Jori Hulkkonen – Attack Magazine – he has a great back catalogue, so looking forward to his Simple Music for Complicated People album. Hulkkonen’s work goes from extremely emotive soulful house to minimal techno and everywhere in between.
September 14, 2018
NYPD surveillance + more things

IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color – you might feel a bit squeamish about the application but this is established image recognition that Google (and Yahoo!) search engines used 12 years ago rather than anything new. We shouldn’t be surprised that the NYPD surveillance search system doesn’t use all aspect of physical attributes that might turn up in a witness statement.

eBay builds its own customized servers to ‘replatform’ its data center infrastructure | SiliconAngle– surprised that they weren’t doing this already

Luxury Daily | eBay extends authentication program to high-end watches – Paywall

Immersive art – JWT Intelligence – In China, where fine art isn’t typically part of a school curriculum, art collectors and curators have been working with mall developers and brands for a number of years to create crossover opportunities among Chinese audiences, fueling interest and building a culture around art. Zheng’s approach is to focus on making his visitors the protagonists in his exhibitions to help them “accept art as an element in their lives.”

WE ARE IN AN EFFICIENCY BUBBLE – BBH – at the expense of effectiveness. Just good enough commotised creative

The Path Ahead: The 7th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation | China Africa Research Initiative – (PDF)

Cryptocurrency exchange Changelly admits it can steal users’ Monero (if it wanted to) – I think this is over egging the opportunity and underestimating challenges

WeChat, Alipay to Block Crypto Transactions on Payment Platforms – CoinDesk – surprised that this is taking so long

JD CEO’s arrest steps on governance landmine – Breakingviews – (paywall) it shows how tenuous ‘foreign’ shareholding in Chinese entities are. According to The New York Times he has some form for these kind of events

Manipulation, Chinese style – Nikkei Asian Review – cunning and clever. This should be compulsory reading for anyone doing lobbying or in corporate communications. It mirrors some of the Russian philosophy on information warfare, but the Russians take it in a much more kinetic direction.

The “experiential advantage” is not universal – the less well-off get equal or more happiness from buying things – Research Digest – really interesting finding on consumer behaviour and retailing

September 8, 2018
SurfSafe + more things

The SurfSafe Browser Extension Will Save You From Fake Photos | WIRED – Chrome only. I don’t know how effective it is. SurfSafe was developed alert people that their media diet is infected with misinformation, right when it happens. Something that Google and social platforms have struggled to do up to now. I would be very surprised if research into SurfSafe was not on the task lists of product managers throughout Silicon Valley and beyond.

The New York Public Library is publishing books on Instagram. | FastCompany – reminds me of Brazilian bank Itaú and their use of Facebook canvas mobile content / ad format for children’s e-books. Its a beautiful idea and well worth looking at the project. I wonder if this is also aimed at young adults who probably don’t read as much as they should

An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64 – MEL Magazine – probably the most iconic game for the Nintendo 64 platform. GoldenEye 007 managed to use the capability of the platform really well and was excellent at storytelling.

Forrester: ‘WPP must dissolve its agency brands’ | The Drum – I agree that consolidation is required, but not convinced that Forrester have the blueprint. There is brand equity that equates to the agencies not the holding company. A classic example of this would be Ogilvy or J Walter Thompson. The effort would be better steered into how agencies can collaborate more easily and that is down to collaboration tools and a shared P&L – creating the right ingredients for collaboration. Up to now, WPP has tried to do this by dedicated businesses for clients like Red Fuse for Colgate-Palmolive. More related content here.

I love the damned if you do it right, damned if you do it wrong introduction on this video

One of the nicer campaigns that I have seen for consumer DNA testing services: FootballDNA

August 25, 2018