1.
Domino’s pizza photos on Instagram are gross deliberately.
Realism. Quote: Imperfectly real.
(Not quite sure when the real got relegated.)
Two possibilities for this shift:
Legitimacy in the age of conversation is not communicated via iconic images. I’ve covered legitimacy previously, in the context of the media:
“People trust us because we’ve spent years developing a relationship with them. We have been scrutinized and found not evil. Our legitimacy comes from honesty, not from cultural signals or institutions.”
Second possibility is that this is the age of photoshop and everything mediated is manipulated. Hard to build trust.
It is also the age of marketing where “greed is good” and “might is right” have been joined by another tyranny: truth is what you can get people to believe.
So there’s space for an approach that doesn’t (appear to) dress up and doesn’t (appear to) convince.
See also: the Instagram trend called the plandid, the planned candid – where you look totally natural in your posing, like you’ve been caught in the act and just so happen to look triple-digit-Insta-likes amazing.
Examples are given.
2.
I grew up in the waning years of the Cold War, those happy days where apocalypse was total but distant, rather than continuous, partial, and immediate. The word “DEFCON” is engraved on my soul. Turns out each of the five levels has a code word associated with it too.
- DEFCON 5, Fade Out. Normal readiness
- DEFCON 4, Double Take. Above normal readiness
- DEFCON 3, Round House. Air Force ready to mobilize in 15 minutes
- DEFCON 2, Fast Pace. Armed Forces ready to deploy and engage in less than 6 hours.
- DEFCON 1, Cocked Pistol. Nuclear war is imminent / Maximum readiness
From DEFCON on Wikipedia.
3.
The Triumphant Rise of the Shitpic, the patina that comes from cycles of screencapping and upload-compression as a picture is shared and shared again, the first non-numeric indicator of viral dissemination.
Wonder how long it’ll take for Domino’s to adopt this.
Wonder which version of the iPhone will have a computational photography mode to create pre-distressed selfies, for that already-shared look.
See also: this video of the LaserSharp Denim HD Abrasion System which creates identical pre-distressed jeans.
See also: Gudak, the disposable camera app. You get only 24 photos at a time; a roll of film takes three days to develop; the photos are grainy and the light that leaks over them is the colour of summer days that never ended, when you were still young and you still laughed and your life stretched out ahead of you and you could still be anything.
Fun app. Five stars.
4.
This oral history of the CGI visual effects in Terminator 2 is an awesome long read. So much of the use of computers was new, then.
Also awesome for this photo of Robert Patrick, almost naked, covered in a Sharpie grid, being filmed for motion capture.
Robert Patrick played the T-1000, the liquid metal morphing Terminator from the future.
Also, also awesome for the terminology of the engineers and artists:
So, we had what we called RP1 through to RP5. Robert Patrick - RP - that was the actual naming convention.
RP1 is the blob, an amorphous blob. RP2 is a humanoid smooth shape kinda like Silver Surfer. RP3 is a soft, sandblasted guy in a police uniform made out of metal, and RP4 is the sharp detail of the metallic liquid metal police guy, and then RP5 is live action.
Robert Patrick, the actor, the actual dude, gets relegated from his own name.
RP5. Fade Out.
1.
Domino’s pizza photos on Instagram are gross deliberately.
Realism. Quote: (Not quite sure when the real got relegated.)
Two possibilities for this shift:
Legitimacy in the age of conversation is not communicated via iconic images. I’ve covered legitimacy previously, in the context of the media:
Second possibility is that this is the age of photoshop and everything mediated is manipulated. Hard to build trust.
It is also the age of marketing where “greed is good” and “might is right” have been joined by another tyranny: truth is what you can get people to believe.
So there’s space for an approach that doesn’t (appear to) dress up and doesn’t (appear to) convince.
See also: the Instagram trend called the plandid,
Examples are given.
2.
I grew up in the waning years of the Cold War, those happy days where apocalypse was total but distant, rather than continuous, partial, and immediate. The word “DEFCON” is engraved on my soul. Turns out each of the five levels has a code word associated with it too.
From DEFCON on Wikipedia.
3.
The Triumphant Rise of the Shitpic, the patina that comes from cycles of screencapping and upload-compression as a picture is shared and shared again,
Wonder how long it’ll take for Domino’s to adopt this.
Wonder which version of the iPhone will have a computational photography mode to create pre-distressed selfies, for that already-shared look.
See also: this video of the LaserSharp Denim HD Abrasion System which creates identical pre-distressed jeans.
See also: Gudak, the disposable camera app. You get only 24 photos at a time; a roll of film takes three days to develop; the photos are grainy and the light that leaks over them is the colour of summer days that never ended, when you were still young and you still laughed and your life stretched out ahead of you and you could still be anything.
Fun app. Five stars.
4.
This oral history of the CGI visual effects in Terminator 2 is an awesome long read. So much of the use of computers was new, then.
Also awesome for this photo of Robert Patrick, almost naked, covered in a Sharpie grid, being filmed for motion capture.
Robert Patrick played the T-1000, the liquid metal morphing Terminator from the future.
Also, also awesome for the terminology of the engineers and artists:
Robert Patrick, the actor, the actual dude, gets relegated from his own name.
RP5. Fade Out.