Connectivity, Trust and Authenticity

A few posts ago I was (somehow poetically) pointing my analytical finger at an apparently inadequate behavior: talking about consumers in the midst of the New Era. The capital letters celebrate the enlivening time when the silently consuming robots broke free and claimed their humanity. Oh, what a moment (although I haven’t quite perceived the exact breakeven point -- a bit like the Middle Ages commencing on a sunny day in 476 A.D. -- the dramatic shifts in preaches and praised practices retrospectively assure me I witnessed one). Some even called it a Revolution, and what happened certainly doesn’t fall short of such a bold designation. Millions took their iron components to happy connective clouds where, liberated from gravity, assembled them into free, responsive and authentic selves, time and again. Under the soft guiding touch of recently reborn peers, selves opened up to one another, started sharing and – in short, and probably quite unexpectedly – everything apparently snowballed into a power takeover. No other real or would-be era seems to have had such liberating effects on the sons and daughters of the Earth, not even a bait recently thrown by servants of a fake New Age promising painless deification to just about everyone (but who wants to be God anymore: the dude has been reportedly found dead somewhere in Germany). I’m sort of divagating here, drifting on the wings of such lofty adjustments.

Coming back to my ache. (...) It just seems to me that brands, at first cautiously blending into the unattentive crowd (then quickly throwing away any concern), joined the exodus and arrived, along with everybody else, in the same new place where things now happen. Of course, with newly forged souls, proven with clothes bearing the newly worshiped signs of openness, trustworthiness and authenticity. Maybe some of them acquired these signs in an honest manner – repented their all too material sins (both in product offering and in bottomline observance) and promised to serve the communities’ interests from now on. I mean, who knows? Some would say though that many of them are just busy catching up with tricks and schemes on how to properly – and quickly -- fake the signs. Don’t quite go for that although occasionally, professional advices on -- for example – how is the “content to achieve an authenticity” attempt to yank my new trusting nature.

Ok, maybe the Earth hasn’t turned into Paradise after all (good news for those who need to heroically dream on their saving the world). Besides, why would progressive business sense need to disappear: people need relationships? -- brands at their service. It’s only natural for the production of relationships to become a lucrative business, where cold calculations of ROI still apply – who can joke around with figures? We all socialize through computers, and it’s rumored that behind the luminescent curtains there are large (but exact) quantities of 0's and 1's. Joke around, and errors can occur – like birthday wishes turning into curses, etc. So much with the trustworthiness. Cold pursuit of numbers is essential to maintaining any progressive order. Brands know that. So they produce nourishments for our new social cravings (sometimes along with some objects, previously called “products”), and responsibly do the numbers all along. If the intense social effort translates into a somehow unreligiously fat bottomline, they’ll even go further with an extra “giving something back to the society”. Of course, some – again – comment on this affability as being specially designed to multiply into hard currency for (fiscal) years to come. Even if so, it’s understandable: with all the help of volunteers producing social fibers (UGC), nurturing a world order sounds like a costly endeavor.

Hmm… I have the feeling I got even further away from where I was initially heading to. Insofar I’ve only managed to chop the world into potentially devilish brands and unsuspecting humans – those that some still refer to as “consumers”. Now I remember, that was the seed of my annoyance. But, thinking again, if these – for now – people swallow fake relationships (even if skillfully prepared), doesn’t that demote them from being authentic humans back to well behaved consumers – only recycled for new kinds of intakes? Maybe all is a whole new game designed to take the consumption order to spiraling heights. Jean Baudrillard signaled these “new” developments decades ago (now in my approximate translation):

“The consumer society is a society of both goods production and accelerated relationships production. The latter aspect is, in fact, characteristic. This production of relationships, still artisan-like at interpersonal or primary groups’ levels, nevertheless tends to align itself to the way goods are produced, and thus follow the generalized industrialized model. (…) The consequences of this evolution are still hard to predict: it’s difficult to admit that you can produce relationships (be them human, social, or political) the same way you produce objects and that, from that moment on, relationships can be objects of consumption, just like any other. But this is the truth, although today we’re only at the beginning of a lengthy process.”

So maybe it’s true we’re in full Economy of Relationships, and -- in order to be part of its metabolism, whether aiming for the riches or for mere survival -- we feel more or less obliged to conform and grow crops of openness, trust and authenticity. Or simply fake it. But, even if most of us – brands and people alike – are faking it, the prospects aren't necessarily bleak. Just imagine: what if, in the frantic process of mimicking it all in an ever more authentic way, we lose sight of our initial calculations and, not remembering what else to do, we just act in the manner we’ve dissected and studied in its tiniest components for so long – that is open, trustworthy and authentic?... ba da ba ba ba…
I’m lovin’ it!!!

pontuse's photo

Ansel Adams on planning

The universal (adamic…) seed has grown into a jungle-like diversity. We’re so busy cutting our way through so many different knowledge branches, leaves and fruits (confusing, too: sometimes the mere existence of one contradicts the other one’s reality), we don’t even see the trunk any longer. Our common nature as human beings gets more irrelevant and abstract as we climb higher in the tree of specialization. We became doctors, plumbers, writers. The taste of progress, frequently professionalizing playful curiosity into sheer differentiation logic, lured us to ever more specialized and innovative heights, where some of us got to hold fashionably intricate job titles.

Eager practitioners and aspiring authorities faced with fickle flows of specialized literature are naturally expected to unwaveringly start – and never quite stop – chomping through theories, newly coined terms and an array of all-encompassing schemes, with little productive time to be lost delving into sideway glitters. And with the number of experts spiraling democratically, there’s no shortage of potential intake.

So, whatever knowledge bubble we make a living in, we’re encircled by specialists -- and that’s allright. But if only emanated by them, specialized air would soon become irrespirable. Fortunately there are also the Poets. Nothing to do with versification, although there are poets that are Poets as well. The latter are universal specialists: people with all kinds of professions get inspired by Poets, because these open in us the valves through which the sap of the tree we all lived in, but forgot about, can run again.

While leafing through a book on photographic techniques, I recognized something in Ansel Adam’s pictures and words scattered among an author’s advice on cameras, exposure or printing. And while it may well read “photography”, to me Ansel Adams talks about brands, planning and advertising – as they could be.

All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed, and is, thereby, a true manifestation of what one feels about life in its entirety.

We observe few objects really closely. As we walk on the earth, we observe the external events at two or three arms’ length. If we ride a horse or drive in an automobile, we are further separated from the immediate surround. We see and photograph “scenery”; our vast world is inadequately described as the “landscape”. The most intimate object perceived daily is usually the printed page. The small and commonplace are rarely explored.

The next time you pick up a camera think of it not as an inflexible and automatic robot, but as a flexible instrument which you must understand to properly use. An electronic and optical miracle creates nothing on its own! Whatever beauty and excitement it can represent exist in your mind and spirit to begin with.

Art takes wing from the platform of reality. We observe reality; we may or may not feel anything about it. If we do feel something, we may have a moment of recognition of the imperative subject and its qualities in terms of a photograph. In a sense this is a mystical experience, a revelation of the world that transcends fact and reaches into the spirit.

I am interested in why I see certain events in the world around me that others do not see. On the day that this photograph [Frozen Lake and Cliffs] was made there were several other photographs nearby, some very good ones who were then far more technically advanced than I. The scene was before us all, but no one else responded with creative interest. Cedric Wright, close friend, violinist, and photographer from Berkeley, observed what I was doing and, half in jest, set his camera up in my location. I saw his print later; he did not have a lens of appropriate focal length and he overexposed his negative. On seeing my print he exclaimed, “Jezz! Why didn’t I see that!” […]
With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable. The visualization is complete, a seemingly instant review of all the mental and imaginative resources called forth by some miracle of the mind-computer that we do not comprehend. For me this resource is not of things consciously seen or transcription of musical recollections; it is, perhaps, a summation of total experience and instinct. Nothing modifies or replaces it.

My own approach relies on experience and intuition for the visualization of the image, but I prefer a more methodical system for executing the visualized photograph.

I am not a scientist. I consider myself an artist who employs certain techniques to free my vision.

Printing is both a carrying-to-completion of the visualized image and a fresh creative activity in itself. As with other creative processes, understanding craft and controlling the materials are vital to the quality of the final result.
You will find it a continuing delight to watch prints emerge in the developer and see that your original visualization has been realized, or in many cases enhanced by subtle variations in value.

I believe in people, in the simpler aspects of human life, in the relation of man to nature. I believe man must be free, both in spirit and in society, that he must build strength into himself, affirming the enormous beauty of the world and acquiring the confidence to see and to express his vision. And I believe in photography as one means of expressing this affirmation and of achieving an ultimate happiness and faith.

New Newfoundland

Bucharest, April 26. At a local radio station, the mayor’s voice exhausts in a competent manner the list of “cultural activities” to be soon performed in Vienna by Romanian artists. The descriptive whirl of words that light up the imagination in short explosive bursts (“music”, “best”, “theatre”, and so) gains momentum, to the point it begins to randomly cannibalize on itself, leaving behind shredded entities -- though still managing to hold an almost normal poise – like “classic underground activities”. All in all, the solemn announcement backs up an important moment: the mayor is preparing the launch of – no more, no less than – the “Bucharest brand” in Vienna.

A few days ago, a promo (of some program) attempted to cut through the fluffy layers of spring innuendos that veiled my consciousness, and bring my feet down to the gloomy realities. It succeeded: “Al-Qaeda is a brand!” thundered the voice of a head’s back, lit by a lamp. End of promo.

A couple of months ago, a representative of the local authority of Brasov county (where Dracula’s castle is located) answered to those questioning the amount of public money (60 million Euros) he was eager to pay for the castle: “The castle is a brand!” With the price issue suddenly transferred into the field of brands, he courteously exemplified with Coca-Cola’s brand value.

Yes, a castle is no longer a castle. As a matter of fact, nothing is itself any longer. Everything has been relocated overnight to the ambiguous but welcoming new land of brands. You name it – you brand it. People are no longer people either. They’re brands, too. New land, new rules. Less known. Less fit for inquiries: most of the newly teleported residents are still trying to figure out what’s going on. But, not to worry: there are plenty of consultants and analysts to promptly help the audience with some more jargon. Still lost?... Don’t admit to that, it’ll make you look stupid. Just use the word “brand” whenever possible. And for maximum impact, or when in need for the ultimate argument (or insight, depending on the context), just use the sentence “X… is a brand!” and say no more.

Consumer Ringtones

Consumer: a word we’re so used to hearing or uttering, we don’t even blink mentally in its presence. It merely fills in the syntax of our discourse, and kind of replaces the potential ambiguity of a “him”/”her”/”them” with the presumption of a professional grasp of what lies beneath.

Think of number, repetition, mechanization, efficiency. Of the time when we made the product, packaged it, advertised it, and sold it to the consumer – basically a big mouth waiting at the end of the conveyor belt to be fed with something he’s been repeatedly assured was good for him. The consumer is, in fact, the by-product of the industrial era. As such, he shares the same substance with its originating source: he’s reduced to the silent materiality of an object.

As a massive iron impetus still keeps The Age of the Number moving its myriad feet in the direction of Maximization, the rest of the world is leaving the march for multiple interactive gatherings of a more immaterial nature. So we partly put down our measuring devices and began to seriously talk about relationships. But what bell rings you the word “consumer” relentlessly popping up?
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"We're all used to thinking of ourselves as primarily mental realities, and of other people as immediately physical realities. [...] And we vaguely see others as mental realities, though only when we're in love or in conflict does it really dawn on us that they, like we, are predominantly soul."

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet