Review of Erik Davis's TechGnosis and Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life
Analysis of Analysis: I've written a small number of articles on media coverage itself, and will now be stepping up my writing on that meta-topic online. For now, you really want to read about the homoerotic undercurrents in two Saab and Volvo commercials, don't you?
Christopher Reeve came to Toronto in September 1997. He wants a cure for spinal-cord injuries. Anybody got a problem with that?
"Slogans High and Low": As published in Emigre 33, this story examined the spread of Jenny Holzer- and Barbara Kruger-esque "slogans" in popular culture. Holzer makes artworks-- often using electronic signs of the sort found in Times Square or airports, but elsewhere, too, including TV, magazine sticker inserts, and stone benches-- incorporating textual "truisms" ("Abuse of power comes as no surprise"). Kruger's art can be words-only, ususally set in Futura Bold Italic (with occasional slumming forays into Helvetica), but more famously links old photos to text: Photo of hand wielding revolver with the slogan When I hear the word "culture," I take out my chequebook
"Talking Behind Their Backs": This article, which, due to a lack of coöperation from the Descriptive Video Service, will never be completed, is an exploration of largely-unexamined issues in the field of audio description, which involves special narrators verbally describing visual details like settings, character appearances, clothing, and action that isn't apparent to a blind or visually-impaired person from audio alone. The issues I'll be exploring are: In tricky cases of, say, race or sex, what guidelines determine how characters or situations are described? When, for example, is it OK-- or even necessary-- to mention that a character is, say, black? What is the best way to describe sexual passages, and should heterosexual and homosexual passages be treated the same way? All I've been able to upload so far is the text of the grant application. I may eventually upload preliminary observations. I welcome dialogue on these topics, and more strongly welcome greater coöperation from DVS