oyl in tokyo

Tokyo: The Attention Deficit Capital

As a city, Tokyo’s mind wanders.

It’s attracted to shiny things. It has trouble focusing on one thing. Which makes it a dynamically shifting visual wonderland.

Tokyo’s fashion sense drifts and changes course on a whim. You see a shirt you like, and you better gobble it up, cause when you head back to the shop a few days later, the contents (and often actual store design) will have changed completely.

There is no Tokyo Summer 2009 collection. Storefronts swap out on a weekly basis. Each week brings in a new fashion season. Occasionally one of the big, international brands will keep things up for a month. But after a couple weeks you start to hear rumblings from the locals that they have gone stale and are no longer innovative. Danger zone.

Walk in to most clubs and you’ll be assaulted with projected images that flicker at more than 120 frames a minute. If MTV, and the rise of music videos decimated our visual attention span by increasing the average cut rate to once every three seconds, what is this kind of Tokyo visual flickering doing to us?

If an image can’t even be fresh enough to stay embedded on the wall for a full second, what is going on?

Is there still a strength in the lasting power of the individual iconic image?

Is there a singular poster that could stand as a visual anthem for this city? I think it would have to be a multimedia poster, that involved lasers, mirrors, a fog machine, a disco-ball, techno music, and it would change the shirt it’s wearing every few seconds. Hmmm, I guess there is not one singular poster we could make.

It’s the embrace of the ANTI-TREND. What little thing can you do that no one else is doing? Wrap your left arm in tinfoil. Wear your socks inside out and pop them on the outside of your pants, or wear short pants so people notice. Graft three bills onto one hat. You name it, and someone hear is trying it.

I felt weird the other day, when in a city of tens of million, I saw two people wearing the same shirt, with the same blurred image of Pac-Man. Usually, everyday consists of walking by thousands of uniquely different graphic textiles.

The only visual trends I recognize are when a new store opens, take, Forever 21 for example. The streets will be taken over by a marching army of high school girls all toting the same bright yellow bag from the store. But that’s it. The city won’t decide, can’t decide on anything beyond that. Shopping is the ever trend. Some call it art. I’m not drinking that kind of kool aid.

Shopping will never be art. The people who create the fashion, the designs, are artists. The people who consume, and decide to buy them are curators. They are art collectors to a degree. But unless they are creating an output of their own, commerce is not a creative act. It is just feeding the frenzy of the collective attention deficit of the city.

I like the scattered attention, because when I walk the city, I feel like I’m experiencing a visual playlist set on shuffle. I never know what will pop up, but I know it will have some style and thought behind it. I find it inspiring. I always carry a notebook because coming across these random things, these shifting things, sparks ideas that I want to carry out.

Browsing and sampling is fine, just as long as the shiny things don’t suck you in and make you forget your personal creative mission.

It is a neon Alice in Wonderland tunnel that can consume and take you as its own.

Be true to your school.

The Groundhog of Technology Saw Its Shadow

When we jumped from radio to TV, that was an instant advancement.

When we flickered back and forth between TV and the internet, it was us questioning what the advancement was exactly. The benefit wasn’t immediate. Certain enlightened folks got in there first, and slowly made things that garnered a wider acceptance. It was a new civilization that needed building.

But I don’t think the transformation in near completion yet.

What is the stand alone benefit of this technology? There is something interactive now, and something about endless possibilities. But there is no core singular benefit. Yet we are relying wholly on the power we claim this digital realm has. The belief has come well ahead of collective understanding. Hence the confusion?

Hence ‘internet radio’ and ‘internet TV.’

But, what is the internet on its own? Why does it always need an additional metaphor for it to make sense to us? Or is it less a format and more the most comprehensive way to archive media to date?

Connection is a benefit, but does it render moving pictures irrelevant, the way radio formats were killed off by the advent of television?

Or is the internet more akin to a new postal service? The mode and method of connecting and transferring information, but not a pure replacement of what we can gain and experience from the quote unquote traditional media?

Traditional media is collapsing, but is it being replaced by a meaty enough alternative? Are we losing value and something human by encouraging a full switch to digital? What does that even mean? Does anyone know the implications?

I long for the charm of analog, and the not instantly connected. I long for the charm of human discovering, offline experience. I long for deep understanding, not just instant wiki-like access.

Was radio completely killed by TV the way they suspected? No, it evolved. It got more interactive, compelling and multi-dimensional. The same is needed of today’s media formats. How can a newspaper or print magazine reinvent what it does and offers, be enhanced by the inclusion of digital thinking?

Let’s enhance, not replace, where we can. Less of a restart and more of an evolution. More touchy feely, and less clickety clack.

John Maeda pointed out in a recent talk at Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo, that technology has expanded exponentially as we all know, but that our lives remain largely unchanged. He said we were stuck in a Groundhog Day. Reliving the same day, with superficial advances in technology tricking us into thinking everything has changed. How do we break free of this repetitive loop and forge new ground? How do we get to new places if the technology has limited us to certain predictable outcomes? Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator make good examples. How much have those programs evolved and led to new means of creation? Or how much does an Illustrator piece of art largely look the same as it did five years ago? Things like this have become less a tool and more a style.

Let’s try new things. New combinations. Not just use the repetitive and predictable function of technology today. How can we use it in a new way? Can it make the human experience better? More textured?

We are all connected, and that seems positive. I’m interested in how this instant connection can lead to new collaborations. Collaborating across time and space. Ideas mixing from different cultures. We have the access and the bandwidth to do this. What new things could be make together?

Let’s take this connection and make some new stuff. Some new stuff that exists physically maybe. Things that live in this world, that are impermanent and beautiful in their fleeting, analog way. Let’s leave an evidence of our ideas together. Let’s take this world to new places and fill it with new thoughts.

(Sometimes you just wake up in a really philosophical place)

How do you make your digital a little more analog?

Thank You Michael Jackson

Thank you for the unparalleled showmanship.

Thank you for bringing an artistry to pop.

You will be missed, imitated, and never replaced.

I remember some Halloween, waiting for MTV to play Thriller in its entirety. What were we all waiting for? A song? A music video? A timeless piece of entertainment. We were waiting for an artist to string us along with a story and a style that we could not take our eyes off of. He referenced things we knew and felt and found a way to make them new.

His work stood on the grand stage of the 1980’s (and still today) on par with the hottest things going on in movie theaters or elsewhere. He found a new and compelling way to tell stories. I never tire of watching his greatest hits DVD. They are mini treasures from a time capsule that we can never return to in full, yet feel compelled to believe will rise again in some new way. We long for the feeling, the excitement, the anticipation, the belief that IT IS ALL HAPPENING NOW.

That was Michael Jackson’s gift.

He made now really, really, really damn fascinating.

Looking at his music videos, I’m just kind of blown away at the conviction of his performance. In what could have been horribly cheesy and failed attempts to wrap a story around a song, his dancing, his expression and his spirit, made them matter.

You see other artists try to imitate this formula. But it seems like an act. Like they want to do the Michael Jackson thing. They don’t have the same magic crazy that made Michael Jackson the solid gold standard.

He didn’t treat pop as pop. It was his art. And he was a genius. A genius and a king of pop.

I remember that Super Bowl Show he did. When he was at field level and then magically appeared at the top of the stadium. That was the stuff of legend. It was the rare Super Bowl halftime show that really seemed to matter. You had to pay attention. You knew whatever he touched was going to be iconic and memorable. It was watching an instant legend, but live.

I remember playing basketball, eight hours a day in the summer of 1991, listening to Black or White on repeat. We literally wore the tape out. But that song and spirit was the soundtrack of our marathon games. And looking back, the sound of an era. 

No one is ever going to rise to those exact, meteoric heights again. People will try.

What made him shunned by the world in the later years is what made him a genius I think. He lived in his own world. Both in a literal world of his own making, Neverland, as well as in an artistic wonderland that know one else understood, but millions loved.

He was an artist who did his own thing. Walked to his own drummer, and hummed bassline. Who lit up the sidewalk with his moonwalking steps. Who served as narrator to a generation (or two, or three) He managed to do his own thing, and also create something that was widely loved. Rare. Once in a lifetime.

Today, I remember the time.

Thank you Michael.

Collaborator Follow-Up

Wow, I’ve got some really creative contacts out there. It comes as no surprise, but makes me realize I need to reach out more and tap into this network of creators more often.

As you can read below, I put out a signal looking for creators, thinkers and makers. And that is exactly what I got.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with these ideas. And figure out how I can help make some of them happen so we can put them up and feature them on The Co-Pilot.

I got people wanting to make iPhone apps.

People wanting to make short films. Others who want to collaborate musically, trading beats and lyrics across the Pacific Ocean and creating a transcontinental sound.

I’ve got people with killer microsite ideas that if we could pull off would set the internet aflame I tell ya! Other people had stunt/performance art ideas that they wanted to carry out, and document for display. I got some photographers and artists pitching ideas for different series of work. Someone even wanted to put out a line of belts (and fannypacks! lol)

It kind of painted a nice picture of the state of creativity today.

It got a little new media, it got very digital. And it is all intriguing as all hell.

I have to find ways to bring these projects to life. Some of them are too good to stay in a state of ‘great idea tapped out in an email.’

Now comes an exercise in follow-through.

Will we be able to find the flash designer who can execute the idea for a microsite?

Will we be able to get an iPhone developer onboard and creating some apps for us?

May set up a ‘creative craigslist’ type listing system to fill out our wants and needs. ‘Seeking Flash Designer to make experimental game.’ ‘Seeking photographer to shoot portraits of futsal players…’ etc.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with ideas! Keep them coming. I will always be willing to accept some fresh, burning ideas that are out there. They fire me up and get me thinking about how to get them done.

The creative odyssey of The Co-Pilot begins today.

We have a long, long ways to go.

Seeking Collaborators

I used to collaborate on a consistent basis. But the only collaborations I do these days are the ones I am assigned for work.

I want to get back to making stuff for the sake of making stuff.

No agendas other than maybe make a handful of people laugh. My crew and I used to operate like this in college, and then for a couple years after. But somewhere along the way, things changed, we didn’t make the time for projects anymore.

I thought that moving to Tokyo would put a damper on potential collaborations with former cohorts, but lately I am feeling the opposite. With the immediacy of technology, we are all right there. We can trade ideas over email, Twitter, whack YouTube videos… etc.

I’m starting, well, restarting a creative side venture that I’ve neglected for a few years. It’s called the Co-Pilot. (very work in progress. it will be in an incubating beta stage for a while…)

It started off as a bit of a joke in college, when the school paper refused to run weekly column. I told the editors that I would start my own paper, and I did. For one printed issue. A small crew of us worked day and night for a week to get the thing out the day the official paper was released. We had a circulation of 400 for that one day. It was glorious walking through the common area and seeing people chuckling at our columns and cartoons. I like bringing that kind of unexpected enjoyment.

And I love working day and night on a project, just because you want to see it through. Almost on a whim that takes hold so strongly you have to see it through. Whim + Follow Through = Magic Time.

So it is in this spirit that I am bringing back the Co-Pilot, and offering it as a creative forum to anyone interested in working together to make stuff. Send me an email if you have an idea, and let’s figure out some original content together.

I want the Co-Pilot to be a place for art, writing, digital experiments, venting, entertaining, inventions… I want to create a creative community that works to make something.

I have no endgame. I don’t know where the hell this thing is going. Let’s figure it out together.

I know many people who are filled with ideas, and have been wanting an outlet. Well, here is a chance. Let’s get those ideas on the record and build something.

So calling all makers, creators and thinkers.

What are you making?