The Van Gobots – Guantanamo Beach Party
From a band name like the Van Gobots, I had expected to be listening to a kitschy oddball synth-driven band. At least I had hoped there would be quirk. But alas, the album was synthless, quirkless, and rife with pentatonic scale dual-guitar boogery, including a beefy guitar solo on the first track. The singer comes out washy and indistinct, is lacking dynamically, and spews out lyrics in a barky and sometimes awkward sequence. The production is fairly clean and straightforward, which emphasizes a fairly tight drummer and well orchestrated, albeit wanky, angular guitar interactions. I probably wouldn’t walk out if they were opening for a better band and only played for 20 minutes.

MISC – Happiness is Easy
While some sound like the unfortunate offspring of pop ballads and vaguely dissonant post-rock, many of the choruses on MISC’s Happiness is Easy are simply bad. Harmonies on “Such a Fighter,” the album’s fourth track, are cringe-worthy and poorly introduced by the mixing. The record is somewhat dissonant; the first half of Badman Recording Co. owner Dylan Magierek’s release successfully attempts to misunderstand all the charm of groups like Mogwai by adding the numbingly earnest voice of Daniel Ahearn, while the second half is spent on stylistic experimentation intimating at folk, electro-pop, what-have-you, but never with enough charm or originality to stick. Perhaps the most consistent aspect of this album is that all the songs overstay their welcome. Its 40 minutes seem long as each song hammers every repetition in, but somehow, at the end of it, it’s hard to remember anything about it at all.

Meridene – You’re Not Pretty, You’re Worse
Dear Maridene,
1) The music on your album is pretty good. I especially like the horns on “Kill the Memory.” But your lyrics are forgettable. Forgettable lyrics are hard to get stuck in your head. This is a pop record. Catch my drift?
2) Where is the harmony? Again: pop record.
3) Your one sheet reads: “…a record full of the happiest sad songs you might ever come across.” I listened to your record. I still think the happiest sad song is the J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers rendition of “Last Kiss.”
4) I don’t get your album title.

Ada Jane – Again…Again
Ada Jane is one of those bands that comes in big with them horns at the chorus. The first track ends with “whoa-oah-oah’s.” Though some brief moments of instrumental play are intriguing in their abrasiveness, the band falls easily into the patterns of folk/blues standard stylings which makes for predictable ends. The vocalist’s alt-countryish singing drawl often reaches moments of overkill. The lyrics can get awfully sentimental, with tons of mushy romantic lines like, “With all this busy-ness/Just stop by every once and a while for a kiss.” However, lyrical gems such as “Every time I cop a stance someone’s waiting behind me pulling down my pants” can be gleaned from the record.

Future Lisa – Clone
We first encountered Future Lisa in the present, which is now the past. Over time, our initial innumerable copies of Clone dwindled to one. Despite this passage of time, we still seem to be eons behind Future Lisa. At present, the lyrics are too simple for meaningful connection: “The discussion is over when I end it.” The vocal recordings are far too articulate – we can hear every uncomfortable vocal nuance. We investigated. Clone was recorded, mixed and mastered by Tom Herbers of Third Ear Recording – the same studio that played a part in Andrew Bird’s Armchair Apocrypha and various Fog and Low albums. Yet Third Ear mentions nothing of Future Lisa on their website’s past clients list.
Where’s the future clients list?

Brendan Themes – Fast
The music of local artist Brendan Themes leaves much to be desired in his new six minute EP, Fast. Themes plays one-man acoustic pop punk. The songs aren’t completely inept as it is clear he has talent in his guitar playing. Unfortunately, Themes has trouble writing anything original. His production value is low, as all his songs end very abruptly and none are over two minutes. Also, Themes’ lyrics in Fast are far too simplistic. It will be hard to win an audience with the hook “What exactly are you, hiding in the open?” I recommend skipping this artist, at least until he improves his talent.

UltraChorus – Words Kept Talking/Planetman 7”
UltraChous’s Words Kept Talking/Planetman is auto-tuned dance music with nicely patterned samples. Side A, “Words Kept Talking” contains a groovy dulcimer (!) sample that contrasts the airy synths that fade in and out of the mix. “WKT” is about words talking on their own volition. In fact, in a parallel universe there is a club in southern Costa Rica where the dance floor is packed with raving raised hands screaming, “you wasn’t talking and the words came oOOut.” That’s my dream. “Planetman” is a bassier track with a less catchy hook: “it’s the end of the night and I’m so excited” or other banal stuff that rhymes with that.

Alicia Leafgreen – The White Lesbian Rapper EP
Maybe it’s too easy to compare every white MC to Eminem, but Alicia Leafgreen not only sounds like a female version of the real Slim Shady, she openly name-drops him. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite have the fierceness to sell the chip on her shoulder. The Twin Cities rapper’s simple, driving beats and smart-alecky rhymes are fairly engaging, but her boasting about her confrontational persona would be more convincing if her delivery weren’t so laidback. There’s something appealing in these tracks, but Leafgreen’s hip-hop neither gets in your face nor makes you want to party, and it ends up feeling a little empty.

In 500 words, explain the established concept of the spherical shape of the Earth as a physical given. Be sure to include important figures and dates, as well as the logic developed in astronomical and geometrical fields of study.

In the beginning, the world was flat, and all men stood upright with their face to the gods. Men stood where the gods put them, and wandered very little. A man on one side of the world did not know a man on the other. This all changed, however, one day with a fisherman called Linus. He was greedy, and always took out of the sea more fish than any man should ask for. This angered the sea, so the sea created a new sort of fish that when eaten, sends the devourer to a long fast sleep. Just as the sea predicted, curiosity overcame Linus and as he tasted the fish, he fell fast asleep. The wind hung in his sails, and his ship drifted off further than any man had ever gone.

At this time, the goddess of the earth bore a son called Demitri. He was given the mindless task of circling the disk of Earth making sure nothing fell off. Demitri was winding around the earth when Linus’ ship neared the edge. The little god tried pushing the ship in the other direction, but he didn’t have enough strength. He tried waking the captain up, but Linus was deeply sedated from the fish. The little god grew frantic as the ship neared the edge of the world. As rashly as anyone has ever acted, Demitri pulled the edge of the world around and tied it to the other. Linus’ ship was then the first to travel around the world.

The goddess of the earth was very unhappy with Demitri for ruining her lovely shape, especially when all of her lovely, earthly things began to fall off. She assigned Demitri the task of adding magnets to the bottoms of every tree, table, foot, and fish, so as no thing would fall off the giant globe. This worked for a moment, but soon war broke out among mortals for who gets to be on top of the world.

The gods definitely had a problem on their hands. With a globular world, who gets to hang out on top? They assembled on Mount Olympus for a pow-wow. “Obviously,” said the Mighty, “the noblest of them all should be on top.”

“And all of the terrible people should hang upside down on the bottom!” sneered the god of dark things.

“Unfortunately, that just can’t work,” one of the Fates chimed in. “These people are not all good or all bad, as I watch their fates change day to day, month to month, and year to year. The only way that would work is if the world spins around.”

So it was, and all of the gods exalted. Demitri was deemed “Spinner of the Earth,” and with all of his might he spins the earth round and round.

Every once in a while, even to this day, a mortal can tell if he on top of the world, and he rejoices.

Your life, your friendships, causes, groups and fan pages—even your death—all on a social network’s terms. Death is difficult enough. In America, there is an expectation that everyone has to have everything figured out when they die: finances, funeral arrangements, cancellation of magazines, etc.; faith, bills, insurance, the soul’s final resting place, and who will care for loved ones. To this, I submit to you, we now must add the obligations that web 2.0 bring us.

In the summer of 2009, in Chippewa Falls, Wis., three young men lost their lives. One died in a fire, one drowned, and one died quite unexpectedly, according to a local paper, with no further explanation given. Aside from the obvious fact that these three knew one another and may have even been friends—they went to the same high school, after all—another commonality exists: at their respective times of death, June 13, June 20 and June 21, all had working Facebook and MySpace pages. Even now, more than four months after the last untimely summer death, these three men still have active social networking accounts. Some have more than one.

If Facebook catches wind of a death, or if a death is submitted to them, they will gladly “memorialize” that user’s account. In their own words:

“When a user passes away, we memorialize their account to protect their privacy. Memorializing an account removes certain sensitive information (e.g., status updates and contact information) and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance. Memorializing an account also prevents all login access to it.”

They also honor requests made by close family members of deceased users to deactivate accounts permanently.

Finding this information, however, took some effort: Facebook the corporation has none of the conventional contact information that one can usually uncover on the Internet. On their site they list a physical address, and further searching offsite will yield a telephone number—but there is no readily available email address. Even reporting a death on Facebook can be a difficult matter. As someone who prides himself on his ability to navigate the Internet, this reporter had to turn to online forums and search engines just to see how it is done.

On its extensive “Help” site, the company provides answers to many frequently asked questions—along with a search blank for getting one’s own questions answered. A search for the term “death”—jarring no doubt to the parent or close family member now served with the task of reporting the recently deceased status of their loved one to Facebook—would eventually turn up a series of articles on the subject. There is even a hyperlink, leading to an online form, for reporting such member losses. But what Internet-savvy, now-distraught legal guardian is going to have time for this? And how responsible should Facebook be for seeking out more information on the mortality statuses of site users on its own? Doesn’t it already collect so much other personal information?

My “death crusade” also brought me to an interesting site called “MyDeathSpace.com.” While perhaps a bit too heavy on the coverage of deaths of higher-profile celebrities and other famous people, the Web page essentially functions as a clearinghouse, “containing news articles, online obituaries, and other publicly available information,” that allows users to “pay [their] respects and tributes to the recently deceased MySpace.com members via [their] comment system,” along with a warning to “Please be respectful.” MyDeathSpace.com did not respond to interview requests for this article.

Because the information MyDeathSpace uses for its online obituaries is publicly available, should other social networking sites actively evaluate the status of their own members to spare others the grief or the hassle of reporting a death on their own—or does this start to get at a seldom-talked-about issue regarding death, illness and privacy in a public sphere?

In the United States, modern medicine, in all its splendor, has almost entirely removed death from the home front. Instead, fear of unknowing has emerged in our collective consciousness; death has become something we’re afraid of, more now than ever. It is a specific end for all at the terminus of a very long race called life. So, by its willingness to create for us a “digital cemetery” in what is otherwise a vicarious (online) social network of living people, is Facebook now influencing our concept of death? Absolutely.

But that’s not the whole story…

There is a big difference between the old-fashioned cemetery on the hill and the digital ones on Facebook; Ye-Olde Cemetery’s proprietors aren’t getting rich from advertising dollars generated by having social marketing messages on your memorial [grave]site! It’s sad, but true—absolutely true. All of the pages for the aforementioned individuals still had social advertisements on them. Even the still-existing MySpace pages linked to by MyDeathSpace had advertisements mediated by Google prominently featured. Unless close family members request that a page be taken off of Facebook, social networking sites and advertisers will continue to capitalize on death the same way they have capitalized on others’ lives. Is Facebook’s founder, one of America’s richest men, and the leader of over 300 million people, doing enough to help the nation of his creation, especially when one considers that he’s now making money off of our deaths?

A better question would be, are institutions like our newspapers any better? Like Facebook, the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press both have a tendency to capitalize on death. A mourner, or any reader, for that matter, can find in the obituary section advertisements for funeral services, monument companies, grief counselors, even purveyors of death-themed knickknacks. Bigger ticket deaths bypass the obit section altogether, and jump to the front page, where they have the power to sell more newspaper.

In-house, media outlets also make money on “memorial classifieds,” which can run as often as a reader would care to pay for one—and space will permit. The analogue of this, however, can be found on sites like MySpace and Facebook, and, strangely, it’s free.

If a page is “memorialized,” friends and family can view it as often as they’d like. If the “wall” is still enabled, people can keep posting their tributes forever and ever, ad nauseam— and, looked at it this way, the “social advertisements” on the site go toward paying down the cost of keeping these constantly updating, dynamic obituaries on the servers. Viewed through this lens, even the Facebook motto of, “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” seems to make sense.

The moral of the story is: if you abhor the idea of having digital remnants of yourself floating out there in cyberspace, then perhaps it’s time to consider a little premature cremation — gut the thing while you’re still alive, or, at the very least, make provisions for it in your Last Will and Testament. (Rest assured, even if you do die an untimely death, no one will be able to read those compromising messages left in your Facebook inbox—unless you’ve left yourself logged in to your computer.) This approach can be applied to all things online in your sphere of influence, not just MySpace or Facebook profiles: think about email, dating sites, pornographic material. Start living the persona you espouse offline in your dayto-day vicarious interactions (it’s your legacy).

If, on the other hand, you don’t mind the concept of being given a lasting, free, although ad-supported, tribute, do at least take some pride in the things you write there—that “it’s” mistakenly spelled as “its,” for example—because, god knows: this may be the last time you ever get to fix things. Still not satisfied? You can take the issue up with Mark Zuckerberg
when you see him in the afterlife.

Believe it or not, some of the esteemed professors at the University of Minnesota spend a lot of time on Facebook. And Myspace. And Twitter. And Second Life. In spite of the obvious reasons why these professors are wasting their time on social networking sites, they aren’t griping about how silly their students are. In fact, they’re studying how their students and other people interact with each other online, and analyzing how we use various communication functions like forums, instant messaging, video and audio clips, posts, blogs and other common tools associated with today’s cutting edge technology. Yet social media studies is only one aspect of a broad range of interdisciplinary research going on in tandem with the Institute for New Media Studies, the U of M’s off-the-wall research tank that studies useful and beneficial components of society, like videogames, in order to understand how we communicate with one another.

The INMS, headed by Professor Nora Paul, is part of the New Media Initiative within the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Although funding for the institute was approved by the State Legislature in 1998, it was not until Paul was hired as INMS Director in 2000 that the institute began its work. Since its inception it has helped create and support a multitude of projects designed to examine new media and content, connecting researchers with vastly different backgrounds in the process. Nowhere was this more apparent than the recent New Media Research conference held at the U of M on Friday, September 18. About a dozen experts in fields ranging from graphic design to computer programming gave presentations on their compelling research.

“I got more and more intrigued about how technology was impacting the packaging and delivery end of the [media] process,” Paul says of how she ended up at the U of M. “So coming up here was a chance to really focus more on how technology is changing the ways that information and storytelling is being created.” Take Facebook for example. Dr. Christine Greenhow, a Learning Technologies researcher at the U of M, knows Facebook. She just finished one of several studies on how Facebook can be used as an educational tool for younger users. With funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Greenhow created the HotDish application with the creative team behind NewsCloud, a social media software provider and Grist, an online environmental magazine. HotDish is an environmentally-themed community app designed “to see if we could get young people coalescing around an issue…get them engaged in an issue,” Greenhow told the audience during her presentation. HotDish, which was built in about two months, allows users to post environmental stories, create application profiles, vote on stories posted, play games and organize environmental activities.

“It’s not just about content,” Greenhow says. “Social media is about the people.” Greenhow’s research focused specifically on how information flows through social networks, and whether a social network could engage younger users, increase users’ knowledge about an issue, build community and generate real world impact while promoting reading and writing practices.

Although about 2,000 people signed up for the application during the time the study was conducted (March 4-April 10), only 346 users fit the 16-to-24 year old qualification for the study. The site mined these users’ data, including how much time users spent on the application, how many stories they wrote, posted and read, the various environmental activities done and how often, and how many outside activities they planned or participated in. Despite the mass amounts of data, Greenhow found users had contributed about two-thirds of the content available on HotDish, and while a statistical increase of environmental knowledge couldn’t be measured among users, anecdotal evidence increased. To be fair, the users who joined HotDish already knew more about environmental studies than what could be measured nationally, according to Greenhow. Best of all, users claimed the site helped stir up activism, with less frequent users increasing interest in a variety of topics over a short period of time than more active users.

Of course, new media raises a variety of concerns over data privacy. How much information is too much? Jennie Lijewski, an information technology manager from University Relations shed light on the U of M’s continuing struggle to define the boundaries of data protection and privacy in social mediums. Comparing the impact of social networking to a dog yard, she challenged conference attendees to define the boundaries of how much presence the University could have online. Raising intriguing questions like whether a third-party social networking site can claim ownership over University-related logos and content, Lijewski did not elaborate on the U of M’s specific policies over social networking but rather focused on the decision-making process behind University policy, describing it as a series of never ending questions whose answers give way to more questions, from the definition of social networking on.

“It really becomes very, very clear this is not a cut and dried issue,” Lijewski says. Of course, the U of M isn’t the only public university struggling with this issue. According to Lijewski, Big Ten schools are still coming to terms with the same questions: Should university administration, staff and faculty have two separate accounts on social network sites, one for work and one for personal use? What constitutes appropriate behavior on these sites? What’s safe to disclose and what’s not? Should multiple units within a University department use multiple social sites, or should they all use one? What are the legal ramifications of using third-party sites? What protection do they offer? Who is held accountable? With all the questions, it appears the U of M must continuously play catch-up with making policy as new social networking opportunities surface, as the rules and boundaries of social networking constantly and consistently evolve.

INMS doesn’t focus entirely on social networking, however. Paul likes computer games, too. Not Street Fighter or Halo, per se, but the applicability of computer games and other virtual environments to education. In other words, how games can be used to teach people. Starting with the well-publicized “Harperville Gazette” simulation she helped create with SJMC Professor Kathleen Hansen, Paul’s work in simulation may reap great rewards for the U of M in the near future. The original idea for the so-called Journalism Game came from a technology and education conference where she heard Kurt Squire, a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, speak about a simulation of the American Revolution he had built using the engine that powers the popular PC role-playing game Neverwinter Nights. From there, Paul and Hansen wrote the scenario and script for a simulation tool using the same Neverwinter Nights engine designed to educate journalism students on basic information gathering techniques by having them cover a train derailment and chemical spill in Harperville, USA.

“We were really excited about the possibilities of it,” Paul says. “The reality of it, the logistics…it was clunky with some of the graphics…so we just couldn’t sustain it as a learning object. But we remained really interested in that kind of simulation space as a possible way to engage students, let them try it out and see what it feels like.” Paul also said the server space needed for the game would have presented problems in the Digital Media Lab as well. Paul may have found a solution in having the Neverwinter Nights model ported into online software called Thinking Worlds. Thinking Worlds is a flexible game engine, game build and tool kit that appears to be a higher graphic, better mapped version of Second Life. What’s more, it can be more easily controlled and scripted, allowing instructors to fine tune a student’s educational experience. Once the Thinking Worlds build is complete, the real research begins.

“There’ll be very rich opportunities for doing some comparative effects research,” says Paul. Of course, enjoyment and immersion will also be researched in order to see how effective a simulation can be in teaching students journalism skills.

Another component of Paul’s game research studies involves a Knight Foundation-funded project that allowed Paul and Hansen to explore the effects of making a general tool kit for an interactive web game that media outlets could post with current issues, hopefully engaging viewers of the web site.

“A lot of journalism-type games have been created, but they’re one-off,” Paul says. “The trouble with those was they were only good for that [particular subject].” Therefore, Paul and Hansen set out to make a “game template” that administrators could update with information on current issues. Out of five proposals submitted to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the proposal they found funding for involved making two separate games. One, which allowed players to assume the role of a staff assistant to a Senator in researching ethanol, was more of an interactive dialogue with different non-playable characters instead of a real game. The other game, “Explore a Topic” was more of a board and card game where players found the answers to different informational questions.

After designing a web site and online survey, Paul and Hansen found participants to view five ways information on ethanol could be obtained, including the two games, a traditional news story, a shortened news story, and a topic-organized page. Unfortunately, respondents found the topic-organized page the best of the information methods. According to Paul, although the board game was preferred over the interactive dialogue game, respondents basically said they didn’t want to work so hard to get the information they wanted. Despite the setback, Paul says she and Hansen are currently working with a company to make application software for mobile devices based on the board game which media administrators could update at their leisure. “You can do it about ethanol this week, you could do it about the state legislature next week, you could do it about fun places to go downtown the following week,” Paul says.

The next research project Paul wants to tackle may be the most ambitious yet. If nothing else, planning a virtual reality tour of the U of M would require much interdisciplinary cooperation from other University departments. Among the various topics of discussion, the Virtual Worlds and Video Games discussion panel bore discussion on mixed reality teaching tools. Greg Daigle, a teaching specialist from the College of Design, suggested an augmented reality tour for the U of M where prospective students could download a program onto their cell phones or other mobile devices and walk around campus finding markers that would send 3D models to a cell phone along with whatever other information University officials would want to appear. To demonstrate the technology, Paul had downloaded a similar program from Toyota that worked with pictures of Toyota-related images she had printed out. Once she held it up to a basic computer camera, the image then became a 3D model of a driving Toyota sedan. The model, textured and shiny, could also be broken down into parts which were also in shiny 3D bitmapping.

“That’s augmented reality,” Paul says. “If you could imagine, with a cell phone…if you were walking around and you see a symbol…it would take in the symbol” and create a 3D model of University maps, or perhaps an avatar of a University official. What happens next lies with innovative researchers like Paul and Daigle.

Although the New Media Research conference happened earlier this semester, another half-day conference will occur some time in February, in order to accommodate more University researchers and visiting scholars. That most likely won’t slow down progress on any of the research projects the INMS supports and creates. Innovation, like progress, won’t slow down so easily.

When discussing the state of the film industry, one can easily become overwhelmed by the seeming ever-growing number of questions one might confront. However, by venturing to answer these questions we can envision an aura of potentialities for the future of cinema. In an effort to promote transparency in the future of film, here are a few questions and issues begging to be given attention today.

One evening not long ago, I found myself in some of the most luxurious and accommodating seating I had ever encountered in a cinema. Where one might expect an armrest, I found a small table with recesses – one to hold the Spanish coffee drink set ablaze by a barista wearing a sport coat just moments earlier. This was the new movie-going experience: the comfort of a living room in a theater. It was an intimate setting yet the room was filled with strangers and an unparalleled selection of food and drink. I fumbled a large pair of sturdy 3D glasses in my hand and continued avoiding conversation with a small group of recent acquaintances. I found myself instead thinking of what the oak table at my side and the pristine screen before my eyes actually meant.

Did the quality of the film I was about to view even matter at this point? For some the answer is simple: Of course. However when introducing the question from the perspective of the average moviegoer – an individual who may go to the movies for social or entertainment value – did the film still matter? Does the public care about quality cinema when there’s a light show from their drink order beforehand? Were these comforts attempts to dissuade and divert from alternatives like video on demand services, renting or simple piracy? What are the repercussions for production companies if viewers start emphasizing experience over quality cinema? Will this mean less quality films and more lucrative endeavors? Is the theater actually killing film?

Indiscernible Truth

Most of these questions cannot be answered. It is either too early to foresee or there are simply too many factors to account for. The film industry is a powerful machine with a great deal of momentum. The films that spill from its gears are the product of many minds, hands and, sometimes, a portion of undirected disorder (i.e. luck). None of these questions can be boiled down to the simplicity of cause and effect that we could use to determine and predict outcomes. Especially with the subjectivity of film viewing, where each film must be taken in multitude of contexts – was the movie streamed over a bad connection to a mediocre television, was it relived by its’ viewer in a comfortable atmosphere, what was the viewer’s state of mind?

Nevertheless, the current state of film seems to be one at a threshold of potentialities. The film industry has endured, and at times celebrated, the coexistence of television, VCR and DVD. But now it battles – perchance – the likes of home theaters, file sharing, steadfast rental systems, video on demand and a multitude of viewing platforms.

Where good films are made

Ultimately, marketing and reviews drive how successful many movies will become. In the ‘90s many production companies began to create divisions for bringing middle-level films from independent auteurs to the public. The coincidence of the birth of these divisions and a demand for DVDs yielded great profits for production companies. These same divisions today are becoming financial burdens and are consequently being eliminated.

This absorption of previous studio departures by production studios further nurtures the objectives of the multiplex cinema. The number of feature films produced in the United States has been in decline for several years, with the most significant loss occurring from 2007 to 2008. The Motion Picture Academy of America’s (MPAA) “Theatrical Marketing Statistics” found a 20 percent drop in number of films produced domestically between these years. By allocating more money to acquire popular acting talent for fewer films, production companies can afford to put these middle-road independent films into mega and multiplex cinemas.

This does not necessarily mean the death of the fund-deficient independent film. While studios continue to load other films with big names and heavy advertising to fill seats it also forces a renovation of low-budget independent filmmaking. This is where smaller theaters and major circuits that specialize in independent film can help fill the gap.

The Landmark Theatres-owned Lagoon Cinema and Uptown Theatre serve the Twin Cities with a large portion of the major independents while smaller cinemas like Oak Street and the recent Trylon Microcinema display local and more obscure films. The trend for single screen cinemas continues to be unpopular – The MPAA has observed a stable number of single screen cinemas for several years while cinemas featuring eight to fifteen screens continue to multiply. These larger multiplexes can spread their investments over several blockbusters and survive the relative successes or failures of individual films while retaining relatively cheap ticket prices. Single screen cinemas are subject to a greater possibility for losses or collapse.

The Oak Street Cinema, for example, has been under the threat of closure for several years, only being kept afloat by the efforts of Minnesota Film Arts (MFA). However the initial successes of the new Trylon Microcinema in showing classic cinema and their support of this year’s coming Sound Unseen Festival helps retain optimism for the future of small-cinema and independent film despite diminishing budgets on the national level.

How film moves

Can we really say that fewer films are being produced? The prevalence of inexpensive HD cameras has resulted in a spike in independent filmmaking. Everyone seems to know someone who is making a film. The reality is that while most of these films will never meet a large audience, many independent filmmakers are becoming increasingly creative in their production and distribution methods. Sometimes these modest productions are shown be the small cinemas that remain outside the scope of MPAA data compilations. Many filmmakers proclaim that how an audience comes upon their film isn’t as important as the commitment a viewer makes to dedicate his or herself to viewing the film. It seems that certain mediums may be overlooked. This could mean new distribution methods for the small independent films.

File sharing systems and the piracy occurring through them has long been labeled as disruptive and destructive by the film industry. A movie shared online does not furnish the same kind of spur as a music album. Musicians can use rapport generated from an album freely distributed to strengthen a touring rapport and the consequent selling of merchandise. When a film is illegally downloaded or streamed—there is little incentive to go to a movie theatre and repeat the same stimuli in a new environment with a price tag. Repeat viewings, with exception to exceptional films, remain unpopular because film is an experience-driven trade. Individuals are constantly playing catch-up with just the major productions of over 600 films released per year in the United States.

If the public knew how easy it is to obtain or stream movies for free, we would likely see another change. Piracy operates worldwide with relatively little regulation as is – but it could be even more prevalent and rampant. Most of the general public simply does not know how to access the vast world of illegally free information.

The public’s impending knowledge of the free supply of films could mean yet another demand for quality (or simply a greater call for regulation). Potentially, audiences could have more choice than ever in what comes to their eyes – barring heavy advertising for theatrical blockbusters. With pricy distribution out of the picture, the making of a film would be more feasible than ever for new writers and directors. If people begin to go to the Internet for these films, the same hype that drives an album release could potentially drive a small film. With a considerable amount speculation, a free distribution model would not necessarily mean the collapse of the movie infrastructure.

Going nowhere

Experts in the film business believe we will always have cinemas. Even with VOD for home theatres, cell phones, iPods and laptops, there will always be a demand to watch a movie on a 30-foot screen without interruption and in the company of strangers. Theaters themselves may undergo changes. Just as drive-in theatres were transformed to indoor multiplexes, they may again transform to small living room-esque theaters, where the seats are large and the drinks plentiful. Perhaps theaters will send dedicated servers before the feature to bring your flamed coffee and a mint on a dish.
But this is just one possible direction for cinema.

It’s difficult to blame the denizens of the world if they incur mental whiplash on the issue of climate change. The world has long been in uproar over the unsustainable nature of a system overburdened with contradictory demands in the name of ever-expanding productivity and the externalization of costs. Media rhetoric has an astonishing way of coming full-circle through discovery, investigation, popular spin and resolution precisely in sequence with the ebb and flow of sensational news cycles. Humans are, above all else, adaptive to their environment. We are the only species to shape the planet so deliberately and dramatically. Of course, the ultimate irony of this adaptability is our constant resurveying of the long-arbitrary line in the sand regarding the environment.

With a plethora of media increasingly available around the world, it has become comfortable and normal to supplement personal experience with the vicarious pleasure of staring at glowing rectangles. There are few locations globally that remain immune to rapidly-changing environment. The scale of this shift is hidden both willfully and subconsciously by the day-to-day rigmarole of life. One of the most potent symbols of human impact on Earth has been slowly uncovered over this decade: the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Invisible to satellites for years, this agglomeration has caught the attention of media all over the world. “Patch” in the singular is a misnomer, since the Pacific debris field is partitioned into two separate entities. “East”—closer to Japan and bounded by Midway Island, and “West”—roughly one thousand miles from California and directly northeast of Hawaii. This pattern is dictated by the North Pacific Gyre, one of five major current “basins” worldwide, falling at the immobile center latitudes of the great ocean currents that are vital to Earth’s thermodynamic distribution. Altogether, the North Pacific Gyre was estimated in 2008 to contain 100 million tons of trash, spread over a total area roughly the same size as the contiguous United States.

The composition of the patches varies somewhat based on the nature of the trash that is dumped there, but they maintain a baseline and increasingly-homogeneous composition. Primarily composed of ever-degrading plastics floating between thirty feet below and surface level, the Patch has been described as “garbage soup” by those who have witnessed it firsthand. Researchers have brought back samples of its composition, chronicled by year, and in fifteen years of sampling, the rate of sea degradation has accelerated at an astonishing rate. Samples of the Patch taken in 2008 were found to have a six-to-one ratio of plastic particulates to plankton. The world’s oceans have long been used as ultimate dumping zones with infinite volume and capacity, and the fundamental, widespread altering of open ocean so far from civilization has been eye-opening to world governments. 

The “trash vortex” in the Pacific—and similar agglomerations around the world—are not something which can be addressed overnight. Modern notions of instant gratification may come into conflict with progress on the issue.  “Cleanup” is regarded to be virtually impossible. The sheer volume of garbage, coupled with its extreme remoteness and legal ambiguity, makes cleanup unpalatable to all governments concerned. Given public indifference to other environmental issues, it seems safe to say that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will keep growing proportionate to excessive, open-loop consumption in the Northern Hemisphere.

There is no effective way to degrade or reuse this disparate plastic at this point in time. To wax poetic, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch represents the sum of every externalized cost that has been deferred to the world’s waterways. Activists assert that the very existence of the Patch challenges the old axiom that human activities are inconsequential to human environs. So far, the issue of waste in international waters has been like a game of hot potato. International commerce has not been particularly encumbered, and it’s very easy to ignore the fact that the composition of the oceans has been altered by particulates with no effective “yin” to their “yang.”

However, where there are massive problems, there are ambitious solutions. One of the most promising proposed solutions to the issue of non-biodegradable waste is the engineering of microbial life which would be instrumental in biodegradation. Summer 2009 saw new milestones in the effort to effectively compost polyethylene bags. In effect, bacterial cultures from landfills are isolated and contained in an isolated chamber.

In all, the composting process took as little as three months per bag, and required very little upkeep and no expensive or outlandish equipment. One widely-circulated experiment was carried out by a sixteen year old kid in Canada. The holy grail of these efforts is the creation of an organism that could survive the pressures of the open environment—without incurring unforeseen collateral damage in its “design.”

It would not be unprecedented for humans to rely on microbial life to do its dirty work. A huge range of processes utilize the unique characteristics of a wide range of bacteria. Alcohol fermentation, baking yeast, and pharmaceutical production are common examples. The introduction of human-engineered cultures into the wider environment may pose an enormous legal quandary, however. It is virtually impossible to determine the effect any organism will have within widely-varying circumstances, and liability concerns would likely be Line-Item One for any heretofore unproposed cleanup effort.

While history has shown that it is never wise to base predictions on the inception of unforeseen technologies, individual bacterium exist which are capable of performing the biodegradation process on synthetic plastics. These qualities are not widely prevalent or competitive in bacterial cultures worldwide, however, which underpins environmentalists’ long-standing concerns about the great length of the natural process. In all, it seems clear that no costly action will be taken until it has been judged to offset the prospect of further wildly uncontrolled collateral cost. As of yet, no longitudinal study has determined what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has directly impacted.

The dietary uptake of “plastic soup” by local fish and bird populations has been documented, and has proven fatal to many local species. The Patch in the North Pacific Gyre is not solely responsible for the introduction of synthetic chemicals into the wider food supply. In strictly economic terms, the areas affected were not the most productive for human activity, and so critics have asserted that there is a certain tolerance built into the system. Regardless of the politics involved, any future efforts by humans to curb this problem will be widely followed and unprecedented.

Circling a dimly-lit bar crowded with trendy twentysomethings, listening to talk of spring lines and independent boutiques, I feel a bit lost. Watching Zoolander is about as close as I’ve come to high fashion before this and it’s hard not to think of the vapid, self-congratulating models and designers of that movie as I weave among the denizens of the Twin Cities’ fashion world. The DJ spinning “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood—was that a deliberate reference?—doesn’t help.

But as I keep talking to the attendees of this Preview Party for MNfashion Week, held at AZIA’s Caterpillar Lounge on April 9, I realize they have nothing in common with Zoolander’s fashion stereotypes. For one thing, not one of them looks a day over 30, and they pass words like “organic” and “localization” back and forth with their business cards. One young model tells me of his plans to go to India to shoot a documentary promoting organic farming there. Another pauses in her catwalk stride across the room to talk about her job as a producer for public television. Clearly, the Twin Cities’ growing fashion scene isn’t just about looking pretty. It’s about celebrating young, up-and-coming designers, being socially and environmentally conscious and giving back to the community.

MNfashion Week’s main event is Voltage: Fashion Amplified, called by model Joy “the funnest event of the year.” The show, now in its fifth year, highlights local music as well as fashion. Part of its stated mission is “providing a national forum for local talent.” This year’s show, on April 24 at First Avenue, features 12 designers and 5 bands.

Tickets for the show are $25 in advance and $30 at the door, but it’s for a good cause. The nonprofit organization plans to set aside this year’s proceeds toward the development of a sewing co-op. The goal of Voltage in general is to provide young local designers with education, resources and opportunities.

“The whole point of Voltage is to pick up a designer and get them up and out,” says designer Laura Fulk. That’s Fulk’s own success story: her designs were the finale of last year’s Voltage show. This year, she hosted her own solo show.

“It’s hard. I don’t know a single designer who sleeps at night,” Fulk says. For her and other designers, though, fashion design has been in their blood for years.

“My mom always sewed, and when I was a kid, I hated it,” Fulk says. “In high school, I got really into the illustration end. I loved the idea of taking a drawing and making it into something physical, something pretty.”

Designer Arwyn Birch speaks similarly about growing up sewing with her mom. For her, she says, getting into fashion “wasn’t an option.”

“I always knew I wanted my clothes a certain way,” Birch, who has been designing “seriously” for about a year and a half, says. “Someone commissioned me to make a pair of pants and I thought, if I can do that, I can do anything.”

Fashion wasn’t every designer’s first choice. Kaja Foat, who designs with her twin sister Zoë, says that the two of them “fell into the business” when they were working as yoga teachers and started making their own yoga clothing. “It wasn’t until two or three years ago that we decided to actually do this as a career,” Foat says.

The sisters’ company now includes bridal and couture lines in addition to active wear. They’re also part of a trend toward green and organic design, using donated and recycled fabrics. “We make them into something completely different,” Foat says.

Foat is one of the designers who speaks excitedly about the growing local presence of Voltage and MNfashion Week. “I’ve lived in so many different cities, and I do feel that Minneapolis has such a look and such a scene that we’re just going to go crazy once we’re on the map,” she says.

That’s the inspiration behind Voltage itself. Anna Lee, described as a “goddess” by one of the models, started MNfashion six years ago. She serves as its executive director and produces the Voltage show. “I got involved because I am a designer and I wanted to see things happen differently for designers in the Twin Cities,” she says. “It’s a community effort that is really starting to take off.”

Since then, what was initially “Fashion Weekend” has expanded to a week, and Voltage has become the largest regional fashion event, self-described on its Web site as “the Midwest’s premier rock and fashion show.” And from what the participants say, Twin Cities fashion is just taking off.

“I wouldn’t really call myself a fashionista,” Anna Lee says. “What’s exciting about what’s going on in Minneapolis is there are so many kinds of fashionistas. You don’t have to be—for lack of a better term—highfalutin.”

As for what local fashion has to offer this season, answers vary. Laura Fulk, whose solo show is called “Suffocate,” collaborated with a painter and a tattoo artist to create designs that were digitally printed onto her fabrics. Arwyn Birch describes this season’s look as “very Mad Men, early ’60s,” saying, “My mind is really focused on bright bold solids, geometric black and whites.” Kaja Foat sees a “punkish vibe all over the board.”

Voltage is about the music as well as the fashion, and this year’s show offers a top-notch slate of local bands: First Communion Afterparty, Mercurial Rage, Gospel Gossip, Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles, and Maria Isa.

Charles Gehr has worked for two years as the music director for Voltage. It’s his job to choose the bands for the show, and he does so by “spending most of the year going to concerts, listening to music and listening to who people are talking about.”

“We like for the musical styles to be very diverse,” he says of the criteria for choosing bands. “It’s about being fashionable, but ultimately just making sure it’s really good music.”

The bands get to be part of the fashion, too. Birk Gruden, who does screen printing, was hired by Voltage to design pieces for Mercurial Rage, and Voltage stylists help with hair and makeup.

For bands like Maria Isa, the 13-piece group headlining Voltage this year, being part of the show is an honor. “Maria’s been working for the past 20 years,” says Jose Rico, the band’s manager. “This is a culmination of all that work, day in and day out.” Rico says the band jumped at this “opportunity to celebrate fashion.”

The same opportunity appealed to Nick Nguyen, the sponsorship coordinator for Voltage. Nguyen’s family owns the Tea Garden, and he became involved in Voltage through his sister, who owns clothing store Design Collective. “This is promoting the local arts and culture scene, and I want to be part of that,” he says.

That might be the most significant trend of all this Fashion Week: the expansion to include more and more local businesses and news sources as well as designers. “So many more people are participating this year, and there’s lots of networking,” says model Joy. MNfashion works to bring together designers, bloggers, boutique owners and students, and it’s largely their efforts that have brought the Twin Cities fashion scene to the brink of exploding nationally.

The aptly titled Bromst, Dan Deacon’s newest album seems to bring together exactly what the title implies. Part new sound, part old, Dan Deacon took Bromst in a somewhat new direction, while largely adhering to his old standbys of crazy and absurd. The songs are as packed with noise as ever, while Deacon distorts his voice through out the background like some sort of acid-tripping, cat-stuck-in-engine sound that I couldn’t possibly describe any better.

Of the newer twist to his sound, Deacon makes ample use of digital synth drums and computerized sounds. Every track is filled to bursting with noise and sound, but Deacon, showing an incomparable ability to make sense out of the absurd, winds it all into coherent and catchy songs. In fact, this album has even more structure than Deacon’s last one, but still manages to contain all of the size his previous work carried.

For some reason though, the album just doesn’t touch me like his last one. There isn’t the freshness or surprise. Deacon makes his music in a sort of vacuum, really pioneering an individual noise. Part of the excitement that lies in Dan Deacon has to do with discovery, that freshness that exists in that new sound. But like asparagus, that freshness turns into something that smells kind of fishy after a while, and makes you think really hard about whether or not you want to digest it. That’s is kind of what Bromst is like after a couple of listens, it just comes out stale.

The album does have some very redeeming tracks, and it does have a lot of new sounds that were undoubtedly pounded out on some sort of digital electronica anvil. As a final statement, if you haven’t heard Deacon before, this would be a great album to start with. If you’re a standing fan however, it may not live up to expectation.

There appears to be no limit to which facets of life are infiltrated by the ecological mindset. Consumers are in a market that targets this mindset by “greenwashing” products. “Greenwashing” is branding an unsustainable product in a fashion that boasts an earth-friendly image. Think images of landscapes on laundry detergent, forests on drawing pads, or perhaps on a larger scale, British Petroleum’s adoption of a green and yellow sunflower logo in 2000. Consumers are slowly questioning their products with a keen eye and mind. Greenwashing, however, has been drawn to new levels outside of general advertisement: think of an entire industry being greenwashed.

Sex is typically viewed as a low carbon dioxide emitting activity. In lieu of some heavy breathing, which equates to about the same carbon dioxide output of an average American scaling a couple flights of stairs, sex doesn’t appear to be an industry that requires reinvention to be sustainable. Nonetheless, every market seems to have potential for a sustainable-revamp.

This revamping has taken numerous forms for the sex industry. From natural lubricants and vegan condoms to solar-powered vibrators and hemp rope for bondage play. While some of these items may seem extraneous, the ideas that support the green sex movement are the same ideas of improved human and environmental health that founded the encompassing green movement.

Common sex toys are known to contain potentially toxic chemicals known as phthalates. These chemicals are used to soften plastics such as PVC for bedroom use. Because phthalates are not chemically bound to PVC, they can break apart from one another with use. Other toys may contain blends of silicone that can degrade under a similar process. While it is unlikely that any of the degradation would be harmful enough to cause adverse health effects, studies of high concentrations of phthalates presented to animals has shown potential for negative side effects.

In response, the European Union has banned many phthalates from children’s toys. Many sex toys are sold for “novelty purposes only,” which allows companies to bypass many regulations and continue to manufacture and distribute their products. Even though there are methods of softening plastics without the use phthalates, manufacturers maintain their current production methods because the alternative is more costly.

While much of the industry is avoiding health-related concerns, non-toxic products have been continuously available for the conscious consumer. With regard to sex toys, the industry is being driven by consumer-oriented advertisements from green organizations. These organizations encourage buyers to seek alternatives and purchase toys made from glass or materials that have not undergone the softening process by use of phthalates.

Is there even a market for sustainable products in the sex industry? The carbon footprint reduction achieved when replacing a battery-powered vibrator with one powered by the sun is trivial compared to choices in transportation or heating a home. Even with companies such as Dreamscapes, which sponsors a sex toy-recycling program, there is little opportunity for the business of business to be business-worthy. There exists, more likely, a market for items that are naturally replaced in the course of sex-related activity, such as lubricants or condoms.

Natural and organic lubricants are promoted by eco-groups while simultaneously advising consumers to avoid petroleum-based products and those containing parabens, glycerin, hormones or silicon. Conventional lubricants contain toxins that have been associated with proliferation of cancerous cells. Condoms are offered free of animal-derivatives for vegan lovers. The availability of natural lubricants feels like a more legitimate attempt at propagating the idea of healthy societies and environments in the sex market. The greening of the condom, on the other hand, seems excessive when the product already helps prevent reproduction – a felony in the world of eco-crimes.

The revamping of the sex industry is just one example of “green” spinning out of control. While some choices may be useful in preventing harmful side effects, the idea that ecologically sound sex paraphernalia mitigates burning oil to power a daily routine is senseless. Even if change were required in every aspect of one’s lifestyle, a market that exploits a trend should be approached with caution. As with many other aspects of sex, it boils down to a personal choice: Is the hemp rope really necessary or will your old rope do the trick?

Albums like Crack the Skye are very troubling. They aren’t good, so you won’t get the satisfaction of hearing a new masterpiece by one of you favorite bands, but they also aren’t bad for any easily identifiable reason. You can’t just say “they sold out” or “their new drummer sucks.” You have no choice but to maybe, just maybe, acknowledge that somebody’s run out of ideas.

That’s the feeling I get from Mastodon’s new album. Either that or they’ve decided to play to all of their weaknesses. I mean, why else would they pull the ages-old “let’s go prog” card? Why else would they decide to sing rather than scream on nearly every track when their sung vocals are probably the weakest part of their sonic array? Why would they swap out veteran metalcore producer Matt Bayles for Brendan O’Brien, the king of radio-friendly butt-rock?

All of these elements combine to make an album that is overstuffed, self-indulgent and boring. It’s got extended keyboard intros, 13 minute songs, banjo intros and ridiculous lyrics about Rasputin, all of which may have been forgivable had the songs been interesting. Unfortunately, they’re not. Most of the songs are either sloppy collages of generic Mastodon riffs or, even worse, generic “rock” songs with hardcore flourishes tacked on because, hey, it’s a MASTODON record!

O’Brien’s production really only makes things that much worse because it turns the melodic portions of the songs into radio-rock messes that lack the crunch and power of Mastodon’s other records. The fact that most of the choruses on the album sound like they were ripped straight from 93X’s top ten is a big problem.

Of course, it’s not just about Mastodon going more melodic or wanting to write songs instead of riff. No, they’ve done that before on Blood Mountain and with fantastic results. The difference is that those songs felt like metal songs infused with good melodic ideas while the songs on Crack the Skye feel like mediocre songs infused with metal ideas. And lots of bad singing. Can’t forget that.