Anissa Marianne Jousset Student ID: 10916547 MA New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam Supervisor: Prof. Dr. R.A. Rogers Second Reader: Dr. M.D. Tuters June 23rd 2016

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Excessive Graphic Motion: On the contemporary music video as the next instalment in post- classical digital cinema

Abstract: The evolution of cinema in the digital age has become topic of interest to both film and media theorists alike, positing the death of film and emergence of new, original genres. Contemporary music videos can be seen as an outcome of this strained relationship, as a media that both borrows from film and brings it into the future through its use of cinematic in technical and narrative terms. Although definitions of the music video remain elusive, a compilation of film and media theory has allowed the music video to find its place within the genre of post classical cinema, addressing concerns of post digital art and affecting the medium in both aesthetic and audience related terms. The accelerated, condensed content of the music video has affected the medium of film not only in aesthetic terms, but has also determined a new kind of hyper-aware audience which reflects new media debates on human-computer interaction, embodiment, and, to a greater extent the evolution of the human experience in the wake of an increasingly digitizing new media landscape.

Keywords: Music video, aesthetics, post-classical cinema, digital cinema, new media, embodiment, retrograde technicity, viewer engagement, late capitalism

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Cover photo: Collection of screenshots from corpus of videos glitched. (Anissa Jousset)

Special Thanks

I would like to thank Pepijn Bierhuizen, Max Cantellow, Alexander Guian-Illanes, and Xeniya Kondrat for their help and support throughout.

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Table of Contents

I: Debaser: Establishing music videos as an undervalued film genre

II. Sound & Vision: Contextualizing the post-classical music video

III. Heaps of fragments: Defragmenting the aesthetics of post digital cinema

IV. Everything, all at once: engagement and the viewer experience in the digital age

V. Take A Look At These Hands: the Post-Digital Identity Crisis

VI. Post-Pop Depression: Status update on the position of music videos in post classical digital film

Works Cited

Videos

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I: Debaser: Establishing Music Videos as an Undervalued Film Genre

Just Plain Old Movies

The scene is the contemporary new media landscape, and our protagonist is film. As we follow him through an analogue desert, increasingly dominated by digital technology, we may expect him to break, falter, or even die. However, a digital plot twist will prevent this, a revolution of some sorts. Film will not die, film will go on.

In theoretical terms, the death of cinema in the digital age has become a topic of great interest to both the fields of new media and cinema and has spurring discourse from both sides questioning the ability of film to adapt .The accelerated development of digital technologies, in relation to the capturing, processing and production of cinematic images has begun to blur the boundaries between individual creation and automated production, modifying the temporality and narrative structure of film, as well as its temporality as a medium. This, along with the increasing availability of digital means of producing and distributing images are some of the elements that have triggered a cinematic identity crisis within which I will establish the music video as being film’s response to new media culture. Although the impact of digital technology on video manifests itself in a multitude of formats which would be equally relevant to study in relation to the evolution of the video medium both in terms of form (i.e. Vine or Snapchat videos), and platforms, I have chosen to place my attention on the music video in order to add to the symmetrical bidimensionality of the relationship of film and new media. In this, I would like to present the music video as both a cinematic response to new digital technologies, and as a new media art form which takes its roots in film but has begun to branch out and become a film genre Jousset 5 in its own right. Here the music video finds its place as being one of the multiple outcomes of debates concerning film and new media.

In the following chapter, I will contextualize the debate on the position of cinema within the new media landscape and offer my own contribution to the theoretical debate through the introduction of the music video as a cinematic genre. Through the works of André Gaudreault,

Philippe Marion, and Patricia Pisters, I will lay out the debate on the end of film in the age of new media. After having mapped out the issue, I will offer my own ideas concerning the death of film, in context with the fluid, ever changing nature of the medium, by arguing that the crisis it is currently faced with is a key component in a revolution, focusing primarily here on the technological aspects of cinematic production, which are at the core of the new media debate. In order to build context for the study of the music video in the field of film, a study of the current stance of the music video ranging from its origins on MTV and its commercial roots to how far it has come in both in theoretical and media terms will be done. Here I will address the gap in literature concerning the study of the music video, and its definition as a media that is independent of being strictly commercial and that remains thoroughly undefined.

Taking into consideration the works of Simon Frith and Anthony Goodwin on the study of video clips, both of whom place great importance on the role of pop culture in the meaning making of these clips, I am proposing a re-examination of the definition of pop culture. This new definition is based on the works of Adorno and Benjamin in relation to the role of pop music and the aura of art respectively, which will be reworked in order to shake the foundations of critical theory. I will end by placing the music video as the bridge between cinema and new media, as being a yet undefined component in the cinematic matrix, which is both in the process of Jousset 6 defining itself as a medium, and thus far remains underestimated while asserting the position of cinema in the digital age.

Carrying The Cans

In her 2013 book Unruly Media: YouTube, Music Video, and the New Digital Cinema,

Carol Vernallis addresses the dynamic relationship between music videos and film: “indeed a close study of this “low art “can help to explain contemporary film” (94) This vacant space between two medias, which have been deemed very different from each other or not studied by media theorists, is where I place myself. While the music video has been thoroughly criticized for its pop culture and commercial value, its role in terms of validity as a film genre has not been thoroughly addressed. Music videos, in essence have been found to borrow from other visual art forms, and have come increasingly closer to the medium of film in particular, which seems to have come as a bit of a shock to affected parties in the industry.

Music video style has colonized contemporary cinema more than we know(33).This

“colonization “of film, which now finds itself amongst the ranks of classical art, gives the music video a threatening impact on the fundamental origins of film. The branching out of the music video into the media of film is informed by the structural fear of low and highbrow culture blending and becoming indistinguishable. In the domain of film, this fear echoes filmmaker Paul

Greenaway’s concerns regarding the death of cinema’s classical form (Gaudreault and Marion

2). The concern that film is being tainted by new media forms can partially be attributed to recent technological developments and the rise of the Internet as an outlet for new media which have left film theorists full of questions regarding the damage digital technologies will do to the Jousset 7 ecology of the film industry. The individual’s power to seize the means of production, the immediacy of rendering the images, and the diverse broadcasting outlets available for the distribution of moving pictures is amongst some of the fears film theorists and (other affected parties) have with regards to the relevance and place of film in the age of digital technology. This situation is addressed by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion in their 2015 book The End of

Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age, in which they address the status of cinema in the crisis brought about by new media(2). In this, they place themselves within the context of contemporary debates which are expecting cinema to become obsolete because of digital technology, which would alter the definition of cinema. Gaudreault and Marion acknowledge this question by stating that uncertainties concerning the future of cinema are not medium specific but are a part of greater debates concerning the status of classical media which have lost many of their bearings since the advent of digital technologies(2).

The theoretical fear of the death of film, in more visual terms, is also deeply rooted in

Rancière’s death of the image, in which he states that in contemporary culture there is nothing but images, and that therefore images are devoid of context or meaning (Pisters1).With regards to the Internet as an artistic environment, which facilitates the broadcasting and sharing of content at an unprecedented speed, the hermeneutical death of the image is not an unfounded fear to have. The death of cinema is in essence the theoretical basis of my research in the sense that it provides a context for the relevance of the music video as an active component in a cinematic revolution pioneered both by new media and paradigm shifts regarding the definition of film. I would like to argue however, that the abundance of images being projected on to audiences in the wake of the Internet constitutes a transduction rather than destruction of image culture, and by extension the medium of film. Jousset 8

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Here I would like to address the increasingly dominant place of the digital within film as being an addition to the creative spectrum of the medium. Gaudreault and Marion refer to a similar idea as a “kind of cinematic renaissance” which has been set in set in motion through the

“present-day effervescence of the digital” (120). In this, cinema is depicted as being an extremely elastic medium, whose definition will come to encompass many expanding definitions and genres. This is where I would like to introduce the music video as a genre within this

“cinematic renaissance”, a genre of cinema whose influence is both revitalizing film while making a name for it.

In an attempt at giving this genre a name and for clarity’s sake, I will call this post- classical digital cinema. In this, Vernallis’ contextualization of music videos in the film landscape will be taken one step further, by incorporating the digital as a key component in order to introduce the music video as film’s response to new media culture. Vernallis begins to contextualize music videos within post-digital cinema by illustrating the creative potential of the music video: “Only within the hothouse of music video production, using the inexpensive and flexible medium of videotape, could a language of music video and contemporary audiovisual aesthetics come together” (70). Here she underlines the liberated means and processes of production of the music video, processes which I will extend into the field of digital film.

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You’ve Heard About MTV

In relation to media terminology, the music video remains a relatively new genre, whose history remains uncharted (26). Symbolically identified as a clip accompanying a song, the deeper, more subjective connections of the music video to film and other media have not been thoroughly addressed. Through my analysis of the contemporary music video and the contextualizing of the genre within the new media and film landscapes, I am picking up where

Goodwin and Vernallis left off, in terms of underlining the potential of the music video and attempting to define it both in relation to older definitions and the media of film. The collections of videos I have put together contain characteristics that are recognizable from the origins of the music video, as well as new narrative forms and cinematic devices which differ from cinematic traditions. I am picking up where the definition of the music video trailed off into the dark. The music videos described in my research serve as a visualization of the theoretical difficulties that lie within the definition of the music video.

As a conclusion of the analysis of the videos I aim to establish that music videos stand as a form of film in their own right, they have the potential to differ from their MTV origins, challenging the relationship between new media and film.

As I previously mentioned, contemporary cinema is overwrought by the impending doom of being cast aside as “old media” in the age of digital technology. In addition, there is a lack of attention being paid to the music video, which is a on the rise as a solid art form that is growing out of the shadow of the 1980s and bringing both the mediums of video and film to unprecedented heights. Jousset 10

Following the development of Internet platforms such as YouTube(founded in 2005) and

Vimeo(founded in 2004) which provided the opportunity to broadcast video content and boost the digitization of film, the music video began to surpass its temporality a medium and gain the potential to differ from its commercial/promotional origins. Since the 2010s, these platforms have massively improved, allowing the music video the opportunity to surpass itself as a visual medium. Despite its rapid evolution in aesthetic and technical terms, the music video has been neglected in theoretical terms within film studies. Vernallis compares the current lacuna in music video theory to the beginning of auteur studies, for which film studies has created a canon of its own(34), after debating the meaning and value of auteur studies overall. Music videos today find themselves in a similar situation, where I see the potential to integrate a new canon within film studies, and to a greater extent in film, there is no corpus adapted to music video studies.

Map of the Problematique

Determining the lack of information concerning music videos on both academic and nonacademic platforms brought another point of concern to my attention. The music video, as an object of discussion seems to have dropped off the map, when it comes to discourse that is not related to commercial or copyright concerns. Vernallis stresses that old definitions [of the music video] don’t seem to work” (82) and that in the 30 years of the music video, various sorts of canon have emerged (209). Meanwhile, these canons have not been thoroughly studied. The problem is twofold, it stems from an inadequate definition of music videos on the side of media, and in the cultural contexts; specifically in relation to pop culture.

The connotations of the terms “commercial” and “pop culture” have left the music video at odds with itself, in terms of what kind of media it currently is. In order to place the music video in a Jousset 11 cultural context, it is necessary to work towards definition of culture which provides more adequate grounds for the study and appreciation of the music video. Lawrence Levine’s

(re)definition of culture concerning the distinction made between high and lowbrow culture fits perfectly here. Levine proposes a more fluid definition of culture, a defining and redefining of the contours of culture (56), which would go beyond dealing with “intellectual abstractions.” He describes this concretely as an open search for an understanding of what culture has been in the past and can become in the future”(56).

In this, he is going towards a more comprehensive definition of culture that goes beyond the theoretical, academic approach and recognizes the abundance of factors that influence and outline culture. Levine’s definition of culture is also highly relevant in the way that he rids it of its structural rigidity. Here, he allows for a more metaphysical approach to the question of culture which focuses on “dealing with lives and minds “rather than one focused on making hierarchical separations between cultural instances. This approach to culture is informed by

Levine’s discontent with classical critical theory and the “sacralization of culture “, both of which pertain to the theoretical incompleteness of music video studies. In order assess the cultural context of the music video in relation to film, it is necessary to re-examine the paradigm of critical theory, in the attempt of rebuilding a more malleable definition of culture, which will be more adapted to the fluid form of the music video. In this, the lack of literature concerning the music video has reached past the academic definition of critical theory and needs to be reexamined from a social perspective.

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What’s In A Name - Platform Specific Side Note

The academic and medium specific lacuna regarding the music video has trickled down into Wikipedia. The expectation for Wikipedia to provide a full article on a pop culture item was wrong considering the incomplete nature of the entry for “music video” on the English

Wikipedia page. In terms of platform analysis, the English Wikipedia page for the query “music video” does not amount to much in terms of providing a definition of the term. The definition reads as follows: A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes” (“Music Video”). This definition is itself borrowed from an essay written by VFX Editor Daniel Moller, in the context of his Master’s in

Digital Media. Moller’s essay features Wikipedia’s original definition of the music video, from

2011:“a motion picture produced to accompany a song, for promotional or artistic purposes”

(2011). He underlines the ways in which this definition, while being more informative than those provided by the Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries, still fails to take note of the creative dynamics of the music video.

The chapters in the Wikipedia page also demonstrate a lack of terminology and attention regarding the music video as a media item that is not primarily commercial. The entry on music videos that was the most interesting for the purpose of this research is was the one devoted to recent music video releases, entitled “2005-present” which offers a vague overview of music video platforms, punctuated with video examples. Most of the entry is focused on copyright and censorship which does not offer anything in terms of contextualizing the music video as an artistic medium. Jousset 13

The meta irony in the challenges linked to the definition of the music video in this instance expands the debate across various platforms thus underlining a gap not only in academic terms, but in new media terms as well.

Copy of A

The music videos’ pop culture origins have become something of a setback in terms of constructing an up to date definition of the genre. This setback is rooted in an antiquated definition of pop culture, which, in turn results in inadequate definitions of the music video.

From a cultural perspective, the necessity to take poststructuralism further strikes me as a being a key step in schematizing the media landscape of the music video. In his 1994 book Media

Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern

Douglas Kellner already make suggestions regarding a broader definition of cultural studies. In his attempt at taking critical theory further than postmodernism, he posits a field of cultural studies that is “open, flexible, and without guarantees”(95) thus departing from a definition of culture with a set, hierarchical taxonomy. Much like Levine, Kellner strives for fluidity and multiplicity in his definition of culture.

His is a definition of culture which is adapted to the multimedia tendencies of the music video. In order to pick up where Kellner left off, in 1994, I am taking critical theory beyond itself into a reflection of itself and ultimately, into a reflection on the status of film, through the lens of the music video.

Kellner and Levine, in their reworking of critical theory deconstruct Benjaminian perspectives on the work of art and work towards a more open-ended paradigm, which takes post - structuralism further than Marxist critique and offers a more constructive reflection on Jousset 14 capitalism. The inherently Marxist stratification of culture becomes problematic in terms of addressing the fluidity of a media such as the music video. For example, in relation to target audiences, the contemporary music remains both cryptic, and inclusive: cryptic in its styles and content, and inclusive in the way that its accessibility is guaranteed through an Internet connection. This surpasses the necessity to own a television, or any sort of video playing equipment.

Through a technological lens, this allows for media to be broadcast on multiple platforms and devices. The means of media distribution in the post-capitalist era transcend class barriers that were still present only 15 years ago. With regards to booms in technology and accessibility of digital media, both poststructuralism and critical theories have failed to keep up. This lack of analytical adaptability is a fundamental flaw in the construction of an appropriate method for studying the music video. As a response to this, Fredric Jameson addresses the post-capitalist approach to culture and states that pluralism is ideology of groups” (220).Here he presents an approach to culture that is distinct in its multitudes.

Bridging The Gap

Placed at the junction of music and film, (contemporary) music videos find themselves in an unspecified position which, in terms of media theory gives them the potential to be a contributing factor in the evolution of cinema, both as an expansion of the cinematic art and as a compression of music, cinema and the imprint of digital technology on the artistic medium.

Jameson states that the video has a powerful claim for being the art form par excellence of late capitalism, it being closely related to the dominant computer and information technology of the late or third stage of capitalism (76). Here he bridges the gap between technology and culture Jousset 15 and draws attention to the influence of the deconstruction of fundamentally capitalist principles on the structure of media.

In order to place the music video within the cinematic context, I would like to draw a connection between characteristics of post capitalism and how they have been reflected in the medium of film. The post-capitalist mindset and its rejection of purely monetary compensation shows through the fact that music videos are now more often detached from their promotional and commercial origins, While being in line with the concept of promoting a song, certain music videos find their sole purpose in being an artistic accompaniment to a song with more artistic freedom than previously in the history of the media. The atomization of class division and social groups in the age of late capitalism has imprinted itself in media culture in a way that it has deconstructed the familiar narrative of “the West” in classical Hollywood cinema, a deconstruction which, in turn, has traced itself onto post-classical cinema. Post-classical cinema came as response to the Hollywood tradition and is distinguishable through is chopped up form and content and rejection of structurally linear narratives.

Vernallis describes post-classical film as possessing a range of features, including disorienting storytelling devices, database narratives; a dazzling surface made up of shots with changing lens-lengths, wipe-byes, and handheld camera movements; and striking audiovisual effects, all of which can further distort classical Hollywood narrative filmmaking”(40). Here I would like to place the music video within the context of post-classical film, first, as an art form which has been underestimated, not in relation to its influence on film, but more in terms of securing a place for itself in the cinematic landscape. Vernallis’ conclusion lies in the hope that the music video will begin to be acknowledged in more domains than it has been previously, specifically within the medium of film. I aim to extend Vernallis’ points in my research by Jousset 16 establishing what I believe to be a new turn in the medium of film. Picking up where she left off, through a selection of videos demonstrating characteristics of post classical film, I am basing myself on the definition of the music video outlined by Vernallis and Goodwin, and adding my own levels of analysis to them in order to work towards a more fluid and contemporary definition of the genre.

Although mechanisms of music video production have changed drastically over the past

30 years, the potential for the music video to evolve into something bigger than itself is very medium specific. Vernallis’ note attributes the coming together of music video language and contemporary audio-visual aesthetics to the inexpensive and popular medium of videotape” (70).

The same can be said today in relation digital recording devices. Where film equipment was once a commodity, often becoming an investment, it has now reached past even the necessity to own a film device on its own, for example, the integration of HQ video in cell phone cameras has made both photography and film hyper-accessible.

Here the contemporary music video becomes particularly interesting to analyze in more formal terms in relation to the devices, both technical and theoretical, it borrows from film explicitly in its visual and narrative structure, as well as more implicit levels through the use of ideology and symbolism which are recognizable both through the musical and visual texts in the music video. Music videos in particular differ from other forms of video art their dual nature.

Specifically in formal terms, this gives the reader a multiple set of texts to interpret and follow.

Placed at the junction of technological advancements, and informed by an accumulation of art forms, film and music video find themselves in peculiar relationship, in which they feed off each other, providing new developments for both media. Here I would like to draw attention to the Jousset 17 particular inspiration new media derives from film, how this manifests itself in new, original forms, and how the new original form of the music video can be seen as a new media spin on the cinematic art form which is both defining itself and ensuring a future for film. With regards to the progression of the music video and the theoretical difficulty of defining it as a genre, the dynamic relationship between music video and film is a breeding ground for innovation. In this, the contemporary music video can be seen not only as a combination of music and video, but to a greater extent, a film genre. Here a close look at the dual nature of the music video in terms of music, visuals, and content is necessary.

Method: A Multilayered Approach To A Multilayered Medium

I Want My MTV

Since its inception, the place and purpose of the music video in the media landscape have been a source of criticism and confusion. Their commercial origins in the 1980s and the birth of

MTV have left music video audiences with an aftertaste of capitalism and mass consumption. In the age of new media, the music video has reached out of its consumerist cage and become more of an object of art, operating in the domains of cinema, performance art, and video art in the broader sense. The concatenation of music and video strikes me as the ultimate form of contemporary cinematic art reinforcing the intertwining of art and new media, which a dynamic of interest in the contemporary technological landscape. For the purpose of my research, I find it necessary to provide visual examples, in my case contemporary music videos which will firstly, allow me to materialize and illustrate the gap literature regarding the music video as both a product of new media in theoretical and technical terms and, secondly, provide a visual grounds Jousset 18 for the comparison of music video and film. In order to visualize the theoretical, I have assembled a collection of clips which I believe embody contemporary currents in new media cinema, through their cinematic impact and the way they address new media sensibilities through both their technological and ideological characteristics. In line with my research question, I would like to stress ways in which the music video, as a visual art form has been both underresearched and unjustly cast aside as a mere product of pop culture which seems to not have warranted the attention of both media scholars and film theorists alike.

Picking Up The Pieces

Up until now, music videos have been defined as short films but have not been treated with as much grace and attention as film. Their relationship with film has either not been established or studied as a strained dynamic. Their cinematic potential has been acknowledged but not thoroughly studied. The music video has rarely been studied independently from its promotional and television origins. With the exception of clips created by film directors( i.e.

Mark Romanek, Spike Jonze, Floria Sigismondi), music videos have been, more often than not, cast aside, or simply not thoroughly researched as an art form in their own right. What I would like to draw attention to here is the way in which music videos as a theoretical object of study have somewhat “dropped off the map “both in the media landscape and in the field of visual arts since the early 2000s. More concretely, what I am doing here is studying what I believe to be a radically underrated new media item, which, despite its origins on the television screen, has evolved into a form of video which now finds itself closer to film.

The music video in particular is of interest to study as a new media art form due to its difficulty to define, which provides virgin territory in terms of limits and parameters, much like Jousset 19 the difficulties which lie in defining the parameters of human existence within the new media landscape. This, in addition to the music narrative of the music video makes for a form of media

I find it interesting to investigate and contextualize in terms of film and new media. As a starting point for my research, I picked up where music video theory left off, mostly through the work of

Carol Vernallis, who remains one of the only scholars to have addressed the role of the music video in all its facets. She addresses the music video in relation to film, society and its means of production and distribution. As a basis for my research, I have used her approach to the music video and extended it into the context of new media and post classical digital cinema through the analysis of contemporary music videos in both their physical and theoretical composition. In terms of analysis, and contextualization of video clips, I found myself drawn to the works of

Andrew Goodwin and Carol Vernallis on the music video as being some of the only relevant sets of research done on the topic in context with society, and other media, specifically film and music and in terms of methods for video analysis.

Although these works were not written very recently(1993 and 2004), the fact that they stand alone, as some of the most (and only) relevant writings on the topic have lead me to make an attempt at justifying the lack of attention granted to the music video. The problematic aspects of the music videos lie both within the structural difficulty to classify them, rooted in the

Benjaminian propensity to dismiss pop culture items as mere capitalist products, devoid of a deeper meaning and meant to be taken lightly by the audience. The lingering influence of classical critical theory has created a boundary between music videos and cinema, both symbolic representations of low and high culture respectively.

This, in combination with the difficulty to attribute a standard definition to the music video, has left the field of music video lacking in terms of analytical techniques. In other words, Jousset 20 research has been rendered difficult due to the elusive definition of the object of study. In his

1993 book Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music, Television, and Popular Culture, Andrew

Goodwin addressed what he refers to as the “poverty of music video analysis”, a phenomenon which results in increasing confusion surrounding the definition of the music video, its purpose and its place within the media landscape. Goodwin attributes this methodological lacuna to an absence of concepts adequate to the field (20). In this, he underlines a structural issue concerning the lack of terminology and methods employed in the study of music videos, which in turn result in a lack of research done regarding the media.

In an attempt at determining reasons for this theoretical neglect, I identified the recurring mention of complexity of the music video genre as being the main source of perplexity in the field. In this, I would like to think of music video studies as a work in progress, simultaneously influenced and informed by new developments in media technologies and movements in film. In

2004, Carol Vernallis addressed the complexity of the music video genre and its analysis in her book Experiencing the Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. Years after Goodwin, she concluded that the problematic nature of methods of music video analysis had not shifted greatly.

She attributes the “disorienting style” of the video clip as being one of the main sources of theoretical unclarity.

Taking Goodwin’s remarks further, Vernallis provides her own method of analysis which

I am using as a stepping stone in my research. She examines the music video as a distinct genre, one different from its predecessors, a medium with its own ways of organizing materials, exploring themes, and dealing with time(x). In this, she differentiates the music video from

“older” media (namely film, television, and photography) and addresses its multimedia nature which, in turn renders a fully classical analysis inadequate. By following this reasoning and, Jousset 21 taking into account the yet to be determined stance of the contemporary music video within the new media landscape as well as its “aesthetic newness” (Hansen and Lenoir), I have determined that a multilayered analysis of the music video is the most accurate way to proceed.

The music video is, in itself made up of multiple core components: video, as well as music

(music and lyrics), each component should be taken into account and analyzed, separately, all the while keeping the greater picture in mind. This, in addition to the cinematographic component makes for a complex media, which calls for a complex, innovative method. Where Goodwin and

Vernallis point out the complexities of the music video as a cinematic form and suggest paying more attention to their development, evolution and impact, the temporality of their work fades rapidly and is therefore lacking in terms of contemporary context. As an extension of their work,

I propose an experimental contextualization of the music video as a bridge between “old” and new media, here film and digital video.

Blurred Lines

Upon further examination of research done on music videos, I became very conscious of the methodological challenges presented by the study of a semi researched topic. In this, my method is built up of equal parts of theory and invention. A collection of theory that is either directly related to or peripherally applicable to music video (theory) and interpretation. In this, I am using what I do know in order to clarify what I don’t know. The difficulty in defining a

“music video aesthetic” is a central point in Vernallis’ study of the topic. For instance, she refers to the complex relationship of music videos and music video lyrics. She refers to the lyrics as having an oracular function, in which they name and point, but do not describe (155). The Jousset 22 relationship of music video visuals with the content of the lyrics is one, amongst many of the dynamics which contributes to the meaning of the music video in its final form.

The difficulty of pinning down a specific style for the music video lies in the fluidity of their form and content. The videos in my corpus do not abide to particular genre characteristics apart from the fact that they have all been released under the term “music video”. This means that each clip could almost be approached through an (almost) individual lens, due to the multiplicity of narrative modes and an accumulation of styles and devices, each music video could stand alone. In terms of content, genres, and styles, contemporary music videos come together in their disparity. The multiplicity of meaning in the music video gives a look into the cultural climate, or Zeitgeist of the time. In qualifying music videos as a film genre, I am presenting them as being the visualization of a crisis in both identity and culture through the cinematic and new media lens. Given the impossibility of determining a universal definition of culture, picking a particular artifact to study can tell us a lot about society at large. The necessity to divide cultural fashions into binaries echoes a fundamentally structuralist approach, a very present backbone of the academic field. I am placing the music video at the tail end of this spectrum, as one of the more accessible symbols of a crisis both within the media and corresponding branches of media theory, at its peak, a crisis which is distinct its simultaneous revolution and reflection on critical theory.

The blurring of lines, between cultural presets such as the binary separation of high and low culture is being challenged concretely in both the domains of art and technology. I am placing the music video at the crux of this challenge in an attempt to gain more insight on the human aspect of the consequences of rapidly evolving, technologies and media. A necessary point to take note of in the study of the music video, as I am defining it here, is informed by, but Jousset 23 not bound to its origins on MTV and, film. I am placing the music videos at the crux of a cultural tempest ruled by crumbling binaries and examining the particular outcome of the strained dynamics of the relationship between new media and film. Here I am establishing the music video as one of the offshoots of the debate concerning new media and the death of film.

Pieces Of What

Based on a collection of assumptions made about the death of film and the future of the cinematic medium, I devoted my attention to the idea that film is not dead, new media is not killing film, it is making it different. Based on the study of film as an adaptable medium, I began to consider the different ways in which film and new media are intertwined, not only in terms of means of production, but also in terms of genres, and film movements, and more specifically post classical cinema. Vernallis states that the music video has colonized contemporary cinema much more than we know (33). Following this statement, contemporary music videos can be seen as having woven themselves into the fabric of cinema in a significant manner which I find necessary to address in regard to the crisis of cinema in the new media era, and the status of the music video.

Taking into consideration the rapid progress made both in terms of technologies and platforms for production and distribution of music videos I have decided to limit my selection to videos with release dates spanning from 2010 to 2016. In terms of music video styles, there is a significant break to be made between videos produced before and after 2010 based on the improvements made in digital recording technologies and the boost in quality of mobile recording devices, for example the launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010, was a major improvement

Jousset 24

allowing users to shoot in 720p, direct High Quality video recording, which was a massive improvement from its primitive beginnings.

The videos were selected for their contemporary nature as well as their aesthetic and cinematic properties. I used a wide variety of musical genres in order to not limit the interpretation of the clips to a certain musical genre, or tradition. In line with the idea of fluidity in relation to cultural identity and set genre definitions in film, the videos in my selection span over various The fact that music videos are somewhat cast aside when it comes to media analysis gave me some more freedom in terms of defining a set of criteria for their selection. I began my selection by taking note of videos that strike me as being a part of the post digital cinematic aesthetic, primarily through their visual impact. Although this initial method is entirely subjective, I strive to adjust this bias through the use of standard film analysis. My selection is a combination of videos I determined would fit the aesthetic of post digital cinema and a series of new releases which surfaced over the course of my research, videos that were released over the past year which allowed me to reinforce my point concerning the contemporary, spontaneous nature of the music video. Due to the difficulties in defining and analyzing the music video as an art form, I have chosen to conduct my analysis following cinematic features in this particular selection of music videos. Here a more systematic approach was appropriate in order to build as strong foundation for the more theoretical and symbolic aspects of my research.

Jousset 25

Lights, Camera, Action

The videos I have chosen are categorized according to the following elements which are equally present in film: mainly through visual and technical analysis of the videos. In order to provide basic organization and clarity regarding categorization, the videos will be examined in cinematic terms according their visual (Lights), technical (Camera), and narrative (Action) properties. In a more systematic way, I am outlining examples of videos which employ a range of cinematic devices (i.e. graphic match cuts and strobe lights) which I then contextualize in accordance with new media theory and developing new media philosophies put forth by Berry and Hansen, amongst others.

I collected all the videos off the Internet, and more specifically YouTube,Vimeo,

Nowness, and Motion Collector( whose videos are hosted on Vimeo) all of the video used in my research have been compiled in a joint YouTube playlist, alphabetically except for a few particular cases in which I have mentioned the source separately. The videos I have collected were all available on YouTube, except when noted otherwise. All of the video have been compiled into a joint YouTube playlist, following the alphabetization by director’s names in my bibliography. In a few particular cases, I have mentioned the source of the media separately.

The gap in research concerning music videos was reflected all the way into the MLA guidelines concerning the referencing of video clips retrieved from YouTube. The Purdue OWL website states that The MLA does not currently prescribe a citation style for YouTube videos

(Lab, OWL, and Purdue, “MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications)”. Here I was faced with a methodological dilemma and I had to decide whether to focus on emphasizing either platforms or creative credits through my referencing system. In order to prevent Jousset 26 undermining the validity of my arguments, I have chosen to reference the clips like I would a film, in order to stress directorial credit, and to integrate creative credit more smoothly into the structure of my arguments. For the sake of clarity, I have chosen to cite the videos by the director’s name. Despite this methodological lapse, I will be treating this collection of YouTube clips as films. Given the size of my corpus, I have also chosen to reference the videos separately from my works cited and I have italicized the video titles for my in-text citations in the following manner so as to maintain clarity regarding the name of the track and the name of the artist: “Song name-Artist”. I have chosen to reference specific segments in the videos in the following manner: if I were to reference a scene taking place 20 seconds into the video, I would write it as follows: [0:20], in brackets, rather than parentheses to avoid confusion with my non-video citations.

Picture This

In order to conduct this analysis, I am following Vernallis’ reasoning concerning the relationship of music and video when they are put together. She states that: “each medium can suggest different types of time, and each can undercut or put into question the temporality of another medium” (14). In this, I am looking at the music, and the video in each clip, both as independent media but mostly in the way they are interconnected and the ways in which this structures the narrative and affects the final form of the video clip. In line with my defense of the music video as a film genre, and the elementary principles Vernallis puts forth for the study of the music video, film analysis will be the basis of my method I will be applying the method of film analysis to the visual components of the music video. This will include a close examination of the cinematic characteristics of the music video (shots, editing, and narrative devices) as well Jousset 27 as their connection to the music, which itself will be analyzed in terms of structure and ( in most cases) lyrics. The interaction between the musical and visual aspects of the music video also provides a ground for interpretation. This segment of the analysis is more theory based, and takes into account more subjective means of interpretation, which remains a dominant characteristic of the music video. In order to address this issue, the clips will be used throughout to physically represent the theoretical points I establish.

With respects to the complex nature of the music video, I find it counterintuitive, and not adapted to the medium to suggest a set of rigidly defined terms to analyze a medium which is fluid in its nature and not rigidly defined in theoretical or media terminology. In this, my method is both based in more classical methods (film analysis) as well as various other theoretical backgrounds such as media theory, sociology, and art history, all of which are woven into the intertextual web of the music video. This will allow me to place the music video within the post- digital art landscape, specifically at the intersection of cinema and new media. My definition of new media, for the purposes of this research includes media which are digital products, and make use of the Internet in their creation and broadcasting. This entails that the platforms, as well as the means of production of the contemporary music video are intertwined with rapidly evolving digital technologies. This means that my analysis of the music video will include the platforms on which they are being “broadcast”, in the aim of showing the ways the music video has progressed since its early days on MTV.

Jousset 28

The Whole Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

In terms of reflection on this method, the necessity of a multilayered approach brought me to similar conclusions as Goodwin and Vernallis who state that the music video is intriguing in its composition, and the dialogue it creates between images and sound. However, detaching the music video from its commercial origins seems to have unlocked its untapped artistic potential and made it more worth examining as an independent art form. This particular aspect of the video clip’s composition places it on the brink of technology and art thus making it more difficult to determine a method which appropriately incorporates both disciplines. In this, I have devised a method which is, in itself, much like the music video, fluid and multidimensional.

Through this, I am addressing what Goodwin refers to as a “stylistic problem in knowing how to identify music video clips”(xiii), by working towards my personal definition of the video clip as being a film genre which is, different from its predecessors in the way that it is both inherently rooted both film and new media.

The music video is inherently postmodern in its structure. It differs from the classical cinematic narratives and combines various modes of storytelling within itself. In terms of cinematic techniques, devices, and narratives, the filmic aspects of the music video are necessary to examine within a dimension of their own. In this, I am exploring recurring narrative themes which are key to the postmodern mindset, the post digital art landscape, and the understanding and redefining of critical theory in the age of digital technology.

Themes such as intertextuality, defining reality, and, on a more theoretical note: redefining critical theory will be covered through the analysis of contemporary music videos. Through this,

I aim to explicitly draw connections between the theoretical newness of the music video and the Jousset 29 visual innovation it brings to the media of film. The music video is complex in its form (and content). Due to the multiplicity of media it contains, and it’s cinematic and television origins, the contemporary music video much like its identity fluid new media audience. In this, I will show how music videos defy and reboot the cinematic medium theoretically, academically, and through its mediatic form. In this, I will address Goodwin’s “stylistic problem” by contextualizing the underestimated medium of the music in order to present the music video as film’s response to new media culture. Based on previous knowledge concerning the medium of film, and the contextualization of film genres and editing techniques in a socio-historical landscape, this method is pieced together in an experimental fashion, replicating the fluid nature of the contemporary music video. Here my analysis contains a combination of historical cinematic devices (i.e. the Kuleshov effect), and broader theories of metaphor and art (i.e. color theory).

Step By Step

Through an in depth analysis, the aesthetic properties of the music video, I will run through components which contribute to the visual acceleration and audio-visual intensity of the music video ranging from the use of light and color, to editing, camerawork, as well as narrative structure and meaning making in order to address the fluidity of the form and content of the music video in relation to film. Both the technical (stylistic devices, editing techniques) and symbolic (historical origins of these techniques, effects on narrative) meanings of the cinematic devices used within my selection of videos, will be contextualized within the field of visual media.

After this, I will address the aesthetics of post-digital cinema as being a framework within which the music video can find its place, in order to questions of definition and Jousset 30 contextualization. Here I will provide an outline of characteristics of post-digital art which are being reproduced in the music video such as the purposeful use of lo-fi editing and technological errors such as glitches, both as stylistic devices and what they represent in relation to the role nostalgia within post-digital artistic thought.

After having conducted a visual analysis of the music videos, I will shift my focus to the audience, and examine how the condensed, accelerated content of the music video impacts reader attention, reception, and interpretation. Through the theory of the ergodic reader expressed by Laura Strudwick, I will examine the relationship between multiple, constant streams of information and neuroplasticity in relation to the dynamics of deep and hyper attention. Cognitive adapting will be placed in the forefront as a coping mechanism, which allows us to navigate an accelerated, constantly switched on new media landscape. As a conclusion of the influence of oscillating fluidity of the music video both film and reader cognition, I will illustrate the metaphysical crisis taking place characterized by the strained relationship of new media and the human experience. Through the lens of the music video, core points of new media philosophy such as human-computer interaction, embodiment, self- actualization, as well as experiences of time and reality will be covered.

Through this, I am aim to establish the music video as a marker for the relationship of new media and film, which both revives and historicizes film, while at the same time addressing core debates of new media philosophy, thus providing a basis for a shift in ideology concerning the role of the music video within the media landscape and allow it to define itself as an art form which is fully adapted for the digital age.

Jousset 31

II. Sound & Vision: Contextualizing The Post-Classical Music Video

See Me, Hear Me

Film has, since its inception, been a prominent medium for innovation and teasing of the senses. Although the combination of film and music is not the most recent innovative component of the cinematic medium, the evolution of the music video over the past 30 years has allowed for a variety of videos with newly intensified aesthetics to bloom and new connections to be made between images and music, to the point where various canons have emerged(Vernallis,209), and music video directors have flourished in the industry, due to their attention to new technologies and new audiovisual relations(5) . The unprecedented creative potential of the music video is seen by both Goodwin and Vernallis as a response to classical Hollywood film conventions and a source of sensorial confusion. In the music video, the relationship between music and images reaches beyond its “soundtrack “properties and allows for multiple narratives to unfold, and move in and out of each other.

Vernallis points out that music videos no longer have to fit the short lengths of pop songs, or present them without interruption, or attempt to “sell” or even showcase them”(27). Here she underlines the emancipation of the music video in terms of form and purpose. This is an element of what Goodwin characterizes as the disorienting style of the music video, as a part of the wider problem of the role of the visual in [popular] music(1).

The newly disorienting nature of the music video has become a viable site to develop style and technique, and to discover means for communicating musical experience”(Vernallis,26).In terms of film analysis, many of the aforementioned characteristics of post-classical have been Jousset 32 replicated in the music video. This deconstruction of narrative and technical principles can also be seen as a source of tension when it comes to the music video text. In some cases, the musical or visual element with the sharpest profile tends to claim the viewer’s attention (52). Much like the images themselves, the relationship between music and visuals is in constant motion.

Through a series of examples ranging from 2010 to 2016, I will illustrate the ways in which music videos differ both from their origins as promotional media and from classical Hollywood narrative structure, first through their complex narratives, fueled independently by film and music, and the variety of relationships between the two, followed by the technical freedom of the music video through camerawork, stylistic devices, and post-production. Here I would like to illustrate the audio visual intensity of the music video in its current form.

Lights: Visual Acceleration And Audio-Visual Intensity

Luminous Freedom

The accelerated development of the music video has become a point of interest in terms of narrative analysis but also in terms of cinematic devices.

In the last five to ten years, music video has become increasingly sophisticated in its cinematic address, mirroring numerous developments in narrative cinema” (Vernallis 159). The particular dynamics of music and video allow for the camerawork, much like the narrative thread to work with and/or against the music and images. The way we experience a song, through camerawork can replicate what we do when we listen to music, what Vernallis refers to as jumping from one location to another even before an image catches our eye (44)”. Here she stresses the concentrated, constantly moving setting of the music video, emphasized by an innovative use of classic cinematic techniques such as particular shots and editing techniques. She goes on further Jousset 33 to underline the value of this innovation as a teaching tool, which draws attention to the grammar of traditional shots by giving them different functions and meanings (33). Following this, I will provide visual references from music videos which employ various cinematic devices to new aesthetic ends. Through the study of camerawork, the use of errors( specifically lens flares and glitches), as well as the use of particular schemes, and black and white, and the use of lights and editing I aim to emphasize the accelerated, intensified visuals of the music video.

Syntax Error

Apart from a disregard for linearity and continuity, many devices which have become customary in the music video stem from technical mishaps, or glitches. For example the lens flare, which occurs when light becomes trapped within the lens and reflects irregularly, is often seen as an aesthetic error in film (the work of J.J.Abrams set aside) is heavily present in the music video. In some cases, it adds to the dreamy atmosphere of the video(Glass Animals-Hazey, Beach House-

Wishes, the xx-Chained), in others it adds to the nocturnal setting(Jamie xx-Loud Places, Bixel

Boys & Poupon-Not Your Girl) ,plays with the sunlight(XYLØ-America, the Kills-Doing it to

Death,J.Cole-She Knows, Jon Hopkins-Open Eye Signal) or is used to represent blinding stage lights(the Lumineers-Ophelia, Arcade Fire-We Exist).

Glitches are another stylistic device which find their origin in technical errors. Previously due to static and poor antenna receptions, or skips in the magnetic tape of audio or video cassettes, the glitch is now purposefully implemented as artistic devices. The beginning of

Jodeb’s Halsey-New Americana [0:00-0:28] mimics the effect of an overused video-cassette complete with “PLAY” in the upper left hand corner. This effect is maintained for the first 28 seconds of the video, after which the image switches to digital high definition. Similarly, the opening credits of Travi$ Scott’s Upper Echelon(pictured above) appear in glitchy font over high Jousset 34 definition images. Frances

Ellen’s Gotham City

Creepers-Gotham City

Creepers, and Craig, Craven and Nicholas’ Rihanna-

American Oxygen feature glitches which are interspersed throughout the videos and switch between club scenes and found footage respectively. The full 5 minutes and 12 seconds of

Patwary and AWGE’s A$AP Mob-Yamborghini High are entirely made up of glitches. In

Odyssey-Rival Consoles director Michael Zoidis made the conscious choice of creating glitches with a circuit bent video processor in order to control the visuals in time with the music.

Jousset 35

Chroma Vs Monochrome

Vernallis refers to the “intensified audiovisual aesthetics’’ of the music video as a distinguishing characteristic of the music video. In addition to the immediate relationship to movement the camera creates, I believe this intensity is also linked to the use of colors and/or black in white in the videos which can heavily impact the atmosphere of the audio-visual narrative. Here I have chosen to apply color theory in order to determine recurring color schemes. For example, the “hazy”’ color spectrum composed of varying shades of red, pink, purple, turquoise and light blues, often accompanied by a light fog or a cloud of smoke is heavily implemented in Halsey-New Americana(pictured above) and in

Clockwise from above in the figure below Beach House-Wishes,Astronomyy-Nothin on my Mind,

Talos-In Time,and ZHU-In the Morning (Fig.1clockwise from the top)

In all of these cases, whether the source of light be natural (Nothing on my Mind) or artificial (In Time) it creates surreal dreamscapes and emphasizes the surreal haze of a bright, strange, recognizable set of colors.

On other hand, black and white is also a prominent stylistic device in the music video. In some cases, it emphasizes the dramatic tone of the songs and the visual narrative (ODESZA-It’s Only,

Hozier-Take Me To Church, Son Lux-Easy, the Dead Weather-Impossible Winner, Kendrick

Lamar-Alright) whereas in others, it is a purely aesthetic choice made to underline a particular Jousset 36 segment of the song (Talos-

In Time switches from color to black and white [2:14-

2:52] during a hook which is slower than the rest of the song then back again, Hype

Williams’ Kanye West-All of the Lights begins in black and white [0:00-1:01], during a string intro before switching to aggressive accelerated lighting and a chorus of horns ) or relevant to the style of film theFig. director SEQ Figureis imitating: \* ARABIC U.S.Girls 1 -Window

Shades which borrows devices from the early days of cinema.

Jousset 37

All of the Lights

In addition to this, a stark visual example of acceleration is the use excessive graphic motion triggered by strobe lights which creates an immediate, sometimes sickening effect of rapid movement. This mechanism is present in Hype Williams’ Kanye West-All of the Lights,

David Lynch’s Nine Inch Nails-Came Back Haunted, Frances Ellen’s Gotham City Creepers-

Gotham City Creepers, and Douglas Hart’s Primal Scream, Sky Ferreira-Where the Light Gets

In. The use of strobes and other lights in Kanye West-All of the Lights is relevant to the lyrics of the song, in which West lists different types of lighting in the pre-hook: “(All of the lights)//Cop lights//flash lights//spotlights//strobe lights//street lights (All of the lights, all of the lights)” and can be seen standing on a police car with flashing sirens.

Whether the lights are metaphorical or not, here the use of accelerated flash lighting in time with the lyrics of the song enhance the audiovisual experience. In David Lynch’s Nine Inch Nails-

Came Back Haunted, the glitchy strobing lights create a nightmarish atmosphere, in line with the theme of the song expressed in the title in the lyrics: “ I don't believe it//I had to see it//I came back haunted//I came back haunted” and the reference to David Lynch’s body of work as an auteur.

Gotham City Creepers-Gotham City Creepers places the viewer in a vampiric, clubbing atmosphere where strobe lights naturally find their place. In a similar vein Primal Scream, Sky

Ferreira-Where the Light Gets In relies on heavy colorful lighting, and shadows to create an atmosphere reminiscent of the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol’s Studio 54. When the chorus kicks off, the singers and the band are illuminated by lights creating red and white polka dot effect identical to the iconic photograph of the Velvet Underground. Jousset 38

Primal Scream, Sky Ferreira-Where the Light Gets In vs the Velvet Underground

Chopped & Screwed

In order to fully take into account the narrative and cinematic devices put to work in the music video, it is necessary to have a look at the tail end of the video process: editing and post production. Unlike films, music videos frequently employ intentionally disjunctive edits

(Vernallis 31). Here I will point out some of these edits, along with other devices of post- production which contribute to the condensed modes of storytelling and visuals in the music video.

Accelerations and slow motion are a key device in changing the pace of a scene, and they gain more importance specifically when looked at in relation to music, in music videos acceleration and slow motion contribute to the nonverbal narrative. In Seekae-Another, shots are accelerated and slowed down in time with the music, creating a visual whole that is ruled by the music. ODESZA-It’s Only uses slow motion to add to the dramatic narrative and the slow, drum heavy music and the chorus of the song: “ It’s only water//it’s only fire//it’s only love”. Talos-In

Time contains a segment in slow motion when the protagonist begins to run to join the woman he Jousset 39 loves [2:54]. Sam Pilling’s J.Cole-She Knows also put slow motion to use for dramatic effects, specifically when the protagonists catches his mother in the midst of an affair with another man[3:40-3:49], a segment during which the music also stops, halting the sonic narrative, and drawing the viewer’s attention to this revelatory moment.

Jamie xx-Loud Places contains a slow motion sequence where Jamie xx and his bandmate Romy can be seen skateboarding in a bowl [3:09-4:06] as the chorus swells up and they are surrounded by multicolored scraps of paper. This combination of editing and music gives a sort of “big finish “to the song before the chorus fades out. A series of slow motion and acceleration at close intervals can be seen in Kendrick Lamar-Alright punctuating the narrative and emphasizing the contrast between celebration, and violent instances. Travi$ Scott’s Upper

Echelon speeds up and slows down as the viewer is taken through a Lynchian southern gothic landscape full of a variety of strange characters. In this context, the slowing and speeding up of the video allows the viewer to take in the intricate details of the visuals. The xx-Chained put slows motion to dramatic effect as the band jump into the water and swim, intercut with shots of an iridescent sky and the slow, lounge tune of the music, this creates a dreamlike atmosphere.

Back In The U.S.S.R.

In her book Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, Vernallis differentiates music videos from film in the way that they employ intentionally disjunctive edits

(31). She then draws a comparison between music video editing and Soviet formalist film, by bringing in the graphic match cut as a device that was dominant in Soviet formalist film due to technical limitations, but has been replicated in music videos by choice. Such an edit joins two shots through shared compositional elements such as color or shape, irrespective of content (30). Jousset 40

In terms of music video, the use of graphic match cuts contributes to the sped up narrative of the music video and plays an interesting role in producing an effect of discontinuity (37). Choppy editing through graphic match cuts is particularly striking in David Terry Fine’s Son Lux-Easy, where scenes of a woman being bound by ropes are intercut with shots of sketches and an old woman standing on a beach. This device is used throughout, creating stark switches between these three settings, while playing against the singer moaning in a grizzly voice: “Easy, easy” over a plinky piano.

A graphic match cut comes as a surprise at the end of Froth-Nothing Baby: although most of the video is smoothly shot, the end features the protagonist cycling through a tunnel. In order to connect his entering and exiting the tunnel, the director uses this device [3:39-3:50]. In terms of Soviet formalist aesthetics, Meghan Remy and Cameron Mitchell’s U.S.Girls-Window

Shades (Fig.2) is the closest. Shot entirely in black and white, it was described by U.S. Girl’s record label as being a take on Golden Era Hollywood (4AD). Although this is the explicit intent of the creator, Window Shades also borrow from Soviet formalist film, and, in particular devices like the Kuleshov effect. The Kuleshov effect is achieved through the superimposition of images that are not explicitly related, creating an effect of linearity where the viewer creates meaning via association of multiple images, rather than one linear shot. This device, in combination with the lyrics of the song play off each other and create and contribute to making meaning in the video.

For example Remy’s plaintive “I haven’t spoken with you for a while now” is emphasized by shots of a clock turning forward, visualizing longing and the passing of time. This type of reproduction of historical film effects suggests that music videos are a prolongation of film into the future both refreshing still dominant classical traditions in film and ensuring a future for the medium. Jousset 41

Due to its multimedia composition, the music video also finds itself at a narrative advantage of

being able to tell multiple stories either all once, parallel to one another or irregularly

intertwined. The music video narrative

can thus fulfills a role both as an

innovative form of storytelling, and a

vessel for reflection on media culture,

and culture at large in both implicit and

explicit ways. Fig. SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2 U.S.Girls-Window Shades

Camera: Camerawork And Movement

Everything In Motion

The camerawork in music videos is at times vertiginous, employing nonlinear angles and

multiple shots in condensed time and space. The feeling of space in the music video depends

greatly on the way the camera is used and the atmosphere each shot seeks to create. For instance,

this can determine the way the singer is presented, in terms of connecting with the viewer and

breaking the 4th wall. The genre brings to the foreground candor, self-disclosure, and direct

address (56). In Anders Malmberg’s Savages-Adore, alternates between close-ups and zooms in

and out of singer Jehnny Beth’s face, while she stands still and sings into the camera. At times,

she looks away, blinks, and sways slightly in the way a person would in a slight breach of

personal space. Here the use of the close-up creates an intimate and uncomfortable atmosphere

Beth describes as stemming from the desire to make a video which would show the band the way

they are, with no artifice (Broadly). Jousset 42

Another striking characteristic of the music video is the constant movement of the camera, which defies the principles of establishing shots and cinematic convention in the greater sense. Astronomyy’s Astronomyy-Nothin On My Mind is a single tracking shot which follows the protagonist as he rides a his skateboard down a road on the French Riviera. The camera tilts and shifts left and right, following the movement of the board, creating the illusion that the camera is being led by the skater rather than by a cameraman or a dolly. Georgia Hudson’s Glass

Animals-Hazey makes use of sharp, vertiginous shifts in movement [0:33-0:40], [0:50-54] which create sharp, accelerated changes. In Seekae-Another, Ian Pons Jewell uses a similar device where he shifts the camera from close-ups, to the landscape, to the inside of a home, cutting up the visual thread of the video resulting in a jumpy narrative. Jim Larson’s DIIV-Mire (Grant’s song) makes use of multiple cameras and angles which create an illusion of constant movement and offer different, sometimes unexpected points of view. One camera follows the singer Cole while he wanders outside, and enters a house where he is joined by his bandmates, as they begin to perform, the camera pans around the room in circular motion [0:00-0:15] and switches between shots of the room and shots of the band, who even react to the camera. The most particular use of the camera in this case is the cameras placed on the necks of the guitars. The combination of these different camera angles adds to the intensity of the relationship between the music and the images. The Kills-Doing it to Death contains a shot from the point of view of a grave, which differs from the shots of the funeral procession and the inside of the church and brings the viewer into the video while Lorn-Acid Rain, is shot in one take, during which the camera follows the irregular movements of the dancers and the music.

Jousset 43

Action: Narrative And Meaning Making

Stop Making Sense

Goodwin and Vernallis both stress major shifts in narrative structure present within the music video. Music video narratives are created through both the music and the images presented to the audience and bound together by the technical in ways that free the narrative. In some cases, the musical feature can be reflected in the music-video image (155); this can be seen in

Michael Zoidis’ video Odyssey-Rival Consoles where the visuals oscillate along with the music.

Zoidis explains the process of keeping the music and the visuals intertwined as follows: I wanted the video to compliment the tracks real sample recordings as well as its analogue elements, so I set about collecting various real world objects, such as different shaped glass goblets and running various different light sources through them. I then set about contrasting this imagery with some analogue equipment of my own, in the form of an old circuit bent video processor. Through this,

I was able to glitch and corrupt the organic flowing visuals, in a manner that I was able to control and keep reactive to the music.” Odyssey does not contain any lyrics, which emphasizes the music and the images thus creating a narrative based solely on the technical aspects of musical progression and the responsiveness of the images to these changes.

The linking and unlinking of visual imagery and unfolding music are also a distinct characteristic of the music video, which contributes majorly to the structure of the narrative. For example Riley Blakeway’s Froth-Nothing Baby follows a man through his daily activities, and is narrated by the singer’s moan:” nothing that I say//nothing that I do//oh there's nothing baby I can give to you”. Here, the slow pace of the song is enhanced by shots of the protagonist sitting Jousset 44 alone at a table in a diner, staring off into space, or hazily looking over his glasses at a couple kissing. In this clip, the sound and the images are linked throughout, punctuated by the hopeless tone of the song, as such it can be seen as a short existentialist film.

In contrast to this, there are also narratives where the music comes and goes, giving the images a new meaning. In Kevan Funk’s ODESZA-All We Need (feat. Shy Girls), the images and the music play off of each other and give the song a new meaning. The upbeat tone of the song contrasts harshly with the story being told through the video. Here we follow a young couple, their relationship and their struggle with addiction. The song itself does not begin until [0:38] when the male protagonist has prepared and taken a hit of something. The music continues while the couple “trips’’ and is abruptly silenced at [1:43], right at the end of the chorus buildup, while the male protagonist vomits violently in the toilet. The story continues in the same manner, following the highs and lows of the couple both in terms of their addiction and their relationship.

The music swells up when they are high and stops abruptly every time they come down and need a fix. Here the song gains a darker meaning, the lyrics “‘I'm gonna to take another ride//call me on my bitter side” followed by “and If no one gets hurt//what was it worth” stand in stark contrast with the dance, upbeat tone of the song.

The viewer begins to see “all we need” refers to a spiral of abuse both in terms of substances and interpersonal relationships. The lyrics gain what Vernallis refers to as an

“oracular function” wherein they name and point but do not describe (155). In All We Need, the lyrics point are what the characters could be saying to each other, they point at something, a something which is visualized through the video. The nonlinear way in which the song is played contributes to the potential for meaning making in this narrative through sound and images, Jousset 45 though not always simultaneously. Here the aggressive narrative device of cutting the upbeat sections of the song off intensifies the strain between the characters in the story, and, on a greater level the tension between music and images in the music video.

In terms of meaning making, another key point in the music video narrative is the construction and representation of reality. In the music video, both a real world and a heightened, phantasmagoric audiovisual world can exist all at once” (160). This double existence is present in Wendy Morgan’s the Kills-Doing it to Death, where the band is a part of a funeral procession, and can be seen standing in a graveyard. The “real” aspect of the narrative is broken by the use of doppelgängers, where the singers Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince turn around to see versions of themselves singing[1:31],dancing[1:15] ,or sitting up in a casket[2:25-2:26]. This occurs on multiple occasions throughout the video, and the double-takes the singers take suggest they are conscious of a break with reality and are able to see these apparitions. Here the intertwining of phantasm and the representation of reality serve as a stylistic device which contributes to the complexity of the narrative.

Famously Inspired

The music video also finds itself at an intertextual advantage, both in terms of its double narratives (music and video) as well as its format, which allows for it to borrow from other visual arts, film in particular. What Goodwin refers to as “mechanisms of intertextuality and multidiscursivity” point of the narrative free form of the music video, specifically in contrast to film as not being bound to any conventions. Many music videos contain narratives which are informed by specific films and film genres, for example Nicolas Pesce’s Tei Shi-Bassically Jousset 46 reproduces the aesthetics of 1960s/1970s exploitation films and R113’s Lorn-Acid Rain has been described as a “beautiful mix of [David] Lynch, Romero, and zombie teenagers”(SALG).

The impact of cinema can also be seen in the music video through Fenty and Megaforce’s Bitch

Better Have My Money which reproduces scenes from cult films such as Brian De Palma’s 1976 horror film Carrie(Fig.3), Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise(1991)(Fig.4), and Ted Kotcheff’s

Weekend at Bernie’s(1989)(Fig.5) (Gorton).

Fig.3 BBHMM vs Carrie

Fig.4 BBHMM vs Thelma and Louise

Jousset 47

Fig.5 BBHMM vs Weekend at Bernie’s

CANADA’s Tame Impala-the Less I Know the Better depicts a relationship between a young blond woman and a gorilla, reminiscent of the premise in King Kong. David Wilson’s

Arcade Fire-We Exist features a dance sequence inspired by Adrian Lyne’s Flashdance

(1983).While these three were inspired by specific scenes and storylines, some videos rely on the entire aesthetic of a film from which they draw their inspiration. For instance Tom Gould’s

Action Bronson-Easy Rider is directly inspired by Dennis Hopper’s 1969 classic of the same name.

Here Gould mimics the film by depicting the rapper Action Bronson taking acid racing across the desert on a Harley (Camp). Another example of intertextuality between specific films and their music video counterparts is Dexter Navy and A$AP Rocky’s A$AP Rocky-L$D (LOVE

X $EX X DREAMS) which was inspired by Gaspar Noé’s 2009 film Enter the Void. In an interview with Vice’s music channel Noisey, A$AP Rocky explains how the whole video was inspired by the film after director Dexter Navy put him onto the film (Noisey).Some music videos are intentionally released as films, for example Paul Thomas Anderson’s Radiohead-

Daydreaming, and Spike Jonze’s Arcade Fire-the Suburbs, while other use the device of Jousset 48 seriality: both Slayer-You Against You, and Haelos-Dust are instalments in three part music video stories. Vernallis states that the deep connection between image and song in music video allows for the responsiveness of editing and other visual parameters to musical features (44), here she underlines the multiplicity of narrative devices music video creators employ which complicate the relationship between music, video and the medium of film and introduces the technical aspects of the music video which contribute to its disorienting narrative approach.

What’s Going On?

In his 1991 book Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Fredric

Jameson states that culture today is a matter of media (68). Jameson’s 25 year old statement has only gained in relevance since then, specifically in relation to the propagation of new media art forms and outlets. Douglas Kellner makes a similar point in relating theories of media and culture to specific studies of concrete phenomena contextualized within the vicissitudes of contemporary society and history(3). This is particularly interesting when studying the content of the music video in terms of sociological content-narratives that are drawn from contemporary societal issues and represent them through their original form. If we assess the music video through Frith’s definition of pop culture, we can view the music video as describing the process in which class and other group values and conflicts are mediated (35).

David Wilson’s Arcade Fire-We Exist outlines a young person’s struggle with gender identity (Wilson) addressing contemporary debates on gender and sexuality, both through the visual narrative and the music. As the protagonist enters a dive bar, the chorus swells “Maybe it's true//they're staring at you//when you walk in the room//tell 'em its fine//stare if you like//just let Jousset 49 us through” explicitly stating the desire to be accepted. Canty, Thomson, and Feel Good Lost’s

Hozier-Take Me To Church addresses a criminalized love story between two men through church metaphors. He compares electing a person in the place of an organization as something that is worth worshipping and something that is tangible and real(Hughes) creating a parallel between the freedom of worship and the freedom to love whomever we choose Kendrick Lamar-Alright,

Rihanna-American Oxygen, XYLØ-America and Halsey-New Americana all address different facets of the contemporary American condition: respectively police violence against the African

American community, the American Dream, American foreign policy, and the state of American youth, particularly those born in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In terms of critical theory, David Berry’s blending of critical theory into the digital becomes necessary in the way that he underlines the inseparable nature of sociology and critique in the interpretation of media (149). He suggests this in order to understand given works in terms of their social totality in relation to their formation and reception(149), bringing in the necessary audience component in the analysis of media. In this context, the music video extends past its artistic potential and begins to play a role in the crystallization of cultural phenomena.

Change Is Everything

Through its narrative and aesthetic freedom, the music video teaches us both about film and society in its own intense, accelerated manner. Where films teach us to assume that we gain information as the narrative progresses, music videos play against this assumption by progressing haltingly and unpredictably, and by contradicting what has already been shown

(Vernallis, 42). The halting and unpredictable structure of the music video plays a significant role in terms of audience reception and interpretation, representing content in ways that the Jousset 50 audience is not always prepared to receive. Vernallis attributes this shock effect to forms of space, time, and rhythm we haven’t seen before, new forms which bear some similarities to contemporary experiences like work speedup and multitasking(277). In an attempt at clarifying the role of the music video as a cultural object, I would like to contextualize the collection of devices and narratives implemented in the music video within the aesthetics of post digital art.

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III. Heaps Of Fragments: Defragmenting The Aesthetics Of Post Digital Cinema

Splitting The Atom

The fragmentary nature of the music video calls for a reassessing of the reader-text dynamic and the fundamental principles of interpretation which follow. In this, the difficulty to define the music video in cinematographic terms transpires into the difficulty of assessing its audience, both in cultural and cognitive terms. Here I would like to argue that the intensified, accelerated aesthetics of the music video have spurred not only a crisis in the realm of cinema, but in the larger debate concerning art and new media specifically in relation to the definition of post digital art in the age of late capitalism and what the nostalgic device in the music video means for the future of film. Vernallis associates the lack definition of the music video to an adherence to a particular conception of the medium, on the one hand, and to the institution of the cinema, on the other (21). She continues by saying that neither is capable of grasping the aesthetic newness of new media art: its resistance to capture by now dated, historical forms of art and media criticism (21). Through the definition of the basic concepts of post-digital, new media art, I am outlining the aesthetic newness of the music video by demonstrating the ways in which the complexity of the medium can be traced to its technical origins.

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Turning It Off And On Again

The term “post” suggests the rejection of a concept, a moving forward into a new era. In the context of post-digital art, this underlines the struggle between analogue and digital technologies and means of production. Where analogue technology is composed of a single unit, digital technologies are divided into discrete, countable units (Berry, 17). Digital technologies are, in essence fragmented, which would lead one to assume anything they produce to be equally fragmented. This is what Jameson refers to as “heaps of fragments”, the product of digital technologies which become difficult to define, read, and interpret.

This falls in line with the negative connotation associated with the digital in the field of art where electronic digitality has been accused of eviscerating the real and liquidating reference, truth, and objectivity (xiv). The so called struggle to maintain ‘’authenticity’’ in the wake of a digital artistic landscape stems from archaic Benjaminian idea that art dies once it is copied and duplicated. In terms of music videos, the necessity to remove the negative connotation of the digital is imminent, in order to allow for a more free flowing definition of post digital cinema.

Digital technologies have not only provided a platform for music videos to grow as an art form but have also played a role within the videos themselves, for example in the construction of reality within the clips.

The implementation of CGI in the music video is an example of the direct hand of the digital in their creation. Both Us’ Foals-My Number and UVA, Clark, and Davenport’s James

Blake-I Need a Forest Fire make use of 3D animation and Computer Generated Images to artistic ends. Here the digital becomes a tool rather than an element of destruction in the film. In Jousset 53 relation to new media art, this is what Mark Hansen refers to as an “analog surface and a digital infrastructure (8)” .Music videos stand here within new media art:” they are intended both to justify my call for an aesthetics of new media embodiment that emerges out of the problematic of the digital image and to specify exactly how such an aesthetics must break with certain constitutive axioms of the disciplines of art history and media studies. (22)” Another particular characteristic of the music video is the way it bridges old cinematic techniques and new ones allowing them to fit into Berry’s definition of the post digital which can be said to constitute the pattern, the asterism, that is distinctive of our age, but it impresses itself on the new as well as the traditional(54) . The traditional in the music video has taken on the role of a stylistic device, here

I would like to trace the aesthetics of nostalgia as both a revival and archival of old cinematic practices.

Time Won’t Let Me Go

Whenever I look back, at the best days of my life, I think I saw them all on TV.

-the Bravery

The concept of retrograde technicity is not an uncommon device in film, as Jameson suggests, the mythologization of the past through aesthetic choices in cinema stems from a crisis and historicity and the desire to experience history in and active way(21)., meaning that the desire to “look back” in film is informed by He shifts his attention to nostalgia films in particular, which he believes restructure the whole issue of pastiche and project it onto a collective and social level, where the desperate attempt to appropriate a missing part is now refracted through the iron law of fashion change and the emerged ideology of the generation(19). Jousset 54

Here he illustrates a longing for the past or at least a longing for a past aesthetic where art begins to lose touch with its temporal meaning, thus becoming fragmented and random. The nostalgic component also plays a significant role in Berry’s definition of post digital aesthetics, where is represents a revival of old media. In the realm of the music video, its role is majorly twofold: one in the use of analogue methods and footage and two in the repurposing of technological errors and embracing of lo-fi imperfections.

Double Exposure

Berry suggests that the digital is the structuring paradox that determines artistic decisions to work with certain formats and media (51). This takes into account the choice that can be made in the midst of creating digital art. What he calls the” neo analogue do it yourself “ has become a dominant creative choice in the music videos of Lana Del Rey, who pieced most of her early videos together on her own using found footage, for the most part from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Her videos still maintain this style and have become a distinct characteristic of her artistic persona (see Lana Del Rey-National Anthem). In Blood Orange-Champagne Coast, Hayley

Wollens pieces together collages and footage of people dancing in a way that is reminiscent of late 1980s, early 1990s rap videos. David Dean-Burkhart’s Porches-Underwater is one of many unofficial videos he has created using found footage from old films and editing them to fit music by lo-fi surf and synth bands. In this case, he has made a name for himself due to the way that his videos cater directly to a glorification of nostalgia which is heavily present in the contemporary new media landscape.

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Shadows And Lights

Whereas some videos find their inspiration in the retro, others whether by choice or by chance find themselves echoing devices stemming from the primitive beginnings of film, as a game of lights and shadows. Nathan Johnson’s Son Lux-Change Is Everything was put together using a foam whiteboard, map pins, and stop motion animation (Hilton). The stop motion process in itself is deemed “old school” and the may seem like a tedious manner of creating within a medium where acceleration and fast access are key. Here Son Lux-Change is Everything stands out in its use of old animation devices and put forward intriguing visuals which may allow the audience to learn more about historical devices in cinema. James Blake-I Need a Forest Fire, apart from its use of CGI also contains a sequence which borrows the same technique as the zoetrope [3:09-3:18] playing with the simple lights and shadows.

Del Naja and Medium’s Massive Attack,Azekel-Ritual Spirit makes use of a single naked lightbulb on a string, with which model Kate Moss dances, as the only source of light in the entire clip. Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack states that: “During the session Kate was dancing in the dark, lighting herself with a naked bulb. She perfectly captured the essence of this track… intimate and ritualistic” (Camp and Monroe). He then goes on to say that a conscious choice was made in the post-production process to keep the clip raw and without retouching. Massive

Attack-Ritual Spirit both contains a historical note on the origins of film and a strong foothold in

Simondon’s theory of technoaesthetics, wherein the artistic product contains traces of the technical objects which were used to create it and embraces the errors or surprises it may produce.

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Glitch Mob

In their book New Philosophy for New Media, Mark Hansen and Timothy Lenoir illustrate a point dissatisfaction concerning the shift from analogue to digital images: “Whereas analog photographs adhered to reality by virtue of their physical modes of production, digital images are fabricated through layers of algorithmic computer processing with no trace of the materially mimetic qualities of film, (predigital) photography, or (analog) television” (xiv). Here I would like to stress the ways in which traces of technological errors, and the glitch in particular, by being employed by choice in the music video is not leaving a metaphorical trace (they have not used magnetic tape to record film) and an ideological trace in the cultural sense as a component of the nostalgia aesthetic.

As I mentioned earlier, a glitch is the result of a technical error in the recording or projection of an image. While it is put to artistic use in music videos (Halsey-New

Americana,Travi$ Scott-Upper Echelon, Gotham City Creepers, Gotham City Creepers,

Rihanna-American Oxygen, A$AP Mob-Yamborghini High, Rival Consoles-Odyssey), here I will address it as a symbolic device of nostalgia which triggers a consciousness of the inner workings of the means of cinematic production by leaving a trace of the technical in the final result. Berry contextualizes the use of glitches within the post digital as an aesthetic that revels in seeing the grain of computation or, perhaps better, seeing the limitations or digital artefacts of a kind of digital glitch, sometimes called the “aesthetic of failure”(152).

In the context of the music video, the glitch develops a double meaning, as a representation of

“the grain of computation” and as a nostalgic device which recalls the use of video cassettes and early computers in film. Here the nostalgic device suggesting that the glitch in the digital age Jousset 57 has become a symbol of something that does not work, rather than a warning that something is broken.

Retrofuturism

The past is now part of my future, the present is well out of hand

-Joy Division

The capacity to adapt and cope with increasing amounts of information and stimuli which are unloaded upon us in the digital age has created a sort of tension wherein today’s media elicit affects different from those of the past, helping us negotiate our present moment(Vernallis,27).

Here the shift in media consumption and interpretation, which has now become a series of more irregular, disparate processes had made it so the present feels somewhat “out of hand” pushing us to gravitate towards older, slower media and more structurally meticulous modes of interpretation. The Zeitgeist bleeds through art created in the contemporary period, we stand in a period of metaphysical crisis in which we resort to nostalgia because it comforts us and allows us to reconnect with a more familiar definition of humanity. Halsey-New Americana paints a picture of the generation of American youth “raised on Biggie and Nirvana” as being the new

Americana, as being a representation of American youth, based on cultural references from the

1990s.

She depicts the generation of children who grew up between the Gameboy, 9/11, and the birth of social media. Arguably the last “ analogue generation” , this is the demographic who finds itself organically prone to the nostalgic reflex, as the bridge between the end of one century and the beginning of another. Jousset 58

The art produced under this post digital umbrella It reflects a certain uncomfortable feeling which raises many questions about what it means to be human in relation to ourselves, our environment, other human beings, and history. Contemporary questions which are raised and expressed in the music videos I will be presenting are centered on how to maintain a grip on our shifting definition of humanity. In an attempt at answering the questions, some art reverts to a familiar state of collective consciousness which is manifested through nostalgia through a compilation of aesthetics from past centuries, and even the past decade. This is done because it reminds us of a time when we (feel) like we knew what it means to be human, am more

“tangible” era which lends to the glorification of analogue technologies as a symbol of a bygone, era. Retrofuturism is fundamentally nostalgic, and this illustrates a somewhat shifting relationship and vision of time.

Plug It, Play It, Burn It, Rip It

Here I have established the place of the music video within the spectrum of post-digital aesthetics, as a hybrid of old a new media(20) in both technical and symbolic terms. In terms of cinema, the post digital in informed both by past technologies and digital innovation, placing the music video at the junction of old and new media, eradicating the distinction between the two in theory as well as in practice(20). This creates a kaleidoscope of sounds and images whose effects would be incomplete without taking into account the audience. Vernallis proposes that today’s media shimmer along multiple patterns, mirroring the ways in which we approach the building of narratives in our own lives (28) while Hansen observes the subjectivity of the viewer and the dematerialization of the observer(xv).While cultural aesthetics are shifting in relation to the digital, it becomes interesting to explore the effects of accelerated, condensed, nonlinear narratives on the audience in terms of cognition, reception, and interpretation. Jousset 59

IV. Everything, All At Once: Engagement And The Viewer Experience In The Digital Age

Crystal Visions

Multiplicity of media, and their accelerated, condensed ,content make it so we, as viewers, no longer need to be fully immersed in media to understand them. This does not hinder a comprehensive understanding of media text, rather, this dispersed mode of attention is merely a different approach to the reading and interpretation, a new way of processing and interpreting information reflected in what Laura Strudwick refers to as a desire for omniscience, or at least much-improved knowledge and perception, does underlie the developed world’s cultural consciousness at this time of intense technological advancement.” (257) . Contrary to assumptions made regarding the passive role of the viewer in relation to television or cinema, this process of media consumption is deeply rooted in the mechanisms of the brain , specifically in neuroplasticity, underlining the adaptable, changing nature of the human brain, focusing on a process of becoming rather than static being. In the way that the music video projects a vast variety of modes of narration and styles, our brains work to read and interpret these newly condensed modes of storytelling.

Following the merging of analogue and digital technologies contained within the music video, our brains are being rewired to adapt to the overflow of signals, in an attempt to help us cope with an unprecedented multimedia landscape. Contemporary music videos are not only challenging in their form and content, but also in the ways in which they are affecting our brains in a mechanical way. In the wake of post digital art, the concept of the image is not easily Jousset 60 defined(145), triggering the process of neuroplasticity, which comes a solution to an overwhelming set of symbols and proves the inherent human ability to flex and adapt to change

(195), by developing a new set of literacy skills and modes of interpretation (205). Through the concept of the hybrid mind and the theory of the deep reader, I will illustrate this cognitive shift in the context of the music video.

In her dissertation Prismatic Perception: an Emerging Mythology of the Millennial Mind,

Laura Strudwick paints the portrait of a generation whose attention to media texts has been ruled by the speed and volume with which they are presented to us. She outlines a shift in human perception that is, essentially an adapting of the brain to different styles of perception. She argues that the current rapid pace of technological development and the resulting cultural change is unprecedented(2). Through this, she draws a connection between art and technology, as I have also done in the previous sections. The cultural change spurred by art and technology then becomes a key factor in the study of the audience and cognition. Strudwick’s approach to perception is “prismatic” in the sense that it possesses the potential the change, and evolve.

Much like Heraclitus’ idea of the river, human perception is never static for a long period of time, and, can vary in form over time.

This idea is reflected in relation to the self in my previous argument about the fluid nature of identification and the definition of the human experience. Through this, she deconstructs the myth of the passive reader by pointing out that prismatic perception is a result of active participation in culture, specifically influenced by active engagement with digital and ergodic texts(9). Though this, she illustrates the key role technology plays in our construction of meaning.

Jousset 61

The previously discussed aesthetics of the contemporary music video would not be complete without an audience, their artistic value does not stand in the void. Here, focus will be shifted to the text-reader dynamic. I would like to argue that these videos are best received by an audience whose consciousness has been conditioned to experience the moving image differently.

I would like to argue that the ways in which we experience film, and by extension, the music video have evolved. Technological developments as well as the aesthetic choices of many visual artists have resulted in constant visual motion which, in turn, has given our minds the capacity and the need to determine new ways of sifting through our experience of visual media.

As with cinematic movements, and their respective audiences, I would like to argue that music videos, and their evolution into a relevant film genre has made for shifts both in audience demographics and psyches. This, the shifting of the music video paradigm has both been influenced by, and created a shift in the cinematic mind of the audience. An audience whose perception has shifted, under the influence of digital media, both in metaphysical and philosophical terms. An audience whose brain has been rewired in philosophical, cognitive, and cultural terms, and has become attuned to the medium and message of the contemporary music video. Through a revisiting of the metaphysics of the contemporary audience, in terms of reception, attention, and perception, as well as a shift in patterns of cognition, and finally an examination of cultural factors and symbols as influence, I would like to introduce this audience.

We now stand at a cognitive crossroads, which, through the relationship between technology and art, and the ideological content of the videos we are being exposed to has made us reevaluate our relationship with linear time, psychological binaries, and essentially our definition of reality beyond the digital image. This, in addition to the fact that the videos are broadcast on the internet, making the viewer prey to multiple distractions has made user Jousset 62 engagement and attention comparable to a browser with multiple tabs open, where we record information and switch incessantly between streams of information and narrative modes.

Hybrid Moments

The brain of the contemporary music video audience is, much like the music video itself at the crux of the analogue and the digital. Rather than being in direct rejection of one source of media technology, we often find ourselves immersed in media that are composed of unique and complex sets of information, pushing us to adapt to hybrid media. This new media swirl has triggered a form of attention in which we are constantly never being bored(Vernallis3). In his article “Literacy, Digital Literacy and Epistemic Practices: The Co-Evolution of Hybrid Minds and External Memory Systems.” Roger Säljö traces outlines a definition of the “hybrid mind” which is made for multiple mergers and coalitions, with external resources, and has access to cognitive amplifiers in a manner which is unique(8). In the same way that the music video merges analogue and digital technologies, our brains assemble information with the help of both internal and external memory systems, sets of symbols and modes of representation. We rely on memory systems based on collective consciousness and our personal memory which can be enhanced by external memory systems if we fail to remember something, or want to dig deeper. `

Where we previously had to process new information in a slower manner, by looking through a dictionary or an encyclopedia for example, we now find ourselves with sets of immediate, processed information at hand. In this, a tool such as a search engine becomes a cognitive amplifier, eliminating the threat of forgetting and allow us to constantly be in the know. This manifests itself in music video o content through an accumulation of symbols , and references both cultural and directly linked to the medium of film. Jousset 63

This manner of piecing information together has imprinted itself on the functioning of the human brain in a way that some scholars regard as alarming and stressful to the inner working of the human mind. For lack of a better term I will refer to this as “digitally induced ADHD’’.

Katherine Hayles, in her work on hyper and deep attention maps out a similar concept by determining that the current mode of cognition, specifically present within younger generations is shifting towards the ADHD side of the spectrum”(190). She proposes that we are in the midst of a generational shift in cognitive styles(187) which would be traceable in younger generations, who have grown up within a dominantly digital media landscape.

Hayles proposes a distinction to be made between two modes of attention: Deep attention where the reader concentrates on a single object for a long period of time(187) and hyper attention during which the reader switches focus rapidly among different tasks, triggered by multiple information streams and seeking a high level of stimulation(187). She underlines the low tolerance for boredom and the adaptive nature of hyper attention in contemporary society

(194). Where deep attention can be linked to an activity such as reading a book, hyper attention finds itself more and more present in contemporary society within everyday tasks, through modes of multitasking we are beginning to adapt and conform to as being a standard way of functioning in constantly changing and moving media landscape. For the purpose of this research

I will expand Hayles’ theory to the audience at large, and in particular the music video reader.

The mechanical shift in attention taking place in the human brain has extended to paradigms of audience/media perception. Here I would like to introduce the concept of the deep reader, as physical representation of cognitive shifts in attention. The fluidity of the music video and its irregular visual and narrative structure makes for an audience who is not restricted by hegemonic Jousset 64 interpretations of symbols and is able to focus, all at once on artistic meaning, subjective ideology and visual stimulation all at once.

Abyssal Zone

The nonlinear content of the music video can be considered as reaching past the origins of the music video and assumptions made about the “depth” and “deeper meaning “of the media text. The multiplicity of meanings, the hidden quality of the whole, is what drives the reader to seek a fuller perception of a text or idea(Strudwick,226). In this, music videos demand a certain level of ergodic capacities on the on the end of the viewer in order to reach their full potential as complex media items. In this, the deep reader finds themselves engaged with ergodic texts, that require significant effort to traverse, resulting in enhanced cognition(iii). Strudwick introduces the concept of prismatic perception, which posits a multifaceted mode of perception influenced both technological changes and metacognitive awareness of human reading processes analyzed by scholars and expressed by artists” (12) . The awareness of the functioning of the human brain on the end of the artist is a key point in the analysis of music video devices which are implemented to artistic ends, such as the previously discussed use of strobe lights and graphic match cuts, which add to the jumpy, twitchy atmosphere of the visual narrative. The intensified audio visual stimuli displayed in these clips demonstrate awareness on the end of the creator, concerning which effects to use in order to tickle the optic nerve for example. In essence, the music video is a multitasking medium, which triggers experiential multitasking (12), on the end of the reader and generated processes of cumulative association.

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A Picture Of What

Here I would like to present the music video as being the genre of cinema which is adapted for the deep reader. Resting on meta-awareness and profusion of images, the music video viewer is encouraged to develop modes of prismatic perception(160) backed by cumulative association of cultural, historical, and sociological symbols, the music video caters to a trained audience who is in the habit of paying attention to many thoughts and sources of information at once, one which transcends the initial confusing and overwhelming nature of multiple sources of media output. In relation to the interpretation of the media text, prismatic perception necessitates this type of connectivity, as one seeks to make as many connections in as many ways as possible”(151). Cultural symbols play an important role in increasing the connectivity of meaning in the music video text. Through examples of objects, historical events, and cultural icons I will illustrate the contribution of symbols to the meaning making, metaphor and interpretation of various music video narratives.

ODESZA-It’s only is a striking example of historical symbols a common consciousness in the fashioning of History. The clip shot, entirely in black and white contains recognizable events and figure in our history of civilization. The clips goes through depictions of Cleopatra[0:40-

0:54],Joan of Arc burning at the stake[2:10-2:27], and Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman-

Hughes[3:27-3:32] all of which are recognizable in their iconic value as historical figures. Lana

Del Rey-National Anthem traces the familiar story of John F. Kennedy(played by A$AP Rocky) and Jacqueline Kennedy(played by Lana Del Rey), running through Marilyn Monroe’s(also played by Lana Del Rey) “Happy Birthday Mr. President” to JFK’s assassination.

Jousset 66

In this case, the iconic representation of known cultural figures transcends the necessity for a full accurate physical representation of them and relies both on the artistic license of the video maker and the cultural archive contained in the common consciousness of the readers. Symbolism in the music video is, in this sense none too different from symbolism in any other visual art form. The difference here lies within the reader as an active component of meaning making in the narrative and to a larger extent, the impact of the video as a cultural object. For instance Jon Hopkins-

Open Eye Signal, Astronomyy-Nothin On My Mind, and J.Cole-She Knows all prominently figure the skateboard. The skateboard is, in essence an object of freedom free object, taking its roots in illegal an illegal practice and maintaining its edgy innovative take on technical invention to this day. In these three clips, the protagonists can be seen riding their skateboards through wide open spaces without the intention of turning back or stopping for any reason in particular. Skating is fundamentally a way of drifting through time and detaching oneself from the linear foundations of human interaction. In this, the image of the “lone rider” on the skateboard places the viewer, alongside the skater in a meditative state.

Narrative symbolism another prevalent factor adding to the ergodic nature of the music video. In the visual realm, Pfadfinderei’s Moderat-Bad Kingdom caters to this idea. Composed entirely of drawings, the song traces the story of a man’s life ranging from his early school days to his death, in a series of flashing images representing different stages of his life (the images in this clip transition exceptionally fast so I chose to reference it a as a whole rather than draw attention to particular instances). The meaning of the song reaches beyond the lyrics “This is not what you wanted//not what you had in mind” and is amplified by the visual audacity of the clip.

The metaphorical “life flashing before one’s eyes” is represented through the audiovisual whole Jousset 67 of Bad Kingdom in a way that allows the reader to follow the disappointing journey that is the life of the protagonist.

Wheels Within Wheels

The music video, although it is becoming more detached from the postmodern mindset, is not exempt from the use of intertextuality as a narrative device. Here I will illustrate examples of clips that are directly inspired by or resemble other art forms such as photography, painting, and video games. O’Neal and WIFE’s the Acid-Basic Instinct was directly inspired by photographer

Toby Burrow’s series Fallen(Nowness) and retains many of the aesthetic properties of a photograph throughout, asking the viewer to take in the observe the music video through a different lens. Wu and Short’s New Build-Luminous Freedom is collaboration with still life photographer John Short, described by director George Wu as “ a story based on celebrity names in the style of Dutch masters”. The clip takes the viewer through a series of still life installations, pausing to place intertitles over the images. These intertitles are the first names of various historical figures, actors, , and artists. The viewer must actively piece together who the images represents by both reading the name and associating it to the object the camera is focused on in order to fully take part in the meaning of the clip. Luminous Freedom plays upon the device of intertextuality and brings in a new, interactive dimension to the video clip in addition to its stunning visual characteristics. The full potential of this clip relies on the reader's knowledge of cultural icons and rapid symbolic association. In a similar vein of visual intertextuality, Hayden

James-Permission to Love is a clip which mimics the aesthetics of a 1980s computer game following the journey of the player asking “permission to love” from various women within the game. The viewer is taken on a journey into the game where the player ventures through a pixilated décor in search of a hook up. Jousset 68

Another intertextual component of the music video, is its use of film and television actors, as well as musicians. Entropico’s Touch Sensitive-Pizza Guy features Touch Sensitive in the role of a pizza delivery man stopping in various locations to deliver records in pizza boxes to a series of artists who are in reality his record label mates off the Australian record label Future

Classics. Anthony Mandler’s Lana Del Rey-National Anthem features Lana del Rey and rapper

A$AP Rocky in a Jackie Kennedy/JFK tribute. Die Antwoord-Ugly Boy and Travi$ Scott-Upper

Echelon both feature the ATL Twins. Ugly Boy also features actor Jack Black, model Cara

Delevigne, burlesque performer Dita von Teese, and Marilyn Manson, here the music video’s intertextuality relies on the viewer’s knowledge of pop culture, giving an active role to the images on the screen and ultimately demanding the viewer to pay attention.

Beach House-Wishes features a lip synching Ray Wise, known for his iconic role as Leland

Palmer in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, J.Cole-She Knows features Harold Perrineau, known for his role as Damon Pope in Kurt Sutter’s Sons of Anarchy. Carly Rae Jepsen-I Really Like You features Tom Hanks(also lip-synching) . Eric Roberts and Mads Mikkelsen both feature in

Rihanna-Bitch Better Have My Money in the roles of a policeman and an accountant respectively, while Andrew Garfield, plays the main role in Arcade Fire-We Exist, while

Rosamund Pike(known for her role as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl) is featured in Massive Attack-

Voodoo in my Blood.

Intertextuality in the music video also reaches past the dimension of fiction and into the

“behind the scenes “life of the performer, allowing the viewer an intimate view of the artist, allowing us to what they do when they are not making music. Iggy Pop-Sunday,Froth-Nothing

Baby, DIIV-Grant’s Song, and Jamie xx-Loud Places all feature the musicians performing Jousset 69 mundane activities, hanging out with friends, wandering around and not necessarily actively putting on a show.

In the process of accelerated cognition, we have become more accustomed to symbolism, through a saturation of global culture, media input, religious iconography, and common consciousness concerning canons in the history of arts and culture. Here I would like to draw attention to a more sensorial aspect of symbolism in audiovisual culture, namely the representation of drug trips and other forms of intoxication in the music video.

It’s Lit

The visual trip plays a significant role in the construction of the narrative of the music video. Understanding the symbolic representation of intoxication and we don’t need the music to be on for this. Drug addled states and drunken benders have always found their place in relation to music, but I would like to argue that the shift in narratives and cinematic devices in the music video has enhanced these representations to the a point where the viewer would not even need to have the music playing in order to understand the content of the video. Following steps similar to the psychedelic art of the 1960s and 1970s, the music video, through its illustration of intoxication adds yet another dynamic layer to its narrative spectrum.

Here I will study the symbolic representations of intoxication in music videos through the following clips which make use of camerawork, lighting and various color schemes to reach this effect. Panic! At The Disco-Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time chronicles a wild night out, where the camera, places the viewer in the action as we follow the protagonist as he travels through the night in a maze of neon and flashing lights. The camera wobbles and shakes simulating inebriation.A$AP Rocky-L$D is an explicit drug trip, inspired by Gaspar Noe’s Into Jousset 70 the Void, which A$AP Rocky describes as sonically and visually giving the viewer

LSD(Noisey). A$AP Rocky-L$D takes the viewer on a trip though vertiginous camerawork, flashing lights, accelerated and slowed down sequences, and a heavy use of neon, warped images and overlays providing a psychedelic experience throughout the song, Frank Ocean-Novacane tells the story of a drug fueled encounter, which Ocean describes throughout the video, sitting on a bed in what looks like a seedy motel room. The camera pans around the room in irregular circular motions, while a series of images, clouded by smoke are layered over Ocean’s face which warps in and out of shape. Route 94-My Love was shot entirely with a thermal camera, giving the entire clip a surreal atmosphere, while the music is reminiscent of 1990’s rave culture.

Insane In The Brain

The speeding up of information and media processing and distribution in the present digital age has not only affected the way we use media but the way we consume, record and interpret information on a metacognitive level. Through symbolic hyper-association the reader of a media text can bring in multiple meanings, surpassing paradigms of the passive media consumer, this heightened state of awareness does not empty the image of meaning; rather, the understanding of the image is complemented by this multivalence(Strudwick, 160) allowing the reader to both make, and bring meaning to the media text on a deeper level. This accelerated, concentrated process of cognition however, is taxing on the brain in the way that it springs from connections made both through analogue and digital media. Here, the heightened human ability to make connections is a necessary survival mechanism to locate meaning in the information age(5). This state of mind allows us to skip past a conscious construction of meaning and allows us to develop a sort of automated ergodic reading of the text in question. Our brains skip the Jousset 71 process of decomposing the content and go straight to reception and interpretation. We recognize cultural codes almost immediately through a rapid decomposition, reception, and interpretation of symbols.

We currently find ourselves in a stage of crisis, in terms of the cognitive ability to adapt to an increasingly intensified media landscape, learning to accept principles of changeable perception as the psyche’s defense against being overwhelmed by unmediated images is frequently insanity(129). Constant flows of information have made it so our brains are in constant state of hyperawareness, placing us in a constant state of flux where we struggle to place our mobile selves in the matrix of visual culture(Pisters, 177).

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V. Take A Look At These Hands: The Post-Digital Identity Crisis

Heart and soul, one will burn

- Ian Curtis

21st Century Breakdown

We now find ourselves at a point in time where we stand both in admiration and disgust concerning technological invention. In a less dramatic sense, we are existing on the best terms we can, at a bitter crux between desperation and hope concerning our relationship with technology, our physicality in terms of embodiment, processes of self-actualization, and finally, our connection to time, reality and ultimately our lives underlining a significant ideological and cultural malaise. Malaise signifies a feeling of unease of being, which, in this case is present within a generation. In philosophical terms, malaise can be seen as a primarily existentialist concept, which trickles down into the Zeitgeist of the millennial generation. I would like to argue that this feeling of unease and discomfort stems from questions of identity in the cultural sense, our relationship with increasingly swift technological developments, and a general not knowing of where the future will lead us (both in terms of what we have created, and how our new technologies are developing independently from their creators]Keeping in mind the accumulation of factors influencing the way we function as human beings, I will address key points in the debate surrounding new media culture and its connection to human existence, namely our increasingly strained connection to technology, spurring a crisis in embodiment, and a Jousset 73 reexamination of the self in metaphysical terms, related to the concept of the ego, and our experience of reality and time

Paranoid Android

When can we talk, with the face, instead of using all these strange devices?

-Father John Misty

The Internet, and the variety of new media it has bred are not old in terms of technological invention. The unprecedented speed at which we gather, process, and distribute information has created a spectrum of existence we are not yet entirely familiar with, an ever changing flow within which we strive to place ourselves and remain afloat. In the process of individuation, we find ourselves examining our relationship with technology under and increasingly urgent lens, asking ourselves whether we rule or are being ruled by the objects of our creation. Our range of interpersonal connections has broadened, to the extent that it has become difficult for us to tell whether we are becoming more or less connected. Simondon’s processes of individuation fits well here when it comes to reexamining ourselves as individuals in relation to technology. Using the metaphor of the crystal, he illustrates the process of becoming as “Supersaturated mother water is perturbed by a seed that extends and grows layer- by-layer in a reticular fashion. The disparition between seed and water creates a phase shift where individuation actualizes”(99). This metaphor can be re-appropriated to express the current stance of individual identity forming within the new media landscape. The saturated mother water would in these terms be the intertwining of technology and culture, whereas the extending seed would be the human being. The disparition here is our relationship with technology. Jousset 74

Massive Attack-Voodoo in My Blood through an adaptation of an iconic scene from the

1981 film Possession and through the metaphor of voodoo, illustrates engagement with technology. Described by director Ringan Ledwidge as being seductive and sexy, but also very benign until you engage with it”(Denney and Dazed) . In the clip the protagonist engages with an orb in a deserted subway tunnel, which proceeds to hypnotize her, placing her in a state of possession, which intensifies until she is left panting on the subway floor. Here we see a darker side of technological engagement where we lose grip of the tools we have created, much like

Dr.Frankenstein, ultimately becoming less and less dominant in the inventor-invention relationship. We fear a loss of agency and associate the rapid expansion of digital technologies with a dystopian fear of nominalism and technocratic thought(Berry 125).

The fear that we, as readers are having our agency increasingly dictated by current technologies(Strudwick 255) plays an important role in the way we approach agency in metaphysical terms. Here, Simondon’s principle of prehensive transduction and individuation comes back, in the way we are now beginning to struggle with the separation between technology and the self. Much like the processes of cognitive readaptation outlined by Strudwick and Hayles, individuation is a process of resolving tensions and incompatibilities(Fox 97) wherein we strive to piece together a new paradigm of existence, what Fox refers to as a process of “providing unity where previously there was disparity”(100). Here we find ourselves constantly examining the ways in which technology can extend human sensation(104). Human sensation which is, fundamentally linked to the shifting experiences of the body, self, time, and narration(Vernallis 36).

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Oscillate Wildly

Jesse Kanda’s FKA Twigs-How’s That places a liquid human like body floating through a blank open space, vibrating, decomposing and losing its recognizable shape as the music progresses. Here we see Kanda’s digital representation of the human body where “distorted figures appear floating in empty space, as the music guides their movement”(Kanda).

In this stance of tension, we are constantly at odds with ourselves, and, our existence in terms of the body is under constant examination.

The intertwining of digital technologies and art has impacted the idea of the self as subject and object of new media The notion of embodiment addresses this in relation to the questions it looks at concerning the relationship of human beings and technology, how this relationship is developed and maintained, the extent of our agency within this relationship, and, essentially what means to be a human being in the digital age. In these respects, post-digital art is, a materialization of philosophical thought related to embodiment in the digital age. Post- digital art stands at a junction between the analogue and a digital in the sense that it strives to go back to a previous socio-cultural state of being while, itself holds its place in the present.

The impending metaphysical disconnect in the information age has become a concern and has been seen as a possible threat to our humanity specifically in relation to the way we use and perceive our bodies, the agency we exert on them how they respond to the never ending influx of media stimuli. This brings me to a more simple, fundamental aspect of the music video, which is the dynamic relationship of music and dance, which Vernallis describes as the physicality that can unfold and expand in discovery, alongside the camera’s and the music’s trajectory”(41).

Here, I will direct my attention to a series of clips which prominently feature dance as a primal human response to music, a way for use to reconnect with our bodies and exploring spiritual Jousset 76 aspects of the human being in the digital realm, integrating technology with ancient wisdom(Tanja).

Lauterbach and IBSN’s Audio Dope’s Solar Soliloquy hold a similar composition to FKA

Twigs-How’s That in its representation of the human body. The protagonist can be seen standing alone in a deserted landscape, interspersed with shots of him screaming while the composition moves in time with the music. The protagonist bleeds, submerges himself in water , and dances, full of expression against a black background in essence, carrying out actions that will make him feel and, reconnect with his body. Lorn-Acid Rain, Haelos-Dust, Bixel Boys-Not Your Girl, Glass

Animals-Hazey, and Young Fathers-Shame all contain dance sequences which can best be described as jerky, expressive and inspired by contemporary dance movements. Arcade Fire-We

Exist, and Years and Years-King both feature choreographies put together by Ryan Heffington known for his striking work in the clips of SIA (see Elastic Heart, Chandelier) .

The Kills-Doing it to Death implements choreography as a stylistic device, using the bodies of the dancers as a visual component in a funeral procession. Here the human body plays a decorative role while the chorus rings out “We’re doing it to death” placing the body at a self- reflective crossroads. Tame Impala-the Less I Know the Better, and Beach House-Bloom both take a more classical approach to the depiction of dance in the music video. Semi-ironically putting forward cheerleaders and ribbon twirling majorettes in dance sequences.

In Kendrick Lamar-Alright, director Colin Tilley implemented dancers as a symbolic choice to put a positive spin on everything, stating that “when you see people dancing, that’s an act of celebration”(Tardio). Here dance is implemented for its symbolic value, a positive use of the human body in an otherwise paranoid, distracted, and strained dichotomy of embodiment in the present. Jousset 77

i

I fell in love with the sound of my heels on the wooden floor, I don't want our footsteps to be silent anymore

-Tame Impala

Strudwick argues that we are now at a critical stance in terms of self-actualization within the new media landscape. She underlines the idea of “extreme self-awareness” as being one of the defining characteristics of the contemporary human condition. In the age of social media, where it has become customary to broadcast oneself immediately and without interruption, the question of self -actualization arises. What does it mean to be an individual, and how do we contextualize our egos within the new media whirlwind? Following Simondon’s fluid theory of individuation, I will examine ways in which the music video address the enduring experience of becoming, and the enduring sense of the self through the representation of the ego in the music video narrative.

Santigold-Can’t Get Enough of Myself is a pop-y take on self-actualization, where the singer walks through a city covered in ads for “VANITY “and reads a satirically titled newspaper with the headline ‘’America’s Vanity Epidemic”. By the end of the song, she stands in a cafe filled with doubles of her as she cheerfully proclaims:” I can’t get//enough//I don’t know about you//but I can’t get enough of myself”. Here Santigold addresses the discussion surrounding the prevalence of vanity in the new media landscape.

Jousset 78

Carly Rae Jepson-I Really Like You approaches the topic of self-actualization from the other end of the spectrum, she goes for the more awkward approach, depicting Tom Hanks as the protagonist, taking selfies and browsing Tinder. Here, the idea of self-actualization is very dependent on other people’s perception of us, to the point where we might even find ourselves asking permission to stoke our own egos. In the lyrics Jepsen says “ I really really really really really really like you//and I want you//do you want me?// do you want me too? ‘’Both proclaiming her affection for another person while simultaneously asking to be noticed, in an ironically desperate way which echoes the role of social media in the process of becoming.

Froth-Nothing Baby, the Dead Weather-Impossible Winner, and Slayer-You Against You all address the ego in a more classical way, through the themes of self-doubt, and inner conflict, addressing ego related struggles which only seem to be prematurely shared in the digital age.

The Urgency Of Life

Is it human to adore life?

-Savages

In taking steps into the future, and somewhat both physically and psychologically putting distance between older versions of ourselves both as individuals, and as human beings we are, in a sense, becoming increasingly aware of our humanity, and the “monsters” we have created(technology).This places us at a point where we are now, more than ever leading an increasingly nuanced experience, ( as in fluid, and gradient) which, itself stands in between the analogue, and the digital. This sentiment is reflected in visual media, while it makes conscious many of the trends currently emerging and swirling together in the real and virtual worlds(Strudwick 314). Under the pressure of the heavy hand of time , we stand harassed by the Jousset 79 constant concern of how we use our time, what we should be doing with our time, and ultimately the purpose of our time held within the confines of our existence. Savages-Adore addresses the existential concern of leading a pleasurable existence, where singer Jehnny Beth asks, in an almost guilty tone: “If only I'd hidden my lust//and starved a little bit more//if only I didn't ask for more// is it human to adore life? “Followed by a very conscious acknowledgement of the ephemeral nature of our physical existence : Maybe I will die//maybe tomorrow//so I need to say//I adore life” Primal Scream,Sky Ferreira-Where the Light Gets In is a proclamation of life as being a bittersweet combination of struggles and estrangement “ Hard to make it through this world alone//lovers become strangers then estranged” followed by processes of acceptance “ As sure as sin, peace begins within” and a conclusion that, problems, as such are not always a negative The wound is a place where the light gets in “echoing Rumi’s “the wound is where the light enters you” suggesting a process of learning from our mistakes, inherent to life.

Real Lies

The breakdown in contemporary thought concerning the basic principles of human existence transpires into the shattered experience of reality presented in the music video. The following videos depict a warped experience of reality, touching upon the themes of hallucination and memory which transpire explicitly through the visuals.

Valentino Khan-Deep Down Low features a confused protagonist experiencing an audiovisual trip as the song progresses. The distortion of images and warped, nonsensical visuals take the viewer on the trip along with the protagonist and do not change back to “normal” once the song has ended. Jousset 80

Flume-Never Be Like You addresses memory, regret and shame in through the wavelike visuals in the clip mimicking the disjointed reality that unfolds after a breakup(Kaye). The visuals swell and recede as the chorus rings out “ I'm only human, can't you see?//I made, I made a mistake//please just look me in my face//tell me everything's okay//cause I got it//ooh, never be like you”. Years and Years- King depicts hallucination throughout the video, where the protagonist is surrounded by a crowd of dancers throughout the entire duration of the clip, only to find that he in fact alone, and has only himself to face.

Human After All

The current crisis and existential spiral taking place within the new media landscape has reflected itself through many narrative devices and modes of storytelling in visual media, and is particularly prevalent within the music video. Although the growing concern that we are falling out of touch with our humanity is ever-present, the basic tenets of our existence as such remain unshaken. In the over saturated contemporary media landscape, we are both adapting to and rejecting new media, and within this inherently post digital mindset, we find ourselves at a junction between a well documented past, a swiftly developing present, and an uncertain future.

This sort of crisis of embodiment is both on a self vs self level and in relation to how we place ourselves within the technological landscape both as individuals, and groups. In this, we are becoming increasingly aware of our humanity and the monsters we have created (both in technology and in relation to human interaction).Here the music video plays a role in the dynamic process of coping and adapting in the helping us negotiate between nature and technology, providing a release for our constantly switched on brains, allowing us to assess, express and fabricate the parameters of our existence. Jousset 81

VI. Post-Pop Depression: Status Update On The Position Of Music Videos In Post- Classical Digital Film The Impossible Winner

Music videos have found their place within the catalyst of new media and film, propelled by a multiplicity of platforms and their ability to combine film and music to create

“transcendental” mobile selves and collective identities through music( Pisters 215).

Gaining a status as a more innovative, freeform variant of cinema, the music video allows for a wide range of interpretations and, a more complex means of perception on a cognitive level.

Despite not being thoroughly defined in contemporary terms in the fields of film, video, or pop culture, the music video incorporates the three in ways that borrow from older media and innovate, creating new opportunities for the medium, and by extension, the medium of film.

Cinema has the privilege of constantly being an idea. The image travels from the brains of its creators, through the machine of production( the video camera essentially) past series of stages of post-production and is projected for the audience, which then becomes the [ergodic] reader.

The film audience then has knowledge of both the technicity of the film and it’s aesthetic/visual end result. The music video in particular is relevant to this because of its visual nature, as well as its necessary integration of music from technical, aesthetic, and narrative perspectives giving it the possibility, just like cinema to branch out and define itself as an art form.

The audio-visual complexity of the form has contributed greatly to its relevance as a new media art form, and more specifically and innovative film genre which has begun to define itself through both its use of classical cinematic devices ( i.e. the Kuleshov effect, black and white, the Jousset 82 use of particular color schemes) as well as contemporary innovative means of creation(i.e. CGI).

In Simondonian terms, the symbolic use of technological error in the music videos allows for both acknowledgement of and reflection on the mark of technology on film through the consciousness of the technicity of the apparatus. The visual freedom of the music video also transpires through camerawork and cinematic technique which ranges from more classical angles such as the close-up, to radical shifts in movement and angles which add to the vertiginous, condensed visuals, contributing to the narrative by shifting the viewer’s attention to specific shots or details in the visual landscape of the video. In addition to the abundance of visual stimulation the music video provides, the internal narrative of music and video, which borrows from other texts such as cult films and culturally significant film sequences provides the music video with an intertextual advantage.

This intertextual advantage reaches past the medium of film, and other artistic narratives, equally inspired by socio-cultural discourse and current events, thus bringing the music video narrative to the forefront in more socially relevant terms where it was previously informed by more commercial and promotional motives. The music video’s layered approach to cinematic technique and the collection of devices it uses in both visual and narrative terms have added to its complexity both as an art form and as a cultural artifact of new media.

The technical and narrative devices employed in the music video create a fragmented whole, whose individual components find themselves identifiable within the domain of post- digital aesthetics. This corresponds to a set of artistic characteristics informed by the desire to both cope with and reject digital technologies as becoming increasingly dominant in the structure and interpretation of our everyday lives. Here the accumulation of socio cultural and historical Jousset 83 elements contained within art in the stage of late capitalism demand a new set of definitions not only in terms of the art form itself but, to a greater extent a reexamination of the role of the reader as an active component of meaning making in the reader/text dynamic.

Currents

With regards to post classical digital cinema, and the music video in particular, this transpires through audience attention and engagement which I argue has been affected both in metaphorical and cognitive terms. Here the melding of hyper attention and deep attention illustrates the capacity for the human brain to adapt to overwhelmingly accelerated and intensified stimuli through processes of neuroplasticity. The predominance of the nostalgic component in the field of post digital art, and, specifically in relation to the music video can be seen as both historicizing the cinematic device, and as being a coping device, reminiscent of less erratic modes of visual representation and narration.

The intertextuality of the music video lies not only within the explicit narrative itself, but also within the relationship of the artistic component with the technological text of the video itself. Here the complexity of the music video relates to the multiplicity of components that make a whole. These components have caused deep shifts in the way the human brain captures and processes media input through sounds, images and symbols. The heightened state of awareness of the contemporary reader’s brain is challenging paradigms of audience and spectatorship on both a cognitive and metaphysical level resulting state of ambient metacognition. Here the parameters of our definition of linear reality are being challenged to the point where we must Jousset 84 begin to accept the fluidity of our being and shed the binaries that bind us in order to accept more nominalist conditions of existence.

New sets of aesthetics and narrative modes have, in turn developed new angles of interpretation, and pushed for a more active reader of the music video text.

In more societal terms, this strain has characterized itself in through a crisis in thought, which demands a re-contextualization of running definitions and paradigms of the human experience in a media heavy environment. In this, the music video addresses more new media oriented topics such as our relationship with technology both as creators and users, embodiment in both concrete and abstract forms, the question of time, and representations of reality thus demonstrating acute attention and meta-reflection both in terms of the cinematic art form and the definition of the music video in the new media landscape. Here the defining parameters of the music video come to light within the context of a crisis in definition, interpretation, and reader cognition in relation to the music video.

Closing Sequence

The crisis in definition, reception, and analysis of the music video is a debate which has not been actively revived since the early 2000s in relation to the medium itself, its contextualization within the media landscape, and its relationship with film. Here I have revived this debate, in relation to film, new media theory and the philosophy of new media by stating that that the music video is a genre that speaks to the audience in the way of a great cinematic genre by catering to post capitalist new media concerns. Through the use of a variety of cinematic devices, its illustration of contemporary societal concerns, and medium specific debates it illustrates and redeems the society we live and, while taking a look at the past. Here the nostalgic device in the music video serves a double purpose, both as a way of looking back on the Jousset 85 technical evolution of the cinematic medium, as well as an ideologically informed reflection on the symbolism of nostalgia in relation to both philosophy and art. Here I have drawn attention to the music video as being poorly addressed in both the realms of academia and art/film theory and drawn attention to the potential of the music video to be seen as a marker for the position of film the post classical digital age, by illustrating the medium as being both artistically and socially conscious.

Through the dynamic relationship of new media and film, more specifically on technical, aesthetic, and ideological fronts, the music video becomes increasingly relevant through its intertextuality and established aesthetic newness as a vessel for currents in new media philosophical thought. By placing the music video within the new media landscape as film’s response to new media, more specifically as one of the outcomes of the relationship between new media and film, I have addressed the academic and medium related debate on the end of film, as well as the theoretical gap concerning the definition of the music video as a genre, and more specifically as a medium which has untapped potential. Here the music video through its fluid definition as a primarily commercial art form, is reasserting itself as a medium which I believe has the potential to be seen as a film genre in the landscape of post classical digital film, thus asserting its place within both film and new media. By picking up where theory and research on the music video left off, I have established a context for the music video to develop both in social and artistic terms, as a marker and a messenger for new media philosophy, which can tell us, in the tradition of great film genres, more about the philosophical strain of an increasingly digitizing media landscape.

Jousset 86

Here the music video can be seen as a release for our constantly switched on brains, adapted to new media cognition, through it audio visual stimulation, its short, condensed format and its primary mode of distribution: the Internet. The lack of research done on the topic can be seen as a sign that there is an element of the relationship between new media and film that is not being addressed, showing to a greater extent an ideological lapse concerning the value of the music video.

Music videos challenge binary definitions of the relationship of film and new media through their fluidity, thus threatening the structuralist critical theory, which still tends to be prevalent within the field, This results in need for a new approach to critical theory which can be characterized as a new philosophy adapted for a new media. As a closing point, I have defined the music video as a new media item which warrants the attention of both film and new media scholars alike which, through its study and interpretation can provide insight on an aesthetically new art form which will, in turn address greater new media debates surrounding embodiment, engagement, attention, and the impact of technology on the parameters of human existence.

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Corpus: https://youtu.be/TTAU7lLDZYU?list=PLTkgmCVSBEdz4vVs3MrU7rL210tzShf0x