Week 4:

Music presents a certain ambiguity to the process of capturing visual images. I know that many of my images are captured with music playing in the background. Everywhere I go downtown on mass transit, in the streets, and at Loyola I am immersed in music. Writing every paper, sitting in the information commons, climbing the dank escalators of the Damen fortress, I am accompanied by my favorite artists and their creations through the sweet, beautiful technology of the iPod. I also find that much of my picture taking follows from my sense of humor. I capture images of things that amuse me, even simple things that stand out from the normal flow of life. I have an eye that hunts down the practical jokes on conformity and regularity. I seek out the absurd or the mundane precisely to point out how foolish and mundane we really all are at our core. I look at my image today of a paramedic standing directly in front of a NO LOITERING notice on a CVS window that took great pains to involve the police in preventing such a gross breach of public decency. I can't help but laugh at this world.

Week four marks a month of shooting pictures geared toward answering prompted questions, so it's only right that I begin with a little reflexive observation into my methods. It would behoove me in the future to look toward more spontaneous, unplanned capturing of moments, not for any closer grasp of the nature of reality but for the sake variety and novelty. I'd hate to see myself getting stale and falling into a representational rut. There's never a perfect way of looking at the world. (but don't tell the scientists that, it unsettles their faith in perfect discernible reason...)

However, back to the subject at hand – music's importance to society. Since I can't capture my music-soaked reality on film without breaking the rules of the assignment, I have to look outward toward the slippery interaction of music and society. One thing that I realized in the course of planning my shots this week is that there is nowhere in our society where we can totally escape music because of the technological advancements in sonic technology. Our every mundane action comes with a full soundtrack, with music piped into the air around us at the grocery store, at the gas station, at the bar, on the train with someone's too-loud headphones, and even in the commons and courtyards around campus.

I include three pictures to illustrate this point below. Taken in the student union, the Union Station bar (the Snuggery...don't laugh...seriously, that's the name), and the courtyard space between the information commons and the chapel, these pictures point to the ubiquity that technology grants to our music. It's part of the invisible cultural fabric that forms daily experience. We are serenaded by Motley Crue and Styx in a bar. We hear pop beats pulsing through our conversations in the student union hall. Our demarcation of time is highlighted by the music of bells each and every hour. And, oddly enough, we only really notice this intrusion when we hear something aesthetically displeasing. I highlighted the speakers in my shots of the bar and the student union because the music was such an obvious obstacle to good taste and a reasonable sonic environment for me. I'm sure plenty of people find something in pop music. There has to be someone out there who still howls along to Motley Crue in their bitchin Camaro.

I included the second picture in the bar to underscore the point about the soundtrack of life. Whether we're attentive to the music around us, it has a cumulative effect on our consciousness and reality. The bartender and patron sharing a moment in discussion across the bar had strains of Foreigner playing behind, serving as an odd counterpoint to the image the two present in the picture. In some sense, every picture that we take is affected by music.

This brings me to my next point. While we are surrounded by music and sound in all areas of life, music is still presented as a commodity. Look at the RIAA. If music weren't a valuable commodity, you wouldn't see them publicly crucifying single moms for sharing a couple Britney Spears songs with their fellow internet users. If there's one thing that file-sharing has taught us it is that music is a commodity to be collected, shared and ingested.

The two images that I chose to illustrate this idea are that of the ClearChannel billboard and the Jersey Boys saturation campaign. The billboard image hangs just outside of the Merchandise Mart (fitting) L stop, dominating the wall facing the station platform. While it trumpets Heineken (the Budweiser of Holland) in 40 feet of mini-keg, the real message of the board is the subtle banner below the ad. ClearChannel operates thousands of radio stations and media outlets around the country. ClearChannel is responsible for singlehandedly killing off my favorite radio station in West Michigan when they took over WKLQ 94.5 in the late nineties. As a conglomerate media hub, the company dictates who gets radio play and, by consequence, who will make it big. Advertising, corporate profits and commodification dictate what music will make it to your ear without trudging off to your local bar scene to listen to each and every battle of the bands, looking for the next big thing.

Jersey Boys is the epitome of a postmodernist commodification of music. I'm looking at banner advertisements for a musical written about a group that has long since disintegrated singing songs we all used to love in the near history of musical-industrial complex. It's music about music. Brilliant. Yet this show is the biggest show in town outside of Oprah's book club, an audience/consumer puppet performance. (Oprah approved?? Must buy...will make me complete...I can finally be happier than after buying the last eight books...) Back to the point at hand however, I find that commodification of music makes it possible to own music, to own memories of a show or an artist. Music can be bought and sold and hold value. In this sense, music, like other forms of art is no longer just about expression and aesthetics – it's about sales, profits, and an entire resultant industry regulating its existence.

In this analysis, music occupies a dual public and private identity. It occupies public space in such a way that only those without hearing faculties are able to resist the sonic advances. Music is as pervasive as the advertising and visual signs crowding for our attention at every turn. However, we are also plagued by the residual songs stuck in our head(phones). We each have our own little private slice of the music world that we identify with and enjoy. Anyone who tells you they don't like any music is lying. There's something for everyone. All our iPods do is reinforce this sonic collection of commodity; Berger presented a similar concept in his presentation of the new art museum where each individual has a wall of art expressing a unique meaning – the ultimate art museum in the private collection. This is the central mystery of music – that something so public and pervasive can mean something special to me yet be utterly abhorrent to you.

(This paper was brought to you today in part through the input of Tool's album 10,000 Days, tracks 1-8. The photos in this paper were captured in conjunction with a random assortment of iPod highlights: anything with 4 or 5 stars. Except for the Snuggery pictures. That was a tacky mix of classic and modern rock piped in at a volume, sadly, too high to ignore.)