Interview with Inigo Manglano-Ovalle part II
Part
I of PORT's interview with Inigo Manglano-Ovalle discussed his shows
Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With at Mass MOCA and Happiness
is a state of inertia
at Max Protetch Gallery, in continuation here the conversation digs deeper
into the artist's sources and process.
Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With, MASS MoCA
Alex: Switching gears: How does Sergei
Eisenstein's movie Glass House relate to Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With at Mass MOCA?
Inigo: In the beginning I was interested in uncompleted projects. These
uncompleted projects were also located historically in a similar sort of period
- these were projects by individuals in a period of modernity. So I was interested
in Eisenstein's Glass House because that was the title of what would be his
first film in the US. Which was to be based on We (the novel by Zamyatin). I'm
really interested in this. Also I'm interested in that when you read We his
architecture is very similar to 1924-6 theoretical projects happening in Europe,
which Eisenstein would have seen when he went to and had seen when he went to
premier The Battleship Potemkin, right? SO when he went to Berlin to view the
Potemkin he talked about this architecture-on-paper. And the architecture-on-paper
were actually drawings because they were unbuildable projects. One of them certainly
would have been Mies'
Glass Skyscraper for Friedrichstrasse. So Mies' Glass Skyscraper
for Friedrichstrasse could very well be a building in Zamyatin's book "We",
right? Mies is not reading Zamyatin and Zamyatin was not necessarily seeing
"We", but Eisenstein has both read Zamyatin and is looking
at Mies.
Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With, MASS MoCA
Then Eisenstein's idea is to make this project called the "Glass house"
in Paramount studios and he get contracted for this and actually starts to talk
to engineers and movie set people to figure out how to build glass rooms that
he can shoot from underneath and so forth. He starts to actually talk about
it, then starts to narrate some - making some minor kind of sketches on what
his screen play would be, right? Who his protagonist would be. Etc.
Next, one of the next that Eisenstein did that I really liked is that in his
proto-screenplay his protagonist doesn't necessarily identify himself as the
mathematician in We. Eisenstein says you don't know if the character is a mathematician,
a priest or a clown, right? And at this moment in some of Eisenstein's notes
- he's very sparse on this - he talks about this character getting in to such
things that he's banging his head against the glass wall to call attention to
people on the other side on the wall, right? Because this literal and physical
transparency in We can only exist if one ignores that transparency of the glass
walls.
In other words the transparency isn't really there for us to see other people
but in We it is more for us to be seen by some monitoring device. So it's a
very large and fluid panopticon, right. That character tries to break that panopticon
and he tries to make the other person see him. That moment in Eisenstein's film
that was never made was something I was really intrigued with. And what I had
originally wanted to do was to make Eisenstein's film, right. So Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With is a collapse of Mies' unfinished project and Eisenstein's
unfinished project. And so what happens is that the We
we are Eisenstein's
"Glass House" and he says it gets played out in two places. One is
through the phone calls, where the protagonist is absent. And the other is with
what I call the only way to experience the house is actually "cinematically"
right? The way that you move around the house you are basically tracking a shot.
You become the camera
so two deflections for Eisenstein's uncompleted
project.
Would you say that all your work is best viewed in a cinematic mind frame?
Only in this sense right? That one of the reasons I'm interested in quoting
Eisenstein is that he had also written an essay on architecture. His father
was an architect. And he was supposed to go to architecture school but he didn't
want to. But Eisenstein wrote about architecture and he was very natural about
architecture. Hence when he was in Berlin he went to go see architecture, right.
He went to see these theoretical projects. He wrote essays on how architecture
works as not as a singular image or object but as an experience. That we need
to move through it that architecture unfolds to us as we move through it. This
was really important to me early on.
Le Baiser - The Kiss (1999) multi-channel video installation and projection, cd audio recording, and mixed media dimensions variable
That essay was actually really important in developing The Kiss or La Blassiare
as an installation. It was actually floating in space, right. Where the projection
was something that you came to and moved around in and there was no correct
space to stand. You could even go inside the building or outside the building.
So at that moment I decided it was seminal for me. When I think of the viewer
viewing work, how they take in the work, even the kind of criticality and the
paradox that occurs in real locations real corporal locations; that's a phenomenological
experience. You are standing with this "thing." This
"thing" occupies the same space with you and time with you and so
it is contrary to conventional cinematic experience. Which for me is a Quarto
Centro experience and what I mean by that - in the renaissance you have a perspective
painting and the painting is meant to bring everything to a center spot. This
is our usual experience with film. So when you go into a movie theater lets
say you might come in late and the good seats are gone. And your off to the
side maybe too close to the front. But once you sit down in that black box you
especially experience the self and some how project yourself to this natural
sector. So that is one kind of cinematic experience, that the consumer cinematic
experience. And the other is the camera, right. In other words that you
actually move through space.
Isn't that a mindset though? You can always move around space and acknowledge
it, but is there a particular mindset that you engage in?
because there
are certain moments where life seems more cinematic than others?
Well I guess it depends on the term. Like when you say "there are certain
moments where life seems more cinematic," for example and those moments
tend to be the ones that are beyond real experience. So you say "this is
like a movie." I think I'm more interested in what the cinematic experience
tries do. We do it all the time too but we aren't being conscious of it.
Phantom Truck (2007) 32'9" (10m) long x 8'2" (2.5m) wide x 13' (4m) high
project for Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany, 2007
The camera is an apparatus and film making as an apparatus has to actually create
a situation into which we can project ourselves into experiencially, but remove
all the apparatus so we never see it. We never see the lights, we never see
the dolly tracks. The apparatus has to be invisible. Ok? Then what I'm interested
in is bringing back the apparatus, but the apparatus is you, you're the apparatus.
So in Documenta
12 the hybrid right? You go into a dark room and it takes about 30 seconds
for you to even realize something is in there with you and even a little longer
for you to realize the scale of it to discern what it might be, right? It might
end up to be just be a truck. And that's it - that all you know. You might not
know anything else that I've put into it
about Colin Powell, his speech
and what not. But if you just get that
that to me is really important.
Because what happens there is that you become the apparatus for making this
thing visible. And then if you understand what the piece refers to. Then you,
in a sense, have become part of the apparatus that has, in a sense, made it
appear. You've colluded in the grand lie, you are the mechanism for allowing
the lie to produce itself. And it's actually a physical experience, it's not
optical, it's physical. It's standing in a space, it takes time and it is not
immediate. It's an almost psychological apparatus that we have to engage in.
And once again, I am here with this thing and this thing is in this space here
with me. It is more of a phenomenological experience than an intellectual experience.
Would you say that self similarities appear in your work and if so does your
work relate to fractal geometry and/or chaos theory at all?
I think that in some of the work I'm definitely pointing towards that. There's
a piece of mine called "Vanishing Sky" and its just a mathematical
problem that creates universes, always creating universes. Lets call them stars,
right. As the universes are being created the program is extinguishing them
star by star. So your watching these universes being created and your also watching
stars going off. Also it is generated, so there is definitely a notion of that
pointing to the basis of evolution
that is version of fractal equations
or the notion of the arbitrary.
I actually started doing that very early on because I had problems. I had this
piece called "Sonambulo"
which is a summer rain storm that last 11 minutes. It starts off as a thunderstorm.
It's kind of like a new age meditation, 11 minute new age track. But its single
source is a gun shot. But then is morphed into all the sounds that you're hearing.
And one of the problems was with rain drops. You couldn't create raindrops that
sounded like raindrops because every thing would sound like rhythm. So that's
the first time back in 1998 that I had to engage a mathematician to help me
to create a fractal equation. That would allow the generation of all these thousands
upon thousands of rain drops to fall without rhythm and at different distances
and different weights with each other. To me it was it was almost like "I
need to resolve a technical problem." Later on maybe I'm referring to these
things in the work. In here (Max Protetch Gallery) I am definitely referring
to it within the photographs.
Iceberg B15 (12/18/03 05:20 GMT), 2010
Or the Rorschach inkblots.
Or the kaleidoscope, or the fact that we may not know what these photographs
are about. And it may be very difficult to understand what they are and where
they come from. But there is a sense of familiarity when you look at these photographs
because I think culturally we have become really acclimated to the notion of
the fractal. And the geometric patterning, which is a very high end math is
actually palpable within culture. We see it we use it, we're familiar with it.
So although one of the things that these photographs do, or that they want to
do at first. Is that they want to present themselves that way. If you come in
and see them for the first time it's some psychedelic New Agey image that you
are looking at. That's fine, that's what it wants to do, and then maybe later
on you locate what the source is and you begin to understand that there is time
that shows up in this set of photographs.
What inspires you to make art/work? What inspires you to be active?
Lately I've been thinking that
it depends on what project I'm working
on. But a lot of times I think that part of my activity, I can't label or have
a harder time labeling as art. In other words I don't need that thing for myself
- {labeling} what I do in the world as art. Sometimes what inspires me the most
is that there is something that I have to see for myself. There are questions
I have to pose and I have to pose them - for myself. And I don't have to answer
them. I just have to pose them. And some of those questions or situations are
creating this. And the question is never just purely intellectual, right. It's
never purely conceptual in a sense. It is actually situational. You create a
situation for an inquiry to exist into something. Some of those inquires are
things I want to share. I want other people to experience them. I don't necessary
want the situations to answer the questions or to find a correct answer.
I try very hard to tell people who may represent my work or what not, "Don't
tell them what it is. There is no answer. You don't get it. There isn't something
you're suppose to get." You might say where the source is from but the
subject of the work is never the source of the getting of the work, right. So
I think that what inspires me is
I don't know. Wanting to experience something.
Really wanting to experience something.
So its foremost for yourself
but what makes the work successful for
you? And do you get satisfaction out of every work or is there works that give
you more satisfaction than others?
Cloud Prototype No.1 (2003)
fiberglass and titanium alloy foil
installation view at Max Protetch Gallery, 2003
Certainly there are works that are more successful than other. And certainly
you keep making work because its never been truly successful.
Successful seems like such a bated word
how about self-satisfaction?
Satisfaction
You know its really interesting because successful is very
different. You are right. Success if very different. You want work that is very
different. You want work that is "working" not that "works."
But that is working. Some work works better than others. It is working.
The notion of working is a larger concept and so some of it does it better than
others. Or you suddenly find something that works and have to go back to it.
You pose these intense questions that are in essence unsolvable.
I'll relate it back to myself for a second. When I pose intense questions if
one person has a particular relationship whether it is "right" or
"wrong" I am satisfied.
I think when I'm experiencing the work. Because a lot of my work I experience
literally the first time when installing it. A lot of the important work for
me is work that is special/based on time. Even though it might be a static object
or something. There's no way too
your creating a situation. I definitely... I think that I am very good at creating situations but I can't know all of the
things that will come froth from those situations, a totality of them. So a
lot of the satisfaction comes from surprise, right. When I'm again surprised
by something. But also equally and maybe perhaps even more so when somebody
experiences the work with me and says something that I had never planned for
that I had never realized was in the work but it is totally true. And at that
moment there is this incredible rush because I start to realize the work is
working. In other words it is generating meaning, right.
Yeah.
It's not didactic. It's not communicating meaning. In other words its not communicating
my meaning to you. But it's generating meaning. That has as its source meaning
not everything that I put into it. But another source which is the viewer, another
viewer, the other.
And that brings it alive.
And to me - that's a big rush. There are big questions that I am
still trying to ask. The fish tank here I'm grappling with whether I should
call it "Bauen." I've been wanting to call it "Bauen"
Bauen (2010) aluminum, glass, water and Astyanax fasciatus mexicanus
(Blind Mexican Cave Fish)
Bauen?
B A U E N right? Because its an essay I've read very early on. Very early
on, I was very young by Heidegger, on dwelling. So bauen as a word for dwelling.
But dwelling also as a verb and building as word for building the building.
And the notion of dwelling as a way to contemplate how we exist. Dwelling as
a notion of existence. The fact that we can not actually exist or be conscious
of existence without dwelling, right. Without actually the notion of dwelling.
We are just set out there in a vacuum so we have to construct a habitat. And
the habitat isn't physically floors and walls. But we have to construct a habitat.
And that as humans we're always constructing habitats or destroying habitats,
right. So, I'm rereading that now because of this piece. I'm rereading that
and I'm trying to come to grips with whether I 'm dwelling. Or if I'm actually
dwelling the right way. Whether we are dwelling the right way. Whether we are
consciously building and taking care of what we build the right way. And by
"building" here I am not talking about "architecture" which
is almost everything. Like
Society
Right. So in this exhibit you have this large global picture, right. This massive
expansive land that is imaged. Bodies of water and ice environment are imaged,
right. And then you have this small, small ecosystem that's trapped in this
piece of architecture. And both are sites of dwelling, right. And one of them
is actually an inquiry back to us, back to our selves. Kind of a Rorschach test
that tries to analyze our own state of denial, right. That we're not actually
recognizing that our dwelling is something bigger and more complicated, and
maybe perhaps more essential and more primordial than what we think about our
dwelling is, right. What we go about seeking for our dwelling, right. Our house,
our apartment, our car, our clothes these are things that we apply to most dwellings.
This is how we live, right. How do you live: I have this apartment, I have these
records, I have this car, I have these clothes. This are the structures that
define how we live. But Heidegger was talking about a different notion of dwelling.
And I am asking that with myself. What does that mean right?
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle installing (right), Alex Rauch (left)
Now, for the viewer these are big heavy questions and you have to understand
when I'm talking to you
For me and you I think it's this kind of privileged
situation. We get to hit these big things. But how does the regular viewer acknowledge
this. They just come in. Well I think its very simple in many cases. Like this
piece here you just look at this object. It's a dead sort of dumb modernist
object. You might as well go over to Zwirner gallery right now and look at the
Larry Bell's, McCracken's, Robert Irwin's and all its doing is sort of riffing
off those kind of things. Except that moment when you realize that the fish
you are looking at are blind. There is in that moment
I have built in
a situation in which I am guaranteed and I am guaranteeing that my viewer with
just that little bit of knowledge enters into this moment of this kind of existential
moment. Because humans will always - blindness for humans, right. I'm not talking
about impairment. Just the notion of blindness. We approach it in a very profound
sort of way. Because it's a state. It's a state that we can think about but
can't necessarily conjure up. And so this is what I mean about that state of
existence, right. Its kind of built in. it drives the piece. These are blind
fish. For a moment I know they'll be thinking about; there're blind, I'm not
blind.
Are they going to laugh?
They might, you know.
On a level it seems like a stripped irony. If you do self reference it. If you
don't put blind fish in a clear fish tank
That's lit. These guys should be in the dark. So there all this built in irony,
right. Like this cave is fully of light and all the walls are glass so you can't
cast a shadow. So vision wouldn't help you gain knowledge this time.
Can they feel the heat from the light?
Well the lights are very low heat.
Do the blind fish just run right into the glass? Sometimes they don't but
that one did
I think they're working it out all right.
It's interesting, I don't know how they function. Would they do that in a
cave?
Yeah. They're probably going at this particular speed that they probably know
how to function at.
I talked to this guy about the cave and says its totally smooth. You have to
be really careful walking in these caves because the bottom is so smooth. I
mean its undulating. Its so smooth. So they're always hitting smooth surfaces.
Hard but smooth. In this they're hitting something at a right angle.
I was reading this paper on Happiness Inertia (Happiness Inertia: Analytical
Aspects of the Easterlin Paradox) and
economics There is this quote "if Happiness Inertia is to be more than
a transitory phenomenon, we should be focused on the long run. Further, one
interesting case surfaces whereby the most consumption and habit-rich societies
are the "least happy" (have the lowest welfare)." Which leads
me to the question: Where do wealth and welfare come to an equilibrium? Which
I also narrated into this piece as a commentary on global warming.
Yeah, this is a commentary on our state of denial and also our ability for escapism
and ironically the piece is almost at first a glance denial what they are. And
then we read them formally as graphic things and they are kind of escapist.
So the Rorschach test is the very thing it is trying to analyze
it's becoming
that. The Rorschach test is already a system of denial.
Andy Warhol - Rorschach, 1984
It's a denial of an ink blot?
It's a kind of denial. In a way what I'm saying is, because the image by very
subtly mirroring itself starts to deny what it is. It flattens itself of what
it's actually looking like. It denies what it's looking at and suddenly you
are shifting
what was originally the center focus is now the margin. And
in the center (of the original picture) is this thing that isn't interesting.
Also, there is this denial of what we are looking at, even if just at first
glance you can't really tell what they are and then it has that kind of kaleidoscope.
It's a kind of psychedelic poster; there's that sense of escapism within that.
Good or bad right? Even as a mandala that kind of escapism from reality. Even
a spiritual escapism. Which can be seen as good or as a negative a kind of social
escapism. Escaping the condition.
Not necesarily a positive or negative comment on happiness inertia?
I think its a negative in the term that I use.
Are you familiar with the term affluenza?
Oh yeah.
It means you are trying to keep up with the Jones and you can't be happy
because your trying to keep up to date.
Right. And when I say "happiness is a state of inertia" is kind of
like Happiness. Not the happiness that should be a kind of fluid and profound
state or joy or bliss or just happiness. But what we think of as happiness is
actually stagnant set. I think I'm referring to that obliquely. I don't want
to be didactic.
And that is an interesting problem for me as an interviewer because that's the
one thing I want to do as an interviewer is to get a concrete statement out
of you. Even though its agents the idea of the work. But at the same time you
have to create some narrative about the piece.
The title of the show basically came... Its an interesting side because there
another site for work and discourse its: there is an image that we produce for
a magazine that we have announced the show and the show at mass moca. Mass Moca
has this title Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With. And so its on this image.
And I start to title this piece in response to the other show. It's almost like
there is this moment they wanted to put these big letters up there on the window
Happiness is a state of Inertia. I said no, that's not the site. The site of
that where that is already exists. it exists in the big ad.
In between the two?
It exists in the art forum ad. And that's another site. So you can throw up
the statement there Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With at Mass Moca and
Happiness is a state of Inertia at Max Protetch both at the same time. So Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With has multiple levels of understanding. Physical
gravity which is the gravity of the situation. You know that something is actually
serious.
That something I've had to wrap around my mind. As a physical force or allegory?
Yeah I think it actually comes back to what you talked about you not wanting
to talk about success. So happiness here in the title may refer to - do you
want a clear answer from me?
Yes.
I can give you one. Happiness here refers to that... success. Its a state of
inertia, a tractor. There's no real movement.
It's a falsehood
Huh.
A falsehood is like a false state of reality.
Yeah, it's a false happiness.
So you are focusing on the thing that is not making you happy, but something
that you think should.
Yes, acquisition.
Black Jack (2006) carbon fiber and aluminum
That "goal" of that thing you are getting, rather than happiness?
So there is this one piece called Black Jack. That was here in this show
called Paradise. I was doing these works about Dante's Inferno. So Paradise
was part of it was this big sculpture. This is what you get this is what you
are. This is your paradise. But of course It is the opposite of an inferno.
But here is this glorious object, the weapon, the stealth, the power, the beauty,
the blackness, the power. This is your paradise. I think this title has that
similar type of irony. I mean that's a child's toy made into a ballistic weapon.
Its carbon fiber its totally sexy and beautiful. And then next I thought this
is it. I started with purgatory which was the cloud. Which is a cloud but also
an explosion. I thought by the time I did this one we were practically into
what Bush had created and the state we had arrived in. I just said here, "you
are this
is this what you wanted, this is your paradise, this is it."
Would you ever be tempted? I mean we're obviously talking it out and you
are elaborating on a narrative. As a piece would you ever write out a narrative
that would relate to your works?
My works?
As an overall body. The fractal geometry question I asked earlier on an integral/literal
level relates to mathematical things you've used in your work.
Which makes me think of self-similarities like a forest. There are patterns to a forest
but you can't really see them on the surface. Do you see your work like a forest?
That's an interesting question because the other day someone who knows my work
came into the gallery and said "this is the el nino effect" this is
this thing I've done before. This is the weather systems and warm bodies of
water. And yeah there is some sort of... I continue to do some kind of work here
there is a hidden pattern but I can't discern it. I can't discern it. And so
its not going to be a line. There isn't a thread some sort of progression.
And that is the relationship I was wondering about chaos theory and how it
might relate within work?
Right, from what I understand about chaos. There are two different types of
chaos. There is one which is fractal, the non-pattern
it is turbulence.
And we're beginning to learn that turbulence has a pattern. You look at it long
enough and let it flow there is an actual pattern. Therefore within what we
consider chaos there is a kind of stability. And then there is a primordial
chaos. And in primordial chaos is this strange situation because in primordial
chaos there is actually nothing. Its lack of pattern, its also lack of anything.
(Turns and walks toward the latest picture in the timeline of the photographs
in Happiness Is a State of Inertia) If anything, here in chaos it wouldn't be
the fractal aspect there. We're defining it this way now, right?
Iceberg B15
(02/15/05 21:55 GMT)
2010
Archival Giclee Prints
26 x 20 inches and 40 x 52 inches
Yeah, we're defining it as the void.
You know what I mean. The "nothing." Total uncertainty. Total uncertainty.
And so chaos has a heavy connotation if your thinking about it philosophically
or theologically, but primarily theologically. If you are looking at the midst
of creation chaos is very important.
De-void the void.
Right. And that carries with it a huge weight. And you transfer chaos/chaos
theory to then fractals it continues to carry that weight. That term continues
to carry that weight. And maybe its actually the opposite. Maybe its not chaos
that math is trying to figure out.
But that's the beauty in it. When would we know? When will we know? Is there
a pattern or is there not? But there is that possibility.
You could be a astrologer trying to derive patterns, a Greek astrologer, out
of that non-pattern. So you put up your consolations and so you get a pattern
to that non-pattern, pitter-patter. And that is one way to deal with chaos.
Or you could be a macro-physicist and look at that and look at a nebula. And
say that this thing is beautiful. And just think that turbulence is beautiful
in and of itself. I don't need to order it. Even though I'm going to try and
figure out how turbulence occurs. I don't need to order it.
It's the process rather than the answer.
And there are two different ways to define the terms. A lot of times I'm more
interested in the etymology of the term. Because it ties it to cultural history.
And just like when people say to me, "your so interested in science or
collaborative science" I'm not interested in science per-se all by itself.
I'm interested in science as one of many very complex cultural manifestations.
In other words what science produces actually responds to culture. If I believe
that the artist doesn't exist solely within their studio, I also don't believe
that the most creative brilliant scientists doesn't exist solely within their
lab. They are being blemished and tarnished and driven by forces outside. Science,
because of politics and the mechanisms of politics, primarily economics, produces
what we desire.
Like inherent problems that exist within 3-D space that even mathematicians
based within theoretically perfect worlds had to acknowledge?
A lot of genetic engineering has been driven by the fact that there is a potential
consumer out there. If there wasn't a potential consumer out there for what
genetic engineering might provide I bet you it wouldn't progress further. So
we see cultural in trends. I am interested in that permeation, and that has
always been my interest. So I would locate my interest in science being as a
part of a cultural engine that isn't driven in isolated spaces. There are actual
walls; the walls of the lab and the walls of the art studio are full of holes,
permeating. These things are coming in and out. And we're responding. We're
never in a isolated hermetic situation. It's impossible. It's uninteresting.
Totally uninteresting. The artist who believes himself to be totally hermetic
is totally uninteresting to me. In fact I think it's an impossibility.
It is an impossibility. Because you are part of a society even if it is a
society of one.
And if you look at it the fractal is inherent in the title because inertia is
a place where chaos would stop, supposedly. Inertia is a place where things
would come to a standstill. (laughing) The beauty of this (points to the piece)
... in a way it is very hard. Even though I'm trying on a very simple minded level.
Do you feel like there is a point where rhetoric and art jargon is ridiculous?
Joseph Kosuth Five Words in Green Neon 1965
Yeah at a certain point. But at another point. Someone asked me when I was doing
activist work, "will your work actually change things?" And I go -
I learned very quickly that in all the places it can change, in all of those
places art can provide real change. Art can actually change power. One of the
places where art can change power is language and if someone writes about something
or develops a new term or changes the definition of another term because of
what art does. Then we're actually making change in language. And language is
something that is in the hands of many different elites, but none the less elites.
So the place where art can have social/political change might actually be within
language. But not within the work. But not within what the work does or what
it says by itself. But how it impacts later on in discourse. So yes I have this
strange skepticism about art jargon but it is in art jargon where the redefinition
takes place. The invention of the term "the other" is huge and has
HUGE political impact. And then subsequently the other in that terminology,
that way of thinking and its impact on art allowed for the existence of strategies
called multiculturalism. Once multiculturalism moved away from the linguistic
into a more or less another stylized way of working it lost it's power but it
also lost the other. What happened is that we stopped talking about the other.
We don't speak about the other. We talk about community. That's a more benign,
less incisive, and a less critical term.
More innocuous.
Right more innocuous, and benign. So you can see that power comes back and recovers
itself. But where? In language.
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Digital comics store-reader combo LongBox hands-on
After a much longer run as a private beta than originally intended, the digital comic book store and comics reader called LongBox has finally opened its doors. The public beta is available for Windows and Mac, and although it's still quite rough in some spots, it represents a major breakthrough for the print-centric medium.
The default main window of LongBox is a massive comic book information feed.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
When you open LongBox v0.5, you'll see a massive information overload. The layout uses boxes to keep the busy display from getting too chaotic, but the varying shades of blue don't keep things as separate as they could be. Just because this is comics doesn't mean you're going to encounter a lot of primary colors or ziptones here, but some of that old-school feel might have helped here.
In the upper left box, you'll see a horizontal scroll of featured titles. Below that is a newsfeed from the comic book news and reviews Web site Comic Book Resources. The Blackbox is a comic creator spotlight, with the debut focus on Steven Niles, perhaps best known as the writer of 30 Days of Night. It is currently not functioning.
The column on the right is devoted to your LongBox stats on top and a scroll list of comic books being published for the current week. The stats counter wasn't working in the version I tested but should display your purchased comics, comics subscriptions, and comics loaded on your current device. That's a hint at what's to come for LongBox, which anticipates an iPad version, an Android tablet version, Xbox support, and support for other handheld devices. Comics downloaded through LongBox are shared to your account in addition to being stored locally, so you'll be able to read them on any LongBox-supported device without having to download them a second time.
Sitting calmly above all the noise is the LongBox navigation bar. Next to the home button is the Library, where comics you've downloaded reside, followed by the Store, the Reader, and the Options button. Nine comics are currently available for free in the store, including both mainstream works like "Witchblade," comics that have been made into movies like "Wanted," and cult favorites like "Punks."
The default view shows the comics as free-floating covers with the title and issue number above the image and a mouse-over link to the publisher info below it. Mouse over a comic and two options appear. The "i" will open an information box that includes a synopsis, a link to a preview, a wishlist option, and a purchase button. The "+" will add the comic to your shopping cart. There's also a list view, which contains a dedicated preview window and a more text-centric approach.
Accessing the store will require registration, a free process. Because the comics are free for the moment, no credit card information needs to be revealed at this time. Through the Options menu, users can choose to log in when LongBox starts, or to enter their information manually. Here you can switch skins and change your start screen from the main window to the reader, store, shopping cart, or last viewed screen when you start LongBox.
The shopping cart lives on the right edge of the top navigation bar, along with your wishlist, featured LongBox specials, and the Help button which opens a PDF. There's a search bar that anchors the two sets of buttons that becomes a recently read list in Reader mode. It appears to work fine from all screens except the default window.
The LongBox library contains comics you've purchased through LongBox.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblat/CNET)
The Reader mode opens to a blank screen. You can click on the Reader button again to open up the default system file browser, although the Reader does support drag-and-drop for non-LongBox formatted CBR and CBZ comics. In the Library window, however, you'll see an interface that looks like the LongBox Store but with page navigation controls at the bottom. Mouse over a comic and click the icon that appears to open it.
Comics that you haven't read before will open smoothly, but ones in the middle of being read are more sluggish. More often than not I had to mouse over the navigation buttons to get the comic to appear. Several times I had to click on a nav button, or in the black space where the comic should have been, to get it to appear.
In Reader mode, the shopping cart and help buttons are replaced by supplementary navigation buttons. There's a bookmarks button, known to be not working at the time of writing, and a "double" button that opens pages two at a time. This is a well-designed and essential tool for comics, which often use a two-page spread to highlight story moments that call for emphasized action.
There's a Manga button, which can be used for Japanese and Hebrew comics that are published in a right-to-left reading order, and a Zoom button that offers three kinds of viewing. Panel zoom focuses in on the comic at panel width, while page zoom is more of a mid-length zoom, but still bigger than the default viewpoint. Free zoom works like a magnifying glass, large enough so that you can see an entire panel in the frame. The scroll wheel can help you move the page under page zoom, and clicking on the magnifying glass zoom icon will toggle between the most recently selected zoom mode and the default view.
Lastly, there's a currently nonfunctional Audio button. There's a long history of comics and music crossing over, and the CEO of LongBox, Rantz Hoseley, won an Eisner Award for editing an anthology, "Comic Book Tattoo," a collection of comics inspired by Tori Amos' songs. If the button allowed publishers to associate recommended playlists with their comics, this could be a really cool feature, but there's no word as of yet as to what it can do.
The navigation controls at the bottom look smart but still need tweaking. There are controls to move forward or backward by a single page, or flip to the beginning or end of the comic. When you mouse over the controls, a pop-up bar appears previewing the pages of the comic that looks and feels like mini and elongated version of iTunes' Cover View mode. However, the previews are all blank unless you've already viewed a page. This could be a clever way to avoid spoiling the story, or another bug. It's a bit hard to tell at the moment.
This "gray market" CBR-formatted comic book was put together from online previews published by DC Comics. LongBox supports the format, albeit without any metadata.
(Credit:
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
The Reader mode is really the guts of the program, and a comic read on a 19-inch monitor with occasional juicing from the zoom mode was enjoyable. Nobody really cares about the news features or even the store if you can't read the comic, and on that end LongBox succeeds. However, it's likely that users with significantly smaller or older screens will find it unbearable.
Hoseley has stated that the beta will proceed in three stages. The current public beta, version 0.5.2, is nearly identical to the private beta that I began testing toward the end of 2009. The next stage will introduce redemption codes for nonwatermarked comics. The final stage will introduce full e-commerce functionality to the LongBox store, and add about 100 comics to the store.
Besides the ones mentioned above, there are plenty of known bugs in LongBox. Font usage needs to be standardized, the Comic Book Resources feed requires tweaking, the default window doesn't pull titles from LongBox site correctly, and metadata editing needs work.
The LongBox public beta showcases a massive amount of potential, but unlike the latest Web browser beta from whichever browser publisher is your favorite, this is definitely a rough work and is still very much in progress. It faces massive challenges beyond getting the software to work correctly. Unlike music and MP3s, there's currently no single approved file format for comics. CBRs and CBZ are little more than image archive containers.
There's also the issue of adoption. Except for the rise of graphic novels, comics have been dependent on the direct market niche comic book stores. Will readers flock to digital versions of them? And will those readers jump from stores to digital, or will LongBox bring in new readership?
Overall, though, LongBox represents a good-faith effort to shove the medium out of its print-based nest. It's just too soon to tell whether it can fly.
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6 Style Blogs And Their Singular Obsessions
Whether it's Disney characters, Muppets, or even cavemen, we love finding a spot-on runway reference that designers probably weren't even intending in the first place. These six blogs, however, take this hobby to the next level, devoting entire sites to their special sources of sartorial inspiration, think Fran Drescher (yes, The Nanny), Strangers With Candy, and everyone's favorite babysitter, Claudia Kishi (just to name a few). Read on for more strangely inspirational sites to bookmark now.
What Claudia Wore
"What Claudia Wore" is a site that records the young babysitter's best fashion moments from the book series. For example, "At that meeting she was wearing '50s-style cat's-eye glasses frames, a plastic barrette in the shape of an alligator, a tie-dyed t-shirt, and bell-bottoms." Didn't we spot her in Williamburg last weekend?
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