A Journal of Film and Digital Media
University of California, Santa Cruz
Fall 2003
Editor: Noah Finneburgh
noahnoah@ucsc.edu
Design and Production: Jose M. Hernandezjmhernan@ucsc.edu
Advertising Manager: Ekaette Akpan
alpha_omega81@yahoo.com
Faculty Advisor: David Crane
dwcrane@ucsc.edu
Writing Staff:
Ekaette Akpan
Eric Danch
Michael DiCenzo
Noah FinneburghJose M. Hernandez
Kiel Olff
Adam Weinstein
eyecandy is a quarterly, student run film and digital
media journal founded in the fall of 1999. eyecandy
focuses on analytical, critical, and theoreticalissues in film and digital media, as opposed to themore evaluative criticism found in popular press.
eyecandy examines film and digital media in relation
to other significant issues such as art form, socialand cultural theory and politics. Above all, eyecandy
is a forum for writers from all fields to discuss andraise issues about film and digital media as a popular phenomenon and area of critical study.
eyecandy is published at the end of each academic
quarter (November, March & June) and is available
by postal subscription for a $25 donation per year.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Student
Press Center, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064.
All images contained within are copyright and property of their respective owners. Articles represent
the expressed opinions of individual writers andnot necessarily those of the Film and Digital Media
Department, UC Santa Cruz, or the University ofCalifornia. Please direct all inquiries to The Student
Press Center, UCSC.
Special Thanks:
The UCSC colleges
The UCSC Film and Digital Media Department
Robin Chanin and Student Media
Arthur Finman and Porter College Faculty Services
James Rambo and UCSC Printing Services
Douglas Rennie
Table of contents images (top to bottom):
Bruce Willis in a scene from Tears of the Sun;the marquee at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco,CA, featuring Prefuse 73 and Four Tet; an example
of a computer game mod; a screen-shot of CNN
during the east coast blackout of 2003, taken froman internet blog; Seann William Scott (left) and The
Rock in a scene from The Rundown; an issue ofHarvey Pekar’s American Splendor comic book;
Craig Robinson’s “Minipops.”

contents

eyecandy

Blurred Reality:

Historical construction in Antoine Fuqua’s
Tears of the Sun
by Ekaette Akpan

02

Standing on the Cusp of an Elevated Sound:
An interview with Prefuse 73 and Four Tet
by Noah Finneburgh

04

Computer Game Mods:
Interactive digital art
by Kiel Olff

06

Friendster, Camera Phones, Blogs and Mobs:
The emergence of an intelligent medium
by Jose M. Hernandez

08

Waiting for the Ball to Drop:

Upper-Division film education meetsthe casual moviegoing experience
by Adam Weinstein

10

Another Short Term Goal Accomplished:

The glorification of ordinary life in American Splendor
by Eric Danch

12

British Humor Goes International:

An interview with digital artist Craig Robinson
by Michael DiCenzo

Please visit eyecandy on the web for
additional content and an archive of past issues.

http://eyecandy.ucsc.edu

14Blurred Reality: Historical construction in Antoine Fuqua’s
Tears of the Sun

By Ekaette Akpan

It seems that Hollywood has always found inviolence on an unidentified African city street. Instantly
Africa a locale in which to explore the exotic and thethe line blurs as the text calls for the audience to referesoteric. One need only reference early films like Blondeback to its past experiences with the newsreel mode—in
Venus or more recent films like Black Hawk Down to findessence, to recall numerous streaming news footage
evidence that the “Dark Continent,” as post-colonial
on network news channels claiming to be real footage
theory terms it, has seemed to the West a conduitof African civil unrest. Consequently, Tears relies
through which to uncover in the Other, latent desires
heavily on both audience preconceptions of Africanthat cannot be explored within its own social strictures.
socio-political history—it invites the viewer to bringThis tendency to posit Africa—its people and its
in extra-textual discourse on past African violence andhistories—as homogenous and easily comprehensible
instability—and its willingness to accept the newsreel
continues toas objective andinform discussions
authoritative. It
in post-colonial
asks the viewer
film studies. The
to believe, thoughfollowing analysis
falsely, that visuals
does not seek to
do not lie. But thisinvestigate theis precisely what
Other as existing
they do within thewithin taxonomical
context of the film.
binarisms such as
Jean Baudrillard
Tame|Savage ordefines hyperSacred|Profane,
reality as thethough it ismoment in which
undoubtedly
reality is replaced
influenced byby simulacra.
such discourses.
Here the viewer
Instead it is anexperiences reality,
investigation,
not as it occurs
though not
objectively and
Bruce Willis (left) and Monica Bellucci in a scene from Tears of the Sun.
exhaustive, of
unadulterated,the creation, not of history, but of a history. It isbut as a re-formulated mimesis lacking a specific pointan examination of film and its ability to effectivelyof origin. Tears of the Sun’s rapid deconstruction ofmanipulate a viewer’s fundamental belief in what
the boundary between fact and fiction in its opening
separates fact from fiction.
exemplifies this principle. The visually and emotionally
Though many critics have dismissed Antoine
chaotic scene begins with a time-elapsed shot of a blood
Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun as a clichéd military drama
red sunrise, which quickly dissolves into fragments
couched in the us versus them paradigm, one mustof shaky news footage in which mobs riot throughmove away from such superficial assays in orderwar-ravaged city streets. For at least several shots, theto understand the complexity with which the film
audience is afforded no indication of spatial or temporal
manipulates reality in order to present itself as alocality, though the grainy news fragments immediately
realistic historical account. What makes Tears of the Sun
evoke western news reports of contemporaneous African
worthy of examination is that the film begins to blur
insurgencies. It is only following the imposition of athe line between fiction and reality from its outset. In
British news reporter’s voice purporting the chaotic
its call to the viewer to accept its opening as emerging
fragments to be recent images of ongoing Nigerianfrom a real history, Tears of the Sun immediately layspolitical unrest, that the audience is allowed a context
the foundation upon which it is able to construct a very
for its voyeurism. Images of broken bodies andrealistic historical fiction.
immolated corpses no longer exist as dislocated pieces
From the moment the camera’s “objective” eyeof history, as Nigeria is hailed as the site on which thefirst documented the banalities of its human subject,film will interweave these mobile realities to create athe newsreel mode attained the mythic distinction ofhighly believable history. From one shot to the next, theauthentic and unadulterated visual truth. Tears of theaudience is violently inserted into the melee, with eachSun plays on this very myth of “newsreel- as-truth” inimage forcing the audience, via its “objective” eye, toorder to validate its essentialized history of an Other.
experience these very real horrors.
Tears opens its narrative with jarring archival newsreel
The opening scene thus becomes a visualfootage of what appears to be related clips of street
documentation of the process by which the hyper-real
02 | eyecandy Fall 2003

usurps the real, in effect creating a space in which
fiction and non-fiction combat for eminence. At once,
Tears asks the audience to maintain its belief in thenews mode as objective and truthful. This faith in
the newsreel is pertinent to the text as its “historicalnarrative” is entirely predicated on images pillaged
from this mode. And still the text goes further, asking
the viewer to accept these images as being those of
Nigerian civil unrest. But in doing so, the audiencemust negate the fact that this representation of achaotic Nigeria is in actuality a compendium of
spatially and temporally disparate histories, edited
together to create a cogent national story. For example,
several archival shots purported to be images of
Nigerian rioters are actually images of South Africanand Zimbabwean political revolutions.
Tears of the Sun creates a fiction so emblematic of
the real that, as Baudrillard argues, the line between
mimesis and reality becomes increasingly moredifficult to discern. Because Nigeria has for decades
been a site of civil unrest, the film’s fictionalized sociopolitical representation of its instability is not at all afar cry from its history. Insofar as Nigeria’s past andpresent both resemble the precariousness depicted onscreen, Tears’ fictional history emerges as a believableaccount. But it is nevertheless a false history,
ironically, constructed from fragmented actualities.
The film, in essence, renegotiates what the viewer is tobelieve as real, as each shot, itself a part of a separate
truth—one shot conveys a Congolese revolt, anothera Zimbabwean street riot—becomes a (re)edited leafin the annals of African history. Where beyond thetext, each shot exists as a spatially and temporally
locatable fragment of a historical syntagma, Tears’
decontextualization renders its extra-textual validity asa pre-existing history, inconsequential and reducible.
Nigeria therefore becomes the site at which conflated
histories and cultures converge to create a monolithic,
easily palatable history of an African people. It
posits an understanding in which social and cultural
individuations are rendered mobile and universal.
In the same way visual elements of the newsreelmode allow Tears of the Sun to assert itself as real, thefilm appropriates—from the same mode—a formal
aural structure that ultimately serves to validate thetext’s historical creationism. Tears of the Sun again
plays with the audience’s faith in the newsreel by
employing omniscient voice-over narration as a meansof influencing and re-directing viewer consciousness.
This aural complexity is evidenced in what isarguably one of the most horrific pieces of footage inthe opening sequence. In a medium shot, an adolescentmale trembles with fear as he is beaten by a man
dressed in military fatigue. The boy’s disheartening
pleas intermingle in a cacophonous cocktail of gunfire

and stampeding feet. But his voice, an aural symbol of
his corporeal and psychological distress—which exists
within the realm of the archival footage—is overrun bya non-diegetic female voice functioning as a narrator.
On one level, her voice functions to offer meaning to
the disjointed on-screen events—she confirms that thenarrative indeed occurs in Nigeria—while on another,
it functions as an aural liaison between the world of thediegetic and non-diegetic—the fictive and the real.
The collision between real newsreel audio andfictional voice-over narration further exemplifies thecomplex aural construction underscoring the film.
The narrator’s voice of authority is posited as existing
temporally simultaneously in relation to the archival
footage conveyed on-screen, though in actuality, it does
not—her voice-over is a post production insert. It is
within this “present tense”—these images of Nigeria as
directly representative of the country’s immediate stateof affairs—that the audience is asked to believe thatboth the documented events—conveyed via the archival
footage—and the reporter’s voice occur. Yet the audience
is asked to accept this temporal progression as the text
simultaneously flows backwards. The news footage
consists of unrelated shots, some filmed several years
prior, each existing within in a specific past and divorced
from the film’s present.
Though the newsreel—via its usage of archival
footage—is a mode that purports to offer up a
document of a specified historical past, its archives are
not exempt from manipulation and reinterpretation.
The prevailing myth of Africa’s histories as universal
is further promoted in Tears of the Sun’s historicalcreationism. The film, as a pillaging text, robs histories
from multifarious African nations and reconfiguresthese histories to create a fiction so real that reality is
no longer paramount, or better yet, important. In its
intertextuality, Tears of the Sun compromises the validityof these histories, offering instead simplistic historicalreconcilability and conflationism. The film plays onwhat the audience accepts as real in order to create aworld in which histories become a history, and cultures
become a culture. ■eyecandy Fall 2003 | 03

Standing on the Cusp of an Elevated Sound:
An interview with Prefuse 73 and Four Tet

04 | eyecandy Fall 2003

sampling, the pleasures and pitfallsof listening to their own music, andblack market baby peddling. Herren
made sure his lack of enthusiasm forinterviews wasn’t taken personally. “No
dis [to you],” he said.

SH: That comes from listening to jazzmusic. You want to hear shit switch
up. You can do a hip-hop song andhave it change to 3/3 and people
won’t even know it.
ec: Did you grow up with jazzaround the house?
SH: Yeah, my mom
listened to it.
ec: Did your parents
encourage you to go
along the path of music?
SH: No, I just did it. I wasjust like, “This is the only
thing I can do well, man.”[My parents said to] finish
school, and I said, “OK,yeah.” But right when I wasthat close to finishing school I
was like, “I quit.”

ec: Scott, do you consider your music to
be visual in any way? Is there any kindof emotion or picture you’re trying topaint?
SH: Yeah, when I make the music there’s
always a personal meaning behind itthat I’m trying to make. It’s always there
in some way or another.
ec: So do you aim for your music tobe—or do you think that it is—more
intellectually or physically stimulating,or a healthy dose of both?
SH: I try to keep it both. I don’t want to
be too intellectual about my music andshut people out because it’s intellectual,
but then I don’t want to make overt
dance music.
ec: I think there is a healthy dose ofthat on [your recent record] One Word
Extinguisher, where there are a lot of
funky beats where you’re just getting
down to it, but there are also parts
where you change up the syncopation,and it draws you out of it and you
totally notice [the change].

ec: You have said before thatyou enjoy playing live withpeople. What do you think thebenefits are of working alone in thestudio, as compared to working on a
track with someone for an album?
SH: When you’re working alone you
dictate your own environment; you’rein charge of everything, so you canprobably get stuff done a lot quicker.
Kieran [Hebden of Four Tet] actuallyknows about this more because he’s[also] in [the] band [Fridge].
Kieran Hebden: There’s nocompromising when you work on
your own. You just see through yourvision. You don’t mess around withdiscussing what you’re trying to dowith anybody else. You just do it.
ec: Do you prefer working with
Fridge or on the Four Tet project?
KH: I like both at the same time. I
miss [how] it’s quite magical when
you are working with someone andit suddenly gels and the ideas reallywork well off each other.
SH: I like both [working together andPhotos: Scott Herren, the man behind Prefuse 73 (left), and Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden.

Scott Herren is tired of doing
interviews. And with good reason.
Herren, who hails from Atlanta, but
resides in Barcelona, has been touring
the world for the past few months,
intensely promoting two of his newreleases under his alias Prefuse 73.
Herren’s latest pair of records, theLP One Word Extinguisher
and its companion piece,
Extinguished: Outtakes,
Alternate Takes & Beats From
One Word Extinguisher, havebeen garnering rave reviews
from the worlds of hip-hop,indie- rock and electronic
music. Herren uses his MPC
sampler to chop up sampled bitsof music and reconstruct theminto sonic collages that sparkle
with elements of hip-hop, funk,post-rock and jazz—Herren chosethe name Prefuse 73 as a nod to thepre-fusion jazz laid to wax between
1968 and 1973, a sub-genre of music
he is particularly enamored with.
While Herren’s music most definitely
encourages the listener to get up
and dance, it also contains a healthy
dose of cerebral elements, with its
unpredictable, often experimental
syncopation and timbres, bothof which contribute to Herren’s
reputation as one of the most original
and creative artists currently working
in hip-hop or electronic music.
On tour with Herren is Kieran
Hebden, an Englishman who writes,
records and produces under thename Four Tet. Hebden uses pirated
PC software to sample, edit andsequence music into compositions
that marry stuttering electronics andwarm organic sounds in a union thatis both pensive and danceable. Lately,
Hebden has been stretching tracks
from his recent LP, Rounds into twenty
minute plus, live laptop jams thatreinterpret the original recordings, apractice Hebden says he drew fromthe free jazz pioneers of years passed.
eyecandy dropped in on Herren and
Hebden as they prepared for theirshow together back stage at Bimbo’s
365 Club in San Francisco on
October 22nd. They discussed theEuropean music scenes, the art ofBy Noah Finneburghalone]. I like making an ill track bymyself and then I like to play withpeople too, where you are totally
feeding off somebody and you hear it.
KH: With electronic music, it depends
on how you make it. I make a lot ofmusic from the inside out. I start withthe main sound of the track or themain idea. The process after is justabout adding details.
ec: What do you use to make music?
KH: I just use a computer hooked
up to my hi-fi. I use this program
Audiomulch. It’s free. I use it
pretty much for anything. I just use
Cakewalk to sequence.
ec: Do either of you know any music
theory or do you just play by ear?
SH: I know a little bit.
KH: I don’t know any music theory.
ec: Do either of you usually plan out
how a song will be? Do you maybe
say, “I want to make more of a funktrack or a jazz track, or a sadder, or
upbeat track,” or does it usually justseem to fall into place?
SH: It’s pretty random. For me, it’s
never really premeditated. It just sortof takes its own shape as it goes. But
then I’ll incubate it. Once I hear it, I
can incubate that sound. But I don’t
set out to go, “This is going to be a sadpeace. This is going to be the last trackon the album.” I can’t do that shit.
KH: [For me] it’s different every time.
Sometimes I have the whole thing in
my head pretty much. Sometimes I’ll
be fucking around on the computerand something will come up thatsounds good.
ec: So once you start trying, then
you’re fucked?
SH: I think it could come out
contrived sounding, but that’s me
speculating. That doesn’t relate tosomeone who approaches music in adifferent way. If you were a theory type
person you could be like, “I’m going tobase this in this minor key…”
ec: Would you guys like to know moremusic theory?
SH: It wouldn’t hurt, but maybe it
would hurt. I don’t know. That was areally good answer. (laughs)
KH: (laughs) I’ve got no interest.
ec: How often do you guys go record
shopping and what is the process like?
Do you scour the used bins, or thebargain stuff for cool covers…?
SH: [Kieran’s] a record digger.
KH: I’m making so much money outof IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) now
that I just buy shit on the wall when I
walk into the shop. It’ll say it’s got adrum break but it’ll be a hundred andfifty dollars and I just hand over themoney. (laughs) No. I look everywhere,
wherever I care about.
ec: Scott, you don’t really dig too much?
SH: I say that, I mean I don’t. I don’t
venture out like these cats [on tour withme] do. Town to town, if there’s a record
store, they’ll hit it. I’ll usually be like,“Fuck it.” I don’t have enough energy.
ec: But usually you’re sampling vinyl
right?
SH: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m reallyspecific about dates and things
stylistically…
ec: So you’ll sample stuff that you’realready a total fan of? You’re not goingout there for more novelty records…?
SH: I just don’t spend as much time
doing it really. I’m just as interested in it
and I’m interested in finding out about
new music, but I’m just as interested inlistening to those records and whateverelse, getting other shit from it than justsamples.
ec: I always wonder when I listen toanyone who’s sampling, whether
they go out [to buy records] andjust say, “Oh, that’s a cool cover,”and they listen to hours and hours
of horrible music for just that one
nugget, that one guitar riff…
SH: I can respect it.
KH: There’s something you cansample on every record. If you knowwhat you’re doing, you can mess withshit so much once you sample it…
SH: You can sample anything, brandnew, buy it blindly, and make it dope.
KH: If you’ve got to go through ahundred records to find something
you can use then you’re not very goodat what you’re doing.
SH: Exactly, you’ve got a lack of ideas.
ec: So you guys aren’t the types who
are all about obscurity? Because you
know there are those people who
think, “This is a big record, I’m notgoing to sample it. Everyone knows
it…”
SH: I would never want to takesomething that was so obvious.
I’m just not into the direct break or
sample.
KH: You don’t want to cover old
ground.
SH: Exactly. You don’t want to do aremix of the record, and essentiallythat’s what you’d be doing, andyou can get paid doing remixes forsomebody else.
KH: I like to sample really weird shit,
because I’m not clearing the samples.
ec: How does that work? Have you
guys ever gotten into legal troubleor do you usually disguise yoursamples so much that no one cares, or
has anyone ever contacted you [aboutsampling them]?

continued on page 13
eyecandy Fall 2003 | 05

Computer Game Mods:
Interactive digital art

By Kiel Olff

Computer games are fast outpacing the cinema as thedominant force in the American entertainment economy.
For the past two years computer games have out sold thebox office and look to top the 10 billion dollar revenue
mark this coming holiday shopping season. With computers only becoming more powerful and user friendly, it
would seem that the gap between the cinema and computer game markets is only going to get bigger. The computer
game market has such a dominating grasp on the world’s
pocket books because computer games have the ability tochange and interact with the user over a long period oftime, not only because on screen characters react to ourcommands issued by keystrokes, but because we can interact with the actual substance that the games are made of.
Cinema does not allow us access to film stock, nor does
television allow us to modify the signals entering ourhomes. However, the numerous files of code that computer
games are made of are available to the user for alterationand editing complicated strings of text. This has all changed
in recent years, for now mods usually involve one executable
download that will automatically place files and edit others
to install the modification to its target game.
Things became more mainstream in 1997 with therelease of the real time strategy game, Total Annihilation.
The game’s developer, Cavedog Entertainment, was thefirst game company to not only create, but also endorse
the development of mods by gamers. Cavedog mademodification simple by featuring a unit of the week which
could be downloaded from their website. These mods werequite easy to install and often worked perfectly, which
helped the game retain its market presence years after it
debuted. Total Annihilation was also the first game to havecorresponding mod building tools available to the public at
the time of its release. The game designers made a simple
program and released it via the Internet so that gamers could
develop their own units and full-featured mods for the game.

A scene From Jedi Knight II before modification.

A scene From Jedi Knight II after a total conversion mod has been installed.

and adaptation. When adapted and modified, computer
games can be made to fit and fulfill the particular desiresof the users.
Modifying computer games is something that has
finally become mainstream to the gaming industry. These
modifications are files made by users and other gamers(and sometimes software companies) that alter the gameenvironment in some way and are posted on the Internet
for download. Computer game mods were first made to
expand upon levels and create new weapons or player
avatars, but were always a small piece of the computer
game puzzle. Their technical sophistication caused themto only be available to and used by a very small marketof hard-core gamers. The Internet was still a very difficult
place to navigate at the time of the first modifications.
Modem speeds were also slow and file sizes were large,
causing the gamer to dedicate a considerable timecommitment to finding and downloading the mods. The
technical know-how required to install and use the gamemodification files involved rooting around game directories

The game also shipped with a map and mission creation
program that allowed users to use the same technology thatthe game designers used, to create maps and script the movie
cut scenes that play between single player missions. Issuing adeveloper’s pack on a company website in correlation with agame’s release is now commonplace.
The most common type of mod is a new skin, whichbasically changes the look of objects or characters within agame. There are two components to creating a new skin, andusually gamers will work in groups and divide up tasks.
The modelers in the group use a 3D modeling program toconstruct a wire frame for their new creation. Depending on
the game, the gamers developing the mod may build jets,
tanks, aliens, cartoon characters, or whatever object they
desire. Once the 3D model is complete, the other membersof the group can start working on skinning the model. These“skinners” create 2D bitmap files to be wrapped around the
3D model to give the new avatars the face, colors, or new
look that the 3D modelers were going for. Some game modifications only create new avatars to be transported into the

06 | eyecandy Fall 2003

game world, as this is very simple and enjoyable because
it allows players to express some individuality throughtheir unique avatars. Perhaps the most famous skinning
modification of all was the infamous “Nude Raider” patchthat removed the clothes from Tomb Raider’s Laura Croft,but changed nothing else in the game. Users went to thefiles containing the skin for Laura Croft and created new
bitmaps that featured her bare chest instead of her usual
clothing. Inserting new skins into games has become commonplace as new games appear on the market with thisability already built in. One such game is Homeworld 2,
which features fleets of ships in space, and allows thegamer to import a picture into the game to be used as
the insignia of his or her team on every ship. Developers
have seen that users often find their own ways of putting
personal touches on various objects in games, and the software companies have responded by building the features
into their games which enable users to do so.
While modding a game to insert new skins allows formore individuality in the game world, some mods canchange the entire look and feel of a game. After creating
new menus and new levels (which is similar to creating
new characters), modders can also change the rules andobjectives of the game to the point where the modded
game can be so different that one might not trace it backto its original version. Creating new rules and objectives
for the game world involves rewriting the code of theoriginal game and entails a much longer time commitment
for modders. Modifications have made possible theexistence of a new author in electronic games, as the mod’s
developer has inserted his or her own art and structure
into the code of the program they are creating. Insteadof the software traveling a one-way street to the player’seyes, the player has the opportunity to change what they
have been given and to send the line of creation back to
the original developers. Software development companies
often scan the Internet looking for what is popular amonguser created files and start to incorporate their findings
into their own work. While some may have thought thatsoftware companies would not want users toying with andmodifying their files and source code, software developers
actually often welcome this two-way communication via
the software they produce. It allows them to stay abreast of
the latest trends and desires within the gaming community,
and in the case of the game Counterstrike, make somemoney off of it too.
The most successful mod available is Counterstrike,a full conversion modification for the game Half-Life, bySierra. Originally, Half-Life was a fantasy game about
a portal that opened between galaxies and an army ofmonsters that swarmed through, presenting the gamer withthe role of a soldier who must eliminate them. This madeHalf-Life a run of the mill first person shooter game, dozens
of which are made every year. The gamers who created theCounterstrike mod for Half-Life made it so realistic that it
has even been mentioned on the news in conjunction withschool shootings, the DC sniper murders and the training

programs for US soldiers in Iraq. After installing the mod,you aren’t battling huge monsters, and the hero isn’t a giant,unrealistic looking male character. The new characters in the
mod are proportioned as normal humans. The game has also
become team oriented instead of solo play. Teams are now
terrorist and counter-terrorist instead of monster and human.
The weapons available are also real weapons such as AK-47’sand Desert Eagle handguns. The modders brought aboutsuch realism that the real world performances of the weapons
are also reflected in the mod. The rounds-per-second
meter is true to life, and now, if you are carrying a heavier
weapon, your avatar will run slower. The main feature that
Counterstrike changed was the way health is measured. In
many other computer games, players can take entire salvosof rockets and bullets and still survive. Shields and healthpacks litter levels and allow players to regain health. The
games feature these items so players have a greater chancefor survival. The Counterstrike mod throws these conventions
out the window in favor of a more realistic health/damage
model. Players can be killed with one bullet if they are hit in
the head or chest, while it may take two or three if they are
hit in a less vital area. Because of the popularity and demand
for this mod—which is a very large download—Sierra bought
the rights to it and is now selling it in stores in bundle packs
with their Half-Life title.
The computer game industry continues to grow because
computer games allow developers and players to interact
with one another and meet each other’s needs. Modified
games allow software companies to work with gamers, as thecompanies design the tools to make whatever changes to thegames the users imagined a reality. In return the software
companies see what players want and are able to stay atop
the latest trends. New models, levels, and avatars enable
the games to evolve and create a new mode of authorshipfor the gamers. The cycle will only perpetuate itself, as thesoftware production companies release more and better
equipped developer packs, and along with games, mods will
also become more complex. Because of the work of modding
groups, computer games are able to stay fresh and evolve
over time, helping both gamers and developers see what isneeded to advance the genre. ■eyecandy Fall 2003 | 07

Friendster, Camera Phones, Blogs and Mobs:
The emergence of an intelligent medium

By Jose M. Hernandez

In the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, computing was about
value—as opposed to social relevance and interaction—to
computing. Tech-savvy elites raced to build a more sophisticatedmeasure its own “effectiveness.” In a “natural” social network,
calculator, while ordinary people remained largely unaffected.
authority of message is linked to personal trust or reputation
Personal computers were relatively inaccessible until the(ask Jane if you can trust John, etc.). With friend-of-a-friend
explosion of the Internet. Emphasis has recently
connections, users give up online anonymity inshifted from personal computing to personal
exchange for a powerful extension of their offline
mobile and wireless devices such as iPods andsocial network.
cell phones. Today innovators seek to bring
Indie developers are already devising amore computing power to communications
solution to the Friendster bottleneck called
devices, as opposed to the broadband push of
FOAF (Friend Of A Friend). FOAF is ayesteryear to bring more communication power
markup document type that standardizes
to computing devices. We are experiencing
and decentralizes the relationship structure,a phase of convergence between information
permitting the user to own and possess theirand wireless communication (much larger thanpersonal data as opposed to allowing commercial
the Internet itself) that has only just begun toservices like Friendster to dictate its use. The great
reveal its true potential. The established naturething about FOAF is that it is not limited to theof telephony creates an accessible context forweb, and can be adapted to cell phones and otheremerging mobile communications devices,
wireless applications. Expect to see useful (nonbroadening the existing ability of non-technicaldating) applications of a FOAF architecture in thepeople to communicate. The determinism ofnext few years.
convergence is about to start a whole new
CELL PHONES“digital revolution.” Technological groundwork
According to a report from FutureImage,has been laid for a socially integrated andcamera phones are expected to outsell digitalA model dons a wearable computer at a and film cameras combined by the end of 2004.
accessible medium ripe for exploration,
recent cyberfashion show in San Diego.
specifically within the realm of non-fiction.
This means that most of the world’s cameras
Recent developments such as Friendster-style social
will soon accompany people wherever they go. Over the next
networking, camera phones, blogging and mobs have opened the three years these phones will be capable of 2 and 3 mega-pixel
door to an intelligent hybrid medium. The instant combination
high-resolution stills and video, reducing the need for additionalof documentation, publishing and social distribution enables
cameras.
individuals to collaboratively construct and interact with a text
Cell phones are also becoming more like personal computers.
which is well suited for socially or politically relevant content
Those enabled with Java can already exchange data (stocks,
due to its grass-roots nature, but also adaptable to purely artistic
weather, IM) with Internet servers in real-time. Programmers canendeavors. Consequently, the potential for entrepreneurs, artists
quickly develop new interfaces for custom applications as needed,
and activists will be vast. The following is a brief overview
such as a simple data entry system for rating a movie you justof some of these emerging technologies, their relations to one
watched or documenting a photo you just snapped.
another and how people have been using them to evolve a selfGlobal Positioning Systems (GPS) are now able to provide
extensive hybrid medium – a medium capable of challenging
precise data about location, allowing for a more tangible
current modes of both documentary and journalism.
interaction between physical space and information. For example,
FRIEND-OF-A-FRIEND SOCIAL NETWORKS
one might document an aspect of a place they visit on someIf you have not yet heard of Friendster, someone you know
given day and then log the details (which might include their(or someone they know) probably has. Friendster is a web-based, exact location in longitude and latitude and a description andquasi-dating service that allows people to interact based on
photo) of that experience to a database. The next day, some otherfriend-of-a-friend connections. Since January 2003, Friendster has person might visit the same place, query their coordinates, andgrown to nearly 4 million users. Other services such as Tribe andretrieve that information. Already, GPS has been cleverly adapted
Myspace have emerged to try to cash in on the trend, which has
to weekend scavenger hunt games, in which participants arerecently gathered millions in funding (remember the dot-com
presented with the task of finding and photographing target
boom?). Inevitably, Friendster has experienced such immense
locations with their camera phones. In Japan, cell phone users
server traffic that it barely functions. The loosely structured
can bring up interactive maps for directions just as Americans doorganization of friend-of-a-friend relationships is sometimes
from Mapquest.
described visually as a “hyperbolic-tree,” which, as opposed toPotentially, cell phones could collect other sorts oftraditional tree structures, has no top or bottom. In other words,
environmental data such as temperature and weather conditions
every node is at the center of its own universe (see cover), thus
or the precise angle at which a photo was taken. This could be
subverting any hierarchy of relationships. This runs counter toa tool for scientists looking to extend their ability to collect data
the autocratic communication structure of traditional mass media, about a given phenomenon, or one for surfers looking to exchange
where a clear distinction between sender and receiver impedes
tidbits of knowledge with their inner-circle of bros. Spatial or
any form of constructive feedback. Television news for example,
environmental data might also be used to corroborate accounts ofrelies on ratings from a passive audience, and thus entertainment a specific event, such as counting heads at a large public gathering
08 | eyecandy Fall 2003

based on photos and their respective times and locations.
The possibility of proximity-based communications opens
the door to a variety of commercial services that are bound to
be quickly exploited. Think of walking past a Starbucks andreceiving a text message on your phone advertising a coffee
pot you don’t really need. Alternatively, proximity-based
communication could enable ordinary people who would
normally remain complete strangers to interact based on what
their phones have to say to each other (profile matching basedon common friends or interests, for example). At the very least,
your phone will be able to transmit your location in the case of a
medical emergency.
BLOGS
The word “blog” is short for web-log, the latest trend inpersonal web publishing. The idea is simple: to publish a basic
chronological set of documents without having to know HTML.
Blogs tend to be casual and personal. Some take the form of adiary, while others are used for news or collaborative research.
Cross-referencing amongst blogs is popular and often promotes
dialogues across multiple websites on any given subject.
Proponents of a “semantic web” believe this kind of technology
will help pave the way for more useful and relevant search engine
technologies. More recently, services such as Blogger (owned
by Google) and TypePad have simplified the blog process to thepoint where anyone with a web browser can start their own blog
in a matter of minutes. One blog, Where is Raed?, followed therecent occupation of Iraq nearly every day, direct from Baghdad.
Not surprisingly, Raed’s accounts were more personal, descriptive
and believable than the constructed and filtered accounts of“embedded” reporters.
A new service, TextAmerica, allows camera phone users
to publish pictures and text directly to a blog. The result is a“moblog,” or mobile-web-log. One could also refer to the moblog
as a photo-journal, which brings into question a relation to photojournalism. While many moblogs focus on city life and otherquotidian subject matter which can be conveyed through lowdefinition images, others have attempted to document events ofsocial and political relevance.
One web-based service called Myspace has attempted to
combine blogging with a FOAF-style social network. This service
has also integrated interest groups and several other usefulfeatures. Microsoft has a service in development called Wallop, in
which they plan to integrate instant messaging with blogging anda social network. AOL has jumped on the bandwagon too, adding
its own hybrid of services to the mix. Blog technology has only
just begun to boom, but is already very well established as one of
the key technologies of future information systems development.
MOBS
If the French had cell phones with text messaging during
the revolution, heads might have rolled at several times the rate
and much more efficiently. On the other hand, they also could
have easily avoided violence in the first place. Enter “mobs,”
an organized gathering initiated via text-messaging or throughsome other wireless communications medium. Mobs currently
consist of two distinct types: “FlashMobs,” which are spontaneousgatherings of individuals for surrealist events, and “SmartMobs,”
which have social or political functions.

Web-Based Friend-Of-A-Friend Networking
Friendster - http://friendster.com
Tribe - http://tribe.net
The FOAF Project - http://www.foaf-project.org/
Blog, Moblog and Hybrid Services
Blogger - http://blogger.com
TypePad - http://typepad.com
TextAmerica - http://textamerica.com
MySpace - http://myspace.com
Microsoft’s Wallop - http://wallop.com
Mob Movements
Flash Mobs - http://flashmob.co.uk
Anti-Mobs - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/antimob/
FlashBlogs - http://clearblueskies.blogspot.com
SmartMobs - http://www.smartmobs.com
Cell Phones
FutureImage - http://futureimage.com
AirIM - http://www.airsoftwireless.com
Blogs and Mobs
Where is Raed? - http://dear_raed.blogspot.com
Southern California Brush Fires - http://fire.textamerica.com
The Blackout - http://blackout.textamerica.com
Chasing Bush - http://www.interwebnet.org
Flash Blaine - http://flashblaine.co.uk

FlashMobs have become popular in London, New Yorkand other urban art destinations. One recent event, FlashBlaine,
involved the taunting of performer David Blaine during his
forty-four day starvation stunt. Several hundred participated,organizing the odd event via text messaging. A similarand slightly more bizarre activity is the “AntiMob,” whereparticipants are asked to disperse from a particular location,
creating a “ghost town atmosphere in a famous public space,”
according to the AntiMob website. The aim of the group is to“appeal to passive aggressives” and allow themselves to “express
their hostility to the world in a safe and indirect way.” Mobs havealso directed their energies towards websites. “FlashBloggers”
coordinate blogging events which involve hundreds of people
simultaneously invading the feedback section of an individual
blog. These gatherings are less surreal than their real-world
counterparts, actually stimulating a functional conversation rather
than simply encouraging congregating for fun with strangers.
While FlashMobs may be nothing more than an avant-gardefad, SmartMobs are the future, according to Howard Rheingold,
who has published a book entitled SmartMobs: The Next Social
Revolution. He describes how more than one million citizens ofManila mobilized against the former president of the Philippines,
Joseph Estrada, through text messaging, over four days in Januaryof 2001. Rheingold writes, “Bringing down a government without
firing a shot was a momentous early eruption of SmartMob
behavior.” He also mentions how protesters in Seattle usedwireless communication to disperse and reorganize during
the WTO riots of 1999, a tactic he calls “swarming.” Rheingold
cautions that there are also malignant possibilities for SmartMobs
such as terrorism (but not to worry, for the US military iscurrently the leading developer of said technologies). On his
website, Rheingold hints at the uncertainty of the future ofcontinued on page 15
eyecandy Fall 2003 | 09

Waiting for the Ball to Drop:
Upper-Division film education meets the casual moviegoing experience

By Adam Weinstein

For me, passive movie watching has become a relic
Shut. Then we have the solitary black (African-English?)of the past. A year of film theory classes has trained myvampire, who sits alone in his room and plays with his
mind to be a lean, mean, semiotic-devouring machine.
weapons, only being called upon when all the white folk
The moviegoing experience has now become a constantneed assistance in killing someone. Token blackness aside,game of trying to see how the White Supremacist
why is it that the lone black character has to be the one
Capitalist Patriarchal Democracy is trying to keep all
whose only role is to provide for more efficient violence?
the good boys and girls of the Minority Crew down, and
The targets of this aggression, werewolves, or ashence, I’m starting to have a real hard time enjoying
the film calls them, Lycans, live in the sewers and plot
myself at the movies. The
revenge on the vampires, whoquestion I have begun to ask
are hunting them to extinction.
myself is whether it’s all this
These werewolves are also atheory that’s ruined my ability
bunch of white people and one
to mindlessly enjoy a film, or
token black character, but thiswhether I’ve always been thisone at least gets to lead war
hypercritical, but just not as
parties. As head lieutenant ofgung-ho about it.
attacking stuff, this character
I know that I was an early(Raze, played by Kevindetractor of the Muses inGrevioux) is the first one seen
Disney’s Hercules. Something
in the film transforming into hisjust struck me as wrong whenhalf-man, half-wolf form, thus
the only dark-skinned people
firmly securing the image of a
in a movie weren’t even part ofblack man going bestial in thethe story, and instead served as
minds of the audience. Oncea singing and dancing chorus
again, the movie represents theto the movie’s action. I figuredgroups’ only black characters
Kevin Grevioux as Raze in Underworld.
they must have been the result of a high-powered Disneyas the ones everyone falls back on when it’s time to get theexecutive receiving some sort of focus group decision
violence on.
that the film needed some minority characters. As my
As the film progresses, we get some back story where
theory goes, an unnamed executive pulls together some
we find out that the Lycans were once servants to thewriters and they all brainstorm about how they canvampires, until one of them went and fell in love withintroduce some non-white characters into a narrative
the head vampire’s daughter, a crime for which saidfrom ancient Greece. “Well,” one intrepid writer points
vampire attempted to kill the entire race of Lycans. Onout, “We have these characters whose only function is
the film student mental scorecard we get a “superior” race
singing and dancing.”
attempting genocide on a minority slave race because of“Brilliant,” says the executive.
the fear of miscegenation. This gets topped off with a battle“I was joking,” says the writer.
between Raze, the token black werewolf, and a vampire,“You’re fired,” says the executive. “The rest of you
who attacks him using whips, during which I almost
get to work on giving me some singing and dancing
expected the two combatants to break into a scene fromminorities.”
Roots:
What has changed in my movie viewing habits, I have
VAMPIRE: What’s your name?
come to realize, is that I no longer wait to look back on
WEREWOLF: Kunta Kinte!
movies I’ve watched to find out how the general public
VAMPIRE: Your name is Toby!
is being led on by filmmakers with sinister motives.
Thankfully, talking with my friends after the movie,
Instead, I can’t even get through the films themselves
it became apparent it wasn’t just my film education thatwithout watching for the signs and situations that I now
clued me in to these representations, as they also caught
see as the stock trade of the exploitative Hollywood
on to them. We all decided we hated the movie, but whatmachine. My mind is just drooling in anticipation ofmade my perspective different was that instead of harping
being able to recognize how The Man is keeping everyone
about the weak plot and cheesy acting, I instead ranted
else down. Taking a look at this past summer’s offerings
on and on about how the races were represented and the
makes me marvel at how I’m still able to go to the movies
overall lack of any substantial minority parts other thanat all without suffering terminal headaches.
one token black male on either side. My friends replied,
Underworld takes the modern cliché of the beautiful,“Dude, what do you expect from Hollywood?”skinny, and above all pale vampire, and lets us see theseMaybe I do expect something more from my films,
creatures of the night wallowing in decadence in a setting
but it’s difficult to get that across to someone who’s notreminiscent of the most notorious scenes in Eyes Wideindoctrinated in the same ways of seeing film as I have
10 | eyecandy Fall 2003

been. The points my friends raised about the movie justseemed like silly rantings to me until I realized that thethings they were talking about were also very important.
I was just so stuck in my “high-class study of film” modethat I missed seeing how the movie failed on even themost basic levels. Or, knowing how much I like to beright, perhaps I just wanted to choose some reason for
hating the movie that no one else could argue against.
The Rundown was surprisingly good, and I had to
wrack my brain a bit before I could get at the cleverly
hidden meaty bits of misrepresentation, making me
wonder whether or not I was just trying too hard to findthis stuff. For the most part, The Rundown threw small
bits of tokenism out that resolved themselves safely,
while other troubling aspects flew right by as I was
busying my mind with the more obvious stuff.
The film’s sexy South American barmaid (Rosario
Dawson), who is being pursued romantically by
the more-or-less benign force of colonialism (Seann
William Scott), turns out to be the leader of the rebel
forces fighting against the film’s real colonial threat(Christopher Walken). Dawson’s character also neverends up kissing, hugging, or even making sexuallysuggestive banter with the film’s hero (The Rock),and instead ends up going turncoat on her American
comrades (Scott and The Rock) in the name of helping her
people take destiny into their own hands.
Of course, near the end of the film, Dawson gets
captured by Walken’s forces and has to be saved by ourheroes, but while they’re busy blowing the crap out of allof the bad guys, her own native forces end up performing
the rescue, taking the teeth out of the American
rescue mission and scoring a blow against Hollywood
misrepresentation. Also, throughout this entire ordeal,
we are spared from seeing any exploitation stemmingfrom Dawson being helplessly tied up and subject to theforces of the evil patriarchy.
With Walken’s conquering forces safely out of theway, the native population gains control of the situation
by taking a native artifact (that otherwise would end up
in a museum due to the intervention of Scott’s character)and selling it on the black market.
Wait. What?
So the ultimate solution, after all of the ethnographic
pitfalls neatly sidestepped by the film, is for the native
populace to sell their heritage?
But is it right for me to dictate how these people
achieve their salvation, like some sort of missionary?
Regardless, I have to go on in my criticisms once I’ve
gotten past how well the film has otherwise eluded thenormal mindless exploitation present in action movies.
Thus, the following questions run into my head:
Is The Rock’s inability to follow in the sexualfootsteps of his forbearers due to the fact that he’s a nonwhite hero?

Is there some unsavory reason that the movie
introduces combative monkeys right before the native
guerilla forces, who fight our heroes in a primitive, almost
primate style? If so, is their ability to be led by a “mere”
woman a reflection of this primitive status?
One idea I’ve definitely taken away from my filmclasses is that the ideology hidden the most successfully
in a film has the best chance of seeping into our
subconscious’s, so while the film trumpeted the success ofa strong, independent woman, I continued to feel that there
was something wrong going on. Has Hollywood evolved
its defenses to the point where it has begun to throw thebone of sexual equality to the film scholars of the world,
in order to sneak the rest of its ideological exploitationright by us? Or perhaps The Rundown should be applauded
for the steps it takes to be a better example for movie
audiences. Or is that just what they want us to think so wewill all let our guards down while they prepare to throw
things back into the Dark Ages, where muscular warriors
battle the Great Dark Menace in order to save the scantilyclad damsel in distress, while the minority sidekick Steppin
Fetchit’s his way into a tragic death meant to allow the heroa brief moment of emotion? Or are these just the paranoid
ravings of someone who’s been brainwashed by the forcesof the intellectual elite as another foot soldier in the fightagainst the Great Hollywood Machine?
How far is too far, and when isn’t far enough? ■eyecandy Fall 2003 | 11

Another Short Term Goal Accomplished:
It is rare when the depiction of a desperately plebeian
lifestyle, experienced by a man with severe aesthetic andemotional deficiencies, can ignite questions concerning bothlife and artistic philosophies. Equally odd,
is that this man’s seemingly tortured
and self-effacing lifestyle cancommunicate an inspirationaland optimistic message about
art and life. Thus, for thoseof us who thrive on self-pity,
apocalyptic wit, and criticizing
others, American Splendor canboth further our fluency in theseareas, and also teach us to actively
reflect upon what these tendencies
reveal about the underbelly of
our everyday lives. Thus, insteadof just acting out these pessimistic
inclinations without reflection, American
Splendor slows everything down andbrings every little qualm about ordinary
life to fruition through art. In doing so, thefilm argues that even a man bent on expecting fireand brimstone around every corner, can learn to utilize art
as a strategy for living a good life. In addition, this art-asstrategy technique is also mirrored by the film itself, via its
unique ability to reveal this learning process self-referentiallyto the viewer. In other words, by calling attention to itself
as an art form, subsequently frustrating how we perceive
and understand the reality of the film itself, and arguing forart as a survival strategy in the narrative, American Splendor
ultimately champions the therapeutic practice of highlighting
the complexity of ordinary life through art.
So, who is our man? What American splendor do wefollow in the film? Who is Harvey Pekar? On the surface,
Harvey makes a living as a file clerk in a VA hospital in
Cleveland, Ohio. His fellow employees include Toby, a semiautistic nerd of proportions not previously realized in film, abitter, elderly African-American man named Mr. Boats, who’s
not able to understand the changing of the times, and a host oflesser developed characters that reflect any depressing, DMVesque bureaucracy.
Harvey’s love life is also in shambles. He is twice
divorced and openly admits he will take whoever will havehim. Harvey (played by Paul Giamatti) confirms this sunnydisposition towards love during one scene in a pathetic displayof desperation, wherein he has lost his voice, and squeaking
and wincing become his only means of salvaging one of his
relationships. Harvey’s love life can also be described as thepolar opposite of the Meg Ryan or Hugh Grant, befuddled-yetapparently-cute format, where every coincidence in the story
serves a function. In contrast, Harvey sees an acute absenceof function concerning the coincidences that perpetuate hisloneliness. In fact, his overall desperation is so intense thathe even considers a new relationship simply based on thethought, “Man, she has great-looking handwriting.” This isalso a man who begins a first date by stating, “I want you to
12 | eyecandy Fall 2003

By Eric Danchknow that I had a vasectomy.”
Harvey’s long walks to and from the hospital should also
be noted here because they serve a thematic function which
compliments the descriptions above. In short, these walks
lead us through an environment so overwhelmed by lifelessrusty earth tones that the viewer becomes smothered by ageneral malaise of hopelessness. All in all, any glimmerof inspiration seems drowned out by the film’s careful
control over the mise-en-scène. However, what wehear during Harvey’s walks isn’t droll at all. Instead
it’s Marvin Gaye’s classic, “Ain’t That Peculiar.”
What’s effective about this choice of music is thatit represents the motivation behind Harvey’s art,in that there is so much more complexity in theordinary than meets the eye. And it’s this strategy
of poeticizing the mundane though the writing ofcomic books that allows Harvey to better understandand manage the world around him. Directors Shari
Bergman and Robert Pulcini add that,
The thing we found as our guiding principle was
the love story between a man and his art form, which was,in Harvey’s case, comic books. It’s about a man who found alife through comic books. He found a creative voice; he foundsome kind of fame; he found a purpose and a legacy, which
was very important to him; he found a wife; he ended up
finding a daughter and making a family; and he wound up
beating a disease [cancer]— all through comic books.
However, what these words don’t reflect is the complexityof how the directors construct Harvey on screen. Harvey is anactual person. He is a Cleveland native. He did work at a VA
Hospital with an actual Toby and Mr. Boats, and he did create
the comic book series American Splendor. Yet, this film isn’t justa bio-pic. And the film doesn’t follow just one Harvey Pekar.
So far we have discussed only the screen version ofHarvey, or what will now be referred to as movie Harvey(Giamatti), while there are in fact three more versions ofHarvey in the film. In no particular order, there is the animatedversion of Harvey as drawn by R. Crumb and other artists
who come into Harvey’s life, the actual Harvey shown in
documentary style footage shot during the filming of American
Splendor, and the actual Harvey of the past, preserved inarchival footage from his appearances on The David Letterman
Show in the 1970’s. This established, we can then ask whatthese multiple Harveys might accomplish. Why make thisso complicated? The answer revolves around self-reflexivity.
For instance, the fact that actual Harvey can both narrate
and interact with movie Harvey, while commenting aboutpast Harvey, while also talking off-camera to the directorsof the film we are watching, indicates that the filmmakers
want to spotlight their own creative processes in relation to
the creative process that Harvey stands for. Thus, having thefilm call attention to this plurality of Harveys, as well as its
own existence as a film, blurs the line between reality andfiction and frustrates our expectations. In doing so, we lose
a little control over the narrative and may even feel the needto look around in the theater, hoping to see others equallyrobbed of their privileged Hollywood blockbuster viewing

Photo: Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar in a scene from American Splendor.

The glorification of ordinary life in American Splendor

position. Resulting from all of this is the fact that we are forced
to attempt to regain our sense of narrative omnipotence byidentifying with all of the Harveys, and how they eventually
discover a form of therapy in art’s ability to reflect on theordinary.
Emblematic of how the aforementioned self-reflexivity
and forced investment gets played out cinematically, is a scene
where movie Toby (Judah Friedlander) explains the delicate
nature of jellybeans to movie Harvey. Firstly, Friedlander’sportrayal of Toby seems so over the top that it’s hard to believethat anyone actually behaves in this manner. Nonetheless,the scene suddenly cuts to a sound stage, where during anapparent break in production (complete with snack table) theactors (Giamatti and Friedlander) take five and begin to talkabout their performances. Following their conversation, into
the foreground of the same frame enter actual Harvey andactual Toby to revisit their discussion about jellybeans. What
this does is not only authenticate actual Toby (who arguablytranscends even Friedlander’s imitation), but also show usthat actual Harvey and actual Toby are comfortable with theirfictive counterparts and even become nostalgic while watchingthem. Thus, having both Tobys and both Harveys in the same
frame is neither distancing nor disrupting to the believablefabric of the film. In fact, it sutures us more into the film
because our investment in the characters becomes twofold.
At the end of the film, actual Harvey tries his best to avoid
the happy Hollywood ending by stating that very intention
continued from page 5

SH: Yeah, but whatever.
KH: Scott sampled me. I was like, “Fuck
Scott.” (everyone in the room laughs)
SH: [He came at me] with lawyers [and]his whole entourage. Fuck, man. I’mnever going to do it again. Fuck thatguy.
ec: (laughs) What do you guys think
about the IDM label—Intelligent
Dance Music?
SH: I don’t think about it too much.
KH: There’s a label called IDM?
ec: No, no, no, not a label (laughs), notan actual record label, but as in theterm [IDM].
SH: (laughs) We should start a label
called IDM.
KH: You only ever hear that [term] in
America.

Actor Paul Giamatti (left) and Harvey Pekar on the set of American Splendor.

in a voice over narration. This is no doubt a noble venture,especially since the film has thwarted classical tendencies at
every turn up until this point. However, an optimistic message
forces its way to the surface. In short, actual Harvey narrates
the statistics of his life as a form of closure. For example,
he’s still stuck in his dead-end job at the hospital, his wife
is terminally unemployed yet idealistic, and his daughter
has ADD. He sums all of this up by stating, “My life is totalchaos.” So, what does all this translate into? A never ending
source of material for his comic books. Granted, it’s not a
Dorothy’s-return-from-Oz happy ending, but it situates art
as a means of survival and champions something we can alllearn to better reflect upon and poeticize: The complexity ofordinary life. ■ec: How do you guys feel about thestate you’re in right now. It seems tome like—ec: Is music paying the bills for you
guys? That’s kind of a personalquestion...

KH: I’m proud that Arnold
Schwarzenegger is looking after us in
the state we’re in right now. It helps me
sleep at night.

SH: As long as I hustle on the side…
drugs, prostitution.

ec: (laughs) It seems to me that theposition you guys are in right now
seems kind of ideal for an artist in
the sense that you can walk down thestreet and be completely anonymous,
but then you can go to a club and draw
hundreds of people who obviously are
here for the music as opposed to what
People Magazine said about you or
your image…

SH: I sell whatever. I sell babies.

SH: People Magazine wouldn’t say
anything. (laughs) It’s cool. Yeah.
I’m full of good answers. I’m a greatinterview.
KH: I have a really good life. I wouldn’t
want to change anything.

KH: Scott sells arms.

ec: You sell babies? (laughs)
SH: Yeah, man. (laughs) I just sellwhatever I can to keep my life balanced.
(laughs)ec: (laughs) What’s the difference
between the music scenes in Barcelona
or anywhere in Europe [as opposed toAmerica] ?
SH: Barcelona is a budding scene ofmusic. Things are new. I play there with[rapper and fellow Warp Records Artist]
Beans—not at a festival, at a club—andpeople are really excited right now. It’s acontinued on page 16
eyecandy Fall 2003 | 13

British Humor Goes International:

An interview with digital artist Craig Robinson
FlipFlopFlyin.com is a series of lowfi serial cartoons, an exhibition of pixel
art, and an homage to pop-culture of thepast and present. The site was createdby Craig Robinson, an Englishman
who ditched his day job to go work as
a freelance designer in Berlin. eyecandy
sat down with Robinson for an online
interview, so we could discuss thepressures and pleasures of online design,
the silliness of British humor, and his
recent dreams about owls. Robinson’s
website will strike a chord with anyone
who has yet to fully escape childhood.
Its greatest hits include “Minipops”—
every band you’ve ever liked shrunk
down to size, Pete and Bob, the owls
who make music, and Ralf, a duck on his
way to the ocean. While the site doesn’t
make any great leaps into the digital
unknown, it does recall the days of 4bit graphics, when even invaders fromspace seemed completely innocent.
eyecandy: Artistically, how did you get
where you are?
Craig Robinson: By accident, I think.
I always liked the idea of being a shit
hot designer, graphics or otherwise, but
it wasn’t really me, and the thing thatevolved from the beginnings of FFF(FlipFlopFlyin.com) was that I’m fairly
good at silly characters who dance a lot,which seems to be the best joke I have,so I keep on using it.
ec: Who are your influences?
CR: Lots of people really. My biggest
influence is Brian Wilson [of the Beach
Boys] because the music he’s madeseems so uncluttered by cynicism andirony. I think cynicism and irony areeasy things to do, and are done way toomuch. On the few occasions I’ve done
irony or sarcasm, they end up being
rubbish and my least favorite things. I
did something about [Donald] Rumsfeld
while the war was going on, which wasbasically the Humpty Dumpty nursery
rhyme in the style of Rumsfeld. It was
mildly amusing, but I’m not proud ofit, as it’s only funny while Rumsfeld
is in office, and kind of disrupts thegood vibrations that the rest of thesite hopefully emits. [Children’s bookauthor] Dick Bruna is another. The Miffy
books, and a lot of other children’s stuff
that’s aimed at pre-school children aregood for me. [Children’s books] help
14 | eyecandy Fall 2003

By Michael DiCenzo

Examples of pixel art from Craig Robinson’s FlipFlopFlyin.com.

me to see what parts of a story are
essential. [Regarding the] comedy stuff
that exists on FFF, I grew up with British
humor, and despite The Simpsons and
The Larry Sanders Show and a few other
US comedies, I still find that I prefer Brit
stuff. There’s a silliness about a lot of it
that I like a lot.
ec: How did you begin your careerin art, and why did you move fromworking for a firm to working
freelance?
CR: I began FFF as a hobby, but thenafter a year or so I got a few offers forfreelance work and a bit of press in
Britain, so I decided to be brave for oncein my life and jack in my office job. Soon
after that I got offered a job at a web
design company here in Berlin, where
I worked for nigh for two years until I
got made redundant when the Internet
industry in Germany went a bit crap. So
I’ve been freelance again since then.
ec: Has the transition been successful?
CR: Yes, it’s been pretty good. It can bea bit stressful, as I’m sure all freelancers
know, but I know that when people
want me to work for them, they want me
because they’ve seen my site and like theway I do things.
ec: Why do you constantly update a
website that has only personal artistic
purposes?
CR: Because the ideas keep coming andI genuinely really enjoy doing it. And I
like having an audience; knowing thatthe audience is there pushes me to keepon doing it.
ec: How does the fact that anyone canview your site effect your work?
CR: Knowing that the audience is there

and they “get” it is good. It’s like whenyour parents laugh at something you dowhen you’re a kid [and] you keep doing
it to see if they’ll laugh again. It sounds
syrupy, but I do really like the idea ofmaking people who are at their desks
smile for a few minutes.
ec: Does the website also work as avehicle for marketing your work andgetting commissions?
CR: Well, it’s a handy way of getting
work, but I don’t do anything on thesite that encourages clients to contact
me other than having a portfolio pagethat shows that I am available for suchthings.
ec: Do you make a distinction between
fine art and commercial art?
CR: Yes. One is for the love of it, theother is for money. If I could afford to
do FFF all the time, I would. I need some
wealthy, mad old Parisian lady withblue hair and 30 cats to let me live in her
country cottage rent free, who’ll pay forme to eat and buy me CDs and books.
Until that happens though, I’ll have tokeep doing commercial work.
ec: Do you separate the two in yourmind?
CR: It’s hard not to. For my stuff, I can
do what the hell I want. For a client, theywant their logo a certain size, they wanta certain phrase, there are restrictions onwhat characters can do, etcetera.
ec: Are you more attached toyour personal work or work for acommission?
CR: The personal works come to me
not through any real choice. They justhappen in my head and then I let themgrow up on the “page,” so I’m a lotmore attached to them as they grow at
a rate that is natural. With commercial
work, you have a deadline and the[previously] stated restrictions, so there’s
already a slightly unreal aura. But I do
try to put as much heart into that stuff.
I did something recently for a gallery in
Sheffield, UK, which was a web-based
flyer for an exhibition of old fairgroundrides and artwork. The subject matter
was something I really liked anyway, so
it was easy to love that one as much as
any of the FFF stuff.
ec: Your work is very low-fi, relying on
highly pixilated images. In cartoons
like “Boy Meets Pixel,” or in the caseof the popular “Minipops,” you arevery conscious of this. Is this style a
response to the demands of updating
a website constantly—your original
intention—or a synthesis of the two?
CR: There was never a decision to dowhat has become known as “pixel art.”“Minipops” was just an idea I had todraw something as small as possible
and still [have it] be recognizable, so touse pixels was the only possible way
to do that well, as my skills weren’t so
hot back then. “Boy Meets Pixel” camefrom a friend of mine commenting on
how much I loved my computer, so hiscomment mutated a little and became alove story.

where I can look at owls.
ec: Personal websites often seem to be
seen as a forum for personal ramblings.
Do you think your site could be seen asa bright spot in all this, because while
it does contain a lot about you, it reallyseems to use this information to reemphasize the lightness of the art.

ec: It seems when people think of theInternet they mostly think of pornsites, junk emails, and people trying
to steal your credit card numbers;
there’s generally a bad, untrustingfeeling about it. There is a very
prominent innocence in your work. Is
this a response to the medium of theInternet?
CR: It’s more a response to the times
we live in, where governments wantto screw their people and the othercountries of the world; corporations
have similar objectives; newspapers
are only interested in who’s sleepingwith who; TV only seems to show us
real people so desperate to be on tellythat they’ll degrade themselves to thenth degree to be there. Last night I
dreamt I was in a barn and there weresome big owls there, about two feet tall,and I was just on the ground watchingthem. I wake up and see CNN reportingon Michael Schumacher winning the
Formula One Grand Prix title, directly
followed by a Vodafone (European
cellular phone company) advert
featuring Michael Schumacher. Of those
two things, I’d rather live in a worldcontinued from page 9

SmartMobs, which are already being hit with legislation in somecountries. He writes:
I still believe that we are fighting a crucial battle over the kindof future citizens will experience, over whether we will be active
users who shape mobile and pervasive media the way we shaped
the PC and Internet, or whether we will be passive consumers,
restricted by legal “rights management” and technical “trusted
computing” platforms, whose only choice is which pay-per-playbrand of predigested content to choose.
P2P JOURNALISM AND
THE EMERGENCE OF A SMARTDOC
What happens when the power of blogs, mobs, FOAF-style
networks and high-tech cell phones are combined? A new kindof intelligent documentation becomes possible: for lack of a better
word, a “SmartDoc.” The combination of the aforementioned
technologies moves us closer to a model from which an individual
can spontaneously initiate and mobilize documentation of anevent, person, place or thing with only their thumb. Furthermore,
an interactive message shared from within a social network or
physical proximity becomes directly relevant to each individual
recipient, and potentially a lot more powerful than a generalized
one-way broadcast.
Rheingold describes an experiment in what he calls “peerto peer journalism,” conducted by students at the University ofToronto, who donned wearable wireless computers, microphones
and cameras that “broadcast everything they saw and heard to theweb.” The students attended a protest that broke into violence. As
they dispersed however, their cameras continued to broadcast theevent, which a typical news crew would not have been able to do.

CR: I like a lot of personal websites andblogs. If someone has a talent for writingor drawing, it’s nice to see it. For FFF, it’sa matter of enjoying writing stuff, andthen enjoying people reacting to the stuff
I write. I’m very lucky to be in a position
where I have a large number of visitors
to the site, and what I do seems to keep
the idiots and right wing loonies away,
so I just ramble on about whatever’s
happened in my life and hope that I
don’t make too much of a fool of myself.
ec: What programs do you use to create
and maintain the website?
CR: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe
ImageReady, Macromedia Flash, BBEdit,and SimpleText. It’s all done on an
Apple Powerbook.
For more information on Craig Robinson
please visit: http://www.flipflopflyin.com ■This type of collaborative reporting experiment is now possible
with cell phones, which are functionally not all that different fromwearable computers. The two will soon be interchangeable in thiscontext.
Already, websites have been launched which invite multiple
collaborators to contribute text and photos from their cell phones.
Two recent moblogs attempted a form of alternative photojournalism following catastrophic events. Southern California Brush
Fires and The Blackout were launched immediately during theevents they chronicled. Each site invited participants to send intheir own images of their subjective experiences. Viewers werethen prompted to comment on images. Possibly without realizing
it, contributors positioned the new medium in relation to older
mediums, an example being the numerous photos of live TV
feeds people submitted. Southern California Brush Fires displayed
TV images of a chummy President Bush exiting Air Force One.
An image on The Blackout displayed a TV news caption that read,“Breaking News: No reports of looting in any affected areas.”
One viewer commented, “Breaking News: There is no news,”
emphasizing the inadequacy of traditional media services topenetrate the significance of such a large event, where millions ofindividual perspectives were curiously changed for a few days.
Journalism is an old tradition. The moblog is formally very
similar to photojournalism. While there is a distinction between
diarists and journalists, it may begin to dissolve into the larger
context of non-fiction. The implied objective authority of large
media services will undoubtedly come into question, as countlesscamera phone-armed individuals weave a more complete
text. When video becomes feasible for cell phone publishing,continued on next page
eyecandy Fall 2003 | 15

continued from previous page

SmartDocs will be able to provide an alternative to televisual
non-fiction. This will afford the documentarian a whole new tool
for the mass aggregation of trusted individual perspectives fromwhich one multi-faceted view might be inferred. This creates adilemma for the documentary, as well as for broadcast news,
which itself relies on a narrow set of perspectives to maintainideological hegemony.
Major news services may be better suited to content ofpolitical significance, but this does not disqualify a SmartDocfrom being capable of functioning within this realm. Southern
California Brush Fires hosts a series of photos documenting Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s visit to the destruction zone, where
during a speech, he apparently caught another man who had
lost his balance and was falling off of the stage. Would a TV
newscast have reported this kind of incident? Some would argue
yes, but only if it forwarded the ideological agenda (promoting
Schwarzenegger) of that news service. Chasing Bush is anotherexample of a SmartDoc featuring political content. This protest
site was dedicated to documenting President Bush’s every move
during his recent visit to the UK. Contributors tracked every
aspect of his visit, from the numerous protests he encountered tohis daily diet.
This article lays out how recent advancements in technology
are converging upon a new ubiquitous medium that will enhance
the ability of the public to document and communicate a social
continued from page 13

really good feeling. In London, if people
are there, they’re there to see you.
They’re usually pretty down for it.
ec: For both of you, how do you
recreate your music live if it’s all
sample based?
SH: Bring a drummer and a DJ withme, and my MPC [sampler]. [Kieran’s]shit is all improvised on the computer.
He does different things than I do. He
does freak shit.
KH: My music is all out of time andeveryone stands there [looking bored].
(laughs) I want to do free jazz types ofstuff live. Old jazz guys used to put arecord out, and songs would go on therecord, but then the music wouldn’t
die at that point. The songs would keepchanging and evolving when they’d go
touring after that. I had this idea that
I would try to do that with the musicon [Rounds]. If people saw me a coupleof months ago it was different, and if
people see me now it’s different, andif people see me in six months time it’sgoing to be different again. [I’m just]pushing the elements of those tracks
further and further, to the point where
I’m doing twenty-five minute versions
16 | eyecandy Fall 2003

reality. Some of the more interesting consequences of this shift
are missing, such as an intensive study of the unique formal
aesthetics of the medium. Likewise, an extensive review might
include an investigation of political ramifications, the functional
impact on journalism, or possibilities for social change. Obviously,
the technical limits and potentials of the medium have not yet
been pushed. Experimentation might include construction of acustomizable Java interface for camera phones, or sophisticatedweb engines capable of designating tasks and aggregating text,
photos and meta-data for presentation and social distribution.
Artists might construct a SmartDoc inviting friends to contributeto a documentary about something as pedestrian as man-holecovers, or whatever they were doing at the exact moment theyreceived the message. Sociologists might utilize SmartDocs for astudy of behavioral patterns. Activists could leverage SmartDocs
for organizing events or documenting pollution or local police
activity. Ideally, these new technologies will make it easierfor people to collaboratively discover and expose fictions andmanipulations of social reality, and provide a new possibility
for mediating and overcoming perceived differences amongst
peoples. ■of some of the songs on the album.
ec: Wow. Scott, do you feel that way
too about changing it up? Does it getkind of dull to play the same [tracks
night after night]?
SH: It does get dull, but sometimes I’m
stuck having to do it.
ec: For both of you, do you listen to
your music a lot after you’ve releasedit?
SH: Not after it’s released really, butwhen I’m making it [I listen to it] a lot.
KH: [I’m] the same. Once I’ve handed
it into the record company I’m prettymuch done. (laughs) If I ever put it on,
it’s purely for nostalgia. It’s purely justto be like, “Huh.”
SH: If I do [listen to the music after it’s
been released] it doesn’t really do much.
It doesn’t do what it did when you weremaking it and monitoring it. Because
you listen to it a million times when
you’re making it.
KH: And I always listen to the wrong
thing [after it’s been released]. You[will be listening] to the track andI’ll be listening to the fucking hi-hat orsomething…
SH: Exactly, exactly.
KH: …but everybody else just doesn’t
even notice that shit.
ec: So for you guys the process of making
the music is more rewarding than thefinished product?
SH: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Making music is
the most important thing.
KH: I’ve got stuff that I’ve made a few
years on that I can listen to now and I’m
happy with. Then I feel proud when I hearit [and I think,] “Fuck, that was a goodtime in my life. I made a good track.”
For more information on Prefuse 73 please
visit: http://www.warprecords.com
To hear tracks from Prefuse 73’s debut,
Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, as wellas other mixes, please visit:
http://www.warprecords.com/ography/
WARP83/For more information on Four Tet please
visit: http://www.fourtet.net ■Scholarly Books

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