December 09, 2004

Iconography (Digital #1.)

The city of Los Angeles is an icon for american life. But is more like a jigsaw puzzle that is falling apart. It spills out and on top of itself and is held together with concrete highways like loosely wrapped ribbons. The 101, the 405, the 10, the 110, wrap across the city like a poorly tied turnicate, trying in vain to keep the city from hemorrhaging at it seams anymore.

Contrary to my prior notions, the city does have a downtown. It pokes out above the haze like a periscope looking at the rest of the world with an expressionless stare that could be either indifference or envy. and right there among the skyline that bristles up from the city, the L.A. Expo sits like an airport that forgot the airplanes. Its steel trusses spider out at 45 degree increments like a wire frame rendering wrapped in a glass shell. the entire structure straddles Pico street in the quiet downtown area collecting dust like a shiny high school trophy forgotten on a shelf.

The 2004 Digital Video Exposition was in the south hall of the building. people don't like writing too many letters. We don't like speaking too many syllables in a row either. so the sign in in the South Lobby read DV Expo. Through the glass doors Apple, Avid, Sony, Panasonic, and Canon staked their claim like prospectors on the floor of the South Hall.

I signed in at the registration desk and picked up my badge and textbook. I walked out into the pavilion and sat down at a table. An older gentleman was reading a Final Cut Pro HD software manual like he was cramming for the SAT exam with a starbucks latte in hand. I looked down at my own book: DVD Studio Pro 3. The book was published on August 24, 2004. The software i was there to learn about was released on April 19, 2004. The computers we were using were build in mid July, 2004.

Suddenly it began to dawn on me:

No on really know what is going on here. suddenly i realized there are no role models for me to learn from. there is no one to apprentice, no past generations to hold up as examples, no precedents set, there are no fool proof formulas developed. the leaders in the industry who have been here the longest were sitting right beside me nervously reading the manual. we are all on the same playing field.

Suddenly it dawned on me:

i am trying be like no one else.

I can find inspiration in painting, music, architecture, or writing. but the best that i can do is take any existing process or product i have learned from and loosely migrate it into what i am doing. and we try our best to compare the methods and tools for digital creation to something familiar, something that everyone can relate to. we build software interfaces that use metaphors from the physical world. we use terms like "copy and paste" and "pen tool". software icons are made to represent tangible tools like magnifying glasses, razor blades, and paint buckets.

but the truth is that working this way is like nothing else that has ever happened. there is nothing physical, nothing real, nothing linear about it. we are manipulating intangible material with equally intangible tools. With digital video, we work with a representation- and icon- of film on the screen which is a representation - and icon - of time and and space. and after we have cut it, de-interlaced it, mux it (again we don't like multi-syllable words; i.e. saying the word, "multiplexing"), and encoded it, we bring it back to something tangible: DVDs, Film, or at the very least, projected light - and we believe it to be reality once again.

at 2 pm the class started and i walked in the with several more older gentleman. as the instructor began the class, he asked us about who we were. i looked around the room. i wasn't the youngest, but most attending the class could have been my father. there were business owners, producers, and creative directors. and none of us knew what we were doing.

The city of Los Angles is an icon for american life. Outside, as the real world stared back at it with part indifference, and part envy, as the city sat tied up and twisted in its concrete ribbons and bows. Above me the steel frame of the L.A. Expo spidered into the sun. I sat down. I opened the 17" powerbook, turned it on, and started looking for icons that i recognized.

Posted by Todd Roeth at December 9, 2004 11:19 PM