[rock music] Mm, honey. It tastes just like it costs.
Welcome back to Tasteland, hosted by myself, Francis Zear, and Daisy Alioto. Uh, we also have a guest joining us shortly, David Rudnick. Uh, Daisy, who is David?
Well, I thought I was gonna get to say my own name, but that's fine. No, not today. [laughs] Um, David Rudnick is a graphic designer who's been working for over a decade with musicians like, you say Avian Christ?
Or Evian? Uh, Evian. Avian Christ. I don't really know. I just drink the water. Right. Oh, I'm sure. And Black Midi.
Um, he's worked with artists like Daniel Arnold, he's made typefaces for Arsenal Boo, um, [smacks lip] and some of the most compelling on-chain NFT work, which, um, you know, that might be mutually exclusive for some of you.
But we can get into- [laughs]... what, what he sees in the blockchain, um, because I agree what he... The way that he used it was very innovative- Yeah... and cool. Uh, we also have an announcement from this podcast.
Very big announcement.
Very big announcement, which is we're raising money for the National Writers Union Service Organization, um, which is a non-profit arm within the union, raising a legal fund to defend media freelancers from non-payment and other grievances.
And we're doing that with a ticketed live recording of the podcast. The episode will be focused on worker-owned media collectives. We have three amazing guests- Mm-hmm...
Samantha Cole from 404 Media, Max Rivlin-Nadler from Hellgate, and Jasper Wang from Defector.
And that'll take place on Saturday, November 16th at 7:00 PM, doors at 6:30, and that'll be at 25 Broadway in New York, at the National Writers Union offices, which are right behind the Wall Street Bull. You cannot- Mm.
The famous bull... miss them. Um- Famous icon of, of, of writing, the Wall Street Bull. Yeah. So we're very excited to dip a toe in events for a cause. It's a cause that I care deeply about, getting freelancers paid.
Um- Mm-hmm... the NWU has been defending freelancers in court for years. Um, they've successfully won, you know, millions of dollars in money that's owed to writers, and so, yeah, we're all in. Yeah.
I, I, I also think, I mean, apropos of that future of journalism article- Yes... in New York Magazine that we talked about last week, I think this is more than... I mean, whatever.
I en- I enjoyed reading, reading that article, but I think a more interesting f- future of journalism idea is this kind of, these worker-owned collective, uh, outlets, like all three of the ones, all, all three of the ones that of- from people we're talking to.
Uh, there's the other one that just came out last week, Hearing Things. Um, so I'm, I don't know. I'm really excited to, to talk to some of the people, uh, who are actually at the forefront of the future of media.
Absolutely. I mean, I briefly considered gathering a 57-person rebuttal in dirt- [laughs]... um, before realizing we don't- They can buy tickets. We don't quite have the editorial bandwidth- Mm-hmm...
right now, um, to, to clap back. But- Your staff is... Yeah. Well, excuse you. Um, [laughs]
but if I did gather 57 people that I think actually have an on-the-ground point of view on the future of media, these three people would definitely be on the list. Absolutely.
So consider this a miniature, uh, alternative- Yeah... to that cover story. Buy a ticket. It's for a good cause. It's... We'll, we'll, we'll have the link in the episode description. Um- Yeah, and if you can't-...
yeah, you should come if you're in New York... if you're not in New York, you can still donate on the ticket page, a dollar, five bucks, whatever you want. It all goes towards this legal fund. Yes. Um, okay.
Also talking about media for a second before David gets here. So the big story yesterday, right, was about The Washington Post deciding to kill their half-century practice of endorsing political candidates.
Um, obviously, you know, Jeff Bezos has, does a lot of business, a lot of government contracts. Um, this, you know, uh, reports are that they've lost, like, at least 200,000 subscribers. That's a lot of revenue- It's-...
et cetera... 8% of their sub- 8%, which is huge. Outrageous. I mean, I've always wondered how much of a dent these boycott calls actually make. Yeah. This is the biggest that I have ever heard of. Yeah. Um, yeah.
Um, well, so one thing I wanted to talk about, though, so Jacob O'Donnelly, who writes, who runs A Media Operator, uh, argued that it's a good, if poorly timed, move, and that more news outlets should be practicing this kind of journalistic impartiality as a civic duty, which let's, let's entertain that for a second.
Um, I- I have something to say. Oh, okay. Well, you say it. You say it- Okay... and then I'll say my thing. I think if you work in the media business, a good move can never be poorly timed, because if it's- Mm-hmm...
poorly timed or poorly communicated, it's not a good move. [laughs] There you go. Right? Like- Yeah, no...
you work in an industry where the medium is the message, and a much, much stronger execution of this move that is more plausibly uncompromised would have been- Mm-hmm... to announce this, like, you know- A year ago...
midway through the previous administration when nobody's really even talking about the next election yet- Yeah... who the candidates will be. I mean,
it shows a huge lack of discipline, and a failure of communication, and a breakdown in the communication chain for there to be an op-ed that existed and was written- Mm...
before it was killed, which is my understanding is, like- Yeah... it was written. So yeah. I'm sorry. I, like, read part of Jeff Bezos'. [laughs] I read the piece of it that crossed my timeline, Jeff Bezos'- Mr. Jeffrey.
Mm-hmm... I mean, I saw people in the tech community who don't believe that media should be political, don't believe that- Mm-hmm... op-ed pages should be making endorsements, praising his, you know, what his...
He wrote his op-ed. I saw a journalist saying, like, "Why is he using we as if he's, like, part of- Yeah... this journalism community?" Yeah. So I saw both sides on my timeline.
Um- Well, I think, I mean, personally, I believe that, like, I don't know, I think neutrality is kind of like a equilibrium that you can never really hit. I don't, I don't know if it really exists, but I, I did...
One thing that was compelling to me about this in Jacob O'Donnelly's thing that I read earlier was, like-Or, or so, you know, when I talk to, like, creator journalists all the time, they are so opinions based, and, like, they don't have, like, a newsroom back- backing them up, and, like, fact-checkers, editors.
Like, they're inherently always gonna be, um, more partial, less impartial. Uh, and they often, these people often say that too.
Like, that's part of why they like being independent is they get to put themselves into it and do whatever they want, and, like, you know, that's, that's the appeal. Um, so I don't know.
I was wondering if, like, maybe that's one direction of the future of media is, like, opinion writing is kind of just the, the realm of these more indie journalists, indie creators, and then maybe,
like, newspaper, you know, more legacy publications, bigger organizations do have to become more, like, uh, you know, try to affect an impartiality, uh, and that bec- uh, uh...
They'll always have the opinion, you know, reporting I'm sure, but I hadn't considered that as, like, a potential evolution before. Yeah, I mean, I think it's all cap, like- [laughs]
You know, Free Press has come up and- Bezos is capping, that's for sure. Well, we've brought Free Press up on this before. Mm-hmm. And, um, you know, they've
gotten a lot of funding from people who are also, like, venture capital investors who- Mm-hmm...
um, you know, believe that the media shouldn't be political, but I think their definition of neutrality still contains an ideology. Um- Definitely... and so
yeah, like, when neutrality itself is an ideology, and I would say has, like... I would say it's right of center, where- Mm-hmm... the center of- Yeah, for sure... you know,
not, like, the electoral college, but, like, what's actually popular in America right now. Like, it's hard to say that that's, like, a vacuum of ideology. Um- Yeah... so. Is, you know, not voting is voting, et cetera.
Yeah, you're right. Like, every action or inaction- Is an... Yeah... contains a statement of values. And yeah, I'm just not buying that this timing was preferred. Accidental, preferred, anything. Yeah.
Accidental preferred. Yeah, I mean, because why do it this way? Yeah. It's an underline. I, I for one can't wait for this election to be over, and then we can stop talking about it.
[laughs] And then we can talk about it again in four years. I, you know- Oh, so you can go back to brunch, Francis? So I... [laughs] Yeah. You know, I, I've... Yeah, so I can go back to brunch.
I don't- Does sound quite good... I don't really do brunch, honestly. Okay, thanks for letting us know. Uh. [laughs] I'm gonna tell you about a book I've been reading. Oh, yeah. Please.
So because this came up on the last podcast with Eliza, um, we were talking about how a lot of praised literary fiction sells 5,000 copies. Mm. Yeah. And, uh, you know, if it's not, like, a bestseller, then
you could expect that maybe it's 5,000. Um, that debut novels, like, if they sell 1,000, that's considered good.
And, you know, she was telling us sort of the range of copies that they've sold of Cake Scene in print, because we were talking about print in 2024- Mm...
uh, which far exceeds, like, these debut novels that have, like, a lot of effort. Um, you know, books take a year to two years to write. Obviously they're putting together their issues in, like, a short amount of time.
There's an editorial team behind it. There's a publisher behind it. Um, and I think that contrast is really interesting because we don't often for- force books and magazines into conversation like that. Mm.
But I think that we should more. And in the past it was just like, well, it's not the same market. Like, the people who are buying Vogue aren't buying Sally Rooney.
And now it's like, well, actually, I think we're- They are... we're kinda talking about the same people, and it's kind of a small influential group of people, so maybe we should force these things into conversation more.
Wait. Also, uh, David is here. David is here. Okay. Let's let him in. Anyway, long story short- Yeah... I'm reading a book called Negative Space. Um, it was put out by an indie publisher. It sold 30,000 copies. Oh, wow.
It's not something that I would typically read, but I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. So maybe once I'm finished with the book, we can pick it up on the next episode. Okay, yeah. Let's talk about it next week.
All right. All right. Let's let him in. Hello, David. Hi. Hello, guys. [laughs] How are you doing? [laughs] Doing good. How are you? He's already laughing.
Uh, podcasting is inherently funny, so that's the correct response to coming in here with us. It's, it's a humiliating act. [laughs] Welcome to Tasteland. [laughs] Thank you. Thanks very much.
Um, so you are calling, I believe, from Ghent in Belgium, which... So I've been, I've been following you for a little while. I've always wondered why you live in Ghent.
Not a town I'd ever thought of really until I knew that you lived there. Um, it's true. I am calling from, from Ghent in Belgium, and I, I am based here. I live here. Uh, I moved here close to six years ago now. Mm-hmm.
I grew up in London, and I spent most of my 20s back and forth between the US and the UK- Mm... 'cause I went to college in America. And, um, the reason I moved to Ghent is I reached a point when I was
finishing up my, my MFA, um, in graphic design, and I'd,
I'd had the chance the year before I went to do the MFA, uh, to work out of a space in London that I'd basically...
I'd reached a point where I was desperate for a studio, and I, I'd kind of talked to a property developer and managed to convince them that, uh, to let me do one of those, like, kind of caretaker things where they had a, a, a builder's merchants- Mm...
that was, was kind of abandoned that they were gonna flip and turn into some, you know, majestic, uh, gentrification opportunity in Dalston. Mm-hmm. Beautiful lofts. A blank coffee shop?
[laughs] Well, uh, but in the meantime, you know, they were kinda, like, going through all the motions of what it would mean to do it.
So they had this site on Dalston Lane, and I managed to convince them to let me have it for, on basically-They, they were like, "We'll sign this deal with you.
You have to sign a piece of paper that basically says we can get you out 10 days notice," kind of thing. "If we sell this building, you're gone," kind of thing.
I, I ended up being able to, to work out of there for, um, for the whole year. I basically got the keys on the 1st of January, and I-- and the last night was a New Year's Eve party. We kind of just like, like- A blowout.
Blowout and gone. And, and, um, I managed to get onto the MFA that year. I reapplied in the September and, and got onto the MFA program. And so kind of, um, going into 2014, I knew I'd be starting the, the, the program.
Mm-hmm. And I felt like I spent those two years really looking hard, but I came to this conclusion. It was like, you want to buy somewhere because you wanna turn it into a studio, and you wanna live there.
I looked and I looked, and I was like, "And you will never be able to do this in London." Mm-hmm. You will never be able to afford a space that, that you could buy.
Uh, I, I had been like putting money aside from the practice, and I had like a small but not inconsiderable amount of money. I think I had like, like a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty thousand, like, saved up.
Mm-hmm. Like, and then I was like, maybe with a mortgage, I could stretch to like two-fifths, three-fifths down payment. Yeah. Solid down payment. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, and it was still like the options in London were just never gonna be- Yeah. Never gonna-- Like I, I'd had to be so far out. Yeah. Or, or...
And, and also, like I wasn't like-- this wasn't like, yeah, well, buy smart, get on the property ladder, and then in a few years get it.
Like, I was like, "No, I wanna like go and do-" And you want the space to be comfortable and inspiring too. Yeah. Right? I wanted space. I was like- Yeah. I was like,
I, I'd been very spoiled by living in, you know, like kind of a warehouse. Yeah. But it was like
mentally to have room to work and to feel like you could put things on the walls and stuff was, was really, you know, that was transformative for my practice.
If it hadn't been transformative, I wouldn't be putting a premium on it, but it was. So, um, I basically reached a point where it was like, well, if you're not gonna be in London, would you move to America? Yeah.
'Cause into college here, you've got the- In New Haven, we call it the Ghent of Connecticut. [laughs] Um, that's, that's, that's in some ways that's an apt nickname. Uh- [laughs]
Um, the, the, I guess they're equally remote, uh, in some re- in some respects. Mm-hmm.
But, um, I also, I, I had a very open set of criteria, but it was like you need to be able to find, uh, a property you can afford first thing. So it needs to be a city where the property values aren't insane.
You ideally need to be able to m- legally move there. [laughs] Um, which is, you know, like- Was this pre-Brexit? Sorry? Was it pre-Brexit?
It was 2016, so it's like we're coming up to the Brexit vote, and I'm starting to look. Yeah. I lo- I looked at a lot of cities. In, well, I was like, I started looking at Belgium really seriously. Mm-hmm.
So like you could take the Eurostar, you could, you could take the train to Paris, you can, you can go to Amsterdam, you can get to Germany easily. And, you know, the downside is, you know, what's Belgium like? Yeah.
Everyone, when I say, "Move to Belgium," I see like ninety percent of their faces drop or do that weird thing where they're like, "Oh, cool." Yeah.
But it's like, okay, you've, you've either like been to Brussels and hated it, which is totally fair 'cause I don't love Brussels, or you're assuming with some degree of validity that Belgium's just some insane cultural backwater that no one would move to.
Yeah. But the thing about Belgium, and specifically Ghent and Flanders, but Ghent more than anything, so I looked at Antwerp, and it still felt like...
Okay, the only reason I'm going into this depth about this is because I feel like some of your listeners might be going through a similar weird thing. I think a lot of my generation- Yeah...
generation thought where they're just like, "The metropolis doesn't work anymore. What is my future in this city where the compromises seem to outweigh the benefits?
But everyone is here, so we're all in this together so that no one leaves." I'm definitely going through this living in New York. I'm like, I'm 30, you know.
We're getting to the age, like friends, we've been here for a while, where it's like, well, like where do we go? I've, I've got German citizenship as well, so I'm like, "Oh, well maybe Berlin," you know?
But then it's kind of what you're saying. You know, you're chasing the wave of gentrification and pricing out and etc. So Ghent basically is like where that, that wave, tho- that tide doesn't exist so much.
Gentrification isn't so much a thing. Gentrification is real, unfortunately. Yeah. I feel like I, I got in a little... Uh, I can, if you wanna be the worst- Are you saying gentrification or gentrification?
I, I said, I did say gentrification. Okay. [laughs] Yeah. Um, uh, this is the most boring topic ever, so I promise I'll, I'll, I'll move off it. But like, um, the thing about why I'd say like tertiary cities. Mm-hmm.
Tertiary cities, like, like there's metropolises, and I think they are done, and they're kinda like a death trap in some ways. Mm-hmm.
And it's like unless you are tapped in already to the lifeblood of what makes that metropolis a first city, like you have a job at, at, like in a, in a premium cultural institution or something. Mm-hmm.
Unless you have that connection, I think like kind of like trying to enter that from the margins or from zero, you have to build your entire life around that. Yeah.
All your friends are gonna have to be, you know, like kind of you're gonna have to network in that direction. You're gonna have to build a personality that's amenable to it.
You're gonna have to want to interface with what the first city, like needs to extract. And for a lot of people, I feel like definitely for me, I was like, "I'm not, I'm not interested in doing that."
I don't want to be part of like if I was gonna make it as a graphic designer in London, I'd have to be inside some kind of like culture network that was interested in, uh, or, or closely affiliated. Yeah.
All these things I'm not interested in. Second cities are like cities that aspire to be primary cities, like kind of- Well, wait.
So, so I did, I did re-listen to your Strelka talk last night, and there was, there's a few talking points I pulled out. Uh, but one I think is really relevant here.
So you talked about how like you, you're talking about like a chef's table and like the chef model and like the chef as designer type of thing, um, and how s- design companies are like they're not training young designers to be great designers, to be leaders.
There's too many designers, um, especially like in these, you know, kind of primary cities like you're saying. So they're, they're training them just to be labor, just to be, you know, kind of workers who will never...
uh, you know, aspire to that, that great leadership, um, position. And then you kind of espouse this, like, small, sustainable local studio model, which is what you've done.
You've got Terrain now, which I think you started, like, five years ago or so, maybe more, I don't know. Um,
but I, I don't know, I, I really a- like, agree with you that, like, smaller, more sustainable businesses, many of those are just better, um, for, I don't know, for society, for people than, like, the few massive design companies.
Um, and it's been successful for you, but I, I don't know, do you see, like, do you see this model, like, proliferating more or is it... Are you kind of a unicorn with Terrain? Like, what's- I don't wanna- Yeah...
be a unicorn, and I think, like, kind of one of the things which I personally feel like I need to do a bit better at, uh, with the practice, because we've been... It's year six. Yeah.
And I'm still renovating the space that I bought. [laughs] I'm not talking to you from the house that I bought. Right.
I'm talking the place that we work, which is, is this beautiful space that I'm very, very happy that, um, you know, that we work from. It's one of the reasons why I guess we're not rushing on the one that I bought.
Uh- Yeah. Beautiful church in the background. I mean, come on. Yeah. Like, a lovely view of the, you know- I love that... kind of the sealed spires of Ghent and stuff. It's amazing. So it- Yeah... it's very nice here.
Uh, like, and s- uh, I can't... We weren't gonna have this view at the studio. No. But, um, I've been really obstinate about saying that one of the things that when we've talked about, like, what I want Terrain...
How Terrain can help, what... How it can be useful to other designers. I think, like, one of the things which I was, yeah, again, a bit obstinate about was for our web presence.
I don't want us to be a studio that just puts its portfolio online. Mm-hmm. And just goes through the client list we have or the work that we've done. Yeah. You're actually a little bit mysterious on the website.
Um- It's quite spare. Yeah. I mean, there's- [laughs]... certain clients, like Francis follows football closely. I follow it, um, in and out, more around big world events, although my husband is a Spurs fan.
[laughs] Sorry. I'm sure you have strong opinions about... Yeah. Well, me too. All right. Um- Thanks. My heart goes out to him. I'd be- But, you know, we knew about the Arsenal thing, but, you know, I've...
didn't necessar- I, I didn't see it on the site. Maybe I wasn't having a look lately. I know about these from following you on Twitter, right? Yeah. But- Yeah...
so it's not, it's not foregrounding every single client, every single project. Um, the website- It's not foregrounding any of them. We have none on the... We have no... There's not- It's the logo and, like, a crosshair.
The logo- Yeah... and a contact link. Yeah. Maybe I just went to your website. Maybe because- Where you have, like, earth and tombs and- Well, yeah. What is the difference between David Rudnick and Terrain? Like- Yeah.
What is the difference between David Rudnick- Um, honestly, like-... and Terrain? David Rudnick as a, as a, as a practicing entity kinda doesn't exist anymore. Mm-hmm.
The archive of work is there because I know that there's still some interest in the stuff that I've done, and I'm also very aware that Terrain, we have... We do not show the work yet that we do. Mm. Yet.
Um, to say, say yeah, I'm not... Like, a studio should be secret and not show its work. I just wanted to do one really specific thing. I made this commitment to go here and build this building.
I want Terrain's website to present Terrain as a... And I want people, when they hear that word, terrain, to think of a space, not a company. Mm. Mm. Not, uh, a, a kind of, uh, commercial entity.
Yes, we are those things, but it's exactly like if I say the name of a restaurant. Mm-hmm. Uh, like- Why is space and not a system of values? Because- Because a studio has to be physical?
No, I think that the values will be evident in the work. Mm-hmm. But I think that what's missing in the world right now and what's missing, I think, in people's...
what they're entitled to hope for design is this idea that outside of some mythical lab that Apple have or- [laughs]...
some, you know, like, deep bowels of, of, of, uh, again, like, a handful of companies in the world, no one believes design happens anymore. Mm-hmm. It's like something that takes place on a laptop.
But the, the conversa- the... When I was- Or like snarchitecture. Yeah. But, you know- [laughs]... or like Eli- Eliasson's, like, kind of like compound with 300 dudes in it or whatever. Johnny Ive.
Architectural space and... Mm. Yeah. Or Johnny's company, LoveFrom. But, you know, and, and, and they, and they may get some star architect to do it, but it's also this palatial display of opulence- Mm...
where it's, like, billions of d- of dollars in capital built this. And they, you know, like Apple with their, you know, with, with the, the giant, um- The circle building... you know, building. Yeah. Mm.
It's also this, like... It's... That's a fortress. That's an almost militaristic display. Uh, if you're 15 years old and you dream of design, you dream of a better world- Mm-hmm... you're being shown a locked door.
You're being shown a gate at the... You are very much... It's clear that, like, you do not participate in these dialogues. They're secret. They're opaque to you.
And the system of, like, even, like, social graces and capital you have to pass through to access what you would love to know, what you'd love to see. Mm. What's it like to make something better?
What's a conversation look like that, that leads to results? Mm-hmm. I think it's been 40, 50 years of culture building walls around that. And what I really want to do, and I think it's, it's just...
I know it's a really simple thing, and it's like, you, you say a system of values, but, like, literally to try and build a space that if I was 15 or if I was 12 or I was 13 and I was dreaming about design and I was like, I want to go visit that space.
I wanna be in those conversations. And then whether or not you make it to our space or whether you make one of your own- Mm... and whether you make one with your friends or, like...
Because-The other thing, and I said this in my Stroker talk, the goal of Terrain is not to scale and become the next great design studio. Yeah, which I love.
The goal of Terrain is just to be an example of a model of production that ideally any creative person should feel that they are entitled to find their equivalent of that model for themselves. Totally.
And like thinking about this twelve or thirteen-year-old kid, like it's very plausible that the first piece of graphic design that they fall in love with is an album cover. And so, I mean, I would love to hear from you.
You've done some of these. Um, does the state of the album cover-- album art really change?
Um, and you know, one thing we were thinking about going into this was like Charli XCX going back and like retroactively, you know, streamlining all of her album art on these streaming services to match the aesthetic of Brat and rather than whatever her original design language was for that album.
So I don't know. What do you think about album art as a sort of, um, you know, gateway into graphic design for an aspiring young designer? I think it's-- it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that like--
I mean, I love album art. Album-- I've, I've, I've said publicly that my route into design was like kind of through- New Order...
design objects that, that really spoke to me were some of these like physical records of Peter Saville's designs for New Order. Oh, so good.
Growing, growing up, like kind of, you know, getting the best of and the rest of New Order for like my eighth birthday or something, and kind of like only having those two CDs in my collection.
So for months at a time in my bedroom, just sitting on the floor listening to those records and listening to them on a, on a CD player that has no visual, you know, no screen. Mm-hmm.
Uh, and, and just having to look, look at the, look at the record, read every word in the liner note even though I don't know what some of these words mean or whatever, like this mystical language.
Just look at everything there. Um, there's no question, uh, that world does not exist anymore. And, and if you make a p-- an album artwork, you are--
I think the gesture of Charli erasing her, um, discography and then rebuilding it in the image of Brat is the like perfect like Sisyphean sadness of like what design is fated to be- Mm...
in a lot of situations now, where it's just like this constantly self-destroying recycled surface of the now that is, um, you know, in a losing game against technology. When we make a record- Is it because it's memetic?
Like is that recycled now, you know, tied to the communication? No, it's because it's... Yeah. Spotify, Spotify like kind of sets the agenda. Yeah. The, uh, you know-- And so because it's free, right?
Like it's a digital file, so there's no cost of production. She didn't have to republish her discography. They just updated the PNGs, right? So it's too easy to overwrite. Well, this is, this is going to like, um...
Another thing I took from, from your talk, uh, was like the idea of like ultra-reality in cinema and like the camera moving around. Like you, you are the camera, you are the main character.
Like this feels very tied to that for me. Like, uh, a, a quote I wrote down was when you were talking about this is, "Infinity is the digital property that we can't keep up with."
Which what you're saying here is like there's no... It's free. There's no limit to reproducing it. Yeah.
I think, uh, a lot of my work, but a lot of the things that have preoccupied me for a long time, you know, in the Stroker talk or when I talked, uh, I guess with Matt and Holly about- Mm-hmm...
these ideas that I refer to as primacy, are about, I think from my position as someone who entered cultural production from an originally the perspective of like art history and looking at, uh, how visual culture both shapes and is shaped by, uh, the technological, political, social reality with which it engages.
Um, it felt, you know, we were, we were kind of-- it's the cosmic joke. Everyone I guess is born, uh, at an interesting time for some reason. Mm-hmm.
But like of our age is that I believe like a fundamental new permanent default, uh, exists within what images are, how we access them, how we create meaning from them, how we create value from them, uh, that has emerged in our lifetime or in the kind of like, you know, in the timeframe of most of our lives, most people who are living now.
And this is the, the, the fundamental basis of that shift is that the new permanent default is that the capital, the meaning, the propagation is virtual- Mm-hmm... not physical.
And that all of the value that we tied to physical systems of image propagation and image production doesn't really exist anymore. But we carry o-- we, we like kind of-- I always h-have this image that I return to.
I don't think I talked about it in the Stroker talk, but I always talk-- like I always... I'm preoccupied by this image in my mind. I don't know if it's from a specific,
uh, source or whether it's just this thing which I've like kind of-- like I keep coming back to. But of a, a figure maybe that, you know, like maybe it's from a, a-an old Japanese movie or something, a samurai movie.
But this, this... It happens a lot in samurai movies where, um, the character is given the killing blow. They're like run through with the sword. Mm-hmm.
And they kind of fight on for a f- for a little while after they know that they're d- before they know that they're dead kind of thing. And, and but, but, but they're gone. Like the...
There, there's this dance, like danse macabre, whatever, where- Yeah... like the, that, that is performed after the killing blow.
And I think so much of what we are surrounded by in our lives, magazine publishing, like kind of even like the way in which like kind of certain types of like-High fashion or, or the cultural symbols and signifiers that are associated with it, um, uh, music publishing and, uh, we're in this dance macabre where it's like they're dead.
Yeah. But everyone agrees to pretend that they're not dead yet. I feel the same way, David. But it hasn't [audio cuts out] war. Yeah.
I mean, I always use the dead star analogy where it's like we're receiving light from a star that's already died. Mm. Yeah. Um, but I also think, you know, I've heard
for the things-- I think a lot of people actually know that they're already dead, but there are people who believe that you can succeed, and this goes back to Francis and I started off before you came on referencing again that like, you know, New York Magazine state of the media, talking to people who I think are participating in methods of media that are light from an already dead star- Mm.
-or they are the tactical moves of, you know, the tactical last moves of a samurai that's already been run through with a sword. Yeah. I've heard it described as like fracking.
I think there's a lot of people who are already in these positions of institutional power.
They know that it's dead, but it doesn't really benefit them to start over, try to steer the ship that's too big or ask what's next, so they turn to fracking, which is just squeezing the remaining value out of what used to sort of work and hope for the best.
You know, limping along on, you know, Google Ads revenue or whatever.
Um, and it takes people who really have nothing to lose, who are establishing new publication studio practices, methodologies that sort of acknowledge, "Okay, digital primacy has already been achieved. What now?
How do I account for that?" Yeah. Um, to bring these fresh ideas in, but they don't-- they're doing it without institutional support because the institutional support is still going to the frackers.
Well, I think one of the ways that culture works, one of the constants and one of the, you know, I've talked about before on my Twitter of these like nostalgia loops that are like actually it's, it's really easily calculable.
You just look at what was popular twenty years ago for five-year-olds, and now that those five-year-olds are twenty-five and they have disposable income, that desire is gonna be being sold back to them. Mm-hmm.
The latent unresolved desire from their childhood are the things that they couldn't buy, uh, are now it's gonna be sold back to them kind of thing.
And, and similarly as well, I think like it's-- when I say that these things are dead, what I, what I don't mean is like no one is ever going to listen to or buy music again, or it won't be an enormously popular part of our lives.
But rather some of the ways in which, for example, like the album cover is perceived as important is because there are people that are alive who remember the album cover being important, and they perform almost without thinking a veneration or like a kind of a respect, or they look to the album cover to give them certain information about the record or what was the artist thinking, what were they trying to express with this?
Because they learned as a, you know, when they were young or, you know, like kind of in the, in the, in the passion of their like highest level of engagement with this medium, that these were, these were texts that were rich in value, rich in knowledge, rich in importance.
And now if you go and load up an old Charlie album on, on Spotify, and it has the brat cover, if you day one come to that, and that's the first time you listen to that record, and you look at it like you-- those people are being taught something different.
They're being taught that these are not permanent markers of value. They don't represent artistic statements or art script. They are points of data in a, in a commercial campaign.
Uh, they express at any given moment what the like macro position of that artist is relative to a market, and those people would be entitled to correct maybe in paying less attention to these things, seeing them as less valuable, seeing them as less credible, important components of an artistic statement.
That generation, the generation, like I said, who are twelve or thirteen now, by the time they're thirty, I don't think they'll have the nostalgia for album covers that we do. Mm.
Talk about Peter Saville and all of these things. In the-- what, what these things are to them is justifiably less meaningful, justifiably less important, uh, because it also-- it, it does not contain these...
It doesn't-- it isn't like a useful historical document. Mm-hmm. And things like Kanye being able to release a record and then unfinished and, and add tracks two days later and remaster it. Mm.
This isn't like a triumph of technology. This is just the end of the idea of releasing a record. Mm. This is just the end of the artistic achievement of what it meant to release an album because you had to like...
That was it. You know, when Prince completes Purple Rain- The end of that limitation. That's it. Mm. Like kind of like idea.
And for, for all of your strengths and for all of the weaknesses, you live by that statement, and that's, you know, that's the risk, and that's the skill, et cetera. And it's like,
I think there are a lot of things where it's like the, the invisible effect is someone like, "Yeah, but, but if you-- if there was a mistake on the album, you could fix it. Why wouldn't you fix it?"
It's like it's not that fixing it is a problem. It's the, the meaning of the unfixed album changes forever. Mm-hmm.
Like the meaning of what it means to like try and make an album that doesn't require fixing changes forever.
And I don't wanna be a pessimist about human ambition, but usually when we make it so that there's no reward or value in an achievement, people don't pursue it anymore.
[laughs] So are we all gonna use AI to create our own fonts? Like can I just like wake up and be like, "I'm sending all my emails in Daisy font today"?
You can, but this is, this is I think the kind of gray goo culture problem, right? Right.
Where it's like, like again, one of the reasons why when we have this conversation, and I say New Order, and you are Peter Saville, and I see the emotional reaction you have, and we make a connection- Mm-hmm.
-is because a shared symbol exists in the midst, in the, in the space, in the cultural mien- Mm.
-uh, in our milieu that was there, that created shared meaning, that created shared focus, and that also therefore becomes a cipher, becomes useful in this conversation. We used it to make a point. Mm-hmm.
We used it to explore ideas.
And if everything is the equivalent of Daisy font, uh, not that Daisy font wouldn't be valuable, but, you know, like, like but, uh-It, we're, we're, we're absolutely at the point where, um, for example, everyone's version of the record on their Spotify could have a cover that was u- Well, like Net- like Netflix thumbnails that are generated for like the, the specific user.
Generated for the user and, and could even go beyond that. Could even like kind of actually add like artistic agencies that know that this person kinda likes a manga style, so you know, like kind of like- Mm-hmm...
it's, it's, it's pushing it even in that direction kind of thing. Like- Well, wait. S-something, something I wanna get into on this. Um, so it's kind of...
I read this tweet from Scott Belsky right after listening to your Stroka Talk, and you were talking about like the, your idea of narrative, which is I was seeing it kind of as like this Gesamtkunstwerk idea of like all the context putting...
Like, like when you're making a book, you should be, you know, thinking about the, the paper and the publisher, and like every, every aspect of it.
Um, but then so reading this [chuckles] Scott Belsky tweet right after, which is ultimately just marketing for Adobe, but I think also a relatively compelling idea.
Uh, he was talking about how the creator economy becomes the meaning economy, um, which what it-- what's the quote?
Uh, he defines meaning here as like the story- He's just saying that 'cause he already used taste economy, and so he can't use it.
Well, y- but so the, the story, the purpose, the myths behind the creators themselves and the brand value. Uh, but yeah, it's marketing for this idea, this, uh, what is it?
This content credentials metadata idea that I think they're developing with like a few other big companies, so you can like put like the provenance of an image in metadata on an image. Um, yeah.
The- I mean, whatever, man. [laughs] Well, okay. I wanna be clear. Like I think this, this position that, um...
I can, I can-- I, I'm gonna justify like kind of very directly or like, like kind of put my, put my own position out there, like on what the both...
I don't wanna use the word role objectively as a graphic designer because it's clear this is not their role in culture. Mm-hmm. Uh, and it's also clear that this is not like...
But, but what I think design could be, what design ought be, what, uh, what-- how these ideas of narrative, for example, inform my practice is that it really is like a kind of ultimate endorsement of a kind of, of a quantum death of the author.
Mm-hmm. Which is your narratives, the ones which are unique to you, which are informed by like all of your experience.
So my unique experience of being, you know, like kind of, of, of listening to these New Order records and what they mean to me is impossible, untranslatable, uncommunicable. That does not leave you.
It is there within you.
What leaves you are the signs, signals, gestures, language, images, symbols that you can marshal, that you can assemble, uh, to create visual systems, to create codes, to create images, et cetera, that you can put in front of other people that can trigger and activate their narratives.
Mm. And the, the like, the path of like the sensitive life of a designer is I think the one of starting to become attuned to and interested in the narratives of other people.
What, uh, things may exist that have cultural visibility that might therefore become useful in communicating sentiment statements?
What actions one can take to change existing things or to, to cause a viewer to question them or to flag certain things is important to change their hierarchies of value.
And it's the exact opposite of the Adobe dream of, of that, uh, that now you can make work that's like hyper-specific to your tastes.
And it's like if anything, not only is that a disaster like de facto in terms of a communication strategy, but it's also teaching you not to listen to the only things which are important, which is like- Mm-hmm...
a sensitivity to how the moments where your taste was, A, what was it informed by, and B, what might you be able to do with this that might have impact or meaning for other viewers, for other people. Absolutely.
Like, and it's also like basically saying that the experience of these things isn't already completely customized when it is.
It is custom because if it wasn't custom, it would be communicable, and like we-- you and I can stand next to Guernica, but I don't know what's inside your head, your experience of the painting.
And even somebody who would measure your brainwaves doesn't know h- what your experience of the painting is. Um, which comes out of like, you know, like I've read a bunch of books on neuroaesthetics. Don't ask me why.
And like we still don't know. Like you and I standing next to Guernica, your experience is completely private, and my experience is completely private even as we're talking about it.
Um, same thing with listening to a song, same thing with reading a book.
And so it's kinda teaching a generation of kids like, you know, reading a book isn't worth it or watching a movie isn't worth it, um, because that experience could be more custom for you if you do it in such and such a way, when actually it already is completely customized.
Mm. And the add-- the value add that you could create through digital primacy doesn't need to be around customization. It could be around something else like creativity, creation, um, trying to communicate- Yeah...
your custom experience of that art. I mean, you can, you can kind of... You can do an experiment internally of imagining different scales of, um, culture exposure. Mm-hmm.
Uh, because what's being invented here, I think, is the possibility of like total solipsism. Mm-hmm. Uh, total cultural solipsism, like the idea of the person who- As the ideal...
the person who lives, you know, like kind of with the goggles on or whatever, the Apple Vision Pro, and everything they see is being generated uniquely for them. Mm. It is never seen by anyone else.
It is entirely a product of, you know, some synthetic read of their desires or whatever. And let's, let's go, let's, let's go like philosophically. Let's be like, and let's say the system's perfect.
Let's say this generates for them every day the best movie they've ever seen, like, uh, uh, the most compelling content, uh, with the most brilliant characters and stories, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Uh-Let's, let's take Adobe at their word. Let's say let's-- okay, you, you crack this technology, and the-- it, it produces perfect dreams, okay? That person has to, like, the, the-- follow the experiment.
Um, if they ever take the goggles off and they go and meet another human being.
I've kinda had this experience all my life growing up when, when hearing other people talk about their trips, when people talk about doing drugs.
[chuckles] I think there's nothing more boring in the world than- Hearing somebody describe an acid trip. Oh, it's like s- telling someone about a dream that you had. Yeah. Which I actually love.
I find them so interesting, but that's- [chuckles] Well, ha- specifically I think, like, kind of, yeah, you've, you've had... So, so let's say they describe the perfect movie to somebody else. Yeah.
The whole thing is, like, kind of like it's completely useless. Mm-hmm. Like, it's-- for them to describe it in perfect detail would take as long as the movie itself. Like it's- Right.
It's like, "Oh, you haven't seen the movie that this woman that looks exactly like Daisy gets everything that she wants? Well, we have nothing to talk about." [laughs] Yeah.
Like, let's say it's, say it's like, like the-- tomorrow you go in a room and they put goggles on you, and you watch the best movie you've ever seen in your life.
It's the, you know, the new, the new Christopher Nolan movie or whatever. It's incredible, and you're like, you want to go and tell your friends, like, kind of, "See this movie." But obviously, A, they can't.
They never will. They never can. Their software will create their version of that movie with characters that are attuned to them. B, the-- I think you'll immediately be exhausted by the idea of, like, having the...
It's, it's very, very simple. There's been words for this throughout human history since the dawn of time, and it's, it's-- this is, this is just a perfect description of madness. Mm-hmm.
This is when you have an interior world that you cannot communicate to other people. You're possessed by visions. You hear voices, whatever- Mm... that you, that only you hear, only you see.
And, uh, I can't think of anything more obviously, like, uh, of zero value than giving everyone in the world the ability to either see, but only for themselves, perfect media or, B, create flawlessly the media that they believe is perfect.
Like their own eight million special shows. I think if you wanna do that, you should at least have to sell your winery, right? [laughs] Like I think that's a fair price to pay for that level of solipsism.
Because basically, like, I think I said I want to talk about Megalopolis with you because I saw you tweet about it. Like, basically, like, if everyone... A-and JLo's movie is, like, kinda the same way. Mm-hmm.
It's like this is basically if they-- everyone had access to the resources to create a movie that's, like, custom to them.
They would just-- we would get stuff like JLo's thing, like Megalopolis, which is basically Francis Ford Coppola saying, "This is the movie. I'm making the movie that I want to see." Don't need any external input, yeah.
Yeah. No, I am, I am the creator, and I am the audience. Um, and you're just there. I mean, okay. So there's like a, there's like a gerontocratic joke, right, about the idea that, like,
we-- maybe in our society everyone can make the movie that you want, but it's like it says the, the sick bargain is that you have to wait [notification sound] until you're rich enough to make that movie. Ah.
And you won't be rich until you're completely senile, and you're- Mm-hmm...
totally exhausted of all of your creative spirit and will, because the only way you made the money was by making 15 other compromised movies that had to be a success, so only those people get that.
Um, did you like Megalopolis? What were your thoughts on it? Like, did you- I mean, like is such a [laughs] [chuckles] I don't know that, like, I would use the word like. I didn't walk out. I was entertained.
I've even thought about it since seeing it. I don't know how much of it I'll remember in two weeks. And- I mean, okay. Yeah. I, I guess you'll know this 'cause you, you will have seen my Struggle Talk.
I, I really love cinema.
And I think that for exactly the reasons that we've talked about, uh, in this conversation so far, the idea of millions of people sitting down and having exactly the same hallucination, that they can leave the theater and talk about to one another afterwards, uh, that they can use to, uh, explore cultural ideas, to tell stories.
We can give-- we can quote specific lines like poetry. Uh, we, we give characters names. This is a mythic component of our society- Mm-hmm... that I believe is of enormous value.
And that in a world that deprives people of shared signs and symbols with which to make sense of their lives and the universe, popular cinema is something that I think is, is unquestionably one of the parts of the modern project that I think is, is super interesting.
It's very close to... Like, it's our oral culture. It's our myths of Olympus. Uh, it is- Mm-hmm... uh, the space.
And, uh, at various points in my life, like, uh, I've found the movies that are actually being released in the cinema to be more or less interesting from this perspective.
Uh, uh, when I was doing the Struggle Talk, I was, I was finding them particularly interesting because it seemed that there was this emergent trope that felt very much like the, the front edge of a wave that was impacting society and that it was happening in cinema first.
That somehow storytelling was responding to the virtual or this, like, kind of presence of new virtual defaults in, in cinema in a way that other parts of culture were yet to, uh, catch up to or react to.
Can you-- what were the examples that you were picking up on for that?
So I, I-- in the Struggle Talk, I kind of named the trope, uh, the, the, the cluster of tropes, this, this, like, kind of mode of storytelling that I called ultra-reality. Uh-huh.
And, uh, the first movie that really blew my mind, that I was like, "I'm watching a new medium here"- Mm-hmm... when I saw it, was, uh, the first Avengers film. Mm. Which was the first film I'd ever seen that...
And I'm not gonna credit the filmmakers as doing this deliberately, but the-- because of the story that they had to tell, I think they almost accidentally fell into this space where for the first time they were free to tell the story in the way the story kinda suggested it should be told.
And it was, in terms of the filmmaking tropes, uh, I, I think I listed five in the Struggle Talk, and I'm not sure I'm gonna remember them, like, perfectly off the top of my head.
But the-- they are certain collapses of convention of, of how, um, uh, a story is normally structured that, that all these films had in common.
And one was that, um, you know, that they-Were stopping using, uh, uh, kind of even cuts in the movie. Mm-hmm. You'd get these very long, like oners became a thing around this time as well.
These, like, very long, like, uh, uh, you know, seemingly unbroken or editing- Yeah. Wasn't Birdman a single shot? Oh, yeah.
Like, uh, so, so Bird-- like, after I do the talk, like a few w- movies, like cross the Rubicon and go completely cutless. So like nineteen-seventeen, I think or like what, like what, uh- Yeah...
All Quiet on the Western Front recently does this, Birdman does this.
But like basically, but the idea behind that is that like, uh, in a very simple way, um, previously all forms of narrative storytelling because of the technological medium of their transmission, text were iterative and cicaded.
You had pages that you turned, you had a sequence that you encountered things in, and then online you would also load between pages in this really- Mm-hmm... like kind of competent way. Mm.
And technology was starting to suggest, and now I think we're really going there with spatial computing, the dream of the seamless experience, the uninterrupted experience, the endless scroll, where any time that experience was interrupted, it was primitive, it was regressive, it was a hallmark of an earlier rudimentary technology that would in time come to be surpassed.
And so the godlike move is the cutless move, is the like single unbroken experience of being.
And this also comes to the Apple's idea of spatial computing, where they're trying to create a seamless experience between computation, thought, and life. That this like...
And that anything that distracts from that is, is something that they're like afraid of. They're like a, like a sad ape that like does, you know, like kind of, uh, shamed by a cut or shamed by an interruption.
So that's cutless. Then also the, uh, the, the, the lack of, uh, the, like the disinterest with or the shaming of regular time. Mm.
So if like the cut is shamed in the first one, the movies that move almost entirely into slow motion or that demonstrate mastery over time, and so then after Strobe you get things like Tenet and you get these movies where-- Interstellar, where the filmmaker's explicit proposal to the viewer is that the godlike power of filmmaking is the godlike power to show, to triumph over time.
Time can go backwards- Mm-hmm... time can slow down. We can, we can like modulate your experience of time.
And again, this is this like kinda like technological idea that I think like the internet and, uh, like even the cutting edge of like algorithmic trading, it's like obviously this preponderance in our society that we feel this, like the last burden that we're trying to overcome right now is that we are just, we're slaves to time.
And so like when you see things like the, the dechronologicalization of, of the social media feed, uh, where things are ordered by narrative importance, not by when they happened.
That previously everything was chronological and then they invent these new modes where it's like actually it's about storytelling, it's about putting like kind of moving time around to fit the narrative you wanna show the viewer.
This is like too, I'm thinking of like the concept of like the second brain that I see people like tweeting about, like tech types where it's like, oh, you put all your thoughts into Notion or whatever, these systems of apps, so you can like automate your thoughts and like m- you know, think faster to get to the...
To get to what faster, you know? If again, a fear of linear time and then like, like an obvious thing I can say is people like Bryan Johnson, like this, this- [laughs] Yeah...
idea of like, uh, like a morbid fear of aging. Like a, a like which, which leads to this like, um, you know, it's, it's actually it's very romantic.
It's like Byronic and Shelley and where that you, you, you enter into a phase almost death in life where you, you become like a prisoner of life, where you get up at six in the morning and have to take 70 supplements, and then you kind of like you can't see the sun, and you kind of become- Well, because you-- the primacy of death, right?
Is for most person-- people, the default primacy is life. And for somebody who's trying to prolong their life, ironically the primacy becomes death.
It's- And as you were speaking about disrupted time, actually, like what popped into my head was like Mark Fisher's essay about Inception. Yeah.
But I was like, I pulled it up in another window 'cause I was like, "What did he say?"
And he said, "In Inception, as in late capitalist culture in general, you're always in someone else's dream, which is also the dream of no one." Wow. Okay. I mean, I love Mark. But what a, a...
still like an enormous loss for all of us because for all of these things. Yeah.
Both I would have loved to have continued to see Mark's reactions and responses to them, and also I completely understand that it was their choice that they did not want to continue doing that. Yeah.
Uh, but um, uh, I'm getting back to Megalopolis, I promise you. This is one of my enormous present tangents. I trust the, I trust the journey. Outside of the ballpark. Um- [laughs]...
with the movies I was talking about in Strobe, because obviously Megalopolis hadn't come out yet and- Mm-hmm... you know, like kind of some of these things were proposals for things that were gonna happen.
And the other one's just really, really quickly, like, um, freedom of movement, like the camera, uh, no longer represents the plausible perspective of a human observer.
So most of the vantage points in traditional cinema were essentially modeling the camera to represent for the viewer a human being. Eye level, like.
Uh, so eye level in a dialogue scene or kind of like looking down from a vantage point or something.
And this movement, not just to like kind of a, uh, perspective of, of some kind of omnipotent godlike observer, where not only can the camera fly and move, but it, it takes thrill and delight in, in showcasing its own like kind of, uh, independent, like navigation of the space.
It would pass through tiny cracks like in, uh, what's the, uh, Enter the Void like kind of- Mm-hmm. [laughs]... thing. So you like do a lot of these keyhole shots and stuff.
But, but in these Marvel movies, here's the thing, like The Avengers is not an art house movie. It is not considered one of those. Unlimited budget, like, yeah. Right?
It's, it's not, it's not viewed normally in film criticism as the act of someone who wants to make a statement about the truly groundbreaking idea of what film can be.
But that's honestly like kind of the first time I saw it in the cinema, I was like shocked.
I felt like it was, it was demonstrating these tropes again, but completely naively in a way where it had abandoned like 90% of what cinema was.
But I'll just very, very quickly run through the last like kind of bits- No, go ahead...
of where this goes becauseThe first thing about that film which was, which was like just like shocking, stunning is it's a Gotterdammerung myth. It takes place on Olympus.
It is a story about gods, and these gods are bored, and it is not a story about people. And again, we come back to the idea of like kind of death and life. It's like these are characters who can't die.
I mean, we're now like 15 years, right, into like the Marvel Cinematic Universe realizing they've got a problem because they can't die. Like they can't-- It won't die. We're, we're bored of life.
Uh, like we're bored of it, and these characters in the first Avengers, they're already bored of being gods, and none of them are interested in humans.
And for the first time ever, it was a film about the Earth where humans were completely irrelevant. Mm-hmm. There's basically no humans in the movie. They kind of ba- they basically don't have dialogue.
There's only one real human character. There's-- well, there's the agents of SHIELD, um, I can't remember their name, Agent Coulson or whatever. Yeah. Nick Fury, right? Like Cobie Smulders who- [laughs]...
like they live on their sky bars. They literally live on an invisible-- They live in the cloud. Like kind of they live in this in-invisible network of, uh, of, of control that hovers above us, right?
So, you know, a kind of a, this like cloud metaphor where they, where they live. But they're the last humans, and they're basically the system administrators of the god machine.
And Nick Fury, God bless him, is the, is the, is the closest thing to a protagonist of this movie.
Samuel Jackson is assembling the Avengers, but what that means is he's kind of going up and door-knocking these gods, um, and kind of just saying to them, "You have nothing to live for." Mm-hmm.
"Why don't you like-- why don't you just do what we want you to do? Like you're, you're basically like a kind of like a mindless entity. Why don't you just like kind of..."
And, and they all rage against it in different ways, but they invariably come around to his point of view and team up and fight this alien invasion that destroys Manhattan and kills millions of people.
But no one cares because people don't-- they don't matter in this universe. We're, we're interested in like the dynamics of the gods and, uh, I am getting to Megalopolis, I promise you.
This is like a, like a, like a very long-winded way of getting to this. But, um, uh, Fury's character, what, what makes him the one human who can talk to the gods is very funny.
Like, um, the movie was during this period where it was, it was still the like-- Hollywood was very interested in three D. Mm-hmm.
And, uh, the Avengers was, was released in IMAX three D, and it was, it was this period where three D was really, really, really important just for those couple of years where they were really trying to push three D.
And I always thought it was really, really funny that like The Hulk is big and green and infinitely strong. Captain America is like incredibly brave and like has perfect martial prowess.
Tony Stark's the smartest man who ever lived. He can invent anything. And what's Nick Fury's superpower? That he can control the gods. What's his like--
What's, what makes him the one person who can like kind of walk between the worlds? How is he Blade, who's both like a vampire and a human? Mm-hmm. What's his thing?
And the funny thing is like Nick Fury only has one distinguishing feature as like a, as a superhero, and it's that he only has one eye. That's his like only distinguishing feature.
But it's just really funny that that means that like his superpower is he doesn't have binocular vision. Can't see three D. He's the only one who can't watch the movie.
[laughs] And that's, that's the thing with- He's immune to IMAX. Mm-hmm. [laughs] I mean, I think that's pretty-- I think that's pretty notable.
Well, I'm gonna force you back to Megalopolis by telling you what I did think was interesting about it. Tell me.
Which is I've always been interested in-- Not always, but since I found out what Superstudio was and first started encountering their work, I've been totally enamored with the aesthetics of it, and my Twitter cover photo is a Superstudio photo.
Um, you know, interested in this idea of post-architecture and, you know, interested that the kind of the protagonist of Megalopolis, he's a architect, urban planner, whatever you wanna call it. Um,
you know, I kind of... I, I think Francis Ford Coppola is approaching this more in a like Roman Empire sense.
I don't think he's thought deeply about post-architecture in the same way maybe you and I have or like Superstudio would recom-- like represent it.
But there were images that I took from that film that felt like Superstudio images to me, and for that reason will probably stick with me. Um, but I think he,
I think he's trying to make a statement, like an old man's statement about civilization through architecture, and that statement's not that interesting. But thinking about post-architecture
is interesting to me, um, even if that's not the message that he intended. I struggled in Megalopolis to see a coherent idea about architecture. Mm.
I thought that the architecture in the film was like, was, was hilarious. It was very comical. Yeah. And that he constructed-- firstly, um, he constructed an idea of a city called New Rome. Mm-hmm.
Which, you know, a very labored metaphor of New York.
And then by the end of the movie, he seemed to have even forgotten that he was setting the movie in, in New Rome, and they had things like the Elvis impersonator singing "God Bless America" and stuff, and the American flag, where he, he like lost control of the metaphor that he was even establishing, and it was just America, and it was just New York.
Um, and, uh, and then you had the like truly like comically pathetic Neri Oxman, uh, you know, arch viz, uh, you know, just like preset two thousand and four, uh, arch greeble of, you know, just like kind of, uh, biokinetic sculpture and like kind of, uh, uh, these, these like parametric forms, which was-- it was so like Post-It note, like architecture goes here.
Totally. And architecture goes here kind of thing. Like Zaha Hadid in the metaverse and like that meme that's like civilization if... Like the city he ends up- Yeah... constructing basically just looks like that meme.
But, uh, uh, again- But there are moments, there's the moments like the, the building collapse, where I'm like, "Oh, that's, that is actually a cool image."
It's like the, the ocean rushing over the skyline in that Superstudio... image, but I honestly think he did it accidentally [laughs] because I also don't think he was in control of the metaphor. Mm.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna... Okay, I'm sorry, guys, 'cause I know there are a lot of things you want us to talk about, and this is gonna-- This-- I've, I've, I've- This is gonna be probably the last thing that we talk about.
[laughs] Yeah. I've hewn very close to- Okay. We can keep going, but I don't wanna make our editor work, our producer work too hard [laughs] on the edit.
Um, Megalopolis was, in the same way that The Avengers was a really important movie for me, and I felt like I was seeing something new there. Mm-hmm.
And I kind of like talked about ult reality and these tropes, which again, like I haven't really explained in much detail here, but if you are interested in any of those ideas, they're in the Struggler talk if someone's listening and, um, wants to engage with them.
But- We could put it in the show notes too. Mm. Definitely.
The, the first, the first time I saw a movie, uh, in the last few years that felt like I was having a similar experience where I was like, "Oh my God, I'm seeing something new, a new kind of storytelling," happened during Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
[laughs] Mm. And it happened again during Megalopolis, where it felt like an affirmation of what Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was starting to do. Um,
my principal criticism of Megalopolis the movie, which I think is, is in many ways like kind of, uh, a disastrous folly, but, uh, but that it really should have come out six months ago.
It needed to come out whilst Joe Biden was still president because it represents a moment, I think, of crisis in storytelling. Well, Joe Biden is still president. A failing vision while he was still running. That's true.
He technically is still president. [laughing] Yeah. Just for- While he was still leading the narrative... let the record show. Let the record show. Yeah.
The record show that like, yeah, at the time, he is true, he is still president, but rather this idea like when he was still doggedly insisting- Mm-hmm... I think, that- Mm-hmm...
that what he represented was what also the vision that, that mankind should follow. Mm-hmm.
And this, this-- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, if you haven't seen this film, if anyone's listening to this, like kind of I, I'd say that this is a, this is a film that I think is a really interesting product of our time.
A totally... Because it tells a new myth. A new- Mm. Like it adds a new myth that I think Megalopolis is, is the second movie that attempts to tell this myth. Mm. And it's a myth of a protagonist
who longs to die and is not allowed by the universe, by the film, by the other characters in the film, and by the filmmakers to die. Hmm. So, uh, and so they basically play themselves to this stalemate.
It's like a, like it's, it's m- both of these movies have like kind of stalemate endings where, uh, the, the characters, uh, kind of realize that not only are they, that is, are they kind of gonna drop their conflict, but that their conflict is irrelevant.
That like one, if one of them winning wouldn't be a win kind of thing. Mm. Um, Indy is in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, he's like impossibly old. It's Harrison Ford. He's like 80.
Everyone watches this movie, and you watch every scene and you're like, "Jesus," like kind of like, like what were they injecting him with in the trailer to like kind of like get him out of bed and do this stuff?
And it's like this looks painful, and he looks in pain and, and he doesn't wanna be doing this anymore. But commerce and our society required another Indiana Jones film. And, and- Yeah...
and Harrison Ford might die soon, so they're like, "We've gotta get, we've gotta get one more out of you." And he's clearly like, "I don't wanna do this anymore." Mm. "I, I don't wanna do this anymore."
And in the film, Indiana Jones is like, "I don't want to do this anymore. I want to stop. I want to die. I want to not live anymore."
And the crazy thing about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is it's a film I've never seen this in Western art before. I think that there are, there are,
there are non-Western narratives that have very similar themes, but I've never seen the protagonist ask to die and, and the film world and the, like the, the, the medium around it say no. Mm. Mm.
In Western art, if the protagonist asks to die, they do it and they do it heroically. Like kind of they- In Eastern art? Yeah. No, in Western art. In like Armageddon- Oh, okay...
there's- This is like, this is going back to like the- Like keep on living. I'm g- you know, I'm, I'm, you know, like kind of it's time for me to like, I've gotta go manually set the bomb. I see. Yeah.
And that's heroic there. I see. Okay.
This is kinda going back to the samurai thing you were talking about at the beginning, but like where that, that, in that one, like the samurai does, is like, you know, doesn't die for a little while and then suddenly does.
In the West- Then he dies... Indy is so powerful and so sacrosanct that like if the, if the hero wants to die, they will die. Mm-hmm. If the hero wants to win, they will win.
In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Indy does not want to be alive anymore, and he is required to be alive for the film to exist and make money. So he's forced to be alive for the duration of the film.
And he, he kind of enters this state of like existential nothingness. They send him back in time to the 1800s to begin this timey-wimey thing, like kind of like, you know- Yeah... again, like ult reality trope.
He gets sent, uh, back and to retrieve the Dial of Destiny from Archimedes or whatever, and is sent forward into the present. And like some kind of... The film ends with this, just like, again,
this insane gesture, which is the way that Megalopolis ends, where like some fucking panda in a zoo, he's trapped in his apartment.
They've, they've put him back in Indy's apartment, and he's literally there like kind of you can sense how meaningless and painful life has been and that he has no reason to be.
And they just magic Kate Capshaw into the scene, like his, his love interest from like previous thing. She's old. He's old now. And it's basically this thing where it's just like, "So go on."
Like again, these like two pandas, like, "Go do this." I mean, I'm gonna say something potentially controversial. Isn't this like every war since World War II? You can't pull out, and you can't win. Is this- Well-...
this the film- I like that. Agree... equivalent? Well, as the Amer- the American forever war. Yeah. Like the forever franchise, like the characters who won't die. Yeah.
Um, I mean-I really would recommend, like, like this movie opens with in a fantasy...
Basically, the reason why, again, these two movies I feel are like, are, are married or like kind of like forms of the same vision is like the movie opens with like a ticker tape parade for the moon landing, uh, in New York, and Indiana Jones is there, and Shia LaBeouf is wearing a Rebel Without a Cause leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, and the Nazis are there for some reason.
Hmm.
And it's just like, and, and it's like you might as well have had Joe Biden in his green Corvette eating an ice cream coming down the street 'cause it's just like this is what it looks like when every neuron in a boomer's brain fires at the same time.
[laughs] Yeah.
And it's the same thing, like kind of when you're watching, when you're watching Megalopolis and like Coppola's 80, and he's like, "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, but no, I've got something really important to say."
And it's like Elvis is singing America the Beautiful, and we're hanging a property developer like Mussolini- Yeah...
and we're building a magical thing in Central Park, and the mayor is making peace with, with this, this brilliant architect, and he's promising him new life because we put a baby on a fucking magic carpet in Times Square.
And it's, it's, it's really just total incoherent nonsense. It's absolute garbage.
But it's the kind of garbage that could only come from, from a mind that has like lived unsatisfyingly without resolution through the 20th century, like kind of the end state of a boomer. And it's like, isn't there...
Like, but wait, isn't there like kind of like some happy ending at the end of this rainbow? I lived through... I got, got a whole life of happy endings. I'm 80 years old now. I'm 85 years old now.
I'm, I'm Indiana Jones, and I'm 82. Isn't there some way this ends? And both these films have no plausible resolution. Yeah. They're like singing Bohemian Rhapsody at karaoke. This is what it is.
It's the equivalent of singing Bohemian Rhapsody at karaoke and/or the Vietnam War. [laughs] Pick your metaphor. There's also... So this is reminding me of the latest Knausgård trilogy. The third one just came out.
It's Morning Star is the first one. I'm actually surprised we made it this far with this group of people without mentioning Knausgård. Talking about Knausgård. Well, so okay. So the... I've read the first two books.
The third one just came out. I'm, I'm planning to buy it in the next couple weeks.
But kind of the premise, it's like kinda set in a similar world to the My Struggle books, where it's like Norway, um, and like, you know, could be cut from like his childhood whatever. Autofiction. But yeah, but the...
But it's more of like a science fictiony thing. And like the science fiction aspect is this new star has risen in the sky, and suddenly nobody can die. Like the, one of the main characters- Hmm...
in the second one is like this funeral director, and he's like on vacation. Um, and well, that's a whole 'nother thing. But anyways, he's like calling his, his guys back home at the, at the funeral parlor.
They're like, "Yeah, nobody's been coming in for like the last six or six days or whatever." Um, so I don't know. The, the, the like end of this, I'm, I'm... It's a trilogy, so the, the latest book just came out.
I'm excited to read it. But I like, I feel like this is kind of getting in on the same zeitgeist myth that you're, that you're talking about. Well, I think like death,
I've thought about this a lot in terms of, um, having to make sense of some aspects of both my practice and my relation to design.
I think one of the things which I'm really interested in because of the finality of the... all the beauty in the world exists in these things which exist inside people's minds, and then they die. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
But, uh, and that's an inescapable and irretrievable like Rubicon that never is crossed, and that, um, when you make a work, when you make art, or when, when art affects you, it enters this place from where there's no return, and that- Mm-hmm...
ultimately you have a finite amount of time for that thing to have meaning or to- Beauty is ephemeral. Mm-hmm... and then it's gone. And one of the things which I think is
there is clearly a preoccupy, preoccupation, a fear, uh, that is I think our society is becoming now like kind of, um, overburdened with. Mm-hmm.
That increasingly this is becoming like an unresolvable, uh, space where
as I think capital, as value exploitation, as every metric of everything in our lives becomes about trying to mine, capture value to build systems that- And scale it. Scale it...
and scale it, and to, you know, to like, to, to turn these things into concrete things, that, that death is becoming this problem that no one...
Like, it's, it's becoming like more and more and more the, like kind of the black hole that's gonna consume this universe. Yeah, the last frontier. And it's, but it's, it's not...
But I think like capital's fear of death is a new thing. Like, kind of we've always been afraid of death. Religion has, has reckoned with the fear of death. You know, society has had these things.
But I think the idea of like in late capitalism specifically, in, in when capital- Well, this is why all the billionaires are making like space race, doing the space race, right?
It's, it's the fear of the death of the Earth and like trying to get away from that type of thing. I don't know. I think, I think that there's...
The thing is, like I think this is a conversation for another time- Yeah... and it's like kind of weird- Could do a whole nother- We'll have to do a part two. Yeah. Just a death-focused episode.
[laughs] I, I actually think that, um, one of the things which, you know, I've talked about recently on a couple of, of, of, um, just informally in the studio through like kind of the practice of it is, um, I worked on something, I can't say what it is, but one of...
I worked on it for a few years. It will probably never come out. Uh, but I real- like I, I was finding it the most rewarding or interesting thing that I'd worked on.
It's an identity for something that I think, you know, there's a very good chance it will never launch.
But I, I realized that the reason I was finding it so liberating is because it was breaking a taboo that was like ever present in design language, and that was for the first time I was working on something that felt like it was both aware of and comfortable with the idea of death- Mm...
and could acknowledge this in the design system. And that death played a role in how the viewer was engaged, and that this wasn't the threat of death- Mm. Mm...
or, you know, like some kind of like military system or something. But it was, it was actually, you know, it was a product that framed death as part of life.
And I really think that it isI think part of why my early work or some of my practice, like kind of like even with like the black background and like this, the calling my site- Tombs [laughs]...
void tomb series, this space of, uh, with which I engage that maybe certain audiences, why they might find it compelling or why they might, is because it's just there are vanishingly few spaces in our culture, um, that explore notions of what might exist beyond life or what is outside of life or, or helps illuminate life by maybe, uh, by trying to depict or have you encounter its opposite or its absence.
Mm. Mm. Uh, and I think that, that I'm, I'm, I'm very curious.
I don't have like great answers as to why, again, like why do I have to go to a very private space and build my own working methodology in order to explore these things in my practice?
Because they're, they're very unwelcome in- Mm-hmm... uh, in most conventional design systems.
Uh, and more and more I think that like we are becoming kind of like the collateral humans who just die in their millions in New York and under the like, kind of in the footprints of the gods.
I do feel like we're increasingly becoming like kind of collateral damage in the struggle between capital and death.
Capital's vain, stupid, mindless attempts to somehow surpass or exceed death or ignore it with a finality that makes it like, you know, forever go away. Mm.
And it's kind of like that, you know, when a five-year-old is first encounters mortality, you know, maybe their childhood pet dies or whatever, and they just, they, they try crying hard enough that they can, you know, make it not true or, or you know, like kind of that, that, that throes of that first tantrum.
I remember being told as a kid like that I would die and that, that having that tantrum and just being like, "No, I don't want to die." Mm. And, and I kind of feel like we're having to suffer a little bit- Mm...
at the moment, the cultural milieu of, of, of we're kind of in the tantrum mode of, of a lot of- Well, people like Elon Musk, they're throwing that temper tantrum, but they have like money to throw at the tantrum. Yeah.
Like- Yes. Facts... not just money to throw at a shitty film. Like- Yes... the technology- The death of a deep well... of the tantrum. [laughs] Takes a lot of money. Um, I, I- We have to wrap up.
I think, yeah, we will discover the death of this podcast episode right now. [laughs] But we'll, we'll resurrect next week. No, this has been great. Um, thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, David. This has been Tasteland. Thank you. [upbeat music] It tastes just like it costs.
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