Smell My Post

I’ve been meaning to post about these ads for a long time. It’s a print campaign for the Kuro TV by Pioneer: seeing and hearing like never before. Very close to Sony’s ‘like.no.other’ I think you’ll agree. Anyway, the series is part of a wider campaign developed by TBWA\Chiat\Day. It’s all about synaesthesia, or the body’s ability to mix up the senses, e.g. seeing the colour green and hearing birdsong, smelling coffee and feeling like feathers are tickling your nose, or seeing the number 5 and feeling like a bright blue light is shining in your eyes.

While photoshopping different elements of a body together is nothing new, there’s something intense and dramatic about these black and white images that grabs my attention. I love the way a frightened eye and a frightened mouth combine to make something that’s infinitely more frightening. I’m in awe of how they’ve got something so processed to look like a real moment in time: alive, gasping with energy and heavy with anticipation. This is why the first of the ads below is my favourite by far – the concept’s there in the second one but it’s not as engaging.

Print ads in monochrome can often look feeble, flat and dull, but these look deep and inky, Hitchcock meets film noir. Add to that some vibrant, chromatic copy that aggressively repositions experience as we know it, and you’ve got an ad that really makes an impact. It’s just a shame that after seeing it at least fifty times I still couldn’t remember what it was for.

Go beyond sight. Go beyond sound. Enter a world where you look with fresh eyes and listen with new ears. A world where you don’t just see, you feel. You don’t just hear, you touch. You don’t just watch, you truly and fully experience. Introducing the KURO.

Look in ways you didn’t know you could. Hear in ways you didn’t know existed. Where you eye bites into a red so juicy it explodes in a gush <pffft> and runs down your cheek. Where every image can be tasted, every note can be felt and every experience is magnified in ways you can hardly imagine.

Why Better is Worse

I don’t have a problem with people criticising me.  Good job really, as it happens enough. Tell me to do something faster, make it longer, shorter, snappier, greener, cooler, smoother – yes, absolutely.  But better? Better in what way?  For who?  How?  To me, criticism is all about identifying problems and making improvements.  Constructive, if you like.  When criticism becomes destructive, a reassertion of power or just plain cruelty, well, what’s the point?

It’s like a coachman who whips his horses just to look impressive.  The horses are trotting along at exactly the right pace; if he wanted them to turn left he could tighten the left rein, to turn right he’d pull the right rein, to slow them down he’d pull gently on both.  They know the score.

But instead, every few miles he’ll give them a couple of thwacks with a grand swooshing movement of the whip, catching them square on the flanks.   He feels important, needed, in control.  The horses don’t have any more guidance or direction than before, but they sure know who’s boss.  And they know whose head to poo on when they get the chance.

The Name’s Man, Media Man

This is the most amusing man I have come across since the worst person in the world.

He’s worked his way up from ‘managing’ a restaurant to running his own media agency, dealing with everything from PR and TV presenting to online advertising, journalism and quite horrifically, web design.

According to his website, ‘Only time will tell, what is next for Greg Tingle and his team, but rest assured that Media Man Australia will remain in the media spotlight, and its full impact has yet to be experienced.’

The CV is particularly impressive, including such gems as:

‘Receive e-mails of appreciation from clients’

In his later career this progresses to:

‘Receive e-mails and telephone calls of appreciation from clients’

I can only dream of being able to write this on my CV one day.

The ‘testimonials’ section lists some excellent quotes from people he has known throughout his career. Has he travelled through life carrying a notebook of ‘Things people have said about me’? We can but wonder.

“I would thoroughly support him” Dennis Heffernan, Head Teacher, Communication and Media Studies, TAFE

“you should do very well in the media” “Big” Tim Bristow, Private Investigator

Plus it’s great to know that ‘additional testimonials are available’, just in case the twenty-odd he’s already listed aren’t enough.

The guy is probably great at what he does but from this eyeball-torturing website he seems like another self-proclaimed paragon of PR that ironically fails at portraying themselves in a good light (much like my amusing interview at itpr). Perhaps I’m just jealous, as he clearly has a talent for self-belief and self-promotion that I lack entirely.

Resurrection

I’ve decided to attempt to bring this blog back to life again. Exciting as it may be there is only so much I can write about photography, and I doubt anyone is as interested in it as I am in any case. Instead I’m going to take a more open approach and scratch around for something else worth writing about.

This is a frightening prospect as it will make me vulnerable to a whole new arena of criticism. There are so many people out there that have so much more authority than me. Still, writing about topics that people can relate to is more in the libelous, gossip-ridden, cathartic spririt of blogging than what I was doing before, so I’m going to stop worrying about it so much and take the plunge.