I was unfortunately in rehearsals every evening this week, so I was unable to join in to the live airing of Limetown on ds106 Radio. I heard from my roommate what was played on Monday night, and I took the time to listen to the first two episodes on my own time- I really enjoyed it! I listen to a lot of podcasts, both fiction and non-fiction, so this was a fun middle-ground for me. While I know this was the intention, I was so surprised by how much Limetown felt like an investigative journalism podcast. The narrator has the perfect voice for it, and it makes it even more offputting for me.
I wish I was able to participate in the Discord discussion as this episode was airing on the radio, as I think this is an experience that is meant to be shared. I was certainly creeped out, and I would have loved to talk/freak out about the guy banging his head on the doorway with others!
I thought that Moon Graffiti was really interesting, and again, I love audio dramas! What I thought was really neat about this episode was the combonation of historical events like Nixon’s speech paired with the hypothetical conversations between Armstrong and Aldrin. I think this grounded the episode and created a really eerie sense of place. It reminded me of the idea of the Uncanny Valley, like maybe I was actually listening to a non-fiction podcast that was recounting the tragic moon landing.
Something that I appreciated was not only the sound design within the dialogue, like the sound of mechanized breathing and the static of a 1960s TV, but the background ambiance. I had to pause the episode at one point, and I was shocked by how quiet everything around me actually was. I wasn’t processing the whiny, almost siren-like noise that was occuring beneath the whole episode. I’d be curious to listen to more of The Truth Podcast’s episodes to see if this was a common theme or if this was something that was meant to be emitted by the moon.
A lesson in hyperlinks indeed! As someone who participates in Wikipedia deep dives, I really enjoyed reading “A Kid’s Guide to Graphic Design by Iconic Designer Chip Kidd.” Not paying any attention to my own design here and just slapping the hyperlink as the name of the article, but that is what it is!
While I make no great claims about my design abilities, I do like to think about design more than the average bear. Working in the theatre means I’m constantly considering how to reach the middle point between what I need and what the audience will see as “good” or “polished.” Not only that, but everything that is on stage needs to be put there with both the considerations of the play and of the audience, which can lead to interesting challenges. I appreciated the article discussing graphic design as “problem solving,” as I feel the same about theatrical design.
The article about movie posters accompanied by the video of the creation of the Stranger Things logo made me think about book covers, which is something I spend more time looking at. Like movie posters, book covers are subject to trends- we’ve seen an increase in drawn/illustrated covers recently. This is not something that I connect with, and personally hope goes away soon. I don’t feel like I’ve felt that uncomfortable or alienated by other designs before. I suppose they must be popular or else cover designers wouldn’t keep making them and authors wouldn’t request them, but irrationally I wish they would just change this retroactivley.
The article about movie posters accompanied by the video of the creation of the Stranger Things logo made me think about book covers, which is something I spend more time looking at. Like movie posters, book covers are subject to trends- we’ve seen an increase in drawn/illustrated covers recently. This is not something that I connect with, and personally hope goes away soon. I don’t feel like I’ve felt that uncomfortable or alienated by other designs before. I suppose they must be popular or else cover designers wouldn’t keep making them and authors wouldn’t request them, but irrationally I wish they would just change this retroactivley.
While I can’t say that I didn’t learn anything from the readings and videos, its hard to identify one particular fact. I feel like a lot of the reading affirmed things that I subconciously already knew. However, I think putting language to these subconsious feelings is important as it allows us, as designers, to target them.
In the blog posts about Technopoly, I appreciated that the author mentioned that Neil Postman was “a prophet … one who warns.” This was a sentiment that I was trying to reflect in my film review of Black Mirror season 2, episode 1, but I wasn’t able to say it as concisely.
As part of the viewing of tech noir, I watched Black Mirror season 2, episode 1 entitled “Be Right Back.” I haven’t watched Black Mirror before, so instead of choosing an episode that I thoight was interesting, I chose a random episode to review. The short description on the episode reads, “after learning about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased, a lonley, greiving Martha reconnects with her late lover.”
What struck me initially about this episode was how closely it already follows our own society. Ashe, the aformentioned “late lover,” seems to be hooked to his cell phone. Martha tells him multiple times to put it away, especially while the two are in the car.
Ashe dies in a car accident, which is heavily implied to be the result of distracted driving. Martha attempts to process his death, only for one of her friends to sign her up for a service that filters all of Ashe’s online activity through a program that will allow her to “talk to him” again. I’m struck by how human this action seems while also feeling so alien. Martha’s friend was only trying to take care of her, but just prevented Martha from being able to process Ashe’s death. Even during the times where Martha is afraid of the program, which will be referred to as “not-Ashe,” she manages to overcome the fear to keep some semblance of her partner alive. Even when not-Ashe is just a text bubble on her computer, her desire to talk to him surpasses her need to interact with the real people in her life.
Eventually, not-Ashe is upgraded to be something/someone she can talk to in a phone call, and then into a “living” being. Only a few hours after not-Ashe is delivered and setup in her house, Martha initiates sex with him. Whether she was looking for connection or just trying to satisfy a desire with something close to her partner, the decision is interesting. On a larger scale, the presence of intimacy with future tech is something that many are interested in, and the inclusion of that in this episode was appropriately uncomfortable. Not-Ashe had to download porn in order to understand how to have sex with Martha, and while this was offputting to her, she did not stop.
This episode was aired in 2013, long before AI chatbots flooded social media. However, the similarity of not-Ashe to the various celebrities you can now “talk to” on Instagram is interesting. I wonder if it will be possible to take these chatbots to a further level, and how that may effect us. At the end of the episode, Martha is overcome by how close and also how far not-Ashe is from the man she lost. She walks him to a cliff and encourages him to jump off. The episode doesn’t have to address what would happen if she killed not-Ashe, who is decidedly not-human, as he pleads for his life at her suggestion. As we continue towards the future predicted by this episode of Black Mirror, it will be hard to ignore the legislation that comes out of it.
Transcription: Well, the review is not bad, mentioning some key points of the episode’s plot and themes. The comparison between the episode’s concept and AI chatbots is interesting, showing a connection to real-world technology. However, consider tightening up your writing to make it more concise and to the point. Also, maybe dial back a bit on your detailed opinions regarding Martha’s choices. We get it. You find it uncomfortable. Keep refining your analysis and keep an eye on how technology in Black Mirror reflects our own society’s trajectory.
I had so much fun developing my course character, Bethany Smith (aka a gangster named “Smithy”). As such, I opted to participate in one of the visual assignments but collage Bethany instead of myself. I used Pinterest’s Collage Maker, and had so much fun developing this character further!
Bethany Smith was born in Agusta, Maine on June 6, 1996. She had a good childhood, full of family dinners and stellar report cards. She surprised everyone by not applying to any colleges, and moving to Chicago with her high school sweetheart, Colin. They married soon after, but her picture perfect life seemed to end there. Colin died on a hunting trip or a ski accident or during a hiking trip with his best friend two years after they were married. She surprised everyone even more when she started working at the same funeral home that “took care of Colin.” Bethany never struck anyone as the type who would work somewhere so morbid, but she seems to love it! It gives her plenty of time to read her books (romance, especially anything with vampires or monsters) and her bosses are pretty lax on the cell phone policy. If you ever ask her for advice, she’ll tell you that “the kindness I to others show, that kindness comes to me.”
Bethany has always been unassuming, but it has only become worse since Colin died. She keeps her mousy brown hair cut above her shoulders (she hates when its in her eyes). She’s 5’5″ with a slim build and dark brown eyes. She tends to favor jeans and pants, and can rarely be found in a t-shirt as she likes feeling “put together.” She has a light dusting of freckles, and acne scars that are slowly fading. One of the signature parts of her style is her green nail polish, because she feels like it makes her features pop. Lunch most days is a salad or leftovers, and after work she might enjoy an Old Fashioned or two. She doesn’t go anywhere without her phone. She is glued to it, whether she is at work or anywhere else. She can be found making hushed phone calls and viciously texting, but swears “its nothing.”
Smithy, on the other hand, was “born” September 29, 2011 at 1:06pm. She knew her Dad was up to something, but he had been going on a lot of “work trips” recently and “working late” more nights than not. One day, she went to bring her Dad some lunch and walked in on a scene she would never be able to forget. Her Dad was dead, bent over his desk in a pool of blood. While she knew it was wrong, she had to look at her Dad’s computer before calling the police. Through his emails and phone records, she realized that the man she knew as a good father and loving husband was one of the East Coast’s most powerful mobsters. Whatever had happened to her Dad was clearly targeted, but the police ruled it a suicide. Smithy used what she found on the laptop to slowly begin to build her own empire, using her connections to the crematorium to take care of anyone who causes her trouble. No one knows who Smithy is, and no one knows what Bethany is always so preoccupied with.
I decided to watch an episode of Black Mirror this week as the tech noir film, as I was interested in the more contemporary approach that this show could take. I closed my eyes and chose an episode randomly, landing on the first episode of season two entitled “Be Right Back.” The short description on the episode reads, “after learning about a new service that lets people stay in touch with the deceased, a lonley, greiving Martha reconnects with her late lover.” Without watching the episode, I’m interested to see if this has any parallels to the AI chatbots that have begun to pop up in common social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.
One of the first lines in the episode mentions the “Narwhal Virus” that collapsed Russia’s economy, and while I know that viruses are a frequent troupe in futuristic media, I still got a kick out of this post-Covid. Ashe, the “late lover” the description mentions, is certainly hooked to his phone and his death is implied to be due to distracted driving. I was also spot on about the AI chatbot prediction, as all of Ashe’s internet activity was funneled into a program that allowed Martha to text him. As the episode went on, not-Ashe became more realistic, transitioning from text into phone calls and finally into a real body. Martha experiences frustration as not-Ashe is indeed not Ashe, and she feels like he is so close to being the person she remembered but also so different.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that it took less than twelve hours for Martha to initiate sex with not-Ashe, which I found interesting. I feel like I would be so uncomfortable if I were in her situation, and the absolute last thing on my mind would be having sex with the thing that looks like my dead partner. However, I know that the idea of intimacy with future tech is something that many are interested in, and I think that acknowledging that in this episode made it stronger.
While it was the eighth task on the to-do list, I opted to consider what I wanted to get out of this class before reading/watching this week’s assignments. I work in theatre, primarily in lighting design, which provides an interesting method for storytelling. While lighting isn’t something that most audiences conciously notice, it is something that carries a huge amount of the narrative and helps to create the wold on stage. As such, I’m always working to try and find new ways to tell stories and interact with the world around me, especially in ways that may be unexpectected or unnoticed by most. I’m excited to learn more about different ways to tell stories, but also to engage with the “tech noir” theme and consider how technology has helped or hindered the development of complex narratives.
