Logos to Echos and Reversibility Between Expression and Perception

"The study of perspective "teaches that our ways of understanding are constituted less by an objective reality or subjective impression than by a communicative interplay of phenomena. In this communicative interplay, the ways one perceives the world are manifest as acts of expression, and, in turn, these acts of expression become the ways that the world is perceived." (Williams, K. p. 199 Why I [Still] Want My MTV)

As Williams is noting here, perception becomes displaced as cenas a key to representing reality. Hence, there is an act of deciphering whether to always measure things in a linear model. The very ways in which one perceives the world are represented through expressive acts. These expressions are then evolved into the that the world is "looked at." Venturing through the aspects of the unknown, one might often escape to their imaginative state of questioning what is real and existing and what could be real and exist. It all depends on how one defines "the real."As Lacan has it, the real can be defined as a state that can only be understood in connection with the categories of the symbolic and the imaginary. In this sense, "that which never ceases to write itself" brings across the idea that reality is related to the impossible, cannot be spoken or written, and cannot be reduced to a single meaning or means of expresssion. How we express ourselves and how we perceive the world , one finds themselves capable of deciphering between concepts about what is real. Perhaps this questioning is a sense of escaping back to a dimension of the imaginary states we experience in childhood or a return to an innocent state.

Ideologies among the various portray logic (logos) as being the sole term of rational thought and being. An audience may become oscillated by the symbolism which tells it to conform to the rationale. Concepts of logos are brought about through the what Williams names the fourth dimension-music visuality. In this sense, echos draws forth logos' (logic's) state of expressing an art through this (fourth) dimension of musical visuality.One thing that Dr. Williams is trying to prove is that although there is nothing wrong with understanding a text through a state of meaning already given; However, it is important to remember having an open mind. Even when it's the most difficult thing to do, opening a state of mind and being can be quite comforting. We are set into this world full of phenomena through symbolism. Some believe in a divine being while others base their reality on plain science. It is significant to remember that there may be more to the world than is portrayed by the naked eye itself. If one looks deeper into the art (whether it be a video, audio track, book, painting, etc.), they may connect in a sense that there is no sole story. Within a text lies various ideas, symbols, and meanings derived from it. As Williams states:

"I suggest echos as a metaphor and way to understand the mutual interpenetration of sights and sounds- and indeed of the presence of multiple logics- and as well of the multiple ways in which such a work may be read, interpreted, and become meaningful in one's life." (Williams p. 211)



As Williams suggests, logos is itself the dimension of musical visuality.As humans we are in flux not only physically, but mentally. How we express ourselves artistically is key to deciphering between echos and logos. They are like Freud and Lacan as Lacan sort of weaves off of Freud's ideas.Knowing that certainty is never given, but constituted gives one the benefit of making sure that music television (MTV) was in fact music television, and that knowing this relates to combinations involving a land of expression and perception. In essence, the act of phenomena is indefinite.

Williams notes the point that awareness does not only constitute a background through which ideas are made clear, but that an awareness is presupposed by all fields of research without even investigating itself. A play of synthesis weaves all of this together. Music video offers a way toward interpreting the importance of sound and and music in a capitalistic society and culture that leans toward the its dominant ideology of the visual. What Williams notes as "videoscape," references that which MTV was and still is capable of bringing to the table. In this sense, MTV sets forth the principles of organization, atmospheric dimensions, and environment. Thus, videoscape expresses a way of interpreting and expressing the world we live in.

In this musical visuality (logos), we succeed in aspiring to find an echoes, a reverberation which amplifies further than the material world of television and into pop-culture. What we call pop-culture is discovered within the echos of MTV. Williams points out that we also find that conceiving an influence on Music Television's viewers is an act that is indeed futile. The things viewed on Music television show up in the background of its style depicted by a musical-visual presentation.

The effects of MTV upon culture have yet to be discovered as Music Television is as Williams suggests "a cultural expression and an expression of culture." Hence, MTV is borrowing from the culture, condensing what already exists, and extending it into the realms of television. A great example is portrayed through PJ Harvey's "This is Love" video where Polly Jean is featured using pastiche and sexualizing an image formerly used by the wonderful Elvis Presley. Her rock star stances and rough, edgy guitar riff is overlayed by her voice mirroring the guitar's edgy audio. It is a great example of the rock star portrayed throughout the dimensions of pop-culture visuality.

Final Blog A : Tori Amos-Bouncing Off Clouds

So my first reaction to the privilege of making a Tori Amos video was "Wow, okay I am going to direct a video portraying one of my all time favorite artists." Not only was the green screen footage of Tori copyright free, it was editable. The only problem I really came across was removing the tracking markers in the background. The first step I took in editing the video was create a multi-clip in Final Cut Pro. I created the multiclip and ran a few rough cuts of which shots of Tori I liked in certain time frames. I ran through quite a few of these cuts until I really grasped onto one. I had already had my ideas layed out.

The song is "Bouncing off Clouds," so needless to say I made sure that I began the video featuring Tori in this literal atmospheric depiction of the clouds. I wanted to start out with Tori's hands. There is a sensual moment every time that Tori's fingers stroke the keys, so I really wanted my audience to "feel" this light, cloudy sense of free spirit. To me, the song's meaning is among various dimensions. In this sense, any perceived meaning is the correct one. Hence, there really are no "wrong" answers here. Furthermore, I took Tori and her brilliant piece into the perceived mountains (or in this case, clouds) of the unconscious.

The visuals birth senses of dreamlike states as the sky changes from day to night, from mint to red, from city to the people caught up in its routine. These images set forth a very powerful viewing experience. At one point, I felt as if I were playing off of Madonna's "Ray of Light" video which also depicts fast-paced city streets and features Madonna in clouds. As I stated before, I start Tori in the clouds-the lightness in our lives. From the clouds Tori's image is then shifted into the busy streets of New York City. The busyness of the people and fast-paced motion can represent a variety of ideas. It serves as a vision of the fast-paced caught up state we find ourselves in when living in a capitalistic society.

The traffic and busyness can also represent a difficult time in one's life. For example, a break up with one's true love, a family death, a bad day at work, a recurrent failure. So, in a sense we are all sort of "bouncing" off of these daily or lifetime dimensions of stress. As Tori's apparition changes from city to sky, one finds a sense that even in all of this, one must learn to escape back to an ultimate dimension of happiness.



"Make it easy, make this easy," Tori sings as the background shifts from technological busyness to a more natural state. Flowers are trapped behind her image, representing an obstruction from an intimate connection with a natural world once known. As Tori is taken through these obstructed views of the simpler world, patches of flowers and green sky show through depicting "wrapped in metal wrapped in ivy. Paint it in mint ice cream." Right when she sings ivy, the flowers are portrayed as an obstruction. A "collage" of Tori's imagery is used to depict this obstruction which portrays her hands stroking piano keys while she sits right in front herself. Her fingers play along the piano with another layer featuring her straddled between two keyboards.

When Tori sings "mint ice cream," the green sky image depicts the world sought to escape to. Also, the term "mint" is a form of green, so it worked quite well. Continuing through, Tori is then floated through these montages of the busy city streets, back to clouds as they shift from day to night. As this occurs, Tori sings "well you can stare all day at the sky." As she leans back towards the moon, the background then shifts to visuals of Times Square, a busy place, indeed. At this point in the video, the viewer may find themselves pleading, or perhaps longing for a change to this busy world she is trapped inside. At the bridge, "make it easy, easy, easy, we could make this easy," her collage is brought back to the screen shifting between clouds, city, and obstructed views.

Tori is then to a point in the clouds where she is sunk into a deeper consciousness. She shifts to a view where she is floating through stars, giving her a chance to thrust her hips and dance as she goes through a resurrection process of re-birth. The starry tunnel represents a shift to a different world unknown or lost, but soon to be found. After going through this tunnel, all that is remembered is a life of constant stress. Although it is a difficult thing to do, it is almost as if Tori is reminiscing about her life in that stressful state. It is almost as if we as a person are remembering what once was and is soon to disappear. Hence, maybe all this busyness and stress was no big deal in the first place. If we take life more lightly and remember our happy state of mind and sense of self, life will ultimately reach its state of easiness. In a sense, the viewer experiences her destination of ultimate enlightenment in the end. A re-birthing of self, a founding of an ultimate state of grace. It depicts a sense of place as you are one self in the world enlightened.

Furthermore, the main themes that I wanted to bring across here were an ultimate enlightenment of self, finding one's self after a rough time, a return to innocence, and finding that lost world once lost and now found. In this case, it's a world depicting a colorful array of mint trees and red sky. Hence, the phrase of putting the color back into a dull or dead world. I am very pleased with the way the project turned out despite the fact that I could not remove all of the tracking markers and some of the green screen still shows through. I worked really hard keying out most of the green, but I could only do what I was capable of creating here. I am very happy that I now understand the basics of working with three-point edits in Final Cut Pro. It's good to learn just how much this piece of software is capable of doing.

Final Blog B: Tori Amos-Bouncing off clouds

I recently finished up a music video featuring Tori Amos and her wonderful song, "Bouncing Off Clouds." The only problem I really came across was removing the tracking markers in the background. I spent over half of the semester trying to work with Apple's Color software. The software didn't seem to cooperate with what I wanted to do, so I then resorted to various methods of research. I aspired to find different ways to get rid of the markers, but never found a thorough way of doing so. Therefore, I then decided to just go with the editing abilities I had available through Final Cut.

The first step I took in editing the video was create a multi-clip in Final Cut Pro. I created the multiclip and ran a few rough cuts of which shots of Tori I liked in certain time frames. I ran through quite a few of these cuts until I really grasped onto one. I also had to fool around with the chroma-keyer in order to get a good amount of the green screen out of the screen shots. This was a very difficult process. It worked for the most part, but even using the color corrector didn't remove every single trace. So what I did was sometimes soften her image and make her more transparent which worked really well.



There were some points in the video where I blocked off some bigger tracking markers on the side of Tori's head. One may notice that some of her images appear more transparent than the others due to my tweaking in the "edge feather" feature in FCP. I felt that this worked better than having a repetitive flow of images including any trace of those markers. Although some shots (especially the ones where Tori is stradling between two keyboards) may include the markers, it still works because the markers would sometimes reveal themselves as stars in the sky. Also, one might notice how subtle they are in some points because of the whites in the clouds imagery. It took a lot of time simply keying out the green screen and attempting to avoid any green of spilling through. In Final Cut Pro, I even tried using a spill suppressor to fine tune the green off of the edges of Tori's hair.

It was quite a process making sure that the green wouldn't bleed into the background I wanted portrayed. In some shots, some green spill would have been okay whereas in others it wouldn't work. For example, the mintish green sky background and then ending tunnel imagery could've survived some of the spill whereas it wouldn't have looked appealing spilling through the VideoTrakk footage and cloudy sky imagery. I think that the video works as a whole, but I'm not necessarily sure that the themes I wanted to convey stretch into the mind of the audience. Although there really is no "right" or "wrong" answer here, there is a significance in the sense that the audience needs to be left with a feeling. I believe that most of my audience may be impacted or inspired by the techniques I used in creating this video, but I'm not sure that they will get the same meaning out of the song that I do. The beauty of all of this is that it doesn't matter if it makes sense or not to the audience. The importance here is that when one expresses themselves in a visually creative sense, whatever they portray is their own. Hence, an audience can receive various perceptions from the music's visual styles and how they move to the music.

In the earlier process, one of the things that bothered me was that I finally realized that the video I wanted to produce was indeed something that would need to be taken into further software. For example, I originally wanted to include a movement of flowers growing out of Tori's piano. I wanted to create the idea that although nature is sometimes forgotten, a state of one's mind can bring them back to that innocent state of mind. I virtually wanted this once lost world to grow onto the city streets and take over the whole idea that one is so caught up in their stressed and busy lives. In this sense, Tori would be shifting through the dimensions of the unconscious while encountering not only bodily, but worldly changes. Hence, the world is in fact changes back to one that she once knew or finds again. I spent a lot of late nights and full days just trying to learn more editing techniques and become more familiar with Final Cut's features. There were many hours spent in the process of creating this final product and I hope that it shows through. I truly had a blast working on this video as it shows me just how much work people do to create a work of artistic expression through video.

Seeking to understand sensuous music visuality through the acts of creating and watching.

"There is always something more-- the shimmer of the screen, the flow of the fabric, the glimmer of the eye, the mood of the stage, the tonality of the work-- that can not be captured semiotically or hermeneutically."- Williams, p. 166 Why I [Still] Want My MTV

As Williams notes, disregarding the stereotypes involving an aesthetic value in music video and television, it is important to attempt understanding the superfluity of the experience and how one's knowing of the world can around them can be interpreted in different senses of expression. One enters the journey of the enigmous encounter with these visuals and sounds as their bodies perceive and express various undertones. It is important to avoid a knowing of television as aesthetic or a fine art form because it simply is not. IN this sense, television can make the use of its elements aesthetic, but the thing itself is not an aesthetic fine art form. There is, however a dimension that is aesthetic. It is all a matter of revealing access to this dimension of television.

"Breathing life into aesthetic formations and capturing the worldly flow is an aisthetic dimension of experience that is rarely discussed, but whose explication would shed light on the superfluity, meaningfulness, and resonance that artistic production has in people's lives." Williams, p. 169 Why I [Still] Want My MTV

As Williams shows here, the potential of finding the meanings of these "things" comes from the aesthetic dimension. Thus, a rebirth for the bodily perception is in flux. One may see the body crossing through aesthesis as the their vision becomes merely a "seeing." Only through our flow of awareness do we come across senses of texture, color, shades and rhythm. As in musit video, all of these senses are brought together in the act of synthesis and the defining that is created in exeperiencing the act. Thus, aisthesis is not only created through perception, but through expression. For example, the meaning of a thing being what it is cannot serve without exploring a possibility for other meanings behind it.



"Musical-luminous unfolding" takes place as music and the act of dancing to it fluxate through birthing cycles. The song, video, or dance do not become one simplistic, solidified thing of being. "Thinking it constitutes a nonmetaphysical, nonotological thought- a bodily cosmic thinking. It reveals, in the contours of "musical visuality." This third dimension gives understanding to the importance of synesthetic experience and the accuracy of embodiment in interpreting the style of music video. Identifying the video as a representation of "something," one must penetrate the video's unfolding, take away the sensual depth reflected in visuals and sounds. Musical visuality serves as the intercourse between sound and vision, music and sights in music video. Hence, this binding of sight, sound, dance, and music evolve narrative, realism, etc. as logos. This creates a synesthetic (inter)communication between all.

Synesthesia can briefly be defined as "the crossing or overlapping of sense modalities." Williams' explanation of the word depicts an interest in the very experience. It is also defined as "the experience of an associated sensation when another sense is stimulated." So it's all just a bunch of conglomerated senses. However, the experience is much more sensual when one takes part in it. For example, the lines and shapes of green used within the movie The Matrix depict a feeling and sound. Simply seeing the design upon the dvd cover communicates the sound of the film's score in the background. We have all had sense-gasms in that sense. For example, a certain smell or a certain sound or color can remind us of someone. Good times and bad times are remembered. The smell of a perfume may remind one of an ex-lover. The particular sweet smell of oats in horse feed can take you back to the farm you once grew up on.

Synesthesia relates to sights and sounds in knowing that when one hears the song on the radio, they may be reminded of the music video they have not seen in ages. It happened to me just recently as I recently heard R.E.M's "Losing My Religion" on a local radio station. Every time I hear that song, it takes me back to the house I grew up in as I watched the strange visual collage of old man with angel wings and the tripped out man dancing by himself. The band claims this is not about religion and loss of faith, although the video is full of religious imagery. Some Catholic groups protested the video. It was the first to show lead singer Michael Stipe dancing. The director hung out with the band to get ideas, and when he saw Stipe's spastic dance style, he thought it would look great in the video. The fact that I thoroughly enjoyed this simply because the mandolin was visually and musically pleasurable. I often wondered who the man in the corner playing the small stringed instrument was. I grew up in the 90's which was a peak time for music video. Thus, it is in itself a phenomenal experience as I am reminded of times as a child. Not to mention, I've recently been on a constant 90's kick. It's wonderful to know how these music-visual effects acutal "affect" a person's reminescence of a time or place.

Therefore, the music video discovers a disregarded, currently living way of perception within its expressive dimension. The significance of the visual itself is thus a known style that permisses the music video to undergo visual perception while it is apparent to "bodily perception" that it is only a visual experience. Thus, visuals become the importance in that which we perceive through a music video. The beauty of phenomenology is that it enlightens us to learn that which our ideologies fail to teach from our day to day experiences.

The Persistence of Vision, Realism, and Hyper-reality

"The visuals of a music video cannot be reduced to a denotation or even a connotation of a song. Instead, they open another dimension-- another opportunity to express."Williams, K. p. 156, Why I [Still] Want My MTV

As Williams suggests, the performance of a music video portrays more than just a televised performance of a song, narrative, or creator's visual illustration. Although the tone and overall feel of the scenes in the song are set,the sounds and sights create a whole other dimension. Hence, the sounds themselves define the depth of the visuals. The music video itself composes the relationship between video and audio thus creating a new idea of presenting a performed piece of music.

Perhaps this new idea lies in the origins of the reality behind synesthesia-the integration of the senses. If senses themselves are mental constructions of an environment, one may find it difficult to decipher whether what they are seeing and hearing in music video is "real." In another sense, one may also argue that based on all ideologic backgrounds; their reality is not in fact another's reality. In that sense, when viewing the color in a video our environmental and ideologic background tell us that a cool color such as blue gives off a sense of mourning or relaxation. One could argue that in the same way with the warm color --red which tends to visually demonstrate a violent feeling, blood, danger, anger, etc. So how does this relate to this text? As Williams points out in his lectures, every video has its own color. With each color comes a semiotic value. For example, The Matrix's visual presentation was mostly green.

"Music video reveals itself as a form of video, as a mediated vision, and makes its technological basis the force of its appeal." Williams, K. p.150

In this case, the viewer cannot deciper whether the televised musical performance is actually live or not. The matter is that the music video is presented to us in such a way that we are not meant to question whether it is "really happening" or "pre-recorded." In this sense, the (music)video must not be mistaken for a live performance (even when it is live). Hence, music video codes specify that the video is not in a live setting. In this sense, the viewer takes on a visual bias by arguing whether something is real or not real. We live in the age of visual senses where visual bias ties "seeing" something to actually "knowing." The impact that television brought to the viewer connects to our culture's dominant favoring of the sense that is sight (our seeing). Our relation to visual imagery is indeed what defines our mindset as in the digital age.

"As clouds cover the sky above the guitarist, it begins to rain at the wedding. A glass of red wine spills on a white tableclot; a woman wearing a wedding dress lies dead in a coffin. The song "November Rain" does not musically or lyrically sing the narrative of the video."

Williams notes on the classic example of a video that transitions from narrative to concert video footage. Above, Guns n' Roses "November Rain" depicts the classic tragic love story as the musicians perform on stage. However, the narrative does not match the lyrics that Axel Rose vocalizes. The importance here is that the illustration of the song does not depict the song. Thus, the song gives off the intense feeling and rhythm that the story and band clips set forth.In this sense, a music video "performance" becomes more than just a televised medium of a song, its visual depiction, or its situation.

"The visuals of a music video cannot be reduced to a denotation or even a connotation of a song. Instead, they open another dimension-another opportunity to express. Thus, a single song may spawn several videos, esach with a different visual look, for the connection between the song and the video is neither fixed nor singular." Williams, p. 156 Why I [Still Want My MTV]

Vision is more something that reality cannot conquer itself in the five senses. What one "sees" may unintentionally mislead them to other biases. This misbelief may lead one onto what Williams defines as "the third communicative dimension." Hence, while sounds define the overall feel of one's experience viewing, the audio and visuals of the presentation give birth to this dimension.

The phenomena of music video allows us to escape from the "everyday world" that we are frequently caught up inside. Perhaps these mediums permit one's mind back to the child or teenager inside of us. The beauty behind this is one's privilege to critique what they are looking at and listening to. In that sense, we aspire to understand how music escapes the instrument it is performed upon. Although we may "see" music videos, but we strive to understand how one creates and expresses such a work through amazing visual imagery and editing techniques. While viewing, one may come across a sense to question exactly how the work's creators developed such skill. As semioticians, our minds are set to interpret these signs of communicative dimensions.

Style: More than categorizing or evaluating a work of expression.

"I suggest that there is another level of communication--style as originary relationship with the world--that music video makes concrete, or at the very least reminds us of this situation." Williams, K. p. 97 Why I [Still] Want My MTV

As Williams suggests, style not only has to do with the sense or the being (in style), but but a way of communicative interaction with one's environment. The text illustrates the idea that music video style has been driven through the processes of conceptualization, conceived in a historical context, and theorized as an aesthetic communication.

"Videos can be interpreted in terms of patriarchy and capitalism; as within the purview of contemporary myth and ideology. This is the case despite the claims that music videos deny narrative and mythos(indeed, we may be witness to a new structure of narrative and mythos)." Williams, K. p 95 Why I [Still] Want My MTV

Many critics overlook the significance of the music video's visual style. There is also, as Williams suggests, a "rear-view mirror" effect on the ways in which music is discussed. Because the music videos are understood in the context of a Hollywood narrative, there seems to be misinterpretations of the language which is understood theoretically. By looking at it visually, the music video's presentation is not at all free-floating as it is connected to the music as well as other images depicted by the media in everyday life. Not that there is anything wrong with interpreting music videos theoretically as we do learn a great deal from theory. Nonetheless, the phenomena of music video earns the videos the pre-determined right to be known as such.

"I suggest that there is another level of communication--style as originary relationship with the world-- that music video makes concrete, or at the very least reminds us of this situation."

Style and creativity are joined with the idea of pastiche as one takes a central thought and simply exaggerates it or makes it better. Thus, these binaries now become polarities in the sense that a style is combined with one's creative inspiration ("style OR creativity now becomes "style AND creativity"). The creator's artistic integrity is most important to keep in mind when viewing a music video and experiencing "musical-visuality." Although the creator's message can be immensely mis-understood by what is considered "modern," concepts of the new and old are brought about to the music video platform. Take for instance, Tool's "Schism" video above. The video was released a year after the dawn of the Millenium (2001). This video marked an excellent comeback for the band while still showing the band's creative video style from non other than guitarist Adam Jones. It was later released as a DVD single. This video depicts the musical-visuality of a band member himself. Concepts from previous singles are brought about showing the band's growth not only in music, but in music video. To many, the video is disturbing and strange, but one cannot decipher between the artist's thought process and abstract representations. In that, one can only aspire to understand another artist's perception.

Another example is Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" music video. The video is directed by Anton Corbijn. The video references the themes and storyline of the philosophical children's book The Little Prince. Footage of Gahan dressed as a stereotypical king wandering the hillsides of the Scottish Highlands, the coast of Portugal and finally the Swiss Alps with a deck chair is intercut with black-and-white footage of the band posing. Brief flashes of a single rose (which is also on the album cover of Violator) appear throughout the scenes.

Equivocation is the premise by which the style of music video stands these days. No more does rock n' roll rule the throne for this style selection as various genre have embraced the idea of using the same model to visualize their music. Keeping the audience on the edge of their seat reigns as an audience hungers to be entertained. Music visuality evokes an audience's aspiration to interpret meanings beyond their own. If anything, style sparks a genuine communicative interaction between creator and audience. Music is risen as visual style permits it eternal life and theme. Thus, one's understanding of the style and the craving one aspires for the message behind that style's content relate in the fact that MTV essentially served as no other than a promotional advertisement of self. Therefore, a work's style is indeed a concept far beyond the strive to categorize or evaluate.