I was alone, I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there.

I rarely blog about Steve Jobs and Apple. I think the obsession with Apple in the United States and Kingdom is symptomatic of an intellectual malaise that stretches from marketing to politics. Deconstructing the yearning for a killer app it's not hard to critique and conclude it as end-of-empire-futility. I mean, how can we belch on about authenticity in brands when as far as I know most advertising people couldn't care less about the supply chain details any further than a POS shelf wobbler because surely it hasn't passed you by that the newspapers harp on about productivity and the best selling apps are all games?

That doesn't mean I don't think Steve Jobs is anything less than the Henry Ford of our times. I dislike his editorial perspective which he's entitled to have and implement but the bottom line is I've loved buying and using his products. I see the MacBook Air as the Volkswagen Karmen of our age. It's so beautiful that I intend to buy a few so I can use one for as long as I'm able to.

That doesn't mean I think an app is going to save marketing. The malaise is too deep, the wilful blindness too pathological, and apart from all that I don't think we're in the business of the blockbuster any more. I think marketing doesn't get it, that more 'one to one', is de facto less 'one to many'. This is the why I fall asleep with gratuitous use of 'awesome' and 'cool' app tweets. I mean really. Shut up already.

Any hoo: Steve did an hour and a half interview which I felt should compensate for ever reading any more tweet links about him for a couple of years at least and I was right. It's a great chunk of what he's about along with some really great revelations about his business. The one I most liked is that app usage is overtaking search on his latest products. Which to me is obvious when a traditional keyboard is not available as per iPhone and iPad. Quicker to use a tool than finger dab the screen. This is interesting to me, but y'all gotta get with the program that the killer app is the operating system. The rest are tertiary ecosystem bricks, and one I talked about in my quick podcast over here.

I could mention that I didn't really know about his lisp before, that someone ought to tell Steve that the half mast jeans and 80's sneaker look is the least coolest thing he does.I'd be pushing for Boot Cut, Rock & Republic denim with some cowboy boots since keeping his weight up is not so easy now, but the polo neck and frameless Lennon glasses work well with that. 

These are inconsequential matters. Even though I'm not a die hard fan boy gushing on the bulletin boards I feel I've paid him a better compliment here than I've read anywhere else and truth is you don't need to listen to me. Listen to him. I heard him reply 'we're having fun' when someone asked him about his business successes recently. Who else says that? Nobody right?

You can see that the most trivial agenda item (though not ignorable) is the quarterly report. It shows clearly, but in the final analysis of Apple, I need to remind you, it's not about the technology, it's about the human and rest assured advertising and marketing world: The malaise is inside us. There is no app for that, though watching Steve the human being below is a start.


Henry Ford of our times. I think Oscar Wilde said that first.

Google Insights (Post Millennial Tension)

It's that time of the year where I need to revisit my Google insights topic on how the search term 2012 is trending.  So far there's nothing to back up my still unarticulated hypothesis apart from a minor blip around the time of the Chile earthquake on February 28th, so there's nothing to say apart from perhaps introducing the 'Jakarta complex' (catchy name huh?). Or is it?

It's worth of course noting that Indonesia provides the most volume for the search term 2012 but it's a classical mistake for the quantitatively obsessed bloggers to attribute national scale when the latest data suggests it's Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka that are more interesting for analysis. The reason why 2012 is one of the few metrics I can use is that it uses numbers so it gets a truly deeper look at national trends than local languages. By that I mean "Revelation" probably has a different name in the Ukraine, though that is one search term I'd like to add for context and analysis. But 2012 it is so let's proceed with that and see what occurs. This might all end in tears since Misentropy pointed out to me the Baader Meinhoff complex but so far so good in my estimation. It's always a bit lonely out on the edge and ahead of the curve but it's been eventful thus far and that's what I'm banking on.

Inbox

Some days my email inbox is one thick Smuckers chocolate fudge jar leaking pure intellectual indulgence of sweet but lucid and illuminating thinking. This morning's paragraph is from Thomas in the UK as we're having a discussion about music and Jaron Lanier (who I think we're in violent agreement on, is punching above his intellectual weight with his latest book).

Thomas writes:

As a perhaps superficial example, the 50's seem utterly distinct from the 60's which seem fairly distinct from the 70's. The 70's have a soundtrack that is distinct from the 80's. But 90's from Millenial? The sharpness of the contrast is becoming more and more attenuated. Perhaps this is because I didn't live through those periods but we've been to the Moon and now we've stopped bothering because it seems so pedestrian. The wide eyed wonder and mystery has become implicit and uninteresting, so full scale shifts in our cultural attitudes seem less likely, and thus there will no be soundtracks to accompany those shifts.

Is good yes?

Cognitive Biases

This is just as much for me as you which is why I'm embedding it some weeks after I first saw it. I am however slightly in love with all cognitive bias nomenclature if only because it's utterly humbling how little room there really is to be right. I could use a little humility more often. I even caught myself saying 'I don't know' to some French tourists requests for advice on some options the other night. I mean I think I knew what they were looking for but deep down I knew my ability to project what they were looking for was way more powerful than actually knowing. So I gave them both options.

Come to think of it I could have blown my cheeks and done the whole 'bof' thing too. Anyway cognitive biases; worth raising if it all gets a bit subjective as it often does in the worlds most subjective business. Yes I'm talking about advertising.

And while we're using Scribd just now. There's another document I wrote over a year ago, floating on the net that I neglected to proofread and edit myself. Some of you have written whole blog posts about it but I see that as asymmetric love for my writing as I don't read your work. I will however be editing it so you can see that the biggest howlers have nothing to do with paradoxical oxymorons but simple logic. If it was really important I'd have fixed it a long time ago but lesson learned. If  you want a job doing properly it's best done etc.

Cognitive Biases - A Visual Study Guide

Duty

A year or so back, Bangkok artist Jim Brewer explained to me a video installation concept he had and that I liked the idea of immediately. I'd touched on the subject myself back here though I had no idea when I wrote it how thematically integral it would be to maintaining the facade of cognitive integrity that is possibly holding together as well as holding back the entire Kingdom. (Sorry about that mouthful I'm spoon-feeding you but anything less elliptical is asking for trouble under censorship rules in Thailand). 

I saw Jim's piece in the WTF gallery a week or so ago and was absolutely super fucking jubilant when I learned that the some of the Thai visitors found the work so provocative and distressing they asked, nay 'demanded' to know more about the farang who made the piece. Artistically, the timing couldn't have been better with the recent color-coded massacres in the Kingdom, including the repugnant use of state-sanctioned snipers against Thai citizens (and foreign reporters) seeking refuge and safety in the temple Wat Pathum Wanaram  วัดปทุมวนาราม closest to the Red protest site.

Yellow shirts are hardly worn on Mondays as they used to be. 

I believe it was  Ian Curtis of Joy Division who wrote the song "Love will tear us apart".

Duty from The Human Eye Corporation on Vimeo.

Characterising The Internet

14 characters that live on the Internet

View more presentations from The Kaiser.

A few moons ago, but not so many that it's a distant galaxy, I met Marcus Brown at The George on D'arblay Street in Soho London where he made a special trip to come and see us from his home in Munich, Germany. One of his comments that rang out then and applies even more so, to this day whether it's transmedia, digital or otherwise was 'it's all storytelling'.

I don't think anyone does it better than Marcus including his latest offering Jack The Twitter. In any case, he's gone and done a presentation of his portfolio in the last couple of years for us and I don't think there's a better example of character-development versatility on the internet. Take a look and see if you know someone in your marketing department who is looking for something fresh that stands out. He's the champ.

Alexander McQueen, Gen-X, Post Futurism & Star Wars (Help me Obi Wan Kenobi)

One of my probably duller-than-I-think, and self important (dinner party) pieces I'm prone to doing now and again (usually if there's a good red to hand) is how surreal it is to be a Gen X'er. 

Don't misunderstand me. I know Baby Boomers and older who have more life in them, than many Millennials and so on and so forth but allow me a Gen X tale.

Below is the first taste of hologram technology I witnessed at the age of 8, living in West Germany watching Star Wars.

I don't remember the opening sequence being so special that I had to duck my head but that doesn't mean Star Wars didn't leave a massive impression on me; lots of things did at that age. However the Princess Leia hologram scene was unforgettable. The idea of not writing down a plea-for-help-message on a piece of paper (this was pre-internet) and instead using a plenipotentiary (of sorts) droid to project an hologram was sensational and yet plausible. The tonality projected through this medium imploring help, felt so much richer than any typewriter or pencil could achieve.

Here it is:

Yet Victor & Rolf's work in the Dutch Pavillion at the Shanghai Expo is just as, if not more seductive; and yet somehow while my experience of it is no more or less than any other person's enjoyment, there's just something delicious about the uniquely Gen X experience of overtaking the future. It happens a fair bit and I haven't even gone into the how amazing it is to juxtapose pre and post internet cultures alongside each other, though I will attempt to some day.

Hopefully here.

It was of course the late (and truly great) Alexander McQueen who did it best with Kate Moss. It's a pity that so much incredible creativity in the fashion industry get's ignored, I guess because, by and large, the egos in fashion leave advertising standing in the dust.

That doesn't mean advertising doesn't plunder fashion's inexhaustible creativity time and again. Above is my favourite piece by Alexander McQueen in 1999. 

Anybody know which brand ripped this idea off? It might be creativity but it is also definitely art. Something our lot could learn something from.

More blow jobs, less world wars

Data Visualizations and Resumes

There's no point denying it. Another case of raging envy. How cool is this for a resume through data visualisation? 

via iBoy

The dissolution of brands?

I really like this conceptual art project of luxury brand lollipops.

Another Shit Presentation

You'd have to be brain dead not to pick up on how shallow, uninspiring and generally shit this presentation is between China Youthology and Ypulse. They're still obsessed with the word mashup when it's been embarrassingly unhip since the donkey mated with a horse creating the ass. You can have a quick flip through but the most stunning contradictions are the assertion that chinese youth (or is it just girls) are both materialistic and shallow (an aspirational life slide 7), feeling defeated and insecure (slide 10)  as well as evolving from surface to substance (slide 34).

China is huge, this is a tier one or two city surface report that could be culled from the web and while I know what they are trying to say they need to drop the mashup "it's groovy" speakeasy vibe, the superficial analysis and get down to the hard work of explaining those contradictions. Instead they'll use this to sell in to the multinationals who are looking for safe but edgy but safe generic catalog communications. ChinaSMACK is where it's at if you want to see where the dynamite is.

Ypulse Mashup presentation: Building deeper connectin with China youth

View more presentations from Lisa Li.

Feedburner Statistics

My feedburner statistics are fluctuating wildly over the last week or so. For example today I seem to have about 400 less of you than normal. It seems to want to return to normal but then drops back down again. Anyone else noticed anything. The only thing I can think of is Java script is playing with the statistics but I've always had a bit of Java action going on in the templates and also post from time to time.

Pointilism's Point: Part II

Well that was just rubbish that last attempt so while I figure out the technical stuff here's an embedded player for you.

Pointilismspoint by charlesfrith

WTF

I was clicking around as usual on the net recently and noticed a new bar/restaurant/gallery in town called WTF (Wonderful Thai Friendship). No shit, but I felt an immediate sharp stab of cold creative jealousy that I hadn't realised what an insanely great name our internet acronym could be till someone else had snapped it up.

Anway WTF is the new hip hangout in town on Sukhumvit 51, Alley 7. I knew it was gathering steam when I was invited to join their Facebook group by P Tik who I interviewed earlier at WTF but ran over the 10 minutes that Youtube permits. I'll be splitting that later to post up here too.

As ever with these things, I also learned that I knew Som & Chris the owners of WTF and was really delighted to find that the art was good and provocative so I took advantage of the opportunity to interview Som about their new anti-establishment with a video installation in the background that was made by Jim Brewer on the topic of Yellow in Thailand. I was aware of his idea because I know Jim and he shared it with me some time back as out of nowhere (sort of), the wearing of yellow in support of his Majesty became ubiquitous every Monday. I explained it all back here in 2007 with what seems like a slightly prescient post though it isn't rocket science if you think about it.

Anyway this gusto for the colour diminished somewhat as over time the colour polarization of politics in Thailand became very sensitive with the now widely understood association of Red for the rural  impoverished classes.

The recording is a crap unfortunately because first I'm rubbish at thinking about sound, and as it's an art gallery on the 2nd and 3rd floor, it echoes too much to hear my questions so turn down the base and play with the treble if you can. I hope though that you can pickup Som sharing her new tapas, bar and art gallery concept and also talking a little bit about art in Bangkok and specifically Jim's work which is going on the background. Most interesting was the revelation that Yellow trainers were banned in Thailand as the feet are considered the most lowly part of the body to associate with anything let alone anything Royal.

She also talks about the stiff reaction that many of her Thai gallery visitors had about the video installation and their demands to know which farang (Westerner) artist was responsible for it. Anyway WTF is the kind of place that supports art as stimulus to discussion and is to be applauded loudly and embraced heartily for that alone, though the owners, clientèle I met, (Hi Andrew that was mad, call you soon) bar and tapas menu are enough reason to go and check them out. 

Unless you wish to avoid me in which case that's all very understandable. 

This Bangkok Post article covers the art much better than I have done here.

Censorship

Many of my readers in Thailand need to use a VPN to get around this image, you may also want to subscribe over here for the period while my blogging is censored as I'm piping my feeds to lots of unexpected places using a lot of digital backflips one of which I've filmed for you guys on the 10th floor of Communications Authority Tower, on 72 Charoenkrung Road, Bangrak. It was taken in the Andaman sea where we did the usual things like throw a ton of money into the Thai economy hiring a Yacht and then sailing around for a few days,

Ever been?http://charlesfrith.tumblr.com/

Pointillism's Point

This is my first podcast so it's not only very very short, I'm not confident that I'm going to get the iTunes RSS feed up and running first time. In principle most of the spade work is done by Blogger but either it will embed, be downloadable or something. Let's see what happens below.

I went for a walk around the park this morning and had a thought. Just one thought mind you, and realised I had that James Bond Mobile on me so I used the voice recorder on it to capture my thought. Later on I realised a blip in my head took a minute or so to explain and if there's anything that is both my advantage and my disadvantage it's this stream of thoughts that are constantly squeezing through what I assume is a very narrow pipe with some caching between immediate processing and pending processing.

This work by Charles Edward Frith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.charlesfrith.com.

Have you met my boyfriend?

You've all given me a fabulous laugh as 64% of you voted Young lady B from Hong Kong as being a fella. Well done gang. And for dessert I should add that the young post operative transsexual Lovely Lady B, picked me up, and despite years of living here I had no idea. To add insult to injury I remember as it became clear that she like me a lot that, uncharacteristically for me in public, I was quite tactile in the swish bars I took her to and I distinctly remember explaining to her that she was extraordinarily 'sporty'. As in fit as a fiddle. You have to laugh don't you?

Incidentally though if I were to be asked who was more feminine. As in graceful, elegant, well mannered and just all round pleasant to be with it was the lady born as a boy. There's another two posts I want to do about this subject as I learned so much about gender identity from this country that it gives me an a lot of additional dimensions to think about when I listen to Women talking about make-up or Guys and football in groups and depth interviews. It's all good though (You can put the missus' shampoo brand down now lads)

I Heart Isaan

Congratulations to Khun Apichat Weerasethakul for winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes with his movie set in Isaan, the impoverished province of the red protesters gunned down by an army under orders. 

The definition of a coincidence is you weren't paying attention the first time round.

Here he is below taking his prize from Tim Burton. Photo Courtesy of the New York Times. The same paper interrupted while interviewing Seh Daeng as a sniper blew out his brains in front of the Dusit Thani luxury hotel.

Check out his other movie "Tropical Malady" if the Joycian style is tough for you. Otherwise just feel it. Thinking is superfluous.

Huh!

That's a reprimand for being faster than a computer right?

Chill Baby

Strangely enough the weather was almost unbearably hot in the lead up to May 19th crackdown and then suddenly we had two of the biggest tropical storms straight after. I caught this little tyke chilling out in the 7-Eleven chiller fridge and I saw the seeds of a lovely print ad in it.