#26 It's just a little crush
Apple releases an ad; the world vomits. Also, learn how my bare feet are going to single-handedly (double-feetedly?) alter the course of arts policy in Australia.
Hello again friendos. Welcome back to my semi-regular sketchpad of feels, thoughts, reacts, rambles. There’s something for everyone in this one I hope.
IT’S JUST, A LITTLE CRUSH
Apple revealed it’s ad for the new iPad Pro, and instantly the world’s creative community vommed in our mouths a little. Or a lot.
Like many, I had an immediate reaction to seeing this. I ummed and ahhed about it but then thought “ok I’ll bite” and wrote something quickly to post to Instagram, in the hopes that maybe it just helps some fellow artists feel seen, to know they aren’t the only ones vomming in their mouths. Turns out I was far from alone, a quick Google and you’ll find plenty of articles aggregating lots of the best tweets and takes and yadda yadda. People had a lot of fun .. while vomming in their mouths and crying onto their keyboards.
For the public record, and in case you don’t use the ‘gram (I’m proud of you), I’m just going repost here what I immediately wrote after seeing the ad:
For years artists have been trying to get the word out about how tech companies are treating their work with less and less respect, and now we have an ad from a supposed "creative company" that literally glorifies the destruction of hundreds of years of human ingenuity & creative expression
This is some darkest timeline type bullshit and the only silver lining is perhaps that this ad and the immediate and forceful backlash to it (driven by people who feel nauseated by what they see even if they can't completely explain why) might galvanise public opinion against tech companies and their dystopian vision of the future, which is one where we are so enamoured of our screens and algorithms that we throw all of our trumpets, arcade machines, canvases & pianos into a literal garbage compactor.
Yes, I'm typing this on an iPhone, and I'd like to thank Apple for everything they've done to help me on my creative journey, I couldn't have done it without them, except you know maybe wait, maybe I could have done it without them and maybe I should spend a bit less time on my phone and a bit more time thinking about that
I identify as a trumpet
I do though. I feel literally crushed by this ad, and by all of it. Thanks Apple for nothing else than for giving me the right word for the moment. Crushed.
It’s mind blowing to think how many people in the decision-making process had the chance to say no to this ad, and didn’t, perhaps none of them realising that when a creative person sees this ad, we see ourselves being crushed under the weight of, well, everything. Or perhaps, they did anticipate the reaction, and planned for it, which really just makes the whole thing more ick. Not sure I’m ready for an era where the Apple brand is edgelord-adjacent.
I get it, it’s fun to watch stuff get squashed. Not so fun when it’s you being squashed.
Or is it? —
The giant culture-squashing machine from Apple’s new ad makes me think of a few things - and I’m far from alone here. But yeah, sure, the garbage compactor from Star Wars. The incredible Hydraulic Press Girl (see above), as seen these days lining the walls of the NGV cafe in Melbourne. The climatic scene from Terminator, which at least one person spliced together with the new Apple ad seamlessly.
But honestly the first thing I thought of was another Apple tv ad, one from 1984.
In the spirit of restoring that most precious thing called context - it’s fun to point out that this literally soul-crushing ad comes only a few months off from the 40th anniversary of Apple’s dystopian “1984” ad, aired during the Super Bowl in January 1984. It was one of the first true high-concept big-budget Super Bowl commercials, directed by Ridley Scott just eighteen months after the release of Blade Runner:
The 1984 ad depicts an oppressive grey and concrete regime where slack-jawed masses stare blankly at screens - but hope comes in the form of a woman in bright shorts with a giant hammer.
According to a Macworld interview in 2004 (via Wikipedia), the ad agency behind it had a noble agenda, at least performatively in ad-agency-speak:
The original concept was to show the fight for the control of computer technology as a struggle of the few against the many, says TBWA/Chiat/Day's Lee Clow. Apple wanted the Mac to symbolize the idea of empowerment, with the ad showcasing the Mac as a tool for combating conformity and asserting originality. What better way to do that than have a striking blonde athlete take a sledgehammer to the face of that ultimate symbol of conformity, Big Brother?"
I’m not the only person to make the connection but it’s pretty easy to imagine the cultural garbage-compactor from the new ad existing in the same timeline as the 1984 ad, maybe as a torture device with which to crush dissenters. We now live in a time where “the control of computer technology” is unquestionably in the hands of a few companies, Apple amongst them. And a pretty strong case can be made that the “ultimate symbol of conformity” in our age is the black mirror, be it a smartphone or a iPad/tablet - do you know anyone who doesn’t have a phone?
Apple isn’t the young woman in the bright shorts throwing the hammer to smash the oppressive regime, anymore. They are the giant immovable force of weight crushing all of humanity into tiny black screens. Sorry Apple to be picking on you today but boy this ad is some A-level bullshit haha. But it’s not just Apple of course, it’s uh… Everything.
Jennifer Paige, save me …
HIGH SCORE & MY BARE FEET
Before I launch into another probably wholly unnecessary deep dive ramble .. some news! I’m doing something new!
I’ve been engaged by APRA AMCOS to be a co-curator for High Score, Australia’s annual game music & audio conference which takes place in October as part of Melbourne International Games Week. It’s a two day event where people from across the game world - composers, sound designers, developers, and anyone else interested - come together to learn, listen, chat and connect.
It’s a great event and it’s an honour to be a part of it, if you are reading this and you are part of Australia’s game audio scene (or you want to be), it’d be cool to hear from you. Me and my co-curator Amy McNickle are building out the program right now and keen to hear thoughts or ideas from anyone. Head here to learn more about the event.
My bare feet have made a rather unexpected appearance in a quite important, and hopefully very helpful, research paper.
“Artists as Workers: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia” is a deeply researched report via Creative Australia that paints an accurate and not super healthy picture of the reality of being an artist in Australia in 2024.
A great summary of where we are at to which I say both “god bless you researchers for actually giving us some stats and numbers around this” and also “no shit, you wonderful Sherlocks!”
As this report was nearing completion, they reached out to me (and a bunch of other artists) to ask me to provide a quote, to speak honestly about my experience and my perspective, in order to give the PDF a little more colour.
I sent them a spicy paragraph and a picture of myself in the backyard, did not expect to end up on page six of the report but there you go, arts policy makers of Australia I hope you enjoy copping the sight of my bare feet within minutes of flicking through this very important document:
This guy sounds smart! I like this guy.
Probably about time I take the sheets off the line though.
BIG RAMBLE: THINKING ABOUT TWO WORDS
I’ve always been a word nerd.
I’m a Scrabble fiend and I kill at Wordle. A big part of my day job is to use words concisely, correctly, excitedly, engaging-edly. This is why I think carefully about the words and how about I use them in the ways that are the good ones to do it.
When we agree as groups to be more intentional with our words - for example, respecting the way people want to be addressed, or changing our place names to more accurate reflect our history and our reality - it can have big impact.
In recent years I’ve become more conscious of how language is programming, in your big wet brain-tank. Want to change yourself? You need to critically assess your language. You might need a deprogram / reprogram.
If you meet me in person, I’m far from someone who is thoughtful and considered with words - things come out in a rush, better out than in, when I’m in the heat of articulating a thought or a feeling. If you can tell from these rants - I have a lot of stuff that needs to be said, often more urgently than my brain-heart-mouth system can really handle. But if I consciously spend some time thinking deeply about words when I’m away from the heat of the moment, hopefully that helps me choose my words more intentionally when I grab at them desperately, needing to be heard as we all do as precious snowflakes.
Here a couple of words I was thinking about this morning, while I was on my bike.
Cambridge Dictionary defines humane as “showing kindness, care, and sympathy towards others, especially those who are suffering.”
When we talk about what kind of society we want to live in, what laws we want to live by, what behaviours we want to encourage, it strikes me that humane might be a great word. Not the only one we can use, but maybe its an underused one.
The word was on my mind because I was listening to a podcast from the Centre for Humane Technology, a group that is working towards figuring out how to make tech more ‘humane’. Even just simply putting those two words next to each other - “humane” and “technology” - can lead to deep thinking. What does humane technology look like? (Scroll up for a reminder of what inhumane technology looks like.)
It’s funny because when I think of ‘humane’ I think firstly of the humane treatment of animals - it is a word I associate with animal rights. It feels like it links in with the idea of humans as a custodial species, that perhaps the only thing that makes us ‘special’ is that we actually have the power - the duty even - to protect the earth and its inhabitants.
So here, again, is Tyson Yunkaporta:
We can perceive an entire complex system, but we can also perceive the systems beyond that system and the way they interact. So I guess it’s that unique capacity, we would say we’ve been given by the hero ancestors and the creation entities. We’ve been given those gifts particularly, so that we can be that custodial species.
So there’s a dreaming story in western Australia, they talk about there was a big meeting. Everything, all the trees, the plants, the animals and humans who were in there, when they were sitting down at the moment of creation to decide who the carers for everything were going to be. […]
Who was going to care for all of this and oversee it? It went through each of the traits of each animal and the trees were like, “Well, we can’t move around.” And the kangaroo came really close, apparently. But he just had these shitty little arms. And they weren’t quite going to do it, so it ended up being the human beings.
Wouldn’t mind being a kangaroo, shitty arms for sure but might be a more chill life if I wasn’t part of the species whose job it is to save the world. Though let’s be honest, I’m sure the kangaroo’s got his own shit to deal with, so maybe being human is fine.
The second word I was thinking about this morning was entrepreneurship.
Out riding my bike through North Carlton, I rode past someone I recognised, a person I had coffee with years ago. I think you would define him as an entrepreneur, or at least I would have years ago. Not sure what he’s doing now, but when I met him he was emerging from Startup-land having done, I dunno, “well” ? I don’t know what that means? Startup-land is a confusing place I’ve only ever approached with equal parts curiosity and caution, a kind-of bizarre nonsense place. Seems like a fun place to visit, and inevitably in the creative fields you end up meeting people who found pots of money there, or who want to co-opt you into their startup-y thingy-whatsit. But you don’t need to be spend much time in Startupland to feel a deep sense of darkness and danger. And the nonsense rhetoric that they run themselves around in is exhausting. Anyway - I liked this guy. I sensed at the time he had good intentions, and money. I remember a conversation I had with him about music, culture, creativity. What I really wanted to ask him was where to find the money, but was too polite or nervous to ask. I waved at him as I rode past on my bike, I think he remembered me too! So that felt nice.
Then I found myself thinking about “the Crumpler guy”.
The Crumpler guy has become a kind of mythic creature in my mind over the years. To be clear, I’ve never met the Crumpler guy though I know people who have. He is a real human person, but in some ways it’s fun to entertain him now more as an idea in my mind, rather than a real person, though he no doubt is a real person. I have owned multiple Crumpler bags over the years though I doubt he built his fortune purely on my patronage. He has a name but I just think of him as “the Crumpler guy” which I’m sure is super unfair. Imagine being the Crumpler guy. Or just, a Crumpler guy. Anyway, I’ve heard he has good intentions, and money. I remember once being told, “Tim, that idea sounds great .. you should talk to the Crumpler guy.” I didn’t. i wonder what Crumpler guy is doing right now.
But anyway. The word entrepreneur has popped back into my brain recently because I’ve been doing high school tours with my eldest daughter. She’s 11 and will be heading into high school in a couple of years. We’ve been looking at all sorts of schools, both public and private (i.e. expensive). I live in a part of Melbourne’s inner north which is well-populated with families who have more money that most families, so a lot of my daughter’s friends will be going to expensive private schools. We have more money than most families, but probably not quite enough to make an expensive school some sort of given. And public schools: I like the vibe. An education is, ultimately, a vibe thing.
On the private school tours, among everything else they offer they often “entrepreneurship programs”, which on some gut level feel like a thing that no 12 year old should have to go through. When they talk about training kids in the skills they need to be entrepreneurs I kind of get that horrible-Apple-ad vom in my mouth again. It’s a gut reaction to feel sick about it, and I’m trying to figure out if that’s just because I’m a delicate creative wallflower, or because the word entrepreneurship signals to me a bunch of things that I’ve trained myself to feel are “bad.” The accumulation of wealth. Extractionism. Growth mindset. Hidden costs and a lack of responsibility for externalities.
I’m not landing anywhere on this one, just sketching out some thoughts. I think this might be a me thing. “Entrepreneur is bad” is an altogether too reductive position and I’m not going to let myself go there. But would I want my daughter to learn to be an entrepreneur? Is that a thing that excites me as a parent?
On some level, I imagine the skills, behaviours & methodologies that make up good ‘entrepreneurial’ practice are themselves a kind of technology - and technology can be used in the service of good and bad. It all comes back to intention - the why. Maybe I dream of my daughters being people who ask why, rather than people who just use the technology without asking why. That’s largely for them to figure out ultimately. I hope someone teaches them to be critical about the tools, not just teaching them the tools. If not the teachers, well sure I’ll give it my best shot.
LOVE IT IF YOU MADE IT
… to the end of the newsletter
And as a reward, for the small handful of people who still read these in the hope of new music from me… I think this is going to my next single ..
I’m having trouble figuring out if its finished - I don’t think it quite is - if you have ideas or thoughts or feelings of any kind, let me know !! Maybe you can help me get it over the line. I’m feeling a bit, how should we put this, “backed up” in terms of the amount of music I have in the, how do you say, “pipeline” .. feel like if I can just get this one done and out there then maybe it all starts flowing out into the world a little easier. Which is possibly an exciting thing for you, but is definitely an exciting thing for me.
Sending love <3 <3
Tim