[microsound] iConsume

[Kim Cascone <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

- the thread on the iPhone touches on a larger and more complex issue  
of 'marketing' and how people are trained (via the media) to respond  
psychologically to the money lubricated mechanisms of manipulation  
that corporations use to fleece the public

- corporations prey on our naiveté and childlike propensity to  
mystify and be mystified by new complex accumulations of symbols  
(mobile phone + touch-screen = must-have gadget)

when I hear the term 'marketing' I take it to mean the ability to  
manipulate the media in order to project an 'aura' which arouses a  
state of desire and fetishism in the consumer

- 'marketing' is much more complex than simply issuing an announcement
while its quaint to quote the dictionary, real-world/working  
definitions are much too complex to encapsulate in a single sound- 
bite from the dictionary

real-world marketing is a carefully constructed admixture of multiple  
nodes (a network) that creates the 'presence' or 'aura' of an object
in the essay: "Grain, Sequence, System: three levels of reception in  
the performance of laptop music"
(it's on the microsound Wiki if people want to read it)
I point out that it is the  _combination_  of TV advertising, music  
videos, web presence, press releases, CD displays at big-box stores,  
etc that creates a 'network of aura' for a pop-star such as Madonna
in which the individual nodes exchange energy - i.e., a synergistic  
network which creates desire is formed by its combined power

the iPhone is no different
as Apple has placed the fetish of the iPhone appropriately in all the  
Internet locations where it would solicit the correct market response  
of desire

there is an interesting book on the marketing of music tech titled:
'Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology' by  
Paul Theberge
http://tinyurl.com/2rtk9p

which analyzes how musicians consume technology

the point is to think critically about consumption
and not fall prey to the the fetishism created by corporate marketing  
dept's