Understanding content.
Firstly, I would like to wish you all a happy new year. I know I’m a bit late, but I was away but now I’m back.
I have been doing rather a lot of thinking during the course of my holiday and have decided to focus on the issue of content and the content manifesto; the feedback both on and off the blog has been interesting and I really want to dig much deeper into the the subject.
In order to understand my own thinking I’ve decided to revisit my own intellectual home, which is (as some of you will already know) not marketing, advertising or business but contemporary and contextual art. After a brief flick through some of my old notes (from 15 years ago), I realised that most of my current thinking is an updated version of what I was driving me on all those years ago.
Returning to my old books, has been like meeting a group of long lost friends and after the initial embarrassment of realising that we are all a little older, fatter and creased around the edges we all quickly settled down and became comfortable around one another. It was just nice to be around them again and settle back and listen to their wisdom.
So I’ll be using art theory to explain how content will destroy the current agency business model which may sound a bit odd but please bear with me.
Interestingly David has started pumping out a series of excellent posts which also touch on this subject and I would strongly advise you to read them:
I’m still putting together a lot of the things I would like to discuss but at currently the core arguments revolve around:
- The arrogance of the audience (here’s an interesting little post from Mark Earls on audience)
- The arrogance of the maker.
- The role of the maker in their social contexts.
- Content as a social object, social objects as content (check out Hugh’s Social Objects for Beginners)
- The language of content.
“I had fallen in love and I had no language. I was dog-dumb. The usual response of ‘This painting has nothing to say to me’ had become ‘I have nothing to say to this painting’. And I desperately wanted to speak.”
Jeanette Winterson - Art Objects. Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery.
I have no idea how long this will all take, no idea at all but I hope you find it interesting. Does this sound interesting?
If you think that others might been interested in this would you be so kind as to Stumble it?
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John Dodds
It’s very interesting - but let me put in preemptive plea that jargon must be avoided - otherwise it will sound like pretentious art criticism and I won’t understand what’s being said.
Jan 5th, 2008
The Kaiser
John - I’ll keep it simple enough for me to understand. Can we agree on that?
Jan 5th, 2008
zeroinflunencer
Thanks Marcus.
@John
Marketing and Business Analysis is the watered down understanding of language. Art tackles language where it’s most vunerable - that is grammar. If we are to use sharp tools to dissect Commercial Media practice, an education in art critism wouldn’t hurt, and that will involve some jargon. Art is just as complex as mathmatics, which in itself is symbol based and can be hard to follow unless you spend time on it.
I spend a lot of time explaining technology and language to designers and it really is a slow process when the dumning down becomes the focus. I for one would love to hear Marcus dig deep into confusion to find the big ideas.
Jan 5th, 2008
The Kaiser
It is an interesting point isn’t it? Advertising and marketing are probably the two businesses with the highest jargon quota in the world and yet, when somebody suggests that they may like to use art theory as a way of explaining or exploring a new way of doing something the age old presumption about the arrogance of the “artist” and the language that they may (or may not) use are pulled out of the bag.
Is this all really doomed to pretentiousness? I hope not.
I would like to point you all to this podcast by Jeanette Winterson (yes she is a personal favorite). I think it’s a wonderful example of a big idea explained simply and intelligently.
http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/assets/mp3/2_art.mp3
Jan 5th, 2008
lauren
ooh goody! i’m really looking forward to this stuff kaiser!! (iit doesn’t hurt that i’m a sucker for art theory, jargon and all). and maybe one day, if you feel up to it, you could scan in the imagery from some of those notebooks too?
Jan 6th, 2008
The Kaiser
Lauren - I had a feeling you might like this, and encourage you to roll up your sleeves and get ready for a good punch up. As for scanning my notes… I don’t have a scanner, the ink is faded and I can hardly read my own handwriting.
Jan 6th, 2008
John Dodds
To clarify - I don’t want it dumbed down, I just want terms explained or replaced with plain language - I certainly want to avoid the semantic nonsense of marketing and advertising but while language is important what we’re all really interested in is behaviour - no?
Jan 7th, 2008
The Kaiser
Plain language and behavior is actually what I had in mind, yes.
Jan 7th, 2008
Adam Crowe
Do it!
Thanks for the book recommendation.
Apr 28th, 2008
The Kaiser
Blimey Adam, where the hell have you been? Welcome back.
Apr 28th, 2008
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