[spectre] Five Production Company Logos in 3D :: April 2-23, Melbourne

[studio at emilezile.com]

Diane Tanzer gallery + projects
108-110 Gertrude St
Fitzroy, Melbourne Australia
April 2 – 23, 2011

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http://emilezile.com/video/five-production-company-logos-in-3d
http://diannetanzergallery.net.au 

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Ego Logos & Euclidean Cum Shots

There will always be a hermetic beauty, an insular logic to how
typefaces and logotypes exist in a void. Their lettering exists alone,
without space, ground, or depth. Requiring nothing but white paper as
their field, yet equally capable of being positioned into a page of text
or upon a photograph, logotypes are single words whose meaning is
conveyed not by their semantics but by their shape. As abstract
linguistic nodes visualised as concrete visible forms, they hover in
both nothing and anything, charming one with their distinctive
configuration and their identity.

As such, this hermetic logic of the logotype constitutes their actuality
as a brand. Coke-A-Cola's fine-print trademark qualification insists
that even the 'dynamic ribbon' of its logotype (an extension of the tips
of the two Cs) is part of the trademarked substantia of the Coke logo.
Trademarks, of course, are the legalised entities of the visual
identities of which ever corporation is represented by a logotype. The
copyright of the 'dynamic ribbon' proves the material effect and
objectival status of the trademarked logotype. It might be an abstract
graphical symbol, but it behaves and is treated like a floating tattoo
of disembodied ink, seeking skin to roost. It is this floating fluidity
of the logotype - its propensity to label, emblazon and signify anything
it touches or sidles up to - that had governed its morphological
development. Heraldic coats of arms from England, embossed wax seals
from France, calligraphic signature stamps from China, scorched cattle
brands from America (all of which shared origins in classical Greek and
Egyptian cultures) prove the logotype to be a graphical transient of
identity. The logotype thus is simultaneously rootless and nomadic,
while clearly stating its origin and ownership at every instance of its
appearance.

The graphical status of the logotype over the last two centuries
witnessed an explosion of ways in which legibility can be stretched to
extremes - while retaining the 'object-in nothing' nature of its corpus.
By mid- 20thC, logotypes became progressively hyper-abstracted, conjured
into near unimaginable ways of utilising alphabetical lettering to
express a word.

It is around this time that movie studios incorporated motion into their
original graphical logotypes introduced as static credit cards during
Hollywood's silent cinema. The Paramount circling stars, the MGM roaring
lion, the Universal circling globe, the 20th Century Fox searchlights -
all were monolithic statements of wealth and might. Well, that's how
they viewed themselves. Instead, they were simply ... big. As if they
each were a newly wrought eighth wonder of the world, on par with
Egyptian or Grecian edifices which have weathered the times.

This nascent period of motion graphics - of mobilizing things so that
the 'dynamic ribbon' effect becomes actual rather than graphical - marks
the embarrassingly unconscious statement of ego and grandeur which has
always been part of Hollywood (and remains so today more than ever). The
whole wannabe-Zeus shtick has defined classicism for at least four
centuries, so Hollywood is no different from western-world banks,
courts, universities and libraries which for a few centuries at least
have made out like they've been postmodern-dumped downtown straight from
Mount Olympus. The unending insecurity of Hollywood being perceived as
lowly entertainment and not lofty art ensures that their self-image will
always be one of trailer trash dressed up for the prom (which is what
the Oscars' red carpet most resembles). The major studios'
cinematised/animated logotypes connote weight, mass and power. Like a
transmogrified industrial plant ready to thrust a barrage of
entertainment into your eyeballs.

Thanks to computers, things simply got worse. When executive producers
and studio chiefs discovered how CGI simulation of Cartesian X/Y/Z- axis
tracking could make their logotypes appear to actually move in a
three-dimensional space, things got bigger than big. Like, so big they
were coming at you and over you. The clouds of the Columbia backdrop
gather like Zeus is about to let rip with a thunder bolt, the Paramount
stars zip out like a line of ninja star knives doing a Busby Berkeley
routine, and the Universal lettering sashays across the globe looking
like a bunch of drag-queen-letters with solid gold backing. Tacky
doesn't even begin to describe such feats of self-aggrandizement.

One can take vicious pleasure from ridiculing the moronic success of CGI
that allows abstract graphics and logotypes - originally born in visual
voids and governed by their own formal logic - to 'break free' into the
'real world' of time-space-as-we-know it. Surely this is as dumb as you
can get. Didn't everyone from Picasso and Pollock to the Coyote and the
Roadrunner break the Euclidean barrier of spatial physics to open modes
of visualisation not tied to the world as we mapped it to be? Spending
lots of money on state-of-the-art motion software to generate this
'realistic/immersive' effect at a high resolution is just dumber and
dumberer.

Those who employ CGI as if they are magicians collapsing the real into
the virtual and back again seem obsessed with gesticulating this process
repetitively. CGI motion logos - now the province of much smaller
studios thanks the liberating power of computers for all mankind - move
backwards, forwards, up, down, spin on fire, dive into liquid, explode
into solar systems, and so on, in a way that would make babies say
'awesome' if they could talk. More so, the movements and trajectories of
these rumbling hurtling rotating logotypes resemble the hand movements
of amateur illusionists whose frenetic handwork over-compensates for a
total absence of magic. And of course, what word is more overused in
Hollywood rhetoric than 'magic'.

Emile Zile's Five Production Company Logos In 3D presents an imaginary
'real man' behind these grandiose charades born of self- important
declaration. Just as design company CEOs probably come in their pants
when they look at their Maya-rendered fonts casting shadows on planets,
so are Emile's hands 'working magic' as he performs aerial jack-offs
synchronised to Adam Milburn's gilded melodic refrains. His hysterical
hand movements hilariously replicate the excessive overload of those
corporate logos which move around like Jane Fonda doing Zumba on crack.
Best of all, it simply looks like Emile is masturbating as if he uses
some amazing technique to whack a super load into our faces. Which is
exactly what the proud designers of those gleaming chromed star-cruiser
logo-ships imagine they're doing. And a grand tradition it is, for what
is Coke's 'dynamic ribbon' but the allusion to a frothy foaming cum
shot.

Philip Brophy (R)

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