FundamentallySound Blog

This little diagram is showing us the "style of the Penguin". In Japan, this particular Penguin (he doesn't really have a name) is the animated spokesperson for JR's semi-magical high-tech integrated-circuit train pass called SUICA (Super Urban Intelligent Card), the card lets you pass through the gate by simply waving it in the air, within proximity of the gate's sensor, no physical contact with the machine is even necessary.

So, about the Penguin's style: he shuns big crowds, he enjoys fish and sunshine, and so on. The Penguin's biography goes something like this: he works hard, commuting to and from the office on a daily basis, always growing tired of the long lines and crowded trains. However, after obtaining a SUICA card, his life became simpler, easier, and more efficient. Once, in the recent past, he lost his SUICA card and was reminded of the way things used to be, then discovered that Japanese Rail will replace lost SUICA cards for free, which made him quite happy and productive once more.

And why am I telling you all this? I was just fascinated by this cute diagram of the style of the Penguin. I love thinking of how one's (even a penguin's!) highly complex and deeply psychologically rooted personality can be (super?) flattened out into a cartoon diagram, revealing a summary of traits and clues about their behavior with no explanation necessary. Only iconic personality quirks are efficiently portrayed, giving you enough information to work with but not too much to confuse the matter. This kind of representational efficiency seems very tightly wound into the cultural fabric of Japan. While visiting Japan I often feel that much energy is put into reducing the superfluous, whether it be in casual conversation or in designing the ambience of a retail store. This kind of reductionism, in its most simplistic form, is seen in shops such as MUJI, and as Rob Duckworth pointed out, it "bottoms out" aesthetically rather quickly. But, what really interests me is when the superfluous is completely stripped, and one is left with what a westerner might call a harsh or cold ambience, and then that which was deemed superfluous is very selectively and carefully added once more. I've seen this done with such care and genius in some cases that in describing the ambience of some cafe, one could equally easily say say it was either a desolate bombed out warehouse that nobody cared about anymore or that it was a finely distressed and highly composed ambience with every superfluous artifact carefully chosen and displayed with grace, down to the last slightly tattered 60's Danish couch. And of course in the case of Japan, it is the latter, the former would be too simple and not playful enough.

In America, the land of Real realism, the case would most surely be the former, the desolate warehouse cafe would honestly have been (and likely still be) a desolate warehouse. (In Europe, the verdict is still out. Things get to be a bit more complicated over here, I think). But in Japan, I feel that faux-desolation (involving multiple preparatory steps and an aesthetic sense of the ambience of "desolation") is much preferred to real desolation (which requires little thought), and in this I completely agree.

I'm working on a music project that a friend of mine asked me to complete for a CD release later in the year. The track he gave me is stripped bare of superfluousness, it suggests a pop song form, but contains only the bare necessities and an icy sound. I see my job in recomposing it as adding the superfluous once more, carefully considering the level of "distressed sound" that already exists in it, and decorating it with elements to make it into a faux-real pop(?) song, suitable to be sung over(!). It is a completely artificial process, with no regard for any adherence to a prior compositional formula or idea. This is music made only for effect, concerned only with how the receiver takes it, no gimmick too large or small to produce the desired effect. In this way, it is most closely related to graphic design, which is never concerned with artistic purity of thought, but only with the efficient production of a desired effect.

Andy Warhol taught us these things long ago. In my thinking, he is one of the few Americans who have been able to see America with clear vision, celebrating it openly with an irony so deep or so shallow that one could either drown in it, or not even notice. At the Tate Modern in London, I was recently introduced to the work of pop artist Sigmar Polke, who takes Warhol's style a step further, reimbuing it with humor and occasionally warmth. He's putting the superfluous back in, but only after Warhol took it out. This is what I'm trying to do with the icy track I was given to work on, I'm trying to bring back the unnecessary and inefficient elements, but only after they were completely removed to begin with.