The essay linked in Longo’s tweet is a nice exploration of the current systems by which branding and product placement operate in media. Specifically, how do products — encoding various symbologies but more importantly, normative (and collaborative) schemata for advertising — come to be embedded within media like music videos that are so widely seen. How does this embedment come about, which seems so uncanny yet neutral? Certainly the common view of music videos as trivial media objects or expressions of anti-conceptual ideology seems dubious. But what can we replace this with, if we can’t infiltrate the industry and see for ourselves how it operates? Longo’s essay tells us to look beyond our experiences of product placement and to the more current question of how our ontologies are affected and reflected by the seeming-contradictions of influence that arise in our heavily mediated and branding-laden lives. His conclusion resonates strongly with me:
Being cloud-based and fluid means that it’s not an issue whether you’re clutched in the palm of the hottest producers’ hand or jammed into the mouth of a second-tier cyber vixen, as you maintain autonomy by flattening association and context to the point where all scenarios are equal and valid, allowing one to view the field from the point of the infinite panopticon. You inhabit everything, or you inhabit nothing. Existing within the flow of culture means letting it take you where it wants. You are the passenger, so please don’t adjust the air conditioning.