I wrote this a while ago for a super snobby campus arts magazine (http://zahir.org.uk):
“Lomography” proudly defines itself as
a sort of anti-photography, and fetishizes things long abhorred by
professionals. In fact, the “Ten Golden Rules” of Lomo (according to
lomography.com) encourage amateurs to take their (plastic) cameras everywhere,
to shoot from the hip, and to shoot quickly, resulting in photos that are often
blurry, saturated, leaky or worse.
DIY photography may be
non-conventional, but its populist principles have sown the seeds of a popular
and commercial appeal that big companies are willing to pay big bucks for.
Instagram, the smartphone app that attempts to digitally replicate that oh-so-exquisite-Polaroid-feel,
certainly represents the final nail in Lomography’s alternative-art coffin.
Last week Facebook purchased Instagram for a cool one billion dollars, a move
which prompts me to consider, just what exactly is so damn appealing about low fidelity art? Lo-fi photography
(particularly the lame-arse Instagram kind) often emphasises peripheral effects
that deliberately obscure the creative content of a photograph, and this
obscuration is a worrying trend we can also trace in lo-fi pop and film
Lo-fi pop
has a particularly long and interesting history, which, for the purpose of this
article, I’m going to brutally condense into two main bullet points:
1.
The deliberate use of low fidelity production.
o Traditionally
achieved via “bedroom recording” style which may feature some, or all of the
following:
§ Swampy
sound with a dense low end
§ Cluttered
stereo spectrum
§ Lack of
fancy overdubs
§ One take
spontaneity
§ Distortion,
or audible “clipping”
o E.g.
Pretty much anything by the Velvet Underground
2.
Or, as a side effect of “Loudness War”
production.
o Traditionally
achieved by employing Rick Rubin to dramatically fuck up the production of your
album, and may feature some, or all of the following:
§ Generally
loud mix
§ Heavily
compressed high and low end, loud mids.
§ Distortion,
or audible “clipping” (particularly if you turn your stereo up)
o E.g.
Anything produced by Rick Rubin
Interestingly, I reckon there’s a new, third school of lo-fi that’s
emerged in the wake of Justice’s debut album †. Music
by Skrillex, Justice and Sleigh Bells actually fetishizes those widely loathed
Loudness War acoustics to create a sound which, in the memorable words of one
Pitchfork reviewer, squeezes “everything into a mid-range frequency band so
loud”, it “practically cockslaps you in the face” (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10321-justice/).
Now, I’m not a guy that’s afraid of loud, messy albums, in fact a whole
bunch of my favourite records are actually enhanced by crude production
methods, because, as with photography, there is something beautiful in that
kind of ugliness. But the reality is that swampy, loud production can also
actively disguise poor songwriting; consider the unashamedly high-fidelity
recording of Girls’ Father, Son, Holy
Ghost and Bon Iver’s Bon Iver – released
last year. Both albums have big, breathy mixes, show off detailed microphone
placement, and use tasteful overdubs. Quite honestly, listening to these
sophomore efforts on a decent stereo is akin to coming up for air from
underwater. Both of these albums work because their primary songwriters (Girls’
Christopher Owens and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon) have written songs that stand
up to high resolution scrutiny. Conversely, if their respective debut albums (Girls’
Album and Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever
Ago) were recorded in the same way, the limitations of those albums would
be highlighted in shiny HD – a criticism devastatingly true of Album.
Low fidelity film is perhaps the
least deserving of criticism, because let’s face it – how many lo-fi films
actually enjoy serious mainstream success? The low budget film and the
low-fidelity film are often one and the same, both representing a realm in
which directors and screen writers are able to indulge their artier instincts.
Hence we have something of a reversal here - most of the movies from major
studios (for me at least) tend to be offensively hi-fi, and such excessive
polish actually ends up detracting from the creative content of the film.
This tendency towards unnecessary post-production-sheen has manifested
itself most disturbingly in Hollywood’s recent obsession with re-mastering
movies in HD or 3D. Big budget examples include the re-release of James
Cameron’s Titanic and the prolific re-mastering (and general fucking up) of the
Star Wars movies by billionaire-tyrant George Lucas. Now, although the Titanic
re-release didn’t radically increase its already glossy sheen, the original
Star Wars movies have an integral smuttiness essential to their original
appeal. Lucas’s incessant need to re-edit his originally trilogy and clean up
this smuttiness is radically detrimental to his legacy as a film maker.
But the seriously lo-fi film most of us are probably familiar with is
George A. Romero’s cult-horror classic, Night
of the Living Dead, which, since being accidental released into the public
domain by post-production editing error, has seen innumerable re-releases by
different distributors, including three re-colorizations and one 3D re-master.
Now seriously, if there’s one film that shouldn’t be digitally tinkered with
it’s got to be Night of the Living Dead,
which, lest we forget, was shot in crappy 35mm black and white, features a
partly recycled soundtrack, and uses chocolate syrup and butcher shop meat as
“special effects”.
Perhaps the sad truth of the
matter is that, for all its claims to anti-elitism, low fidelity art should be
employed professionally or not at all. Only Hollywood film seems to fall prey
to an excessive high fidelity prettiness inhibitive to its quality. In most
other cases, the Instagram-style aversion to traditional composition and
carefulness simply reflects a reluctance to engage seriously with art, and
suggests an unfortunate desire to disguise a lack of quality.
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