Advertising reaches the masses on a familiar and unobtrusive level. Television and radio commercials, billboards, magazine inserts, etc. -- all of these things filter into and out of our conscious minds with little or no thought, because they are so numerous. With the introduction of viral marketing it seems that commercials have now honed themselves, locking on to people to make sure they pay attention. These sometimes mysterious and often clever advertisements, usually found on the internet, don't seek to peddle you something so much as give you an experience based on the thing they are selling. That experience, which connects you to a product, is the selling point.
In the 1960s, Americans looked to space and sought to explore. The astronauts sent up in rockets were boxed as the all-American hero and explorer. They were conquering something that seemed unconquerable. However, now that NASA has finished all its Firsts, the American government and people have turned away. Space is no longer the explorer's playground, but has become the government's money pit. Former astronaut Mike Mullane wrote in his book Riding Rockets that NASA’s golden age passed with the loss of Challenger in the 1986, one of many flights that traveled with a non-astronaut passenger.[1] After this, civilians not chosen to train and each class of astronauts had a harder time getting onto flights as passengers.
Despite these dangers, humans feel entitled to the joy of space flight. Arguably, it is in our nature to want to explore the great spaces that have yet to be touched by our influence. Space is no exception. In this string of three short animations, I want to convey a sense of comfort with the feelings of entitlement that advertisements bolster in their audience. Each animation shows a sequence of space followed by a glib line that specifically calls to the viewer, drawing on their sensibilities as consumers.
This consumerism is similar to the strange phenomena called “space euphoria.” During space walks and flights, astronauts have recorded more than once a feeling of “odd euphoria and a disinclination to go back inside the [space] capsule.”[2] I see this as akin to the euphoria a shopper gets when they are perusing the windows at the mall or in a department store. Though clearly on a smaller level, this kind of euphoria does more than bring joy. It partitions off a space simply for the individual, allowing them a moment of disconnect from the world. While astronauts feel this from literal disconnections with the terra, a shopper creates their own disconnect with the actual world while they spend their time and money in another, speculatively better world of consumption.
Reaching back into the era when space flight was just beginning, I have chosen to pair each sequence with its own song from girl bands produced by Phil Spector. These songs are mixed with metallic, noise-like sounds that somewhat skew the original melody of the music. Between each animation runs an interstitial ‘logo’ accompanied by a robot beeping noise, suggesting that the advertisements have been placed on a reel as a part of a never ending loop. As the animations play over and over again, their message may become either more coherent or more distorted.
[1] Mullane, R. Mike. Riding Rockets: the Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut. New York: Scribner, 2007.
[2] Roach, Mary. Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
