The media has a long-standing history of controlling public perception. It often walks a fine line between informing and indoctrinating. Photographs play a significant role in how we receive and process information (as discussed in part one of this essay series). In an interview with the BBC, Dan Rather once stated that “those who control images will control public opinion.” This is not a new concept. While it is widely acknowledged that images are a vehicle for controlling opinions and beliefs, on a day-to-day basis, the truthfulness behind photographs seen in the news is rarely disputed. Today, when an image is created and put on the Internet, it’s impossible to tell how far it will travel, where it will end up and how many eyes it will be viewed by. News sources frequently use photos captured with cell phones and low quality point and shoot digital cameras in their coverage. The line between journalism and art is blurring. Individuals like Geoffrey George and Jim Griffioen who were previously creating images for their own purposes now find their images viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Thus the role of the image-maker comes with great power and responsibility, regardless of whether the creator of the image originally intended for widespread dispersion of their creation.
Interactivity too, has greatly altered the course of the news coverage. It’s something the current X and Y Generations, who grew up with the Internet in their homes and schools, take for granted. In the 1972 BBC documentary, Ways of Seeing, John Berger describes the power of images on television, before the Internet existed in its present form. “The images may be like words but there is no dialog yet. You cannot reply to me, for that to become possible in the modern media of communication, access to television must be extended beyond its present narrow limits.” The ability to reply, to comment, is empowering. A recent example of this happened locally in the strong reactions to Time Magazine’s Assignment Detroit commissioned advertisements, “Selling Detroit.” In just days hundreds of replies poured in from outraged individuals. I can speak first hand in saying I felt a certain sense of satisfaction in being granted the opportunity to publicly voice my disapproval for the project. Seeing venomous response from the vast number of people outraged by this even lead a few local creatives to start their own campaign, Attribution Detroit, in response.
Enter Single Barrel Detroit. A local collective of musicians, designers, directors, writers, audio engineers, photographers, and editors with a simple goal: to bring attention to the sounds and sights of Detroit. They do so through a multi-sensory experience, combining video, music, still photos, and written descriptions of musicians performing in various distinctly Detroit locations, each song recorded in a single video shoot.
For Single Barrel’s producers Andy Martin and Jared Groth, it’s not about following the latest media trend of capturing Detroit’s ruins, which for decades now have been familiar to those who live here. They don’t have a political agenda and they aren’t trying to fix massive problems like a broken education system. “We’ve shot in the DIA, we’ve shot at the Saint Patty’s Day parade. It’s not just about the abandonment and Detroit being left behind. Its just about where we come from and its current state and how to depict that beautifully. We’re not trying to preach or tell a story or anything else beyond that.” The goals of Single Barrel are not enormous and unreachable. It’s a large factor in why they have been so successful. They’re interested in showcasing what they are passionate about to a broader audience, and that’s what they’re doing.
Historically music has played a large role in how Detroit is presented to the world. With a past so tied to music from Motown to garage rock to techno, Martin and Groth are continuing that tradition in a new and modern way. Using the medium of video and employing the Internet as their vehicle, they bring voices unknown both to many outsiders and to Detroiters front and center. “It [Detroit] has this amazing past with music and that’s what people always go back to. And then theres those artists that break through, like Kid Rock and the White Stripes and that’s it. So there’s all these other bands. It’s more about trying to show those guys off. Like Rodriguez, he’s this guy who’s in Detroit and should have so much more notoriety. He deserves attention whether it’s international or even people here in Detroit.” Martin explained. Groth elaborated, “First and foremost I want make the bands that are important to us known locally. I think so many people come from Detroit and don’t really know what’s going on in Detroit and kind of want to know but don’t know where to go to see bands play live and don’t know what they sound like.” Aaron Johnstone, who photographed one of Single Barrel’s shoots added, “Everyone in Detroit not knowing what’s going on in Detroit has been going on for a long time. There’s a set up audience in Europe for a lot of Detroit musicians. They just go there and they see on the headline ‘this is a rapper from Detroit’ [and] you just automatically going to get kids going to that.”
With each of Single Barrel’s shoots Martin and Groth make a conscious effort to select new individuals to participate in their process. “We get a different photographer for each shoot. We try to make sure that someone else’s creative vision is able to come through,” Martin explained. “We knew people going into it but at the same time I think that’s what’s been interesting about it. We meet new people along the way whether it be an editor that comes in, or someone with a new idea or even new bands. We’re constantly coming into contact with more and more of the creative community in the Detroit area.” It’s so simple yet simultaneously brilliant. By involving different people, who will each inherently visualize the same thing differently than the next, Single Barrel ensures a unique outcome each and every time. “The fact that they use different writers to do synopsis, editors and different people are shooting from time to time opens it up so much to interpretation that it becomes a very free art form because you’re not forced to read the same sentence over and over again,” added Candance O’Leary, who has photographed several Single Barrel Detroit shoots.
Not only is the final formatting and presentation of Martin and Groth’s work interactive, their entire process is as well. “We’ll try to in some way match a band to a location. As far as the location could influence or add anything to the performance,” Groth stated. “It seems like they’re inspired by the places. You can tell,” Martin added. Not only is the interaction between musician and location a key component in the final outcome of Single Barrel’s videos, the interaction between each member of the collective throughout the process is equally important. From the editors to the graphic designers and writers, each pair of hands involved molds the final outcome. I was shocked to learn that Single Barrel’s primary director of photography rarely knows the musicians or locations he is shooting prior to the day of the shoot. As Martin described, “He doesn’t even know the majority of it. He doesn’t know the music so he has no reference. He has no idea when the song is going to end. I mean you get the innate sense of the songs progression, of the songs pacing [and] that it’s going to end but that’s the cool part about it too, it’s built in spontaneity.”
There is something about that statement that serves as a fitting metaphor for Detroit. So many of Detroit’s problems lie in not knowing the future and having no control over the present. Like all of Single Barrel’s shoots there are no second takes. Certainly there are aspects of Detroit’s economic decline that could have been predicted, that should have been anticipated and planned for, but now people here are so caught up in their day-to-day survival that it’s difficult to plan any further ahead than tomorrow. The factor of spontaneity that works in art is not always comforting in day-to-day life. Maybe that’s why we need art and music to get us through.
At then end of the first segment inWays of Seeing Berger states, “with this program, as with all programs, you receive images and meanings which are arranged. I hope you will consider what I arrange but be skeptical of it.” To echo Berger’s sentiments, I hope you will please view Single Barrel’s and images on their site and consider the thoughts I have conveyed here. But please, as when viewing all images, when viewing images of Detroit, be skeptical.
Please do not hesitate to voice your skepticism and/or opinions on this piece or any others presented on Pixelgawker. Our hope moving forward is that Pixelgawker will be an interactive forum for dialog and discussion. In order for this to happen response from our readership is vital. If you would like to participate as a guest contributor or have ideas for a piece you would like to submit, please contact us at pixelgawker@spirit3design.com
The media has a long-standing history of controlling public perception. It often walks a fine line between informing and indoctrinating. Photographs play a significant role in how we receive and process information (as discussed in part one of this essay series). In an interview with the BBC, Dan Rather once stated that “those who control images will control public opinion.” This is not a new concept. While it is widely acknowledged that images are a vehicle for controlling opinions and beliefs, on a day-to-day basis, the truthfulness behind photographs seen in the news is rarely disputed. Today, when an image is created and put on the Internet, it’s impossible to tell how far it will travel, where it will end up and how many eyes it will be viewed by. News sources frequently use photos captured with cell phones and low quality point and shoot digital cameras in their coverage. The line between journalism and art is blurring. Individuals like Geoffrey George and Jim Griffioen who were previously creating images for their own purposes now find their images viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Thus the role of the image-maker comes with great power and responsibility, regardless of whether the creator of the image originally intended for widespread dispersion of their creation.
