Uncontacted

The above photograph probably fascinated me the most of anything that I read about in this week's news cycle. It is a picture taken of a uncontacted tribe in the Amazon jungle on the border or Brazil and Peru shooting flaming arrows at the helicopter over head.

For some reason, it is comforting to know that there are still elements of the unknown in the world, as we seemingly begin to crack scientific mystery after scientific mystery. This tribe is but one of a dozen uncontacted peoples still living throughout the world. The majority are found in the Amazon jungle and in West Papua in New Guinea.

The Sentinelese in the Andaman Islands are among the most famous. They were feared to have been wiped out in the 2004 tsunami, but survived. In 2006, two local drunk fishermen apparently went to close to the Sentinelese camp, and were killed by bow and arrows. When rescuers tried to recover the bodies with a helicopter, the Sneinelese drove the rescue party away, and the two bodies remain unrecovered.

There is something utterly fascinating about coming into contact with a culture that has no interaction with Western society. Indeed, some exotic travel groups are now charging prices like $8,000 took into area like West Papua to try and find these lost tribes.

The BBC made a documentary called "First Contact" that goes with one of these companies to try and meet these people living beyond the reaches of civilization. Many anthropologists have strong objections to tourists treking through the jungle to find these people who for the most part, seem to want to remain isolated.

They hold that it should be on the lost tribes terms when they went to make contact with the rest of the world, and that it should be done slowly and carefully. An argument is put forward that as people in the West, we are simply bored, and need to keep challenging ourselves with increasingly new exotically dangerous adventures. The thrill of bungee jumping wears off, and backpacking through Thailand, so now we must go 10 days into the jungle to find these people with the chance that maybe we will get killed by an arrow.

I must say, the temptation is luring, and is something I know I would love to do.

The tourist companies claim, though, that if it is someone's desire to go out and interact with these people, who are anthrolologists to intervene. They claim that the tribes first interactions are going to be with either missionaries, miners, or tourists. So it is inherently better for people who merely want to take photographs rather than their souls or resources.

The whole issue leaves me very tied. Several posts ago, I wrote about trying to find what my new adventure would be. For some reason, this is grabbing ahold of me. An incredible adventure in which civilizations are come into contact for the first time. As the world shrinks, it seems rare taht there are still places in the world not yet explored by the West. Thee final frontiers are ending.

Stephen Hawking recently came out saying that every government should invest 0.25% of its GDP toward looking to explore and colonize space. The new exploratory landscapes looms as there are only a few places left on the planet to have the haze removed.

At the same time, though, from a cultural standpoint, who am I or anyone else to step into these peoples' homes because I have a curiosity. Indeed, it is the fascination with associating with a people who are so removed and the complete idea of the other.

Eurovision

Last night I was perhaps introduced to the oddest and most frightening aspect of European culture -- Eurovision.

Now, I consider myself pretty fortunate to have had the opportunity to have been able to come to Europe many times, yet I had never heard of this thing. Neither had any of the Americans whom gathered with our European friends in the living room of our house to watch American Idol meets the FIFA World Cup.

If one were to try and get a barometer of Europe, I would say to skip the books or documentaries, and just watch this television event. You will more or less get the sense of otherness, geopolitics, and really odd europop complete with men from Azerbaijan dressed as angels and devils with dancers behind them gyrating on the television.

(*It should be noted that any descriptions in this post are not only not an exagerration, but if anything, a lacking attempt to try and describe the visuals and music that play before you on the screen.)

Basically Eurovision is a massive song competition across Europe where each country submits a performer, and all of the countries vote for a winner. It has been put on every year since 1956 as an ambitious endeavour in live television, along with an opportunity to tie together Europe in the post-war period. Past winners have included famous acts such as ABBA and Celine Dion.

I would have thought that for such a massive competition, surely one of us Americans should have heard about it. What you get, then, is an incredibly eclectic mix of musical genres going back to back for two hours without any commercial breaks. Some countries like Romania take the serious ballad approach, while others go for irony. Below, Spain with a song about a chicken, and Latvia with one about pirates in which they yell out to a techno beat "With a hii hii hoo and a hii hii hey!", show some of the odds sides of the competition. If in doubt, though, a country's seem to take the approach of getting a beautiful young girl, getting her scantily clad, and then adding some sort of disastrous pop song to that idea:

Just some of the many faces of Eurovision.

It really is something else. If you feel like watching any of these for a sample, simply click here. I would say if you want odd, then check out Bosnia & Herzogovina's entry, which features odd looking women in wedding dresses bouncing up and down, while a man and women sing and dance through a colorful clothesline.

After the performances are finished, there is a 15 minute period in which people call or text in their selections for winners in a country other than themselves. Here, the competition gets incredibly interesting on a political level. Apparently, lots of academic studies have been done analyzing the history of voting patterns in Eurovision, and how they are indicative of important political and ethnic issues at the time.

The biggest problem that the competition suffers from is extreme bloc voting. Essentially, all of the Eastern countries, Baltic countries, and Scandinavian countries will vote highly for one another while awarding no points to Western Europe. These relationships explain why Greece and Cypress give each other the top scores ever year.

For decades before the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, it appeared to be more or less music competition essentially. There were always allegations of improper influences, such as Franco bribing countries to let Spain win, but the competition at least had elements of being free.

Since Russia and the former Soviet states have entered and created massive voting blocs, no winners have come from the West since 1997.

Those eligible for the competition are part of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which allows a country like Israel that once won with a transexual to participate each year.

This year, there was little surprise as Russia easily swooped in to win the competition. The rumor is that Baltic states are increasingly concerned about Russia potentially not providing oil, so they are trying to win favor with the Russians.

Another interesting aspect are the effects of ethnic diasporas on the voting results. The influence of migration could be seen in a country like Ireland which has seen an influx of Eastern Europeans in the past several years, giving two of its top three votes to Poland and Latvia.

As each country comes in to inform the rest of Europe about their votes, it becomes at little surprise as the votes are typically predictable based on their geopolitical relationships with other countries.

With the Russian winners, the competition is now set to take place in Moscow next year. This comes, though, at the grumblings of the big four countries -- France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom -- which provide much of its funding.

The shirtless Russian winner who apparently was doing nothing but loads of coke during his entire week in Belgrade leading to the competition. His act obviously featured an elevated ice skating rising rink out of nowhere.

Perhaps the largest draw to watching Eurovision on television is the commentary of Sir Terry Wogan on the BBC; the man is an institution. He has been broadcasting it every year since 1973. His broadcast, though, isn't what you would call typical news coverage.

The best way I can explain it, is that he basically provides narration over the song performances, the voting, and the actual hosts who are in the arena. It's not really neutral commentary either, as he makes fun of the acts and the hosts for their lack of talent, and the way they talk.

More or less, it sounds like he's couped up in a room by himself with loads of drinks, and progressively gets meaner and drunker as the competition drags on. And he lets you know it. It's wonderful.

At the end of this year's Eurovision broadcast, while the Russians danced in celebration on stage, Terry bemoaned that it was no longer a music competition anymore, and that both he and Great Britain needed to think about whether to come back next year.

It left a bit of a sour taste in Eurovision, as questions about what an integrated Europe really is are continually becoming difficult to answer.

On the bright side, though, we know that the French are the French. And their musical selection, which was my favorite, is quite a treat, and the new song stuck in my head:

Sébastien Tellier is basically cooler than anyone around.

Endings & Voids

Sitting in Ms. Belsheim's drawing class as a freshman in high school, I glanced through my Art Talk! course book reading about different forms of painting, sculpture, and printing, when all of a sudden an image grabbed me. Sitting on the top right hand side of the page, was a giant photograph of Machu Picchu. I had never seen it, or anything like it before. The image compelled me to do all of my prints, trying to replicate its image. I vowed that before I died, I would go to that mysterious place.

Several summers ago, I created a summer grant proposal through my college that placed me in the rural Andes for several months, and allowed me to at last hike up and see it. I remember after coming home, I knew that the next place I wanted to see in the world was Petra. Ever since I was a kid, and was mesmerized by Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, with the striking image of Harrison Ford and Sean Connery riding in contrast out of the mysterious city, I knew I wanted to go there.

So this past year, I spent my thoughts organizing a trip to the Middle East. I was excited about Istanbul and Jerusalem, but the real draw that pulled me into that direction of the world and made the trip reality was that vast and mysterious city built into the stone.

The next item on my checklist remains blank.

During college, I didn't really watch too much TV, as there always seemed to be things going on at night -- meetings, parties, studying, and it was never on a regular schedule that you could get accustomed to any weekly program.

I knew there were a couple shows, though, that were up my alley and would catch me if I gave them the time and watched them. As a graduate student in a foreign country for a year, I have less social demands than college, which has created at last the opportunity this year to catch up on shows like Entourage, Peep Show, and, at last, The Sopranos.

I finished the rather short runs of Entourage and Peep Show last year, and for the past several months have been consumed by the drama and dark humor of a small mafia family in New Jersey. It's odd, though, because of the 86 episodes of the incredible series, I only have five left now.

There is a bizarre sense and dread as I begin to watch one of the final episodes. I want to become consumed, but don't want it to end.

The not wanting it to end is more complicated, though, than simply knowing that the enjoyment that some show gives will be gone. Surely, that is a part of it, but like the places in the world that you want to visit, I'm not sure what is next, and that seems to play a more subtle role.

We become so consumed by those goals and checklists we have in our lives, so that once the list is done, we enter an odd and uncomfortable liminal void of what is next. We know that there are countless options out there for the next, but we have always had certain particular items in our mind that we envisioned doing. Once those are checked off, where are we left?

An approach might be take it in at a more organic pace, letting experiences or places come to you naturally. Things will face into place.

There is something to be said for that outlook, but I don't think that is what I want, or believe will turn out best. Things don't usually fall into place, and months, then years, can easily pass by without any of those desires being met.

It's a dilemma that folks come face to face with the year after finishing college. The next part, when that clear cut image isn't so visible, becomes difficult to idealize. I somehow managed to extend the dilemma by going to graduate school, but it is beckoning call that needs to be answered at some point.

Where to?

There is something to be said, though, I think for that image that once existed. If I hadn't imagined being in Petra, or finally sitting down and watching The Sopranos, it wouldn't have happened.

Perhaps, then, what comes next before being in an experience, is asking the question before providing the answer. It is new territory to have to remake aspirations when we had some that existed for so long.

Whether finally watching a show, the top 100 AFI movies, going some place in the world, learning a language, writing that thought in our head, the idea itself must be imagined and become part of that psyche of desire. Then the question mark can be filled in more clearly, and hopefully answered soon.

On Typeface

Perhaps one of my quirkier interests is my love of fonts. It would make sense perhaps, if I was involved in graphic design, journalism, or any sort of seemingly related field where the selection of serif or sans-serif means everything, but the truth is, for some reason I just can't get enough of typography.

Folks may quickly glance at a font without giving it much thought, but there is an incredible amount that goes into each character.

Just some of the different variables that form a font.

It probably isn't a surprise, then, that I was much too overjoyed when the documentary Helvetica came out last year. The font Helvetica is essentially the benchmark of 20th century typeface. It is a gorgeous sans-serif font created by the Swiss in the 1950s. It is impossible that you haven't seen it before. Shown below on the film's poster, it is basically the identity of neutrality as far as fonts go. Without serifs, and looking very clean and consistent, it serves as the logo font for Microsoft, American Airlines, BMW, Toyota, the New York Subway, and countless others.

One of the really interesting aspects about Helvetica and Microsoft, which is listed above, is that it is not included on PC's by default. Microsoft was not willing to pay Adobe the rights to use Helvetica back in the 1980s, so it created Arial, which is a cheap knock off. Unfortunately, we now often see Arial as a default font for things since so many people use PC's, but there are a lot of imperfections. For instance, it isn't consistent with the angles of many of its lines such as the top of the t and middle of the C.

It may seem like something small, but it really does make a signicant difference when we want something to clean clean and professional. This article serves as a helpful guide to see the difference, so you can be a font elitist as well...

Whenever given the chance to explain why Apples are different, Steve Jobs will always find some way of bringing up the typography class he took at Stanford, and how that has allowed Apple computers to be much more aesthetically pleasing. Helvetica is typically the default font on Macs. It is hard to take issue with the typography choices of Apple:

Ironically Helvetiva's beautiful simplicity led to its overuse which has caused many in the field to believe it has lost its value.

While fonts may seem like something left to graphic artists, or college students trying to extend their essay from 12 to 15 pages without having to write more, (or an odd kid writing in a blog) they are gaining a lot of attention in political news this primary season. Much has been made (and applauded) of the Obama campaign's choice to use the sans-serif Gotham in all of its campaign posters.

This interesting political article looks at the Obama's, Clinton's and McCain's choice of fonts in the campaign for clues about messages. The New York Times just recently had a piece that is an interview with a branding expert dealing with Obama's choice of Gotham. And the Boston Globe had an article back in January with a nice visual examining which of the various campaign's fonts most evoked the idea of CHANGE.

It is making a significant difference in the feel of the campaigns. While Clinton's New Baskerville is "commonly used by book publishers, law firms and universities", Obama's Gotham was developed specifically for GQ magazine. One of the creators of the font said that GQ wanted a "sans-serif on a geometric structure that would look masculine, and new, and fresh, and be versatile". Is there any surprise then in the campaign's selection?

Meanwhile, McCain employs Optima, the font used to engrave the names of the dead soldiers on the Vietnam War Memorial; the intended message can easily be read. Indeed, fonts are in every sense political.

The Campaign Font Battle: Gotham v. New Baskerville v. Optima

Though I am not selecting the font for a presidential candidate, I always spend a great deal of time going through different options when designing a cover page for a paper, flyer for a program, or navigation bar for my web page. Sites like identifont and whatthefont become odd and frequented destinations when I see something that I know I like. It is a mysterious, dark world of subtlety, where one angle or serif can make all the difference.


Colophon for matthewdelja.com
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Elephant
ITC American Typewriter STD