Leave the Tank Running

I want to know what the oil does to a song I hate.

This is not the question I was meant to bring to Apple’s new brand identity. There are people being paid to consider what the logo expresses. I have read about the equipment, and now I want somebody to put the wrong record on.

Aurich Lawson describes the production in Ars Technica on October 21. For Apple Music’s new look, the people at TBWA/Media Arts Lab worked with Fred again.. and a crew, lights, cameras, a tank of mineral oil, and a transducer. The device transmitted sound into physical ripples. They filmed the oil interacting with branding printed on transparent panels. Lawson says they chose oil for its higher viscosity. Even the liquid had to meet the requirements of the job.

The final effect was cleaned up and processed afterward. This wasn’t a vow to avoid computers. It was a way of getting something to happen in front of a camera.

Lawson likes the result more because he knows how it was made. Amid generated pictures and the suspicion surrounding them, he finds value in seeing the people and the physical work. The behind-the-scenes film supplies what he calls the receipts.

I understand the relief. There is a difference between being told a thing happened and being shown some of the arrangements by which it happened. But his account has given me an appetite which the finished logo probably isn’t designed to satisfy. I want more information about the oil. I have almost no questions about the brand.

Here is the film I would commission, not footage I am claiming Apple shot. Keep the tank. Keep whoever knows how to operate it without getting oil into the expensive parts. Put on a song which makes me reach for the radio before the singer has finished taking his first breath.

Then show me what happens.

I would like the liquid to register an objection. Some little recoil of the surface, a refusal to cooperate with the chorus. At last, a scientific instrument which understands me.

Of course the tank hasn’t been hired as a critic. It is responding to vibration. The record I despise might produce something lovely. I would have to sit through the bastard to find out.

This would be a much better use of my dislike than explaining it to someone who enjoys the song. They generally remain alive to its charms after I have finished, and I have spent an afternoon delivering a review nobody commissioned. With the tank I might at least discover something I wanted to look at.

Now I am interested in the volume. The part before the chorus. Whether one sound holds a pattern and another breaks it up. Those are questions, not results I have obtained. I haven’t run this experiment. I have become the man standing beside somebody else’s equipment, asking whether we could try just one more thing.

A dangerous man to admit near a working crew. He doesn’t have to clean anything afterward.

That is a different attraction from the promise of an image on demand. Ask for beautiful liquid rippling around a logo and you have named the result you hope to receive. The tank offers me a small extra nuisance: I can ask what happens if we change this, then have to wait for the answer to take shape. My instructions don’t settle whether I will like it.

A computer can offer experiments and surprises too.

Turn it down. Change the sound. What happens when it stops?

The people have made a new identity for a music service. I would like them to postpone finishing it so I can watch a substance recover from a song I dislike. I don’t know how long the recovery would take. That is one of the things I would like left in.

There might be nothing worth watching. The surface might settle promptly and leave me looking at a tank. I could discover that the person who cut the film knew exactly where my attention would run out. That would be irritating, but it would not require me to stop admiring the experiment.

Still, I want the chance to get bored with it myself. No quick succession of the best moments. Give one change time enough to become less interesting, then let another sound disturb it. I have spent hours listening to people who couldn’t manage either half of that arrangement.

Lawson wants the hands behind the image to remain visible. Reading him, I find I want the equipment kept available after the image has been secured. The job can be finished before I have finished being interested.

They could leave the logo in. I won’t make difficulties about the lettering. But I would like control of the next record.

And if the oil does something beautiful, I am going to insist we watch the recording once with the sound off.

Source: The new human-crafted Apple Music brand matters in an AI world