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He'd seen things like that before, art videos, but he'd never actually tried
to pay attention to one. Putting on the hotel's white terry robe, he told
himself he'd better try. Yamazaki seemed capable of quizzing him on it later.
Why did people make things like this? There was no narration, no apparent
structure; some of the same fragments kept repeating throughout, at different
speeds.
In Los Angeles there were whole public-access channels devoted to things like
this, and home-made talkshows hosted by naked Encino witches, who sat in front
of big paintings of the Goddess they'd done in their garages. Except you could
watch that. The logic of these cut-ups, he supposed, was that by making one
you could somehow push back at the medium. Maybe it was supposed to be
something like treading water, a simple repetitive human activity that
temporarily provided at least an illusion of parity with the sea. But to
Laney, who had spent many of his waking hours down in the deeper realms of
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data that underlay the worlds of media, it only looked hopeless. And tedious,
too, although he supposed that that boredom was somehow meant to be harnessed,
here, another way of pushing back.
Why else would anyone have selected and edited all these bits of Lo and Rez,
the Chinese guitarist and the half-Irish singer, saying stupid things in
dozens of different television spots, most of them probably intended for
translation? Greetings seemed to be a theme. "We're happy to be here in
Vladivostok, We hear you've got a great new aquarium!" "We congratulate you on
your free elections and your successftil dengue-abatement campaign!" "We've
always loved London!" "New York, you're
...pragmatic!"
Laney explored the remains of his breakfast, finding a half-eaten slice of
cold brown toast under a steel plate cover. There was an inch of coffee lefr
in the pot. He didn't want to think about the call from Rydell or what it
might mean. He'd thought he was done with Slitscan, done with the lawyers .
"Singapore, you're beautiful!" Rez said, Lo chiming in with "Hell-o, Lion
City!"
He picked up the remote and hopefully tried the last-forward, No. Mute? No.
Yamazaki was having this stuff piped in for his bene
94 William Gibson fit. He considered unplugging the console, but he was afraid
they'd be able to tell.
It was speeding up now, the cuts more frequent, the whole more content-free, a
numbing blur. Rez's grin was starting to look sinister, something with an
agenda of its own that jumped unchanged from one cut to the next, Suddenly it
all slid away, into handheld shadow, highlights on rococo gilt. There was a
clatter of glassware. The image had a peculiar flattened quality that he knew
from Slitscan: the smallest lapel-cameras did that, the ones disguised as
flecks of lint.
A restaurant? Club? Someone seated opposite the camera, beyond a phalanx of
green bottles. The darkness and the bandwidth of the tiny camera making the
features impossible to read. Then Rez leaned forward, recognizable in the new
depth of focus. He gestured toward the camera with a glass of red wine.
"If we could ever once stop talking about the music, and the industry, and all
the politics of that, I think I'd probably tell you that it's easier to desire
and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to
accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us."
Someone, a woman, said something in French. Laney guessed that she was the one
wearing the camera.
"Ease up, Rozzer. She doesn't understand half you're saying." Laney sat
forward. The voice had been Blackwell's.
"Doesn't she?" Rez receded, out of focus. "Because if she did, I think I'd
tell her about the
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loneliness of being misunderstood. Or is it the loneliness of being afraid to
allow ourselves to be understood?"
And the frame froze on the singer's blurred face. A date and time-stamp. Two
years earlier. The word "Misunderstood" appeared.
The phone rang.
"Yeah?"
"Blackwell says there is a window of opportunity. The schedule has been moved
up. You can access now." It was Yamazaki.
2
95
"Good," Laney said. "I don't think I'm getting very far with this first
video."
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"Rez's quest for renewed artistic meaning? Don't worry; we will screen it for
you again, later."
"I'm relieved," Laney said. "Is the second one as good?"
"Second documentary is more conventionally structured. In-depth interviews,
biographical detail, BBC, three years ago."
"Wonderful."
"Blackwell is on his way to the hotel. Goodbye."
96 William Gibson
The site Mitsuko's chapter had erected for the meeting reminded Chia
ofJapanese prints she'd seen on a school trip to the museum in Seattle; there
was a brownish light that seemed to arrive through layers of ancient varnish.
There were hills in the distance with twisted trees, their branches like quick
black squiggles of ink. She came vectoring in, beside Mitsuko, toward a wooden
house with deep overhanging eaves, its shape familiar from anime. It was the
sort of house that ninjas crept into in the dark, to wake a sleeping heroine
and tell her that all was not as she thought, that her uncle was in league
with the evil warlord. She checked how she was presenting in a small
peripheral window; put a nudge more depth into her lips.
Nearing the house, she saw that everything had been worked up out of club
archives, so that the whole environment was actually made of Lo/Rez material.
You noticed it first in the wood-and-paper panels of the walls, where faint
image-fragments, larger than life, came and went with the organic randomness
of leaf-dappled sun and shadow: Rez's cheekbone and half a pair of black
glasses, La's hand chording the neck of his guitar. But these changed, were
replaced with a mothlike flicker, and there would be more, all the way down
into the site's finest resolution, its digital fabric.
She wasn't sure if you could do that with enough of the right kind of fractal
packets, or if you needed some kind of special computer. Her Sandbenders man
aged a few effects like that, but mainly in its presentation of Sand- 3
benders software. 0
9
97
14. Tokyo Chapter
Screens slid aside as she and Mitsuko, seated crosslegged, entered the house.
Coming to a neat halt side by side, still seated, floating about three inches
off the tatami (which Chia avoided focusing on after she'd seen that it was
woven from concert-footage; too distracting). It was a nice way to make an
entrance. Mitsuko was wearing the kimono and the wide belt-thing, the whole
traditional outfit, except there was some low-key animation going on in the
weave of the fabric. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]