Media is in its Decoration Era

How books and TV in design have come to define an age with too much content 

To live a modern existence is to constantly outsource our inner world. Cognition allows us to conjure up our own images in our mind’s eye, but most of the time I prefer to let someone else do the work of mental picture-making. When I’m riding the subway, I’m imagining an elaborate wedding gone-wrong, supplied to me by a storytelling podcast. When I’m waiting for a friend, I’m reading an article on my phone and letting the characters of the story take up my consciousness. The psychological experience of idle time is often completely divorced from the actual space I inhabit. When I escape into a book or album, I am less a part of my physical space, and I signal to others that disconnection is permissible. 

Except lately, these physical spaces have adopted a clever camouflage to reflect our new reality.

Recently, restaurants and cafes everywhere have been big on bookshelves, but not to house books which patrons might take and read – they’re design tools. At Poetica Cafe, a chain of coffee shops in Brooklyn, books quite literally are climbing the walls, their spines splayed open and glued to the wall, a tantalizing intellectual collage – except their haphazard placement makes them impossible to read. At Cafe Lyria in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood, an old-fashioned TV sits on a shelf with other relics – a sewing machine, a Greek-style bust and a stack of newspapers. Nothing plays on this TV – it’s just another object in the shop’s attempt at an airy and erudite aesthetic.

Welcome to media as decor. Foliage, fauna, and even buildings have long been inputs of design, showing up in prints and silhouettes. As media increasingly becomes the everpresent backdrop of our lives, the objects of media – TVs, books, newspapers and records – become as eligible for print-making as flowers.

How we got here: ambient media to ambiance media 

Media, of course, must be read or registered to some extent. Decoration, by contrast, is primarily meant for adornment and not any greater engagement. To describe a table, I simply need to look at it. To describe a song, I need to pay more attention. Or do I?

Several decades ago, artists began to explore the possibility of mass media to enhance a space – to exist somewhere between decoration and media. One of the most preeminent artists of this genre, Brian Eno, created the album “Ambient 1: Music for Airports.” In this, he sought to enhance the experience of being at a physical location by toning down some of its most engaging properties and taking notes from the space it was trying to complement. The airport mood, he notes, has “something to do with where you are and what you’re there for — flying, floating, and, secretly, flirting with death.” In the liner notes on “Ambient 1,” Eno writes that ambient music should be ‘as ignorable as it is interesting.”

Ambient media, once avant garde, has become inescapable, albeit in an inverted format. 

The rise of platforms like Spotify, Netflix, and TikTok have provided an endless supply of content, where algorithms study our every move, feeding us ever more material to keep us from logging off. Critics like media studies scholar Paul Roquet have named this evolved form “ambiance media,” digital noise which allows people to escape into “a mood as a concretized thing, an off-the-shelf “vibe” consumable as a product.” Think lo-fi beats to study and relax to, or Emily in Paris and Chef’s Table – slickly produced, visually appealing shows where not much happens. Writer Kyle Chayka compares the earlier era of “prestige TV,” – demanding watches full of complex plotlines – to modern television, writing, “Here, there is nothing to figure out; as prestige passes its peak, we’re moving into the ambient era, which succumbs to, rather than competes with, your phone.”

It’s not just scholars cherry-picking the most mind-numbing examples. The CEO of Netflix has told investors its biggest competitors are not other corporations but sleep, while a Spotify executive said the company “fights for the background” of people’s attention.

In this climate, is it any wonder that media artifacts like books, newspapers, and TVs are infiltrating our decor and our fashion, not as art to engage with, but as totems of the modern age? 

Cultural capital to capital 

Our media-filled realities are not the only explanation for why prints of books and newspapers have popped up on blouses and bakery walls. Another theory is that designers want to borrow some cultural capital from forms of media typically regarded as more high-brow. Writer Nick Harmis notes the recent phenomenon of fashion houses collaborating with authors as a form of branding. Valentino invited poet Rupi Kaur to read her writing at a post runway-show party and partnered with literary (albeit thirsty) Instagram account “Hot Dudes Reading” on an ad campaign. Dior, for a Jack Keorac-inspired men’s collection, had models walk on a runway covered with the original manuscript for “On The Road.” 

The tendency for one artform to reference another is not particularly novel – it is fundamental to the creation of art. But the routine process of intra-medium inspiration has fallen prey to rapid-cycle consumption, resulting in a dangerous trend: art as vibes.

In the digital age, books themselves have started to become art cum ambient media, a place to exist in ephemerally but not really engage with. Via platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr, authors regularly post moodboards – digital collages of images that capture the aesthetic of the book. In response to an anonymous Tumblr’s user’s critique that the rise of moodboards has made young adult novels more similar, with certain plotlines seemingly designed to be placed on a future digital collage, fantasy author Claire Wenze responded that literary moodboard culture is the result of “the congealing of "YA [fantasy] as a Marketing Category," acknowledging the role of digital dynamics on creative production. Writing about the modern novel’s transformation under the pressures of the Internet, cultural scholar Mitch Thereiau suggests that Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History is itself a foundational text to the digitally-borne, literary aesthetic “dark academia,” which “already anticipates its robust afterlife at the center of an online image culture.”

So long as creators exist in a digital world, they need to use its tools and vocabulary to make art that is culturally salient. But just because artists can adapt to this new reality does not make it net good. As we continue to live on the information superway, everything becomes landscape. 

Artificial intelligence is already guzzling years of knowledge and creation and spitting it out into handy answers for our queries. Media as decoration has a similarly flattening effect – human creativity and intellectual output doesn’t have to be seriously engaged with. It can exist solely to serve a superficial function in our lives. When media is the print of a dress or the backdrop for a living room, it hems in our world, far gone from its original potential of connecting disparate people. 

Uprain: What We Know and How We Know It

When it rains, it never pours anymore. Records indicate that the last full-on thunderstorm was well before the comet. On muggy days — like today — the air is simply wet, a translucent drizzle never thick enough to merit an umbrella. Weather so common that nobody even took notice until someone pointed it out. Then, we all became scientists.

In October, another breakthrough. Dr. Nadim Al-Jally (former professor of economic studies at George Mason University, expertise rendered useless by the modern economy, which obeys no rules except to give the faint impression of intentional, toddler-like recklessness) discovered that the rain was falling both ways. From the sky, business as usual, and also from the earth. This second rain, officially called Terrapluvia but colloquially known as “uprain” or Ghost Rain, is a heavy, mist-like thing that quietly but consistently floats upwards, joining the clouds. Clouds are otherwise the same as ever.

In the typical reaction to major scientific breakthroughs, Dr. Al-Jally was initially called a total crackpot and temporarily prohibited from his already-empty classrooms. But the fast news cycle of the digital age worked in his favor, and a successful grassroots effort cleared his name (though not the air). Textbook diomramas of the water cycle were begrudgingly altered. The CDC tested the new water, and finding no toxins passed the project along to the low-funded and bureaucracy-bogged Department of Environmental Protection, which to-date has not released any further research.

A common theory is that Ghost Rain flows from a rich pocket of groundwater, cracked open by the impact of the comet. Following this thread, many people have begun collecting it in makeshift “Parch Huts,” clean tarps which trap the uprain as condensation and funnel it into a ceramic vessel. The water is then used for drinking, and is said to have health benefits.

Here at New Earth Commune, we employ a farm of Parch Huts and proudly drink 100% Ghost Rain. Our water is tested daily with iodine drops and further purified with volcanic pumice stones. Our happy, hydrated members report that Ghost Rain imbues their waking lives with a sense of vigor, assists in sleep, and even sanitizes unwanted content from dreams. All concede that it tastes faintly of pewter, though no pewter compounds have ever been detected. 

To learn more about geoengineering initiatives and membership options, please visit @NewEarthCommune on Instagram. 

This piece is excerpted with permission from a series of informational brochures produced by the New Earth Commune, which is based outside of Norfolk, Virginia. 

“The Boat Sunk Itself” and Other Unusual Reports from Calloway, S.C.

by Geraldine Oaks

The sleepy fishing village of Calloway, South Carolina was embroiled in scandal and mystery. Reports of strange happenings came to me in the usual way. The boy, paid just above minimum wage and panting from the long bike ride and the several hundred stairs of my lighthouse he had to climb, clutched at his gut while holding out the note. Written in hastily scribbled Crayola Palm Leaf, it read:

“Boat mysteriously sunk off the coast of Calloway. Connection to eerie song also reported by witnesses? Immediate investigation required. Payment doubled.” 

The boat in question was the Catamarina, an old fishing schooner reportedly owned by the family of Calloway’s mayor, Don Priest. I highly suspected this to be the work of fraudsters looking to collect on insurance. These suspicions were founded on Priest’s latest scandal. He was photographed cavorting aboard that same schooner with several runner-ups of the Prestigious Calloway Talent and Beauty Competition—itself not a crime, save for his wildly unhappy, soon-to-be-ex-wife, Regina Priest, who publicly swore to divorce and take every penny she could. Sinking the boat would provide the family with a nice payout, money that Ms. Priest would not be able to access via divorce proceedings. Nothing necessarily requiring my expertise in the strange and miscellaneously otherworldly. 

And yet, what of this eerie song? Was it the call of some passing albatross, or something queerer still? 

I took the job, more for the promise of double payment than anything else. And that is how I found myself listening to the claims of the lead witness while standing on an overgrown dock in Calloway, the Catamarina’s final resting place. 

“The boat sunk itself,” she said bluntly, staring off into the waves of the North Atlantic Ocean as they frothed around the top of the Catamarina’s tallest mast, which poked just above water level a few yards away. The she in question was none other than Ms. Priest herself (who had insisted upon the courtesy title). She was a sharp-looking woman in her late 50s, tall and thin, with a pointed nose, pointed eyebrows, and an even pointier chin. The strong, frequent gusts of wind blowing off the ocean caused her to sway slightly, yet despite her five-inch blood-red heels, she never lost her balance. To her left was a tall, broad, imposing woman in a black and gray pantsuit who spoke not a word, but would frequently shoot Ms. Priest looks heavy with indiscernible meaning. She went unremarked upon during our interview, but after doing some digging, I believe her to be Briony Mathers, Ms. Priest’s personal attorney. 

“How could you be sure?” I inquired. 

“She told me so.” 

“Could you elaborate?” I inquired further. This spurred one of the aforementioned looks from Mathers. 

“I don’t think I will,” said Ms. Priest. After a moment, she added: “And don’t listen to anything those Scabbies will tell you. They’ll say anything for a buck or a chuckle. Kids these days. Do you have any?” 

“No” I lied. This didn’t seem the time to discuss the finer points of child-rearing. “Who are these Scabbies?” 

“Pesky little shits. Riff raff. Charlatans. Skateboarders. You know the type. Never worked a day in their lives, yet won’t blink to beg for a dollar.” Ms. Priest gestured down the salt-blasted beach, where, some ways away, I spied several figures gathered around a small fire. 

“Ms. Priest, do you think it’s possible your husband-” 

“Ahem,” she coughed. 

“I’m sorry,” I continued. “Ex-husband. Do you think it’s possible he sunk the Catamarina? I believe you recently hired the services of one Brian Woolworth, a private investigator, to look into his reported infidelities. Maybe Mr. Priest sunk it to hide the evidence? To smooth over the divorce proceedings, perhaps? Or maybe even just for the insurance money? You stand to receive a sizable chunk of his fortune if your lawsuit is successful. Maybe he is looking to pad his coffers, as it were.” 

But in response, she merely snorted and rolled her eyes. “That piglet? No. The boat sank itself. I told you, Mrs. Oaks, I’m quite sure of that.”

Ms. Priest ignored my attempts to pry further into how she knew this, or by what means the boat communicated with her. In this job anything was possible, but when there is clear human motive and means, the mundane explanations typically prove to coincide with reality. And yet, stranger things have happened than a boat gaining sentience and deciding to sink itself. While I was not convinced, I decided to change topics. 

“There were reports of a song being heard the night the Catamarina sank,” I said. “Some sort of strange, melodic vocalization. Did you-” 

“Sure, I heard it,” Ms. Priest muttered. “Ungodly. That’s what it was. It came from the water, out beyond the Catamarina. It was haunting and depressive and just ugly. The Scabbies heard it too, but I doubt they’ll own up to it. Fucking ungodly. This whole world—what has become of it? For what purpose, I ask you? And I tell you what, I didn’t believe a word of it until the boat sank itself. These stories of, of, of wrong, broken miracles. Liberals. They’ll print anything to get a little traction. No offense, of course. But fuck them. And for all this, this, this weirdness, what’s it for? Is this the world you wanted? Songs without singers. Suicidal schooners. And you still can’t keep a grown man away from collegiate tarts. What’s the point? It’ll all burn, that’s what I say. It’ll burn, and all the little activists and philosophers and blasphemers still won’t know why they caught fire.”

“And why do you think that is?” I asked. 

Mathers, who had been giving Ms. Priest several ignored and increasingly severe looks, let out a small cough. 

“I won’t speak of it,” said Ms. Priest. “This interview is over. I have a pilates class at three.” And they went together, side by side, Ms. Priest and Mathers, walking slowly down the aging dock to the waiting jet-black Lincoln Navigator parked some meters away. 

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The Scabbies turned out to be teenagers. There were four of them, all sporting varying degrees of shaggy hair and unkempt clothing. Their pants, ripped along the knees and shins, revealed scars and scabs, some still oozing. They were androgynous to the last, with roughly clean-shaven faces, long hair, and glazed, distant eyeballs, a result of the marijuana they smoked throughout our encounter. Their genders were quite indiscernible by voice and appearance, and any attempt to gather their pronouns or names through questioning direct or indirect was met with silence. They were gathered around a small fire of driftwood some ways back from the tideline. In the sand next to them, heaped in a careless pile, were four beaten skateboards that seemed to be covered in fading communist imagery.

The sun began to set. As we spoke, we watched a salvage team start to pull up the wreckage of the Catamarina, silhouetted by the peach-gold light of the sleepy sun as it sank beneath the horizon at the end of the ocean. A large truck positioned a long crane arm over the wreckage. Divers held chains attached to the crane arm and slipped beneath the surface near the still-protruding mast of the sunken schooner. 

The tallest one, who I shall call Rose due to a flower-shaped patch on their frayed black denim jacket, did most of the talking.

“Regina [Priest] sunk the Catamarina, my friend,” said Rose in a quiet lilt. The others nodded in agreement. “We saw her swimming away from it as it sank and climb onto that dock over there. Right over there.” They gestured to where I had been interviewing Ms. Priest.

“I bet she said we did it, didn’t she?” Said another of the Scabbies sitting by the fire. I will refer to them as Roller, as they were constantly rolling joints as we spoke. “That’s classic bourgeoisie tactics. Classic Priest family tactics. Blame it on the working class while collecting insurance, or whatever. Capitalist schemes and shit. You didn’t fall for it, did you?”

I told them what Ms. Priest told me; that the boat sank itself.

“Nah,” said Rose. “Boats don’t sink themselves. They have too much to live for, you know? Floating in water all day, and the sun and the sky and the waves and... If I was a boat, I’d sink- I’d never self-sink.”

“Ever,” said Roller. The others nodded once more. 

“Unpack that for me,” I said. “What do you know of the inner psychology of old shipping vessels? It wasn’t exactly, well, alive, was it?” 

The Scabbies looked to Rose, who stood silent for several moments, fiddling with the joint in their mouth. “I mean, everything could be alive, right? That’s what they’re saying these days. Y’know. Like Beauty in the Beast or some shit. Talking plates. Don’t you write about stuff like that? Like, weird reality scrambles and whatnot?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve had a number of paranatural encounters working this job. But a sentient schooner would be a first.” 

“You never forget your first,” said Roller, and the others chuckled. 

There was a loud sloshing from the dock, and we all fell silent as, on creaking chains, the broken hull of the Catamarina was raised from the ocean. A second large truck had arrived, this one towing a massive, open-top metal container. The crane swung the wrecked ship over towards the container. Just then, the chains snapped, and the Catamarina fell on the edge of the container and split in two. The workers cursed loudly and brought out fresh chains to secure the remaining wreckage. 

Rose winced. “I always liked that boat. Alive or not, she had character, anyway. The Catamarina did,” they said. “You could tell by the way it skipped over the waves. Even when it was docked, it had this jaunty air of- of- I don’t know...”

“Contentedness,” said another of the Scabbies, who I will call Hoodie on account of their fluffy hooded sweater. “But she was alive, you know. I didn’t tell y’all this, but I was out here with Taylor a couple weeks ago-” 

“Taylor who? Taylor S.?” Asked Rose. 

“No. Taylor K.,” continued Hoodie. “Anyways. We were out at night, just walking around, you know. And the Catamarina was docked over there. Right over there. And all her lights were lit up. And we heard laughing, too. Like, big fucking belly laughs, you know? Like, laughing with your best friends type of laughing. Raucous. And we were just hanging out and listening and smoking and whatever, and then out comes Regina. But she was by herself. All alone, but with this big, shit-eating smile on her face. I didn’t know that woman had that much happiness in her, but she does. Anyways. Who was she laughing with, you know what I mean? Cuz there were two voices, on my life, OK, there were two voices. But she was the only one that came out. Therefore, I posit, that ship was alive, man. And she and Regina were in love. You’re not- check it. This story you’re writing? It’s not about financial fraud, or whatever. You’re writing about murder. I think she murdered that boat, you know? I think, like, she knew about Don and the cheating, and they’re gonna divorce, and she’s gonna lose the boat. So she sunk it.” 

Rose nodded appreciatively. “Love can really mess you up. Thanks for sharing.” 

Hoodie nodded back, looking melancholy. “Rest in Power, Catamarina,” they said. 

I wasn’t sure what to make of this report. Any of a hundred occurrences could have accounted for the raucous laughter. Perhaps Ms. Priest was on the phone, or talking to someone who never left the boat while Hoodie was watching. Or Hoodie could be making the whole thing up, or missed significant details on account of being fantastically stoned. But in my experience, confronting interviewees with these perspectives at the moment rarely yields results and often ends an interview cold. 

I decided instead to change topics. “So you were all out here the night the Catamarina sunk, correct?” 

They all nodded affirmatively. 

“Ms. Priest reported hearing a song, some sort of eerie, melodic vocalizations, the same night,” I continued. “Did you hear anything like this? Was this before or after the Catamarina sank?” 

Upon mentioning the song, Roller inhaled suddenly and began a bout of fitful coughing. Rose, their eyes wide, slowly looked away from me and offered their friend a bottle of water. The rest refused to make eye contact. After several moments during which Roller’s coughing slowly subsided, I repeated the question. 

The Scabbies looked at each other, their expressions uncharacteristically grave. 

“We didn’t hear nothing like that,” said Rose. “Anyways, we gotta bounce. It’s bad luck being out here at night.” 

I asked them what they meant, but they didn’t seem to hear me. I listened to the sound of their skateboard wheels rolling across the uneven boardwalk quietly receding as I watched the salvage crew lower the final piece of the Catamarina’s hull into the metal container. 

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I had only booked a single night at the Motel Sherman’s on the edge of the town. I was supposed to be heading home today, but curiosity inclined me to stay. More than the mystery of the boat, whose demise I still believed to be an act of human fraud, the accounts—or lack thereof—of the mysterious song had intrigued me. If there was anything that was super, ultra, or unnatural in Calloway, I would bet my bottom dollar it was the source of the music. 

For my second night in South Carolina, I decided to camp out on the beach. If there was any truth to the rumors, this would be the ideal spot to hear the song. I set up my tent (which I always keep in the trunk of my Wrangler for just such an occasion) by the still-smoldering remnants of the Scabbies fire, several meters away from the tideline. The teenagers were long gone, just as they indicated. In fact, the entire beach, or at least what I could see of it, was deserted. 

As night fell, I fed the fire with bits of dried driftwood and rehydrated a packet of leek and potato soup with freshly boiled water. While I waited for dinner, I set up my sound equipment: One military-grade cassette recorder and a high-fidelity, long-distance microphone. The microphone was pointed out towards the sea, just beyond the grave of the Catamarina. I checked and rechecked the sound levels, and ate, and waited. 

The face of Regina Priest came to mind. I could see her lips tightening, her widened eyes suddenly darting back and forth, as I asked her about the song. I knew that expression. It was fear and desperation. There is a certain type of person who demands reason and purpose from life, and Ms. Priest is certainly counted among them. I suppose I am as well. Perhaps that is why I cling to my theory of financial fraud being the cause of the Catamarina’s demise—a theory that so far has failed to account for ghostly music sung by invisible maestros. In my profession as a field reporter for Something in the Water, it’s my job to get to the bottom of reality and differentiate the purely human from the supernatural. And yet, what truth exists in the age of the comet? What purpose can be gleaned from, as Ms. Priest put it, a broken miracle? 

There is no shortage of humans who have been set adrift (or set themselves adrift) from what I like to call contemporary societal purpose. For all of human history, well before reality-bending comets, there have been those who turned their back on society, on religion, on whatever dominating social power existed at the time. When I press these folk for their motivations, many articulate a quest for some personal truth that they believe lies outside the boundaries of everyday life. 

If they have it right, and it is for each human to define for themselves their own truth, what becomes of the Ms. Priests of the world who look at the bending of reality and find no purpose to latch on to? What becomes of those like myself who find solace in reporting the truth, as it happened, and nothing aside? Surely it is just as valid to find truth and purpose within the lines of society than without. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the scales have forever been weighted one way, and are just now beginning to tip. But all of these suppositions would point to some sentience behind the structure of reality that wants something from us, and I have scant proof that this is the case.

I wonder if the 100 trillion microorganisms that populate every living human question the decisions of their host or are merely along for the ride. I wonder if the universe itself is alive and set itself adrift, and is tugging the human race, kicking and screaming, into the voidstuff of unreality. I wonder if the only purpose is the quest for purpose, and Ms. Priest asking “why?” was the point all along. 

And it was with all these thoughts swirling around my head that I heard the music. 

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I woke the next morning tasting salt and feeling pain. I opened my cracked lips and rubbed coarse sand off of my drying tongue. My throat was dry as chalk and my voice was little more than a guttural whisper. 

The pain came mostly from my hands, which had been badly burnt, and my head, whose pounding reminded me of a concussion I sustained by falling off an American Thoroughbred at summer camp. My tent, clothes, audio equipment, and rations were strewn about the surrounding quarter mile of beach, as were the blackened logs of the firepit. 

I remember vaguely hearing the song, softly at first, as it drifted across the waves to me. A sort of undulating, melodic chanting from a voice that seemed both alive and inhuman. I can recall the song worming its way into my skull like a cockroach desperately squeezing under a crack in a door to escape an approaching flood. And I saw visions, too. Abstract, awesome, apocalyptic things that exited my mind as soon as they had entered, yet left behind a deep scar. I think at the time I must have gone mad. I cannot recall any of it for you, but much like someone whose left and right hemispheres of their brain are bisected, I am sure I could point to what I saw, were someone ever able to conjure such images.

Over the next few hours, as I gathered my scattered belongings and attempted to make sense of the previous night, I made two discoveries. 

The first of these was waiting for me on the cassette tape I had recorded. At around the three-hour mark, I could hear the strange, warbling vibrations of the song as it started to gain in volume. However, just before it became truly audible, it was interrupted by my own shrill screaming. My screams continued for several minutes until the recording ended with a violent crash. Judging by the condition of my recorder when I found it half-buried in a sand dune, it appeared as though it had been pulverized with a still-burning log. 

When I took the cassette to the Priest family mansion, hoping to have the snippet of the recorded song confirmed by Ms. Priest as the same she had heard, I was informed by the county sheriff loitering outside the front gate that I was no longer welcomed in the town of Calloway and was advised to leave most expeditiously. Still, I bummed around the beach for the day, hoping to corroborate my experience with the Scabbies, who I assumed lied to me about their encounter with the song, but they were nowhere to be found. Soon after I left town and drove for sixteen hours back to my lighthouse, where I wrote down everything I could remember about my time in Calloway.

As for the Catamarina, word reached me several days later that the cause of its abrupt demise will forever be a mystery due to the botched salvage operation. My research indicates the insurance payouts for such a vessel are around thirteen million dollars, and the Priest family is reportedly expecting a full payout. 

The second discovery I made that morning was of a note tied to the zipper of my tent with a bit of dried reed. Written in charcoal and in a handwriting I did not recognize, it simply read: 

It wanted to know what lay beneath the surface.