If you came of age in the '80s (and if you want to feel old, just type that), the phrase "I learned it by watching you" recalls the savage PSA coup de grâce from a pot-smoking teenager to the disheveled, raccoon-eyed father who's just discovered his kid's weed stash. Jump ahead a few decades and toss in a media-saturated cultural landscape—then the phrase takes on a distinctly political meaning. When any relatively frivolous outpouring of emotion—think tears and Spears—can turn up as a segment on the nightly news, one has to wonder from where our impressionable young ones might be forming their social educations.
At Downtown's Crewest Gallery, Syndrome Studios will turn this speculation into a three-dimensional realization. Poking fun at television and those who try to both escape and subvert its influence, they've constructed a toy TV with claw-like arms and spindly legs. In early renderings, it grows to enormous height and chases people down the street like a playfully terrifying Dr. Octopus. It should come as no surprise that Syndrome is itself a commercial motion-graphics design firm, with a client list encompassing the Big Three television networks, major record labels and a number of other high-profile media companies. It's kind of like Jonah spray-painting the inside of the whale.
George Ducker is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
