From the advertorial for NBA Live 2004 by EA Sports:

"10-Man Freestyle is a revolutionary addition to NBA LIVE 2004 that provides the most realistic movement for all ten players on the court. Thanks to extensive motion-capture sessions using ten players in real game situations, the NBA LIVE 2004 team captured lifelike positioning, technique, and movement for each player on the court. The motion-capture data allowed designers to build individual players from the ground up, as single data points morphed into wire-frame figures, which were then shaded and textured to produce amazing player reproductions. The result is a fluid, seamless reproduction of life on a real basketball court, where all ten players work both independently and in conjunction with each other to produce dynamic and intelligent offensive and defensive play."

1. The standard model of communications: Sender –> Message –> Receiver
2. Unlike a tangible industrial product (eg. a widget), an image-sign does not exist without a receiver to decode its meaning
3. Therefore, both firm and customer produce the image-sign, in ever-escalating oscillations of meaning
4. The customer then consumes goods associated with/attached to that image-sign
5. In this sense, the customer is a prosumer of the image-sign's meaning, while the firm simply takes a producer role
6. However, the customer/prosumer has few, if any, legal rights with regards to the creation of meaning of these image-signs
7. Thus the transfer or transaction of meaning is primarily one-way towards the customer/prosumer
8. This is problematic if individuals increasingly communicate with one another using the image-signs produced by popular culture: language is essentially being privatized
9. Prosumers must seek ways to assert their fundamental human right to communicate by injecting meaning into image-signs — through fair use or other legal mechanisms, or by illegal means if necessary

<!– Field notes for becoming Fitter Happier –>

A quick overview of the geography of Premier Fitness, from my tour on Wednesday and a quick visit today:

The main workout area is divided into three sections: the first is a cardio section composed of treadmills, etc. that faces a bank of televisions (I haven't seen what is playing on these televisions yet … perhaps the 99th percentile?); the second features basic universal weight equipment, designed to work all of the muscle groups; the third offers free weights as well as machines specifically devoted to leg exercises.

There are five satellite areas from the main gym area: a fitness testing area for new members to the club; a women-only workout area; an aerobics/kickbox studio; a spinning studio replete with stationary bikes; and a boxing studio that includes heavy bags, peanut bags, a full canvas ring, and a hard-ass-looking instructor.

From my visit to Krystal's office, and after walking by the open door to the women-only gym, I noticed that there are giant billboards in the women's workout area that exclusively feature a thonged female posterior. While I am a big fan of thonged female posteriors, I can only imagine the sort of "encouragement" this provides for the women working out in this area. The aerobics studio also offers billboards of idealized and disembodied breasts, triceps and glutes, both male and female alike.

The main gym area smacks so strongly of Foucault's disciplinary technologies it is bracing. However, there are elements of Baudrillardian hyperreality here as well: the order (odor?) of consumption is strong, since everyone is really here to purchase sex, no matter how diluted the form in which it is represented/commodified. The simulacra is that everyone is beautiful and that sex is readily available, when that is most far from the truth. As a matter of fact, the patrons (conveniently enough) appear to be tripolarized into those mawkishly thin, desperately obese, or humorously hypermuscular — none so beautiful as to warrant an appearance on one of the facility's billboards.