Just Another WordPress.com Site Indeed
My only possible tagging rival, the weird beard behind Hovermansion’s Blog, has been doing some amazing things with crepe paper seriality lately. Whether it be confounded specularity, as is the case with a preening Dracula who two-fists hairstyling accoutrements in front of a reflectionless mirror, or confounded primogeniture, as evinced by the disappointed king who sees little of himself as he stands before his decidedly not shovel-ready son, doubling and reflection are recurrent Hovermansion themes.
The digital mixed media pieces on Hovermansion, which are usually sparse collages built up from original drawings, are characterized by a wanton incorporation of generic, Google-retrieved clip-art. Through the deliberate selection of mostly one-point perspective images, Hovermansion scenes achieve an impossible flatness that would make the Cubists proud. But it’s the blog’s subtle approach to content-through-technique that really twirls my props. I’ll start with the author’s most recent creation, since it’s the one that prompted me to finally post about his blog. Oh, and I don’t usually include image links in my posts, but this is a rare instance in which I will, because these Hovermansion pieces deserve to be seen in all of their over-sized glory. So, yeah. Do click through.
Picture-In-Picture
In “It’s Gonna Be A Rough Day At School”, the seriality of Eugene’s triple portrait is nothing short of comic genius. Not one but two instances of PIP (and the sloppy pasting of Eugene’s face onto the family photograph may actually score higher on the funny than the comic-font captioned inset over Bernard Shaw’s shoulder).
Broadcast and Projection
Another great post involving duplication and facsimile is “Conspiracy Theory 101”. Here ima hafta insist that you click through on the small version above to explore the original, as the strange hole in the wall (the post’s tags suggest that this is to be interpreted as a “wormhole”) contains aliens who observe the same scene as the viewer—duplicated via surveillance equipment that itself echoes the overhead projector in the main space.
Despite all of the repetitition, the “do not erase” bit is probably my favorite detail on this one.
Infinite Regress
The earliest instance of Hovermansion’s hallmark seriality is found in “House Rat”. And it’s an intricate example—perhaps even more intricate than the elaborate upside-down representation required for the overhead projector in “Conspiracy”. In “House Rat”, the blog’s ubiquitous gilded frame (it has since held Hulk Hogan, as well as an Ames employee working at a key-cutting machine) contains the entire image, which itself contains the entire image, and so on—without any indication whether the viewer is seeing a mirror or a static depiction. The presence of this gilded frame and its contents is awesome in its superfluity.
The inherent observational humor, wordplay and forced literalness of Hovermansion really make it unnecessary for me to tweak or draw parallels or identify source material. But that’s never stopped me before, so I’ll still end on one of my side-by-side comparisons:
L: PT Cruiser (artist’s rendering), via Hovermansion; R: Midlife Chrysler (in banana), via a douche bag near you
ASSIGNED MEANING 