The first screen of Sooner or Later shows a number of icons. Clicking on the 'Active Audio' 17 icon produces text which explains the product and the company producing it (ie PAMS). This kind of instructional and promotional information itself emphasises the novelty and unfamiliarity of the medium to consumers (and is also a prominent element in Xplora 1 and the Severed Heads' Metapus). Once in to the 'Press Conference' section the interaction begins. Clicking on one of the hands holding microphones results in a question being asked, then clicking on one of the four women gives you an answer. Each of the women have their own answer to each of the (over twenty) questions that can be asked. The next screen, showing all four of the band, gives you the option of finding out more about the woman of your choice. Click on Melanie, for instance, and you will find out about her through text , video and photos. In the individual videos 18, the women talk 'to you' about their own personal philosophies. Melanie, for instance, believes dolphins hold the answer to the problems of humans and she is filmed on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Each of the band make reference to the product in their individual biography section. Click on Jackie and she takes you into her family home, shows photographs of relatives. It all seems very natural and she even gets an ('impromptu') call from a friend on her mobile phone as the video keeps recording. Click on the 'Sooner or Later' icon and a screen shows a brick wall with graffiti and a video 'window'. Click on this and the music video section begins.
The video's image change for the group is unequivocal. All dressed in white, three of the girls are 'goddesses', while the fourth, Melanie, is the one who 'gets the man'. The choreography is more subdued than their previous work and, together with the costume, hairstyling, make-up and lighting, attempts a sultry, erotic feel which differs from the 'clean-living' vivacity of their earlier videos. This is reinforced with the tongue in cheek (and/or heavy handed) imagery of snakes, horses, owls etc. which seems to be used to evoke animal physicality. Further screens can be reached by clicking onto the backstage door, allowing the viewer to see the girls getting their hair done, see an interview with the video makers (and even meet the owners of the animals used in the video...) and generally feel a part of the video making process.
The video component in the GF4 CD-Rom was compressed ten times in the process of digitalisation but is still the biggest video component to be used in a PAMS' CD-Rom to date. The disc contains thirty one minutes of music plus the text, graphics and video and uses 360 megabytes of disc space. More complex and intricate CD-Roms use more disc space. For instance Peter Gabriel's Xplora 1 used the whole disc space, about 600 megabytes 19. The 31 minutes music running time is a significant factor here since BMG decided to market the disc through music outlets rather than the computer shops which handled Xplora I and other product (such as the Jump disc made for David Bowie).
d. Independent Options - The Severed Heads and Metapus
Despite the increasingly high marketing and media profiles of the CD-Rom format - and the role music CD-Roms played in early developments and publicity - the implications of the Australian Multimedia funding initiatives to the music industry (and music producers more generally) are somewhat unclear. Tom Ellard, founder member and leader of the Australian multimedia band Severed Heads 20, was one of the earliest (international) advocates of the CD-Rom as a medium of interest to musicians. As early as 1987, Ellard formed a 'parent company' to Severed Heads, entitled Sevcom, to develop multimedia projects for the band. In 1989 he identified the (then dominant) form of CDI (Compact Disc Interactive) 21 as a significant direction for bands such as Severed Heads to explore, arguing that:
| A CDI can be a book, a movie, a record, a computer game, all of the things that are sitting in people's lounge rooms in one big box.... Eventually we'll draw more people in and we'll have a 'band' that could record a CDI... (cited in Casimir: 18) |
As he went on to argue
| The limits of Sevcom will be defined eventually by the technology and the politics that go with it... The only way you can be truly independent is to do the whole thing from scratch, press the CDIs and make the players... In a way Mr Sony has more control over my future directions than I do (ibid) |
Ellard was one of only a handful of Australian cultural producers to have approached the DOCA to fund the development of a CD-Rom prior to the October policy announcement. Funding was not however forthcoming and Ellard produced Metapus, a CD-Rom retrospective of his band's career, in the 'independent' manner outlined above, using "tens of thousands of his own money" 22, his self-taught production expertise and five months of his own time. With considerable irony, given his 1989 comments, "Mr" Sony provided significant assistance to Ellard on the Metapus project when Sony USA - with whom his Australian record company Volition became affiliated in the early 1990s - mastered and manufactured the finished Metapus CD-Rom. Released in Australia in late 1994, the disc features over a hundred pages of text and information; video clip material, sound sequences; and an interactive game.
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