woodstock

Hey I just wanted to recap on what my paper covered. I discussed people of the 1960s who were social reformist. I inculded various riots, movements, festivals, and people who made use out of radical media to create the change they wanted to see. By use of these radical media outlets word got out and changes to the world, espically in the US was made. For example, the Berkley Barb was an undergound newspaper which let the people know of the situations occuring in which the governement was oppressing the people. In addition televsion covered riots which police brutlley beat civilians. All of these media outlets, along with the pepople who made use of them changed the world.

Activism In the White House: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10194174-38.html

I remebering finding and reading this article yesterday.  I was schocked to hear that Obama has hired activist Van Jones to serve as s special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).  I just got my thinking that activism, especially in the United States has target are government, criticizing the way the some things are carried out the the governmnet; while the government seems to always be attacking activists.  Although it is just one step, since Obama (the government) has hired Van Jones (activist) I feel like this is a small turning point showing the progression and influence that activism has reached! 

One last thing, I saw this article online and had to share it with the class. Not only is John Stewart hilarious but he makes some great points, that directly relate to the flaws with in mass media, and the importance of "investigative journalism" Please check it out , I think everyone will find it interesting and assuming!

First link is article
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Television/WireStory?id=7071736&page=2

Second Link is the show, and the show you want is titled

Intro - Brawl Street: Get Ready to Buy Low! And Sell Die

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

How To Become A Professional Media Activist: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=119

Also, I used some articles in my paper from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Report).  I really enjoyed there site, and especially thought it was funny and interesting that the organization actually has an entire section of there sight on educating everyone with a "FAIR'S MEDIA ACTIVIST KIT", it literally goes step by step of how to detec bias, communicate, etc.  At first I thought there were using this as a joke, but after reading each topic it was loaded interesting stuff.

Hey sorry I forgot more think, here is a link to Banksy's website, that we started to look at in class. For those of you who are not familiar with him or just for a good reference check out his stuff it is really amazing!!

http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Hey everyone,
I hope all your papers went well. As you know I did my paper on Shepard Fairey and I just wanted to share some extra information about him. The first link I am posting is to Underwire magazine, and it gives a little background on Shepard as well as some really great images of his art work. The second link, is to an article that discusses Shepard venting about copiers of his work. Make sure you check out the comments/blogs fallowing the article. It is really intersting to read about how much conterversy surrounds Shepard and get the full specturm of opniouns form his audeince.


http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/09/poster-boy-shep.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/10/shepard-fairy-o.html

http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/1999/12/328.shtml

Hey everyone, now that the papers are over, I wanted to give everyone the link to one of the blog's from Seattle Indy Media, that I used in my paper.  I really think that this blog segment really gives you an idea how of diverese alternative media can be.  I really could never imagine a mainstream source going this far.  Check it Out...

 

Whats A? Subvertisment

So here is my final Film Project the Subvertisment that I blogged about earlier this quarter. Please let me know what you think compliments and criticism are welcome. Please spread it around to your networks so that more people can see what this is all about.

Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama

I came across this youtube video a few weeks ago and it just made me think how some people will watch any story. This is a funny story but says way more about Americans and what we will watch and believe. I think that is also a good example how having so many media outlets can spread a story like this and the saddest part is they did a fallow up to this story. I also wanted to say I had a great learning experience this quarter and hope to see maybe of you next quarter in classes. 

http:www.youtube.com/watch?vnda_OSWeyn8

 

Culture Jamming

Hi All!
Here are some of the links I showed in class. I'm also including a couple I didn't show which deal with Detournment and subversive cartography... contemporary movements which may have been inspired from the Situationists/Guy Debord. These are also classified as Psychogeography. Basically these movements fit into Culture Jamming because they are questioning authority, authenticity and herd mentality regarding how we respond to our surroundings. Can we rely on a map to define our experience of a place? Why not create our own maps, our own realities based on personal experiences, our imagination and a hyper attention to our surroundings?

On the "Institute for Infinitely Small Things" website (the collective which publicly performs corporate commands), check out their projects, including the "unmarked package" video. This is a performance where the artists marched around Chicago with a pile of mysterious, unmarked packages and interviewed people on their views regarding fear and security. It's an interesting project.

Institute for Infinitely Small Things - Corporate Commands
http://www.ikatun.org/institute/infinitelysmallthings/corporatecommands/about.php

The Good Consumer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ut93YYZu8

The Bubble Project
http://thebubbleproject.com/a>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7GCsrX5K_o&feature=channel_page

Whirlmart - Buy Nothing Day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JajJCcUUVgk

Subversive Cartography - Situationists - Psychogeography
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Photos/html/en/sm-essay.html

Subversive Cartography - Urban Interventionism - tweaking how a neighborhood is portrayed on google maps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIDGyRO6w2o

The Boondocks

My presentation on Jan. 20 centered on the topic Radical Media and Resistance in Everyday Life. I showed the banned episode of the Boondocks; the comic strip started in a college newspaper in the late ‘90s with a small audience and no outside distribution. It then appeared monthly in the Source magazine, a hip hop magazine. The Boondocks gained popularity and was soon made into a television show on Adult Swim, attracting a mass audience.

Counter-hegemony occurs within a system, an attempt to challenge dominant ideological frameworks. The second season of the Boondocks television show had two episodes that were banned from distribution. The two episodes were a critique on Black Entertainment Television, which throughout its existence, the comic has constantly mocked. The banned episodes created a buzz on the internet, because their existence was not yet verified until a hip hop blog created a new post streaming the show.

At this point, the Boondocks had a mass following. The show itself had begun to steer more towards comedy for comedy’s sake, rather than its original political and social satirical commentary. It returned to its early roots in episodes challenging BET and black popular culture in an easily digestible form. One episode showed a hunger strike by the 10-year-old main character, the other, a ridiculous reality show trailing a self hating black man. The shows creator claimed he wrote these shows because BET has not changed, it is still an awful representation of black culture.

Link to watch the second banned episode no

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/videos/id.665/title.boondocks-hunger-strike-banned

Culture Jamming

Cultural jamming is re-appropriating the dominant message; taking the dominant message and speaking with it. An example of this would be Jay Z’s hit of the ‘90s, “Hard Knock Life”, where he samples a song from the musical Annie. He creates a rap around the hook sample with a narrative of his rough background. He dubs it the “Ghetto Anthem”, and repositions the message of a young white girl raised in an orphanage to fit an anthem of the young black man raised in America.

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFubqcvkSos

Another Fine Art Remix: Manet & Brack

Referring back to Kelly's presentation on Picasso's remix of Las Meninas, I thought of another relevant example.

While studying abroad in Brisbane, Australia in the fall, I took an Australian Art class where I was introduced to the work of Antipodean painter John Brack (1920-1999). He was born in Melbourne in 1920 and joined the Antipodeans group in the 1950s, protesting against abstract expressionism as a worthless form of art that did not reflect the truth of life.

His most famous work, The Bar (1955), is a remix of the famous A Bar at the Folies-Begere (1882) by Édouard Manet (1832-1883). Compare the two below:


Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Begere, 1882


Brack's The Bar, 1955

Brack used Manet's composition to comment on the six o'clock swill, which was the rush to buy drinks after work before Australian public bars closed between 5 and 6 p.m. in the 1950s. The Bar was a satirical and critical view of Australian suburban life, where the bar often served as a purely functional environment meant as an escape to the drone of 1950s suburban life.

In Manet's painting, the mirror behind the pretty barmaid reflects a lively, joyful atmosphere. She is helping a customer in the reflection, but in our head-on view, she appears idle and pensive, perhaps even bored or jaded.

In Brack's version, the barmaid -- who is angular and rather mannish -- is smiling slyly, not helping any customers. Behind her we can see, reflected in the mirror, a full bar of men methodically throwing back drinks.

The sharp contrast in atmosphere and purpose of the bar is apparent from Manet's view of the 1800s French social bar and Brack's image of the 1950s Australian escape-from-suburbia bar. Brack's use of Manet's work, set in a bustling bar, to comment on the current (for him!) condition of claustrophobic suburbia is apparent.

Just another example of fine art remix...!

Hacktivism

Hi all,

Here is what I'll be showing in class today. First a quick video that shows opposing views on hacktivism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNXk6kLd8IA

Recent example of hacktivism: skittles.com

Since skittles.com has changed their site in the past days... here's a related article about what i orignally planned to talk about...
http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/01/skittles-tweet-the-rainbow-or-racial-slurs/

The gist of this is skittles.com is basing their site off social media... the background of their homepage is merely a twitter search (today it is a facebook fan page). What the execs at Mars Inc did not expect (or maybe they did), is the "hep" use of social media would result in a large amount of people spamming skittles.com, posting everything from racial slurs to toilet humor. It's pretty clear that the users of twitter and now facebook are sending a pretty clear message to the company... "you don't get it, you're trying to be cool, and therefore we're going to screw with you".

Also if you're interested in learning more about the different types of hacking, looks like there's a book out by Tim Jordan simply called Hacking. Check out this interview he recently did that gives a brief overview: http://ourmaninside.com/2009/02/27/hacking-and-hacktivism/

Hey everyone,
I hope your weekend went well and you are ready to get back into the weekly grind. Well this is my first time blogging, ever. I came across this article in the New York Times, The Burden of Interactivity. I personally relate to this article; agreeing with the author that participating or being interactive with media can be scary and overwhelming. It is a cool comment on the process of the audience interacting with media, check it out and let me know your thoughts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/magazine/11wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1

I wanted to recap my presentation for the Intellectual Property portion, both for those not there and others who wanted to review it again. It is a confusing topic but I will make an attempt to define it as accuratly as possible. Intellectual property laws cover ideas dealing with copyrights, display of work in public, infringement, and allow different amount of protection with consideration to the date of the work. In a more specific instance, U.S commercial law which resides in matters entailing trademark law deals with words and/or designs which are used to specific a company. The federal standard for trademark is that it must characterize the company while at the same time adhering to the law. Trademarks must be acceptable for public domain, should not closely resemble a flag of a country or a person’s signature or likeness (without consent), nor can it be geographically descriptive of origin or product. If the trademark passes the stated rules above than it can be protected by the Lanham Act of 1946.
When it comes to virtual property the laws are not set in stone. Although material may develop via internet, to actually be eligible for copyright protection the material must be found in a fixed tangible medium as well as being original. A concern here is if the material is created and transmitted electronically should it be considered ‘fixed’. This also leads to the question if a document exits in physical space and is placed on the internet should it be protected for it is a second copy and not original.
All of this is confusing and I am looking foward to the furture to see what actual digital copywrite laws will or will not be put into place.