Technology and Public Space

About ten years ago, technology was like a new frontier waiting to be conquered by various industries. Unfortunately, corporate forces got there first and are slowly making it their domain. Without factoring subliminal messaging and product placement, it seems like commercial advertisements have managed to weasle their way into roughly 30% of the programs we watch on television today. (I have yet to watch the news without certain stories being sponsored by a corporate mega power or seen a sitcom without a conveniently placed Coca-Cola.) However, technology has also played a crucial role in the evolution of a largely unregulated counterculture carried out through the internet. Technology has been both a blessing and a curse for independent thought.

While corporations are using the new medium to sell an idea or product, various artists are using it to make art. Around 1996, Jenny Holzer started using high powered projection equipment to display various quotes and poetic short thoughts on buildings and landmarks around the world. She transformed entire skyscrapers and landmarks into giant symbols of expression. Neon light displays have also been used by artists such as Nathan Coley.

The thing I like most about these projects is the transformation of a landscape to mean something completely different than intended. Buildings and skyscrapers are meant to support the rapid expansion of our society and jam pack even more into less space. In a sense, buildings are a symbol of Capitalism and over-consumption. Whether intended or not, these artists are creating a canvas out of a symbol for something I perceive as a negative impact on our society and giving it whatever message they please. It’s only a matter of time before we start displaying massive drop-down banners from blimps flying high above football stadiums, projecting art through clouds, and spilling oil in pretty little patterns across the ocean…. wait what? Exnay on the oil idea (I think someone already has property rights on this “installation”… not pointing fingers or anything) but you get the drift.

Ever wonder why women take so long in the bathroom?

While this is going to seem like a really trivial thing to get bent out of shape about, I’m going to write about it anyway. I am not pleased with whoever decided to paint over the graffiti in the girls bathroom of Sproul Hall. Most of the time, it was just silly stuff like “why are all men so evil” or “I’m peeing tee-hee” but sometimes there was some pretty heavy stuff being discussed in there. I’ve seen a broad spectrum of issues ranging from relationship and sexual health advice, school complaints, current event banter and whatever else is on our minds. Sometimes the issues mirrored what was going on around us and sometimes they didn’t. For example, during the height of the prop 8 repeal, at least ten different people (judging from the handwriting) were writing paragraphs back and forth expressing their viewpoint. There’s something about the illusion of anonymity that brings out the absolute truth in people and I respect hearing what my peers think.

Bathroom graffiti is what I consider to be the people’s message board. There’s a really amazing relationship of power behind who is writing this stuff and who is reading it. We were all gifted with pens and markers so everyone has the ability to express something and by virtue of being in the girls bathroom, we’re all sitting down to pee (no boys allowed!) and inevitably reading just snippets of the banter. If I walk through Watkins Hall, I see a bunch of signs all over that tell us we can’t post any announcements unless we’re in the sociology department. However, in the bathroom, all authority is lost and behind that stall of anonymity, we have the power to post whatever we want.

I can understand why administration got rid of it and most of the time it does make the bathrooms look just a little bit more trashy but I’d prefer the bathroom break reading material over the smell of fresh paint any day. Anyway, moral of the story: The bathroom is the one place where you’re safe from the freedom of speech nazis. Keep it classy. Keep it intellectual. Keep it funny. I don’t care just don’t stop writing, ladies.

P.S. Sorry, no commentary on the men’s restroom. Apparently I’m not allowed in there.

help me out guys

Let’s say I gave you a chunk of canvas and at least a hundred people would see it. What want YOU want to communicate to people? It can be a song lyric, little life lessons, what you had for breakfast, philosophical quotes… whatever! It doesn’t need to be super serious. It just needs to mean something to you. Because I already know not a lot of people will respond, you can leave as many as you’d like too. So you can reply here or post anonymously on my blog or email me personally if you’re embarrassed. It doesn’t matter but let me know your ideas!

Scented Advertising Takes Things One Step Too Far

Scented billboard aims to lead shoppers by the nose

In an effort to control your experience of public space and optimize your reception of commercial messages, outdoor advertising is always finding new and not so clever ways to advertise. Often kept to purely visual methods, outdoor advertising has recently begun experimenting with other sense including sound and now smell.

I’m a vegetarian and while this is my personal dietary choice, there’s no reason why anyone should be subject to smelling meat when they’re walking down the street, regardless of their dietary preferences. This is pretty disgusting.

“Are These New Technologies Reshaping Human Attention?”"

I’d just like to appreciate the irony of reading about “the economy of attention” while in lecture for another class, while also simultaneously taking history notes and consistently checking my cell phone for “go-time.”

Toby Miller’s book, Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention, highlights the way in which American culture has created various industries surrounding the quick fix of anything outside of the norm. When celebrities cheat on their wives, they just go to an expensive “rehab” facilities and they’re back to normal in a few weeks. If you don’t like your body, you go have expensive procedures to fix it. Everything now has an immediate (but costly) fix. He focuses on the increase in the prescription of Ritalin and other attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) medications for kids presumed to have attention problems but the article, “The Economy of Attention,” suggests that maybe the issue isn’t entirely with our generation of students, but rather the increase of technology to distract us. They argue that it’s time we stop blaming the kids for their lack of attentive behavior but instead focus on what’s causing it and possibly change the way we interact with people to demand their attention.

We’re all familiar with the traditional classroom set up; seated rows facing the professor, who talks AT you instead of with you. By having a professor not command your attention, they’re essentially asking us to make the choice as to whether or not we want to get involved with what they’re saying. The article calls it, “choice architecture” and I’m doing it right now. I heard the words “feminism,” and I tuned into the lecture, disengaged when I lost interest, then got involved again when I heard “Black Panthers.” This just reinforces their argument that the current model for education needs updating. The revamping that they’re suggesting requires professors to make their lectures more interactive (ie: videos, discussions, changing class room layouts, etc) to command that respect and attention they deserve from students. They did an experiment at a symposium at Emerson College, in which they utilized digital media to encourage interactivity between the speaker and the audience. They’re not arguing that professors abandon the traditional classroom choreography, but instead update it to correspond with the changing technologies to supplement the old way of teaching.

Reappropriation of the Billboard

The average citizen sees over 3,000 advertisements a day.  They remember only 12.

I saw this picture awhile ago and unfortunately can’t really cite the source. (if you know the artist… let em know I said excellent work!) The idea behind advertising creeps me out. I came to this school wanting to ultimately do advertising but after a few quarters in college, I started to see the issue with getting paid to sell shit people don’t want to people who don’t need it. I mean, that’s what it’s all about, right? The even more frightening part of that cycle is that you don’t have a choice either. You can’t visually register that many advertisements without something resonating and striking a cord in your memory bank. We’ve given some higher power the right to force us to impulsively consume and control us. Does that bother you? It should and apparently the MAK Center for Art and Architecture agrees. So here’s the rundown on their project; various artists take back billboards throughout the greater Los Angeles area and do whatever the hell they please with them.
Here’s an example by Kerry Tribe:

There are so many things right with this project!

There’s a general formula for advertisements to maximize how long you remember it and blah blah blah. It’s boring. It’s not innovative and it’s been done before. These artists aren’t trying to sell you anything so for once, that formula is abandoned and art is allowed to make its comeback. This isn’t bombarding people with their images either. They get one billboard to get their point across and if you don’t like it, you move onto the next one. There’s no monopoly here.

This is a huge amount of exposure for a single person to have. I can’t estimate how much traffic this billboard gets a day but I know it’s a lot! This is an extraordinary transfer of power from a major corporation to a single individual. Imagine you had this opportunity. What would you find important enough to visually display? What statement would you make?

A Revolution in News Coverage?

Based on the concept of ‘crowdfunding’, spot.us is an experiment in citizen-funded community journalism.
Here’s how it works: Anyone can propose a story idea. The ideas are posted online and citizens can then pledge contributions to the stories they want to see reported. If enough people chip in, the idea is investigated and the story gets published.
In one case, journalist Lindsay Hoshaw pitched a story to the New York Times about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The newspaper accepted her pitch, but Hoshaw would have to pay her own reporting costs. Hoshaw posted her story to spot.us and raised over $6000 from 116 people. Donations ranged from $10 to $700, and the story made it to the New York Times.
Crowdfunded journalism is an interesting concept, but will it work? Is this democratic media or news sold to the highest bidder? Check out the site and tell us what you think.

-Adbuster

Crowdfunding by Spot.us poses a really interesting question about democracy in the media but is it exactly alleviating the problem? It’s undeniable that the media isn’t presenting “the people’s news” but rather it’s a propaganda model designed to satisfy the interests of their corporate partners. By allowing donors to give money to the stories they’d like to read about the most, to whose hands are we shifting the power of information? While I like the idea of people having a more active role in deciding what is published and publicized, it still seems like the majority of power is going to those who have disposable income to donate to the New York Times, which isn’t going to represent the voice of the people. Eventually, the news will once again be overrun by stories that meet the interests of the wealthy few. Spot.us has the best intentions but I predict this will become another smoke screen to mask the disappearance of democracy and diversity of perspective in the media.

I understand the tough economic times and everybody’s gotta get their money somehow but let’s talk about the ethics of paying for coverage that the New York Times should already be reporting on. No one, who understands how expansive the internet is, is going to pay for a story to get published if they know they can just google it and find it ten times faster than it takes to walk to the end of their driveway. I’m interested in hearing about the second garbage patch in the ocean but there’s no way I’m going to pay someone else to write about it when I can either read about it from another source and I think most people would feel the same. Perhaps if it was opened up to a free voting system, I’d be more inclined to play that game but considering the New York Times isn’t the only news source we have access to, I predict they will lose readers because they’ll just go elsewhere to get the same story. Times are a-changing and technology is evolving. Rss feeds, sports scores sent directly to your phone, facebook groups keeping you updated on events and specific themed stories. The list goes on but the point is that if people really careabout reading a certain story, they will find other ways to access the stories they want to know about. By adding a monetary component, Spot.us can’t rival that either.

Another issue that I have with this is the medium of newspaper and magazine printing. In a time when people claim that they no longer have time for the simplest of tasks, such as exercise, a full nights rest and 90 mph starts feeling like the minimum driving speed, sitting down to read the newspaper is no longer a luxury (or chore if that’s how you view it) that most can afford. My parents canceled our newspaper subscription years ago; not because they stopped caring but because they never had time to do anything with it besides put it in the recycling bin. No one has time for newspaper or magazines anymore. I think it would be really interesting to now open this up to CNN or MSNBC television networks and ask them to do the same thing as Spot.us. Would people be more inclined to sit down and watch an episode of Lou Dobbs or Rachel Maddow if they could vote on the discussion topic? Hell yeah. Expanding this idea of crowdfunding would be much more effective if it was not being geared towards a somewhat dying concept like printed news sources.