Mark Dery’s Culture Jamming

1. I found the section about "Media Hoaxing" quite alarming. The culture jammer would act as a professional in a field and fool the media into believing whatever outlandish claims he would make, and they would take his word for it. It's also a commentary not only on the media, but that people are so easily persuaded and influenced. All of the culture jamming techniques Dery mentions are still relevant and used today, like the "Billboard Banditry," "Audio Agitprop" (where people are still challenging copyright law by most recently posting free downloadable books on the internet), and "Sniping and Subvertising."

2. Symbols seem to have like an objective meaning but also more abstract, symbolic meanings. Marilyn Monroe for example is a symbol for sexiness and femininity. According to Dery, culture jammers use semiotics to make explicit the implicit. I think they would do this by exploiting some kind of advertisement that were suggestive in some way.

Culture Jamming I

culture jamming artists

1. Michael Aaron Williams is an artist creating street art.  He creates portraits of the homeless on cardboard and places them throughout the city in London. He wants people walking by to notice them, and even take them home.

"This series are all done on cardboard and depict the homeless. They are put up and are able to be taken down so that they can be taken home. They are therefore extremely delicate. Its interesting because just like the actual homeless, the people on the street ignore the pieces and many times see no worth in them. However, Some people have and are encouraged to take these home where the pieces can survive."

 Michael Aaron Williams' website 

 2. A british bank gave money towards a bike rental program, and had their logo on the bikes. People added stickers to the advertisements to change the meaning.
Barclays Bikes Busting Article

Chance Project

My idea-
1. carry your camera with you on Monday and Tuesday
2. take a photo of the scene in front of you at 2PM, 4PM, and 6PM
3. In photoshop, create a canvas that is 6 inches tall and 4 wide.
4. Divide canvas into 3 sections
5. On the top section, place all the 2PMs, the middle section 4PMs, and so on.
6. for the 1st pic make it 100% opacity and the second 50%

tada

My Version

Amber's Version

My extended body

There are two aspects to my new body:
- To avoid verbally expressing something my ears change color. They are mood changing. When i'm shy they turn pinkish in color, when i'm anxious they're purple, etc.
- I thought it would be interesting to have a defense mechanism like other animals (porcupines, skunks, blowfish), so whenever I feel frightened my skin develops a skin like that of a cactus.

My idea is mostly just so I can non-verbally communicate and that as humans, we don't really have physical defense mechanisms. They are mostly psychological. I wanted to take a natural-animalistic approach to my body.

I have used various tools: the magic wand, the marquee tool, the polygonal lasso tool, layers,  and i edited the photos a little bit

 

 

Artists working with "extended body"

Here are two artists that I found interesting working in robotics and extended body:

1. Sonia Cillari- "“GATC/life is an immersive experience inside units of life." 

This is a virtual reality project. In a cube-like room there are 3D projections of genes and cells. 

GATC/Life 

2. Seemen Organization- artist Kal Spelletich and 40+ other artists working in robotic, interactive art. They encourage the audiences to interact with the robots and other machines. Some of their work even incorporates bio-feedback: where it can read heartbeat, movement, respiration, etc. 

http://seemen.org/

- EKG UNIT triggering flaming ring: The fire ring pulses with one's heartbeat 

-Monkey on your Back: person puts on gloves and monkey robot. The gloves have EKG and flex sensors to activate the monkey. The EKG picks up the volunteer's heartbeat and moves the tail and spine of the monkey.