Archived Live Stream of Occupiers holding a General Assembly in Times Square. Link for video embed

On Saturday I was enraptured by Tim Pool‘s USTREAM live cast of Occupy Wall Street’s recent action.* As Occupiers played Red Rover and Frogger with police across Manhattan, all was captured live and uploaded into the planetary Net. Like the live cast of the Occupiers getting kettled and arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge a few months ago, it was a riveting reprieve from the old, predigested form of media we grew up with.

As I watched I couldn’t help but feel that this is a collective, emergent version of Martin Luther’s protest in 1517. Like the 95 theses he posted on the church door that later was reprinted and widely disseminated with the new media technology of that period, likewise we are now seeing an unprecedented diffusion of an alternative paradigm that challenges the power structure. But this time it’s the 99% thesis. Whereas Luther challenged the corrupt authority and abuse of power by the Roman Catholic Church, we are now doing the same against domination and colonization of the planetary commons by corporations.

The fact is, since the 1980s I’ve seen these kinds of actions over and over again, but they never gained traction like they are now. The difference is probably that so many people have been pushed off a cliff that the propaganda system in place can no longer shield people from the truth at hand: that the corporate takeover of the commons can no longer be sustained. We have reached the limit and end of the old system and we are currently in a transition into a liminal state in which all the old thought forms that were codified during the past 500 years are becoming destabilized.

This is made visible in the above clip, which is an archived stream from the Saturday protests. It’s the moment when the protestors, after dodging the NYPD throughout Manhattan, spontaneously organized a General Assembly in Times Square. Using the “people mic,” they “testified” as to why they are part of the Occupation movement, all the while bathed in the surreal glow of corporate propaganda.

Times Square is the quintessential spiritual center of the corporate project. Once the seedy underbelly of New York’s deviant unconsciousness, since Giuliani’s reign as mayor the open space of 42nd St. has been transformed into a kind of dystopic hydra of capitalist enclosure (privatization/fencing off). A mix of surveillance and marketing uber alas, Times Square has become an open air television studio that invites anyone to enter and be mediated by the planetary corporate rulers. This, I would argue, is part of its lure. A hybrid of advertising and reality TV, I know of no other place on Earth where Disneyland, advertising and mass media cohere into a pulsating hum of mediated insanity. Not even Las Vegas can achieve such a distinction. And like moths to a flame, people are attracted by the very thing that could ultimately destroy them. To paraphrase Benjamin, not since the Nazis has our own alienation and self-destruction been made to look so beautiful.**

Yet as police stand by to protect holiday shoppers and business as usual, a handful of Occupiers bear witness to this insanity (thereby labeled by the system as lunatics). Here, as the embodiment of Earth’s spirit, these brave souls momentarily disrupt the pulsating spectacle. Whilst in the past numerous crazies have attempted such sacrilege against this colonizing machine, something has changed.

We are being heard. And it’s resonating.

It’s happening despite the luminous power of Times Square and its tentacled financiers in Wall Street. A people’s mic, which is a spontaneous form of direct democracy and speech, utterly contradicts the communication forms of advertising in which psychologically tested and honed messages are pushed into people’s mindspace. The occupiers wage guerrilla war against that mechanism through the deployment of prefigurative politics that pull people together with a shared senses of responsibility and reciprocity. Their collectivity, community and ritual becomes an alternate form of mediation that deprives the corporate powers of their ability to colonize human energy.

For the moment the system seems invincible, its vast architecture of light and information permeating public space. It can only succeed when no other world can be visualized or imagined beyond it. What you see here is a new kind of collective imagination taking shape. Behold, participate, smile and look around. Raised consciousness is coming to a live stream near you.

* Here is an insightful interview with Tim from Current’s USTREAM channel.

** If you think I’m stretching the analogy too far, I consider the rapid rise of Co2 emissions changing the very chemistry of our atmosphere as a far worse crime against humanity than anything achieved by the worse totalitarians of the 20th century.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

I’m sure this “The Grand Rapids LipDub” video has been viral long before I set my eyes on it, but just in case you missed it, you’re in for a real treat. What strikes me about this (and warms my heart) is how media can be sublime in a positive way. It doesn’t always have to be about false consciousness. In particular, I think the video serves as a really clear example of James Carey‘s idea of communication as ritual. We normally don’t take the mundane activities of media engagement as ritual (i.e. reading the paper or checking Twitter feeds), but in this more extreme case we can see that media bring people together, and even possibly serve as a cleansing ritual.

The background is that “The Grand Rapids LipDub” was an effort to disprove Newsweek‘s claim that Grand Rapids was a dying city. No doubt the video’s producers were able to rejuvenate a sense of community pride through its choreography and production. It’s hard to know what kinds of politics went into the kinds of representations that would be included–not being a resident of the city I don’t know what is being left out. But it seems to include diverse representations. Viewing it from Italy I can see how remarkably American it is– is it internalized stereotypes, or is this really what the heartland is like? No matter, it feels good in an apolitical way, and shouldn’t be taken as self-aggrandizing propaganda. However, context is everything. If I had seen this right after 9/11, I would think differently. In 2011 it feels more like a kind of “back-to-basics” reminder of the good things about our culture (yes, sometimes it is helpful to focus on the positive). Let us forget, just for a moment, that we are a dying empire with political spectacles orchestrated by multinational media corporations and remember that people left to their own devices are also creative, community building creatures.

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that no women are singing. Too bad, that is a grave omission.

Al-Jazeer’s Empire on social networks and revolution. Features some excellent talking heads.

Meanwhile, NYU’s Jay Rosen has been a bit of a lightening rod in the debate between the so-called digital Utopians and the pessimists. He rounds up the debates on his blog here. I recommend following him on twitter.

What do I think? Any media that enters into a communication or language community will disturb it. By disturbance I mean an ecological disturbance as in when a new element enters into an ecosystem it becomes a new ecosystem. The fact is, the Internet is part of the system, so we can’t even speculate what the situation would be without it. Obviously it is a mix of both. But I like the point from Mark Poster (thanks Peter!) that the Internet is not a hammer, but a social space. Of course people make revolutions. But empathy is contagious and we can’t be empathetic with that which we do not know. Something is in the air, and certainly media are generating the wind.

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

Though I’m a big supporter of Amnesty International, I find something a little troubling about this ad. Part of it is based on some resent criticism I’ve been reading about how NGOs tend to work outside the context of the societies they are functioning in, and can inevitably buttress the control mechanisms of empire by advocating for universal rights and interventionism. Hence Bush can take the rhetoric of the NGO as justification for invading Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet, human rights are so intrinsic for international norms that provide a space for justice.

Strangely, though, the creates an odd vicariousness for ones actions in which a fantasy for justice is fulfilled in simplistic terms without allowing for the complexity of a situation. It’s like playing a video game that insulates us from the difficulty of real struggle. There’s certainly more blood, sweat and tears than this push-button kind of justice. Nonetheless, I remain a committed supporter of AI. I just don’t like this unsettled sense of ambivalence abetted by marketing and technology.

YouTube just announced on its blog a new citizen journalist initiative, which is described above by YouTube News & Politics manager Olivia M. I have to admit that the whole style and approach of the press release is interesting because normally it’s traditional media companies who try to hip-ify themselves through remediating (appropriating) the style of user-generated media (i.e. with amateurish production). It’s a complete melding of the prosumer aesthetic when one of the biggest internet companies in the world (Google) makes its company style completely “uncorporate.”

OK, so please don’t kill me for this cheap date, but I saw the above clip at Huffington Post and instantly fell in love. I’m torn because part of me thinks this is really a future SNL skit inserted as covert marketing, the other part of me wants to believe that this is the last piece of authentic home brew media we’ll see ever again. I love this because with so many out-of-the-box media production kits out there, rarely do you get to see something with real fingerprints on it.

Now, bring on the imitators and the haters and see what happens.

I nice little profile from MTV about community low power radio.

OK, so this is really not a spontaneous deconstruction of Super Bowl ads, but really a clever Miller Lite ad made to look like something fo’ real. I spotted the ad technique right away from the gratuitous lingering shots on the Miller Lite logo, and I thought the cuts were a little too fast for an amateur. But, I’m sure it will do its viral trick as it was intended to.

PS Unfortunately this year I cannot do a Super Bowl ad round up because here in Italy it was running far to late for me to watch. I will monitor the net closely, though, for some good montages.

Technorati Tags: Super Bowl

I’m cribbing notes from Rising Voice‘s David Sasaki who wrote an excellent roundup of how the Web is a tool for Kenyan activists to document the current crisis.

Ushahidi is an organization that is combining SMS alerts of Kenyan violence with google maps that gives a timeline of civil incidents but also a way to map the state of the conflict in real time. You can view the timeline here.

And here a post of the potential of twitter in Africa.

YouTube – Broadcast Yourself.:

It’s about time to demand some R-E-S-P-E-C-T from your cleaning products so tell that broom “She’s Gone.” We know that you love to belt out those break up songs, especially while you’re cleaning. Put those talents on camera! Choose a song, grab your Swiffer and start filming now! Sing along, dance and show us your moves Swiffer!

You know the user generated media revolution has gone too far when Swiffer gets involved. Yes, Swiffer wants you to make a commercial for them (you could win $15,000– cheaper than an ad agency) because you love them so much you feel motivated to make a film. One thing I emphasize in media literacy workshops is the ridiculousness of feigned passion, be it in the ecstatic and orgasmic states people in the ad-generated world find themselves in, or a Shakira jingle declaring love for Pepsi. I have never in my life seen in a teen talent show a song or poem written for a product– a jilted lover, a betrayed friendship, a love for animals, yes. Products? No. OK, sometimes drugs, but products are most definitely out. And just to prove my point, last I checked there were only 2 videos posted. But… there are 121 subscribers. They can’t all be media critics, can they? Anyhow, one thing that I don’t think anyone gets concerning the user generated phenomena: people do it because they care. In the case of Swiffer, I can guess that most will care more about the opportunity to win $15,000 than some plastic hyper-broom. But the way the dollar is going these days, a broom is about all you’ll be able to buy with the prize money.

PS A note to ad copywriters: please stop the extraneous use of exclamation points. It does not make the product more fun, and it’s really annoying!

(Via AdRants)