It took me a minute to figure out what is happening in this video, but if you look closely, you will see this is indeed the work of Banksy. Hint: what is the dolphin jumping over?
Here’s more from Banksy’s recent work in the Gulf of Mexico:
Video
2
Sep 10
Banksy’s oily dolphin ride
It took me a minute to figure out what is happening in this video, but if you look closely, you will see this is indeed the work of Banksy. Hint: what is the dolphin jumping over?
Here’s more from Banksy:
28
Aug 10
Oil and cognitive disonnance
Lisa Margonelli connects lots of patterns when speaks on “The political chemistry of oil.” An facsinating observation is that fuel pumps are designed to look like ATM machines. Interesting.
It’s from the TedxOilSpill event earlier this summer. There’s also a cool overview of the event at PBS’s Need to Know Website.
26
Aug 10
Screen test turn on
I’ve written previously about my view that Warhol was a zen master (click this link to see my favorite Warhol quotes listed at the end of the post). Now, I know it’s a stretch. I realize that thinking of a Warhol as a bodhisattva contradicts the view that media are the destroyer of all that is good in the universe. Indeed, Warhol celebrated and created many of the most reprehensible and superficial aspects of contemporary media culture, such as the concept of “superstars” and the idea that visibility is worthy enough for celebrityhood. (Even though he said that someday everyone would have 15 minutes of fame, little did he know that it would only take three minutes a la YouTube to do the trick.) Films like Factory Girl, about troubled Warhol protege and starlet Edie Sedgwick, even depict Warhol as a user of humans in the worst way.
All these criticisms are valid. However, as a friend once said, trust the art, not the artist.
From this perspective, I’d like to share with you my enthusiasm and love or Warhol’s most interesting work, his screen tests. Made during the Factory’s 1964-66 heyday, they were short films lasting a reel, with the only instruction being that the talent stare into the camera without moving. Many who came through Warhol’s Factory were asked to participate in such experiments, including uber-celebrities (Bob Dylan), uber-artists (Salvador Dali), quasi-famous actors (Dennis Hooper), resident artists (Lou Reed) and an assortment of characters that will remain historically anonymous (except for their presence in these films and at the Factory).
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have had profound and deeply moving spiritual encounters with these films. In fact, it is extremely rare that works of art cause me to shiver, but these do. The video I posted here is a compilation of several screen tests set to a soundtrack by Dean & Britta (formally of Luna), who were commissioned by the Warhol Museum to create a series of tracks to accompany a live screening of the films. The DVD (and soundtrack too) is called 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests, and is absolutely wonderful. Dean & Britta do a great job of emulating the Velvet Underground without imitating their sound, thereby replicating the mood of Warhol’s Factory while also sounding contemporary. I can’t imagine a better, more atmospheric tribute to the screen tests than this.
You can get a flavor of the screen tests on YouTube, but it is not nearly as moving as seen projected onto a large screen. One of the subtle manipulations of the films is that Warhol slowed them down very slightly to give them a slight unreality. Though I love the soundtrack Dean & Britta created, the films were originally silent (unless they were projected during live Velvet Underground shows, which is possible, but I cannot verify) and when viewed as such they have an unearthly quality.
Warhol has said that the camera “turns people on.” This could be a double entendre meaning that on the one hand people will light up/perform for the camera, but also it is a turn-on to look at other people without them knowing it. There is some truth to both aspects. I think, though, there is something more revealing and less performative about the screen tests. If you stare into someone’s eyes for four minute you will likely lose your guard and reveal your insecurities. I dare you to try it sometime. In fact, I challenge you to look intently into your own eyes in the mirror for four minutes. Staring at a camera takes the edge off the fear of exposing ourselves, yet you can see in many of these clips that a profound vulnerability, and hence humanity, reveals itself. I don’t think you will find such a deep, penetrating look into people’s souls in any other kind of media. Perhaps that is what I find so wonderful and sublime about viewing the screen tests.
For some YouTube Webcam posts can produce a similar feeling. Michael Wesch’s An anthropological introduction to YouTube culminates in an interesting exploration of the camera eye of the computer that is both highly personal and global. But I think it takes Wesch’s anthropological sensibility to point this out. I don’t have the patience to watch YouTube confessions, but I remain enraptured by Warhol’s screen tests. I hope that you can find a way to watch the DVD with a projector so you can see them larger than life. I can’t guarantee that you will have the same experience of the sublime that I had, but I’m guessing that you will find something eerily remarkable about these films.
25
Aug 10
Media literacy and cultural citizenship
The above work is the product of two my star students, Wanda and Sara Gabai. This summer they did an intensive media literacy seminar with me, creating the above video as part of their coursework. I’m impressed by the quality of the script and how they contextualized it with their own mash-up of Web imagery. It was the first video they have ever made or posted to YouTube. If you like it, please to go the video’s YouTube page and post a comment or give it a thumbs up.
4
Aug 10
Miles Davis: Original punk rocker
Henry Rollins – The Art of a Bad-Ass from Joseph Vella on Vimeo.
I never realized that Henry Rollins was such a jazz geek. In this sweet little podcast he discusses Miles Davis, and in doing so rips the music industry while savoring one of the great risk-taking bad asses of yore. It’s strange to think of either as “organic” artists, but in relation to what is passed off as jazz or punk these days, we’ve got to tip our hat to both these fine folks for keepin’ culture alive.
29
Jul 10
Filter bubbles: less global media in globalized media world
Media activists and forward thinker Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices, raps on “imaginary cosmopolitanism,” “wisdom of the flock,” and “human curators.” He shows that despite the global nature of networks, most of us still remain within cultural bubbles and there remains little crossover between users of different cultural environments. The solution? We need more DJing.
16
Jul 10
Buzz kill: ambient music not a dangerous drug
As Wired.com points out (Report: Teens Using Digital Drugs to Get High), there is a new hysteria about a craze called “i-dosing.” As the story goes, teens are encouraged to put on headphones and to listen to ambient tracks on the Internet that induce feelings of pleasure and ecstasy. God help them! As the Wired article points out, the phenomena is getting the attention of some concerned folks who worry that this is simply a gateway to some other drug, like marijuana or LSD. Never mind that this is much safer than a much more pressing addiction: our insatiable appetite for war and petroleum.
Indeed, their fears are likely confirmed by the graphic on the signature i-dose track (posted above), “Gates of Hades” (you have to let it run a little to see it). If anything I find the electronic pulse on this track annoying. I much prefer a Tibetan bowl, Balinese gongs, chanting ohm or my favorite: a live Sonic Youth feedback jam. But hey, who can fault teens for wanting to transcend the hellish nightmare we call school and American consumerism.
The fear of teens evading the control of the capitalist/Church mind trap is normal in America. During a time when corporations have hijacked democracy and are poisoning the planet, there’s never a better moment to whip up hysteria about how race music/rock/rave/Internet are abducting our children.
Incidentally, the article’s comments are hilarious. My favorite comment comes from Zombowski, who put it this way: “I can’t figure out how to get the music into the needle. Do I shoot it up with an old record player?”
6
Jul 10
Heart swarming
Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.
I love both the aesthetic and paradigmatic approach of this video as a potential solution for the environmental crisis. Though I’m encouraged by the proposed solutions at the end of the video, I’m not sure if they will necessarily pan out as stated, mainly because I think it will emerge in ways that we can’t imagine quite yet (a la Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World). I also don’t agree with its “war on climate change” rhetoric. Nonetheless, the form of the video (it’s a collaboration between 24 artists) and its central concept of the swarm and its re-presentation of the ’60s as a rhizomatic prototype (and its critique of the co-optation of ’60s culture) shows us that we already have lots to build on.
You can learn more about the creators, Coalition of the Willing, here.
5
Jul 10
Conflict (mineral) resolution
In my efforts to be more holistic with my media literacy approach I’ve been moving in the direction of not just looking at the content of media, but their entire production process, from the making of content to the production of gadgets. There’s a good book,Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman
23
Jun 10
Drugged out butterfly hates bad publicity
The Lunesta ad parody that has survived fair use on YouTube (not the one I posted)
Apparently that cute little Lunesta butterfly flapping around in a corporate induced stupor is a rather pissy drug shill. I posted the Lunesta ad on my YouTube channel because I used it for teaching purposes in my courses. Accompanying the video I posted the following comment: “Corporation is a butterfly, replaces nature.”
To my chagrin YouTube users made lots of positive comments about the commercial, one stating that it was her four-year-old daughter’s favorite ad and thanked me for posting it. In fact, this has been a common trend: I post an ad for the purposes of criticism, and the commentators end up loving it. Go figure.
Anyhow, Sepracor, the maker or Lunesta, decided that an open media system is more than it can take. Too bad for them, because ultimately I made the one mistake of culture jamming: through my efforts to critique corporate brands, I end up giving them even more attention than they deserve, and hence more “mind share.”
Hey Sepracor, didn’t you learn anything from PT Barnum, who said there’s no such thing as bad publicity?
This, too me, is what I have been fearing about the future of the Web, and particular for those of us who teach media literacy. So far there has been a “hands off” approach from advertisers when it come to us using their work as part of our teaching materials. Either the Fair Use provision has kept them away, or we’re too few to care about. But you know the saying, you have free speech as long as no one listens to you.
Or put differently, does a copyright violation happen when a deconstruction takes place in the forest?
For what it’s worth, this is what the take down notice said (click here to see the rest):
Continue reading →
17
Jun 10
World Cup and the anthropological object at play
Two different visions for the World Cup
Living in Italy it’s hard to ignore the World Cup. Everyday at the local market people want to know my opinion about the England-USA match-up on June 6. That’s fine by me. I’ve got the bug too.
What I find fascinating is how a single ball can so inspire the collective imagination, which is brilliantly captured in the above Nike ad (the first embedded video). Taking a page from Lost, the ad flashes sideways into alternate realities based on the results of the play. Aesthetically the ad captures the global zeitgeist of the World Cup’s fever dream.
Speaking of balls…
Using the soccer ball as a point of discussion, a section of Piere Levy’s Becoming Virtual explores the “anthropological object,” which highlights the possibility for using the World Cup’s gameplay as a visualization for a larger project: global ecology.
Building on French philosopher Michel Serres‘ work on “quasi-objects,” Levy draws on the image of a soccer match to concretize how collective intelligence can emerge around the movement of an “anthropological object,” the otherwise unspectacular soccer ball. There are different levels of engagement: the stadium and its spectators, who cannot directly act on the ball, but most certainly can charge the energetic field of the gamespace (as the general debate about the vuvuzelas testifies). On the field, there are the players, of course, who directly engage the ball. Then there are those of us with our nervous systems extending into the gamespace via the cameras that capture the action and transmit it through cyberspace, satellite and broadcast.
With the scene set we can see that though the ball is itself an artifact in its own right, once it goes into play it becomes a point of relations, propelling collective intelligence into action. No single player can pick up the ball and puncture it or run away with it. The ball becomes a tool for which we can think with and respond to in relation to other people. In play it is collectively conceived, a fulcrum for a billion people to relate to and with each other.
Now, imagine if that kind of collective action revolved around the most important ball of all: Earth.
Certainly the commercial, creative and civic energies that go into the World Cup are not currently directed towards our blue ball in space. Yet, as Levy wholeheartedly wants to do with this particular thought exercise, we can humanize/eco-ize the virtuality experiment that we as a global society are engaged in. He suggests that cyberspace can be such an object to think with, one that offers the pedagogical potential for engaging us in building intelligent communities. Obviously at this current moment the BPs of the world are firmly entrenched in the political, military and financial matrix of global power, but they are not poised for the necessary intelligent response to what the ecosphere, and humanity, is calling for. The Greenpeace ad (the second embedded video) is a step in this direction.
Of course, unlike a soccer ball, we don’t need to kick Earth around any more. In Levy’s words:
“Technology virtualizes action and organic functions. Yet the tool, the artifact, are not merely efficient things. Technological objects are passed from hand to hand, body to body, like a baton in a relay. They create shared uses, become vectors of knowledge, messengers of collective memory, catalysts of cooperation.” (p.165)
16
Jun 10
Not too challenging: freedom is slavery and other ironies
Is Challenger the official car of the Tea Party? Here Dodge is desperately pandering to the extreme right, an indicator that American corporations have no scruples when it comes to salvaging its business model. Indeed, this is a zeitgeist ad for the American political landscape: a failed ideology can only salvage itself through the appeal of fascist aesthetics.
Indeed, muscle cars are like tea Partiers on steroids, trouncing the landscape as they chase off the foreign occupiers with a false sense of self-confidence. Sorry to say this folks, but the Brits have you by the balls right now. BP will gladly fuel your Challenger for you at a special discounted rate of specially repurposed Gulf oil.
George Orwell, Walter Benjamin and George Washington are somewhere shaking their heads right now while chasing quaaludes with a stiff brandy.
So much for freedom.
9
Jun 10
CNN’s lesson in branding history
CNN’s recent re-branding effort, “Go Beyond Borders,” presents a bit of a conundrum for me. On the one hand this is a brilliant marketing campaign that is also educational and interactive. On the other hand, it really bleeds the line between marketing, history and interpassivity–designing carefully controlled parameters of interactive media that are “free” in aesthetic only.
Here CNN re-brands itself as “borderless,” yet it’s not just any border. It carefully chooses an event whose symbolism as the triumph of capitalism cannot be ignored. At a time when capitalist ideology should be challenged by media, CNN intrenches itself as the premiere network of capitalist dogma, incorporating the various signs and trademarks of the system’s triumphs– the fall of communism, art, marketing and networked technology–to bundle them into their own nifty little neoliberal package.
Is this something to be concerned about? Commercialism has penetrated every aspect of public life. I know I’m old school when I argue for a clear line between the public good and corporate interests, whereas others would say, what’s the big deal? Maybe it shows that corporations are responsive to the public good. Yet, as is the case with BP, it’s one thing to brand yourself and side with a particular outlook, it’s another thing to practice it. Given a choice between CNN and Fox, I would certainly prefer CNN, but I would hardly call the network virtuous. It certainly remains a primary propaganda arm of global capital. This is not a conspiracy, just business. After all, which “side” do you think Time Warner Inc. is on? Wall Street’s or yours?
I suppose the world is more nuanced than my cartoon, punk rock version of it, yet it’s still hard for me stomach this marketing ploy couched as a history lesson.
4
Jun 10
Empathic media
Call it TED meets Story of Stuff.
The above clip contradicts a bit my previous missive about the Net. Indeed, this clip represents all that is good about the Internet: it combines sharable oral communication with visual storytelling and the intellectual rigor of print. In this most excellent visualization of Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’s adds to its excellent series of Web-illustrated talks (follow this link to see other like-minded illustrated talks). Yummy.
16
May 10
Biospheric simulations of the simulacra
On the heels of her recent book, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, Jane Poynter raps about her Biosphere 2 experience at TEDX. Note that the book’s title is “human experiment,” a far cry from the ecological experiment Biosphere was sold as (rather than give a detailed description, watch a few minutes of the video to get a sense of what happened). Regardless of what you think of the proejct and its rather strange history, I feel the story is quite interesting and the talk offers plenty of lessons for us in terms of thinking about our place in the world.
As a side note, back in my journalism days I was asked to write a hit piece on the project because of its roots in an unusual art/hippie/cult/commune near Santa Fe called Synergia Ranch. I never wrote the article, but if you want a really good deconstruction that reads like sci-fi, I recommend the chapter on Biosphere 2 in Timoothy Luke’s Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture. Taking a page from Baudrillard, here’s my favorite Biosphere 2 quote from Luke’s book:
“Biosphere 2 is a unique ecoengeneering project that reduces natural life-forms to their biotic/biophysical operability in order to reintegrate them in new synthetic ecosystems that can, in turn, develop only in the artificial spaces of this biospheric laboratory. Here, “Nature” is not Nature, but rather something that has been digitally sampled, botanically colorized, zoologically compressed, and ecologically scanned into a biospheric simulation of itself that could not and would not exist without the engineering needed to stage this odd ecological experiment.” (p. 102)
PS: Here is a post regarding recent photos of Biosphere 2 (the images have been taken off the site, but I pasted below one from Boing Boing to give you a taste of the photos):
11
May 10
Buffy the corporate slayer
From old school protest music to new school YouTube, Buffy Sainte-Marie hasn’t lost a beat in over 40 years. Lyrics for No No Keshagesh are below.
For a bonus, check out this nice video on the Johnny Cash Show in which the two take down Custer.
No No Keshagesh
by Buffy Sainte-Marie
I never saw so many business suits
Never knew a dollar sign could look so cute
Never knew a junkie with a money jones
Who’s buying Park Place? Who’s buying Boardwalk?
These old men they make their dirty deals
Go in the back room and see what they can steal
Talk about your beautiful for spacious skies
It’s about uranium. It’s about the water rights
Got Mother Nature on a luncheon plate
They carve her up and call it real estate
Want all the resources and all of the land
They make a war over it; they blow things up for it
The reservation out at Poverty Row
The cookin’s cookin and the lights are low
Somebody tryin to save our Mother Earth I’m gonna
Help em to Save it and Sing it and Pray it singin
No No Keshagesh you can’t do that no more.
Ol Columbus he was lookin good
When he got lost in our neighborhood
Garden of Eden right before his eyes
Now it’s all spyware Now it’s all income tax
Ol Brother Midas lookin hungry today
What he can’t buy he’ll get some other way
Send in the troopers if the Natives resist
Same old story, boys; that’s how ya do it , boys
Look at these people Lord they’re on a roll
Got to have it all; gotta have complete control
Want all the resources and all of the land
They break the law over it; blow things up for it
While all our champions are off in the war
Their final rip-off here at home is on
Mister Greed I think your time has come I’m gonna
Sing it and Say it and Live it and Pray it singin
No No Keshagesh you can’t do that no more.
22
Apr 10
Thoughts on Rome’s birthday, Earth Day and the future of education
Bill McKibben discusses Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Note: I addressed the following letter to my colleagues.
It is fitting that Rome’s 2763rd birthday falls within a day of Earth Day. Though we don’t often connect the environment with history or empire, they are closely related. For 10,000 years Earth has experienced a stable climate which has created the conditions for humanity to flourish and grow. But whereas the environmental destruction of the Roman Empire could be absorbed because the carrying capacity and carbon sinks of the globe were relatively healthy (the North African forests never regrew, unfortunately), the next generation can no longer expect the same guarantee. In fact, civilization now faces a challenge like no other. Oceans are now 30% more acidic than 50 years ago, and there is 20% more vapor in the atmosphere due to melting glaciers and the like (hence our wet winter). From 1850 to 2002 the US created 30% of the current atmospheric carbon, and Europe created 26.5% (stats are from the The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World (Think Now)
I’ve never thought of myself as environmentalist. I’m just a human trying to act morally in the environment I’ve been born into. I/we are biological environmental beings. We are all environmentalists the moment we are born. Unfortunately our fundamental models of reality are not going to serve the next generation or our own. The biosphere that my three-year-old daughter is growing up in is fundamentally different than the one I was born into. Can we continue to ignore how humbling and incredible this is? As educators I believe we have a moral duty to prepare our students for this emerging new world. But this will be challenging, because most of our professional careers are based on the systems and structures that have brought us to this moment. I don’t have all the solutions, and admittedly I often feel powerless in the wake of so much resistance and denial prevalent in the media and elsewhere. Yet I think we need to start somewhere, and I think if education’s role is the help develop the capacity for enlightened citizenship, then we should consider how to expand that definition of citizenship to incorporate the biosphere and all its inhabitants.
10
Apr 10
Insane miracle posse
The Insane Clown Posse showin’ love for the great miracle of life. Who coulda guessed!
