Mark Dery Article

From distorting the intended message of the mainstream media, advertising, or through actions, like a performance for example, culture jamming distorts it by changing its message politically or for other reasons.

I've been interested in culture jamming even before I heard of the term. When I was a freshman in high school, I stumbled upon into a classroom filled with billboards and posters that were actual advertisements of products, but it's images were distorted to change its situation by changing its text or setting, making its message different in terms being of political or social commentary. It took me a second glance to realize that none of the posters showing corporate products or familiar images not introduced in the first place. One example of that can be the U.S. flag, iconically known for it's 13 red and white stripes and blue canton, where it bears 50 stars in it's area. The flag I saw looked like this, but note the overall shape is suppose to be rectangular.

Billionaires for Wealthcare

Billionaires for Wealthcare is a guerrilla theater group working in the area of culture jamming, posing as people who are opposed to Obama's attempts at healthcare reform in the U.S. and go out and openly mock people who are opposed to the reform, whether it be influential political leaders or regular folk for example. Here's a culture jamming performance where they shower Sen. Mitch McConnell with fake bills, acknowledging he's being paid a ton of money from the health insurance companies to stall attempts at healthcare reform.

Just looking at the sheer reaction of Sen. McConnell, he seems to listen to the people who congratulate him for trying to stall reform and throw fake bills around him. It's as if he's trying to not react at all to the commotion as he walks to his car. It's just so heart wrenching to be that person who gets paid a ton of money from insurance companies to be mocked, but then again, you're already being paid tons of money, so who honestly gives a care about the uninsured.

The picture below also shows an example of poster signs held by the group themselves to satirize actual anti-healthcare signs knowingly held by tea party protesters.

I would also like to pose a question to whether culture jamming can also accommodate the right-wing as well. Considering the history of culture jamming as being associated with left-wing ideas of anti-consumerism or anti-corporatist. Does its intention of Obama being The Joker, a character in the Batman series known for pranking his enemies into bad consequences, gives the right-wing to also culture jam as well?

Well for the graphic below, it does not espouse the point whether there is some actual truth to it, of how Obama being behind the national insignia of the former Nazi Germany associates him to being a Nazi and a socialist at the same time. It does evoke emotion to the viewer whether Obama is The Joker, a socialist, and a Nazi?

To be honest, if Glenn Beck had raped and murdered a girl in 1990 isn't what you're expecting see me write on this blog, I don't know if culture jamming can also be a form of performance or distorted information, just like the picture below.

Ideas About My Third Project

As school is coming to its mid-life crisis, I too am going through one as well. Now with our third project coming up, which we will be doing some Culture Jamming, where we have a public space with a certain message or messages, what we would put and where?

Well this video sparked an idea, which got me thinking about making something that would create a spark among people in public. Now considering this may not be exactly what we are suppose to do for the next project, since we're told to create an ad, logo or billboard and put in a public space, I find the children's reactions to be wholesome and just quite interesting, which is what I would like to see in adults as well as children if I were to create something that gives a reaction to my work.

Plus, it's Sesame Street, what's there not to like? I've always been fascinated with the show and the way they integrate learning with optimizing critical thinking among young children who watch the show, but even so, there's so much that adults can learn and consume as well just from watching what the show has to offer.

My synopsis:

In the video, a plastic bag lays on a metal vent, which the vent is used to circulate air from the underground subway. A man who is apparently an artist then picks up the bag and has some thought after "straightening" it out, picking up other bags lying around the streets. Eventually, he creates this thing out of those bags, which then rises up as a bear whenever air is coming out of the vent. People walking on the streets react to the inflatable air bear, including little kids, who one kid at 0:49, catches his eye and starts walking towards it, making a curious stare at it, then checks out the bear with a happy gleam on his face.

A little girl walks with her mom at 1:00 with a shocked face and runs to the bear, checking it out as well. The bear eventually deflates and the girl is in a disappointed state. Even so, the sound of the underground train gives us a cue that air will come up again from the vent, making the bear inflate again. The girl waves goodbye to the bear, cutting to black.

2nd Round of Chance Project (Indeterminacy)

For the 2nd round of the chance project, I am challenged to do what my partner is doing for her chance project; working on the same project as she is with the same mode of operations my partner has done with the project.

You can check out the project she chose to do:

Taryn's Chance Project

I was told to go to the random integer generator and generate 30 numbers, from values between 1 and 5, representing the number of seconds.

The 30 random integers chosen:





After that, I had to upload Sktech onto my desktop and was given a save file that contained the coding that Taryn used, making it easier to do the project, without any coding myself.

Coding that was given to me:












I was told to start with the right arrow key when I activated the program and to switch from the right to left arrow keys and hold those keys for a number of seconds, depending on the integers given to me, starting from the top row, selecting numbers from the left and to the right.

And here is the finished product:










Thoughts/Conclusions:
-I found Taryn's chance process to be more simpler than mine, considering that I had a lot of integers to organize and place onto Mario Composer, a software program I found to be very buggy at times. Taryn's choice of software is much easier to use due to being open for elementary school children, but much can be manipulated in complex ways not for its intended audience.
-It reminds me of a Spirograph drawing; with its use of curves, uniformly moving together at the same time in different directions.
-I find this piece to have more of an aesthetic appeal due to its way of uniforming four sprites moving at the same time, but at a different direction compared to my work.

1st Round of the Chance Project (Indeterminacy)

For my project, I create a musical composition with the use of Mario Composer, a free, open-source program downloadable for the PC and Mac. The program derives from a Super Nintendo video game, Mario Paint, which was a graphics painting program, just like Microsoft's Paint. The program includes musical well-known sound effects from the Mario video games, but has extended features and new notes not seen in the original.

I did previous work on Mario Composer in my ART 412 class, where we created a musical piece about a specific domestic technology (e.g. bottled water, blender, eyelash curler, etc.). Here's a sample of my work:

Bottled Water

So here's the process that it took to create the musical composition:

I relied on an online random integer generator, which gives out random numbers according to how many random integers you request, considering the limit is from 1 to 10,000 and the values limit from 1 to 1,000,000. I could have found another random integer generator or paid a premium subscription to generate larger quantities, but I decided not to for budget purposes, since I'll only be using it for just this project.

Now here's a diagram of how many notes and the number of rows that the composer have (Note: The Notes will represent X; Lines (Row Number) will represent Y, as importance for coordination of numbers later on):

And here are some visual descriptions of the sets of numbers that were given to me and the sets that generated these random numbers:

[The number of notes that are going to be in the composition (From 50-100), divided by 10 to make an average of 77 notes.]

[What notes will be chosen according to its designated note number (From 1 to 19). Repeated 2 times to have three combinations of notes in a column. Notes chosen across, starting from left to right, from top to bottom.]

Combo #1 (X1)

Combo #2 (X2)

[The locations the notes will be, according to its designated numbered row on the sheet music (From 1 to 16). Repeated 2 times, combos are assisted according to what set of integers are listed. Placed notes will follow row number, starting across from left to right, starting from the top to bottom.]

Combo #1 (Y1)

Combo #2 (Y2)

[The average of the tempo number (from 98 to 1000) divided by 10, equaling 593.6, rounding up to 594.]

-The song will last for about 30 seconds or more, regardless whether it repeats itself many times or doesn't get through the whole singular composition.

-All combos are appropriated a coordinate system, where (X,Y), X representing the designated note number and Y being the designated row number. [(X1,Y1), (X2, Y2)]

-I had to write down which combo coordinates will be used to get a better visual of what notes and rows are put into place.

I eventually wrote down the coordinates appropriate to the sets:

Combo #1:

Combo #2

So here is my finished work:

My chance project

You can also check out what my partner did for my project:

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

Conclusions and thoughts:

-I realized that both the process and execution of the chance project took a very long time to create.

-The program is at times wonky, meaning that there will be times when the program suddenly makes an error and the program has to force you to shut it down and I'm careful to frequently save my song. It also effects if you have other programs on your desktop cause it will react to any stroke on your keyboard or movements and clicks of your mouse.