Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire." » consumerism

New Culture Jamming Image

NoahC — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:24:27 +0000

Culture jamming – imho – is best seen by the works created by the minds that are the Billboard Liberation Front. By subtlety modifying advertisements in the public space, these “culture jammers” express an opinion about how they feel about the public space being inundated with advertisements (so-called “a-political” advertisements). Letting advertisers take up massive amounts of space creates an environment where it becomes increasingly more impossible (read too expensive) for artistic and political voices to have a place in the public sphere to express themselves – freedom of speech is effectively taken away by the fact that in order to adequately speak you have to have millions of dollars.

Another point to remember is that advertising is NOT a-political; rather it is a HIGHLY political medium (capitalism is about as political as you can get, right?!).

So, culture jammers see our common public sphere being acquired by private, political interests and this acquisition is at the expense of cultural interests that reside outside of capital. I totally agree and love the idea of re-interpreting advertisements and putting them back out into the public. I can’t say I’m as good as the folks at BLF but, personally, I don’t really think it’s about “being good”.

About the image. The public transportation train in the SF Bay ARea is called BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and their police force has committed some serious blunders in their time but most recently they went over the edge. One night on the train there was a ruckus and the police took some people aside for questioning and felt one (Oscar Grant) was being uncooperative. So one of the officers forced Oscar to the ground and while Oscar lay face down on the concrete, with his arm twisted behind him, the cop proceeded to shoot him in the back. Dead. This whole scene was caught on video from various sources and no where is it clear that Oscar was ever resisting nor was his behavior warranting the use of a taser (the weapon the cop says he was intending to go for). Anyway, it’s a really, really sad story of which BART has not really made any significant changes that people can see. I mean they haven’t shot anyone lately so I reckon that’s a good thing. But when I saw BART’s new “…and you’re there” advertisements the first thing that came to mind was the above image. Not a masterpiece but you get the point.

Here’s an older image of mine. One in which I received my very own cease-and-desist letter from those wonderfully wealthy corporate attorneys at BofA…

[original BART image; BART video; original BofA advert]

Branding Musicians

NoahC — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:56:34 +0000

I really hate the idea of commercial brands USING musicians to sell their products. It’s a popular method that only seems to be growing. Check out this posting on the Audio4Cast blog. I’m all for artists getting paid but I guess I want to live in an ideal world where they get paid because their work is valued; not because their work is seen as a good platform to sell ones’ own product. Though I do have to back-peddle a bit. In my own ventures I am exploring the idea of connecting local businesses with local musicians as a way to boost each other. I see these two as having more in common and not so much of a “big guy” exploiting the “small guy”. Am I wrong?

Music Diversity?

NoahC — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:37:48 +0000

According to “Audio4Cast,” the top sales of songs on the Internet are limited to “hits”. You know, those songs that are played over and over on the radio, commercials, television shows, etc. This is not the least bit surprising to me but it’s a good point to remember when the U.S. music industry/FCC cries foul and inevitably keeps creating an environment where small webcasters like SomaFM, Pandora or even Pirate Cat Radio, are treated like Piraya and told there’s no place for them. Small outfits like this clearly bring a needed diversity of music to people (aka “the market”) and will only positively effect online music sales as people become exposed to a larger base of music. Until then I guess we’ll just cue up another Britney-Diddy-Gaga song on the ol’mp3 player……