Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
Michael Heyn & Gracie Tamanko Part A: Logistics of Identity Private business analysts studying the Walmart corporate model discovered that along Interstate 70 in the southern Midwestern states Walmart had adapted and marketed its physical stores to specific Midwestern character tropes or stereotypes. Utilizing the existing logistical network, the branded stores were intended to create new territories and override existing sales boundaries. These regions were created by a Walmart analytics team in an exploratory trial referred to as Project 9G83M: The Walmart Consumer Identity Experiment. The hyper-marketed stores drew in higher numbers of consumers and increased sales exponentially, but in addition created an inescapable influence on the region. The pre-existing lack of Midwestern identity was overwhelmed by the six prescribed identities trialled in the Consumer Identity Experiment, leading to a region devoid of individuality, and instead a creating region stocked with corporate dictated personalities.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
VIDEO
Project 9G83M: The Walmart Consumer Identity Experiment.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The southern Midwestern states, main interstates and highways, Walmart locations, and Walmarts along I-70.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The I-70 Walmarts identified by the stereotype to which they were adapted.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The six identities targeted in the experiment: The Midwest Farmer, The Sports Fanatic, The Overfriendly Neighbor, The Midwest Emo Musician, The Brewery Hipster and the Midwest Millennial.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The adapted Midwest Farmer Walmart, exterior made of hay bales and interior aisles arranged to mimic rows of crops and a corn maze.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Sports Fanatic Walmart, exterior complete with a stadium on top of the store and interior with products arranged under tailgate tents.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Overfriendly Neighbor Walmart, exterior composed with residences attached to building allowing the store to serve as a “back yard” and interior with meeting spaces for spur of the moment conversations, book club get-together’s or pot lucks.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Midwest Emo Musician Walmart, exterior adorned with a guitar and interior similar to an indie record store with products in milk crates.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Brewery Hipster Walmart, exterior designed to be reminiscent of a cooler and interior complete with a track for shopper’s personal pedal wagon carts.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Midwest Millennial Walmart, exterior adorned with QR codes that shoppers can scan to create an online order and interior (unavailable to general customers) with conveyor belts to unload trucks for order pickup.
Bizon_Heyn_ Michael_Tamanko_Gracie
The Cycle of Influence created by the Walmart Identity Experiment, furthering one’s perception of themselves by the products they buy.
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Michael Heyn Part B: Walmart Watch Fights Back Following Walmart’s Consumer Identity Experiment, a group known as Walmart Watch - a nonpro��� ganization that studies the e�ects of large corporations on American society - travels along Interstate 70 to document the broader impacts of the experiment. Walmart Watch discovered the emergence of ad-hoc structures, built by Walmart customers and composed of Walmart products, that marked a cultural turning point; at large, the people were convinced that they were the personas prescribed by Walmart. In response to this phenomenon, Walmart Watch created a series of experiential tents to remind consumers of the factors that in����their identities. Published by the revered Midwest Times, “Walmart Watch Fights Back” depicts these tents and their e�ects.
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
VIDEO
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Heyn_Michael
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Gracie Tamanko Part B: Cosmic Influence In the same commercialized world, the Walmart corporation has continued to grow more influential upon the identities of Midwestern individuals. The prescribed identities are all people have to come to know and associate with; following the expectations set out for them by the corporation. Only few are aware of the powerful influence in which they live and can choose to rebel from within the corporate sphere or to escape entirely. A society exists, outside the boundaries of the corporate pull, where the harmonious members turn to a natural code, untouched by man: the constellations. The order of the rotating cosmos dictates the society’s schedules and patterns carried out by the whole community. Individually, the constellation pattern at birth creates a blueprint of one’s soul that shows their true self, genuine and uncorporatized. Be one’s sun sign, live with one’s sun sign, participate in the cyclical rhythm of scheduled days. But even in this constellating, rotating, cosmo guided community, the presence of an influencing factor remains, just veiled in the guise of fate or destiny. Is influence, natural or man-made, actually escapable?
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
VIDEO
When did you realize that the world had changed? It didn’t happen in the blink of an eye or suddenly in the middle of the night, but slowly, almost unnoticeable until it was too late. As Big Brother was watching us, the corporation was controlling us.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
One day, someone picked up an online order, and the next they were living in an online order- their choices and moves depicted to them on a screen. People had become like products themselves.
Buy the product, use the product, be the product. Buy the tailgate tent for the peewee football championship, and burn it in celebration after the game. Buy what is expected of you, do what is expected of you.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
I heard the whispers about a group. Rumors about a society where the corporation’s identity logistics and behavioral instructions are abandoned;
Where the people turn to a naturally occurring code, untouched by humans: the sky.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
My curiosity piqued in this rumored community, I made the choice to leave the corporation’s sphere in hopes of finding this society. Eventually, I arrived in a land of harmony and peace, home to a community that looked to the position and unchanging cycle of the celestial bodies,
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Specifically the zodiac made up of twelve constellations.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Wanting to join, I began my initiation process: 11 days of personal refection on the location of each planet at the time of my birth, concluding with a rebirth ceremony on the 12th day. I was then clean of the corporation’s pull, was welcomed into the society.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
We were free to be ourselves, leaving our branded identities behind.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
We were only who we born as, as what was written in the stars the moment we took our first breath. The constellation pattern at birth was the cosmos blueprint of one’s soul; outlining the journey one would take through life, and how they would go about it.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The zodiac formations affected more than our souls and destinies. The order dictated how we lived everyday, following a schedule of twelve 90 minute increments that aligned with the elements of the zodiac.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Fire hours we worked for the community. At the center of the community was the distillery, Through twelve steps, we combined the four elements into one end result: vodka. Grain from the earth, added to water, heated by fire, vaporized into air before collected in its end form.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Not only was vodka a combination of the zodiac elements, but it was a product that the corporation we had escaped from could not sell.
Earth hours we cared for the community. We cultivated the grain fields, prepared food, and maintained the grounds.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Air hours we socialized amongst the community. We ate together, roamed the surrounding woods and creek, and entertained each other. This formed close-knit bonds, especially between those of compatible signs.
Water hours we reflected on the community. We meditated and practiced mindfulness, emptying our minds of everything except the community’s success and happiness and focused on our position in the solar system.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
We shared common houses with our fellow sun signs, each identical house located around the distillery and arranged by the order of the constellations.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Each house was modified to accommodate each sign within.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The Gemini’s, ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication, had a large common space centered within their house due to their social and chatty nature. Symbolized by the twins, the sleeping quarters were arranged to accommodate harmonious pairs.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The sensitive Cancers who are strongly in touch with their emotions had individual feelings booths in their quarters for when they an emotional break.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The Virgo house also had a large common room at the center for socializing as Virgo’s were also ruled by Mercury. But different from Gemini, their sleeping quarters were circular and shared with a group.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The Sagittarii, who were wanderlust and didn’t like to stay still for long, had individual bed chambers they could come and go as they pleased and not disrupt their house mates.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
The Aquarius house had no permanent walls in the sleeping quarters, and instead had movable partitions and beds to satisfy any creative Aquarius who needed space to constantly grow and change.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
For Pisces, considered the oldest zodiac sign, the house was arranged with a labyrinth like hallway to appeal to their introspective and thoughtful nature and for pacing through during reflective hours.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Fire, earth, air, water. Work, care, socialize, reflect, repeat. Twelve by twelve by twelve. Look up, rotate, constellate. Be your sign, live with your sign. Circadian rhythm replaced by the constellation rhythm.
But moving and living in circles makes you dizzy. People would spiral, driven delusional by the unending cycle of the hours and days and motion sick from watching the stars rotate above. They left, and the community continued, believing they were stronger now without the weakest link.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Slowly, I began to notice that even in this natural community, choices and personality were prearranged.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Identities were just rooted in the stars at the time of your birth rather than the products you chose to buy. An overpowering influence was still present, and attempting to sway who you believed you were. Just veiled in the guise of fate or destiny, this community was not unlike the corporate experiment from which I had just escaped.
Bizon_Tamanko_ Gracie
Scared of the reach of the corporation and nauseated by revolving hours dictated by the stars, I left and wandered, and I wander still. Corporation or constellations, does a world free of influence actually exist? And if not, when it comes to identity, which decides? The influences of our environment or ourselves?