BOOGAZINE ANALOGITAL
Publicado por Actar Barcelona / New York www.actar.com Impresión Ingoprint Distribución Avtar D Roca i Batlle 2 08023 Barcelona T +34 93 417 49 93 T +34 93 418 67 07 office@actar-d.com © de los textos, de sus autores © de las imágenes, de sus autores © de la edición, Actar Barcelona, 2009 ISBN: 978-84-96540-0 DL: B-49293-07 Impreso y encuadernado en la UE
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STEREOGRAPH REACT
Stereograph is conceived as a magazine about graphic design and visual communication with a thematic approach to information rather than a merely cumulative treatment; in other words, the intention is for each issue to be devoted to a specific theme, which will be developed in a range of materials and formats: graphic projects, articles, essays and so on. The idea is to translate the concept we pioneered with Verb, our architecture magazine, to the world of graphics. This model of book-magazine has worked very well in the field of architecture, both as a tool with which we can research and experiment, and in terms of the commercial success it has achieved. We want to launch the series with an issue devoted to reactive graphics: in other words, those graphic works that express a reaction to a situation of injustice or defend a particular culture against the domination of more global languages. Quite simply, it is a question of celebrating the critical or dissident potential of graphic designers and visual communicators, the effectiveness of their tools and the intrinsic value of their independent proposals, with an evident capacity to innovate and stimulate reflection. We believe there is a better alternatiave to the passive dérive of an environment so absorbing and asphyxiating that it obliges us to rebel against it, in the form of a reaction to the imposition of a uniform homogeneity on our distinctive local models and references, resulting in the disappearance of situations and actions unique to autochthonous cultures: scenarios peopled by Frankenstein-like hybrids fashioned from the merging of vernacular references and other, more ‘globalized’ models. We also find scenarios in which to rebel against social injustice, whose origins are in most cases political: wars, dictatorships, oppressive regimes... Of course, this is not a new phenomenon; such critiques have always found expression, from the old broadsheets and pamphlets to the present-day weblogs, but there is no denying that the latest high-tech tools have given a new dimension to such movements, far more global, with a much stronger media presence. Another, related aspect that we will be looking at in this first issue is the importance of the Internet as a medium of diffusion, and of the information technologies —tools and programmes, graphic environments and the rest— at the disposal of today’s graphic designers. All of these things have provided the basis for a huge variety of responses, from groups asserting that another world is possible and anti-global movements that oppose the present the system to works by individual designers and visual communicators who, moved by an awareness of injustices or as a tool of protest, voice their critiques in independent, personal creations that in many cases are not commissioned by a client.
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THIS IS NOT A MANIFESTO: TOWARDS AN ANARCHO DESIGN PRACTICE
by JARED DAVISON
1 In relation to the anarchist concept of ‘no gods, no masters’ — or, that the exploitation of man by man and the dominion of man over man are inseperable, and each is the condition of the other.
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2 Design collectives such as The Street Art Workers, Drawing Resistance, the Beehive Collective, Paper Politics, Taring Padi, and the Prison Poster Project are just a few examples. See ‘Realising the Impossible: Art Against Authority’ by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007).
Graphic design has predominately been, and still is, the tool which beautifies, communicates and commodifies a set of ideas, ideals or products within various tenets of our social and economic relations. Unfortunately, it is fair to say that this creative tool is overwhelmingly used in an economic/commercial sense — consciously or unconsciously using its talents to exploit — to raise profit margins and material wealth for the benefit of a select clientele. While graphic design lends its talents outside of the commercial realm in the form of an informative and communicative visual language, and in academic or self-authorship, research-based practices — the primary role of graphic design as a medium is that of the visual instrument of the powerful; the seller of sales, the convincer of consumers — employed by the corporate body or state-sanctioned by capitalist /socialist totalitarian governments in order to perfect and reinforce their hegemonic positions. And while design academia can wax poetic about the virtues of graphic design and its specialised visual language — conveniently sidestepping more tangible issues — the design industry practitioner, whether one chooses to acknowledge his/her role or not, must realise that their labour is nothing more than the harbinger of consumerism, used in the service of monolithic capitalism and all of its ails. Without graphic design those who sustain these ills of society have no face, no visual identity, no point of reference, and most importantly, no effect. While recognising in the libertarian tradition that no individual designer, group, government or
institution has the right to define the role in which graphic design should play,1 it is important to explore and encourage alternative design practices in an attempt to counter the exploitative position it has consciously stepped into. Analysis of the capacity inherent in design/designers practices to alleviate current ideologies, and to aid in more alternative modes of social organisation is needed, and has begun in limited pockets of the design world.2 Design then, must explore the periphial space outside of advertising; totally devoid of any commercial use — or more specifically, for the movement towards a more humane and libertarian society, that is to say, a more autonomous existence based on self-management, mutual aid, solidarity and direct participation in one’s affairs. As the potential producer, educator, organiser and visual face of social change, graphic design could weld its creative future with more important and pressing concerns than market shares, profit margins and consumption rates. It is interesting to realise the power that graphic design holds within the current capitalist system.
“One cannot, in the nature of things, expect a little tree that has turned into a club to put forth leaves” Martin Buber
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“It is no longer enough today to lock ourselves in our studios and produce culture. We must engage in our world in as many ways as possible. We need to ground our artistic production in the realities of our lives and those many others around us.� Realizing The Impossible: Art Against Authority
3 A government initiative aimed at helping New Zealand companies ‘increase their exports and profits through the better use of design in their products and services’. Check it out at www.betterbydesign.org.nz. 4 See ‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser (Penguin Books, 2002). 5 Michael Bakunin in ‘Anarchism’ by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970).
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6 Voline in ‘Anarchism’ by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970).
Corporates, and likewise, governments, have all tapped into the powerful and almost unrivalled marketing resource that is graphic design. Better By Design,3 hand-in-hand with business interests, has marched towards a better future for consumerism. And no wonder — what other non-physical coercive technique can instill a company logo in the public and private mind as early as two years old.4 Unchecked, the increasing role of graphic design as advertising’s lackey will continue to have unreversible effect on our mental, visual and physical environment. In 1964, and again in 2002, the concerns of above were brought forward in the form of the First Things First manifesto, signed by designers, photographers, artists and visual practitioners interested in steering their skills along a more viable and worthwhile path. “Unprecidented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention... charitable causes and other informational design projects urgently require our expertise and help”. Calling for a shift in graphic design’s priorities, the signatories of the manifesto recognised the potential for their skills to aid more humanitarian causes. The 2002 manifesto, as a tentative step in reviving Ken Garland’s original ideas for todays practitioners, and as a step towards visual ‘reform’, is greatly noted. However, regardless of how well meaning and sincere the ideas brought forward in these documents were, it is necessary to critique their statements This step, however small and tentative, towards visual ‘reform’ was greatly noted. However, regardless of how well meaning and sincere the ideas brought forward in these documents were, it is necessary to critique their statements in more radical terms. While proposing ‘a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting, and democratic forms of communication’, the manifesto falls short in recognising any kind of tangible and radical change. The First Things First Manifesto of 2002 fails to recognise that the ‘uncontested’ and ‘unchecked’ consumerism they wish to re-direct is so engrained in the very system we participate in, that anything short of the complete transformation of social priorities, structures and organization will never effect true social change. Proposing the shifting of priorities within
the system rather than the shifting of the system itself — as history has proven in both state / democratic socialism, and the farce of parliamentary democracy — will do nothing more than gain a few insignificant victories while the real battle goes unwaged. The fact that rampant globalisation and totalitarian corporate hegemony go hand in hand with the current system is the real issue concerned graphic designs could be questioning. In fact, “the representative system, far from being a guarantee for the people, on the contrary, creates and safeguards the continued existence of a governmental aristocracy against the people.”5 With this in mind, the following text proposes to explore the graphic designers role (if any) in revolutionary, direct action towards the transformation of society, in specifically anarchist terms. The basic ideas of Anarchism have been mis-informed, mis-interpreted, and misunderstood throughout its existence. Its humanistic and libertarian ideas were forever tarnished by a minority who committed violent acts around the turn of the 19th century — ‘the propaganda of the deed’ as it was known, included assasinations and terrorism directed towards the state and its leaders. These acts, and the anti-authoritarian stance of Anarchism have tended to, in the majority of peoples minds, associate its theories with chaos and disorder. This is simply not the case. Anarchism, or libertarian socialism, is the concern — whether it be social, political, or historical — of human beings living, interacting, and relating in a way that is the most fair, equal, involved, and ultimately free of any kind of exploitation — whether it be economic or political, capitalistic or communistic. “A mistaken, or more often, deliberately inaccurate interpretation alleges that the libertarian concept means the absence of all organisation. This is entirely false: it is not a matter of ‘organisation’ or ‘nonorganisation’, but of two different principles of organisation...Of course, say the anarchists, society must be organised. However, it must be established freely, socially, and, above all, from below.”6 The idea of non-hierarchical forms of organization are central to libertarian socialism — only through direct action and self-management will we enjoy com-
7 Paraphrased from Rudolf Rocker’s ‘Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice’ (AK Press, 2004)
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8 From ‘Anarchism’ by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970).
plete emancipation in our lives and the daily decisions that they entail. These ideas are far from utopian or fruitless as those who fear its potential would lead us to believe — they are no more utopian than the thought that far-removed, parliamentary ‘representatives’ can intimately and effectively answer our many wants and needs as individuals and communities. Therefore Anarchism is not a fixed, selfenclosed social system but rather a definite trend in the historic development of society, which, in contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governme tal institutions, strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in life. For anarchists, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but a vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him/her, and turn them to social account.
“As anarchists, we have seen our politics denigrated by other artists; as artists, we have had our cultural production attacked as frivolous by activists.” Realising the Impossibe: Art Against Authority
The less this natural development of people is influenced by religious or political guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious human personality will become, the more it will become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in which it has grown.7 It would be wrong to view this text as some kind of blueprint for anarchist design action. This is not a manifesto. Nor is it the justification for graphic design as a specialist, elitist profession to continue in its current form for the ‘aid’ of social change. As Proudhon wrote to Marx, “Let us not make ourselves the leaders of a new intolerance. Let us not pose as the apostles of a new religion, even if it be the religion of logic, of reason”.8 And while there is a definite place for the graphic designer in an activist role, both in an educational and provocative sense, designers must not make the mistake of becoming some kind of vanguard group of directors. Whereas Marxism is often justified in both political and academic fields in this respect — defending the role of a necessary vanguard party towards the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ — anarchism vehemently refutes and rejects this concept. The everyday individual or anarchist design practitioner, through the basic act of joining their libertarian principals with their material production, should, and could, greatly contribute to the transformation of everyday life towards a more just and humane existence. As educator and mediator, it is the responsibility of anyone with an understanding of visual communication to instill in people’s minds a broader sense of possibility, using the communicative powers of artistic imagery to encourage and enrage. It is important to shift societies’ many urgent concerns from the fringes and into the public realm, in a direct and unavoidable manner. However, purely negative and angst-ridden critique can only go so far — it is the sense of positive possibilities that need to be associated with the
9 Colin Matthes, ‘Realising the Impossible: Art Against Authority’ by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007).
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ideas of Anarchism. The marginality of current grassroots movements must be overcome — the isolation of both activist groups and concerned individual’s thoughts must be rendered public, transparent, and shared. Mainstream media do a rather convincing job of keeping our private thoughts as seemingly isolated and illogical. It is 10 Rudolf Rocker, ‘Anarcho-Syndian important task to illustrate that the calism: Theory and critical and questioning ideas we may be Practice’ (AK Press, having individually are, more often than 2004). not, shared as a whole, rather than letting them be diffused and disarmed by hegemonic structures and institutions such as the news, popular media, and the state.
Graphic design can publicly and prolifically become the visual manifestation of these shared ideas. “Ideally, art can inspire hope, encourage critical thinking, capture emotion, and stimulate creativity. It can declare another way to think about and participate in living. Art can document or challenge history, create a framework for social change, and create a vision of a more just world. When art is used in activism it provides an appealing and accessible entry point to social issues and radical politics”.9 As the initial point of contact with more in-depth and varied forms of activism, graphic design can act as the essential catalyst for further research, involvement, and more importantly, for direct action. Further exploration of existing and more experimental modes of production and aesthetics in design and design application can only set the basis for future non-hierarchal, organic organisation. Systems and structures raised in ones practice could essentially form patterns and guides for self organization in a more truly libertarian society. Individualism and autonomy intact, the personal process/es of making work could lead the way in eventual liberation on a more macro level, exploring the ‘unlimited perfectibility’ of both personal design arrangements and social organization. “Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression…” 10 Allowing design to publicly explore and illustrate those ‘higher forms of expression’ can do nothing but broaden the scope and awareness of the anarchist movement as a whole.
“It is said that an anarchist society is impossible. Artistic activity is the process of realising the impossible.” Max Blechman, “Toward an Anarchist Aesthetic”.
signed: Edward Wright Geoffrey White William Slack Caroline Rawlence Ian McLaren Sam Lambert Ivor Kamlish Gerald Jones Bernard Higton Brian Grimbly John Garner Ken Garland Anthony Froshaug Robin Fior Germano Facetti Ivan Dodd Harriet Crowder Anthony Clift Gerry Cinamon Robert Chapman Ray Carpenter Ken Briggs
We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.
In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.
 We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons. By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.
FIRST THINGS FIRST 1964: A MANIFESTO
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signed: Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Siân Cook Linda van Deursen Chris Dixon William Drenttel Gert Dumbar Simon Esterson Vince Frost Ken Garland Milton Glaser Jessica Helfand Steven Heller Andrew Howard Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy Zuzana Licko
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it. Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.
FIRST THINGS FIRST 2000: A DESIGN MANIFESTO
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Ellen Lupton Katherine McCoy Armand Mevis J. Abbott Miller Rick Poynor Lucienne Roberts Erik Spiekermann Jan van Toorn Teal Triggs Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson and many more In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.
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WHAT A PERFECT, PERFECT WORLD.
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by JAMES DAVID
So much order and planning, so many grids, routines and systems. Its mechanical intricacies are astounding and mesmerizing; it has a pulse all its own. Even now the soft, humming anesthesia of the city seeks to replace what thoughts you may still be allowed to have with white noise.We are here to guard against exactly that. As citizens, we obediently pay our landlords to let us inhabit the homes we make, and we talk casually of the atrocities that our governments commit in our name – so what does it take to end these absurdities? What new forms must we explore, and how can we assume them? How can we weld visual communication to social justice? The answers are as complex and as varied as the artists featured in this compilation. In honoring the libertarian ethic that we prefer, we’ve come together to applaud one another, and to provide a narrative about these activist efforts while simultaneously participating in them.Our work might be described as that design which must be done in pursuit of a more humane and libertar-
ian world, and which claims that notions of freedom and ethical conduct are most poignant when communicated visually. Where mainstream media frames debates, our goal is to open them up or smash them to pieces. Where undemocratic structures put up barriers around our liberties, we are there to subvert them.Many of us have carved out wholly unique (and frequently noncommercial) spaces where we conduct our work, and explore alternative design practices as a means, not an end. Rather than sell revolution, or use revolution to sell a brand, we actively participate in creating that cumulative occurrence that is social change. In our line of work, we can find at least one common theme: influencing systems through design is central to success. If a designer’s work tangibly contributes to fashioning and furthering alternative modes of social organization, it’s working. That design which proffers what could be, and which prefers community and participation thrives in this environment. It’s a rebellion against monoculture, and the editors of this volume are perfectly correct in labeling our work “reactive.” But it’s proactive, too. Cultural production of this variety questions and dismantles dominant ideologies. It is in character for us to not wish for the reform of unjust systems, but to disrupt them and hand out the tools with which to skirt or dismantle them. We work from an unscripted reality, and alleviate (rather than enforce) politics. There is something to be said about this foundation that we work from, and our propensity to thereby create new channels of communicating. The spaces we create through our solidarity, while temporary, are autonomous, culturally relevant, and inclusive. Through our nonparticipation in anything we believe to be evil, we are forging another route.We still sense that there is a life to live, one where we control our own actions, and where the only pulse we hear is not of the city, but the one in our lover’s chest. We see a world where people are compelled by their own will, and where no one is subjected to the numbness of being “under control,” because desire of any sort is always our own, and no one can take it from us. We are creating this world and dismantling an old one, for what better way to build a new world than in our hearts!
CULTURE JAMMING POLITICAL ART PUBLIC INTERVENTIO MAPPING YOUR REA URBAN TYPOS ACTIVISM ARTIVISM HACKTIVISM CRAFTIVISM
ONS ALITY
25 64 75 82 93 102 123 134 145
Old fashioned notions about art, science and spirituality being the peak achievements and the noblest goals of the spirit of man have been dashed on the crystalline shores of Acquisition; the holy pursuit of consumer goods. All old forms and philosophies have been cleverly co-opted and re�spun� as marketing strategies and consumer campaigns by the new shamans, the Ad men.
Different forms of media serve the Ad as primary conduits to the people. Entirely new media have been invented solely to streamline the process of bringing the Ad to the people.
Advertising suffuses all corners of our waking lives; it so permeates our consciousness that even our dreams are often indistinguishable from a rapid succession of TV commercials.
signed by: In the beginning was the Ad. The Ad was brought to the consumer by the Advertiser. Desire, self worth, Jack Napier self image, ambition, hope; all find their genesis in the Ad. Through the Ad and the intent of the AdverJohn Thomas tiser we form our ideas and learn the myths that make us into what we are as a people. That this method of self definition displaced the earlier methods is beyond debate. It is now clear that the Ad holds the most esteemed position in our cosmology.
THE BILLOBOARD LIBERATION FRONT MANIFESTO
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Know more about BLF on Stereograph
Each time you change the Advertising message in your own mind, whether you climb up onto the board and physically change the original copy and graphics or not, each time you improve the message, you enter in to the High Priesthood of Advertisers.
For these reasons the Billboard Liberation Front states emphatically and for all time herein that to Advertise is to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design.
You can switch off/smash/shoot/hack or in other ways avoid Television, Computers and Radio. You are not compelled to buy magazines or subscribe to newspapers. You can sic your rotweiler on door to door salesman. Of all the types of media used to disseminate the Ad there is only one which is entirely inescapable to all but the bedridden shut-in or the Thoreauian misanthrope. We speak, of course of the Billboard. Along with its lesser cousins, advertising posters and “bullet” outdoor graphics, the Billboard is ubiquitous and inescapable to anyone who moves through our world. Everyone knows the Billboard; the Billboard is in everyones mind.
And so we see, the Ad defines our world, creating both the focus on “image” and the culture of consumption that ultimately attract and inspire all individuals desirous of communicating to their fellow man in a profound fashion. It is clear that He who controls the Ad speaks with the voice of our Age.
Artists are judged and rewarded on the basis of their relative standing in the ongoing commodification of art objects. Bowing to fashion and the vagaries of gallery culture, these creators attempt to manufacture collectible baubles and contemporary or “period” objects that will successfully penetrate the collectors market. The most successful artists are those who can most successfully sell their art. With increasing frequency they apprentice to the Advertisers; no longer needing to falsely maintain the distinction between “Fine” & “Commercial” art.
Product placement in television and film have overtaken story line, character development and other dated strategies in importance in the agendas of the filmmakers. The directors commanding the biggest budgets have more often than not cut their teeth on TV Ads & music videos.
Spiritualism, literature and the physical arts: painting, sculpture, music and dance are by and large produced, packaged and consumed in the same fashion as a new car. Product contents, dictated by trends in hipness, contain a half-life matching the producers calender for being supplanted by newer models.
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by JOHN SMITH
GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB
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Fresh out of graduate school and unhappy doing web design work in order to pay back student loans I applied for a fellowship position at the Eyebeam OpenLab, a non-profit art and technology research and development lab in Manhattan. The application asked for two work samples and a series of questions related to creativity and open source. I applied with Graffiti Analysis and Explicit Content Only, and based on the strength of graffiti and curse words, I was asked to join an elite group with three other hacker types with backgrounds ranging from NASA to MIT. The position came with a small but livable salary and health insurance, and allowed me to focus solely on my work for what ended up being a period of two years.
Admittedly feeling like the wild card choice amongst the group, I quit my job and continued doing projects related to graffiti, open source, and popular culture. After 4 or 5 months I started collaborating with an ex-robotics contractor for NASA named James Powderly. James was an engineer with a tendency towards deviance and when he saw that I was using technology to create graffiti tools for the modern vandal, he quickly dropped everything and lent his engineering, hardware, and materials expertise. We made a good team and quickly came up with a simple way to combine an LED, a magnet, and a small battery into a new self illuminating medium for graffiti artists. The LED Throwie was our first big collaborative hit and it was shortly after the development of this device that we donned the name Graffiti Research Lab and decided to continue this strain of research as a team. Early on we decided the G.R.L. would have two main goals: 1) to produce and release cheap, easy, and functional tools for urban communication, and 2) to use graffiti as a medium to spread open source ideals into popular culture. All G.R.L. projects are released for free with detailed HOW TO guides and source code so that people can implement them on their own and for their own purposes. In an effort to try and trump the success of Throwies we joined forces with British artist, friend, and programmer Theo Watson to create Laser Tag, a system that allows writers to draw at a very large scale onto buildings in light using a
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small pen sized laser. It is to date our most widely utilized project, with activist groups, graffiti writers, and nerds putting it to various uses in cities as far as Singapore and as close as Rochester. With the wide spread adoption of the Laser Tag project we decided that we should open up the Graffiti Research Lab in the same way in which we had released Laser Tag and LED Throwies. When Esquire magazine approached us in 2007 and offered us 2 pages to do whatever we wanted, we decided that we should use the opportunity to invite everyone to take part in this project. In essence our goal was to treat G.R.L. similar to any other open source project; to make G.R.L. more like Linux. Today James and I continue to collaborate heavily and create new tools for graffiti but we are joined
by a loose unguided network of hackers and vandals from all over the world. At times they work with us to create projects together, and other times they release work completely independently and with little contact. G.R.L. is the largest open source initiative that I have ever been a part of, and it’s existence and functionality is a meta experiment above and beyond the individual projects and technologies it creates. Currently my creative time is spent between Graffiti Research Lab, which is highly collaborative, and my solo work, which I release on my website ni9e.com. The wheels of the G.R.L. are constantly in motion but at the same time I still enjoy releasing non-graffiti experiments as early and as often as possible. Below is a small selection of these projects.
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Play the GRL How to Video on Stereograph
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Visit the Graffiti Reseach Lab website on Stereograph
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by JAMES DAVID
INTERVIEW WITH PERTER FUSS Peter Fuss reclaims billboards to examine and evaluate present, socially taboo subjects. He’s been a fugitive, a critic, and many other things. Chiefly a painter these days, his work comments on politics, the relationships between religion and authority, flashy religiosity, social problems, and art. Peter was generous enough to lend us a few minutes for an interview, after putting in some hard work on his latest project - a re-imagination of the Catholic Stations of the Cross, which forces one to think twice about perceptions of criminality.
For our readers who aren’t as familiar with your background, can you give us a brief rundown of your life up until today?
I did many different things, many of them not even worth mentioning. Now I mainly paint. I am most known for works in acrylic paint on paper which I then illegally place in urban landscape. To do that, I use billboards which are plentiful on the streets.
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When painting or designing an Both design and content are important in art works. To make a piece installation, do you start by thin- interesting, both of these must maintain equilibrium and fit well with king about the social issue first, each other. When one of them starts dominating, the piece becomes or do you put design first? boring. I favor work of artists who are able to balance both form and content. To me, it is not only important how an artist speaks, but most of all what he/she is actually saying. I am not excited by abstract works or excessively vivid graffiti with no message. Therefore, the starting point for my work is definitely a message, idea.
You work illegally and commer- I set my work in the streets because this helps me show my work to cially. Where do you feel most at people I would never be able to reach through an art gallery. Besides, home? street art gives me unlimited freedom. I work when I feel like and do what I want. I don’t have to agree anything with any art gallery manager. I don’t have to keep deadlines, get my ideas assessed or consult my projects. These are the main advantages of working in urban environment. Of course, I also exhibit in galleries if I am invited. The precondition though is that no one will interfere with my vision. I don’t know if that is a problem in the U.S., but in recent years Poland saw many cases of interfering with works of art on display, we’ve had interventions from the police and local authorities or pieces being withdrawn from display by scared curators. My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day. I was prosecuted by the police for 6 months because of the contents of the billboard I illegally posted on a fence in front of the church and the public prosecutor spoke to the press of the sanctions I could face. Then they discontinued the case as they were unable to find me. Over the past few years, you’ve worked outside of Poland, both in the scope of your work, and literally, attending more events in other countries. For the Laugh of God debuted in London, for example. What brought about the shift for you, and has it changed the way you work?
Freedom to travel and taking part in events in various countries is nothing extraordinary in today’s world. I’ve lived in different places and all experiences I had surely influenced me, to a varied degree of course. But it is not a question of place where I live or interacting with different people and cultures that is decisive of the subject matter of my work – it is rather the times we live in that determines my perception of this world. The fact that Americans elected Bush has a direct impact on the life of people outside the U.S. Polish soldiers die on a war started by Bush in Iraq. Thanks to the media and the Internet, photographs of Hillary Clinton crying during the primaries are seen immediately in Poland and in Texas. The fact that Hirst exhibited his diamond skull in White Cube in London was known on the same day in Los Angeles, Kiev and Sydney.
Many of the installations of I don’t create series just because I feel like it. The subject matter deyours that I’ve seen are serial. termines it. So sometimes it takes a series and sometimes one piece Do you set out to create a series is sufficient. of installations, or do you let the setting determine how far you take a concept?
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A good deal of your work deals with the Pope. Why the fixation?
It is not the fixation, it is a reaction to the reality around me. I live in Poland, Pope John Paul II was a Pole and even when he was alive the scale of his worship was really grotesque, and after his death it only intensified. Right now there are about 500 monuments of the Pope in this country. You can see the Pope’s images on mugs, ballpoints, or lighters. The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste. The Pope is worshipped and loved by masses. But to them, he is more of an idol, a superstar than a spiritual leader, as paradoxically they know very little of his teachings or Papal encyclicals. The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste.
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“My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day.”
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Lisen to the Peter Fuss audio interview on Stereograph
People prefer to have pictures showing the Pope than Jesus Christ. They are also much more sensitive over the Pope than Christ. In Poland, it would be more acceptable to caricature or make a joke on Christ rather than the Pope. The police intervened several times during my exhibition on the Pope after they were called by people that felt offended by it. What were some of your early As a young boy I lived in a country that was not independent. You influences? couldn’t travel abroad, I even remember the period when it was not possible to travel freely between cities – to do that, you needed a special permit, which was checked by the military and the police. The state-controlled television had only two channels, the press was censored and before playing a concert, every band had to have their lyrics approved by institutions which made sure that no dissent was voiced. It was not a free country. You could go to jail for criticizing those in power. You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered. Those people expressed their need of freedom, they fought the system by writing politically involved slogans. It was their way to manifest their views and express their dissent against the regime. And they really risked prison. You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered. Those were my first contacts with graffiti activism. It taught me to be uncompromising and believe in the sense of manifesting myself, my beliefs and ideas. It taught me that it’s important to be true to one’s beliefs and express one’s individuality and independence, even if that might cause serious repercussions to me. Therefore, when Harring painted in the subway and Basquiat fulfilled his creativity on Brooklyn walls, I had contact with completely different type of graffiti activism Can you tell us about your My latest project is a series of 14 billboards showing the Stations of most recent project? the Cross. In the Catholic tradition (more than 90% of Polish population declare being Catholics) there is this tradition of acting out the Stations of the Cross before Easter. I posted my billboards on the Good Friday at the city train stations so people going to work would see different Stations of the Cross posted on successive train stops. But it wasn’t my goal to make people more spiritual or to promote Christianity among people.
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Christ was portrayed in the same way as criminals and suspects are shown in media coverage: surname abbreviated (”Jesus Ch.”) and face shown in a way so as to make it impossible to identify the person. On one hand this reflected how the media trivialize stories of individuals, but most of all I wanted to point to the fact which many people seem to forget – that Christ was a revolutionary who challenged the existing law and order. Nowadays, people who break the rules and challenge the law and order imposed by the system are being sentenced and imprisoned, notwithstanding the fact that Christ, who also broke the rules, is worshipped.
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by LAURA BOUDREAU
A DIVIDED HIGHWAY ROADSWORTH
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The grey area between graffiti and vandalism is more than theoretical for Roadsworth: his controversial street images have turned pavement into politics in the city of Montreal and rekindled debate about the nature of public art. Peter Gibson, the man behind the Roadsworth graffiti identity, began taking to the streets of Montreal in the early mornings of late 2001, spray-painting cyclist symbols on roads to protest the lack of bike lanes and paths in the city. Gradually his street images developed into increasingly symbolic displays of civic and environmental critique: pedestrian crossings on the Plateau Mont-Royal turned into giant footprints; orange stencils of barbed wire lined crosswalks; heart monitor-like spikes and valleys punctuated centre lines on roadways. Bemused Montrealers, many thinking that the city commis-
sioned the road stencils, were left to contemplate the significance of these images. The pieces were “very simple, open-ended, ambiguous,” says Gibson. “They were also somewhat integrated with the environment — the street, the road markings — giving them an almost subliminal quality.” Gibson adds, “I think my intention was to create a language that would function as a form of satire, accentuating the absurdity inherent to certain aspects of urban living, urban space, [and] public policy.” But evidently something got lost in translation: Montreal police arrested Gibson on November 29 last year and charged him with 51 counts of mischief, the charges carrying maximum penalties ranging from $200 to $5,000. Gibson defends his works, claiming that they create free dialogue within the city’s commercial monologue. An economic, anti-ecological imperative holds the city hostage, Gibson says, and this deference to industry is symptomatic of the hypocritical way laws are applied in the city setting. As Gibson notes, “We aggressively pursue graffiti writers for scrawling their names on a wall across from a massive backlit billboard advertising Big Macs.” Despite the claims of police that the Roadsworth images are a threat to public safety, Gibson argues that what they actually threaten is the corporate monopoly on public space.
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Many Montrealers agree. Chris Hand, Director of Zeke’s Gallery on the Plateau, says that “at the street level — and elsewhere — there is a tremendous amount of support for Peter. I have yet to hear anyone say that they didn’t like what he did, and the only complaints are to vague ideas of public security. After I show them pictures of what [artist] Maclean did [using red tape to change “ARRET” signs to read “A R T”], it causes them to realize that, in comparison, Peter’s work was very benign.” Gibson’s trial begins in January 2006, but his impact on Montreal will likely still be contested long after the courts decide his legal fate. Public space is full of competing and contradictory messages, but where is the line between public acts of selfexpression and selfish acts of public vandalism? Roadsworth’s case highlights this debate surrounding art in public space. Pop culture expert Dr. Tim Blackmore of the University of Western Ontario sees “L’Affaire Roadsworth” as a missed opportunity for discussion about public art. “I’m sympathetic to Roadsworth’s politics and like his art, but that’s not the issue. I get the sense that
a lot of what Roadsworth is doing is basically stickin’ it to The Man. I’m little convinced that road art will do this. It will cause The Man to allocate more money for repainting. “I think it’s a serious mistake for Montreal to drag Roadsworth into court,” Blackmore continues. “If I were in the position of advising the city, I would suggest that they meet with a collective of the graffiti artists and begin discussing public art seriously, allotting space for freestyle of all kinds.” Gibson agrees that access is key: “If I were a city councillor, I think I would designate a lot of public space as free space — space where one could express anything.“I love life in the city,” Gibson says. “I love the possibility for cultural and economic exchange.” It is, however, the collision between art and commerce in the public sphere that both inspires and infuriates Gibson, fuelling his unconventional form of protest: “Painting images on the street is actually a very innocuous gesture in the face of the problems that exist. We are living in serious denial if we feel that business as usual is going to ensure our continued survival and well-being.”
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“If I were in the position of advising the city, I would suggest that they meet with a collective of the graffiti artists and begin discussing public art seriously, allotting space for freestyle of all kinds.”
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Visit the Roadsworth website on Stereograph
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by JAVIER BRIONGOS
JORGE RODRIGUEZ GERADA
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For some time, Andy Warhol has conceded to us 15 minutes of fame. That being the case, the prerequisite was to have an accident, be poisoned… That tricky media worthy relevance would not spare Marilyn, Elvis or Mao. Their faces were sufficiently important to be worthy of being remembered, reworked and converted into a treasured object or icon for posterity. Why is one life more important than another? Most Importantly, who is interested that we think this way? Jorge Rodriguez Gerada started making art more that 15 years ago in New York City (he is a Cuban New Yorker, and that is not banal biographical information added to satisfy the curiosity of curators in search for the exotic or art professionals whose value scale is based on the passport).
We are before one of the founders of the artistic direction known as “Culture Jamming”. But lets go to the artistic processes of the Identity series, one of the best examples of coherence in art in the last few years. Portraits in charcoal (gestures, sketches? – not in the least) people, until now anonymous, scale the walls of buildings in our cities, in a format that we can begin to describe as gigantic. Yes, they are gigantically defying, proud, dignified. More social than political, with the measure that the preoccupation for one ridicules the other. Jorge finds his protagonists in the street, in the neighborhood where they live, where they are from or decided to stay. That they be residents is important. They are not an object troubé. Thus begins the true dialog. Mutual understanding, the reasons and the explinations. Then comes the final decision,
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which belongs to the local resident, to allow the work to be completed. But let us not be mistaken, the art piece is not the charcoal drawing. The artistic process begins with the search for the city, the building, and most importantly the person (who is sufficiently valiant to allow being found). Decide to be converted into a hero (like those of modernity described and defended by Baudelaire) monumental; a Goliath confronting the powerful King Davids of politics and advertising in order to take back the public space, snatched from our hands by advertisers anxious to sell us perfect men and women, and politicians that against all the evidence want to convince us that they are perfect. Risk your own likeness, the gaze, the anonymous life, to reach a popularity that is not paid (this is not Big Brother, nor any of the other loathsome programs in which we hand over our miseries for money). And this entrusted to an artist. Let us not forget how many times artists have duped us and
taken advantage of known imbeciles and the famous that are not worthy of being known (of course, later they say that it is a critique, or whatever allegation that they can find in the great Bible of aesthetics. What defines identity, that fragile and inconsistent –but necessary- sensation of being? Its search is one of the most arduous tasks in life. I would say especially for an artist and particularly for Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada (I wont repeat his pertinent biographical information). His achievements, his coherence and the grandeur of the humanity in his work, place him among the best artists of our generation. Fortunately, utilizing words which are not my own, but that I cannot resist using (I am sure that the person who wrote them will forgive me), his “Identities occupy the canvas of our cities, populating them with the marvelous residual essence of it people�.
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Visit the Jorge Gereda website on Stereograph
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POLITICAL PROTEST ART CRAIG FOSTER Craig Foster in 2002 started creating a piece a day based on impressions from the news and it grew into an art blog of sorts with about 2000 images. The pieces intentionally add light relief to the political message conveyed. More importantly the work is an indictment of the direction that the United States is being taken and the ready acceptance of war and the notion that military intervention is an effective means of diplomacy between America and the rest of the world. Craig Foster has been an artist since the late 80’s when at the beginning of the first Gulf War he began making protest art, never considering that the work would be relevant in the new millennium.
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Visit the Foster Craig website on Stereograph
by STEPHEN DUNCOMDE
ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLE PACKARD JENNINGS
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If “politics is the art of the possible,” as the 19th century German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck once wrote, then what sort of politics are Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert proposing with their posters? Movable skyscrapers. A martial arts studio on a BART train. Public transit by elephant back. Commuting by zip line. Transforming San Francisco into wildlife refuge. Turning a football stadium into a farm (and linebackers into human plows). Every one of these proposals for our “awesome future” is patently impossible. Urban planning is a serious business: the domain of accredited academics, trained technicians and pragmatic politicians. What’s proposed by Jennings and Lambert – artists, of all things – is not serious at all.
Which is exactly why one needs to take them so seriously. Enlightenment pieties aside, politics is not solely, or even primarily, about reasoned thinking and rational choices; it’s an affair of fantasy and desire. People are rarely moved to action, support, or even consent by realistic proposals; they are motivated by dreams of what could be. This is something Conservatives understand quite well. It is highly unlikely that we will do away with income taxes or become a Christian nation any time soon, yet this doesn’t stop Republican Party standard bearers from making allusions to these futures. An Islamic Caliphate is not in the offing, but dreams of such a possibility convince a disturbing number of Muslim militants to strap bombs to their chests. Not too long ago imagining the impossible was the job of the Left. Conservatives, after all, wanted to conserve what was, while progressives wanted to move toward the awesome future. What were democracy and socialism if not leaps into the unknown? Who, after all, is remembered for proclaiming “I have a dream”? But things have changed. Think of the Liberal uproar a few years back when Karl Rove told a New York Times reporter that the goal of the Bush administration was to “create new realities.” When this senior adviser to the president then went on to describe (and denigrate) Liberals, reporters, policy experts, and the general Times readership as the “reality-based community,” the
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Left, far from taking offense, adopted this appellation with pride. As I write this essay, Democratic candidates for the 2008 presidential election are making appeals to audacious “hope” and unspecified “change,” but the past quarter century of progressive politics has been dominated by the opposite: professionalism, pragmatism, and predictability. And where has all this seriousness gotten the Left? An unprecedented rise of the Right, from Neo-Cons on the Potomac to Fundamentalists from the Bible-belt to Jihadists in the Middle East. A triumph of the dreamers. It’s true, in the United States at least, that some of these dreams are finally being recognized as nightmares, but it’s a bittersweet victory since the Left has little to offer in replacement. The absurd proposals offered up by Jennings and Lambert have the quality of dreams. The artists explain that they asked experts in the fields of architecture, city planning and transportation for ideas on how to make a better city. These plans were then “perhaps mildly exaggerated.” It is exactly in this exaggeration that the artists’ visions have their political power, and their morality. The problem with the dreams offered up by the Right (and commercial advertisers, who share the technique) is that their fantasies are meant to be taken for reality. Vote for this candidate or buy that product and this phantasmagoric future will be yours. Since these impossibilities can never be delivered, the result is another search for a new fantasy (endless consumption), increased fanaticism in an attempt to will the impossible (terrorism), or disenchantment when the promised future is not delivered (witness the current implosion of the Republican Party). What is so inspiring – and honest — about the visions of our future offered up by Jennings and Lambert is their transparent impossibility. A city could become more “green” with additional public parks and community gardens, but transforming San Francisco into a nature preserve where office workers take their lunch break next to a mountain gorilla family? Ain’t gonna happen. And that’s the point.
Because it is not going to happen their fantasy fools no one. There is no duplicity, no selling the people a false bill of goods. It’s a dream that people are aware is just a dream. Yet at the same time these impossible dreams open up spaces to imagine new possibilities. The problem with asking professionals to “think outside the box” and imagine new solutions is, without intervention, they usually won’t. Their imaginations are constrained by the tyranny of the possible. By visualizing impossibilities, however, Jennings and Lambert create an opening to ask “what if?” Standing in front of one of their posters on the street you smile at the absurd idea of practicing Tae Kwon Do on your train ride home. But you may also begin to question why public transportation is so uni-functional, and then ask yourself why shouldn’t a public transportation system cater to other public desires. This could set your mind to wondering why the government is so often in the business of controlling, instead of facilitating, our desires, and then you might start to envision what a truly desirable State would look like. And so on, ad infinitum. Jennings’ and Lambert’s impossible solutions are means to imagine new ones. There is an important place in politics for the sober experts and bureaucrats of the “reality-based community.” These people take the impossible dreams of artists, visionaries and revolutionaries and bring them down to earth, transforming them into something possible. But you cannot start with the possible or there is nothing to move toward (and nothing to compromise with). Otto von Bismarck was famous in his own century for his practice of realpolitik, a hard-headed style of politics that ignores ideals in favor of what’s possible given the real conditions of the times. Our times, defined by the ubiquity of Las Vegas style spectacle and “Reality TV” entertainment, where the imaginary is an integral part of reality, necessitates a sort of dreampolitik. Conventional wisdom may insist that “politics is the art of the possible,” but Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert make a much more inspiring and, ironically, serious case that politics is the art of the impossible.
Visit the Packard Jennings website on Stereograph
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by ANNA KAFEL
BIOMAPPING CHRISTIAN NOLD INTERVIEW Bio Mapping is a research project which explores new ways that we as individuals can make use of the information we can gather about our own bodies. Instead of security technologies that are designed to control our behaviour, this project envisages new tools that allows people to selectively share and interpret their own bio data. The Bio Mapping tool allows the wearer to record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. This can be used to plot a map that highlights point of high and low arousal. By sharing this data we can construct maps that visualise where we as a community feel stressed and excited.
You ask people to go out into the Bio Mapping is a participatory methodology for people to talk about streets and take an emotion their immediate environment, locality and communal space. I’m trying walk. Can you explain? to use 3D visualisation as a way of talking about the space. It’s not representational. As part of this method I have developed a device, which can be used by lots of people. It consists of a lie detector connected to a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit, which measures your location and your physiological arousal at the same time. By combining the two I can talk about physiological arousal in certain locations. A Galvanic Skin Response sensor in the form of finger cuffs measures the sweat level. Fitted out with this device, people go for a walk and when they return their data is visualised and annotated. You then visualise data and There are two kinds of visualisations. In the older visualisation I used assign colours to specific a colour scale from green to red; green being a low arousal, i.e. a calm emotions or the whole walk. area, and red being a high arousal. It was dot-based and 2D and built in Macromedia Director. Now, using Google Earth I visualise height as indicator of arousal and use different colours for different people’s walks.
The biomap of a walk that took place in Nottingham shows a route of emotional picks. What was so special about this route to make people so emotional?
That’s a question I ask people, it’s not something I can answer. If you look at people’s annotations, they were talking about seeing people they recognised; being asked by tourists to take photographs of them; going to shops; it’s a whole variety of different things. It’s very much about what people are saying about their own reactions.
How valid are these annota- I don’t think there is any ‘truth’ or ‘lies’ in these stories. People are tions? Do people make up these generating the content. They are the creators and final arbiter of the stories? contents. When someone does a drawing you don’t ask whether this is a ‘true’ drawing or not. We can see these documents as a record of their experience. I see the combination of scientific data and the annotations as being one package that shows how people have interpreted their experience. The interpretation is as impor- It’s the same thing. The visualisation of the data only allows that distant as the actual mapping, cussion to take place. So the end product is the combination of this isn’t? concious reflection on this ‘pseudo’ scientific data. How did your experiment reflect Oh, that’s a really big question. What was interesting was that the MP the residents’ reactions? was really excited because he could see that there was some real politics happening there. He felt he didn’t have anything to do with it, and he somehow felt excluded. So he saw politics happening and wanted to be part of it. This is interesting because for the next stage of Bio Mapping I want to work with some of these ‘stakeholders’, as they’re called, and try to work through some of these ideas. What this map means and how it can ‘start’ being used? I think there will be a lot of discussion about representation; the kind of questions you’re asking: How representative this is? Does this represent all the people’s opinions? I personally don’t’ see the map being ‘representative’ but more as a discussion tool to argue a point. This is how maps have always Yes, but I want to get away from representational maps towards disbeen used. course maps or as I call them ‘weak’ maps rather than strong authoritative maps. Two annotations that I remember are ‘realising to be running late and crossing the Italian style’, and another one noting the Millennium Dome renamed as O2 Area.
Those annotations are done after the event. People comment about the space or about the experience, such as commenting on ‘crossing the road Italian style’, or trying to think what happens when they ‘peak’. Sometimes I ask people to think about their walk and then show them the map. It allows people to remember things they would not otherwise think about. There are many things we forget about when we go for a walk, so many things simply get lost. This is a way of looking at minutia of our experience. Some people say this is a kind of paranoia or schizophrenia technology. It makes us constantly reflect on our experience, constantly makes us aware of ourselves.
Is Bio Mapping a reaction to the Sure. If you think about surveillance technology, CCTV cameras are a ubiquitous presence of security very visual and tangible example of that. cameras? Do you think you give people back the control over their action and memories? They can switch the device on and off, can’t they?
No, they can’t. I have the key! There is something very performative about Bio Mapping. People are taking part in an ambiguous performance when they are using the device. I like the idea of performative technology that make the user concious of the technologies that they are using.
Visit the Biomapping website on Steregraph
On the one hand it’s about participation, but on the other it’s about you controlling what they do. Are you directing the performance?
Yes, it’s a performance where I’m directing their life in a particular way. I am asking them to think about the poltical and social implications of this technology and how it could/should be used on a larger scale. We constantly perform for CCTV cameras every day.
Do you tell people where to go? No, they can go where they like. But I sometimes tell people it might be worth thinking about where they want to go beforehand. Sometimes people go to re-explore where they go for a walk everyday; sometimes people take their normal walk to work; sometimes people go to places they really love. It’s quite interesting when people have an agenda. Do people improvise? People try to mess around with my device, which is interesting. People are playing with it: trying to jump out at each other or into a pool of water. People see there is this issue of control and are trying to deal with it. Bio Mapping is not a way of telling people about their emotions. If you think about Foucault, the body is the place where all control is exercised. The body is politically controlled through physical means but also through our imagination, emotions, fantasies and desires. Bio Mapping is a way of rethinking the body.
Do you see Bio Mapping symptomatic of what is often termed, recently by Charlie Gere, ‘real-time digital culture’?
If I think about real time, it is in the context of Henri Lefebvre’s and the politics of everyday life, and how we experience the space of everyday. I’m quite interested in real time because it suggests thinking about the everyday, the quiet and the ‘normal’.
The visualisation maps you create, especially since you’ve started superimposing emotional charts onto Google Earth, are visually stunning. I was drawn into your work because of its aesthetic impact, even before I have found out what Bio Mapping was about. The jagged 3D structures inserted into urban spaces made me think of Liebeskind’s architecture.
Google Earth has this stunning effect. It’s almost like a three-dimensional diary drawn across Google Earth. Normally there are no people visible on Google Earth: you can spin across the whole world but you won’t see a single one of the two billion people living there, which is quite bizarre. Suddenly with Bio Mapping, you can see these very detailed tracks of somebody’s experience. Visually, it has a certain authority. Maps all have authority and the 3D quality gives this authority to project. You see a peak and people almost need to talk about this peak; it becomes a discussion point.
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Do you make people more aware Yes, it makes people think about how their body is related to their of their inner side? mind. People’s personal issues arrive differently.
Some people refuse to annotate because it is quite a powerful representation. There is almost a sense that everything is mapped out for you, but then through discussions we come back to the point where we can see that these biometric technologies don’t tell you everything. They give us some abstract squiggles and these squiggles need some interpretation. Personal interpretation makes it interesting and meaningful.
The visual representation I chose is important not only for aesthetic reasons. I’ve chosen maps because they talk lots of languages we are already familiar with. For example, we are familiar with the scientific visualisation of the cardiogram. When doctors look at a cardiogram they look for pathology, and try to see what’s wrong, looking for the missing bit. So the idea of Bio Mapping is of almost a cardiogram put across the landscape. I’m interested how people deal with these mixed languages: the language of maps which is about power and the scientific language of cardiograms. I want people to find their own way of negotiating between the two.
Going back to your days at the Royal College of Art, what did you do before Bio Mapping?
I have a fairly traditional art background. Like a lot of people involved in media art in the early 1990s I was doing video art. In the mid-1990s I discovered the Internet, or the Internet discovered me. I got madly involved in doing slightly hacky things with the Internet. Heath Bunting was one of my big inspirations, so were people from Irrational, the Institute of Applied Autonomy, and Natalie Jeremijenko. A lot of these people were really influential in showing how technology wasn’t so clean. There is something very irrational and bizarre about technology. These artists were finding really interesting ways of using technology to highlight its bizarre, contradictory aspects. Fo me though I found that the Internet as a distribution medium didn’t provide enough feedback and discussion. I really wanted to have a real live discussion, so I started applying some of the ideas of Net Art to much more physical, real world things. I was building small protest tools that were designed to be attached to CCTV cameras; beautiful helium balloons that drew attention to these cameras and made noise. I was building periscopes that floated in the river and had radio transmitters inside that were knocking out local radio stations. I guess this physical technology brought me directly towards Bio Mapping in many ways. In between I also wrote a book called Mobile Vulgus , which got me to think in a particular way about tools and objects, and how objects start to transform our way of dealing with the world. I spent a year interviewing riot policemen, activists, weapon designers and psycologists. Yes, I love the Charles Booth’s Poverty Map. I’m fascinated by the nineteenth century. This is when all the interesting technologies were invented, and photography and early computing came together. This is where Charlie Gere and Lev Manovich are really good at rethinking the beginning of computing and multimedia.
You also teach.
I teach New Media Histories at the South Bank University, London and I do Electronics Clinics at the Bartlett, Faculty of the Built Environment, which is part of University College, London. We teach architectural students how to deal with interactive environments. They want to walk into a building and their presence to transform the buildings. So they want a bunch of sensors to manipulate motors to move the walls and change lighting levels. There is a lot of thinking going on at the moment about physical computing: the idea that our bodies interact with computers in a very transparent way. Soon we won’t be using computers any more. We’ll just be interacting with ‘stuff’. It’s the opposite of Augmented Reality. It is a big reaction against the 1980s and 90s idea of Virtual Reality. The idea was that the real world would suddenly merge into the computer. Now computing is going the other way, it is becoming invisible and ubiquitous . Nobody talks about Virtual Reality any more. The new idea is that computing is in every object we touch. We are not talking about mobile phones any more but Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that can be embedded everywhere and anywhere. This will be pervasive and invasive computing. We will be using doors that are going to recognise who we are and why we might be trying to open this door. Some will open for us, and some won’t.
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There are some interesting nineteenth-century precedents of mapping social phenomena. John Stow’s Survey of London, for example, and police reports from various wards of London …
The Greenwich Map is coming out in three weeks printed by the Ordnance Survey in size A0. It will be interesting to see how people deal with this physical map
It’s a full circle. I like the idea of maps because people know what to make of them. For communal representation I found that 2D works much better than 3D which often is too powerful and individual. The 3D is useful for an individual who can spin and twist around his view and look at his own immediate environment. Is there a problem with spatial The 3D-view is the view of the ego. When you talk about computer imagination? games, it’s the ego shooter. The three-dimensional projection shows the individual in the landscape, so it is very useful for individual representation. It becomes very difficult to represent things communally. 2D representation offer more of flat hierarchy. Do you anthropomorphise My project doesn’t anthropomorphise landscape, but there are cullandscape? tural forces that do. People reflect upon them when they talk about landscape. I simply connect two data sources together: the arousal data and the location data. You map fear, anger, joy and In the classic representation of Hobbs ‘s Leviathan the community beother emotions as part of a comes anthropomorphised as the giant. So in that respect, some basic landscape. ideas about how we think about community and how we deal with our environment, are really important. People are desperately trying to think what Nature is. We use a lot of metaphors such as the ‘parks as the lungs of the city’. People are very keen on anthropomorphising. A community of people who can share biometric data with each other. What’s the next fantasy project? There is a piece of software called Moodstats, built in Denmark, which indicates on the level from 0 to 10 how you’re feeling, how much exercise you’ve done, etc. It’s like a little calendar. It’s linked across the whole world and people are contributing data to a universal database.
91 MAPPING YOUR REALITY
The idea is to come up with a global mood. I found it irritating when I This is exactly what people don’t tried this on myself, but sharing quite intimate things with our friends want to do! and community seems interesting. So I would like to have enough Bio Mapping devices to try it, for example on cyclists, and see how a particular community might use it and find their own way of creating communal meaning from the data. On this level I’m still a designer. But I also want to wrap up some of my findings, talk with statisticians to see whether they confirm my data, and write a book. I want to find a way of reflecting on the project and move on.
94 URBAN TYPOS
by DANIEL MEDEIROS
TTSSS... THE VASTEST ART, PIXAçAO
95 URBAN TYPOS
Extracting “notes”, from the “historical” diary of a graphic artist – a pixador – was how this book came to existence. Boleta, who put together this volume, is a member of the first generation of Vício, one of the oldest and most active graphic-manifestation gangs in São Paulo. The diary dates from 1988 to 1998. During this period, Boleta gathered signatures, tags*, pixos*, grapixos*, tags*, throw-ups*, folhinhas*, stickers*, symbols and drawings. These personal notes are a testimonial of how Pixo gradually came to life in São Paulo. We have reproduced pages of this collection of autographs either in their totality or in detail. The photos were the next step. The book’s photographic work reveals how “Pixographics” defines the chaotic mood of the city, yet allowing us to see through the chaos, where beauty lays - multiplying in extension and height – allover
the city. Editora do Bispo sees a genuine, contemporary, 21st century form of communication in Pixação*, where a gifted and original graphic creation emerges. We have decoded alphabets, logotypes, and drawings from the diary. These symbols, if seen detached from their context, reveal original and sophisticated graphic creations. Ttsss... does not intend to be an encyclopedia of graphic art, decoding all its symbols and nuancing its forms of expression. It is, however, the editorial introduction to Pixo. Ttsss… is an important compilation that shows a specific stream of young artists - artists who predominantly come from an underprivileged social segment. Their social condition is, nonetheless, the ingredient that makes their symbolograms one of the most original urban phenomenons in Brazil – or perhaps in the entire western hemisphere - in recent years.
97 URBAN TYPOS
“A pichação é um reflexo da insatisfação com uma sociedade que produz ilusões o tempo todo: a ilusão do bem-estar, do poder e do glamour. Isso não preenche o vazio existencial das pessoas, pelo contrário” Celso Gitahy.
99 URBAN TYPOS
Visit the Pixaรงao website on Stereograph
Stereograph is conceived as a magazine about graphic design and visual communication with a thematic approach to information rather than a merely cumulative treatment; in other words, the intention is for each issue to be devoted to a specific theme, which will be developed in a range of materials and formats: graphic projects, articles, essays and so on. The idea is to translate the concept we pioneered with Verb, our architecture magazine, to the world of graphics. This model of book-magazine has worked very well in the field of architecture, both as a tool with which we can research and experiment, and in terms of the commercial success it has achieved.