Doesn't everyone love parking?

In "Public Parking", people take guided tours of cities with historic sites of public parking as it relates to "the more general ideology of utopian capitalism." Basically this project is about teaching people how parking affects us and the cities we will in and how parking has changed and how is continues to change as society grows and times change. On their website they discuss that currently they are "looking at the disappearance of surface parking lots" that is happening all over the country, not just in certain areas. Tours have been given in Brooklyn, NY., Chicago, IL., and Hollywood, CA., for example.

I find this project really fascinating because it explores something people often take for granted. It also is a nice mix of media and a public physical attraction. By using a physical tour and putting it on the web, it can read twice the audience. The idea is also really cool. With so many people driving on the roads these days, public parking is such a huge issue. I never would have thought that parking would evolve, but it certainly has and continues to.

Fedex Ships!

For my subversment project I decided to take a fedex print ad and change it. The message from the ad is that fedex shipping is fast and painless. In fact, what they don't tell you is that there are many roadblocks when something bad does happen to your package. Like every other pack and ship company there will be some problems and drawbacks but having more experience with the company lets me see the truth behind what goes on.

Is the internet really forever?

Everyone always says, whatever you post on the internet will stay there forever. Well, until Zack Gage came along, that might have been true. In his project called "Temporary.cc" each time a "unique visitor" visits the site, a piece of information from the site is deleted. So instead of collecting information, such as every website is known to do, "Temporary.cc" will eventually "fall apart entirely," ultimately "becoming a blank white website." The way this whole website works is that every time a visitor visits the site the website deletes part of itself and thus this changes "the way browsers understand the website's code and create(s) a new composition through self-destruction. "

This project caught my eye because it is definitely different than any other website on the internet. Today in the digital age, people would prefer to save something electronically because it will always exist, unless some tragic crash or some other disaster occurs. Computers are not designed to intentionally delete its own material, which makes this project all the more interesting. The end result will be the deletion of the entire project, which can be said of the more typical pieces of artwork such as paintings or other medias, but one would think if it was electronic it could live forever. I guess Zach Gage has taught us wrong.

John Berger

In John Berger's article, he explored the nature of publicity. Many people would find that quite odd because quite honestly, publicity is everywhere but what people don't know is what really drives publicity. First off, publicity is everywhere. In the subway, on the road, on tv, I mean you can't escape publicity. What many might not realize is that publicity deals with the past and focuses on the future, meaning that the present isn't dealt with. It want consumers to see themselves in the future with whatever product is being promoted but it uses the past to hook people into the advertisement. Publicity persuades the consumer to want the product. It also manufactures glamour. Through publicity, glamour plays a key role in selling a product. Glamour exists through personal social envy that is produced by publicity. If this didn't exists, consumers wouldn't be envious of the product on TV and want to go out and purchase it. Publicity also plays on the fact that in today's society, people are measured by "you are what you have." By using inciting images and making the consumer envious of those with the desired product, the consumer will run out and buy whatever is being sold just to be considered "in". This basically is an anxiety that makes the consumer purchase the product.

Just from the tone of the article, one would think that publicity is bad. In some aspects it seems that way, but capitalism thrives on it. Because publicity is all around us, people are basically brain washed to think that if they don't have this product they will be considered insignificant. These companies making these ads aren't helping us by providing us the product, they are making us feel bad about ourselves in order to buy their product. Unfortunately profit is the only drive that keeps this cycle going. Whether this is bad or not, it is continuously used all around us, so I guess it is up to the consumer whether publicity is good or bad for society.

"Pandora's Sound Box"

"Pandora's Sound Box" is an exhibit that features a wide variety of interactive multimedia that has showcased many artists and their talents. Inspired by the 1929 film which Hitler hated because of its suggestive content and material, Pandora's Box was thought of as being light years ahead of anything else in the art world at the time. Now a days, "Pandora's Sound Box" "deals with the identification of fearing contemporary society... as conveyed through the strong material presence of sound." "Pandora's Sound Box" features many artists including, but not limited to, Pierre Bismuth,Django Hernandez and Tanja Ostojic. Bismuth explores what art will look like in the future with his installation "The Bruce Nauman Project." Hernandez takes lamps and turns them upside down on top of record players that project presidential secrets from the lampshades. And Ostojic portrays a woman's existance in "Misplaced Woman."

As far as art goes, this is pretty tame but I can't really fathom how so many diverse topics can be put together into one show. I chose to write about it because it is so diverse and had an interesting story behind why this show was put together. There are some elements that deal with new media, but I like how the artists use some older technologies to incorporate their ideas into something that seems way more modern, like the upside down lampshades for example. I guess I gravitated toward this because it sounded interesting. The mix of new and old media blends well, especially in a day and age where "retro" is popular.

Ubermorgen.com: Media Hacking Vs. Conceptual Art

You would think that most media art books, or any kind of computer type book would be really boring, but fortunately "Ubermorgen.com: Media Hacking Vs. Conceptual Art is not one of those books. Presenting the work of Hans Bernhard and lizvlx, the book reads like an "old photographic or graphic design reference manual crossed with one of the popular web design survey books of the early 2000s." Both controversial and sometimes mainstreamed, the artistic duo has completed many media art based works over the past decade including "Voteauction" during the 2000 presidential election, "Google Will Eat Itself," and "Nazi-Line," one of their more controversial works of art. This book shows how the artists take media art seriously. From "introducing uncomfortable truths and repressed memories into the net and into the gallery," the artists take serious subject matters and display them on a media accessible to everyone.

What caught my eye about this article was the fact that not only was the art getting great reviews, but the the book about the art got great reviews. Taking a look at a decade's worth of media art, which is a long time in the media art world, can certainly show how different the art form has changed, but with these artists, it showcases all of their strengths, even if some of the techniques are outdated. What was really impressive is how they successfully dealt with controversial and non-controversial topics. Both were given the same amount of thought and are well executed, which displays the underlying meaning even more. With hopefully more to come from the media art world and more books about it, these artists are a great foundation for the field and are displayed as such in this book.