Category: TacticalMedia

Final project: my first experimentation with radio with the primary aim of extending our class content by sharing some quality musical tracks by conscious artists and exposing their value from a humble tactical media perspective (my perspective) and hopefully progressing others “tactical media” perspective to develop.

Layer a) the artist uses lyrics and the popularity of their music to spread a message and reach a large audience
Layer b) me bringing their work to another audience and having a good time

An intro went through like so…

Hey ITP community, this is Ben and this is the inaugural broadcast of On Point.

On Point, inspired by a course here called Tactical Media led by extraordinaire Marisa Olson, is an experimental radio show, looking to expand your minds to the revolutionary aspects and possibilities around ITP. Each episode will bring you a different artist (or two if you lucky) who has taken the medium, in our case music and made it you know, a little battlefield of rebellion. The artists I’m spotlighting are well known to probably just a small minority, but hopefully their names will sit on everyone’s tongue as favorite flavors from now on. I want to take you through their lyrics and explore some points to be held in our collective consciousness.

Not to blow your minds with too many songs at once, we’ll take it two at a time. In between takes it’s all about making connects. That’s why I’m here — to bring you into the medium and the message out to you. So for tonight, get ready for some Ozomatli and Talib Kweli. And remember, that extra a pinch of theory is gonna make it taste really gooood.

Now let me start you out with a first nibble on some Ozomatli – an up-tempo and optimistic group whose members actually met through their affiliation with the Peace and Justice Centre in LA and their first performance was at a picket line during a strike. They offer an infectious fusion of hip-hop, funk, reggae and Latin beats, with a few African and Middle Eastern-style rhythms thrown in, plus a fairly healthy dose of rock as well. The music acts as a conduit for the band’s explosive message.

http://itp.nyu.edu/itpradio/

i’m going to pick rucyl’s brain in the next day or two about the show she did and her experience. that’s exciting. such a pretty woman. ha. i need to put together 2 pages of proposal tonight for tomorrow’s class as well. greatness.

so what about doing a weekly radio show at itp. in addition to bringing my musical taste to the floor, it would aim to be an extension of the tactical media class topics and itp theory areas in general. i could use this semester to familiarize myself with the current radio shows and find the best times to air. i could also begin to create scripts or topcs or guests or whatnot for the shows. i could research online myself and/or speak to students for their input. this would serve to bring up these issues more with a community that really should have more connections to these topics. perhaps many people are already focused on these ideas, but more info could never hurt, and if it’s right here on the floor, people wouldnt even have to go out of their way to absorb the material. also, it would get me to school more often and inspire me to speak to more folks and interact more. as an addition, i could build a dedicated website or add a section to my personal one to explain the station and invite comments/topics.

possible titles: on point

more reaction when i get a second. . . ah!

Ryan Griffis – tours.. interesting activism
Trevor Paglen – black world.. damn, expose them

wooo! today’s class was mind pushing. there were lots of ideas thrown around that i haven’t really discussed with people much at all, and it was really good to have such a strong energy/guest speaker come in. we talked about this panoptic notion that to me is basically an architectural structure giving an athority a vantage point to control all the prisoners or lab specimens. the structure becomes a machine that gains information and maintains order based on division and power hierarchy. it relates to a plan for a response to the plague, but the concepts do differ. bill brown talked alot very passionately and articulately about his group, which seem very intelligent and motivated, and i think he embraced lightweight the idea of being a punk. though there were more relevant and practical or whatever ideas in his presentation, what stuck with me most was when he created a picture in my mind of society if people realized that working 5 days a week is not necessary for our world to function, and that the authorities or structural ideologies or ruling concepts or whatever would allow for people tot work a half day a week or something. the result could be utopia (or chaos), but in this semi fictitious scenario, lets just say it would be heaven. if people had 6.5 days to think about who they are, what they want to do with their free time and accomplish with their life, instead of worrying about other responsibilities like paying bills or putting food on the table, fixing social problems, raising children, making art, playing sports, retiring early…whatever, what would happen? what would people do? what would human nature be like if we have all our needs met by a half day of work, but we still have our technology and understandings of modern day. essentially, what would happen if everyone could nearly retire whenever they chose too? self reflection would be everything, but if one were to retire early, what would they even have to reflect upon? would people just observe? everything we do is founded on our development into a society and changes so much with every week, month, so on. what if our environment were much more open, free…surplus’s everywhere. i guess i havent thought about heaven since i was little. now i’m thinking about it again i suppose, but in the real world without angels and clouds and all taht. hmmm…. back to work/school/socializing for now. hopefully my actions or hustle now will bring me to a point where i know what i want and want to do, and situate me in a place where i have the resources or connections to make things happen. hopefully my mind will continue to evolve in a productive and interesting way. hopefully our planet survives longer than me and my potential grandchildren, but really for humans (and plants and animals) as a whole.

http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html

so it’s thursday, the day before friday, class day. as of last friday, one of the tasks of my daily routine was to read, digest, interpret, write 8 pages, and prepare to guide a half hour discussion about the first chapter of a book called eletronic civil disobedience, by a group called the critical art ensemble.

so far, i’ve read, i’ve digested, i’ve outlined, written 3-4 pages of material, spoke with the professor, and poked through the many related paths via wikipedia. while i feel 4-5 more pages wouldn’t be disastrously difficult to complete tonight, i also feel overwhelmed now by the vastness of the topic of tactical media (and by the constraints of a day job and the body’s requirement for sleep).

now, instead of plugging away at the pages and discussion questions production, i’ve decided to step back and think freely with my fingertips on the keys. my hope is that this will ultimately enhance the quality of the paper and assist the clarity of my thoughts in general. it’s always fun to read back through rough times as well, and feel good that they’ve passed. ok, so here goes.

cae is a group of 5 folks originally, and possibly still now. one of them was arrested or charged with felonies after reporting his wife’s death, because he had various instruments in his home that were suspicious, which he had used for art installations. i’m pretty sure he’s still not clear, because there’s an ongoing fund to protest the whole deal. the group is politically active using tactical media. they are artists with similar political perspectives who want to use artistic expression and tech skills to create positive change. they seem to understand authority (a tiny word) pretty well and how it has evolved over time. they use writing as a major method of resistance to this authority, as well as installations in the physical public domain and the virtual public domain.. these are all words i’m not used to using, but it’s fun to learn eh.

in the chapter i was to digest, cae comes with a pretty persuasive force. in the context of the basic tactical media research i’ve done, they describe essentially the context in which electronic civil disobedience is born, where it lives, and where it needs to go. they lay out the history of authority.. the castles, capital, institutions… centralized, physical masses really, that were about control, supremacy, power, domination, wealth.. these sorts of things. next i believe, comes their discussion of how all that is today. it has evolved. it’s now decentralized, invisible, nomadic.. and therefore no longer vulnerable to old means of activism. the new civil disobedience has to evolve as well. one of the keys then for modern society to resist authoritarian power then is to evolve as well, to begin or grow the usage of tactics that are strategic and decentralized and powerful. that’s the gist of the beginning. there’s a whole lot of other ideas in there umm… social order, disruption, cyberpolice, division of labor, criminality/curiosity…lalala, all related, but what’s kinda interesting is the switch cae makes from basic what’s going on to this is what needs to happen…very clearly. build cells. make sure they’re self sufficiently strong and attack. sure, there’s some avant-garde theoretical more more stuff in there, but they know stuff is wrong and they take direct action in virtual ways. ok, so there’s too much to get into in my opinion, which is why i needed to step away from the paper itself …

in relation to the readings we’ve done so far by mcluhan and benjamin, this is all related, yes surprise. tactical media…medium is the message…art/reproduction/mechanical… use this new stuff for political good. makes sense….

the indentations are interesting. flesh machine hmm… this stuff is interesting for real. i wanted to jump start my curiosity with the class, and at least we’ve achieve that. hope tomorrow goes ok.

. . . access . cell . community . technocratic avant-garde . counter strategy . flow . disrupt . resist . block . disobedience . trespass . r&d . marketing . value . social organization . division of labor . order . negotiation . hacker-activist schism . pluralism . institution . power . elite . centralized . hidden . capital . authority . domination . cyberspace . virtual information . representation . profit . cyberpolice . hidden . nomadic . curiosity . criminality . intent . property . punishment . . .

[back to work and then the actual paper some more]