Week 1 Video Project - Inspired Sound Initiative

This video was intended to reflect the aesthetics of "Harrisburg 8," a documentary-style piece about an activist and the motivations behind their activism. Yuval Ron leads the Inspired Sound Initiative, a 501(c)-3 non-profit that leads musical workshops designed to teach diversity and inclusion through music, dance, and storytelling.

I found it interesting the amount of control I had in the editing process over his story. I was most interested in relating his work to the general political climate, and privileged those sound bites over others concerning the spiritual motivations and aspirations of the project.

HAMATREYA

In a political and cultural climate that is prone to alternative facts or even the flat denial of data the approach to creating mind and behavior changing media must adapt. Steering away from statistics for this assignment, I wanted to create a poetic video that convinces with invisible arguments, the terrible effects of human consumption on the natural environment. Using Emerson as a base and a mixture of my own footage and found footage, I hope this pulls a more visceral response out of the viewer.

Links from class 8.29

Mellencamp:

https://www.amazon.com/Patricia-Mellencamp/e/B001H6KKHE

EAT: click through various sites

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=237 

Begin 18:20:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0coC9CxER4

  

Ant Farm:

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/centro_andaluz_de_arte_contemp/

http://www.spatialagency.net/database/ant.farm

Eames  early on and and around 16 m

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byyQtGb3dvA

Rosler:

Rosler’s site:  http://www.martharosler.net/video/index.htmlhttp://www.martharosler.net/video/index.html

MOMA images for Rosler:  https://archive.org/details/ddtv_93_born_to_be_sold

Semiotics of the Kitchen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm5vZaE8Ysc

Also worked with PTTV:  trailer: 

http://www.vdb.org/titles/born-be-sold-martha-rosler-reads-strange-case-baby-m

Kuchar: http://www.vdb.org/titles/weather-diary-1

Hershmann:    http://www.lynnhershman.com/

Binge:

http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_A218550CAF4D4132B30985B58AE90944

Marez:

Why Braceros clip:  http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/curtis-marez/the-aerial-gaze-of-agribusiness?path=agribusiness-futurism-defined

2 images: agribusiness vs farm workers  http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/curtis-marez/space-colonies?path=agribusiness-futurism-defined

Utopia?

I filmed things I could order/purchase without interacting with another person. The text that runs across the screen reads “Fully automated luxury gay space communism.” This concept grew from meme culture and has been the topic of many a subreddit, one Reddit user stating it “is a meme that points at both a naive optimistic goal and embodies its impossibility. It is a reference that is both optimistic and pessimistic, hopeful and cynical. It is making fun of itself while simultaneously asserting itself.” A utopic, communist, queer, space nation may be outlandish but it can represent a hope to free ourselves from the earthly hierarchies and restrictions that control our lives.

The optimism that runs through utopic discourse (including academic and theoretical utopic discourse) is not always grounded. I understand and appreciate the importance of the hope it embodies, but I am often let down by its lack of objectivity. While it doesn’t make sense to expect rationality from utopia, it does true progressivism no good to disconnect it from real life circumstance or our goals/hopes, one of those being a considered egalitarianism.

To me, the tongue-in-cheek meme embodies a limbo that many progressives reside in. In the case of automation, many utilize it regularly and, further, it’s soothing to take comfort in the Marxian notion that human labor’s eventual replacement by technology and automation will determine capitalism futile. However, as of this moment, these processes, rather than enacting utopia, have helped to dismantle the concept of job security and endanger the American union—the interfaces and automation of tech companies serving as sufficient cover, as they optimize behind-the-scenes workforces for profit above all else. Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, etc. all take advantage of unregulated cyberspace, and, ultimately, it is the poor and minoritized that suffer the brunt. Given this (I often wonder) how do we look towards utopia while keeping our feet planted firmly on the ground. As we envision the future and take action to enact it, how do we avoid utopic discourse and progressive action that doesn’t consider the needs of everyone and the reality at hand (see Jill Stein 2016)—that quite possibly puts ease or ‘automated luxury’ before those this ease immediately and negatively affects?

Monuments, local and at large

Links about monuments:

USC petition about Charlottesville:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfkXJan_9zPTognRb7ZcAZviwEM3d7EF_auPrPoDIJPBQkO7w/viewform

Coverage of USC monument:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-usc-traveler-20170818-story.html

Monument Syllabus:
http://all-monuments-must-fall.ghost.io/all-monuments-must-fall-a-syllabus/

NYT Visual History:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/controversial-statues-monuments-destroyed.html?mcubz=1&_r=0

This the blog for CTCS 585.  Welcome!  From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to last winter's Women's March, the last decade has seen a variety of competing claims about the role digital media might play in activist struggles for social change.  Through a series of case studies that will center on issues of race, gender, sexuality, privacy, and class, the course will explore the ways in which digital media intersect with and possibly reconfigure activist practice in the twenty-first century.  This class is also a practicum of sorts, so students will be asked to engage with media making tools and exercises in a variety of contexts.  Theory and practice will be integrated across the term, and each mode of expression will be valued.  Throughout the semester, the guiding frameworks of the class will be those of cultural theory, digital media studies, feminism, and critical race theory, and we will constantly link our exploration of old and new technologies to investigations of social change, aesthetics, and efficacy.

As we collectively shape the contours of the class, I hope that we will address questions like the following: "How do technologies shape our sense of self and other?", “How does technology impact social organization and forms of community?”, "What continuities exist between activism before and after the web?", "What potential do tactical media offer activists?", "How do digital activism and other forms of activism intersect?", and "Do digital media enable new ways of imagining social change?". The course takes seriously the notion that digital media are re-jiggering the relationship between theory and practice, illuminating new possibilities for activism, art, and daily life.

We will also explore the impacts of digital media on strategies for organizing through the exploration of concrete case studies. In order to explore issues of organizational strategy, consensus building, and deliberation, several weeks of the semester are as yet unmapped.  Students in the course will collectively author the contours of these sessions, deciding upon case studies, assigned readings, hands-on activities, planned actions, and more. We’ll talk a great deal about this process in the next few weeks.