BOOGAZINE ANALOGITAL

Publicado porActarBarcelona / New Yorkwww.actar.com

ImpresiónIngoprint

DistribuciónAvtar DRoca i Batlle 208023 BarcelonaT +34 93 417 49 93T +34 93 418 67 07office@actar-d.com

© de los textos, de sus autores© de las imágenes, de sus autores© de la edición, Actar Barcelona, 2009

ISBN: 978-84-96540-0DL: B-49293-07

Impreso y encuadernado en la UE

This is a QR Code

Although initially used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR Codes are now used in a much broader context, including both commercial tracking applications and convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging).QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards or just about any object that users might need infor-mation about. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader software can scan the image of the QR Code causing the phone's browser to launch and redirect to the programmed URL. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks.Users can also generate and print their own QR Code for others to scan and use by visiting one of several free QR Code generating sites.

REACTSTEREOGRAPH

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 domina-tion 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 broad-sheets 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.

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.

THIS IS NOT A MANIFESTO:TOWARDS AN ANARCHO DESIGN PRACTICE

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Graphic design has predominately been, and still is, the tool which beautifies, communicates and commodifies a set of ideas, ideals or products within vari-ous 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 — con-sciously or unconsciously using its tal-ents 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 commer-cial 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 power-ful; the seller of sales, the convincer of consumers — employed by the corporate body or state-sanctioned by capital-ist /socialist totalitarian governments in order to perfect and reinforce their hegemonic positions. And while design academia can wax poetic about the vir-tues of graphic design and its specialised visual language — conveniently side-stepping more tangible issues — the design industry practitioner, whether one chooses to acknowledge his/her role or not, must realise that their la-bour 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 sus-tain these ills of society have no face, no visual identity, no point of reference, and most importantly, no effect. While recog-nising 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 al-ternative 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 al-ternative modes of social organisation is needed, and has begun in limited pock-ets of the design world.2 Design then, must explore the periphial space outside of advertising; totally devoid of any com-mercial 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, or-ganiser and visual face of social change, graphic design could weld its creative future with more important and pressing concerns than market shares, profit mar-gins 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

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 condi-tion of the other.

2 Design col-lectives such as The Street Art Workers, Drawing Resistance, the Beehive Collective, Paper Politics, Tar-ing Padi, and the Prison Poster Proj-ect are just a few examples. See ‘Re-alising the Impos-sible: Art Against Authority’ by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007).

by JARED DAVISON

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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

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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 ef-fect on our mental, visual and physical environment. In 1964, and again in 2002, the concerns of above were brought for-ward in the form of the First Things First manifesto, signed by designers, photog-raphers, artists and visual practitioners interested in steering their skills along a more viable and worthwhile path. “Un-precidented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention...charitable causes and other informa-tional design projects urgently require our expertise and help”. Calling for a shift in graphic design’s priorities, the signato-ries of the manifesto recognised the po-tential for their skills to aid more humani-tarian causes. The 2002 manifesto, as a tentative step in reviving Ken Garland’s original ideas for todayspractitioners, and as a step towards vi-sual ‘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, how-ever small and tentative, towards visual ‘reform’ was greatly noted. However, re-gardless of how well meaning and sincere the ideas brought forward in these docu-ments 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 organiza-tion 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 in-significant victories while the real battle goes unwaged. The fact that rampant globalisation and totalitarian corporate hegemony go hand in hand with the cur-rent 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 pro-poses 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 mis-understood throughout its existence. Its humanistic and libertarian ideas were forever tarnished by a minority who com-mitted violent acts around the turn of the 19th century — ‘the propaganda of the deed’ as it was known, included assa-sinations and terrorism directed towards the state and its leaders. These acts, and the anti-authoritarian stance of An-archism 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, po-litical, 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 libertar-ian concept means the absence of all organisation. This is entirely false: it is not a matter of ‘organisation’ or ‘non-organisation’, but of two different prin-ciples 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-

3 A government initiative aimed at helping New Zea-land companies ‘increase their exports and profits through the better use of design in their products and services’. Check it out at www.better-bydesign.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).

6 Voline in  ‘Anar-chism’ by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970).

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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 uto-pian than the thought that far-removed, parliamentary ‘representatives’ can inti-mately and effectively answer our many wants and needs as individuals and communities.Therefore Anarchism is not a fixed, self-enclosed 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 con-crete 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.

The less this natural development of peo-ple is influenced by religious or political guardianship, the more efficient and har-monious 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 pro-fession to continue in its current form for the ‘aid’ of social change. As Proudhon wrote to Marx, “Let us not make our-selves 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 defi-nite 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 politi-cal and academic fields in this respect — defending the role of a necessary van-guard 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 transfor-mation 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 artis-tic 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 unavoid-able manner. However, purely negative and angst-ridden critique can only go so far — it is the sense of positive possibili-ties that need to be associated with the

“As anarchists, we have seen our poli-tics denigrated by other artists; as art-ists, we have had our cultural produc-tion attacked as frivolous by activists.”Realising the Impossibe: Art Against Authority

7 Paraphrased from Rudolf Rock-er’s ‘Anarcho-Syn-dicalism: Theory and Practice’ (AK Press, 2004)

8 From ‘Anarchism’ by Daniel Guerin (Monthly Review Press, 1970).

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ideas of Anarchism. The marginality of current grassroots movements must be overcome — the isolation of both activ-ist groups and concerned individual’s thoughts must be rendered public, trans-parent, and shared.Mainstream media do a rather convinc-ing job of keeping our private thoughts as seemingly isolated and illogical. It is an important task to illustrate that the critical and questioning ideas we may be having individually are, more often than not, shared as a whole, rather than let-ting them be diffused and disarmed by hegemonic structures and institutions such as the news, popular media, and the state.

Graphic design can publicly and prolifi-cally become the visual manifestation of these shared ideas. “Ideally, art can inspire hope, encourage critical thinking, capture emotion, and stimulate creativ-ity. 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 is-sues and radical politics”.9  As the initial point of contact with morein-depth and varied forms of activ-ism, graphic design can act as the es-sential catalyst for further research, involvement, and more importantly, for direct action. Further exploration of ex-isting and more experimental modes of production and aesthetics in design and design application can only set the basis for future non-hierarchal, organic organi-sation. Systems and structures raised in ones practice could essentially form pat-terns and guides for self organization in a more truly libertarian society. Individual-ism 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 ab-solute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in defi-nite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living condi-tions, 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 pro-cess of realising the impossible.”Max Blechman, “Toward an Anarchist Aesthetic”.

9 Colin Matthes, ‘Realising the Impossible: Art Against Authority’ by Josh Macphee and Erik Reuland (AK Press, 2007).

10 Rudolf Rocker, ‘Anarcho-Syndi-calism: Theory and Practice’ (AK Press, 2004).

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FIRST

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man

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17 R

EAC

T

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sign

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than

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t H

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ma

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ixon

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t Dum

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ster

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Gar

land

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ilton

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sco

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xpan

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chal

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ersp

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In 1

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ator

s si

gned

the

orig

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cal

l for

our

ski

lls to

be

put t

o w

orth

whi

le u

se. W

ith

the

expl

osiv

e gr

owth

of g

loba

l com

mer

cial

cul

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, the

ir m

essa

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as o

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oday

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e re

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ifes

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ill p

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ob W

ilkin

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and

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ore

19 R

EAC

T

20 R

EAC

T

WHAT A PERFECT, PERFECT WORLD.

by JAMES DAVID

21 R

EAC

T

So much order and planning, so many grids, routines and systems. Its me-chanical intricacies are astounding and mesmerizing; it has a pulse all its own. Even now the soft, humming an-esthesia 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 absurdi-ties? 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 liber-tarian ethic that we prefer, we’ve come together to applaud one another, and to provide a narrative about these activist efforts while simultaneously participat-ing 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 visu-ally. Where mainstream media frames debates, our goal is to open them up or smash them to pieces. Where undemo-cratic 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: influenc-ing 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 prof-fers what could be, and which prefers community and participation thrives in this environment. It’s a rebellion against monoculture, and the editors of this vol-ume are perfectly correct in labeling our work “reactive.” But it’s proactive, too. Cultural production of this variety ques-tions and dismantles dominant ideolo-gies. 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 alle-viate (rather than enforce) politics. There is something to be said about this foun-dation that we work from, and our pro-pensity 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 con-trol 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 JAMMINGPOLITICAL ART PUBLIC INTERVENTIONSMAPPING YOUR REALITYURBAN TYPOSACTIVISMARTIVISM HACKTIVISMCRAFTIVISM

CULTURE JAMMINGPOLITICAL ART PUBLIC INTERVENTIONSMAPPING YOUR REALITYURBAN TYPOSACTIVISMARTIVISM HACKTIVISMCRAFTIVISM

2564758293

102123134145

THE B

ILLOB

OARD

LIB

ERAT

ION FR

ONT

MANIF

ESTO In

the

begi

nnin

g w

as th

e A

d. T

he A

d w

as b

roug

ht to

the

cons

umer

by

the

Adv

erti

ser.

Des

ire,

sel

f wor

th,

self

imag

e, a

mbi

tion

, hop

e; a

ll fi

nd th

eir g

enes

is in

the

Ad.

Thr

ough

the

Ad

and

the

inte

nt o

f the

Adv

er-

tise

r we

form

our

idea

s an

d le

arn

the

myt

hs th

at m

ake

us in

to w

hat w

e ar

e as

a p

eopl

e. T

hat t

his

met

h-od

of s

elf d

efini

tion

dis

plac

ed th

e ea

rlie

r met

hods

is b

eyon

d de

bate

. It i

s no

w c

lear

that

the

Ad

hold

s th

e m

ost e

stee

med

pos

itio

n in

our

cos

mol

ogy.

Adv

erti

sing

suf

fuse

s al

l cor

ners

of o

ur w

akin

g liv

es; i

t so

perm

eate

s ou

r con

scio

usne

ss th

at e

ven

our

drea

ms

are

ofte

n in

dist

ingu

isha

ble

from

a ra

pid

succ

essi

on o

f TV

com

mer

cial

s.

Dif

fere

nt fo

rms

of m

edia

ser

ve th

e A

d as

pri

mar

y co

ndui

ts to

the

peop

le. E

ntir

ely

new

med

ia h

ave

been

in

vent

ed s

olel

y to

str

eam

line

the

proc

ess

of b

ring

ing

the

Ad

to th

e pe

ople

.

Old

fash

ione

d no

tion

s ab

out a

rt, s

cien

ce a

nd s

piri

tual

ity

bein

g th

e pe

ak a

chie

vem

ents

and

the

nobl

est

goal

s of

the

spir

it o

f man

hav

e be

en d

ashe

d on

the

crys

talli

ne s

hore

s of

Acq

uisi

tion

; the

hol

y pu

rsui

t of

cons

umer

goo

ds. A

ll ol

d fo

rms

and

philo

soph

ies

have

bee

n cl

ever

ly c

o-op

ted

and

re”s

pun”

as

mar

ket-

ing

stra

tegi

es a

nd c

onsu

mer

cam

paig

ns b

y th

e ne

w s

ham

ans,

the

Ad

men

.

sign

ed b

y:Ja

ck N

apie

rJo

hn T

hom

as

27 C

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AMM

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Know more about BLF on Stereograph

Spi

ritu

alis

m, l

iter

atur

e an

d th

e ph

ysic

al a

rts:

pai

ntin

g, s

culp

ture

, mus

ic a

nd d

ance

are

by

and

larg

e pr

oduc

ed, p

acka

ged

and

cons

umed

in th

e sa

me

fash

ion

as a

new

car

. Pro

duct

con

tent

s, d

icta

ted

by

tren

ds in

hip

ness

, con

tain

a h

alf-

life

mat

chin

g th

e pr

oduc

ers

cale

nder

for b

eing

sup

plan

ted

by n

ewer

m

odel

s.

Pro

duct

pla

cem

ent i

n te

levi

sion

and

film

hav

e ov

erta

ken

stor

y lin

e, c

hara

cter

dev

elop

men

t and

oth

er

date

d st

rate

gies

in im

port

ance

in th

e ag

enda

s of

the

film

mak

ers.

The

dir

ecto

rs c

omm

andi

ng th

e bi

g-ge

st b

udge

ts h

ave

mor

e of

ten

than

not

cut

thei

r tee

th o

n TV

Ads

& m

usic

vid

eos.

Art

ists

are

judg

ed a

nd re

war

ded

on th

e ba

sis

of th

eir r

elat

ive

stan

ding

in th

e on

goin

g co

mm

odifi

cati

on

of a

rt o

bjec

ts. B

owin

g to

fash

ion

and

the

vaga

ries

of g

alle

ry c

ultu

re, t

hese

cre

ator

s at

tem

pt to

man

u-fa

ctur

e co

llect

ible

bau

bles

and

con

tem

pora

ry o

r “pe

riod

” obj

ects

that

will

suc

cess

fully

pen

etra

te th

e co

llect

ors

mar

ket.

The

mos

t suc

cess

ful a

rtis

ts a

re th

ose

who

can

mos

t suc

cess

fully

sel

l the

ir a

rt. W

ith

incr

easi

ng fr

eque

ncy

they

app

rent

ice

to th

e A

dver

tise

rs; n

o lo

nger

nee

ding

to fa

lsel

y m

aint

ain

the

dis-

tinc

tion

bet

wee

n “F

ine”

& “C

omm

erci

al” a

rt.

And

so

we

see,

the

Ad

defi

nes

our w

orld

, cre

atin

g bo

th th

e fo

cus

on “i

mag

e” a

nd th

e cu

ltur

e of

con

-su

mpt

ion

that

ult

imat

ely

attr

act a

nd in

spir

e al

l ind

ivid

uals

des

irou

s of

com

mun

icat

ing

to th

eir f

ello

w

man

in a

pro

foun

d fa

shio

n. It

is c

lear

that

He

who

con

trol

s th

e A

d sp

eaks

wit

h th

e vo

ice

of o

ur A

ge.

You

can

swit

ch o

ff/s

mas

h/sh

oot/

hack

or i

n ot

her w

ays

avoi

d Te

levi

sion

, Com

pute

rs a

nd R

adio

. You

ar

e no

t com

pelle

d to

buy

mag

azin

es o

r sub

scri

be to

new

spap

ers.

You

can

sic

you

r rot

wei

ler o

n do

or to

do

or s

ales

man

. Of a

ll th

e ty

pes

of m

edia

use

d to

dis

sem

inat

e th

e A

d th

ere

is o

nly

one

whi

ch is

ent

irel

y in

esca

pabl

e to

all

but t

he b

edri

dden

shu

t-in

or t

he T

hore

auia

n m

isan

thro

pe. W

e sp

eak,

of c

ours

e of

the

Bill

boar

d. A

long

wit

h it

s le

sser

cou

sins

, adv

erti

sing

pos

ters

and

“bul

let”

out

door

gra

phic

s, th

e B

illbo

ard

is u

biqu

itou

s an

d in

esca

pabl

e to

any

one

who

mov

es th

roug

h ou

r wor

ld. E

very

one

know

s th

e B

illbo

ard;

th

e B

illbo

ard

is in

eve

ryon

es m

ind.

For t

hese

reas

ons

the

Bill

boar

d Li

bera

tion

Fro

nt s

tate

s em

phat

ical

ly a

nd fo

r all

tim

e he

rein

that

to A

d-ve

rtis

e is

to E

xist

. To

Exi

st is

to A

dver

tise

. Our

ult

imat

e go

al is

not

hing

sho

rt o

f a p

erso

nal a

nd s

ingu

lar

Bill

boar

d fo

r eac

h ci

tize

n. U

ntil

that

glo

riou

s da

y fo

r glo

bal c

omm

unic

atio

ns w

hen

ever

y m

an, w

oman

an

d ch

ild c

an s

crea

m a

t or s

ing

to th

e w

orld

in 1

00P

t. t

ype

from

thei

r ver

y ow

n ro

ofto

p; u

ntil

that

day

we

will

con

tinu

e to

do

all i

n ou

r pow

er to

enc

oura

ge th

e m

asse

s to

use

any

mea

ns p

ossi

ble

to c

omm

ande

er

the

exis

ting

med

ia a

nd to

alt

er it

to th

eir o

wn

desi

gn.

Eac

h ti

me

you

chan

ge th

e A

dver

tisi

ng m

essa

ge in

you

r ow

n m

ind,

whe

ther

you

clim

b up

ont

o th

e bo

ard

and

phys

ical

ly c

hang

e th

e or

igin

al c

opy

and

grap

hics

or n

ot, e

ach

tim

e yo

u im

prov

e th

e m

essa

ge, y

ou

ente

r in

to th

e H

igh

Pri

esth

ood

of A

dver

tise

rs.

32 C

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GRAFFITI RESEARCH LAB

by JOHN SMITH

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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 ques-tions 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 de-velopment 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 cre-ate Laser Tag, a system that allows writers to draw at a very large scale onto buildings in light using a

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Play the GRL How to Video

on Stereograph

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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 proj-ect we decided that we should open up the Graffiti Research Lab in the same way in which we had re-leased 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 re-lease 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-graf-fiti experiments as early and as often as possible. Below is a small selection of these projects.

38 CULTURE JAMMING

39 CULTURE JAMMING

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Visit the Graf-fiti Reseach

Lab website on Stereograph

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INTERVIEW WITH PERTER FUSS

by JAMES DAVID

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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 mention-ing. 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.

When painting or designing an installation, do you start by thin-

king about the social issue first, or do you put design first?

Both design and content are important in art works. To make a piece interesting, both of these must maintain equilibrium and fit well with each other. When one of them starts dominating, the piece becomes 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.

Peter Fuss reclaims billboards to examine and evaluate present, socially taboo sub-jects. 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 author-ity, 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.

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You work illegally and commer-

cially. Where do you feel most at home?

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 orpieces 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 sanc-tions I could face. Then they discontinued the case as they were un-able 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 percep-tion 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 yours that I’ve seen are serial.

Do you set out to create a series of installations, or do you let the

setting determine how far you take a concept?

I don’t create series just because I feel like it. The subject matter de-termines it. So sometimes it takes a series and sometimes one piece is sufficient.

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.

I set my work in the streets because this helps me show my work to people I would never be able to reach through an art gallery. Besides, 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 manag-er. I don’t have to keep deadlines, get my ideas assessed or consult my projects. These are the main advantages of working in urban environ-ment. Of course, I also exhibit in galleries if I am invited. The precondi-tion though is that no one will interfere with my vision.

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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.”

Lisen to the Peter Fuss

audio interview on Stereograph

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People prefer to have pictures showing the Pope than Jesus Christ. They are also much more sensitive over the Pope than Christ. In Po-land, it would be more acceptable to caricature or make a joke on Christ rather than the Pope. The police intervened several times dur-ing my exhibition on the Pope after they were called by people that felt offended by it.

What were some of your early influences?

As a young boy I lived in a country that was not independent. You 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 cen-sored 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 slo-gans. 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 most recent project?

My latest project is a series of 14 billboards showing the Stations of the Cross. In the Catholic tradition (more than 90% of Polish popula-tion 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.

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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The grey area between graffiti and vandalism is more than theoretical for Roadsworth: his contro-versial 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 graf-fiti 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 im-ages 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, am-biguous,” 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, ac-centuating 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 mono-logue. An economic, anti-ecological imperative holds the city hostage, Gibson says, and this defer-ence 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 mas-sive 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.

A DIVIDED HIGHWAYROADSWORTH

by LAURA BOUDREAU

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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 tremen-dous 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 secu-rity. After I show them pictures of what [artist] Ma-clean did [using red tape to change “ARRET” signs to read “A R T”], it causes them to realize that, in com-parison, Peter’s work was very benign.” Gibson’s trial begins in January 2006, but his im-pact 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 self-expression and selfish acts of public vandalism? Roadsworth’s case highlights this debate surround-ing 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

“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.”

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 sug-gest 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 ex-press anything.“I love life in the city,” Gibson says. “I love the possibility for cultural and economic ex-change.” 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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Visit the Road-sworth website on Stereograph

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JORGE RODRIGUEZ GERADA

by JAVIER BRIONGOS

For some time, Andy Warhol has conceded to us 15 minutes of fame. That being the case, the pre-requisite 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, re-worked 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 in-formation 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 di-rection 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 anon-ymous, 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 impor-tant. 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 artis-tic 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) monumen-tal; a Goliath confronting the powerful King Davids of politics and advertising in order to take back the public space, snatched from our hands by advertis-ers anxious to sell us perfect men and women, and politicians that against all the evidence want to con-vince 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 fa-mous that are not worthy of being known (of course, later they say that it is a critique, or whatever al-legation 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 bio-graphical 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 ARTCRAIG FOSTERCraig 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 inten-tionally 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 art-ist 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.

Visit the Foster Craig website

on Stereograph

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ART OF THE IMPOSSIBLEPACKARD JENNINGS

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 pa-tently impossible. Urban planning is a serious busi-ness: 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.

by STEPHEN DUNCOMDE

Which is exactly why one needs to take them so seri-ously. Enlightenment pieties aside, politics is not solely, or even primarily, about reasoned thinking and rational choices; it’s an affair of fantasy and de-sire. People are rarely moved to action, support, or even consent by realistic proposals; they are moti-vated 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 un-known? Who, after all, is remembered for proclaim-ing “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 appella-tion 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 ex-plain that they asked experts in the fields of archi-tecture, 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 po-litical 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 phantas-magoric future will be yours. Since these impossi-bilities can never be delivered, the result is another search for a new fantasy (endless consumption), increased fanaticism in an attempt to will the im-possible (terrorism), or disenchantment when the promised future is not delivered (witness the cur-rent implosion of the Republican Party).What is so inspiring – and honest — about the vi-sions of our future offered up by Jennings and Lam-bert 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 work-ers 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 con-strained by the tyranny of the possible. By visualiz-ing 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 fa-cilitating, 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 im-possible solutions are means to imagine new ones.There is an important place in politics for the sober experts and bureaucrats of the “reality-based com-munity.” These people take the impossible dreams of artists, visionaries and revolutionaries and bring them down to earth, transforming them into some-thing possible. But you cannot start with the pos-sible 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” entertain-ment, where the imaginary is an integral part of reality, necessitates a sort of dreampolitik. Conven-tional wisdom may insist that “politics is the art of the possible,” but Packard Jennings and Steve Lam-bert make a much more inspiring and, ironically, se-rious case that politics is the art of the impossible.

Visit the Pack-ard Jennings

website on Stereograph

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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 se-curity 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 geographi-cal 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.

BIOMAPPINGCHRISTIAN NOLD INTERVIEW

by ANNA KAFEL

You ask people to go out into the streets and take an emotion

walk. Can you explain?

You then visualise data and assign colours to specific

emotions or the whole walk.

Bio Mapping is a participatory methodology for people to talk about their immediate environment, locality and communal space. I’m trying to use 3D visualisation as a way of talking about the space. It’s not rep-resentational. 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.

There are two kinds of visualisations. In the older visualisation I used a colour scale from green to red; green being a low arousal, i.e. a calm 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.

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.

I don’t think there is any ‘truth’ or ‘lies’ in these stories. People are generating the content. They are the creators and final arbiter of the 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 anno-tations as being one package that shows how people have interpreted their experience.

It’s the same thing. The visualisation of the data only allows that dis-cussion to take place. So the end product is the combination of this concious reflection on this ‘pseudo’ scientific data.

Oh, that’s a really big question. What was interesting was that the MP was really excited because he could see that there was some real poli-tics 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 opin-ions? I personally don’t’ see the map being ‘representative’ but more as a discussion tool to argue a point.

Yes, but I want to get away from representational maps towards dis-course maps or as I call them ‘weak’ maps rather than strong authori-tative maps.

Those annotations are done after the event. People comment about the space or about the experience, such as commenting on ‘cross-ing 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.

Sure. If you think about surveillance technology, CCTV cameras are a very visual and tangible example of that.

No, they can’t. I have the key! There is something very performative about Bio Mapping. People are taking part in an ambiguous perfor-mance 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.

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?

How valid are these annota-tions? Do people make up these

stories?

The interpretation is as impor-tant as the actual mapping,

isn’t?

How did your experiment reflect the residents’ reactions?

This is how maps have always been used.

Two annotations that I remem-ber are ‘realising to be running

late and crossing the Italian style’, and another one noting

the Millennium Dome renamed as O2 Area.

Is Bio Mapping a reaction to the ubiquitous presence of security

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?

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?

Do you tell people where to go?

Do people improvise?

Do you make people more aware of their inner side?

Do you see Bio Mapping sympto-matic of what is often termed,

recently by Charlie Gere, ‘real-time digital culture’?

The visualisation maps you create, especially since you’ve

started superimposing emotio-nal 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 Map-ping was about. The jagged 3D structures inserted into urban

spaces made me think of Liebeskind’s architecture.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, it makes people think about how their body is related to their mind. People’s personal issues arrive differently.

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’.

Google Earth has this stunning effect. It’s almost like a three-dimen-sional 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 de-tailed tracks of somebody’s experience. Visually, it has a certain au-thority. 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.

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.

Some people refuse to annotate because it is quite a powerful repre-sentation. 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 every-thing. They give us some abstract squiggles and these squiggles need some interpretation. Personal interpretation makes it interesting and meaningful.

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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; beauti-ful 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.

I teach New Media Histories at the South Bank University, London and I do Electronics Clinics at the Bartlett, Faculty of the Built Environ-ment, which is part of University College, London. We teach architec-tural 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 mo-ment about physical computing: the idea that our bodies interact with computers in a very transparent way. Soon we won’t be using comput-ers 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 ev-erywhere and anywhere. This will be pervasive and invasive comput-ing. 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.

The Greenwich Map is coming out in three weeks printed by the Ord-nance Survey in size A0. It will be interesting to see how people deal with this physical map

Going back to your days at the Royal College of Art, what did

you do before Bio Mapping?

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 …

You also teach.

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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.

The 3D-view is the view of the ego. When you talk about computer games, it’s the ego shooter. The three-dimensional projection shows the individual in the landscape, so it is very useful for individual rep-resentation. It becomes very difficult to represent things communally. 2D representation offer more of flat hierarchy.

My project doesn’t anthropomorphise landscape, but there are cul-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.

In the classic representation of Hobbs ‘s Leviathan the community be-comes anthropomorphised as the giant. So in that respect, some basic 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. 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 ex-ercise 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.

The idea is to come up with a global mood. I found it irritating when I tried this on myself, but sharing quite intimate things with our friends 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 par-ticular community might use it and find their own way of creating com-munal 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.

It’s a full circle.

Is there a problem with spatial imagination?

Do you anthropomorphise landscape?

You map fear, anger, joy and other emotions as part of a

landscape.

What’s the next fantasy project?

This is exactly what people don’t want to do!

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TTSSS...THE VASTEST ART, PIXAçAO

by DANIELMEDEIROS

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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 signa-tures, tags*, pixos*, grapixos*, tags*, throw-ups*, folhinhas*, stickers*, symbols and drawings. These personal notes are a testimonial of how Pixo gradu-ally 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 “Pixo-graphics” 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, contem-porary, 21st century form of communication in Pixa-ção*, 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, decod-ing all its symbols and nuancing its forms of expres-sion. It is, however, the editorial introduction to Pixo. Ttsss… is an important compilation that shows a specific stream of young artists - artists who pre-dominantly 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 re-cent years.

“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.

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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 materi-als 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 ex-periment, and in terms of the commercial success it has achieved.