User:Darija Medic/project
What ever happened to mad cows?
At the beginning of 2009, a H1N1 strain from the swine influenza virus started spreading throughout the world,
and together with it, panic of infection rose. The virus itself hadn’t shown dramatically greater numbers of victims
in comparison to the regular seasonal flue, to which it also resembles in symptoms,
making it difficult to distinguish them both, causing further uncertainty and panic among people.
“Of course it’s wonderful how quickly information can be communicated these days.
The problem lies in evaluating that information. The media or individuals publishing on the Internet
can make mistakes, panic themselves, and infect other people. And this spreads much more quickly than the swine flu”
The more it is well spread, present, mutating, and becoming THE virus (forming a strong structure-image)
the more different reactions are born, mutating. What made this virus so dangerous and controversial?
Whether out of fear of another plague, or remembrance of some deadly predecessors –the Spanish flu,
the pandemic of 2009 became a media monster, memeticaly infecting with theories of conspiracy and irrational behaviour.
As Wendy Chun argues, the paranoid mind has an answer for everything (Chun, 2006).
But also the paranoid mind must have resources for consuming paranoia.
In the vastness of blogospheres and social networks was a fertile ground
for spreading the disease of the disease. In that case we are explicitly dealing with the reality of the virtual,
where the virtual belief becomes the true reality, influencing our experience of the everyday.
The objects tagged (infected) in this project are objects shared among people in our everyday, tracing our tactical networks. The infection has spread so far in Brussels and Rotterdam, with a tendency to grow.
newspaper
toilet towel
bookstore
bookstore2
toilet
traffic light
restaurant
cafe
cafe2
