User:Jasper van Loenen/RWRM/outline1
In Feedback, David Joselit writes about how the Black Panthers in 1972 called for more African American culture on-screen, and more ownership of media and its regulation by saying: "From the beginning, those who enslaved and colored us understood that by controlling communications they could control our minds" (Feedback, p.88). By becoming part of the group behind the cameras and the regulation of information, they would be able to have more control over it.
A few years later during Ant Farm's "Media Burn" performance - or "Ultimate Media Event" as they called it - an actor dressed as John F. Kennedy addresses the same problem outside of the race context: "What has gone wrong with America is not a random visitation of fate. It is the result of forces that have assumed control of the American system... These forces are militarism, monopoly, and the mass media... Mass media monopolies control people by their control of information... And who can deny that we are nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media? And not a few of us are frustrated by this addiction. Now I ask you, my fellow Americans: haven't you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen?" ("Media Burn" video, Ant Farm, 13:27)
Even though these examples are from the early seventies, the wish to stop being a static receiver hasn't gone away. With the rise of the internet and the tools that came with it - especially with web 2.0 in the early 2000s - it is easier than ever to create, publish and share user generated content. Projects like the open source Arduino - an easy to use microchip - even expanded this terrain into the physical world.
The ability to create your own content not only enables you to use the information systems but can also helps you get a better understanding of the inner workings of said systems - both technically and socially. This is something I also found interesting during the last year of my bachelor: how can you show people / users / an audience how 'something' operates - both on the previously mentions technical and social level.
But do people actually want to know this? Do these tools actually help us see through the system, or are they a new system all together. *not sure where to go from here.* We get video websites so we make videos, we get a blog, so we start talking about ourselves, we get Facebook so we share and create a network. But are we by doing so creating the system, or have we again become the recipient.
- Feedback, David Joselit, 2007
- Media Burn, And Farm, 1975
- Control and freedom, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, 2005