Project 3: The Pixel Resistance-- You will become Visual Agents of Mass Disruption!
Now that we have discussed culture jamming movements, activists like the Yes Men, Anonymous, alongside the theories of hacktivism, laughtivism, and retail poisoning, let's put our understanding of these movements to work! By understanding these strategies, we can use remix & AI to critique contemporary societal issues & inspire real-world change.
Your Task:
Collaborate with AI to create original works that challenge and subvert mainstream media messages, consumerism, or some other social/political issue that you want to confront. Focus on crafting a powerful message with the potential for real-world impact. Your final remixed artworks will be showcased in a student-curated art exhibit, demonstrating the practical value of fair use and the power of AI/remix as tools for social critique.
Goals:
choose the issue/establishment/norm/etc. you wish to confront, research it, and devise a plan to disrupt, subvert, criticize, expose, challenge or otherwise oppose it through art.
create a series including a minimum of 6 images and 1 time based media.
Time based media can be anything from performance/prank captured on video, gif, animation, commercial, music video, video game, fake website or other similar time-based experience. You can use AI to generate videos.
consider how you will present this at our final exhibition.
printed zine, live performance, prints on wall, shared video loop with classmates, a computer screen, etc. Your creative ideas welcome!
Embrace some of these characteristics: disruption - humor - parody - performance - subversion - prank - risky - innovation - provocation - community orientation - temporality - symbolism - accessibility - impulsiveness - & chaos in order to draw attention - induce thought & emotion - criticize - expose truth, damage perceived enemies and possibly... ----> to change the world!!<----
Have Ethical considerations. While I do want you to take positive risks, to rock the boat, to have power in your projects, to be disruptive and critical, it is important that we practice ethical behavior and should take a do no (actual) harm approach. Think about the ethical concerns we have already discussed in this class and use that as your guiding light.
Constraints:
Do not get yourself, me, or any of your classmates arrested.
Do Now:
Brainstorm and decide the theme of your project in preparation for next week.
Next week I will show you several examples of what we might consider to be "fine artists", who are working in interesting ways that fit right in with these creative activist movements.
Questions?
A.I. Art in the News
What are your thoughts?
Performance & Protest:
What are your thoughts?
Artist Examples:
What are your thoughts?
Martha Rosler
House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, 1967–72
Martha Rosler’s War Series is a powerful collection of photomontages that addresses the devastation of war and its portrayal in the media. Initially created in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War and later expanded in response to the Iraq War in the early 2000s, the series critiques American military interventions and the sanitized way war is often presented to the public.
Overview of War Series
Medium and Technique: Rosler uses photomontage to create jarring juxtapositions, combining disparate images to produce thought-provoking contrasts and surreal scenes, often placing war imagery in American domestic spaces.
Themes and Messages: The War Series highlights the contrast between American home comfort and the brutal realities of war, questioning public detachment from global conflicts and media's role in downplaying war horrors.
Vietnam and Iraq War Connections: Rosler's War Series addresses issues of media censorship and public perception during the Vietnam War and Iraq War, showing parallels in how wars are covered and perceived.
Impact and Legacy: Rosler's War Series remains a critical commentary on war commodification and media mediation, forcing viewers to confront their roles in perpetuating conflicts and highlighting the media's influence on public perception.
Artistic and Cultural Significance
Rosler’s War Series exemplifies her use of art as activism. By remixing familiar scenes with unsettling war imagery, she challenges viewers to consider their complicity and awareness in global events. The series has been influential in anti-war and feminist art, and her technique of photomontage has inspired other artists working within social and political realms.
What are your thoughts?
Barbara Kruger
Appropriation: Kruger uses images from mass media, combined with bold text, to critique power structures. Her work often involves appropriation of both imagery and slogans from advertising.
What are your thoughts?
Tom Sachs
Remix, Appropriation: Sachs creates sculptures and installations using branded objects and materials (like Chanel, NASA, or McDonald’s) in ways that critique consumer culture and the fetish.
"I’ve always admired and appreciated Chanel but I couldn’t really rock it because it wasn’t for men. I started to try and use that brand in my art and bring it into my life as a way of participating; I put Chanel logos on things when I wanted to make them more powerful and give them more authority. I’m also interested in how sexy Chanel makes my wife look but also how its advertising contributes to her body dysmorphia, and that she is both aware of yet victimized by it. This is something that has been plaguing me my whole life: the effect advertising has over our self-image. Even though we understand that, we continue to be part of the addiction and contribute to its power."
What are your thoughts?
Robert Colescot
Revisionist: Robert Colescott was an American painter known for his provocative and bold works that critiqued issues of race, identity, and the American experience, often using humor and parody to challenge conventional narratives. Colescott's art is marked by its remix of historical art traditions, particularly European painting, as well as its revisionist approach to the portrayal of Black identity in the context of Western art history.
Parody as Critique: One of Colescott’s most notable strategies was his use of parody, taking iconic paintings from art history—especially works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Eugène Delacroix—and reimagining them with Black figures and contemporary themes. His work remixes classical compositions with subversive twists, often blending elements of African American culture and history with the European art canon to critique the exclusion of Black artists and narratives in the mainstream art world. For example, in his reworking of The Death of Sardanapalus (1983), Colescott replaces the original figures with exaggerated depictions of Black bodies, bringing forward issues of race and power in ways that disrupt traditional interpretations.
Revealing truth: Through these revisionist interventions, Colescott not only addressed the ways in which Black Americans had been historically misrepresented, but also pointed to the limitations of Eurocentric artistic conventions. His work engaged with the idea of reclaiming and redefining space within an art historical context that often marginalized or ignored African American voices. The playful yet pointed nature of his compositions, infused with a sharp wit, invited viewers to rethink the complexities of race, history, and representation in both art and society.
Overall, Robert Colescott's work serves as a critical, remixed reflection on the dynamics of race and representation, using parody to question and critique historical and contemporary portrayals of Black identity in art and culture.
What are your thoughts?
Jacolby Satterwhite
Jacolby Satterwhite is an American artist known for exploring themes of identity, technology, sexuality, and the body through digital media, performance, and animation.
A key aspect of his work is the use of remix as both a conceptual and aesthetic strategy, where he blends and reinterprets diverse cultural references to create new meanings.
Satterwhite remixes elements from:
Popular media (e.g., video games, comic books, pop culture)
Personal experiences and family narratives
Queer and Black cultural references
His immersive works often incorporate virtual reality, digital animation, performance, and dance to create dynamic, digital worlds that question the boundaries between the physical and virtual realms.
In works like Reifying Desire 6 (2016) and Thank You For Your Love (2017), Satterwhite explores:
The fluidity of identity (particularly queer and Black identity)
The relationship between the real and imagined
The intersection of race, sexuality, and technology in contemporary culture
Satterwhite's remix of personal and cultural materials allows him to:
Critique how marginalized identities (particularly Black and queer bodies) are represented in media and culture
Explore the construction and reconstruction of identity in the digital age
His use of digital animation and virtual space allows for a revision of the body, often transforming it into avatars or surreal, otherworldly forms that suggest new possibilities for embodiment and expression.
Through remix and revision, Satterwhite challenges traditional notions of authorship and originality, creating work that reflects the fluid and fragmented nature of identity in the contemporary, digital world.
His practice offers a critique of how technology shapes our understanding of self and examines how identities are constructed, consumed, and represented in both the physical and virtual worlds.
In short, Satterwhite's work blends remix with personal narrative, technology, and cultural critique to explore how identity is continuously shaped and redefined in an increasingly digital and interconnected world.
What are your thoughts?
For Next Week:
Please prepare a short presentation telling us about your idea.
You can tell us:
What do you want to talk about? What strategies will you use? What media/images will you remix? What will your final presentation look like?
You can also show us progress that you have made and we will give you feedback to move forward with completing the project.
Questions?
댓글