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| screaMachine
performance proposal, with digital video projection and
audio |
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Grafitti
actions and a Jungle soundtrack are the tools of
this techno rebel in his attempt to usurp the projected
environment.
The performer, armed with a can of spray paint,
stands in front of the projected set. As the projections
and soundtrack (featuring police, surveilance etc.)
progress the performer graffitis the slogan 'Information
Divide = Class War' on the projection screen
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URBAN
JUNGLISM: A digital animated video approx. 5 minutes,
DV NTSC.
The
advent of new technologies is accelerating the divide
between the haves and the have-nots. The techno rebel
needs technology to fight technology. ‘Jungle’
music exemplifies this paradox by combining ethnocentric
rhythms and patterns electronically. Graffiti actions
and a Jungle soundtrack are the tools of this techno rebel
in his attempt to usurp the fascism of an imagined, not-too-distant
future. As wealth and the ability to amass wealth is increasingly
related to technological savvy and access to information,
then poverty is equally related to lack of technological
access. A new class structure is being born with internet
access and speed of connection as dividers or benchmarks
of potential. The future of the information age is one
where many may be left behind in a poorer, mechanically
oriented service community, while the information techno-farmers
reap the benefits of being on the top of the pecking order.
This piece highlights some of the paranoid fears of a
technological society where personal data is either public
or easily accessed by the police; where privacy (of information
or movements) is a thing of the past and ‘Big Brother’
is always watching.
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| The
artist, seen from a roving camera position walking his dogs
in New York’s East Village, is portrayed as this futuristic
techno rebel. Throughout the video the artist/protagonist
is seen as though looking through the lens of a surveillance
camera or mounted camera in a police car. As the roving
camera tracks the artist going about his daily business,
the soundtrack iterates a feeling of being watched, a paranoid
sense of no privacy. The recurring phrase “as I walk
down the block, I feel I’m getting ‘clocked’
by the cops…” is heard while images of police
cars, vans, logos and footage of police actions are choppily
animated in rhythm to the grooving soundtrack realized in
the techno style known as ‘Jungle’. Within the
techno culture a ‘Junglist’ is an avid fan of
Jungle music, so the play on words in the title, the mixing
of urban jungle and the ‘ism’ of junglist is appropriate
for the techno rebel. In a following scene, we see superimpositions
of personal data, birth date, social security number, alien
registration number etc. flow over images of the artist
walking on his home block, implicating the viewer in the
voyeuristic surveillance by forcing this information on
them through aesthetic devices. We see, on a number of occasions,
the artist, armed with a can of black spray paint, graffiti
the phrase: “Information Divide = Class War” onto
urban walls in the night-time, all the time being tracked
and recorded by security cameras. The futility of a simple
act of political graffiti in comparison to the monster global
advertising, info-tainment, internet and security industries
(including police and armed forces) is highlighted by juxtaposing
the scrawled sprayed lettering against the neat, clean motion
graphics of the animated surveillance camera views. |
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critical of aspects of technological advance, ‘Urban
Junglism’ also revels in the digital media that created
it, further emphasizing the dichotomy of society’s
need/desire to continue like a self-destructive addict,
in pursuing further technological advances irrespective
of the long term damage possible/probable. Technology is
a beast that must be controlled (shared) by the many, or
it will control them (and who knows, with enough bells and
whistles, they may just like it).
Urban
Junglism is one of a five part series of works titled
‘Technophobia’.
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