Joseph DeLappe, Dead in Iraq, 2007

“It may not effect change in the kind of physical sense that maybe we’ve been talking about, but I think if you can get inside someone’s head, and make the synapses shift for a second, then there’s something really valuable to that.”

Working with electronic and new media since 1983, Joseph DeLappe’s work in online gaming performance, electromechanical installation and real-time web-based video transmission have been shown throughout the United States and abroad.   In 2006 he created a project called dead-in-iraq, entering America’s Army First Person Shooter online recruiting game and typing in the names of all of America’s military casualties from the war in Iraq. He is an Associate Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he runs the Digital Media area.

Stephen & Steve: So, we have some questions.

Joeseph DeLappe: And where is this gonna go? What is this for?

SD: Well, your files. (laughs)

SL: Department of Justice.

JD: Oh, my FBI files.

S&S: Tell us some kind of story about the most effective or successful work that you made. What was it and why do you consider it a success?

JD:  In terms of thinking of success as audience, like how many people might have actually experienced the work or the idea of the work, I would probably say a project called Quake Friends. It was essentially an online performance piece inside of the Quake game space.

FROM FRIENDS TO ENEMIES

S&S: Quake is an early first person shooter video game? And you could play it over the internet…

JD: Well, myself and five other gamers, my students, went into a particular server and we re-enacted an entire episode of the TV show, Friends. I transcribed the entire episode. And it took us about 3 hours. We were easy targets and we just got killed over and over again. It was total chaos. And we did it as a creative experiment. I had been doing these kind of in-game performance works for a number of years, mostly on an individual scale.

I would consider this my first work that really reached a broad audience. It got posted on Rhizome. Then a writer from the New York Times picked up on it and wrote an article about three days before we did another performance. Which was just, you know, phenomenal from my perspective as an artist, in terms of my circulation and my reach. Potentially millions of people were getting this concept planted into their head.

I was threatened with a lawsuit by Warner Brothers for copyright infringement, which is another curious way of measuring success. It was really interesting that the producers of Friends learned about the project from the New York Times. You know, that really pleased me – that they were thinking about this. Somehow it got into the mainstream, or whatever you wanna call it, I considered that a level of success.

That really informed my work from that point on in terms of thinking about how my work functions. Because in the computer game there’s maybe twenty-four other players tops, and I often get asked “is that your audience?” And it’s like well, you know, yes, in an immediate sense. But think of Chris Burden shooting himself in the arm. There was a very small group of people of watching it but the concept of it carrying on becomes a big part of the work. So that definitely informed my thinking.

EXPANDING THE THEATRE OF ENGAGEMANT

S&S: So we’re talking about a small primary audience with a much larger secondary audience. OK, so is getting written up in the New York Times your ideal of success?

JD: The next work that I think really was successful, was the dead-in-iraq project which was in a much more serious vein. I go into the America’s Army game –

S&S: And America’s Army is basically military recruiting propaganda, right? It’s a video game developed by the military and given away for free to generate interest in signing up.

JD: Yeah, and I go into the America’s Army game and my character’s name is dead-in-iraq.  I go into this game/recruiting tool and instead of playing, I drop my weapon. Then I type the name, age, service and date of death of each soldier who has died in the Iraq war. This started out as a quiet individual gesture; a memorial and a protest, a kind of balance between the two. I was much more reticent publicizing this project than previous work just because of the seriousness of it. But I sent it to my compatriots, my fellow media artists, saying “hey I’m doing this project.” And I put up some images up on my website, because some of the screen shots were really pretty amazing in terms of the reactions of other players.

Then it got picked up by some blogs, mostly game blogs, and unlike the previous project covered by the New York Times, this built more sort of like grassroots. It started in game blogs and then in Wired magazine and a couple others. It just sort of blossomed from there, and resulted in interviews on CNN – National and International – CBC in Canada, some kind of National Radio in Australia, various print things. So really the internet acted as both a venue for it and then as the distribution of the idea.

S&S: So you really measure success in terms of media hits then?

JD: I also measured success on that piece by the intense level of interaction that I chose to involve myself in online. Like I started with going to Salon.com – and the reactions to it were pages and pages of people battling back and forth, questioning what I was doing. And I decided to insert myself into that process. I considered that part of my role as the artist. I would usually start out saying “Hey, you know, I’m the one doing this project and here’s why. Here’s what I’m thinking.” That was very interesting. Usually you make work in kind of a vacuum, I think as an artist you make work that is appreciated from a distance.

ENGAGING WITH THE ENEMY

S&S:  Yeah, so you’re beginning to engage in some dialogue with the audience after the fact.

JD: The process was actually engaging in debate and dialogue with people who were very opposed to what I was doing on a number of levels. Whether it was politically, or saying “this is a game. We do this to escape from this kind of thing.” You know, it really, really forced me to get into a dialogue with people outside the art world who viscerally disagreed with me. And often times even threatening – you know, in type.

I measured a level of success on at least getting to a point where we could agree to disagree but be civil about them understanding my perspective: that there was a validity to question this game, through this process. Just to get them to understand my particular point of view.

It was a way of, again, getting that idea out there, the concept of calling attention to this very questionable use of technology for propaganda purposes and recruitment purposes. But at the same time putting some new content into it. And from my perspective, closing the loop. You know, there are undoubtedly a number of casualties from the war who actually started their military career by engaging in the game. You don’t see these connections made.  And the kids playing the game don’t think about it.

S&S:  So, it is engagement on the level of the game – those twenty-four or so players. Then it’s an engagement on the level of the media sphere. And then a kind of a re-engagement with people who discovered the project and are responding to that press.  What is your hope with the people in the game, those who either read or see it in the mass media, or actually are, you know, talking to you in the blogs… I guess what we’re trying to figure out is, what do you hope will happen as a result

JD: I think on a basic level it’s about building awareness.  To create that connection. There’s a disconnect between what we are doing in our everyday lives and our complicity in what’s going on in Iraq. The why of it is to force a situation where that connection becomes explicit.  That the game is connected to the war.  That you sitting there at your computer, fantasizing about being in this virtual situation, killing. It’s not an escapist entertainment activity that you are involved in; there are serious connections to be made.

And I suspect, I mean I have no way of really knowing, but the simple act of putting those names into that space– When you play computer games you’re in a very, very sort of familiar, comfortable headspace. It’s like watching television, you’re not generally engaged in deep intellectual thought. You switch into a reactive situation. And my hope is that by putting this important content, these meaningful words, names, that are directly saying “this person died in a situation connected to where you are.” My hope is after the fact, it might still be in their head. They might be angry about it. But it’s still in their head.  They are thinking about this particular issue…

S&S:  Basically, that they are haunted by those ghosts. Hmm, ok. So, what do those thoughts lead to? Like they’re- they’ve made that connection. Then what?

WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS

JD: I don’t know. Maybe again, it’s awareness. I can’t quantifiably say that it’s changed any perceptions at all. It may not effect change in a kind of physical sense either. But I think if you can get inside someone’s head, and make the synapses shift for a second, then there’s something really valuable to that. So, I guess that’s why I do it.

S&S: So there’s no way to really tell if you’ve succeeded in this way?

JD: Well, I do know one example – for sure. And this was in recent exhibition of dead-in-iraq that had the projected imagery of the names typing in and the reactions of the other players at a gallery in Santa Cruz. The director told me that at the opening a student ran from the gallery weeping, and she followed after him. She tried talking a little bit. And he said well, he was just, he was crying uncontrollably, and saying “I don’t know why I’m so upset.” And he said basically that his friends play games all the time and he’d never made any connection between real deaths and this sort of virtual experience. And that he was never going to play them again.

S&S: Wow. And is that a desired outcome? For people not to play the game? Or…

JD: Well I don’t know.  That part is sort of out of my control.

When you’re doing some kind of interventionist gesture or something political, it’s almost like a prototype for something, as opposed to the actual thing. And then if it has the actual result that’s maybe an added benefit. I guess if I thought of myself as an activist the failures would be really, really difficult to take. You know what I mean? But when you’re doing the art stuff you have this buffer of “oh, it’s just art,” and if it winds up being something more important, it’s, like, “yeah, I meant to do that.”

S&S: (laughter) We realize you’re joking, but “oh it’s just art” – that’s a cop-out isn’t it?

JD: I think I’ve had to learn to let things happen. I think the dead-in-iraq project is probably a really good example of that.

I sat on that idea for two years before I did it.  In part because I was really wanting to be certain of my motivations. Because I would think okay, if you’re in the family of someone whose gotten killed in Iraq and there’s some asshole putting names in a computer game you’re gonna be pissed. But I got to the point of saying “OK, that’s probably inevitable,” It’s probably unavoidable.

But at the same time, there’s such a disconnection of this issue from our daily lives. It just seemed like the issue was more important, and I could probably do more good than harm.

S&S: Fair enough, you can’t avoid all risk. But, how do you know if you’re doing more good than harm?

JD: I actually had an email exchange with a guy who asked me not to put his brother’s name into the game, but I already had. I identify that instance as where I really had to codify my reasoning behind it, in detail. Eventually we were interviewed on NPR in kind of a dialogue. In the end he respected what I was trying to do, and got to a point of appreciating our positions.

S&S: It’s funny, we started this discussion talking about media hits, but it seems like you’re strength is in one-on-one conversation. Is it that personal exchange that you’re striving for in your work?

JD: When I got out of high school, I was like this close to going into the Army. I mean, I had no kind of guidance towards college or any sense of a future. I had always dreamed of going into the military since I was a little boy. But I had a pivotal life changing experience going through the process of joining. I actually contacted a recruiter who had come to our school. I had a recruiter in my living room and the next step was to take this test in the Presidio, in San Francisco. There they classify where they would have you go. This guy actually talked me out of it.  The recruiter — he was a Vietnam Vet — probably just saw something in me; he said  ‘You know, you really need to be sure there’s something very specific you want to get out of this because it’s not always for everybody. You may want to think about not doing this.”

It changed my life. This one person saying it maybe was not the right thing. And it wasn’t the right thing.

SL: It seems like that might be who you want to be for someone else.

JD: Yeah, yeah. Most definitely. If it does happen with a dozen kids, I can maybe call that a success, I don’t know.

Contact: directors at artisticactivism-dot-org

CENTER FOR ARTISTIC ACTIVISM AWARDED $75,000 GRANT BY GEORGE SOROS’S OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

Grant to expand CAA’s School for Creative Activism after Successful Inaugural Year

The Democracy and Power Fund, an initiative of the Open Society Foundations, awarded $75,000 to the Center for Artistic Activism.  The grant will allow the Center to expand its School for Creative Activism.   

The School of Creative Activism is a participatory workshop infusing community organizing and civic engagement with culture and creativity.  The School was founded by the Center for Artistic Activism in 2010 and held two successful workshops for activists in the New York area and North Carolina.  In recognition of the workshops’ successes, the Open Society Foundations nearly doubled their funding from 2010 to support continued curricular development and organizer training in SCA workshops over the 2011-2012 year.

Working directly with organizers and community actors, the SCA leverages the strengths of grassroots activism and the attention grabbing and complex messaging of art through a curriculum designed to:

• Teach cultural tactics and creative strategies employed effectively by organizers in the past.

• Recognize and draw upon the cultural resources and creative talents residing within individuals, organizations, and communities in the present.

• Collectively run scenarios and plan campaigns that utilize culture and creativity.

• Build a network of organizers and artists using a model of creative organizing more effective in our media-saturated, spectacle-savvy world.

The Center’s co-founders, Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert, are eager to begin work with the 2012 class of organizers and activists. “OSF’s continued support allows us to do what we think we do best: team up with hard-working organizers to help create more creative campaigns,” says Duncombe. “We truly believe this is the most important work we can do,” added Lambert, “we’re very excited.”

2011-2012 workshops will be held throughout the U.S.  Locations and calls for participants will be announced in the coming months.  For more information on the School of Artistic Activism and other CAA programs, visit The Center for Artistic Activism.

# # #

Like this: from number one: “Choose better problems to solve”

We have more processing power, affordable tools, and combined intelligence right this very minute than at any point in the history of design. We are using it to build shit.

And this, from number four “Stop being your own obstacle”

I spent the first 10 years of my career saying things like, “If I could just do this work the way I know it should be done…” and convincing myself that someone else was keeping me from making better choices. [...] What is this strange gene that makes designers handicap themselves?

Stop designing the compromises you expect to have to make. Your fear of being wrong wins out over your fear of having to convince someone you’re right.

You can’t design in fear. Don’t throw the fight before a punch gets thrown.

And there’s more like “stay curious” and “learn to make mistakes faster.” Really great stuff.

via 10 New Year’s resolutions for designers | Feature | .net magazine.

Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the “meta-bigots”…. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It’s a dangerous game: If you’re humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.

[...]

All of Silverman’s controversies are essentially large-scale pieces of PC performance art—but instead of settling anything about race and humor in America, they just expose the incoherence of the debate. If her humor does have a larger purpose, it is that it maps the outer limits of our tolerance; it exposes ambiguities in the discussion that we don’t like to acknowledge; it taps into our giant unspoken mass of assumptions, tensions, fears, and hatreds—not to resolve them, but to remind us that they’re there. (She told the Believerrecently that she likes the idea of “saying things that force people to have opinions.”) By reducing all of this toxic material into a logical game, she creates a kind of public catharsis. The point of Silverman’s humor—the final translation of all that irony—might simply be that, no matter how much we pretend, we’re notready for her humor. These are life-and-death problems, and our laughter has terror in it.

“We pulled off an event that invoked the shock of something completely different, but was also universally familiar, and we did it in the middle of downtown. I feel good about that at the basest level.”

We met Donovan McKnight last Spring when he participated in our School for Creative Activism in North Carolina. McKnight is the co-director of Face to Face Greensboro, a community advocacy organization that promotes grassroots change through old-fashioned, face-to-face dialogue. We caught up with him recently, after he and his colleagues staged a huge event called Show of Hands 2011, a city-wide party to foster community and increase voter participation.

CAA: The party looks like it was fun! How did the idea evolve?

Donovan McKnight: Similar to what was said in the video, we were really trying to think of how to get our demographic engaged and informed in the local election. What would be the best way to do that? Well, we’re big on events. Actual, in-person, flesh-and-blood gatherings where people are sharing the same physical space. Our town, Greensboro, North Carolina, is still pretty divided in terms of race. Folks in West Greensboro are very unfamiliar with the East side of the town, and vice versa. There’s a shortage of places for these two groups of people come together. Downtown – the city’s center – is, geographically at least, the closest we can get. So we decided to have the event right in the middle of our town, in the liminal space that is neither East nor West.

So we knew we wanted an event. But what should that event look like? Well, for most people, not just youngish folks, civic engagement isn’t a very exciting idea, especially in a local context. For instance, voter turnout in Greensboro for local elections is around 20%. That was shocking to me, first learning that. So we said, let’s just throw a giant party in street, out in the open for everyone to see. Let’s have good music, both hip hop and rock music. Let’s get some good southern food out there, good beer too, of course. Let’s make it so it’s difficult for people to NOT come to this event. So once the party is set, let’s work in voter information. Hell, let’s invite the candidates to come hang out with their prospective constituents. Let’s also invite other applicable civic organizations to set up shop at our party: Young Democrats, Young Republicans, League of Women Voters, etc. We also peppered the space with a large-scale projection of voter information, profiling the races, as well as the dates and locations of voting sites. We had a custom digital photo booth, a cornhole setup (look this up if you’re not familiar), Wii bowling with candidate avatars, and an online station for election research.

The general strategy here is to have a party that is targeted at a certain demographic and happens to be thematic around the upcoming municipal election. Pretty simple really.

CAA: What issues did you hope to address? Whom did you hope to address?

DM: This action was pretty much free of any specific issues. We wanted to keep it as bi-partisan as possible. Our main goal was to bring together youngish people from across the city, from all districts, to party together and become aware of the local election and in turn increase voter turnout in Greensboro.

CAA: Was it effective?

DM: The event was definitely successful. People from all areas of Greensboro came out and partied together. Candidates showed up and had beers and food with potential voters. People witnessed a unique happening in the middle of their town, organized by their peers. We can’t really measure how many of those folks actually voted. I think, in large party, civic engagement is a long and continuous effort. It’s not everyone’s thing, but we’ll keep working on events such as this to get folks informed and activated.

CAA: What tactics did you use? Who or what inspired you?

DM: In my time at the School for Creative Activism we learned about the Ethical Spectacle, a large-scale public display that is good-natured, well-intentioned, and kind of mind blowing. I think that’s what we accomplished. We pulled off an event that invoked the shock of something completely different, but was also universally familiar, and we did it in the middle of downtown. I feel good about that at the basest level.

I loved that we were able to use hip-hop and rock music in the way that those two genres historically emerged – as activators. A simple thing like a mic and PA… it’s a powerful public tool.

I also love that the event wasn’t a divisive one. There was no left or right or us or them. It was about all of us coming together and having a good time in the same space and becoming aware of our options as common citizens. This sort of civility is a really powerful thing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about “income inequality” and “paying your fair share.”

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’”I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

via How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street | The Ticket – Yahoo! News.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Wonder Showzen: Where will you hide when the revolution comes?

This is from a couple years ago, but I have never forgotten it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Big thanks to CAA’s friends Gan Golan and Mark Read for sending us these links to coverage of Occupied performances and protests that took place on Halloween.

SUPERHEROES VERSUS WALLSTREET SHOWDOWN:

CBR

AFP

Gothamist

WNYC

Downtown Express

WIRED

Democratic Underground

MSN

NY Daily News (photo)

Bleeding Cool News

Policy Mic

MORE

Comics Alliance

OCCUPY HALLOWEEN PARADE:

CBS

AFP

New York 1

DNA Info

NBC

Bloomberg

Campus Progress

WNYC

CBS:
CBS

From the Yes Lab

Earlier today, a small group of Occupy Wall Street activists engaged in a near-successful corrida against the Wall Street Bull.

The incident began when two clowns, Hannah Morgan and Louis Jargow, scaled the steel barricades protecting the landmark. The clowns began spanking and climbing the beast, traditional ways of coaxing a bull into anger in preparation for a Castilian corrida, or bullfight.

Within seconds, police officers grabbed both clowns by their colorful shirts and wrestled one of them (Jargow) to the ground. The other (Morgan) continued to play the harmonica until an officer removed it from her mouth.

With the officers thus occupied, a matador in full traje de luces leapt onto the hood of the patrol vehicle parked in front of the bull and boldly presented his blood-red cape to the beast.

“I wondered whether I, neophyte matador, could bring down this behemoth, world-famous for charging towards profit while trampling underfoot the average worker,” said the OWS activist/torero whose first fight this was. “Come what may, I knew I must try.”

Police officers took no notice of the matador, occupied as they were with the clowns.

“This bull has ruined millions of lives!” wailed clown Jargow as he lay on the ground face-down. “Yet he and his accomplices have been rewarded with billions of our tax dollars—and we, here to put a stop to it all, are thrown to the ground. ¡Un escándalo!”

Both clowns were charged with disorderly conduct and released an hour later; they returned to Zuccotti Park to great fanfare. The Wall Street bull continues to rage.