Image taken from controversial 2014 Ralph Lauren ad shared on Twitter via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to show how modern casual cultural genocide is still present in our society. Text added, see below.

Image taken from the Vancouver Media Co-op’s coverage of the 2013 Truth and Reconciliation March via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to represent the strength of modern indigenous groups to stand up for their rights and cultural identity in the face of forced assimilation. Text added, see below.

Image taken from Squamish Lil’wat cultural center website via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to provide one of many examples of how indigenous culture is still thriving and advancing in the territories it did for thousands of years before European settlers arrived. Text from Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) as recorded in the book Coded Territories.

After watching this video for the first time, I admit, I had a great deal of difficulty deciphering the message behind the medium.  Even after reading the excerpt from Coded Territories about the piece, while I certainly understood the methodology, it was not until the class discussion and a closer look at the reading that it began to become clear to me.  Clearly, this installation is a heavily layered piece with the intention of conveying a great deal through these discordant sounds.  Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” was quoted as follows:

To articulate what is past, [does not simply mean] to recognize ‘how it really was,’ it means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.

Postcommodity is accomplishing much more here than simply conveying a message translated from another time.  By translating it into this format, these artists are changing the narrative and actively contributing to the stewardship of this knowledge for the community in Santa Fe. They are able to “negotiate cultural space” (from the excerpt provided on connect) within the current era to provide a narrative to the events that occurred when the town of Santa Fe “essentially fell out of history”  (Coded Territories)  in terms of how history is traditionally understood in Western cultures.  That is to say, this group has created a narrative that represents and advances indigenous understanding of this key period in time when Settler culture and ‘civilization’ was renounced and an attempt to reclaim cultural and physical territory was made and then held for twelve years after nearly eighty years of oppression according to Coded Territories. To me, this highlights the relevance of indigenous artists working with all kinds of media.

What Postcommodity and others are doing to not only preserve historical cultural knowledge, but also to carefully and painstakingly translate it into a media that can be understood in the current cultural context is a stunning act of decolonization and cultural sovereignty. Their contribution, through their art, has enriched and fundamentally changed the dialogue around indigenous life and culture for all those who are effected by this piece or by those influenced by it.  This ripple effect is emulated by all of the other artists and artisans working within this field.  Their propagation and translation bridges the gap between cultures and times. While some may say that perception of history is based on our weapons, maybe it is time to challenge that analysis.

In this information era, could it not be instead stated that history moves at the speed of its words?  Propaganda and censorship have long been a part of the international discussion around individual freedoms and liberties. Now that more and more time is spent by millions of individuals in an online space that can be more directly monitored and controlled than at any time before, perhaps it is the words, sounds, and images that will define our understanding of the progression of history rather than the analog weapons we decreasingly bare. Or perhaps the pen has become the sword?

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Some of the links in this post may lead to sites with NSFW content

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I hope that you enjoyed some of those links – I wanted to share a few of the more creative ways of organizing a information

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.  We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.

When Marshall McLuhan wrote this statement (sans hyperlinks) in his book, the first thing that my mind went to was the concept of news media.  In the world today, companies based in both the new and the old media have assembled vast arrays of data input systems in order to gather and display (generally for profit) information about the many sights and sounds of the world (with more sensual data coming soon?).  Google, for example, has built itself on the concept of gathering data by providing services where people want to input the data for free – such as web browsers, maps, social media, and much more.  By creating the medium, these companies are able to profit greatly from the messages being sent through it.  Similarly, the Net Neutrality debate has revealed how eager many are to control this vast new medium – due in no small part to the fact that it is still so much in it’s infancy that many potential profit streams or other uses remain unexplored – especially as new information interfaces/data inputs are developed….and bought.

But are these risks worth it? Have we really ‘democratized information‘ or are we simply tricking ourselves to think that we are this….

Ozymandias, the King of Kings

when in reality it is more like this…

Sheep puppets

However, even as this medium which seems to embody the freedom to find information, it is this very enigma that could lead to assumptions of freedom and openness when we are, in reality, becoming even more confined in what we see and how we see it.

While I feel most people are aware of how important terminology can be in the media with most political parties loading up on loaded vocabulary during campaign speeches, I feel that this issue calls for deeper exploration. We have come a long way from the Acta Diurna of Rome where the news was literally carved into stone to an era where our major news agencies put views and profits first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5U_XD4kDJ4

However, there are those who (rightly in my opinion) claim that the internet is a powerful force for the dissemination of hidden information (though the impact can be varied…).  Even as the major news media producers try master the art of attracting viewers at all costs and even so-called new-media sources fall to censorship and regulation, the internet still remains a place where people can come together in a huge variety of ways to share and discuss information.  There remain new opportunities for free and unmoderated interaction and new mediums will, hopefully continue to mean new freedoms as well.

As more and more users continue to come online  and resistance is shown to the notion of restraining the internet into a more traditionally profitable model, the internet certainly offers a way for people to empower themselves both online and in the world around them.  The online dialectics that have formed around concepts of freedom of information and interaction  and self-sufficiency (to name a few) are examples of concepts that are highly translatable – just as previous forms of media have been.  Now, information and ideas are spread even faster on concise youtube videos, images with text, or things that are ‘trending’ on social media.  While such memetic concepts can have a high velocity – they tend to also have a short lifetime and issues with openness and validity. While there are still many online media communities that operate under different structures and values, the potential diversity of interaction can be greatly limited by these very social structures.  Many online sites such as Reddit, Digg, 4chan, or others make use of highly specified vocabularies, images, and reactions as a potential reaction to the desire to be part of the cultural ‘in-group’ that is present in these communities – especially where there is strong opposition to those who would interact differently.

In summary, McLuhan would surely have felt validated today to see the clear correlation between interface and interaction – between required format and the resulting inputs.  What will certainly be interesting to moving forward is how these new platforms will effect the physical world.  Or maybe the luddites are right and we’ve all just had a bit too much instant orange juice.

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