Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?

Not very long ago I used to consider graffiti at the same level as Popular Rap Music. My experience of graffiti was limited only to the gang symbols and rude racial words scratched on the buses and metro’s plastic windows, or the very colorful yet meaningless spray drawings on the walls of Montreal.

While staying in Dubai, a place surrounded by disgusting advertisements as big as skyscrapers, I really felt like drawing something on them because a) they would make huge canvases and b) the messages on them were absolutely filthy. Sharing this idea with a friend who just arrived from UK, made him introduce me to BANKSY.

The first visit to his website made me fall in love with his work, at the same time gave me some great laughs. His sense of humor is keen and smart. The quality of his works is absolutely amazing, and his messages are strong. It very much reminded me of some of the 80’s and 90’s Art groups such as the General Idea or Guerilla girls, yet Banksy’s approach is very new to its kind as Internet is his main venue of showcasing his work. But Internet hasn’t been his only medium of advertisement. He has used tricks like writing on bank notes, painting on the Israeli West Bank Barrier, installing modified reproduction of classical paintings in museum, or simply painting on the walls wherever possible. He has remained anonymous (like guerilla girls), while he has gained an international reputation.

Banksy's website:http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Society of control vs. Disciplinary societies

Deleuze recognizes disciplinary societies as an ended system which has given its place to the society of control, a new intellectual way of applying control over the society. This happens according to Deleuze by blending what Foucault calls “closed environment”. Also other methods like specializing, dividualizing are key points in this process.Today every person has a personal password which is recognized by a machine; a machine that works with a program designed for dealing dividually with individuals.

Delueze's notion of the capitalism in the today’s society of control is also very interesting as he calls it capitalism for the product rather than capitalism for the production, as most of the products are made in the third world where there is cheap labor. And this is why marketing have become the core of the financial society, to an extend where Toni Morrison recognize Fascism a marketing for power rather than just an ideology. By making people paying their tax and debts, today were are enclosed to these methods of control through power where we are consumers in form of numbers and statistics.

Virilio and Minh-Ha on Reality and representation

Virilio tries to express reality through speed of light and time. How the speed of light affects our notion of reality, the fact that we perceive every incidence not at the very moment it occurs; the idea of trans-appearance, and how time plays an important role in our perception rather than the space. Therefore the speed of light which is related to time is more important than the light itself in the way we conceive the reality of appearances. And that is why the image is what Virilio calls shadow of time, referring to Plato.

Virilio also cites Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” and discusses how technology made us so close to the things that we are no longer affected by them. We are trying our best to develop systems of control where we are able to do everything simultaneously without necessary being present in different spaces, and here is the notion of mobility which doesn’t necessarily refers to space.

Minh-Ha argues how we are subjective and the technology is absolutely objective; that is why when we hide technology as much as possible, the images we are presenting become far more detached from the reality.

Discussing Minh-Ha, why do we think that the reality is neutral? Can the reality itself be biased as well? Reality, Being untouched and raw whether it may seem biased, is neutral.

Also, if “a bad shot is guaranteed of authenticity" then is a beautiful piece of art, even if it is reflecting reality, always a lie?

Image, Technology and Political Economy

With the emergence of new technologies and the developments in reproduction, “Image” acquired a whole new definition, which no longer maintained the notion of its physical component, and considered the mass production means.

Reproduction has always existed, but with new technologies it has entered a new level. Digital imaging, along with Internet, has created a shift in the visual culture, by providing the easiest reproduction and access tools. A reproduction, no matter how accurate and perfect it is, comparing to its original, lacks an element which Walter Benjamin calls “aura.” The fact that the reproduced image is no longer present in time and space, specially in the digital world where it may even not have a physical existence. (Benjamin, 50)

One of things that make the original, for instance a painting, valuable is its uniqueness. The “aura” of the original, what gives it its cult value, is its oneness, and also the phenomena of “distance.”(Benjamin, 52) Mainly due to its inaccessibility, the original always tends to keep this “distance” with its viewer, even though s/he might be physically close to it.

But with the digital technology where the copy is absolutely identical with the original, the original becomes a copy where at the same time all copies can be considered original. On the top of that is Internet where all these originals are distributed, and can be accessed easily. So the question is that in such a system, does there still exist a notion of “aura.”

The other thing, that has been redefined frequently, after the appearance of digital imaging and Internet, is copyright. Once protecting the uniqueness of an image, now it has entered a whole new level. Images can easily be stored in personal computers and there are such a great amount of users that tracking everybody down, is impossible. The new technology enables the masses to get what they want without the involvement of any power structure or economic corporation. It has created a situation where the visuals can reach anybody in anywhere without passing through the filtering process of capital, and propaganda. It is for this reason that countries like China or Iran limited their people’s access to Internet.

Culture Industry, Propaganda and IMAGE

Image has had definitely a powerful effect, in establishing a visual culture and it has been overused, over centuries, politically to manipulate public perception and to set norms and standards, by political and capitalist economical administrations. Through the notion of representation, image has helped the establishment of the culture industry. In counter point artists have used the same medium to effect their audience, by delivering messages, emphasizing certain social and/or political issues, and exposing them to some realities. Image has also been a tool to document realities and events that are inaccessible to general public. Taking these notions further, because of the technological advances of the modern world, image has gained a new meaning and its use and impact have been moved into a new level.

Image, Culture Industry and Propaganda;
Image has always been culture Industry’s major tool in manipulating general public, and establishing a culture that encourages consumption and the empowerment of capital and power structures.

The term “Culture industry” was first used by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in their book, “The Dialectic of Enlightenment.” They expressed the modern culture as a standardized and uniform system that views the mass or rather consumers as only numbers and statistics and tends to force them towards passivity. Quoting Horkheimer and Adorno:

Culture now impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system, which is uniformed as whole and in every part. Even the aesthetic activities of political opposites are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of iron system. (71)

Therefore, one of the key features of the culture industry is producing an illusion of variety and choice for the consumer, when in fact the perfunctorily distinguished products prove to be all alike in the end. All products are manufactured under a formalized procedure, which its mere purpose is the moral and financial benefit of the capital. An example, which explains such an idea well, would be Hollywood, where movies follow the same structure. Although at first they may seem different in content, but in fact they are identical to an extent where from the beginning of the film, it is quite obvious how the film will end and who will be rewarded or punished. Each movie is produced under the investment of the major corporations and thus the financial profits of the movie overwhelm its artistic values.

In culture industry “Image” plays a significant role in establishing power structure or rather Capital’s desired culture. The two of the most affective strategies employed, in which the use of Image is at its core are: propaganda and advertisement.

Political groups and power structures have always used propaganda as a key apparatus in fulfilling their objectives. According to Noam Chomsky:
When you can't control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion. (1992)
Through the images that the power structure mediates, and also through imposing control over what is being produced and published, the general public is directed in a path, more likely in the benefit of such power structures.

President Bush and his administration are very well aware of the power of Images in establishing an impression of strength and resolve. Quoting Kenneth T. Walsh: “Throughout the past four years, the president's handlers have surrounded him with the kind of visuals that the camera finds irresistible.”(12/5/04) Patriotic scenes including president with the American flag, children, soldiers and etc. were mainly the center of photographers’ interest and were widely mediated. There were some iconic photographs, which were even key points in projecting Bush and his administrations’ patriotic image. One would be the photograph of Bush standing on the top of the debris of the world trade center, surrounded by police and firefighters, and giving a speech through a bullhorn; an image which portraits a strong authoritative representation of him. Another example would be the photograph of Condoleezza Rice Playing Piano with a string quartet.

She in Placed in the center of the photograph, Under the only light source which is in the frame, in the focused point of the picture, wearing a darker cloth comparing to others in the picture. These all together not only attract all the attentions towards her, but also suggest a powerful, intelligent and emotional persona for her.

Evidently the idea of propaganda is nothing new. For instance Napoleon Bonaparte, not long after his coupe d’tate in 1799, appointed the famous French painter, Jacques-Louis David to memorialize his crossing of the Alps. Although Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule and in very exhausting circumstances, David painted him questionably theatrical on a white horse, with a victorious gesture. The reality was so distorted in that painting that the French painter Paul Delaroche decided to challenge David’s painting, by repainting the whole scene. He studied all the evidence of Napoleon’s crossing of the St. Bernard Pass and even visited the place himself, to acquire as much information as possible. Delaroche then painted his version of the “Napoleon crossing the Alps”, which marked a picturesque contrast between the Image Napoleon was delivering and the actual reality. (Walker Art Gallery, 2006)













Advertisement, on the other hand, is a kind of propaganda itself, but it has been mainly utilized by Capital and political economy, in order to manufacture a need for the consumption of commodities, rather than promoting a power, or concealing its missteps.

[…]the mechanical repetition of the same culture product has come to be the same as that of the propaganda slogan. In both cases the insistent demand for effectiveness makes technology into psycho-technology, into a procedure for manipulating men. (Horkheimer and Adorno, 98)

More than half of the images that one sees every day are advertisements, sponsoring goods. Most of them not only try to promote a product, but also a new culture or rather “style” that encourages consumption, and keeps the commercial power on scene.

Apple has spent a large amount of money over past years in order to only manufacture a need for their products, or at least create an illusion of need. It has used any kind of advertisement possible, from bus wrappings to TV commercials, employing the same simple attractive theme, which is a silhouette character on the top of a bright background. By leaving the character anonymous, Apple avoids addressing any specific class or cultural ethnicities, and leaves the decision to the public. By aiming at the general public it has represented a commodity, which could belong to any social class. Quoting Horkhiemer and Adorno: “the freedom is symbolized in various media of the culture industry by arbitrary selection of the average individuals.”(88)

As mentioned several times above, the culture industry’s main objective is to produce a need, to manufacture a consumptive culture, mainly by substituting what is being lived with a “representation.”(Debord, 1) In 1967 Guy Debord introduced the idea of spectacle: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relationship mediated by images.”(Debord, 4) As Debord describes, the spectacle is a social relationship or rather a culture, which is propagated through Images; the culture that defines the material basis of social life, and advertises commodity as a necessary part of the social power.

By Idolizing celebrities and creating positive, attractive but at the same time inaccessible icons, the ruling economy not only affects society’s objectives, but also at the same time moves away their life into something unreal. The affect of spectacles like Hollywood or Television becomes so fundamental, and changes many of the personal and social ideologies to a degree, that it directly effects the social life and forms it own culture. All the social relationships, even in the most intimate situations, the choice of words, and even the emotional reactions are all affected by the spectacle and tend to become similar to the models that the culture industry provides.( Horkhiemer and Adorno, 100)

Alan Watts :::: Time :::::

Alan Watts a western Philosopher, who has a very deep understanding of the Buddhist Zen, Talks about time, a very absurd notion which tends to keep us away from the Tibetan/Sufi ideology of living in the second:

High Art industry, women and Artists of color:::: Part II

As stated earlier the Guerilla Girls, a feminist group of artists formed in mid 80s, were well aware of the power structures that effected and had control over High art, and the strategies that they chose in order to fight back, were appropriate in its context. For Adorno, “although administration is inescapable, it is vulnerable to the fact that it lacks the ability to plan every detail of every eventuality in advance, and to the extent that it tries to do so, administration becomes consumed by its own inefficiency. This limit guarantees the possibility of something different which, because it is not planned, embodies the value of hope.”[1] Hence Guerilla Girls were able to, under the right circumstances, secure their position by forming autonomy within an organizational form, to which it was opposed, through the involvement of administrators who happened to share the same aesthetic values.[2]

In order to escape the organizations and institutional structures, underneath the power hierarchy that promote high art, Guerilla Girls chose ‘public art’ as the medium to communicate with their audience. Apart from posters which are their most public communication tool, they have also done billboards, bus ads, magazine spreads, protest actions, letter-writing campaigns, and putting up broadsheets in bathrooms of major museums.[3] In this way they have not only escaped the biased administrative selections, which happen within the museums and galleries, but they have also reached a much broader audience.

Another strategy used by Guerilla Girls in order to have the best impact on their audience, has been their reliance on the mass culture rather than the world of high art. Quoting Gertrude Stein, from the Guerilla Girls, “there is a popular misconception that the world of high art is ahead of the mass culture, but everything in our research shows that, instead of being avant-garde, it is derrière.”[4] Because of the honesty that was evident in their work, and the simplicity of their message which, communicated easily with the mass audience, their work didn’t allow any misinterpretation. Therefore the public could easily understand and appreciate their work, without feeling the need to refer to a critic in order to communicate with its message, although the critics still did criticize their work. In other words, in this situation, the public no longer identifies museums and critics as a superior ‘knower’, because the art work is ‘known’ to him/her by itself already.

Apart from the tactics, mentioned above, Guerilla Girls used other techniques as well, which are worth mentioning; they wanted to be shocking. By calling themselves, a group of grown women, ‘girls’ which can imply that they are not complete, mature or grown up, they attracted a lot of attention. Also wearing Guerilla masks as a disguise, in order to both earn attention and remain anonymous. According to Zora Neale Hurson: “being anonymous, operating under code names and alter egos, has meant there are no career gains to be earned by being a Guerilla Girl. This makes us all equal, gives each of us an equal voice, no matter what our position may be in the ‘real’ world.”[5] But one of the most important qualities of Guerilla Girls which earned them a lot of attention has been ‘humor’. By ridiculing and belittling the system that excluded them[6], they not only criticized the system in an amusing way, but, as said by themselves, humor gets people involved. [7]

But are any of the activities similar to Guerilla Girls, General Idea or any other ‘activist art’ movement effective? Do they actually make a difference? Without a doubt they have been indeed effective, but it is not in a way that displays a cultural shift at once. Putting it differently, the major effect of these activists arts happen in a very large time scale. Jeremy Valentine explores this concept, through Hardt and Negri’s Empire: “Empire is not a stable system that is limited and that can be weakened and overcome by direct attack.”[8] Referring to the power structures by the term Empire, Hardt and Negri support this idea, that it is impossible for any activity or protest against the empire to have an immediate effect on the power structure as a whole; the effect can only be gradual. Quoting Valentine again: “In terms of political significance of art, the idea of an oppositional sphere defined in terms of political casualty of aesthetics, […] has dissolved. This is not to say that art is suddenly without effects, including broader social changes. It is to say that these cannot be determined or guaranteed.”[9] Valentine believes these effects cannot be guaranteed mainly because the effect of any opposition to the power structure does not happen instantly. Of course when Guerilla Girls where asked whether they have made a difference or not, they believed they have made dealers, curators, critics and collectors ‘accountable’. They have been protesting for feminism and artists of color for more than 20 years now, and things have certainly changed over these decades.

As demonstrated here and in the previoua post, because the whole power structure that imposes an authority over the art, is affected by white-male-heterosexual-western prejudice, the groups who share a value different than that of the system, do not get the recognition they deserve. Different strategies have been employed by activist artists, such as Guerilla Girls. Such Strategies may have not shown its impact; its influence is gradual over large time scales. But these protests have certainly been effective.

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[1] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 199.

[2]Ibid, 200.

[3] Guerilla Girls (whoever they really are). “Guerilla Girls bare all: An Interview” Confessions of the Guerilla Girls. ( HarperPerinial, 1995), 18.

[4]Ibid, 26.

[5] Ibid, 20.

[6] Ibid, 15.

[7] Ibid, 15.

[8] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 192.

[9] Ibid, 196.

High Art industry, women and Artists of color

In order to examine the effectiveness of the ‘activist art’ as a tool, protesting the recognition that women and artists of color deserve in the art scene, a basic understanding of the systems in which art gets exhibited, exchanged, and criticized is necessary. Oppositional groups such as Guerilla Girls certainly do have an influence on the power structure within the art industry, but their influence is gradual, rather than immediate.

When The Guerilla Girls were asked whether art is judged based on quality, or if women and artists of color are simply victims of racist biased intentions, their response pointed several issues. Quoting Lee Kranser, one of the Guerilla Girls: “The world of high art, the kind that gets into museums and history books, is run by a very small group of people. Our posters have proved over and over again that these people, no matter how smart or good intentioned, have been biased against women and artists of color.”[1] What Lee Kranser points out is the very fundamental conditional relation between art and its own institutions and organizations, and studying this relation leads us to the issue of power, both of art and over art. Referring to Jeremy Valentine: “Sometimes this question [the question of power] takes banal and mundane, perhaps trivial form, with issues such as dealers, collectors, critics, curators and administrators. At other times the question is posed in more elevated terms of the relations between art and life.”[2] In other words, art has always been subjected to the power structures that control and influence the high art industry, which is according to Valentine dealers, collectors, critics, curators and administrators and of course museums. But Valentine takes another factor into account as well: the relation between art and life. How one’s views and ideologies may effect art, or in particular high art industry. Citing Joy Senack: “Ideologies are super structures based on the ideas, or systems of ideas, that prevail at any given time in any social group. They are erected upon the realities of the social structure but they may reflect these realities in a biased manner.”[3] Most of the influential participants of the art industry are affected by white male heterosexual western ‘ideologies’, Thus the art administrations act biased against works of women, artists of color, homosexuals, and non-western artists.

At the core of this power structure are the critics, whose influence or general impression of a work of art cannot be overlooked. According to Jeremy Valentine, “The political significance of art cannot be determined by any established political or aesthetic critical criteria, precisely because the relation between the two terms has increasingly become arbitrary.”[4] That is to say the relation between the art object and its interpretations, established by the critics who share different political values, is so arbitrary that a misinterpretation is very likely. Therefore in such circumstances that the authority of the critical misinterpretations conceals the actual meaning of an art work, the white-male-heterosexual-western gaze influences critics, and results in disrespect of the actual value of any art produced against such ‘ideologies’.

Another part of the power structure is museums and organizations that exhibit works of art. Jeremy Valentine, a critic of these institutions argues that: “the museum codifies and bureaucratizes cultural experience, imposing uniformity and eliminating difference.”[5] As a result of this, museum displays a restricted relation to knowledge, that Bennet called the ‘exhibitory complex’, which structures a hierarchy of power over that which is known. Yet visitors are encouraged to identify the museum as a superior ‘knower’ over what it represents as ‘known’.[6] Therefore because the museum has this selfish perspective, and at the same time it is part of a bigger power structure which shares unified ‘ideologies’ with critics, collectors and dealers, not every type of art gets exhibited. Only those are qualified that either agree with its mentality or take a neutral position. Perhaps a very famous example of art which questioned the museum administrations and the above issues was Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. By questioning the categories through which art was interpreted and displayed, Duchamp’ Fountain not only criticized the institutional spaces such the gallery, the museum, and even the archive, but it also extended its criticism to both employers and users of such spaces, and the public and private conditions that made them possible.[7]

The third part of the power structure is the political economy in the art industry, which views art as a commodity. Becoming a commodity, an art work not only may lose its value for what it is, but it also becomes the subject of dealers and collectors’ evaluation. As the critical theorist Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno put it over fifty years ago in their work Dialectic of Enlightenment, in capitalist market the tendency is that: “everything is looked at from only one aspect; that it can be used for something else, however vague the notion of this use may be. No object has inherent value; it is valuable only to the extent that it can be exchanged.”[8] This part of the power structure’s concern is only the exchange value of art work, and it follows, like the rest of the power structure, the white-male-heterosexual-western ideology, mainly because it believes: this is what sells.

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[1] Guerilla Girls (whoever they really are). “Guerilla Girls bare all: An Interview” Confessions of the Guerilla Girls. ( HarperPerinial, 1995), 25.

[2] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 200.

[3] Senack, Joy. “The Economics of Value” Value, Art and the Market: A Study in the Political Economy of Value and the Evolution of a Modern Art Market. ( Concordia University Press, 2004), 33.

[4] Valentine, Jeremy. “Empire and Art: Aesthetic Autonomy, Organizational Meditation and Contextualizing Practices” Art, Money, Parties: New Institution in the Political Economy of Contemporary Art. (Liverpool University press, 2004), 195.

[5] Ibid, 201.

[6] Ibid, 201.

[7] Ibid, 203.

[8] Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. (Continuum, 1995), 158.

Michael Foucault and Noam Chomsky

A very neat dialog between two of the most influential contemporary Marxist theorists:

Our Indefensible Ears

A Response to Hillel Shwartz's "Indefensible Ear"
First Paragraph Summery by Thomas Benoit.

At the end of last century, understanding of the ear sifted from a passive and indestructible organ to a sensitive, complex and active organ. There had been a reassessment of the ear in many fields like science, medicine, psychology and even fashion. Hearing became central to human experience with innovations of the 20th century (gramophone, radio, telephone). At the same time, the ear was overexposed to the noise of all this new inventions (machinery, subway...) although the ear is the most indefensible perception organ - we cannot shut our ears as we do for our eyes -, its vulnerability has been much considered. As the faculty of hearing reduces with age, it has been commonly thought that there is no reason trying to protect an organ, which is bound to degenerate. The author is an anti-noise advocate. He proposes to fight surrounding noises endangering our faculty of hearing by studying our sonic environments and make people aware of the threats of bad sonic vibrations.

The author draws our attention towards the dissimilarity of hearing as an involuntary phenomena and Listening as voluntary, and demonstrates how some notions like noise are bound to this difference. The question that raises here is: does noise loose its meaning if it is heard voluntary? (i.e. if noise is “listened” to is it still noise?)


As a consequence of modern technology the variety of the noises produced is wide. The sounds produced by us, as a result of unfamiliarity with the technology (ex. raising our voices over telephone). The sounds that the technological devices produce, And finally the sounds of commercials, public announcements, shopping mall radios… which most of us does not pay slightest of attention to them and yet they exist. Therefore we are living in an atmosphere where our ear, which is our most indefensible perception organ, is “overtaxed”.

Apple iPod and the Change in Culture Industry

This is an assignment I wrote 2 years ago, now that I read it, I realize it is not written well but since its mine I post it:

With the rise of the Apple iPod, a device as big as a pack of cigarettes, which stores all the music one owns, a new shift in the culture of the music listening occurred which was mainly due to the technological advances of the iPod. Analyzing the whole notion of the iPod and other Apple concepts which are related to it, in the perspective of four different media analysts, Walter Benjamin, Horkhiemer and Adorno and Brecht, enables me to explore this concept, considering different aspects of it.

Considering the usage of the iPod, it has totally changed the way one experiences music, and as it is dependant on the reproduced music, the whole notion of the “aura” is misplaced. As soon as an album is released, people around the world have access to it and can easily listen to it through their white headphones. Taking into account the advances in the technical means of reproduction, and the arrival of the digital technology, where the copy is almost indistinguishable from the original, still the reproduced copy lacks the whole concept of the uniqueness of a live performance (original), and its presence in time and space, even though with devices like iPod we can experience any music, anywhere that we can think of.

The other reason why Apple iPod functions against the idea of “aura” is that it has a quality which erases the “distance”, and brings the music to the mass “closer” in a way which is much more effective than any other music player device introduced earlier. It was not long before that audience had to go to a concert hall to hear an orchestrated symphony, where now they can listen to the same music while walking from work to home. And this raises the whole controversy about the way we shall experience music and how the environment effects our perception of a song.

Although a concert is viewed by a large number of people, but considering this in a larger scale it is hidden from the mass, and this is why a live performance has it cult value and is still attended by a large number, although the same music is “exhibited” through distribution.

Apple iPod and the new technical progresses in the consumption of music have also had an impact on the production as well. First, the size of the audience is increased massively and it has become universal due to the new ways of distribution (i.e., iTunes). Secondly, as the aud

ience of a technically reproduced music is separated from the “original” they take the position of a critic. Thirdly, as I mentioned above the whole way of experiencing music is changed. The musician must also consider the fact that his music is going to be played everywhere, and it will be carried with people all the time.

We can also take into deliberation the concept of the “aura” in the perspective of the way iPod is advertised. The fact that each iPod contains the music, which belongs to a certain taste of a particular consumer, makes the product unique and creates an aura. Also the new features like engraving any message one wants on the back of his/her iPod add another kind of exclusivity to the device.

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The new methods of online distribution of music has made it possible for the musicians to get the feedback they need so fast, that it has made the iPod an apparatus of communication rather than an apparatus of distribution.

Also the new technological advanced features like the Pod cast, which is particularly developed for iPod is exactly the kind of the radio that Brecht was dreaming of, where everyone is a distributor as well as receiver, teachers as well as pupils.

Considering the two ideas mentioned above, this new way of communication has also effected the production of the media as well. The quality of the productions is going to increase, as the producer is always fed with the feedback that is coming from an audience, whom due to the qualities of reproduction are taking the position of critics. In addition to that, because the quantity of the production is increased, as everybody transmits his/her own show as well, a kind of competition will be fashioned, that will have a direct impact on the excellence of different programs whether professional or amateur.

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In the perspective of Horkhiemer and Adorno’s Culture Industry, the whole concept of the Apple iPod is debatable in the way Apple promotes and advertises its products, and tries to establish a new “style” or in other words culture.

In terms of the iPods advertisement Apple has used all of its power and intelligence in order to create a market for iPod. Their major goal in this area, I believe, is to “manufacture” a need for the product, or at least create an illusion of a need, using different methods. First, they have used any kinds of advertisement possible, from wrappings to TV commercials, employing the same simple attractive theme, and Secondly, by aiming the general public. Quoting Horkhiemer and Adorno: “the freedom is symbolized in various media of the culture industry by arbitrary selection of the average individuals.” This sentence clarifies very well the main theme of the Apple iPods, which is a dark character against a bright background. By leaving the character in the ads anonymous, Apple avoids addressing any specific class or cultural ethnicities, and they leave the decision to the spectator.

Apple also produces different kinds of iPod. According to Horkhiemer and Adorno this is not only to aim different classes and different individuals but also to create an “illusory strike.”

Another method Apple uses to generate such a “need” is by introducing a new “Style” where iPod is a vital part of it. First, not only celebrities present iPod in the TV commercials (which is not something new), but they also use the iPod in their shows and soap operas. They create a whole atmosphere where

the spectator will feel that he/she is the only one who doesn’t own an iPod. They feel like an “outsider” in a style which is practice by the “general”.

Living in a world of entertainment and Hollywood movies, most of the audiences try to simulate the experience of a movie in their daily life, and iPod gives a lot of them this opportunity in a way by providing them a choice of soundtracks that can be played anytime. The music becomes part of the life. Referring Horkhiemer and Adorno: the best orchestra of the world is brought into your living rooms free of charge, and this involves making the average heroic.

Having mentioned all the reasons for the practicality of iPod and it success in the advertisement, it easily justifies why iPod has become popular that any other electrical device in very short period of time. Everybody now have his/her own white headphones and enjoy this technological development, by listening to his/hers favorite music while waiting for bus.

Distorted Perception

I thought it would be a good idea to post this video as it is in the same direction of my next post which I am working on. So enjoy this 1min "Intro".

Marcel Duchamp

A great answer as an artist. This is how an Artist must feel about his work.

Khatami speech on Human Safety

I Have always respected Khatami He may have not succeeded as a president mainly because of his concerns for the Iranian safety, but he has always been great as a person and as a theorist. I really get upset when I see people including him with the rest of the regime when blaming it.

Modernism Vs. PostModernism

According to the World Encyclopedia the term Avant-garde is used to describe “innovators in the arts, particularly those whose artistic audacity surprises their contemporaries.”

Avant-garde always introduces something new and innovative. In art it can refer to something that has not been done before; a novel and innovative artwork which is much ahead of its time and in most cases radical and pioneering. Avant-garde despite modernism and postmodernism movements which chronologically followed each other in 19th and 20th century, could have happened in any period of time. In other words in every movement in art history there could have beenavant-garde, as there were, and because rather than a movement in art, it is a novelcharacteristic of an artwork, it could have even started a movement itself. For example Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes can easily be regarded as an avant-garde piece as Danto specifically credited this work of art with the end of modernism and the beginning of the postmodernism.

Looking through the “possibility of universal communication” which modernists believe in and postmodernists don’t, it is even more likely to consider avant-garde in postmodernist art rather than that of modernist. Karen Hamblen (1991) argues that “most scholars no longer believe that art objects can communicate without viewers having access to knowledge about the times in which they were made and the places in which they originated.”

Where Immanuel Kant, who set the philosophic groundwork for artistic modernism, believed “when viewing art, people should put themselves in a supra state of sensory awareness, give up their personal interests and associational responses and consider art independently of any purpose or utility other than the aesthetics.”

Therefore viewing this notion from the modernist perspective, it is almost impossible to have an avant-garde, because one of the major requirements of considering an artwork avant-garde is to view it in regards of its time of production or performance. In other words avant-garde is temporal. For example in modernist point of view John Cage can no longer be considered as an avant-garde musician as his chance operation techniques have been practiced by different artists in variety of disciplines.

One of the major concepts that effected both modernism and postmodernism during the 19th and 20th century was the major advances and developments in the technology. In Both movements it attracted a lot of attention from both artists and philosophers. Many different articles were published concerning technology and its consequences. Many of the artists and philosophers deeply engaged themselves in producing material exploring, criticizing or admiring technology.

In modernist art Technology was still observed in the context of capitalist Industrialization, where postmodernism, because of its roots in Marxism, criticized modernity by mentioning the subjugation of workers under that system, and focused more on the implications of technology in the lifestyle of people and its relation with the society in a more general view. Artists not only made art about technology, but they actually employed it to produce art. The significance of the technology in art production in Modernist and postmodernist art is to an extent that Douglas Crimp (1990) mentions the invention of photography as the reason for modernism’s demise and postmodernism’s birth.

Technology, particularly in postmodern world, has benefited artists in various ways and has offered them so many different tools, or what Marshall Mcluhan calls extensions of our senses and nerves, that the possibilities and options in front of them comparing to that of the modernism, is extremely vast. As a matter of fact, if according to Douglas Crimp photography is considered as the end of modernism, many art disciplines including photography and cinema appeared during the postmodernism. Therefore the postmodern artist can express her/himself in a much larger variety of mediums and in this age referring to Mcluhan again medium’s characteristics gains such an importance that it overwhelms the importance of the content. Therefore as technology provides variety of tools and also creates a new subject in the philosophy of art, one can say the more a society is advanced in technology the more possibilities and options are open for the artist in that society, which means postmodernists have a much more diverse range of mediums and concepts to work on comparing to modernists. Thus it is more likely to see avant-garde in a postmodernist rather than modernism, because of the potentials that technology has granted it. At the same time in another sense it is fair to say that it is almost impossible to produce an avant-garde art today, because according to the definition of avant-garde one can refer to him/herself as an avant-garde if s/he believes that s/he is ahead of his/her time, where quoting Marshall Mcluhan: “in the electric age there is no longer any sense in talking about the artist being ahead of his time. Our technology is, also, ahead of its time, if we reckon by, the ability to recognize it for what it is.”

One of the key contributions of technology to art is the development of reproduction which photography as mentioned earlier is an important part of that. Therefore postmodernism has benefited the most from technology as one of its main qualities is reproducing existing information in new means. As Terry Barrett (1997) mentions: “Postmodernists flout the modernists’ reverence for Originality.” In other words postmodernists tend to, what he calls, “barrow” from the past and by placing the old information into new contexts, try to question the whole concept around the information, and of course this goes back to the nature of the postmodernism, as quoting Richard Tarnas: “The subject of knowledge is already embedded in the object of knowledge: the human mind never stands outside the world judging it from an external vantage point. Every object of knowledge is already part of a preinterpreted context and beyond that context are only other preinterpreted contexts.”

The reproduction developments have not only provided tools for artists, and particularly postmodernists, but have also influenced art indirectly by making it available to the public. The reproduction brings a work of art to all those people who would otherwise not see it; regardless of their position in time and space, although reproduced art lacks what Walter Benjamin calls the “aura” of it. In this concept one may reason that because postmodernists have the tendency to appropriate material from the past to remind us that the notion of originality is absent in most traditions of art, there can not exist an avant-garde in postmodernism. But the necessity of being considered avant-garde is more based on innovation rather than originality. In other words a piece of art can be new and innovative while it appropriates material from the past. A perfect example for this can be Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. By “appropriating” a urinal, an object from the daily life, he pioneered and introduced the idea that art could take any form and he shocked the world. Therefore he was a postmodernist avant-garde.

As It is demonstrated above, avant-garde not only can exist is postmodernism but it is even more likely to appear in postmodernism rather than modernism, mainly due to the nature and structure that forms postmodernism: the nature of questioning knowledge and truth, its roots in Marxism and feminism and the appropriation from the past, Also considering the fact that postmodern era is exposed to a much more advanced technology.

Marshall Macluhan ::::: Electric Revolution

Rumi Again ::::: باز هم حضرت مولانا

No matter in what mood you are, you can always express yourself abstractly with his words.

All through eternity

Beauty unveils His exquisite form

in the solitude of nothingness;

He holds a mirror to His Face

and beholds His own beauty.

he is the knower and the known,

the seer and the seen;

No eye but His own

has ever looked upon this Universe.

His every quality finds an expression:

Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;

Love, the life-giving garden of this world.

Every branch and leaf and fruit

Reveals an aspect of His perfection-

They cypress give hint of His majesty,

The rose gives tidings of His beauty.

Whenever Beauty looks,

Love is also there;

Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek

Love lights Her fire from that flame.

When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night

Love comes and finds a heart

entangled in tresses.

Beauty and Love are as body and soul.

Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.

They have together

since the beginning of time-

Side by side, step by step.

Virtual Music

One of the main qualities of games are that they usually help us achieve something that in real life is either unachievable or simply needs a lot of time and effort. Becoming a successful musician is one of those. In real life it take years of practice and performances to become a well-known musician. But in the world of games one as an Avatar can easily place him/herself in a position of a musician.
In the game that I have in mind The user experiences the whole process that takes a person to become a real musician, the only differences is that it happens much faster. The user goes through different stages, and actually that’s the thrill of the game, and simultaneously improves his/her skills much faster.

Navigation:
The only external tool needed, in order to play this game is a pair of goggles. By wearing these goggles the user can situate him/herself in any possible music scene; whether an amphitheater or a concert hall or in a football stadium on a rock stage.
There are two notions of “time” in this game:
• There is a continues notion where the avatar has to move in a virtual time and pass through different levels in order to become a professional musician. For instances it may take 15 virtual years for a player to perform in rock concert in a stadium.
• The other notion is that the player can experience his/her stages in different periods of history. For example one can become a musician in 17th century and play Aria with Bach himself.
The players instruments for performing music is nothing but their own hands. By performing different gestures, which are taken metaphorically from real music performance, one can play or conduct… any kind of music. For example one can easily create a ¾ rhythm by drawing a virtual triangle with his/her left hand, which is the same gesture used by orchestra conductors in order to conduct a ¾ time signature piece, or taken from position of hands on guitar, one can easily strum a chord by moving his/her right hand up and down, where his/her left hand’s shape dictates the tonality of the chord.
There is a feature in the game, which allows all the players to create their own instrument. They can easily grab and put different object together and see how they sound. In this virtual world there even exist object for digital instruments and effects.

Networks:
This game connects people from all over the world and positions them in a virtual place and allows them to perform music next to each other.
Because the majority of people do not have any understanding of the music notation this game uses another method to orchestrate different musician:
Each musician has a screen in front of him/her, which displays the his/her Avatar. The movements of the conductor or the bandleader is then translated into the movements that s/he has to make in order to become synchronized with them, and then this is what is going to be displayed through the Avatar in the screen. In other words the player can easily synchronize him/herself by mimicking the movements in the screen.

Avatars:
Each player has different options of character. S/he can be a Musician, Orchestra conductor, sound mixer, light designer, lyricist, composer or simply an audience. Of course one has to go through different levels in order to take any of these roles.
To each of the above categories are subcategories as well, for instance the musician group, includes the players of different instruments and vocalists. Another interesting thing is that once one gains a certain amount of skill, s/he can even choose celebrities as his/her Avatar.

Rules:
There are different levels to this game:
• Audience: Every one start at this point. The reason for this is that the beginners get a general image of how the game is being played, and the musicians, who are another users some where in the world, get to have real(not computer generated) audience.
• Lesson: each user has to take specific lessons for each instrument.
• Jam sessions
• Recitals and local concerts
• Concerts
• Record labels
• Soloist, band leader, Conductor


Each user can only used appropriate mediums in each genre. For instance no one can play electric guitar in a classical mode, and if one desires to mix different genres can do that in the “new age” or “contemporary music” mode.

In order to be able to place traditional instruments of each region one must have an understanding and general overview of that specific culture. In this way each player can utilize such instruments much better.
Each player has to improve his/her knowledge of music theory through he game by different tutorials and gadgets in the game, so that by the time they finish the game they actually become musicians.
Once every player reaches the “record label” level s/he actually gets to sign a real record deal. From that point all of his/her works are protected by copyright laws.


This is more than a game. It is a whole system of developing musician in short time, where almost anybody can become a musician. Although the performances happen in virtual spaces but all the characters and avatars are actual human, In other words this system is a different way of experiencing music.

Wear Sun Screen

This is not my video, but I love it. It makes me feel good!

Everyone Must See This! - video powered by Metacafe

Justified Racism

General public has always had a very abstract idea of “Racism.” It still has the same image as early 60s: calling an African-American with the “N” word, or generally abusing any ethnicity. But Racism has become such a bigger issue today, as the notion of Racism has become indecent. Therefore it is more veiled now.

What matters even more is that “Racism’ can be seen in many organizations, governments and systems, and yet nobody questions them, because it never seems like it. For instance the only reason which I have to pay 8,000$ tuition fee more than my Canadian classmate is because I am not Canadian. It is not because he has higher grades or anything else. It is just because of my nationality. One may reason that you haven’t paid tax all those years in Canada, but this is an absurd justification because it still does not solve the problem, it rather erases it.

The fact that a whole nation or followers of a specific religion should be humiliated just because of few terrorist is another example. A terrorist can be from any country ( for example in 9/11 while the Americans where busy interviewing and investigating Iranian applicants, a UAE citizen which are the most trusted in the middle east carried away the mission.)

All that being said, the only ironic reason now that I can not travel back to my country Iran is that I am actually Iranian. Because I am Iranian it has now taken more than a month to get the Canadian visa, something that usually takes less than a day for other nationalities, Even though I have been living in Canada for almost two years.


At the end this is me in Abu Dhabi trying to kill some time, waiting to hear that my application is delayed another two weeks!