Sound
From CT4CT: Creative Tools for Critical Times
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Barbie Liberation
The Barbie Liberation Organization's (B.L.O.) Barbie Liberation (1993) was an artistic prank in which the voice boxes of 300 talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls were switched. The modified dolls were then secretly returned to stores to be purchased by unsuspecting consumers. The B.L.O. was founded by Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men.
According to the B.L.O.:
The surgery was no simple matter — circuit boards had to be trimmed, a capacitor moved, and a switch re-engineered. The press made it sound like an easy pop-and-switch operation, but this took some research and dedication. The BLO returned the altered dolls to the toy store shelves, who then resold them to children who had to invent scenarios for Barbies who yelled “Vengeance is mine!” and G.I. Joes who daydreamed “Let’s plan our dream wedding!” Cleverly placed “call your local TV news” stickers on the back ensured that the media would have genuine recipients to interview as soon as the news broke. One BLO member counted up the many benefits of their program: “The storekeepers make money twice, we stimulate the economy — the consumer gets a better product — and our message gets heard.”
See also:
- Barbie/G.I. Joe Home Surgery Instructions (.pdf)
- Barbie Liberation
- RTMark: B.L.O.: Past Projects
- Wikipedia: RTMark
- YouTube: B.L.O.
Guantanamera
Alonso Gil and Francis Gomila’s 2007 Guantanamera literally gives voice to the sounds of torture and hypocrisy resonating from the war of terror. A multimedia sound installation that reflects on the use of music as a torture instrument, Guantamamera challenges the war of terror’s technologies of forgetting by establishing audioconceptual sites of remembrance and reflection.
Located inside one of the air vents of Madrid’s busy subway system, Guantanamera utilized a high-amplification sound system to blast multiple versions of “La guantanamera,” a popular Cuban folk song, out onto the street. Serving as a direct reference to the infamous US military base and detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Guantanamera encourages reflection on the American use of pop, rap, and heavy metal music as a mode of sleep deprivation and interrogation of detainees.
See also:
One Free Minute
Daniel Jolliffe's One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture designed to facilitate anonymous public speech. Callers to One Free Minute's toll-free line can record a message of up to a minute that will be broadcast in public. The mobile sound system has an audio range of more than 150 feet.
According to Jolliffe:
The principal intent behind One Free Minute was to investigate how public discourse has been changed by technology. Cellular phones have brought private space into the public realm, metering human interaction in billed-by-the-minute increments. One Free Minute inverts this aspect of cellular technology, using it instead to break the soundscape of public space with unpredictable acts of improvised, anonymous public speech. Instead of allowing corporate structures to specify how we communicate in public space, One Free Minute allows individual callers to control the public soundscape for a single minute.
See also:
- One Free Minute: Anonymous Public Speech
- One Free Minute: Video
- Wired: Artist Cranks Up No-Name Rants
The Sound of Silence
Alfredo Jaar's The Sound of Silence (2006) is an enclosed 10-foot tall aluminum structure containing an 8-minute video projection featuring a story about Kevin Carter and his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Sudanese girl being stalked by a vulture.
According to Glasstire:
What remains unseen for almost all of the Sound of Silence is Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize-winning image of a young victim of the 1990s Sudanese famine. Visitors to the exhibition first see a very large metal-clad box. At one end, a bank of 10-foot high industrial daylight fluorescents projects an austere verticality, emitting a rancid glow that illuminates the black-painted gallery walls. Entrance to Jaar's box is afforded on the opposite, darker side, where you receive your first instance of image control. Unlike most video artists, who assert no mandate for the dedicated attentions of their audiences, Jaar does not want viewers ambling in and out of his piece. The box uses light to assert when it is time to wait (a horizontal bank of red LED lights) and when to enter (horizontal red switches to vertical green). As viewers assemble outside, the social dynamic that sets in is both anticipatory and slightly nervous, with those waiting making small talk like airplane passengers waiting for their encounter with the metal detector.
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