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Culturejamming
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Edited
by Chris Zahn
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WORLD'S LARGEST TETRIS GAME La Bastille is a very-large-scale integrated art installation created by Technology House at Brown University. The product of over five months of planning, construction, and installation, La Bastille is the largest art installation ever to appear in Rhode Island, partially visible from Narragansett Bay and from Interstate 95. It is also currently the world's largest fully-functional Tetris game. Containing eleven custom-built circuit boards, a twelve-story data network, a personal computer running Linux, and over 10,000 Christmas lights, La Bastille transforms Brown's fourteen-story Sciences Library into a giant video display which allows bystanders to play a game of Tetris which can be seen for several miles. http://etv.et.tudelft.nl/commissies/lustrum/movegif.html The COVERT ACTION QUARTERLY reports that The Mikos Corporation has developed the FACIAL ACCESS CONTROL by ELEMENTAL SHAPES (FACES) system which identifies individuals regardless of temperature, facial hair, and even surgery, by measuring 65,000 temperature points with an accuracy level surpassing fingerprints. The devices will soon be used in automated teller machines, point-of-sale terminals, welfare agencies, and computer networks. One serious drawback, they admit, is that alcohol consumption radically changes the thermograms. That's okay by Big Brother because if he doesn't get you with FACES he's sure to nab you with VAN ECK MONITORING- a device which extracts information by reading a computer's electromagnetic radiation. If that doesn't work than MILLIMETER WAVE DETECTORS will scan beneath your clothing to check for guns and drugs from a range of 12 feet or more. It can also look through building walls and detect activity. And don't forget about FORWARD LOOKING INFRARED (FLIR) which detects a temperature differential as small as .18 degrees centigrade. Texas Instruments are marketing models that can essentially look through walls to determine activities inside buildings. Law enforcement agents are pointing them at neighborhoods to detect higher temperatures in houses where artificial lights are used to grow marijuana. They are also using FLIR to track people and cars on the Mexican border and search for missing people and fugitives. Makes you wanna stay in bed under the covers. http://mediafilter.org/caq/CAQ56brother.html CONSUMERTRONICS sells the Van Eck Monitoring System plus a demonstration video and a book called "Beyond Van Eck Phreaking." The updated Consumertronics Web site has a variety of interesting products (the $3 paper catalog is a good read too). http://www.tsc-global.com/ Due to The Freedom of Information Act, the CIA has released a 1954 instructional guide it wrote called "HOW TO COMMIT AN ASSASINATION" which was found among the CIA's training files for "Operation PB Success" -- the agency's covert 1954 operation that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in June 1954. The assassination plans were never implemented. But names of the targeted individuals were deleted when the documents were made public, making it impossible to verify that none of them were killed during or in the aftermath of the coup. The seven methods of assasination include: Manual, Accidents, Drugs, Edge Weapons, Blunt Weapons, Firearms and Explosives. NIXON'S BASEMENT TAPES In April 1996, the U.S. National Archives announced that after years of legal haggling between Nixon's lawyers and the government's record keepers, some of the 3,700 hours of unreleased Nixon tapes, recorded by hidden White House microphones, would soon be made available. Currently 265 hours of tape (at a cost of $702 pl. tax) are placed on the public record. The tapes catalogue astounding illegal acts that were ordered by President Nixon, further tarnishing his historical standing and adding crucial details to many little understood events. You can also purchase The Nixon Tapes on DAT or CD. The remaining 3435 hours of tape will be available on January 1st, 2003. Some of the gems on tape include Nixon ordering the Immigration and Naturalization Service to check out a ``wetback,'' an illegal alien believed to be working as a gardener for an executive of The Los Angeles Times. Nixon calls an INS employee in California a ``kike,'' http://www.nara.gov/nixon/tapes/wgtapes.html TAPER GEEKS OR WHAT? In the late 1950s a Swedish professor named Konstantin Raudive began to hear words recorded on what should have been blank audiotape. He assembled a small team of researchers to study this electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and eventually made over 100,000 audiotapes. Perhaps his most memorable experiment was that conducted at the German headquarters of Pye Records in 1971. The engineers at Pye had invited Raudive to do a controlled experiment in the special sound lab that blocked out all external radio and television signals. They taped his voice speaking into a microphone for eighteen minutes - and heard no other sounds. But when they played the tape back they were amazed to find over two hundred voices on it. The first known experiment in which 'spirit voices' were recorded on an electrical recording device was by American anthropologist Waldemar Bogoras. Bogoras was on a trip to Siberia to visit a shaman of the Tchoutchi tribe when his experience took place. In a darkened room, he observed a spirit conjuring ritual that entailed the shaman beating a drum more and more rapidly while entering a trance state. Startled, Bogoras heard strange voices filling the room. The voices seemed to come from all corners and spoke English and Russian. After the session, Borgoras wrote: 'I set up my equipment so I could record without the light. The shaman sat in the furthest corner of the room, approximately 20 feet away from me. When the light was extinguished the spirits appeared after some hesitation and, following the wishes of the shaman, spoke into the horn of the phonograph. The recording showed a clear difference between the speech of the shaman, audible in the background, and the spirit voices which seemed to have been located directly at the mouth of the horn. All along the shaman's ceaseless drumbeats could be heard as if to prove that he remained in the same spot'. At the forefront of spirit voice research was the eminent scientist Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the electric light, who together with his assistant Dr Miller Hutchinson was busily at work in his laboratory building a machine to achieve spirit communication. In his diary Hutchinson wrote: 'Edison and I are convinced that in the fields of psychic research will yet be discovered facts that will prove of greater significance to the thinking of the human race than all the inventions we have ever made in the field of electricity'. To obtain a free 'spirit voice" analysis check out George Marion's CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ELECTRONIC VOICE PHENOMENA website: http://www.ghostshop.com/Page_1x.html The analysis will tell you exactly what you have recorded, whether it is an explainable situation, a genuine anomaly or actual spirits sounds or voices. "I am brutal in my testing," says Marion. "Do not expect me to patronize you simply because you " think" it is a spirit." And if you record the sounds using a Membrane Microphone he will make you an amplified copy of your tape after any residue noise is totally eliminated. Feel free to e-mail him: ghostshop@netzero.net WEIRD MESSAGES IN THE OUTGROOVES There are too many people investigating ghost messages on blank tapes but nobody to explain the bizarre messages etched in the outgrooves of many vinyl LP records. This strange unexplained phenomenon has intrigued me for years. Try rummaging through your record collection scan the blank grooves at the end of each side. I'm sure you'll find a few. Here's some examples:
The Clash - The Clash
Led Zeppelin - IV
Beastie Boys - Licensed To ILL
Butthole Surfers - Hairway to Steven
SURPRISE CD OF THE MONTH: I have a habit of only listening to solo piano music by dead Europeans but the new live CD "Grateful Dreams" (Relix) by original Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten rocks the classicals with the classic rock: Covers by The Who, Donovan, Beatles and The Dead rub shoulders with Brahms, Liszt and Rachmaninoff sounding like George Winston on bad acid (and that's good!) Don't be turned off by the hideous cover photo (he looks like Gandalf after having his magic mushrooms sprinkled with angel dust) File under: Lysergic Classical Gas http://www.relix.com Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) is trying to pass legislation that will ban computer games from all federal offices, and prohibit the federal government from purchasing computers with game software already installed. Faircloth predicted that, once implemented, the ban would "save millions, if not billions, in lost productivity." Apparently, the idea of firing federal employees who spend excessive amounts of time goofing off at work is not good enough. Instead, a study -- which will waste untold hours of labor by Senate staffers -- will be commenced, and then a report will be compiled. All over a few games of solitaire and Minesweeper. It's no wonder Congress can't manage to overhaul the income tax, reform the Medicare system, or pass other big reforms. It's too busy worrying about the small ones. U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey is an MP3 pirate. "I get full-motion streaming video and sound, I listen to radio and steal, steal uh, you know, my music through MP3, like everybody else does," Kerrey said. "I write the laws that say it's illegal, and I do it anyway," he added, chuckling. Later, when asked again about whether he downloads illegal MP3s, he dismissed his comments, saying, "No, I do not. That was a joke. "I'm very much aware of what the law says in regard to copyrighted material," he said. "I think the artists' copyright should be protected." Kerrey said that he does download MP3s, but from a legal site. THE MUSEUM OF BAD ART: http://glyphs.com/moba/ is a Boston-based private institution dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms and in all its glory. Their motto: Bringing quality bad art to a global audience The pieces in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented artists that have gone awry, to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the merely incompetent. The Museum of Bad Art was founded in the fall of 1993 and presented its first show in March 1994. The response was overwhelming. Since then, MOBA's collection and ambitions have grown exponentially. Some recent MOBA exhibitions:
* "Gallery In The Woods - Art goes out the window" * "I Just Can't Stop" Exhibition - The artist as slave to creativity An exploration of the compulsive need to create - tirelessly, relentlessly, repetitively, repetitively, endlessly.
* "Fine Wine / Bad Art " Exhibition in downtown Boston. * "Awash With Bad Art" - The world's first drive-thru art gallery & car wash. Bad art collector VITO SALVATORE has scoured the United States for the past several years seeking the most appallingly bad art he could find. "Bad art is cheap," says Vito. "You can get it out of trash cans and flea markets. It's usually about $5 for a little work, and sometimes up to $10 or $15 for a very large piece. Subjects are sometimes unintentionally humorous, crudely drawn, or trying to achieve something they cannot. Good bad art is always powerful, and makes the viewer stare, convinced that something is not right. Bad art is always interesting on some level, even if it is, obviously, after all is said, crappy." To see some great crappy art: http://www.badart.com/
A can of spray paint, a blithe spirit, and a balmy night are all your
really need to hack a billboard and the: Some posts:......ever since I saw John Lennon's encompassing gaze selling Macintosh PCs in SF, I've been mentally pricing paintball guns...I'm totally sick of McDonald's current slogan over here "Where would you be without McDonald's?" - how patronising can they get! Why not get to the point and just say "You depend on us, you pathetic sheep!" I'm tempted to steal part of a Burger King poster and stick it up after the question mark....Please funk with any Shell ads you can. Just remove the s and you get - amazingly- HELL.....I heard something about a Kate Moss billboard in SF with the words "Feed Me" spraypainted over her face.....we just go around causing trouble and breaking bottles n' shit...putting free beer signs in front of bars and writing "actual size" on fast food signs with pictures of giant hamburgers is pretty fun...
The humdrum task of consumer complaining is elevated to the art of Consumer Terrorism in Frank Bruni's revolutionary guide for beseiged shoppers- CONSUMER TERRORISM: How to Get Satisfaction When You've Been Ripped-Off by Bad Products and Worse Service. Consumer Terrorism is the radical, revolutionary guide that teaches you how to combine refunds with revenge. Bring your tormentor to their knees. Order it from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060951966/qid=955258495/sr=1-1/103-4388813-6636616
WARNING: DON'T SUCK ON POKEMON BALLS!!! Burger King has issued a voluntary recall of more than 25 million Pokémon balls after an 18-month-old girl nearly suffocated when a ball half got stuck over her face. On the second attempt, the girl's father was able to pull the ball half from her face. Pokémon balls are small plastic, ball-shaped containers that pull apart to reveal one of 57 different Pokémon toys inside. Packaging described them as safety tested and recommended for all ages of children. Burger King has promised a free order of small fries if returned FLAME BROILED: THE DISGRUNTLED EX-BURGER KING EMPLOYEES PAGE caters to an apparent legion of former Burger King employees seeking solace. The site's manifesto begins: ''My pain runs deep. My acne has never left my face. My memories of adolescence are riddled with the smell of chicken tenders and Vanilla Shakes. I have seen the creatures that live at bottom of the dumpster. I have seen the rat by the soda machine. I have seen dead frogs in the fresh salad lettuce. I have seen undercooked meat served to children and I have seen bags of trash piled higher than I stand as they lay less than 3 feet from the hamburger meat. I am the DISGRUNTLED EX-BURGER KING EMPLOYEE!'' It is large, somewhat frightening and has a message board and BK Bites mailing list, with sections like the Evil Customer. Are you an evil customer?......How about the guy who comes into the store takes a shit and than leaves doesn't buy anything just uses the toilet and leaves......When they order a chicken Mcnugget happy meal. BK has chicken tender kids meals. I had a lady ask me one time what was in our apple pie.....My favorite customer was the 300 pound woman who would always order a double Whopper, large fry and a diet coke! What the fuck is the point of ordering a diet coke you fat whale?!?!?!!!.....The idiot who comes in at 7:01 am and orders a single 69 cent cup of coffee and wants to pay with a hundred dollar bill. http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2645/index.html Burger-flippers aren't the only ones pissed off on the job. At THE WORX SITE: http://www.worx.org you can post nasty things you've done on the job like:......called around 20 extensions from the phone list and recorded really happy hispanic music into their voicemail, one of them was done over and over again until it filled their box.....pull the stop buttons on the elevators and twist out all the lightbulbs so that it stays dark on some floor - everyone thinks it is broken for hours....threw blackcat firecrackers down the elevator shafts for forth of july. work on a holiday? screw you!......used coat hangers to grab bags of chips from the snack machine.
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