Obama Education Ad

Also available on youtube

Political Ad Prep

For this project I will be focusing on Barack Obama. I plan to focus on the issue of getting out the youth vote with the slogan "Barack Obama, paving the way for tomorrow's leaders, today" or something along those lines. The emphasis is to quantify the idea of change by focusing on the current shift to the next generation and to have the older generation think about their kids.

Reaction to Hirshhorn/YouTube

YouTube has opened the floodgates of information on the internet to include video in the available content. The internet provides an uncensored collection of responses and opinions of real news around the world. Anyone with a camera and an idea can create a video and have it available for millions of viewers to see. This removes the control that the media currently uses to focus our attention on one thing or another and enables users to choose their news. With such a large user base as well, YouTube provides artists with an incredibly large audience. What was once relatively hard to distribute, video art can now be posted and seen by thousands upon thousands of eyes an unlimited number of times. Any artist can get their name out and launch their career and it can all stem from word of mouth. The internet took a traditional grassroots method and amplified it a million-fold. Users like the Numa Numa Guy Gary Brolsma can almost accidentally become pop culture celebrities by tickling the fancy of bored web surfers both young and old.

The Numa Numa Guy- over 9.6 million views

The implications of this newfound media stretch to the realm of politics. Activists and satirists who previously depended on rallies and cafes to get their word out on the street can now have a much louder voice. Groups like jib jab fuse comedy with their message to increase the effectiveness upon the viewer. The ability to host and distribute video web content has exponentially increased the power of the individual.

The Hirshhorn exhibit The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image brought to my attention a number of innovative uses of video art. Tony Oursler uses video art to achieve a moving sculpture which is more real than any painting or sculpture yet eerily artificial at the same time. His work, pictured below, uses video art to evoke a reaction to a unique blended art piece. The innovation is in the delivery. Anyone can show a movie of an eyeball or a man talking. Anyone can carve a face out of granite, but the fusing of these two ideas combined with recorded audio creates a surreal effect that I never even imagined.

Reaction to Dietz Lecture

Steve Dietz spoke in his lecture about unscripting the political process. To me this involves breaking down the façade used by politicians and their organizations. By looking deeper into a politician or political organization’s position on issues, artists attempt to discern the true motives behind the words so beautifully composed by the staff writers. The traditional political process is presented in a neat package to the public, with very specific, yet vague pieces of information. They always tell you just enough to get your attention, but not enough to take away the flexibility of indecision. Artists are able to cut through that veil of secrecy and illustrate what they feel is a truer, if not exaggerated point of view on these political subjects. One example of how this can happen is through the use of irony and sarcasm. An easy source of material for satirists, politics provides points that can easily be blown out of proportion or taken out of context to give an image of ridiculousness. In this case, the Billionaires for Bush go around protesting for Bush to be re-elected. They campaign for this because billionaires saw increasingly large tax cuts during the Bush term. The point of the group is to make the public aware that they are getting what seems to be the short end of the stick and essentially the activists are using reverse psychology to discourage supporters of the GOP. By making a stand on a point that a politician like Bush would purposefully keep quiet, the awareness on that issue is raised and can better affect the outcome of the democratic system America attempts to take advantage of.