The field I am concentrating on is that of subverting advertising - considering what advertising says about our society and attempting to create something which playfully makes a comment on this, utilising the medium of spam e-mails. My personal interest has been borne from research into this field from my second year Confessions project, using methods developed through my final year Narrative and Space projects, which have dealt with the relationships between physical spaces and digital technologies. I had also been inspired by a quote by British novelist Norman Douglas, 'you can tell the ideals of a nation from its advertisements.'
Inspiration also came from a photo I took in the second year of an 888.com billboard, which began the train of thought on the relationship between digital and physical manifestations of advertising and the unexpectedness of seeing something which previously had only been encountered digitally in the physical realm.
In this field, there are groups such as Adbusters, who create Subvertisements - subverted adverts which successfully use the brand identities and advertisements of well-known corporations
Inspiration also came from a photo I took in the second year of an 888.com billboard, which began the train of thought on the relationship between digital and physical manifestations of advertising and the unexpectedness of seeing something which previously had only been encountered digitally in the physical realm.
In this field, there are groups such as Adbusters, who create Subvertisements - subverted adverts which successfully use the brand identities and advertisements of well-known corporations
to create their own messages about society.
I have also been inspired by tactical media practitioners such as Google Will Eat Itself and Re-code.com who created have created projects which also contain such messages but importantly, these are done in a playful manner, which in my opinion lead to their success. These were studied in detail in my dissertation.
I have also researched several artists which utilise the medium of sewing, such as Kate Pemberton’s depiction of digital items using embroidery and Ulrika Erdes' sewing graffiti.
My project is significant because it draws together many influences from across my university projects to create something which I feel successfully addresses the aim of creating a playful comment on society. It differs from the projects mentioned above because it deals with spam e-mails in particular and what they say about our society from a cultural viewpoint.
It differs from other spam-based art such as spoetry in that it exists in the physical realm and seeks to raise the aforementioned questions about society.
The methods used for creating this project are
I have also been inspired by tactical media practitioners such as Google Will Eat Itself and Re-code.com who created have created projects which also contain such messages but importantly, these are done in a playful manner, which in my opinion lead to their success. These were studied in detail in my dissertation.
I have also researched several artists which utilise the medium of sewing, such as Kate Pemberton’s depiction of digital items using embroidery and Ulrika Erdes' sewing graffiti.
My project is significant because it draws together many influences from across my university projects to create something which I feel successfully addresses the aim of creating a playful comment on society. It differs from the projects mentioned above because it deals with spam e-mails in particular and what they say about our society from a cultural viewpoint.
It differs from other spam-based art such as spoetry in that it exists in the physical realm and seeks to raise the aforementioned questions about society.
The methods used for creating this project are
highly physical and tactile, in order to create something which would bring the digital realm into the physical in an unexpected manner, in an attempt to mimic the playful way that tactical media works. I have collated spam e-mails and created an installation of a chintzy room which has spam hidden within the décor. This was done using a variety of physical media and uses ‘technologies’ such as sewing and drawing, again to depict these digital manifestations in an unexpected physical manner.
It has been important to keep the theme of ‘chintz’ as an interior design style, as it is old fashioned and serves as an interesting and hopefully humorous juxtaposition with the somewhat sordid contents of spam e-mails. It has also been important to make these depictions of spam e-mails within the installation fairly subtle, so the viewer does ‘double-take’ and really examine the way that spam is used within the scene. Spam is present on almost all of the artefacts within the installation, in an attempt to demonstrate the ubiquity and spread of such an advertising medium.
Further information can be found on my blog.
It has been important to keep the theme of ‘chintz’ as an interior design style, as it is old fashioned and serves as an interesting and hopefully humorous juxtaposition with the somewhat sordid contents of spam e-mails. It has also been important to make these depictions of spam e-mails within the installation fairly subtle, so the viewer does ‘double-take’ and really examine the way that spam is used within the scene. Spam is present on almost all of the artefacts within the installation, in an attempt to demonstrate the ubiquity and spread of such an advertising medium.
Further information can be found on my blog.
This is a project by Llia Apostolou