Fear and Loathing in the Attention Economy

"Many are saying that it is disrespectful to do what we are planning to do. I can see the point, but while I do not wish to dishonour Thatcher as a person, I can see no other way to protest at the kind of send-off she is getting. I wish she were getting a quiet family funeral, then I would have stayed away." - Message posted on Facebook about turning away from the Thatcher Funeral cortege

The bombing of the Boston Marathon Finish Line is delivered as spectacle violence

Over the past few days two events have been represented globally that are themselves symptomatic of the attention economy developing around us. The Attention Economy is ably defined by Wikipedia:

Attention economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve various information management problems. In this perspective Thomas H. Davenport and J. C. Beck define the concept of attention as:

Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act.(Davenport & Beck 2001, p. 20)

As content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information. Attention economics applies insights from other areas of economic theory to enable content consumers, producers, and intermediaries to better mediate and manage the flow of information in light of the scarcity of consumer attention.

The two events I refer to are

1. The Bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon.

2. The Funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Both of these events, while very different in terms of effects, are examples of what I see as a virulent attention economy which all of us are forced to participate in. The above two links are evidence of this, both leading to live news blogs updated by the minute from major media conglomerates.

What has disturbed me the most about the Boston Bombing, apart from more senseless bloodshed and suffering, is the total spectacle nature of this act of violence. Bombing the finish line of a mass sporting event (a considerable time after the 'main event' - i.e. the winner and so on - has actually finished) does little other than appropriates mediated spectatorship, turning it into a visualization of carnage, fear, panic and death. With no demands issued or responsibility taken thus far, this looks like a heinous attempt to spread fear and nothing else. Whoever is behind this violent act is using the spectacle offered by the marathon to spread fear and anguish.

Within the context of the attention economy we can see the Boston Bombing as an example of attention without a message. Central to this attention without a message is the flow-on effect of the mediated compulsory witness perspective. By 'witness perspective' I mean that the addressee is positioned by the media in a temporal and spatial perspective that is immediate and present in relation to the events depicted.

Even a cursory search online for accounts and explanation of the Boston bombing returns reconstructions, looped videos of the blasts, eye-level street views of the explosions and the scenes immediately afterwards and piece to camera from on-site witnesses. These images combined with live updates (often containing inaccurate information) and resulting in an uncritical sense of distance from the events. There is little commentary or reflection in live updates and streamed images.

Compared to the horrible events in Boston, the funeral of Margaret Thatcher is a more contentious spectacle. Here the mediation of history is being constructed through digital rhetoric and authority. An example of this contention is Prime Minister David Cameron urging the populace to participate in the perspective he supports by claiming "We are all Thatcherites now".

Many lining the streets for the Thatcher funeral cortege are expected to turn their backs on the hearse. This is an act of embodied resistance to the witness perspective as it is arranged according to authority. The above opening quote from Facebook, spoken by a woman intending to turn her back on the cortege is interesting in how the spectacle of the funeral is contrasted with Thatcher "getting a quiet family funeral". In the 'quiet family funeral' there are no witnesses outside the 'family'. The spectacle and subsequent demands made on attention are severely limited by this structure.

The implications of large scale events mediated in the ways described here for a global attention economy are dramatic and important. In the case of the Boston Bombing I feel ill at the thought of random acts of violence conducted in order to catch the attention of as many people as possible. In a grim prophetic comedy, this scenario reminds me of the bombings conducted in the Terry Gilliam film Brazil;

                         INTERVIEWER
                         Deputy minister, what do you believe 
                         is behind this recent increase in 
                         terrorist bombings?

                                     HELPMANN
                         Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless 
                         minority of people seems to have 
                         forgotten certain good old fashioned 
                         virtues. They just can't stand 
                         seeing the other fellow win. If 
                         these people would just play the 
                         game, instead of standing on the 
                         touch line heckling

                                     INTERVIEWER
                         In fact, killing people

                                     HELPMANN
                         In fact, killing people  they'd 
                         get a lot more out of life.

               We PULL AWAY from the shop to concentrate on the shoppers. 
               Helpmann's voice carries over the rest of the scene.

                         INTERVIEWER
                         Mr. Helpmann, what would you say 
                         to those critics who maintain that 
                         the Ministry Of Information has 
                         become too large and unwieldy... ?

                                     HELPMANN
                         David... in a free society 
                         information is the name of the 
                         game. You can't win the game if 
                         you're a man short.

The funeral of Margaret Thatcher stands as an attempt to establish a place in history for a political figure. As witnesses to the spectacle of her funeral people must adopt the position offered by an invisible 'Ministry of Information'.

"The Conservatives' attempt to enforce a national day of mourning for their former leader was announced so far in advance of the key event as to be macabre but at least half of the public aren't buying it" Laurie Penny, The New Statesman. 

By turning away from the funeral cortege the 'turners' (not a pun perhaps on the famous 'The lady's is not for turning' quote from Thatcher) bypass that perspective but they do not alter it. If we consider the insidious mis/use of the eye witness perspective which has already resulted from the Boston Bombing, perhaps it is all the more vital that alternatives are developed to the enforced temporal and spatial code of the mediated witness today. Whoever bombed Boston wants the kind of attention to the event that a funeral of an ex-Prime Minister is getting across the Atlantic today.

The Revolution will be Perspectival

I like many people outside the continental USA (where cable companies refuse to carry it) have been watching the live transmission of Al Jazzera covering the uprising in Egypt. It has been an amazing few weeks in this most strategic and pivotal of Arab lands. What I have found interesting, following from the online coverage of the uprisings in Tunisia, Iran last summer, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza over New Year 2008-2009, is that the coverage of the Egyptian uprising has reached another level, literally. The viewers of Al Jazeera witness the demonstrations in central Cairo from above, in an omniscient God-view. Cameras positioned about the city lift the view above the mass scenes and provide an almost diagrammatical image of the city and what is happening in it. The scene takes on the perspective of a map, with live actors inhabiting it in real time.


Scenes taken from different locations are aligned in time and space in a single full screen image

The view can see both sides of the sitation as it stands on the ground, the military and the 'protesters' (actually a number of groups, from socialists to religious)


Commentators are also in the sky, looking down on the mass with us and providing explanations of events and a guide to the topography of what we are all looking at.



Scenes are broken down into their components, with camera moving from ground level to the frame of buildings. In these two images the commentator talks us through first the identity of the building we are looking at, the State Television Building;



And then, as the camera gaze corresponds with his words, we are shown groups of people gathered in front of the building. These groups had apparently been preventing people from entering or leaving the building.



In this sequence of images an interconnected series of perspectives that can be navigated are presented to the viewer with text superimposed on them to explain either what one is seeing or their contexts. The perspective is removed from the events and gives a long enough time and space frame for multiples to be combined. We are watching now a live world of interactions as the drama of surveillance. The news swallows the city of Cairo, its people and the time they exist in, re-presenting them in a series of fields of action that change only according to the view of the cameras. It reminds me of the third-person, so-called god-view of The Sims City.

New Ways of Meeting People (Chatroulette Self-Portraits)

Retinal Art Revisited: Story of the Eye

A pioneer in the development in digital art, Joseph Nechvatal will present, in a second solo show at the Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, Paris, a series of new paintings, most of which are accompanied by a digital video. Retinal Art Revisited: Story of the Eye will take place from September 4th through September 29th, 2010 and will invite the spectator to reflect on the importance of the relationship between audio and visual noise in the process of creation.

Nechvatal has worked with electronic images and information technology since 1986. His computer-assisted paintings turn images of the human body into pictorial units that are then transformed by IT viruses. Contamination of the tradition of painting on canvas by new digital technology thus creates an interface between the virtual and the real, which Joseph Nechvatal calls viractual It was back in 1991, while working at the Louis Pasteur workshop in Arbois and at the Royal Saltworks of Arc and Senans that Nechvatal and Jean-Philippe Massonie developed a program of IT viruses. In 2001 Joseph Nechvatal and Stéphane Sikora combined the initial IT virus project with the principles of artificial life, in other words creating systems of synthesis that reproduce the behavioral characteristics of living systems.

In his previous series of paintings, the fermentation of artificial life was introduced in an image. This population of active viruses then grew, reproduced and propagated within the space of the picture. The artist then froze a moment that he later turned into a painting. Were the artist not to interfere, the process of propagation would continue until the original picture would be completely destroyed.

The Retinal Art Revisited: Story of the Eye series consists of 15 digitally assisted paintings (10 of which have accompanying videos). A group of paintings portray the retina of human eyes bracketed and centred by paintings-animations that investigate the lips of the human rectum. With the eye as the “highest input valve on the human desiring-machine” (1) and the rectum the lowest, Joseph Nechvatal plays with the possibility of harmonizing them. The videos that are joined with paintings show a projection of the computer virus eating the same image that is on the painting. This approach is relatively new, with a progenitor work exhibited in 2004 at the Digital Sublime show at MOCA in Taipei.

Joseph Nechvatal reminds us of (and opposes at the same time) Marcel Duchamp’s prejudice that visual art (and beauty in general) cannot (or shouldn’t) arouse intellectual dialogue between the artist and the spectator. Also, by associating paintings with videos, he evokes another question that seems to be at the core of this new body of work: “On a planet that is increasingly technologically linked and globally mediated, how might visual noises break and reconnect in distinctive and productive ways within practices located in the world of art and thought?” The notion of noise that not only strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking through a beautiful self- perception but also a source of creation in itself is a key element in the understanding of the new series of works exhibited at Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard. Joseph Nechvatal’s work is in many major private and institutional collections around the world. An interview of the artist will accompany the exhibition.

1. All quotes are taken from Joseph Nechvatal’s interview by Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard, 2010, available in French and English at the gallery.

Well Dressed Man or Time Traveller?

It’s the short description for the photograph shown at the virtual Bralorne Pioneer Museum, from British Columbia, Canada. The image can be seen specifically on this page (scroll down to the middle), among other items of the online exhibit. Did you notice anything out of place? Or perhaps, out of time?

The man with what appears to be very modern sunglasses seems to be wearing a stamped T-shirt with a nice sweater, all the while holding a portable compact camera!

Internet people reached to the obvious conclusion: it’s a time traveller caught on camera on 1940! Finally, we have proof!

We Take our Images With Us

The attack on Italian strong man Silvio Berlusconi by Missimo Tartaglia provides us with yet another image of hate and power. Silvio new exactly what to do once the makeup of hate was applied to his serene visage. Stumbling up from his car and blanket of burly security he showed his wounds to the crowd and they cheered.




Like Mao in the Yangtze and Putin with his ongoing muscle show, Silvio had a chance to stab at the ancient code of manly power and heroism. He will rise again in three days with a new face and a message for the masses.



Missimo Tartaglia on Facebook has almost 45 000 fans at the time of writing.

Home with Google Street View

Home 1982-1987

Home 1973-1982

Home 1969-1973

Google Street View brings images of my three childhood homes. As well, it is now offering:

According to this UNESCO announcement, 19 historical sites will be included, and I’ve listed them below. The video above offers more details.

“Spain: Santiago de Compostela (Old Town); Old Town of Cáceres; Historic Walled Town of Cuenca; Old City of Salamanca; Old Town of Ávila with its Extra-Muros Churches; Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct; Historic City of Toledo France: Palace and Park of Versailles; Paris, Banks of the Seine Italy: Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata; Historic Centre of Siena; Historic Centre of Urbino; Historic Centre of San Gimignano Netherlands: Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout Czech Republic: Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc; Historic Centre of Český Krumlov; Historic Centre of Prague United Kingdom: Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew”

Via Open Culture and my Mum and Dad

Visualizing the Decline of Empires

This is mainly an experimentation with soft bodies using toxi's verlet springs.
The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. The visual emphasis is on their decline.

More on that project mondeguinho.com/master/visual-experiment ations/visualizing-empires

Ozymandias as Machinima (2000)

Praised by everyone from New York Times Arts columnist Matt Mirapaul, to film critic Roger Ebert, through to games journalists and literature professors, Strange Company's groundbreaking visual adaptation of the Shelley poem remains one of the most evocative pieces of Machinima.

Developed using an early version of Strange Company's Lithtech Film Producer software (a project which was later dropped, sadly), "Ozymandias" was created in just over a week for a demonstration show. However, the idea had been in director Hugh Hancock's mind for much longer.

"I've wanted to visualise to poem for years" says Hugh. "The imagery and the feel of the words is so strong that it really is crying out to be made into a film - and indeed, our adaptation stands as the latest of a number of films based on the poem."

Roger Ebert compared the film's minimalist construction to seminal Anime work "Grave of the Fireflies", and its attempt to capture the spirit of the poem was judged so successful that several literature courses used the film as part of their teaching program. Dell used the film as part of their demonstration at the Windows 2000 launch, and it appeared at several film festivals as part of Strange Company's Machinima showcase.

"As with all of these things, I had no idea that "Ozymandias" was going to be so successful when we were making it." says Hugh. "This was one of the most off-the-wall ideas I'd come up with, and its success has been very gratifying."

Download Ozymandias

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

Princess Hijab

Awake. Today. Writing. Anything Possible.

Images Of The World And The Inscription Of War

Images Of The World And The Inscription Of War (1989)
Film by Harun Farocki (b. 1944)
Download and Stream at UBUWEB

In 1944, an Allied aircraft took topographic photographs of Auschwitz during a routine surveillance operation for power plants, munitions factories, chemical plants, and any other industrial complexes that could potentially serve as bombing targets that, in the military's myopic search for these high collateral targets that would cripple the German war machine, failed to recognize that they had actually taken an aerial survey of the layout of the Auschwitz concentration camp - an explicitly detailed, but mentally unregistered discovery for which the implicit meaning would not be realized until decades later, long after the tragic reality of the Nazi death camps had been exposed. It is this assignment of significance to the act of visual observation that underlies Harun Farocki's thoughtful, understated, and engaging exposition on the interconnection - and at times, disjunction - between cognition and recognition in Images of the World and the Inscription of War.

Prefaced by a humorous anecdote on 19th century architect, Albrecht Meydenbauer whose near death experience while making physical measurements for a cathedral project, combined with an interest in the visual reproduction capability of a still camera, led to the development of photogrammetry (which provided for the accurate, graphically scalable, two-dimensional, measurable image of the studied object), the film illustrates, not only the inherent correlation between production and technology, but also the conceptual introduction of quantifying images measured from a distance into discrete elements that can be uniquely identified or accurately reproduced remotely into scale models and detailed simulations.

From this logical trajectory, Farocki cites another point of reference in a French government campaign during the 1960s to dispatch conscripted soldiers to Algeria in order to photograph native women for the issuance of identity cards in the occupied colony - a process that required the women to remove their veil in public, contrary to traditional custom. Having spent much of their public lives obscured behind a veil, the question then arises if an identity card that captures these women in full, unobstructed gaze can accurately reflect their distinctive characteristics to the point of recognition? Would an officer tasked to verify identity find semblance between these unveiled photographs and the women physically presented before him? Unable to find specific, isolated features within the human face that remains unaltered through the years, these photographic images can only serve as a referential document of physical attributes, and not a record of truth - of the actual reality. Farocki illustrates this recursive cycle of distanced, "safe" action and estranged surveillance operating under the vacuum of social (and cultural) responsibility (a familiar preoccupation in the filmmaker's oeuvre that is also evident in the equally provocative essay, War at a Distance) through repeated references of the Auschwitz, Algeria, and Meydenbauer paradigms, as well as the film's thematic use of the German word aufklärung - a term that alternately means enlightenment and flight reconnaissance - that reflect the technological quest to define empirical, universally identifiable data that can remotely identify (or characterize the essence of) an image. It is this passive, alienated act of seeing that is ultimately rejected in a publication's symbolic call to action, "The reality must begin", in reaction to Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler's revelation of the concentration camps - an active resistance that is punctuated by the October 7, 1944 uprising by Sonderkommandos (prisoners who were tasked to operate the gas chambers and crematoria) at Auschwitz that succeeded in the disabling of a death apparatus - a heroic act of conscious and formidable human engagement.

Much more from Forocki (really worth looking at...excellent stuff)

Does it Get any More Real Than This?

If anyone doubts that shared online worlds like Second Life and the world we share here in Real Life are not blending, check out these two videos:





The Second Life video seems to pay more attention to traditional concepts associated with the ritual of a wedding (church, heterosexual, christian, vows, and so on) than the Real Life ritual does. Could it be that we will come in future years to preserve our traditions in high resolution immersive media, while in real life we live out our desires and identities according to our own particular preferences and beliefs? The holodeck of Startrack will come to be where we preserve our ideals in a sort of laboratory of "Truth" and the mission of the starship (our real bodies) is to find out who we are becoming rather than who we once perhaps were or could be......

Toowoomba Camera Obscura

Glen Rees. Camera Obscura Building, Picnic Point, Toowoomba, Queensland. 1995. National Library of Australia

I am reading The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft by Anne Friedberg at the moment. I am really enjoying it. It begins with an account of Renaissance perspective and the concept of the window. Then it looks at drawing machines and moves on to a history of the camera obscura, and this is where I am up to at the moment. With reading about the camera obscura I came to realize that one of my earliest experiences of virtual technologies was the camera obscura that was built in my home town, Toowoomba (pictured):

The lens of the Toowoomba Camera Obscura is an achromatic doublet of about 6" diameter with a focal length of about 13' 6" giving a focal ratio of F13. The dished screen is 5 or 6 feet across. It was designed and built by W.M. Lowe at Picnic Point in about 1966. The octagonal building is made of white pine and rotated on 16 industrial castors. It holds about 30 visitors at a time. This camera obscura has now closed down.

On several occasions in the 1970s and 1980s I visited the camera obscura at Picnic Point Toowoomba with my grandmother. I remember sitting in a darkened room as the cylinder wall rotated noisily about us and we were shown scenes from the escarpment outside of the city, treed slopes of the Great Dividing Range and significant buildings below in the ancient crater where Toowoomba is situated.
I will blog a more detailed review of The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft next week.

Shopping for Images

Image: c.1225, "artificial representation that looks like a person or thing," from O.Fr. image, earlier imagene (11c.), from L. imaginem (nom. imago) "copy, statue, picture, idea, appearance," from stem of imitari "to copy, imitate" (see imitate). Meaning "reflection in a mirror" is c.1315. The mental sense was in L., and appears in Eng. c.1374. Sense of "public impression" is attested in isolated cases from 1908 but not in common use until its rise in the jargon of advertising and public relations, c.1958.

On the same day a serial rapist (the so called ‘Hagaman’) is arrested in my town of residence I witness Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 Film Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom.

Salo is a deeply disturbing experience to watch. On this side of the screen the serial rape and torture of women (the youngest 14 years old) has been an ongoing source of despair in Umeå since 1998. The cross over points between these two phenomena is insightful.

Whilst most critics have described Pasolini’s last film as a critique of capitalism, power and state control (and rightly so) I saw it as a morbid study of the power of the image and the ability of spectatorship to discount moral and ethical consideration.

To watch reality is very different from participating in it….or is it? Every day the bourgeois post-industrial citizen is immersed in images and information. The sign has become the way of defining the self; we buy the brand, join the group or go to the place based upon what the signs are: Nike, Hardcore, Vegan, and Toyota:

"When you happily drive a Mercedes or eat at McDonald’s, you’re in essence taking part in the experience that particular brand promises. Advertising plays the most important role in developing a strong brand image and brand character. It is not uncommon for us to purchase products because we identify with what a corporation or business stands for, or because we want to be a part of the group to which the product allows access.”
How Advertising Works


Once we have surrendered to the strength of the brand image we are the passive recipients of its values, histories, and morals. This is why “public relations” is so much a part of any corporate agenda. When dealing directly with the public the image that the customer has must be the one the business wants them to have in order for the relationship to work. If the customer’s image of the business is compromised the relationship is over, think Enron and Skandia. However, if you do not deal directly with the public but rather with governments and lesser underlings then just about anything is permitted. Think Halliburton, BHP Billiton, Union Carbide, Exxon…. The list goes on and on. The image is just a matter of efficiency.

What has this got to do with sexualized violence? The objectification of another human being to the point of turning their life into a living hell is only possible if the idea one has of that person is an image rather than a shared understanding. In Salo a narrative is a priori central to the enacting of reality. Before any act is undertaken it is preceded by a monologue recounting a similar act from the memories of the fascists (Education??). Any emotion that spurs self-identity is forbidden as is any recourse to realities exisitng outside of the narrative monologue (personal memories, religion, love of family or others). It is submission and control indoctrinated as desire that is the law of Salo. Under such a law anything can happen and does in the spinning cruelty of the narrative. In the final two scenes we the audience are watching the spectacle through binoculars turned around the wrong way. The tortures are far away, panoramic and compositional (like a painting or a billboard). We are spectators watching the film. The consumers of the image.

On this side of the screen we buy the image. We want the image. Shopping is a high that millions of people take a hit of every day. And it not just products we buy, it is ideas also. In the audience for Salo there were individuals who seemed to have taken on the persona of famous philosophers. The man who introduced the film resembles Sartre (glasses, crumpled suit, turtleneck sweater) and the man sitting in front of me is Foucault (shaved head, glasses, even down to the 1970’s turtleneck black sweater!!). Such is the power of the image that we can become it. Living in the image reassures us that if my family is OK, if my job is OK then it is all OK. The subject defines the object.

From reading the Gnostic texts I as well believe that it is impossible outside of madness to avoid the image:

[Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
[Glaucon] I see.
[Socrates] And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
[Glaucon] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
[Socrates] Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
[Glaucon] True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
[Socrates] And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
[Glaucon] Yes, he said.
[Socrates] And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
[Glaucon] Very true.
[Socrates] And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
[Glaucon] No question, he replied.

Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

So is it a question of attempting awareness? Of breaking through in small acts of compassion? Or is the Surrealist Rimbaudian “rational derangement of all the senses” a way of overcoming our meat prisons. I cannot say. I am planning on reading Slavoj Žižek in the near future. I am trying to be kinder for now.

(The reason why I wanted to see Salo is that is banned in Australia as being pornographic. If that is the Censorship Review Board’s idea of pornography, then they are very twisted people)

For some light antidote to the image spectacle check out Midaircondo “Shopping for Images”. Intelligent pop that seems to attempt to visually challenge the dominating power discourse.