Media Mindfulness

The ghost of Tibor Kalman, whose tenure at the helm of Colors Magazine revitalized and re-appropiated the language of commercial graphics for social change, seems eerily present behind the creative campaign of Dropping Knowledge. Like a Zen koan, Dropping Knowledge is part playful pun, part serious business. We drop a dime like anonymous tipsters to the cosmic dharma police on nonsensical, idiotic social practices, and we download knowledge like hidden viruses inside protein shell ad phrases.

The mutants are merging with nature; as ciphers for us, they are hybrids. Typically in sci-fi, hybrids are part machine. In the case of X-Men, the characters are elemental or animalistic. In a sense they are the earth force re-balancing the human realm, which resists the mutants and insists on instituting a policy of “curing them” (made possible by a genetically engineered serum). Unlike typical sci-fi, the conflict is not mediated by technology, but rather by biology (and bio-science). As the struggle ensues between the mutant factions, the battle goes mano-a-mano, albeit the group that harnesses the perfect balance between the forces of nature and human prevails.

My colleague over at the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Christie McAuley, wrote the following letter to Adbusters. I think it is right on, and speaks for itself. I want to qualify this as constructive criticism. I have loved Adbusters for many years but have been somewhat disenchanted with its direction. It used to […]

A friend once said that if you don’t envision a future, you will live in someone else’s. This is why I like the following piece of media produced by Free Range Studios (the folks who made The Meatrix). It’s a news dispatch from the future on how we averted climate catastrophe, albeit some of the […]

OK, so Roger Waters is a bit of a cynic. But you don’t have to be. The folks at MySpace have a really cool feature, A Brick in the Toilet. There’s lots of little, practical features to get your ecology on. Plus you can see a preview of El Presidente Gore’s new missive: An Inconvenient Truth. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen the film, but I wonder about the disaster film aesthetic. Can anyone tell the difference between The Day After Tomorrow and an infomercial on global warming?

I guess the Marine training that equates a hard-on with a deadly weapon translates well to the optical unconsciousness. At FreeVideoBlog soldiers are posting their combat footage (and in other cases doing things as mundane as doing BMX bike tricks in the middle of a vacant desert). Some of the clips are straightforward sad, with […]

You can thank the media literacy movement for this:
Advertising Age - FTC, HHS Call for Strict Standards in Children’s Food Marketing:

Two government agencies are calling on advertisers to market only healthier food products to children in the continuing clampdown on children’s obesity.

Sphere: Related Content

A great article From The Economist print edition on the possibilities of “citizen journalism” as traditional newspapers decline:
Journalism too is becoming interactive, and maybe better
Craig Newmark, of Craigslist, says that “journalism needs to become a community service rather than a profit centre,” and is working on making this happen. As The State of the News […]