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Have you seen the revamped Pepsi logo? - a designer did hehehehe

Lawrence Yang

Following our work on subverting content - and my recently identitiy corrected Consumer Direct Website I was chuffed to find the Onion News Network. I’m pretty sure I have seen some of their stuff before but the content seems much more pertinent now - especially the videos on outsourcing and sweatshops.
It reminded be of ‘Brass Eye‘, but as it’s online it allows it to be a bit more uncensored - which adds to the ludicrous nature of some of the panel discussions and content.

I have finally finished the 23 page reversioned Consumer Direct site - all created using CSS and photoshop. I am very happy with the content as it looks believable at first and then becomes more and more outrageous and ludicrous as you delve further into the text. In a side by side comparison to the original site it is a pretty close approximation and contains enough (mis)information to be a convincing parody.

The site is here and here’s some example screenshots;

Home Page

Before You Buy

The Feelgood Factor

And if you wanted to compare it to the real site - it’s here

After speaking to Geoff, he suggested that my MIT ‘My Internet of Things’ was a bit passe as the phrase is a bit worn out these days. SO after rethinking my approach to the objects in the archive, all of which are defunct, obsolete or broken but which retain a mnemonic status I have renamed the project and created webpages for each of the objects.

Screengrab of example page - JRB/OE 001

I need to create as many links to external sources - like a folksonomic wiki with hyperlinks that are associated with each object to suggest the network created around each item. Hopefully they will inter-connect at times - and also through either the objects themselves or the comments from users create a rich subjective/semantic network which enables the archive to become much more than a taxonomic colection and stress the stories and relationships between each artifact.

I now have to create a stylised reader, and remove the overt tikitag branding to make the whole piece seem much more personal.

As I mentioned previously my attempts to re-version the Consumer Direct website using Reamweaver were scuppered by certain presets on my webhosting - but once I began experimenting with the content I knew I had to do it. Therefore I had to revert to using Grab to capture screenshots and edited them into backgrounds in Photoshop.

Now I have to try to convincingly recreate the navigation, layout and styling with CSS to make my funhouse mirror ‘look and feel’ like the real thing.

I have been re-reading my work so far on the Apathist Cookbook and it’s not really hitting the right note.
The visual stuff I have been working on looks ok though…

Consumer Direct

So I have been looking into the Yes men’s “Reamweaver” which allows you to funhouse mirror a corporate website - unfortunately the passthru() function in php is disabled by my webhost (for security) so I am unable to set up a fake site. I planned to use the govt’s consumer direct website and place misinformation and apathist aphorisms on it.

I think I will take that idea into print though if I cant do it online - and continue with the apathist idea but maybe as an “identity corrected” govt. leaflet. Similar in premis to the fake NY Times which the Yes Men distributed to commuters. So In conjunction with my posters regarding pro-consumerism I will also create a Consumer Direct leaflet which covers much of the apathist aims.

It feels funky..and makes me wanna get down!

I had a thought - my initial interest in RFID was the misuse and surveillance aspect of personal and biometric data being accessible via a unique RFID signature. This was inspired by the Mexican border police and rfid tagged dignitaries who wanted to be ‘trackable’ to prevent kidnapping (even though this technology has no GPS capability), cashless transactions and our online persona/information recalled via RFID. This inherent monitoring of such interactions was apparent and that was my initial concern - however my digression into the development of Spimes, IPSO and IPv6 has taken that thought onto a bit of a tangent.

If we were to volunteer folksonomic information online about our possessions and objects then not only would that allow external control of sensor enabled objects but also it would add more detail to the digital record of our existence. If every transaction, movement (via CCTV) and communication is open to monitoring - by detailing our connection with the world around us we are adding flesh to those ‘digital bones’ already sat in some database somewhere. So by exploring the concept of blurring the lines between online and real world existence - I am still raising the question regarding surveillance and in fact making it more personal - rather than big brother watching you via CCTV, your toaster and fridge are broadcasting information about you into the ethers. Your IP enabled shoes are telling the world every step you take - and Big Brother is listening.

I also want to investigate the relationship we have with objects and ephemera - which is a direct relationship wth our consumerist existence - and highlights the task of tagging and rendering each item a smart or IP enabled object we become aware of the scale of our own consumption and hoarding of paraphenalia. As Bruce Sterling envisioned the Spime as a step towards transparent manufacture - with objects ‘fabbed’ on demand and processes of manufacture wholly apparent rather than discreet and secret. The tagging of current everyday objects creates ‘transparent consumption’ which makes our consumerist traits obvious to the internet enabled world and above all ourselves.

Would this knowledge change our habits? If we tagged and archived every item we owned and bought we would see our level of waste and consumption. Sterling states that there is no ‘away’ left to throw things and we need to radically rethink our current model of living to create a sustainable future - perhaps the Internet of Things would cause us to question what we hold onto - why we no longer use objects and perhaps by making all our possessions archived - we could facilitate the distribution of items to those without rather than simply sending them to landfill? Like a global freecycle movement.

Just a thought.