Animal Rights Update

So far I have have posted our images on 4chan and canv.as in addition to tumblr. On tumblr, my “It’s finger lickin’ good image” gained some popularity and received 71 so far. I got some interesting responses on 4chan as well. I posted images on the animals thread, food thread, and also the random thread /b/. You can read what people said in the screen caps I took. Reactions ranged from people hating on animal right activism and PETA, to people generally discussing KFC and fast food. On canv.as I also a good/interesting response to our images with 41 replies. You can look at and read the thread here. Although I did have some people who were supporting the cause and liked the memes, most people seemed to be hating on animal rights activists and were discrediting the issue. Overall I think we got some interesting responses and got people talking, which was part of the goal of our campaign.

Game Action, Four Moments by Alexander Galloway

• A video game is a cultural object, bound by history and materiality, consisting of an electronic computation device and a game simulated in software.
• Video games are an action-based medium
• Foundation of video games is not looking and reading but in the instigation of material change through action
• Two basic types of action in video games: machine actions (performed by hardware and software of computer) and operator actions (performed by players)
• Algorithmic cultural objects
• In video games there are actions that occur in diegetic space (world of narrative action) and nondiegetic space (game elements that are external to narrative and outside the portion of the apparatus that constitutes a pretend world of character and story)
• Four moments of gamic action:
  • 1. Diegetic machine acts: The machine is up and running- no more, no less. This includes “ambience acts” in which the game is on and running but the no stimulus from the game environment will disturb the player. Also includes cinematic interludes that progress the narrative.
    • Action experience of being at the mercy of abstract informatic rules
  • 2. Nondiegetic operator acts: Nothing in the world of the game can explain or motivate the action when it occurs. Ex. Pausing, cheats, hacks
    • These acts are an allegory for the algorithmic structure of today’s informatic culture. Video games render social realities into playable form.
    • Action experience of structuring subjective play, working with rules and configurations of game
    • Instead of experiencing the algorithm, one enacts the algorithm
    • Ex. World of Warcraft
  • 3. Diegetic operator acts: Moment of direct operator action inside the imaginary world of game play. Appear as both move acts (change physical position or orientation of the game environment) and expressive acts (select, pick up, get, rotate, unlock, open, talk)
    • Defined through intensities, or vectors of agitation: the time-based unfolding of a game is never smooth or consistent but is marked by a wide variance in the agitation of movement, where one moment may be calm and another will be action filled.
  • 4. Nondiegetic machine acts: Actions performed by the machine and integral to the entire experience of the game but not contained within a narrow conception of the world of game play.
    • Disabling act: Any type of gamic aggression or gamic deficient that arrives from outside the world of the game and infringes negatively on the game in some way. Ex. Crashes, bugs, slowdowns, temporary freezes
    • Enabling act: Action offered by the machine that enrich the operator’s game play rather than degrade it. Ex. Pieces of information, increased speed, extra life, increased health, teleportation, points.
    • Machinic embodiments: Emanate outward from the game to exert their own logic on the gamic form. Ex. Shape and size of Mario in Super Mario Bros is determined by design specifications of the 8bit microchip driving the game software.
    • Nondiegetic machine acts can be defined as those elements that create a generative agitation or ambiguity between the inside of the game and the outside of the game, between what constitutes the essential core of the game and what causes that illusion to be undone

In what ways do video games blur the distinction between diegetic/nondiegetic acts?

In what ways do the concepts of diegetic/nondiegetic acts complicate the notion of play?

Animal Rights Update

Here are three memes that I have created that address the issue of animal cruelty and KFC. The next step is to post these images on message boards and blogs and see what reactions these images elicit in people.

Animal Cruelty Update

For this project Lynlea and I have decided to partner up and create two different styles of memes that respond to the issues of animal cruelty and fast food restaurants. The meme’s that I will create will be made using photoshop and will resemble advertisements done by fast food restaurants such as KFC. I will play off of and remix current ads by using the slogans and images that are used in current ads. Lynlea will create memes that she will draws that will be in a cartoon style. We are planning on creating a tumblr blog to post our images, and also post the image on message board sites such as 4chan. By creating memes in two different styles, we plan on seeing which kind of meme will catch on and be the most successful.

Fast Food Chains and Animal Cruelty

For my project I want to focus on the issue of animal cruelty, specifically focusing on the way that fast food restaurant chains treat their animals before they are slaughtered.  KFC, for example, is one of the largest restaurant chains specializing in fried chicken in the US and Canada, and there has been a number controversies that have come to light in regards to how they treat their animals. Here are some facts for the Kentucky Fried Cruelty‘s website:

• The roughly 1 billion chickens killed each year for KFC’s buckets are crammed by the tens of thousands into excrement-filled sheds that stink of ammonia fumes.
• The birds’ legs and wings often break because they’re bred to be too top-heavy and because workers carelessly shove them into transport crates and shackles.
• Chickens’ throats are slit and the animals are dropped into tanks of scalding-hot water to remove their feathers, often while they are still conscious and able to feel pain.

These claims are backed up with undercover investigations that have been done of KFC chicken suppliers. In 2004, for example, a “PETA undercover investigation caught workers on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals’ beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces—all while the chickens were still alive” (Kentucky Friend Cruelty Website). KFC and other fast food chains have promised to take animal welfare seriously, but investigation like the one just mentioned show that they fail to live up to what they say. There are alternatives to the way that chickens and other animals are currently slaughtered, such as by using controlled-atmosphere killing, which is a process in which oxygen is removed from the birds’ atmosphere and replaced with a non-poisonous gas that puts the animals to sleep while they are still in their transport crates. My proposal is to create a series of memes that play off of the fast food restaurant’s advertising campaigns. Adbusters is a group that has done some things like this in the past. I am thinking that I will juxtapose an image of animal cruelty that has come out of the undercover investigations with a well known advertising slogan used by the restaurant. Here is an example that I have created:

This is an image of a bird that has been dragged through boiling hot water while still alive and was scalded to death. The industry calls them ‘red birds.’
Here are some other links that discuss this issue:

McDonalds Animal Cruelty

Article on Cruelty and the McRib

Disorderly Conduct Video Update

Last Tuesday members of our group sat in on a civil rights meeting at Picture the Homeless. We were planing on filming the meeting and getting interviews, but our memory card ran out of space after 25 minutes of filming. The next day, on Wednesday, our entire group went down to Zuccotti Park to meet with with members of PTH who were marching in the rally and possible film some interviews. After initially not being able to find PTH members, after a couple of hours Zach and I spotted PTH members marching with their banner. We were able to collect some footage of them marching, and also collect 2 short interviews. Members of our group are planning on going back to PTH this Tuesday to collect more footage and conduct interviews.

Disorderly Conduct Update: Interview Questions

Our group is planning on going to a civil rights meeting this Tuesday and possibly getting some footage for our video. Here are some interview questions that our group is planning on asking people at Picture the Homeless:
What were your actions when the police cited you for disorderly conduct?
How did the police treat you when you were cited for disorderly conduct?
What were the reasons the police gave for ticketing/arresting you for disorderly conduct?
What steps were taken to fight the disorderly conduct arrest/ticket?
How far did your case of disorderly conduct get in court?
Do you think the disorderly conduct law should be reformed? If so, why?

Group members: please edit and add questions to this list.

Disorderly Conduct Update

Our group has now increased to 5 members, with Lynlea and Ashely joining our group. For this project our group decided it would be a good idea if we could help to raise the production value of their current civil rights video, as it’s quality is low, and create a new video. The video will contain a general overview of how disorderly conduct works to criminalize innocent people, and it will also contain some interview we do with currently or formerly homeless PTH members about their experiences with the enforcement of the disorderly conduct law. I met with Sam at Picture the Homeless last Tuesday and sat in on one of their weekly civil rights meetings. I talked with Sam about our idea after the meeting and he is open to it, although he wants us to show him the video as we are in the process of making it so that the he can make sure that we are representing the organization properly. Our group also thought it would be a good idea to incorporate a social media aspect into this project. I noticed that Picture the Homeless did not have their own Facebook page set up. I think it would be a good idea for our group to assist PTH in setting up a Facebook page and starting a Facebook campaign about homeless civil rights. PTH could post information such as where meetings or rallies are being held on their FB page, and also post the video we make. Facebook could definitely be a good organization tool for PCH. I sent an email to Sam about this FB idea, but have not heard back yet. The next step for our group is going to sitting in on on a civil rights meeting, introducing our group and what we are trying to accomplish, and see if anybody there is willing to speak in our video. We are planning on doing this either this coming or the following Tuesday.

Everyone is a Media Outlet

• Internet replacing the newspaper
• Professionals as gatekeepers; simultaneously providing and controlling access to information, entertainment, communication, and other ephemeral goods
• Media industries have suffered first and most from the collapse of communication costs
o Problems of production, reproduction, and distribution less serious with internet, taking control of media out of hands of professionals
• Digital means of distributing words and images have shifted power from newspapers
• The internet introduces the ‘mass amateurization’ of publishing
o Unlike newspapers who publish news in order to deliver prophet
• Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s comment supporting Storm Thurmond’s 1948 segregationalist presidential campaign.
o Mainstream media did not cover story, but bloggers did
o Lead to Lott no longer being majority leader
o Bloggers/ordinary citizens having say in what mainstream press covers
• Cost of finding like-minded people has been lowered and deprofessionalized
• Old system: what identified something as news was professional judgment
• New system: News can break into public consciousness without traditional press weighing in
o News media covering a story because it has broken into public consciousness, not other way around
• Publishing the same idea in hundreds of places (blogs) can have an amplifying effect that outweighs the verdict from the smaller number of professional outlets
o Shift from news as an institutional prerogative, to news as a part of a communications ecosystem occupied by a mix of formal organizations, informal collectives, and individuals
• The transition from the scribe to the invention of movable type
• Journalism
o Traditional definition of journalist: writes for a publisher
o Now anyone can publish on Internet
o What is the distinction between journalist and others who write on internet?
o Who should enjoy journalistic privilege and protection?
• Judith Miller case- NY Times journalist jailed 85 days for refusing to reveal source
• Josh Wolf case- video blogger imprisoned for 226 days for refusing to hand over a video
• Who is a professional photographer?
o iStockPhoto
• Distinction between professional and armature is gone with rise of internet
• New communications tools favorable to innovate uses because they are cheaper and more flexible than old tools, such as TV or radio
o A person can explore new models of communication without needing anyone’s permission first, unlike in traditional media firms
• Globally free publishing is making public speech and action more valuable, as the specialness of professional publishing diminishes

In today’s world, what is the distinction between a professional and an amateur?
Who should enjoy journalistic privilege?
What are the benefits of giving people the tools to self publish?
What problems arise as people are able to publish anything they want on the internet?

Homeless Civil Rights

Last semester I took a class at Lang called Engaging Urban Homelessness. In the class we learned about the many different aspects that make up homelessness in New York City, from the various causes of why people become in the first place, to the reasons why those who are homeless tend to remain homeless for many years. A requirement of the class involved outside volunteer work with a homeless advocacy organization. Our class had several different choices of organizations to work with, and I ended up volunteering with The Coalition for the Homeless. I was required to volunteer with the Coalition every Friday night for the duration of the semester. My volunteer duties involved riding in a van filled with soup, bread, milk, and fruit to the Bronx and distributing this food to homeless people at 10 stops in the neighborhood. Taking this class and volunteering directly with homeless people altered my opinion and view of those who are homeless, and the class left me wanting to get more involved and do more to help. In the class we learned that one of the main challenges for those who experience homelessness is that their civil rights are often violated and they don’t have the power to fight those violations in court. Police often target homeless people and selectively enforce laws that make living life on the street even harder for those who are homeless. Picture the Homeless, which several of my classmates volunteered with, is a grassroots organization founded and led by homeless people. Picture the Homeless organizes social justice campaigns around issues such as housing, police, and the misrepresentation of the homeless. One of Picture the Homeless current organizing campaigns focuses around the violation of homeless individual’s civil rights. This current campaign is against “Disorderly Conduct” which the police regularly use to arrest or ticket homeless people and it is a key tool in the criminalization, profiling, and harassment of the homeless. Currently the term “disorderly conduct” is very vague and could be considered unconstitutional. The goal of this campaign is to make it so police are required by law to specify one’s alleged violation and make disorderly conduct a non-arrestable offense. I think it would be a good idea to organize a campaign around the New School campus in order to raise awareness and gain support for Picture the Homeless civil rights campaign. I think the more people who know about the ways that homeless people’s rights are violated on a daily basis, the more support there will be to change the current situation. Facebook could be used to spread the word and get people in the New School involved. Please add any ideas you may have to improve on my idea.

Here is the link to Picture the Homeless civil rights campaign: http://www.picturethehomeless.org/civil_rights.html

Picture the Homeless’s “What’s Wrong with Disorderly Conduct” article:  http://picturethehomeless.org/Documents/PDFs_Other/Whats%20Wrong%20With%20Disorderly%20Conduct.pdf

New York Times article from Aug 29, 2011 about homelessness and disorderly conduct:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/nyregion/panhandler-on-fifth-avenue-wins-respite-from-arrests.html

Official New York State disorderly conduct law: http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/bclc/web/NewYork/ny3(b).htm