My new blog...

http://braysstudio.blogspot.com/

obey

check out this manifesto by Shepard Fairey. He created the Obey Giant logo, which you might recognise.
http://www.obeygiant.com/main_new.php?page=articles

irony

From Naomi Klein’s No Logo, section describing the protests against the G8 summit in Cologne:
“On the same day that the Indian farmers were peacefully protesting in Cologne, London’s financial district turned into a war zone – the city hasn’t seen anything like it since the 1990 poll-tax riots. The 10,000-strong gathering started as a classic RTS surreal political party. The streets were cleared by a Critical Mass bike ride and were flooded by activists dressed in second hand suits with slogans painted on their backs. They danced in the door steps of office towers, formed a human chain around the treasury and held peaceful sit-ins at several banks. The bankers and investment brokers, meanwhile, came to work disguised in casual sports clothes, having been advised by police to “blend in” with the activists so as not to catch a flying pie.”

I love the image i have in my mind of 10,000 people converging on London's bank district, waving flags, dressed in suits, yelling , chanting and reclaiming the streets; while the people that work for the corporations that the protests oppose sheepishly cut through the crowds in their Polo and Ralph Lauren Golf shirts and slacks.

T-Shirt thingy

Thought about T-shirt thingy... "Place Your Brand", I think is the best. Another option could be the famous Bush phrase, "Shame On You!". Let me know what you think.

T-shirt designs

To try and get the ball rolling for the t-shirt design, can we submit our phrases as comments to this post or images to the photobucket?

theyrule

www.theyrule.net details the relationships between corporations according to who sits on their boards. There are many influential people who sit on more than one board, and sometimes five or more. Also included are members of political boards. The premise is that with networks of associates all interested in the financial gain of each of their companies, the board members can help each other out.
Go through the flash welcome and then go to load map>popular for a great visual tool for relating the corporations. You can also create your own map through the companies, directors of institutions buttons.
What do you guys think? This is the kind of map I want to represent in a 3d map, but more with relations of companies…

Re: Printing T-shirts

Hey folks,
I've just been to see my old print making teacher about screen printing t-shirt. Since we are only looking at making a few shirts, it'd be quite expencive for us to go out and get all the equiptment we need. We'd be looking at; around $30 for a cheap screen, $3-4 per shirt, $40 for the photostencil emolsion, $10-15 for ink and $20 to get the screen cleaned at the end (unless someones got a high pressure hose...). Also, we'd need to have access to a darkroom and UV lamp to expose the stencil. So..... Iv been told that the companies "Jones Bros" and "Tee Shirt Graphics" are both good for getting t-shirts printed. Jones Bros will also just make up the stencil for us (for a fee) so we could print them our selves without actually buying the equiptment. Another option would be to cruise over to the RMIT fine art faculty and see if they have some screen printing equiptment we could use.

ideas and pol comp

Hi guys,
I thought i'd just follow on from bradens suggestion. i think all of us doing the political compass is a great idea, i used it for my different histories as well. i think it also shows where we are coming from to show that we know we are being subjective, and perhaps not looking at both sides of the story. but i guess thats our role as dissenters.

here is my compass and a compass showing world leaders:


a couple of readings which i think are important to our research and ideas are no logo by naomi klein (http://www.nologo.org/) and pro logo, which was an article written in response. i will try and find a copy of this article, but the book is at the swanston library. there are 5 copies which are all out, but you can reserve them for when they are due, all some time in july.

scratch that - the article, pro logo is available at http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=770992
also, a write up of a debate between naomi klein and the author of pro logo is available at http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/4390

i think the nature of our point of view as dissenters on corporations means we should do something radical. i think it is more important for us to make a big statement in something like the form of a protest, installation or something inspiring and challenging. I like the analogy of humans living like Barbies with the same clothes, same cars and houses, in identical lego streets. Maybe we could set something up to be something like that American suburban look, where everything is homogenous, because we’re all buying the same things. But perhaps that’s getting too far away from the corporation and more towards the brands. Though I guess its still the effect of the corporation on the community.

Another installation-ey idea could be to make a 3d map of how the companies are related, like a big 3d tree diagram. Well that’s my dream anyway.

I think the t-shirt thing will go down well.

One last thing. a major content of street or stencil art is anti corporation, such as this design which mocks coca cola (amatil). Perhaps we could collect samples of anti-corporation art into some sort of book or exhibition?
And just on the coca-cola note, amatil might be a good example of a corporation. We could examine the effect of the takeover of SPC Ardmona and its impact on the area surrounding (is that Shepparton?)

Anyway, let me know what you think!
ben

ps. my photos aren't working so i will put them in the photo bucket

Political Compass

http://www.politicalcompass.org/
Hey everyone,
I recently came across this site and i thought, since this is a particually political project, it might be an interesting way for us to get a better idea of where everyone in our group's political ideals lie. This may be helpful in deciding what direction we want to take this project if we decide we'd like to work together.

The way the political compass works is basically you fill out a questionaire and based on your answers the site calculates 2 values; Ecomonic Left/Right (your x coordinant) and Social Libertarian/Authoritarian (your y coordinant). From these 2 values you can find your position on the political compass.

I've just taken the test, and heres where i stand....

Ecomonic Left/Right: -7.13
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.28

We have bloggage!

Hello fellow dissenters, and welcome to our new blog.
I hav created a 'photobucket' account that i've linked to this blog so we can post images here too.

You can find this at www.photobucket.com

Ill tell ya the username and password at uni