June 12, 2006
We're Not Gonna Take It!
Protest Karaoke-Style
We're Not Gonna Take It, by Amos Latteier, is an interactive public art project that allows you to record your own protest songs using the telephone. You can create a song about issues you wish to protest (such as corporate globalism, your landlord's poor repair record, or bad produce at the supermarket). You record your song by using the telephone like a karaoke machine, singing along to rock music. Your personal protest song will then be delivered to the politicians of your choosing.
From Jonah Brucker-Cohen's Gizmodo interview with Amos Latteier: In the world of creative interventions into popular technology, projects that make us question how we consume and use digital devices are often those that maintain our attention. Using this credo as a starting point, Toronto, Ontario-based artist, Amos Latteier creates work that explores the lighter side of technology. Poking fun at everything from corporate software presentations with his PowerPoint performances to creating homebrew prosthetic limbs with the “Prosthetic Ass”, his work examines the subtleties of DIY culture and the potential “emotional” impact of simple devices.
Re-purposing consumer electronics in inventive ways, his project, “Calculator Haikus”, creates poetry from upside-down calculator displays to emphasize how a playful approach can often yield unexpected results. On the software side, his inquisitive PowerPoint lectures employ the bland presentation software to create absurd relationships between viewer and speaker. Gizmodo caught up with Latteier to discuss his artistic practice, creative philosophy, and aim to infuse mild absurdity into standardized teaching methodologies and mass-produced software and hardware. Interview and photos after the jump… [via Coin Operated]
Posted by jo at June 12, 2006 04:59 PM
