Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Culture jamming: transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method.

We recently posted about the "rollerskating dwarf" experiment on Getty Images. But that isn't the only instance of culture jamming that has happened recently.

A group of people living on Sampsonia Way, located in the North of Pittsburgh, decided to bring to the street to life when the Google Street View cameras came by. Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, the people behind the project, gathered neighbors and other participants to create staged scenes including a sword fight, parade, marathon, band practice, and more. The Street View cameras captured the activity via 360-degree photographs, as the snapshots became forever preserved in Google Maps.

These instances of culture jamming got Organic thinking... Is this a downside of pure information-driven systems like "search?" If I know when the Google camera van is coming, then I can dress the environment to be anything I want. Perhaps even raise property values...

"In this particular case, it took the group quite a bit of effort, and the coordination of artists, actual people living in the neighborhood, etc to set it up. It isn't likely that this would start happening everywhere. And while artists, local tricksters or a Flash Mob taking over a street is personally entertaining and interesting, who's to say that that street view wouldn't also tell something meaningful about the neighborhood and its people? What if cities really started beautification projects because they knew the Google camera van was coming, then Google Street View would have some remarkable power." Karri Ojanen

Christopher Page