ISSN: 1705-6411
Volume 6, Number 2 (July, 2009)
Author: Holland Wilde
Recreating the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election TV Coverage
Imagine a kind of internet video jukebox that contains only one (five month long) video… but instead of playing that video end-to-end each time any selection is made, the jukebox plays only a 60 sec. clip constructed in real-time from over 12,000 randomly accessed bits and pieces of it. Cool? Maybe not. Even though this jukebox always plays an engagingly different, curiously non-sensical video each time; every video regardless of preference selection absurdly and uncontrollably communicates a similar TV message: Informational, sensorial, temporal, contextual and authorial chaos – as inculcation. This is the ‘nature’ of U.S. TV news production and presentation.
Baudrillard’s Blender is a simple ethnographically performative response to how I “experienced” the 2008 U.S. presidential election media coverage on television (as participant-observer-ethnographer)… and how I intend to “play” my experience back into our media-ether in a form of gift-reversal.
To use the blender click: http://www.culturalfarming.com/Ethnography/Baudrillards_Blender.html