Newsgroups: workspace.tactical_media


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Subject: tactical media
From: mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au
Date: 2 Jul 1997 14:16:32 GMT

* * * * *

There's something invigorating about the rhetoric of
tactical media. It makes me want to start writing
things, as writing is what i do. If i was a singer it
would make me want to sing.

This is the question i want to pose about tactical media:
how does one articulate the desire to communicate? And
are there good and bad ways to do it?

I think we're all over the 'let's wire the world and
let 'er rip' philosophy. It generates noise. Noise is
better than the staccato tap tap tap of authoritarian
media, but thats about it.

Geert & c. suggest an aesthetic of tactical media, as well
as an ethics. An aesthetic of crafting the point of
intervention, the vector of movement, the style and speed...

Not just so it looks good, in and of itself, but so it
works against the background of its media context. Figure and
ground in the landscape of postmodern media.

Unfortunately, art schools still teach people how to be
artists. But this is not an aesthetic for artists. Its something
else. Its an aesthetic about producing something other, or
beyond art. Producing events in which a vector cuts across
the pink sky of the media at just the right moment to
intersect with another, at just the right angle, so that you
notice something, not just about the tactic, not just about
its author, but about the media itself, and about possible
worlds to which media might refer

McKenzie Wark