CrossWorlds
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Cinema after the Digital
Presentation Title:
- CrossWorlds
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Session: Cinema after the Digital
‘CrossWorlds’ is a work about political manipulation. It comes from my experience of the both sides of the Berlin Wall.
The most popular part of American propaganda was delivered through the Hollywood movie’s industry: “What the people believe is true“. One of the most popular slogans of Soviet propaganda in the same period was “The dreams of the people came true“ – a way to explain to Soviet people that they already got the materialization of the “Hollywood dream”, and that “Each day we live happier!” Susan Buck-Morss gives a detailed analysis of the similitude between Soviet and American propaganda since the twenties to the end of Cold War.
I’ve built a particular protocol to realize « CrossWorlds ». I’ve selected some of the most popular pictures from the American and Soviet propaganda. I’ve taken seven American and seven Soviet slogans. I’ve encoded each slogan as an electronic tag composed with two pictures – one Soviet and one American. Each tag has a black part and a white part, it can be decoded tanks to this contrast. The slogans are also composed with threats and promises. In each tag one of two slogans represents it’s black part, another one – the white part.
« CrossWorlds » is an interactive program. The program is connected to the NY Stock Echange Server an it generates interactive electronic tags in real time. Each tag contains a slogan from the ideological propaganda of the cold war period. Then Dow Jones goes up, American slogans are encoded. Then Dow Jones goes down, the program takes a slogans from a Soviet database.
