[00:32.610 --> 00:34.330]  We have the last hope.
[00:36.490 --> 00:41.270]  I suppose at some point we should put on some cold play and have a tear filled montage.
[00:44.130 --> 00:48.010]  This next panel is the intersection of culture jamming, hacking, and hacktivism.
[00:48.170 --> 00:55.730]  I would introduce these gentlemen, but some of their names have percentage signs and squigglies in them, so I will let them introduce themselves.
[00:55.930 --> 00:56.150]  Gentlemen.
[01:02.630 --> 01:12.230]  And I'd like to thank you all for coming out this morning to this presentation on the intersection of culture jamming, hacking, and hacktivism.
[01:12.530 --> 01:24.010]  And my name is Pan, and I am a, for lack of a better term, a culture jammer, an artist, a computer programmer, and a lot of other things that I won't mention here in public.
[01:25.450 --> 01:43.130]  The premise of this is to provide sort of a Venn diagram, if you will, of culture jamming, and defining culture jamming, and also, again, a Venn diagram of culture jamming, hacking, and hacktivism.
[01:43.770 --> 01:50.530]  And we'll define those terms and also provide you with some media samples that you can hear and some video.
[01:50.530 --> 01:55.270]  And each one of us will introduce ourselves as we come up here to talk.
[01:55.430 --> 01:56.810]  So just a little bit about what I do.
[01:57.210 --> 02:12.070]  I started out doing weird things with art and technology probably about 20 years ago, experimenting with collage, image collage, audio collage, and then moving into some technology stuff.
[02:12.070 --> 02:18.770]  And now, currently, I'm the host of Interactive Technologies, which is a radio show that focuses on...
[02:18.770 --> 02:23.090]  It's perspectives on tools that enhance communication, creativity, and utility.
[02:23.330 --> 02:24.770]  And I've been doing that for 10 years.
[02:26.210 --> 02:32.810]  So what I'd like to do is not talk too much about myself, but just sort of get into this right now.
[02:32.810 --> 02:34.510]  So make yourselves comfortable.
[02:34.850 --> 02:46.830]  And what we're going to do is, for the first hour, have each one of the panelists talk, approximately 10 minutes apiece, and then move on to sort of a discussion section.
[02:47.590 --> 02:57.030]  We've actually blocked out a whole, you know, 20, 25 minutes for people to be able to interact with us and communicate and talk about these things.
[02:57.150 --> 03:01.650]  And I think we're going to pose some interesting questions that people will want to talk about.
[03:01.650 --> 03:05.670]  So, let's get started here right away.
[03:06.110 --> 03:07.590]  I'm going to provide an introduction.
[03:07.850 --> 03:14.450]  Then we're going to go over VoiceJail, which is a voice mailbox community that started.
[03:14.690 --> 03:17.590]  And then also, we'll have Mark Hauser from Negativland.
[03:17.730 --> 03:26.010]  And then that will transition into the Snuggles Collective, which was an art group that sort of grew out of fans of Negativland.
[03:26.190 --> 03:28.370]  And then we'll have the Evolution Control Committee.
[03:28.890 --> 03:32.610]  And then Steve Heiss from detritus.net.
[03:33.270 --> 03:37.330]  And then Ricardo Dominguez of the Electronic Disturbance Theater.
[03:37.630 --> 03:43.450]  And then we're also going to have Bernardo Otis talking about sort of a historical perspective of this.
[03:44.070 --> 03:45.310]  And then we'll have the discussion.
[03:45.750 --> 03:50.390]  So, let me provide just a little bit of background about what motivated me to do this.
[03:50.390 --> 04:00.350]  This panel was inspired by discussions that I had with hackers in the community locally and on IRC and on the web.
[04:01.190 --> 04:10.670]  And some had become sort of apathetic and sort of been down on the notion of becoming socially involved, artistically involved.
[04:10.670 --> 04:13.990]  And just the notion of culture jamming.
[04:14.190 --> 04:16.350]  And I didn't really see the value in it.
[04:16.490 --> 04:20.090]  So, that got me to thinking, well, how can I show how these things intersect?
[04:21.150 --> 04:24.890]  So, I'll be providing some social context to the technological exploration.
[04:25.230 --> 04:30.910]  And hopefully inspiring participation in the social, artistic, and political realms that we're sort of showing here.
[04:31.570 --> 04:35.930]  And demonstrate to you that you, too, can participate in these types of communities.
[04:36.690 --> 04:41.590]  So, let's get started, actually, with a recorded message from Phineas Narco.
[04:41.690 --> 04:42.830]  He couldn't be with us here today.
[04:42.990 --> 04:49.790]  But he sent us a very special audio file to listen to about VoiceJail, a voicemail community that sprang up.
[04:50.290 --> 04:51.710]  So, let's get started with that.
[04:55.930 --> 04:57.530]  Hold on one second here.
[04:58.170 --> 04:58.910]  Here's the...
[04:58.910 --> 05:00.430]  No, no, there we go.
[05:05.680 --> 05:06.340]  There we go.
[05:15.210 --> 05:18.010]  Please dial your password and press Pounds.
[05:18.990 --> 05:21.830]  Please dial your password and press Pounds.
[05:25.110 --> 05:29.930]  You have two new messages and another saved messages.
[05:30.330 --> 05:32.050]  To review, press 1.
[05:32.350 --> 05:33.970]  To send, press 2.
[05:34.250 --> 05:36.790]  To hear more choices, press 0.
[05:37.290 --> 05:42.530]  From sent today at 12:01 a.m.
[05:46.280 --> 05:51.240]  In the years before the personal computer, there was the telephone.
[05:52.120 --> 06:00.260]  In the days before the World Wide Web, in the wee small hours before the dawn of email, there was voicemail.
[06:01.360 --> 06:10.440]  From the late 80s to the mid-90s, in the suburban sprawl of Silicon Valley, there existed a community of voicemail box owners.
[06:14.480 --> 06:15.240]  VoiceJailers.
[06:20.530 --> 06:21.290]  VoiceJailers.
[06:21.450 --> 06:21.830]  VoiceJailers.
[06:21.830 --> 06:28.930]  A ragtag cadre of four philosophical insomniacs bound together by the humming copper filament of their own collective isolation.
[06:29.310 --> 06:30.870]  This is their story.
[06:31.190 --> 06:32.630]  These are their voices.
[06:33.710 --> 06:36.650]  This is Midnight VoiceJail.
[06:41.200 --> 06:42.880]  I'm James Sianna, a.k.a.
[06:42.940 --> 06:50.900]  Phineas Narco, and that is the introduction sort of theme collage to my show, Midnight VoiceJail, which I'm going to tell you about.
[06:50.900 --> 06:53.900]  Let me give you a little background about myself.
[06:54.520 --> 07:01.120]  And I'm originally from the Midwest and moved out here to Silicon Valley in the mid-70s with my family.
[07:01.720 --> 07:14.240]  In 1985, a character who went by the name of Ed Notes started a kind of voicemail box scene for weirdos, which he advertised in the Metro.
[07:14.240 --> 07:31.520]  And it was called the World Suicide Club, and that was just the right kind of name with which you would attract just the right kind of people, you know, kind of twisted people who just for, you know, one reason or another did not fit into the predominant yuppie social scene of the Silicon Valley in the mid-80s.
[07:32.320 --> 07:48.180]  These were people like subgeniuses, phone phreakers, stone nerds, as I'd call them, recluses, angry loners, the unemployable, you know, people who didn't fit in.
[07:48.440 --> 07:59.460]  The default group would call, a lot of them would call the World Suicide Club, and eventually Ed, Ed Note, got all manner of strange people calling up the World Suicide Club.
[07:59.460 --> 08:07.920]  He would take the incoming messages, cut them into creative collages, and then play those cut-ups as the outgoing messages.
[08:07.920 --> 08:13.100]  Those would inspire even more weirdness and interest, kind of in a feedback loop.
[08:13.360 --> 08:19.580]  And people would see the ad, they'd call up the box number, heard interesting sounds, weird stuff going on, leave messages, word spread.
[08:19.880 --> 08:28.220]  And eventually the scene migrated to more and more robust voicemail systems, voicemail box systems, which could better handle the traffic.
[08:28.860 --> 08:40.380]  So, this was a scene that went on from 1985 to 1995 in Silicon Valley, and people continued to use these voice mailbox systems in ways that they weren't really meant for.
[08:40.580 --> 08:42.720]  They were using them in creative ways.
[08:42.780 --> 08:46.620]  They were a means of social networking and meeting people.
[08:47.420 --> 08:54.140]  A lot of times rivalries and fights would break out, causing some people's boxes to be bombed.
[08:54.140 --> 09:04.640]  And when I say bombed, I mean they would just, you know, create a noise that would take up a space in the voicemail box until all the spaces were taken up, sort of like a denial-of-service attack nowadays.
[09:05.820 --> 09:15.180]  Some boxes were hacked into, and squatters would take up residents and do their own things, create, you know, they'd get kicked out and they'd set up somewhere else.
[09:15.680 --> 09:24.140]  Some boxes were political soap boxes, some were journals, some were there to pass on strange religious messages.
[09:24.560 --> 09:28.500]  And occasionally, you know, someone would actually leave you a message if you were out.
[09:28.500 --> 09:35.540]  At its peak, there were no less than 50 boxes, or probably more than that, in that scene.
[09:35.740 --> 09:43.380]  And then there were countless hundreds of other people who would call them up for entertainment, but not own boxes themselves.
[09:43.660 --> 09:48.660]  The two guys who I actually started the National Cynical Network with, Alexander T.
[09:48.760 --> 09:54.900]  Newport and Ronald Redball, were very much in that voicemail box world, almost from the beginning.
[09:55.740 --> 10:04.000]  So, bringing us up to 1999, I was at KFJC, which is a college radio station in Los Altos Hills, California.
[10:04.320 --> 10:22.620]  Started to create a show there called Midnight Voice Jail, utilizing many hours of voicemail messages and weirdness that Ronald and Al and various friends of Ronald and Al had accumulated over the years, weaving those messages into what I call a psychedelic documentary called Midnight Voice Jail.
[10:22.620 --> 10:31.220]  So, we did about 50 episodes in all, 50 one-half, or 50 half-hour to one-hour episodes.
[10:31.540 --> 10:39.880]  So, if you're interested in hearing or getting this series, the place to go, is nationalcynical.com.
[10:40.000 --> 10:48.640]  That's www.nationalcynical, all one word, N-A-T-I-O-N-A-L-C-Y-N-I-C-A-L.com.
[10:48.640 --> 10:56.000]  Take the webcasts link at nationalcynical.com, and there will be a link there where you can hear...
[10:56.000 --> 10:59.440]  Just scroll down, you'll hear the best of edits of the show.
[10:59.660 --> 11:10.820]  And there's also links on that page through which you can find the Voice Jail FAQ, and you can also find a link there through which you can buy and download the entire series.
[11:10.820 --> 11:18.900]  So, again, you'll want to go to nationalcynical.com, and from there, it's the webcasts link to hear and find out more about this project.
[11:20.040 --> 11:43.320]  Oh, and I also wanted to mention, I will be on Over the Edge on KPFA the last night of the month at midnight, which I believe is a Thursday night, five-hour show, largely centering around Voice Jail on KPFA 94.1, or go to kbfa.org to tune into that.
[11:44.280 --> 11:45.160]  Thank you.
[11:45.380 --> 11:46.100]  Thank you for listening.
[11:48.020 --> 11:58.780]  So that was Phineas Narco of the National Cynical Network talking about Voice Jail and a social networking community that essentially grew around voicemail boxes.
[11:59.080 --> 12:08.020]  Now I want to move over to a group of people that had a very long tradition and actually defined the term culture jamming.
[12:08.160 --> 12:11.820]  So, with that, I would like to introduce Mark Hosler of Negativland.
[12:18.800 --> 12:20.380]  Hey, I get to be at the podium.
[12:20.820 --> 12:21.000]  Great.
[12:21.280 --> 12:23.520]  Yeah, I'm a founding member of the group Negativland.
[12:23.640 --> 12:24.820]  It sounds like some of you have heard of us.
[12:24.900 --> 12:25.360]  That's great.
[12:25.720 --> 12:29.500]  We've been around for now almost 30 years, which is hard to believe.
[12:30.320 --> 12:33.300]  Cutting up sound, appropriating, and rearranging things.
[12:33.620 --> 12:36.140]  A lot of it taken from corporately owned mass media.
[12:36.680 --> 12:42.160]  We were doing this back in the days when we used reel-to-reel tape and razor blades, tape loops, stuff like that.
[12:43.600 --> 12:47.220]  Didn't start out being concerned about issues around copyright law.
[12:47.480 --> 12:49.340]  Weren't thinking of what we were doing.
[12:49.520 --> 12:55.980]  I was in high school when it started and certainly didn't think of it as as these kinds of cultural, civil disobedience, cultural interventions.
[12:57.500 --> 13:14.660]  But over the years of doing the kind of work we did of appropriating media, we increasingly realized that this form of collage and cut-up and appropriation was a really great way to talk about systems of power and information, communication, and pop culture.
[13:14.880 --> 13:17.440]  And do it in a way that oftentimes is really quite funny, too.
[13:18.900 --> 13:21.400]  We also always loved just listening in on things.
[13:21.400 --> 13:36.820]  And we were always recording short-wave radio broadcasts, you know, back when you could tune into people's phone calls in the early days of cell phones, stuff like, you know, when the carrier frequencies that was on were things you could pick up with a scanner at home,
[13:36.840 --> 13:37.680]  we'd record that.
[13:37.940 --> 13:41.400]  And we were always picking up things from ham radio jammers.
[13:42.560 --> 13:46.600]  And, because they like to just kind of jam each other out with test tones.
[13:46.740 --> 13:48.620]  Any of you here, ham folks?
[13:49.900 --> 13:50.580]  All right.
[13:51.900 --> 13:52.940]  Hammers, hammer-jammers.
[13:53.440 --> 14:01.540]  On our weekly radio show, which was just mentioned in Phineas Narco's talk, Over the Edge, we've been doing kind of thematic shows since 1981.
[14:01.780 --> 14:03.280]  It's still on to this day.
[14:05.620 --> 14:11.160]  And we did a series of shows that were all about jammers and ham radio jammers.
[14:11.300 --> 14:12.680]  And we were using some of these recordings.
[14:12.680 --> 14:16.740]  And one of the characters we've evolved on the show is a guy named Crosley Bendix.
[14:17.440 --> 14:26.780]  And he did a review of jamming, but took the idea of jamming, which in the ham world is pretty much just silly, dumb ass, you know, swearing at people and just using test tones.
[14:27.340 --> 14:29.940]  It's pretty silly, but fun stuff.
[14:30.400 --> 14:39.340]  And he took it, and in this, in the guise of his character, he talked about it from more of a cultural standpoint and was talking about what he would call, he called a culture jamming.
[14:39.340 --> 14:43.640]  And, like, people altering billboards, things like that.
[14:43.840 --> 14:46.840]  And, so that's how the phrase kind of popped up.
[14:46.920 --> 14:48.220]  This is back in 1984.
[14:49.780 --> 15:07.540]  I think in 89 or 90, a writer named Mark Deary, who's actually lives in upstate New York, was writing a sort of a trend piece for Elle magazine, talking about different people and artists who were doing kind of a creative activist work by using the media to talk about the media.
[15:07.540 --> 15:10.680]  Kind of creating this sort of hall of mirrors thing.
[15:10.900 --> 15:16.640]  And he ended up latching onto our term, culture jamming, and used it in this article.
[15:16.780 --> 15:20.840]  He then was asked by, what is it, the Open Media series?
[15:22.320 --> 15:27.020]  He wrote a pamphlet about it, and then it came to the attention of Adbusters magazine.
[15:27.360 --> 15:33.420]  And Adbusters magazine had been looking for a term, a phrase of some time to kind of label what they were doing.
[15:33.580 --> 15:36.640]  They wanted to brand the movement of attacking the branding of everything.
[15:37.300 --> 15:40.720]  Which I think is actually a very sort of short-sighted approach.
[15:42.180 --> 15:53.360]  But they took the phrase, and really ran with it, and started talking about it in their magazine, and came up with culture jamming how-to videos, and calendars, and probably coffee mugs.
[15:54.560 --> 15:56.400]  So it took on a life of its own.
[15:56.520 --> 16:00.320]  It spread far beyond Negativland's initial creation of it.
[16:01.620 --> 16:05.040]  I think at this point though, is anyone reading Adbusters these days?
[16:06.400 --> 16:08.720]  Are they even mentioning the phrase culture jamming anymore?
[16:08.920 --> 16:10.780]  I feel like they've sort of finally dropped it.
[16:10.880 --> 16:11.500]  Did they drop it?
[16:12.280 --> 16:13.180]  It's still in there?
[16:13.320 --> 16:13.540]  Okay.
[16:14.840 --> 16:18.520]  They didn't invent Buy Nothing Day either, but you'd never know it from reading the magazine.
[16:18.520 --> 16:23.380]  But it's interesting what they've done with it.
[16:25.020 --> 16:29.480]  There's not enough time to really talk about it, but obviously I think we're all essentially on the same side.
[16:29.640 --> 16:39.020]  But there's some curious qualities about how they've kind of taken and run with these, with other people's ideas, and used them in ways that I think ultimately...
[16:40.260 --> 17:04.120]  I think it's really incredible to realize that you can take media and repurpose it and reuse it, and at this point it's becoming so normal of an approach that just a 13-year-old kid, you know, with their parent's iMac, is putting stuff up on YouTube that is using all of these techniques that just a few years ago were seen as being these completely avant-garde approaches to making art and media.
[17:04.700 --> 17:07.600]  This stuff is becoming incredibly mainstream right now.
[17:08.400 --> 17:12.900]  You know, to the point where it's made its way into academia and college courses and stuff like that.
[17:13.580 --> 17:20.000]  So, anyway, that's a little brief overview of how the phrase ended up coming into use.
[17:20.220 --> 17:20.960]  How was that?
[17:21.360 --> 17:21.760]  Okay.
[17:22.280 --> 17:23.620]  So, let me just really...
[17:23.620 --> 17:25.540]  Well, I have two little short video clips.
[17:25.700 --> 17:29.500]  I think it's going to put me a little bit over my 10-minute limit here, but...
[17:30.100 --> 17:31.460]  But I was told that was okay.
[17:33.220 --> 17:40.320]  So, as I said, the more negative land started appropriating media, the more we thought about what it meant to do this.
[17:40.460 --> 17:43.100]  What can you do by taking stuff that doesn't belong to you?
[17:43.520 --> 17:49.240]  And Richard Lyons, a member of negative land, he was in a thrift store.
[17:49.320 --> 17:52.240]  He found a record that's called, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?
[17:52.320 --> 17:53.760]  And it had the Reverend Estes W.
[17:53.920 --> 17:54.800]  Perkle from Louisiana.
[17:54.800 --> 18:00.680]  He was talking about the communists taking over the United States sometime by the early 70s.
[18:00.800 --> 18:12.120]  And they were going to brainwash all of us into being communists by putting us into a concentration camp and broadcasting over a loudspeaker 17 hours a day the phrase, Christianity is stupid, communism is good.
[18:12.640 --> 18:13.120]  Give up.
[18:13.920 --> 18:14.400]  Give up.
[18:14.400 --> 18:14.640]  And...
[18:15.600 --> 18:16.080]  Yay!
[18:16.740 --> 18:23.320]  And, well, what we liked about it was not just what he was saying, but that it was a Christian preacher saying it, but the way he said it was very musical.
[18:23.560 --> 18:27.220]  He said, Christianity is stupid, communism is good.
[18:27.520 --> 18:28.040]  Give up!
[18:28.280 --> 18:28.740]  Give up!
[18:28.820 --> 18:29.260]  Give up!
[18:31.580 --> 18:32.540]  So, obviously...
[18:34.840 --> 18:36.080]  But what about communism?
[18:36.700 --> 18:37.160]  Well, anyway.
[18:37.420 --> 18:40.600]  So, obviously, he was a great vocalist for a song.
[18:40.600 --> 18:44.220]  Now, back then, this to us seemed like a pretty unusual thing to do.
[18:44.400 --> 18:52.500]  I think this is very common now to take voices and stick them on top of music, but this was back in the late 80s, and this really was a fairly unusual thing.
[18:52.720 --> 19:04.600]  We were still using cutting up tape and tape loops and razor blades, and so we recorded this piece of music, this heavy dirge-like rock piece that we wrote ourselves, and actually, I played the guitar on it.
[19:04.660 --> 19:05.760]  I actually can play instruments.
[19:05.860 --> 19:06.940]  I don't just steal things.
[19:08.700 --> 19:10.460]  And we made this piece of music.
[19:10.460 --> 19:15.080]  which we ended up very imaginatively titling the track, Christianity is Stupid.
[19:17.180 --> 19:18.760]  And we ended up...
[19:18.760 --> 19:20.480]  Well, what I want to do is to show you the...
[19:20.940 --> 19:26.100]  We made a video many, many years later to go along with the music, which I think you'll find very amusing, very entertaining.
[19:26.360 --> 19:32.280]  We were inspired by a gentleman from Australia who had a very popular film in the theater at the time, Mel Gibson.
[19:33.760 --> 19:37.100]  And we ended up grabbing the movie from...
[19:37.100 --> 19:38.260]  I think it was from Soul Seek.
[19:38.340 --> 19:39.060]  It was still in the theater.
[19:39.220 --> 19:43.400]  Probably someone had put up a review copy of the DVD, you know, up online.
[19:43.400 --> 19:44.640]  We downloaded the whole thing.
[19:45.200 --> 19:46.680]  And we went through...
[19:46.680 --> 19:55.980]  We got subscribed to Netflix, and we ended up renting every single Jesus bio flick that's ever been made, and ripping the data off the DVDs.
[19:55.980 --> 20:10.980]  And we kind of wondered what would it look like to take our piece of music and kind of take all these scenes of Jesus being beaten, flogged, whipped, and abused that have appeared in every film ever made about the life of Christ and edit it together like an early 80s rock video.
[20:12.100 --> 20:13.340]  Well, what would this look like?
[20:13.580 --> 20:14.340]  I don't know.
[20:14.460 --> 20:15.040]  Let's find out.
[20:15.840 --> 20:19.060]  So, we gave it a slightly different title, too, in honor of Mel's film.
[20:19.220 --> 20:20.180]  So, if we could turn this up.
[20:20.240 --> 20:21.940]  Turn this up loud, as loud as you can.
[20:21.940 --> 20:23.140]  It still sounds good out there.
[20:23.140 --> 20:26.100]  And this should be right here.
[20:28.400 --> 20:30.940]  And, Sherry, if you can get the lights off, too, that would be great, off the screen.
[20:31.240 --> 20:32.000]  Is that possible?
[20:32.780 --> 20:33.100]  Yes.
[20:33.100 --> 20:33.520]  Please.
[21:10.900 --> 21:13.600]  The loudspeaker spoke up and said...
[21:16.320 --> 21:20.360]  The loudspeaker spoke up and said...
[21:21.320 --> 21:24.660]  The loudspeaker spoke up and said...
[21:28.160 --> 21:31.720]  The loudspeaker spoke up and said...
[21:31.720 --> 21:34.040]  Christianity is stupid.
[21:35.240 --> 21:36.800]  Christianity is stupid.
[21:38.320 --> 21:39.600]  Christianity is stupid.
[21:41.080 --> 21:42.680]  Christianity is stupid.
[21:47.530 --> 21:49.590]  Christianity is stupid.
[22:03.780 --> 22:05.480]  Communism is good.
[22:06.680 --> 22:08.320]  Communism is good.
[22:10.120 --> 22:11.680]  Communism is good.
[22:13.420 --> 22:14.540]  Communism is good.
[22:17.890 --> 22:19.350]  Give up.
[22:19.810 --> 22:21.090]  Did you hear that?
[22:24.500 --> 22:25.880]  Give up.
[22:25.880 --> 22:28.680]  Give up.
[22:30.720 --> 22:32.320]  Give up.
[22:33.600 --> 22:34.820]  Give up.
[22:35.560 --> 22:36.620]  Give up.
[22:36.620 --> 22:37.600]  Christianity is stupid.
[22:39.500 --> 22:41.200]  Christianity is stupid.
[22:42.180 --> 22:43.840]  Christianity is stupid.
[22:43.840 --> 22:46.540]  Christianity is stupid.
[22:46.900 --> 22:48.680]  Give up!
[22:50.780 --> 22:52.740]  Communism is good!
[22:56.260 --> 22:59.280]  Christianity is stupid!
[23:06.990 --> 23:08.590]  Communism is good!
[23:10.510 --> 23:11.690]  Communism is good!
[23:14.170 --> 23:15.250]  Give up!
[23:16.170 --> 23:17.230]  Give up!
[23:17.670 --> 23:18.290]  Give up!
[23:18.750 --> 23:21.990]  From 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9!
[23:23.390 --> 23:24.170]  Give up!
[23:24.550 --> 23:24.950]  Give up!
[23:25.790 --> 23:29.230]  From 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9!
[23:29.510 --> 23:30.110]  Give up!
[23:30.590 --> 23:32.070]  Give up!
[23:32.390 --> 23:36.430]  From 5 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at 9!
[23:51.080 --> 23:51.800]  Give up!
[23:51.800 --> 23:52.440]  Give up!
[23:52.880 --> 23:53.600]  Give up!
[23:54.540 --> 23:56.360]  Give up!
[23:56.380 --> 23:56.380]  Double Run!
[23:56.380 --> 23:59.980]  From 5 o' clock in the morning till 10 o' clock at night.
[24:00.320 --> 24:02.200]  Communism is Good!
[24:04.060 --> 24:05.220]  Christianity is Stupid!
[24:09.080 --> 24:10.820]  Communism is Good
[24:17.130 --> 24:19.050]  seventeen rounds, a teenagers!
[24:19.050 --> 24:23.470]  Give up, give up, give up, give up, give up, give up, give up, give up.
[24:30.470 --> 24:31.490]  Shop as usual.
[24:34.800 --> 24:36.140]  And avoid panic buying.
[24:45.450 --> 24:46.130]  Thank you.
[24:47.170 --> 24:48.550]  Well, that was a lot of fun to make.
[24:48.650 --> 24:54.450]  And even though I don't believe in hell, I have to say that as we were making this, I kept thinking, no, we're going to burn.
[24:54.590 --> 24:55.230]  This is bad.
[24:55.470 --> 24:56.710]  This is really bad.
[24:57.450 --> 25:01.410]  And the other thing is we wanted to get this out while Mel Gibson's film was still in the theater.
[25:01.410 --> 25:03.830]  So this is before YouTube existed.
[25:04.010 --> 25:09.890]  And so we couldn't afford having thousands of people download a full-screen, high-res version of this.
[25:09.990 --> 25:12.990]  And so we actually utilized the BitTorrent network.
[25:13.550 --> 25:15.050]  This was in the early days of it.
[25:15.110 --> 25:17.530]  And we said, well, we could use this as a way to distribute new work.
[25:17.690 --> 25:31.330]  And so we put out a press release saying that Negativeland's hard drives had been hacked into and that all this video they'd been making for their own fun, which obviously violates all the DMCA rules, that they would never put out to public, but it was stolen from them.
[25:31.890 --> 25:36.090]  And unfortunately, it's out there on these BitTorrent networks and, oh, here's how to find it.
[25:36.710 --> 25:53.430]  And so we ended up with about 160,000 people grabbed it, which back then, this was like, what, four years ago or something, for us seemed like, you know, pretty great, you know, when we were only selling, you know, you could never sell that many CDs in a million years.
[25:55.770 --> 26:01.710]  So anyway, after this piece, the music came out, obviously the video was made many, many years later.
[26:01.850 --> 26:09.150]  But when the video came out, we were planning to finally tour the United States because the record that this was on was called Escape From Noise.
[26:10.150 --> 26:11.970]  It had done quite well in college radio.
[26:12.090 --> 26:14.970]  And we thought, well, maybe we can actually put together a tour and break even.
[26:15.090 --> 26:16.770]  None of us could afford to lose money on tour.
[26:16.870 --> 26:19.030]  We weren't expecting to make it, but we needed at least break even.
[26:19.030 --> 26:27.310]  Well, it became clear that because, even though we were popular on college radio, it was going to, we would lose money because, of course, the clubs didn't know who we were because we hadn't played there yet.
[26:27.830 --> 26:28.470]  You know, duh.
[26:30.170 --> 26:32.410]  So, we realized, you know, we had to cancel it.
[26:32.490 --> 26:41.190]  Well, as I mentioned earlier, our use of the media, we were increasingly, you know, examining why are we taking it, what can we say with this, what kind of creative work can we do.
[26:42.070 --> 26:54.790]  And Richard, who was in the group, was very bored and sitting at his all-night security guard job, and he saw an article about a teenage boy in Rochester, Minnesota, who'd cut up his mother, father, brother, and sister in the middle of the night, chopped them up to death with an axe.
[26:55.370 --> 27:03.730]  And so, Richard, who has a very dark, super f*cked up sense of humor, and was bored, he starts writing a press release.
[27:03.930 --> 27:17.050]  For immediate release, negative land have been asked by federal authorities to cancel their long-planned 17-city tour pending an investigation into the connection between the quadruple axe murders in Rochester, Minnesota, and their song, Christianity is Stupid.
[27:18.870 --> 27:26.410]  He showed this to the group, we thought this was kind of sick, kind of funny, and then we thought, well, you know, actually this is so much more interesting than the truth.
[27:27.050 --> 27:28.230]  Why don't we put this out?
[27:28.350 --> 27:29.110]  Why don't we see what happens?
[27:29.330 --> 27:35.110]  You know, instead of responding to the media in our work, why don't we actually put something into it ourselves?
[27:35.310 --> 27:37.970]  You know, feed it something and see what it does with it.
[27:38.150 --> 27:41.690]  Now, if we'd done this in the days of Google, I think it would never have gone as far as it went.
[27:41.690 --> 27:44.150]  I think you would have been able to figure it out pretty quick.
[27:44.630 --> 27:47.990]  But it showed up in a zine in California about a month later.
[27:48.790 --> 27:51.190]  A lot of the press release used pretty much verbatim.
[27:51.830 --> 28:03.610]  And, you know, claiming that there was some argument over the music or backwards masking, something that precipitated these murders because it was a devoutly religious family that were chopped up.
[28:04.430 --> 28:12.770]  And a regional arts, culture, and music magazine that covered all of the West Coast picked up the zine and they wanted to write about it.
[28:12.930 --> 28:15.310]  And so it reached a much bigger level at that point.
[28:15.430 --> 28:19.830]  And we were being interviewed and saying, how could the... this can't be true, it's gotta be a hoax.
[28:20.250 --> 28:21.110]  You know, it's ridiculous.
[28:22.990 --> 28:26.610]  And then, I was working at the time as an assistant nursery school teacher.
[28:28.370 --> 28:28.770]  And...
[28:31.070 --> 28:31.950]  Why is that funny?
[28:33.530 --> 28:35.450]  I was actually... I'm actually pretty good at it.
[28:35.450 --> 28:37.910]  You were the main teacher, not the assistant.
[28:37.930 --> 28:39.250]  I was the assistant teacher.
[28:39.450 --> 28:40.670]  I was not the main teacher.
[28:41.050 --> 28:41.410]  Yes.
[28:41.550 --> 28:46.810]  If any of you know our track Car Bomb, Car Bomb was debuted right when it was done being mixed to a room full of four-year-olds.
[28:47.490 --> 28:51.390]  And they all spontaneously dropped to the ground when the explosion sounds went on.
[28:53.570 --> 28:56.590]  I used to sing the Nesbitt's Lime Soda song with all the kids too.
[28:56.590 --> 28:58.150]  Anyway, so...
[29:00.190 --> 29:01.310]  So, I get...
[29:01.310 --> 29:06.630]  One of the administration people comes down and knocks on the door, you know, and says, Mark, can you come up to the head office?
[29:06.770 --> 29:09.130]  There's a phone call from the CBS... this CBS News guy.
[29:09.230 --> 29:09.870]  They want to talk to you.
[29:09.950 --> 29:10.530]  What is that about?
[29:11.210 --> 29:12.870]  And I said, I don't know.
[29:13.010 --> 29:14.550]  But I knew what it had to be about.
[29:14.790 --> 29:18.630]  And it was Channel 5 KPIX News, which is the CBS News affiliate in San Francisco.
[29:18.770 --> 29:22.830]  They had seen the article in this BAM magazine, the Arts and Culture magazine.
[29:22.970 --> 29:24.810]  And they wanted to talk to us about why this had happened.
[29:24.810 --> 29:32.830]  And I've never been in a situation like this in my life where it's finally, like, the regular mainstream corporate news media is knocking at my door to ask what I have to say.
[29:33.290 --> 29:37.570]  So we... I decided to... I said, no, we don't want to talk to you.
[29:37.730 --> 29:39.610]  I mean, you're just going to sensationalize this.
[29:39.750 --> 29:44.730]  People are accusing us of trying to further our career and publicize ourselves for doing this.
[29:44.830 --> 29:47.250]  And our whole lives have just been turned upside down.
[29:47.390 --> 29:49.910]  We've had to cancel our tour, lose all this money.
[29:49.910 --> 29:50.670]  It's a disaster.
[29:51.410 --> 30:00.810]  And this was just the exact right way to respond to the reporter because I think it made it completely believable because I was trying to get him to not talk to me.
[30:00.970 --> 30:03.270]  And he said, no, no, we want to tell your side of the story.
[30:03.490 --> 30:07.090]  We, you know, we're objective.
[30:07.090 --> 30:07.610]  We're fair.
[30:07.810 --> 30:09.830]  You know, we're not going to sensationalize it.
[30:09.830 --> 30:12.730]  So I reluctantly agreed that we would talk to him.
[30:13.790 --> 30:20.190]  So I then hung up the phone, called up the rest of Negativland and said, you know, oh my God, there's going to be a news van in our studio in two hours.
[30:20.310 --> 30:21.750]  We have to figure out what the hell we're going to do.
[30:22.470 --> 30:24.730]  We set up in the studio as if we were a band.
[30:24.930 --> 30:26.570]  Now, I don't think Negativland really is a band.
[30:26.690 --> 30:31.650]  We just pretend to be one because it's interesting to work, do what we do within a kind of a pop cultural context.
[30:31.790 --> 30:35.250]  We've always been very intentional about doing that.
[30:35.790 --> 30:38.250]  And so we set up as if we were a band in our studio.
[30:38.950 --> 30:43.710]  And they came over to and, you know, I knew they'd want footage of us performing and doing stuff.
[30:44.050 --> 30:50.030]  So we were, at one point, I think I was playing the bass guitar and I picked up a drumstick to play the bass guitar over the drumstick.
[30:50.710 --> 30:54.750]  Thinking, well, they'll like that because they're going to make us out to be strange weirdos, I'm sure.
[30:56.530 --> 31:10.450]  And during the interview at one point, the reporter Hal Eisner turned to Don Joyce of Negativland, who's the guy who runs the radio show Over the Edge every week that we've been on, that Phineas Narco kind of got his start in, I guess.
[31:11.010 --> 31:20.910]  And the reporter Hal Eisner said, this whole story with Negativland and this Axe Murder story is so extraordinary, it seems like it would almost have to be a hoax.
[31:21.950 --> 31:29.110]  And there was this sort of incredible pause and Don looked at the reporter and he said, it is a hoax.
[31:30.390 --> 31:32.410]  And the blood drained from the reporter's face.
[31:32.730 --> 31:34.410]  Because he had to be on the air in just a couple of hours.
[31:34.550 --> 31:36.030]  And I was sort of shocked Don said this.
[31:37.530 --> 31:39.830]  And then Don said, oh, I'm just kidding.
[31:43.490 --> 31:45.750]  So Hal Eisner was very happy to find that out.
[31:46.090 --> 31:51.230]  So anyway, we talked about, you know, how the media doesn't check their facts, how they sensationalize things.
[31:51.470 --> 31:53.150]  We were telling him, you know, on camera.
[31:53.290 --> 31:56.530]  He was saying, well, how the news media really always relies on other media.
[31:56.530 --> 32:01.350]  You know, he's not always doing their research and, you know, never knowing what would make it on the air.
[32:01.530 --> 32:06.190]  So we, we, they left.
[32:06.490 --> 32:10.910]  We went over to the TV and turned it on and began the wait to see what was going to actually happen from all of this.
[32:10.990 --> 32:12.610]  Because we just couldn't believe it had gone this far.
[32:12.810 --> 32:16.730]  Well, that night, it turned out it was a very slow news day in Northern California.
[32:16.910 --> 32:19.790]  And we were the lead story of the top of the hour.
[32:19.990 --> 32:23.730]  So let's just look at that broadcast right now.
[32:25.930 --> 32:27.650]  Boy, am I talking fast.
[32:34.860 --> 32:35.620]  That's okay.
[32:55.460 --> 32:56.320]  Good evening.
[32:56.580 --> 32:59.460]  Topping Nightcast, a possible link between murder and music.
[32:59.680 --> 33:02.560]  Music performed by a rock group right here in the Bay Area.
[33:02.880 --> 33:05.700]  Four members of a Midwestern family were murdered.
[33:05.980 --> 33:08.040]  The 16-year-old son is the prime suspect.
[33:08.240 --> 33:12.580]  Members of the experimental rock group Negativland have been drawn into the case.
[33:12.580 --> 33:17.700]  And prosecutors won't even tell them for certain that their music, how their music might be involved.
[33:17.920 --> 33:19.360]  Hal Eisner has our report.
[33:20.760 --> 33:24.860]  It was the kind of murder case that friends and neighbors said didn't make sense.
[33:25.040 --> 33:31.980]  They didn't understand how an A student from a good family could murder his brother, sister and parents with an axe.
[33:31.980 --> 33:35.100]  He was not a homicidal maniac.
[33:35.840 --> 33:41.420]  He did not show any signs of wanting to hurt anyone.
[33:41.720 --> 33:47.980]  David Brom was accused in the multiple axe slayings, but now almost three months later, many are still wondering why.
[33:47.980 --> 33:52.380]  One explanation may involve a Bay Area music group called Negativland.
[33:59.280 --> 34:04.460]  Negativland's music is highly critical of the mass media, nuclear war and handguns.
[34:04.680 --> 34:13.930]  The group thinks their music is humorous, but they don't find it a bit funny that one of their songs poking fun at religion may have sparked a dispute among the Brahms triggering the murders.
[34:13.930 --> 34:21.890]  They say federal authorities asked them to cancel a long-planned 17-city tour and eliminate live performances until the conclusion of the investigation.
[34:21.980 --> 34:26.240]  The probe apparently involved their song, Christianity is Stupid.
[34:27.720 --> 34:29.300]  Christianity is Stupid.
[34:33.930 --> 34:36.870]  It's hard to listen to the cut and not laugh.
[34:36.870 --> 34:48.320]  If you have any sense of humor at all or whatever, it's hard not to see the humor and that it would result in anything as serious as this, I think is ridiculous.
[34:48.820 --> 34:52.680]  This isn't the first time controversial music has been linked to tragedy.
[34:56.460 --> 35:01.000]  Charles Manson said his murder spree was influenced by the Beatles' Helder Skelter.
[35:01.000 --> 35:07.520]  It's believed Night Stalker suspect Richard Ramirez was influenced by ACDC's Highway to Hell album.
[35:07.820 --> 35:15.660]  An Ozzy Osbourne song, Suicide Solution, became the focal point of an actual suicide case involving a Southern California teenager.
[35:15.960 --> 35:23.320]  What you can say is that music is a bystander involved to a certain degree, but most unlikely that it generated a mayhem.
[35:23.860 --> 35:26.220]  If it did, there'd be a lot more mayhem around.
[35:26.220 --> 35:39.680]  Meanwhile, the members of Negativland are hoping for a speedy conclusion to the Brom case in Minnesota, and eventually a return to their live performances, and a career that after nine years had finally taken some positive turns.
[35:39.980 --> 35:43.080]  But a quick end to the bizarre murder case may be in doubt.
[35:43.320 --> 35:47.360]  A Minnesota judge has ruled that David Brom will face trial as a juvenile.
[35:47.680 --> 35:51.540]  The prosecutor wants Brom tried as an adult, and he's appealing.
[35:51.840 --> 35:54.800]  I'm Hal Eisner, Channel 5 Eyewitness News.
[35:54.800 --> 36:00.260]  It'll be several months before the court decides whether to try David Brom as a juvenile or an adult.
[36:00.480 --> 36:03.840]  The date for his murder trial can't be set until that decision is made.
[36:04.080 --> 36:08.280]  That means it's also not clear how long the band will be restricted from performing.
[36:17.130 --> 36:21.850]  A lot of people were watching that night on TV, including my mom and my dad.
[36:23.510 --> 36:25.290]  So I had a lot of explaining to do.
[36:25.650 --> 36:30.750]  But I know that all of you already know this stuff about the media, but it was really quite incredible to actually...
[36:30.750 --> 36:35.930]  It's one thing to kind of intellectually know it or read about it, but to actually go through it and do it and see what happens.
[36:36.070 --> 36:38.730]  It was really, you know, I recommend it to everybody.
[36:39.310 --> 36:40.710]  It was a great experience.
[36:40.710 --> 36:48.650]  And as you were laughing, you know, in the story, every time they had to talk about it, they always had to keep using this phrase, Christianity is stupid, over and over and over.
[36:49.450 --> 36:54.310]  The San Francisco Chronicle, which is the main daily paper of the Bay Area, they saw the news broadcast.
[36:54.590 --> 36:55.870]  Well, obviously the story is true.
[36:55.970 --> 36:56.990]  It was on TV.
[36:57.950 --> 36:59.510]  So they told us up.
[36:59.770 --> 37:04.290]  Richard said, we're not talking to you because we just got a rock thrown through our window and he hung up on them.
[37:04.450 --> 37:09.990]  That made it onto, which was a lie, that made it onto page three of the front page section of the paper.
[37:10.270 --> 37:12.550]  And then ultimately, we ended up on NPR.
[37:12.830 --> 37:15.030]  And at that point, we decided to actually tell the truth.
[37:16.750 --> 37:18.970]  And explain that we'd been lying to all of our fans.
[37:19.090 --> 37:26.250]  I love the idea that all of our fans have been feeling so sorry for us for all these, you know, months and months, you know, realize we'd just completely been screwing with them.
[37:26.450 --> 37:27.970]  Never trust your favorite groups.
[37:31.670 --> 37:32.470]  So, um...
[37:33.650 --> 37:34.050]  I...
[37:34.050 --> 37:47.670]  Yes, too much to go into here, but as this was evolving, we did, just in case you're wondering, we did become increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that, that while this is an incredible prank and hoax, and we were learning a lot, it also really was exploiting a real,
[37:47.850 --> 37:48.710]  true human tragedy.
[37:48.930 --> 37:56.250]  And that we did feel, you know, increasingly conflicted about that as this story spiraled out into a big, bigger and bigger spheres of, of media.
[37:56.650 --> 37:59.890]  So, we decided the responsible thing to do was to make an art project out of it.
[38:00.150 --> 38:10.850]  And so, we made a, a record, a seat, which, a record which eventually became a CD, that in honor of reporter Hal Eisner's promise to not sensationalize it, we called this record, Helter Stupid.
[38:12.390 --> 38:17.390]  So, that's a little bit of, of, of, just one little story of stuff negatively has been up to.
[38:17.510 --> 38:26.170]  The next thing we did after this was a record where, the, the U2 record, where we got sued by, uh, Island Records for trademark fraud, copyright infringement, and everything you can imagine.
[38:26.550 --> 38:29.610]  Um, so, that would be another hour and a half talk.
[38:29.890 --> 38:44.470]  Well, one of the things that we ended up doing was, uh, making a piece of audio that was using some wonderful bits, uh, and pieces from a Walt Disney film, uh, I mean, I'm sorry, Walt Disney audio, taken from a film called, uh, The Little Mermaid.
[38:44.750 --> 38:48.390]  And that was in a book that documented this whole lawsuit over the U2 single.
[38:48.510 --> 38:51.010]  It's called Fair Use, the story of the letter U and the numeral 2.
[38:51.410 --> 38:59.850]  And we made a piece that utilized The Little Mermaid, and a punk rock song from the band Black Flag, and chunks of TV shows about cor-, corruption in the music industry.
[39:00.330 --> 39:09.090]  And, um, we ended up, uh, getting to know, uh, this gentleman here, Mr. Tim Maloney, who was, um, and I'm probably going to get this story slightly wrong, because I always do.
[39:09.790 --> 39:16.690]  Um, Tim was working, uh, uh, for Walt Disney at the time in the building where they were doing the, uh, Little Mermaid Saturday morning cartoon show.
[39:17.110 --> 39:24.590]  And, uh, we really hit it off with Tim, and we had this piece we'd already made, um, with, um, with audio from The Little Mermaid.
[39:24.710 --> 39:27.290]  And we said, hey, Tim, you, you know, you work in the building.
[39:27.510 --> 39:28.590]  You have access to all their gear.
[39:28.690 --> 39:30.310]  You know how to draw The Little Mermaid.
[39:30.410 --> 39:32.510]  We should make something with you, you know?
[39:32.510 --> 39:37.730]  And so, uh, that's my segue into, uh, uh, Mr. Maloney.
[39:48.770 --> 39:49.250]  Hello.
[39:49.250 --> 39:50.210]  How are you all?
[39:50.810 --> 39:50.930]  Good.
[39:51.790 --> 39:52.990]  I've been missing you.
[39:56.490 --> 40:00.510]  Uh, yeah, and, um, hmm, what to say after that great introduction.
[40:00.890 --> 40:01.750]  He is...
[40:01.750 --> 40:03.850]  Everything you already said, yeah.
[40:04.190 --> 40:04.970]  Uh, it is true.
[40:05.150 --> 40:07.830]  I did work, uh, for the Walt Disney Company at that time.
[40:08.150 --> 40:12.070]  Uh, what Mark, uh, he usually gets that, that part right.
[40:12.070 --> 40:15.290]  About, uh, I worked in the same building that they made The Little Mermaid TV show.
[40:15.610 --> 40:20.810]  Actually, I went to purchase a, uh, readily available book called, How to Draw The Little Mermaid.
[40:21.250 --> 40:22.810]  That you can get just about anywhere.
[40:23.110 --> 40:25.910]  So that, I didn't really have any specialized knowledge other than that.
[40:26.330 --> 40:28.130]  Uh, to, to do The Little Mermaid.
[40:28.250 --> 40:29.450]  I think we should just show it, though.
[40:29.610 --> 40:31.190]  If it's, uh, possible to do that.
[40:31.990 --> 40:34.310]  But he's talking right now, so it might not happen.
[40:34.530 --> 40:36.610]  Can we show the, uh, clip?
[40:39.390 --> 40:39.990]  It's easier.
[40:40.130 --> 40:41.370]  It'll give me something to talk about.
[40:44.630 --> 40:45.070]  Sorry.
[40:45.830 --> 40:46.270]  Okay.
[40:46.630 --> 40:47.310]  I'll keep talking.
[40:59.670 --> 41:02.950]  It looks a lot like the KPIX, uh, segment.
[41:03.210 --> 41:05.050]  For the, most of it looks about the same.
[41:05.330 --> 41:07.090]  You know, uh, it's later.
[41:07.550 --> 41:07.970]  No, earlier.
[41:08.370 --> 41:08.930]  It has to be earlier.
[41:09.530 --> 41:09.970]  It has to be earlier.
[41:09.970 --> 41:10.610]  It's on the first page.
[41:12.450 --> 41:13.230]  There you go.
[41:13.650 --> 41:14.670]  There's The Little Mermaid.
[41:16.770 --> 41:17.730]  Give me...
[41:31.220 --> 41:31.460]  There you go.
[41:31.460 --> 41:31.580]  There's The Little Mermaid.
[41:32.360 --> 41:33.140]  Give me...
[41:34.240 --> 41:39.600]  When you're talking about whether it's convenience, I'm talking about over breath in this long.
[41:39.880 --> 41:41.020]  Hello, Dead Dog Records.
[41:41.500 --> 41:42.220]  I got some...
[41:45.460 --> 41:46.380]  I'm currently recording.
[41:49.310 --> 41:50.190]  Hold on a minute.
[41:50.890 --> 41:52.330]  I thought you guys are listening to everything.
[41:55.950 --> 41:56.650]  I know.
[41:59.420 --> 42:04.720]  No ability to use this for any purpose whatsoever, either for free or for money.
[42:05.000 --> 42:05.360]  You wanna...
[42:05.360 --> 42:05.840]  You wanna...
[42:05.840 --> 42:07.180]  You wanna test me in the court?
[42:07.400 --> 42:09.900]  If we did not buy ownership, we bought exclusivity.
[42:10.020 --> 42:12.160]  And if you wanna try and check me out, and...
[42:12.160 --> 42:15.320]  And you go ahead and try and do something with it, and I'm gonna sue your ass.
[42:15.580 --> 42:17.300]  You can never use it without our permission.
[42:17.500 --> 42:18.360]  Maybe he's right.
[42:18.480 --> 42:19.520]  So I sent you the check.
[42:19.760 --> 42:21.980]  I own it, or I control it.
[42:22.480 --> 42:25.120]  You can never use it for anything without my permission.
[42:25.440 --> 42:26.400]  And if you wanna...
[42:26.400 --> 42:30.380]  You wanna challenge me, we'll go to court tomorrow, and I'll prove you wrong.
[42:30.600 --> 42:31.600]  And you wanna find out?
[42:31.760 --> 42:32.200]  Let's go.
[42:32.380 --> 42:33.140]  Maybe he's right.
[42:33.320 --> 42:36.980]  I'm telling you, the facts of law and the facts of reality here.
[42:37.080 --> 42:37.400]  They'll
[42:42.940 --> 42:43.320]  sue you.
[42:43.660 --> 42:47.280]  You never use it for any purpose again, or I will sue you.
[42:49.160 --> 42:50.200]  Maybe he's right.
[42:50.320 --> 42:52.080]  I own the copyright, though.
[42:53.400 --> 42:54.800]  Go get a lawyer right now.
[42:54.900 --> 42:55.540]  Let's have it out.
[42:55.740 --> 42:58.060]  I am not gonna piss around with you about this.
[42:58.220 --> 43:00.720]  You can't use it without my permission.
[43:00.720 --> 43:02.640]  For anything, forever.
[43:03.820 --> 43:04.640]  You got it?
[43:05.440 --> 43:07.420]  You're a lawyer, cause you're gonna need one.
[43:09.640 --> 43:10.760]  Maybe he's right.
[43:11.180 --> 43:13.120]  Maybe there is something the matter with me.
[43:13.140 --> 43:14.040]  I'm gonna sue your ass.
[43:14.200 --> 43:19.340]  I just don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.
[43:19.340 --> 43:20.500]  You wanna test me in the court?
[43:20.620 --> 43:21.500]  Look at this stuff.
[43:21.580 --> 43:22.100]  I own it.
[43:22.220 --> 43:23.020]  Isn't it neat?
[43:23.200 --> 43:23.860]  I control it.
[43:23.900 --> 43:26.460]  Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
[43:26.500 --> 43:27.080]  You wanna find out?
[43:27.220 --> 43:28.940]  Wouldn't you think I'm the girl?
[43:29.120 --> 43:29.400]  Let's go.
[43:29.580 --> 43:30.420]  The girl who has...
[43:31.040 --> 43:31.420]  Let's go.
[43:31.920 --> 43:32.320]  ...everything.
[43:32.520 --> 43:33.740]  You can never use it without our permission.
[43:33.820 --> 43:34.700]  Look at this troll.
[43:34.840 --> 43:35.300]  I own it.
[43:35.540 --> 43:36.600]  Treasure's untold.
[43:36.940 --> 43:39.900]  How many wonders can one cavern hold?
[43:40.080 --> 43:40.440]  I'm telling you.
[43:40.540 --> 43:42.180]  Looking around here you think.
[43:42.320 --> 43:42.800]  I own it.
[43:42.900 --> 43:43.240]  Sure.
[43:44.040 --> 43:45.260]  She's got everything.
[43:45.820 --> 43:46.280]  You can't use it.
[43:46.280 --> 43:46.320]  Please.
[43:46.560 --> 43:49.060]  I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty.
[43:49.160 --> 43:50.160]  And you wanna challenge me.
[43:50.280 --> 43:52.760]  I've got who's-its and what's-its galore.
[43:53.100 --> 43:53.820]  I'm gonna sue your ass.
[43:54.000 --> 43:55.040]  You want thingamabobs?
[43:55.060 --> 43:55.760]  Yeah, I'll get a lawyer.
[43:55.920 --> 43:56.520]  I got 20.
[43:57.460 --> 43:58.920]  But who cares?
[43:59.480 --> 44:00.720]  No big deal.
[44:02.180 --> 44:03.800]  I want more.
[44:14.300 --> 44:14.800]  Got it.
[44:16.760 --> 44:17.240]  Yes.
[44:17.560 --> 44:18.020]  Oh, okay.
[44:18.880 --> 44:19.740]  How about that?
[44:19.780 --> 44:20.580]  I'm gonna be copied.
[44:20.720 --> 44:21.460]  I'm gonna be copied.
[44:21.940 --> 44:23.620]  Go get a lawyer right now.
[44:23.760 --> 44:24.500]  Let's hop it out.
[44:26.480 --> 44:27.560]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:27.560 --> 44:29.960]  I am not for- I need some more.
[44:31.180 --> 44:32.320]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:33.420 --> 44:34.560]  Don't ask what for.
[44:34.640 --> 44:35.960]  Pitch around with you about this.
[44:36.120 --> 44:37.120]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:37.420 --> 44:37.880]  For anything.
[44:38.280 --> 44:39.380]  I need some more.
[44:39.560 --> 44:39.860]  For whatever.
[44:40.600 --> 44:41.760]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:42.020 --> 44:42.540]  For anything.
[44:42.860 --> 44:44.080]  Don't ask what for.
[44:44.400 --> 44:44.760]  For whatever.
[44:45.280 --> 44:46.480]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:46.800 --> 44:47.360]  For anything.
[44:47.560 --> 44:48.740]  I need some more.
[44:48.920 --> 44:49.320]  For whatever.
[44:49.940 --> 44:51.140]  Gimme, gimme, gimme.
[44:51.440 --> 44:51.960]  For whatever.
[44:52.220 --> 44:53.440]  Don't ask what for.
[44:53.860 --> 44:54.340]  You don't know.
[44:54.340 --> 44:55.880]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[44:56.800 --> 44:58.160]  Need some more!
[44:59.160 --> 45:00.480]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:01.460 --> 45:02.860]  Need some more!
[45:03.880 --> 45:05.240]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:06.160 --> 45:07.540]  Need some more!
[45:08.740 --> 45:09.860]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:10.880 --> 45:12.240]  Need some more!
[45:13.140 --> 45:13.560]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:13.560 --> 45:13.560]  Need some more!
[45:13.560 --> 45:13.560]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:13.560 --> 45:13.560]  Don't ask before!
[45:13.560 --> 45:14.660]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:14.840 --> 45:16.880]  Need some more!
[45:17.900 --> 45:19.220]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:19.640 --> 45:21.380]  Don't ask before!
[45:21.840 --> 45:23.380]  Gimme, gimme, gimme!
[45:28.960 --> 45:30.640]  To try...
[45:33.100 --> 45:46.960]  From the back of modernism and all this international law to make profit out of his own ungenerosity to humankind.
[45:50.140 --> 45:50.880]  There you go.
[45:54.860 --> 46:01.140]  So, of course, by day, I would make cartoons for small children.
[46:01.660 --> 46:05.660]  And then when 5 o'clock came around, I would work on this until I collapsed.
[46:05.860 --> 46:09.700]  And then overnight on Disney's computers, this would be rendering.
[46:12.420 --> 46:19.320]  Which I guess is... I guess that's somewhat subversive, but it was just whatever I had available at the moment.
[46:20.060 --> 46:27.080]  It's interesting because, you know, the title of this panel, of course, being the intersection of hacktivism, culture jamming, those sorts of things.
[46:27.340 --> 46:33.800]  And it's interesting, as you hear everyone talk about the work that they do and what they're involved with, you can see there's sort of a spectrum.
[46:34.480 --> 46:38.770]  Everyone's interested in different things along the way, different ways in which this stuff works.
[46:39.180 --> 46:45.220]  I tend to find myself on the sort of art end of the spectrum rather than the activism end of the spectrum.
[46:45.420 --> 46:53.540]  I'm just one of those people that's sort of curious to see what happens when you stick two things together, when you put something and try to make it work with itself.
[46:53.750 --> 46:59.160]  It's the same impulse that you saw in the KPIX piece, after all.
[46:59.300 --> 47:10.120]  You know, equating Manson with, you know, the situation with Negativland is certainly, you know, all about making some sort of juxtaposition between the two things and creating some sort of connection.
[47:10.300 --> 47:15.460]  But it's, of course, a different mindset that gives you that versus the work that we've done here.
[47:15.680 --> 47:17.680]  So it's, it's kind of like trying it on for yourself.
[47:17.900 --> 47:19.920]  What will happen when I put these things together?
[47:20.040 --> 47:25.380]  What will happen if I, if I put source, different sources together and try to get some sort of effect out of it?
[47:25.540 --> 47:33.250]  So after working with Negativland on that piece, I think it was after, wasn't it?
[47:33.320 --> 47:35.560]  Or somehow kind of the same time.
[47:35.680 --> 47:37.040]  It was all sort of happening at the same time.
[47:37.220 --> 47:44.320]  I became involved with the Snuggles Collective, as you can see the graphic here displaying.
[47:44.820 --> 47:58.770]  This, of course, was a mailing list that was originally devoted to discussing the works of Negativland, but, and still does that to this day, but begin to change somewhat as we became, the members of the list became more and more interested in the subject,
[47:59.020 --> 48:04.520]  more and more interested in creating work themselves, more and more interested in doing projects of their own.
[48:05.660 --> 48:13.600]  And there had been a few sort of list-oriented projects before, tape trading, cassette tapes made of everyone's work that had been passed around.
[48:14.040 --> 48:19.800]  But eventually the, the drop lift project came into being.
[48:21.400 --> 48:24.600]  Drop lifting is, of course, a pun on the word shoplifting.
[48:25.560 --> 48:37.400]  Richard Holland of the Institute of Sonic Ponderance coined the term when he would burn his own CDs of work that he had done, then go into chain stores and drop them into the bins.
[48:38.580 --> 48:43.700]  Ostensibly so that someone would come along and find them and hopefully attempt to buy them.
[48:44.820 --> 48:54.290]  They, of course, had no barcodes or prices or anything on them at all, but, and, and Richard would sort of scatter these like seeds, not really knowing what would happen to them, where they would go.
[48:54.940 --> 48:56.380]  Sometimes it would be a postcard in them.
[48:56.900 --> 49:01.540]  People might send the postcard back to him saying that they found it somewhere or got it somewhere.
[49:01.720 --> 49:03.960]  And we thought, this is the perfect thing.
[49:04.200 --> 49:07.880]  This is the perfect device for distributing our work.
[49:09.420 --> 49:12.680]  Interesting to note because it simply can't be done anymore.
[49:13.840 --> 49:17.500]  Time has changed and we don't really have the chain music stores that we used to.
[49:17.600 --> 49:26.580]  It's not really quite as possible to go in with a few CDs in a, you know, in a purse or a bag or a pouch and in your pocket and we'll put them back in the bin.
[49:27.320 --> 49:29.770]  I don't think... Can you do that anymore here?
[49:29.920 --> 49:30.340]  Does anyone know?
[49:30.340 --> 49:30.840]  Not really.
[49:31.060 --> 49:42.770]  I think also another aspect of it, um, speaking as someone who contributed to track to DropLift and also, um, my servers host, uh, the DropLift website in which the album and the artwork are available for download.
[49:42.770 --> 49:44.200]  Actually, you can check it out.
[49:44.440 --> 49:47.920]  Another thing I think that has changed is also just sampling in general.
[49:48.420 --> 49:50.940]  Um, and, and Mark touched on this briefly.
[49:51.160 --> 49:57.120]  Sampling in general is less, uh, radical, uh, these days than it was at the time.
[49:57.300 --> 50:06.980]  And, and we constructed all of the songs on the CD, uh, by sampling, uh, commercial, uh, advertisements, uh, pop music.
[50:07.620 --> 50:16.580]  And, and sort of at the time, this is when sort of file sharing was just about starting to spring up and all of these things with sampling and the courts and everything were happening.
[50:16.800 --> 50:24.100]  Um, and I think that has changed also to where now there's public, you know, you can get mashups of Britney Spears and all this other stuff.
[50:24.120 --> 50:26.660]  So it's definitely changed in that regard also.
[50:26.790 --> 50:31.840]  But I'm going to disagree on that a little bit though, because both those guys were talking about, okay, it's easier.
[50:32.060 --> 50:32.500]  That's true.
[50:32.640 --> 50:35.270]  But a funny juxtaposition is still a funny juxtaposition.
[50:35.290 --> 50:35.880]  Yeah, I don't mean to...
[50:35.880 --> 50:37.100]  And not everyone can do that.
[50:37.300 --> 50:45.460]  So, uh, it, it may be that the tools are more common and it may be that everyone has them, but, uh, interesting work still rises.
[50:45.920 --> 50:54.160]  And, uh, in fact, the democratization of, uh, sampling tools, if anything, has allowed more people to try their hand at it.
[50:54.580 --> 50:58.790]  I mean, I still think, yes, we have a hundred billion, thousand million videos on YouTube.
[50:58.980 --> 51:02.560]  How many of those are videos that we would watch again and again?
[51:02.620 --> 51:03.600]  Besides the cat ones.
[51:03.750 --> 51:09.770]  I know we want to watch the cat ones again and again, but besides that, I mean, how many would we actually watch again and again?
[51:09.980 --> 51:11.300]  And it's a very small number.
[51:11.420 --> 51:14.720]  I mean, it might be a different number for everyone here, so maybe that's good as well.
[51:15.180 --> 51:21.200]  But, uh, just the fact that it's more common now, I mean, I still think a lot of the tracks in the droplift project sort of hold up.
[51:21.400 --> 51:23.580]  It's interesting, uh, what's on there still.
[51:23.770 --> 51:25.790]  It certainly has its historical context.
[51:26.020 --> 51:28.000]  This was 2000 when we put the disc out.
[51:28.540 --> 51:36.620]  Uh, interesting at that time also because I don't know of too many projects, uh, then that were, um, organized quite the same way.
[51:36.790 --> 51:37.840]  Nobody had met each other.
[51:38.420 --> 51:40.520]  Uh, we all worked through the mailing list.
[51:40.700 --> 51:44.900]  The tracks were all contributed by, uh, some were mailed, a lot of them were FTP'd.
[51:45.440 --> 51:50.120]  Uh, uh, the disc was sort of, uh, designed and organized, uh, by a group of people.
[51:50.250 --> 51:55.320]  And then when it was together, we all pitched in money to produce the CD as a physical object.
[51:55.460 --> 51:56.180]  How many did you make?
[51:56.620 --> 51:57.140]  A thousand.
[51:57.560 --> 51:57.680]  Okay.
[51:57.920 --> 52:00.360]  So, uh, it's a fairly small number because we're broke.
[52:01.000 --> 52:08.840]  Uh, but, uh, those thousand were distributed across, uh, the United States and other territories and, uh, abroad as well.
[52:08.920 --> 52:11.800]  There were several in Europe by now, several droplifters.
[52:12.360 --> 52:15.520]  So, uh, entirely coordinated, uh, through the mailing list.
[52:15.520 --> 52:18.460]  So, um, yes.
[52:18.940 --> 52:19.660]  Keep going.
[52:20.060 --> 52:20.400]  Okay.
[52:21.680 --> 52:22.290]  All right.
[52:22.420 --> 52:23.790]  Let's look at that website, shall we?
[52:24.270 --> 52:24.440]  Oops.
[52:30.130 --> 52:30.910]  There we go.
[52:31.570 --> 52:34.070]  We're seeing the website, which by the way is still active.
[52:34.070 --> 52:42.770]  And, uh, if you are interested, all those tracks, uh, of course are still available and still in the public domain for continual consumption.
[52:42.990 --> 52:53.170]  Uh, you know, we were at that time also encouraging people to download the tracks, to burn a copy of the CD themselves, to drop lift it themselves, uh, and instructions for how to do that on the site as well.
[52:53.650 --> 53:03.530]  Uh, so we were trying to, uh, since we knew we could only manufacture a small number of them, we were trying to get other people interested in the project enough that they might also, uh, burn a copy, send a copy.
[53:03.650 --> 53:15.830]  To this day, I still get, uh, people requesting the disc and requesting a burn of the disc or requesting me to tell them about the project, which is sort of odd because it is now 2008.
[53:16.290 --> 53:21.610]  So the project is a, is a bit, is a bit on the old and creaky side, I think right now.
[53:21.750 --> 53:27.510]  You should probably mention the, the meme aspect of it and the fact that we did get mentioned in the mainstream media, uh, quite a bit actually.
[53:27.930 --> 53:28.070]  Yeah.
[53:28.350 --> 53:30.590]  We got mentioned in the mainstream media quite a bit apparently.
[53:31.470 --> 53:33.650]  Well, we made it in, uh, NPR.
[53:34.170 --> 53:35.130]  Someone was on NPR.
[53:35.530 --> 53:40.390]  We, uh, were also mentioned in Rolling Stone magazine and, uh, several other news interviews.
[53:40.510 --> 53:47.750]  If you go to the website, there's actually several press, uh, uh, items up there, audio and text and also video.
[53:47.950 --> 53:49.490]  And people also videotaped.
[53:49.850 --> 53:51.630]  Tim, you videotaped yourself.
[53:51.790 --> 53:52.110]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[53:52.190 --> 53:52.750]  Drop lifting.
[53:53.190 --> 53:58.730]  Uh, so people actually videotaped themselves as they were dropping the discs into the bins in these chain stores.
[53:58.990 --> 54:04.870]  That's sort of a how to, you know, show you how it is that you walk in with it concealed and show you how you file it properly.
[54:05.150 --> 54:09.390]  And I think mine was after Dropkick Murphys, I think was the name of a band.
[54:09.610 --> 54:12.150]  So that was an alphabetically I had to file it that way.
[54:12.490 --> 54:15.910]  Uh, yeah, we did get some, uh, coverage from mainstream media here and there.
[54:16.010 --> 54:25.790]  I know I gave a number of interviews and I know I sound like a babbling idiot right now, but I sounded better on the radio because they can edit and they did as much as they could to make me sound like I knew what I was talking about.
[54:25.970 --> 54:28.570]  So, uh, some of those things are on the site as well.
[54:28.750 --> 54:44.670]  So, um, yeah, uh, and with obviously with an interest in, uh, that project, uh, with the snuggles, uh, collective, uh, decided to organize themselves for a second, uh, project, which of course was the free speech for sale project.
[54:45.230 --> 54:48.630]  Did you want me to talk about this or do you want to pass it on to another person?
[54:50.210 --> 54:51.410]  And your timing too.
[54:51.570 --> 54:51.950]  That's good.
[54:53.210 --> 54:57.050]  So free speech for sale was sort of a follow up on the droplet project.
[54:57.110 --> 55:02.490]  Uh, I think a couple of years later, uh, very similar in the way that that was put together.
[55:02.970 --> 55:15.770]  Uh, once again, uh, tracks from those who are interested, uh, the same way that the money was sort of collected by, uh, people who by now a couple of them had met, I guess, but it's still a kind of a remote project, uh, in that regard.
[55:16.090 --> 55:18.590]  Um, free speech.
[55:18.830 --> 55:18.910]  Hmm.
[55:18.910 --> 55:23.090]  So why don't we let, um, yeah, I was going to say, why don't we, why don't we pass the torch here on this?
[55:23.410 --> 55:30.190]  So, um, Kumquat, would you like to contribute a little bit about, uh, your involvement with free speech and droplift?
[55:30.410 --> 55:32.610]  Well, and droplift and free speech and snuggles in general.
[55:33.030 --> 55:33.430]  Okay.
[55:33.590 --> 55:35.550]  Finer minds than mine are going to take over at this point.
[55:35.670 --> 55:36.050]  So thank you.
[55:46.640 --> 55:47.240]  Thank you.
[55:47.400 --> 55:47.780]  Hi everybody.
[55:47.980 --> 55:53.120]  I'm Fred Church and, uh, I am from an electronic act called Kumquat.
[55:53.380 --> 55:56.380]  Uh, one of the acts that was on the, uh, drop lift project.
[55:57.140 --> 56:01.500]  And, uh, I have this thing with, with me today, which is a digital audio recorder.
[56:01.940 --> 56:03.000]  It's got high quality