For inspiration: Frozen Grand Central Station, a flashmob intervention by “Improv Everywhere”.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo[/youtube]
There’s already a hint on ‘blind spots’ of specific media:
“Another thing we learned at the Home Depot mission is that it’s really tough to convey this idea through photographs. Everyone is frozen in place in a photo.”
– Charlie Todd (2008), founder of “Improv Everywhere”
We don’t expect a photograph to move – do we?
Culture is a medium, and a medium, as any other media, will become ‘visible’ if it stops working. So, what if nearly everybody else starts acting… strange? As Voltaire stated:
“Madness we call the illness of the brain, that keeps a man necessarily from thinking and acting like the others.”
– Voltaire quoted in Foucault (1977), „Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft“, S.176, translation by Tan
“The others” – these are today encountered in new media.
“If there’s nothing wrong with me… maybe there’s something wrong with the universe!”
– Dr. Crusher (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”, “Remember Me”)
Another nice intervention of Improv Everywhere, this time decisively dealing with a social blind spot. In the expensive vacational area of Aspen, Colorado, there are only 0.44% afroamericans…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyRwrrggxok[/youtube]
http://improveverywhere.com/2012/02/06/meet-a-black-person/
