Blog of Wade Making Connexions

Living in Our World

Everywhere, I’m bombarded with either advertising or sterility. Where’s the real? Where’s the human? Where’s the living? This post looks at both sides under the microscope, with photos along the way. It also offers answers to bunk reasons, and puts forward alternative scenarios.

Most shopping centres now have TV’s above escalators playing ads that no one asked for, that no one wants to watch. How did this happen? How is this allowed to happen?

Slowly, but surely, everywhere something can be stuck up or hung down, advertising is creeping in. I’m sure the centres get paid well for it too. 100,000’s of eyeballs a year in a place where there’s no other distractions. I’ve even started seeing TV’s inside individual shops advertising.

TV top right (under letters ket) advertising to all their customers.

 
Why have we allowed this encroachment into our lives? Shopping centres cover their costs by renting out shop space. ¹ It’s not like we watch them feeling bad for the shops. It’s just one more thing to screen out.

If we don’t stand up for our rights, we will lose them. No one seems to be keeping the advertising companies ‘in check’. At the thought of a bit of extra cash, private, and public companies alike sell out.

Bigpond bomb Cityrail’s Martin Place station, all walls, roof, and floor with advertisements

 
Public services like Cityrail sometimes have whole stations covered in single cohesive advertising campaigns. Cityrail is run by the State Government. Users pay for trains and stations. How Government services are able to subject paying users to stations bombed with advertising, I have no idea. It should be illegal everywhere, but then super even more illegal for public services.

An online Ad by City of Sydney warning about fines for putting stickers up

 
The contrast to this advertising everywhere, is sterility. Plain trains, plain walls, plain signs. Anywhere that something is put up, anywhere where someone tries to show human expression of any form. It’s removed. There can’t be any show of humans living in the environment.

This is often covered up with ‘environmental damage, and eventual economic cost’ as the result of what happens if work is left up. Utter bullshit, as expanded upon below. The other frequent reason given is we wouldn’t want to offend the masses. Everything must be politically correct. I don’t understand why everything is so unbalanced, either all advertising or nothing at all. Why can’t there be some of everything. Go the middle way. Some of everything is equally politically correct as nothing, but it also honours everything in the process.

The underlying reason for the removal of any act of creation probably comes back to the Broken Windows Theory and the resulting police policies from 1980’s New York City. The theory goes:

“one example of disorder, like graffiti or littering, can indeed encourage another, like stealing.”

An example of graffiti ‘disorder’ by Futura 2000 in New York City. An example of community-generated themed trains

 
Unfortunately this theory has never really been proven, but it’s not stopped implementation by most major cities/countries around the world. It’s a case of Security Theater, allowing Government to be seen To Be Doing Something. It may even be about lowering unemployment, by hiring people for the most meaningless of tasks. That’s speculation. Anyhow, back to a living case of bullshit.

Newtown is probably Sydney’s most ‘alive’ as well as Left-leaning suburb. It’s full of creatives and humans. It’s a place where anything goes, a rarity in Sydney. In Newtown People sticker, paste, stencil, graffiti and even knit things up in Newtown. People create and share their art on the streets. It feels nice to see personal expression. Newtown is famous for it’s culture and community. Without sharing, there’s no culture or community.

An example of a paste up in Newtown. The kind of thing the council likes to take down, or fine you for putting up²

 
Yet Newtown council goes around every few weeks buffing (removing), everything. Resetting the city to start again.

Stickers and pasties don’t damage the environment, taking them down does. The council is now employing people to remove the stickers. When the stickers and pasties are “buffed”, they have to be disposed of. There’s direct costs of hiring staff to take stickers down, but there’s also hidden costs. There’s the transportation and disposal costs to be looked at as well. Disposal is most probably land fill which is already over flowing.

Once the signs are all cleaned, the cycle begins again. More paper and chemicals are used to get new stickers and pasties up. Then a few weeks later, the council’s people come by again and repeat their buffing. These people could be freed up to plant trees, remove rubbish, or perhaps fix the drains, roads, or other failing public services. Instead they lead a cyclic life of removing stickers from poles and signs.

If they council let the city evolve, eventually there’d be nowhere for new stickers to go up. This leaves the options of either no creation, recycling what’s already there, or creating a mash up. All of these options are ‘better’ than having them professionally removed.

An example of what happens if you let people paint on walls.³

 
Sydney council, with all areas combined, would spend over a million dollars a year on trying to develop culture that lasts for a few weeks and is removed. An example of this is Newtown’s 2042. There’s real humans in the city who wish to create and share. Instead we get the fake version. The people want to create their own culture, but it’s unauthorised, so instead we get blank walls, and “No one takes photos of blank walls”.

Let those who have a voice, and wish to speak speak. For those who don’t like it, the same options are out there, let them develop a voice and reply. Let the city be a dialogue between it’s citizens instead of being dull and lifeless, where any form of expression is quickly removed as to not allow people to be inspired to create.

In Summary, on both sides, advertising, and human expression, humans are losing out. We are being sold out and fenced off. The single purpose of a city seems to be economic growth. Cities are a collection of people with thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, and a myriads of factors. We’ve accepted being silenced for so long, most don’t know what it could or should be like.

Movements like Reclaim the Streets and Critical Mass are global movements in the right direction, yet they failed to take off here. There’s limited time, we all lead busy lives. Thing is, the longer we leave it to start re-humanising our environment, the harder it gets. As much as I’d love this to be a call to arms post, it’s moreso a what the fuck. I’m doing what I can to balance the score, are you?

Perhaps Newtown needs to hear the message in light..
http://zacislost.blogspot.com/2007/06/laser-tagging.html
http://zacislost.blogspot.com/2008/10/guerilla-vjing.html

And in relation to annoying TV’s blasting us from every angle, ever seen the TV-be-gone gadgets? Very cool for a silent anti-commercialism protest. Saw a cool instructable recently where a girl had sewn the parts into a jacket for ultra covert ninja annoyingness.

Hi Zac, I’ve seen both of those forms of light interaction before. Lots of cool stuff. Town Hall has a project running on it over December each year. Also pretty cool.

If I wasn’t moving to the US in Feb, I’d already own a TV-B-Gone. They are awesome. Perhaps you could/should take
up the mantle here?

Thanks for the comment.

Peace,

Wade

Well written, Wade.

Thank you Commander. I hope your case goes well.

Peace,

Wade

Hey Wade, Interesting piece. I agree with your sentiments regarding what I like to call urban art. It would best be left alone and to my eye looks better than the walls it covers in most instances. But with regards to advertising I don’t get your point. As far as I know adverts are not created by machines, they’re created by humans and so are as much a form of human expression as any other form of urban art or graffiti. Just like graffiti, adverts can be good, bad, original, clever, boring etc I get a lot of enjoyment from advertising (and it saves me a lot of money - my bus trip would be a lot more expensive if it wasn’t for adverising and I’d hate having to pay for Firefox and Google and various other softwares). I certainly don’t feel like advertising has encroached on my freedom. As far as I know I am still free to ignore them. The erosion of freedom happens when bills are passed that allows government agencies to detain people on suspicion of terrorism or when security guards prevent people from photographing buildings from public places or when people like Ankle are treated like criminals. Advertising doesn’t force me to do something or prevent me from doing anything. Also I don’t feel it is a chore to “screen them out”. In your first photo of the tv in the supermarket, the tv is hardly noticable in that wild array of colours and textures surrounding it. As for Martin Place Station, well, I like the colours and the images and the graphics. Somebody created those images and somebody selected them and put them together. There’s talent in those activities and for all I know the people involved may have been feeling very creative and may have had as much emotional attachment to their work as an urban artist. It’s not for me to judge.
But perhaps I am naive or perhaps it’s a matter of perspective.

Hey Cedric,

Thanks for your comments. It’s great to see another point of view on Advertising.

“The primary function of advertising in business is to sell or to help sell.”

Adverts can never be good. If it is, it’s not advertising. The clever ads, the witty or colourful ads, all serve a purpose to play on something, to inject something into your brain, trying to influence your purchasing decisions.

A primary method of propaganda is repetition of bright/juxtaposed colours. Martin Place’s colourful setup is corporate propaganda. It may look pretty, but it’s trying to brain wash you.

The thing with software advertising, it’s a choice, you, the user, has accepted. It’s also contextually specific. That’s the whole thing with Google. It’s relevant, and choice to use the site.

There’s many different ways and degrees of freedom erosion. You’re right there’s MUCH bigger issues in the world. The whole system is out of whack. There’s around 500 BILLIONS dollars a year spent on trying to make we the people feel bad, or influence us. Money that could be spent on anything from make better products, lowering the price of products (it’s the consumer who ultimately pays for marketing), or something totally different.

You maybe free to ignore them, but that’s their side of this. Of course you are free to ignore them. But did you ASK to see them? Also, by the time you’ve chosen to ignore an Ad, you’ve already processed it subconsciously. Good Ads attack/work on the sub conscious level, they are not meant to be seen. They are meant to be absorbed. Which is why they are everywhere.

Each year the average person is exposed to ONE MILLION ads. (http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Advertising_is_Brain_Damage.html). That’s one Million things you didn’t ask to see, that have a purpose, other than to cheer you up or keep you amused.

Advertising maybe creative, it maybe emotional, it may look pretty, but it’s purpose is to sell, and that’s fucked.

Peace,

Wade

I would say that the only function of advertising was to sell. There is no other reason.
But using terms like brain-washing and propaganda verges on paranoia don’t you think? I can assure you that the real process of brain-washing someone is extremely complex and time consuming and is only effective on certain personality types. After all if it was easy to brain-wash people we would see many positive applications of this technique but of course we don’t because it is far too difficult.
At best, advertising will influence your choice when it comes time for you to make a choice in buying a product. For example if you decide to connect to the internet, you may recall, consciously or not, certain adverts about this. These may or may not have an influence on the final choice. But no advertising campaign will make you get internet access if you don’t care to have it. I am sure companies would love for it to work this way but it doesn’t. In fact many studies have shown that the single most effective way of selling a product is word-of-mouth. All companies can hope for with advertising is that you will remember their products when you come to need or want something. Oh and ‘want’ is not something that adverts create either. The purely human trait of ‘want’ is deeply rooted in human nature and has been a part of humanity for as long as humans have been around which was long before advertising was born. So ‘want’ can’t be pinned on adverts. But that’s a whole separate topic.
A lot of money is spent on advertising because it is effective in keeping a brand name active in the market place. And that is important for many reasons other than profit margins to companies. Companies succeed by selling products. Success encourages research and development which leads to progress. Sure not all progress is good but for the most part it is. I don’t know about you but I am glad I have a washing machine to do my laundry and electricity to light my home and shops in which to buy my food and clothes and music players to fill my ears and cameras to capture moments… Competition, for better or for worse has given us the things we enjoy and the things that free up our time so that we may spend it at leisure to… well, write blog posts and comments for example. It may be that my choice of washing machine or electricity provider was influenced by advertising but all choices are based on something. It is quite certain that none of us can make a pure and free choice. That is the nature of being human. All choices are based on memories which may be true or false. It’s difficult to calibrate most memories.
As for the question of eroded freedom. We each of us build our own prison walls. For some these walls are scalable and for some they are insurmountable. They’re usually built out of beliefs and to break them down they only need to be seen for what they really are. I once met someone who was blind and quadriplegic. He was missing most of his lower jaw and his body was severly contorted. I was there one day when someone asked him if he ever longed to be free of his condition. Using a special board to communicate he replied that he would need to feel imprisoned before he found a need to be free. For an example closer to our current topic, I also once met a woman who’d lived her life in the old U.S.S.R. One of the comments she made during her first visit to the west was about billboards. She thought it wonderful that she was being made aware of all the things that were available. She saw advertising as a service and I am quite sure that she would have been quite puzzled by the notion that advertising reduced your freedom.
Just because you didn’t ask to see something it does not mean it impinges on your freedom.
And while we may well be exposed to one million ads (I just love the way these numbers are thrown around), we’re also exposed to a zillion (hey, I can blow things out of proportion too) natural things too. Trees, birds, insects, leaves, clouds, people, rain, seeds, pollen, animals, fog, rainbows, sand, dirt, flowers, rocks, mountains, oceans… anyway you get the idea. The one million ads are easily offset by a miryad of other things. Even in a train station. It just comes down to one’s nature which in turns affects one’s perspective.
I recall an article about the evil influence of violent music and how it was brain-washing the youth into commiting violence. Someone responded (it may have been Bono, I don’t remember) that if music could do such a thing then the world would be a peaceful and loving place because far more songs have been written about love than any other topic.
Advertising is just that. Anything we choose to see in it is of our own making.

Cheers.

thats a very insightful response cedric
i enjoyed reading it