Copy of Remix 6: The Pixel Resistance Part II

Art As Solution:

“The old world is dying…

but as artists, we get to decide what the new world will be like."

The systems we inherited (data systems, AI systems, surveillance systems) were never built for us. These systems are breaking, collapsing, glitching under their own weight. Don't forget in all the fear that collapse creates space. And in that space, artists — not corporations, not technologists — are the ones with the cultural imagination, emotional intelligence, and radical vision to define what comes next.

It’s profoundly in line with your mission for this project:

• Art as critical intervention

• Artists as culture reprogrammers

• Subversion as necessary literacy

• AI as both problem and raw material

The final message is literally what I’ve been saying all semester:

If artists don’t engage with AI critically, others will build the future for us. But if we DO engage — creatively, disruptively — we get to shape it.

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Performance & Protest:

What are your thoughts?

Artist Examples:

What are your thoughts?

Martha Rosler

House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, 1967–72

Martha Rosler’s War Series is a powerful collection of photomontages that addresses the devastation of war and its portrayal in the media. Initially created in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War and later expanded in response to the Iraq War in the early 2000s, the series critiques American military interventions and the sanitized way war is often presented to the public.

Overview of War Series

1. Medium and Technique: Rosler uses photomontage to create jarring juxtapositions, combining disparate images to produce thought-provoking contrasts and surreal scenes, often placing war imagery in American domestic spaces.

2. Themes and Messages: The War Series highlights the contrast between American home comfort and the brutal realities of war, questioning public detachment from global conflicts and media's role in downplaying war horrors.

3. Vietnam and Iraq War Connections: Rosler's War Series addresses issues of media censorship and public perception during the Vietnam War and Iraq War, showing parallels in how wars are covered and perceived.

4. Impact and Legacy: Rosler's War Series remains a critical commentary on war commodification and media mediation, forcing viewers to confront their roles in perpetuating conflicts and highlighting the media's influence on public perception.

Artistic and Cultural Significance

Rosler’s War Series exemplifies her use of art as activism. By remixing familiar scenes with unsettling war imagery, she challenges viewers to consider their complicity and awareness in global events. The series has been influential in anti-war and feminist art, and her technique of photomontage has inspired other artists working within social and political realms.

What are your thoughts?

Barbara Kruger

• Appropriation: Kruger uses images from mass media, combined with bold text, to critique power structures. Her work often involves appropriation of both imagery and slogans from advertising.

  
  

What are your thoughts?

Tom Sachs

Remix, Appropriation: Sachs creates sculptures and installations using branded objects and materials (like Chanel, NASA, or McDonald’s) in ways that critique consumer culture and the fetish.

"I’ve always admired and appreciated Chanel but I couldn’t really rock it because it wasn’t for men. I started to try and use that brand in my art and bring it into my life as a way of participating; I put Chanel logos on things when I wanted to make them more powerful and give them more authority. I’m also interested in how sexy Chanel makes my wife look but also how its advertising contributes to her body dysmorphia, and that she is both aware of yet victimized by it. This is something that has been plaguing me my whole life: the effect advertising has over our self-image. Even though we understand that, we continue to be part of the addiction and contribute to its power."

What are your thoughts?

Robert Colescot

• Revisionist: Robert Colescott was an American painter known for his provocative and bold works that critiqued issues of race, identity, and the American experience, often using humor and parody to challenge conventional narratives. Colescott's art is marked by its remix of historical art traditions, particularly European painting, as well as its revisionist approach to the portrayal of Black identity in the context of Western art history.

• Parody as Critique: One of Colescott’s most notable strategies was his use of parody, taking iconic paintings from art history—especially works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Eugène Delacroix—and reimagining them with Black figures and contemporary themes. His work remixes classical compositions with subversive twists, often blending elements of African American culture and history with the European art canon to critique the exclusion of Black artists and narratives in the mainstream art world. For example, in his reworking of The Death of Sardanapalus (1983), Colescott replaces the original figures with exaggerated depictions of Black bodies, bringing forward issues of race and power in ways that disrupt traditional interpretations.

• Revealing truth: Through these revisionist interventions, Colescott not only addressed the ways in which Black Americans had been historically misrepresented, but also pointed to the limitations of Eurocentric artistic conventions. His work engaged with the idea of reclaiming and redefining space within an art historical context that often marginalized or ignored African American voices. The playful yet pointed nature of his compositions, infused with a sharp wit, invited viewers to rethink the complexities of race, history, and representation in both art and society.

• Overall, Robert Colescott's work serves as a critical, remixed reflection on the dynamics of race and representation, using parody to question and critique historical and contemporary portrayals of Black identity in art and culture.

What are your thoughts?

AI specific examples of art that makes real world change:

Stephanie Dinkins is a groundbreaking artist who uses storytelling, community collaboration, and hands-on tech building to challenge the racial bias baked into AI systems. Instead of just critiquing these systems from the outside, she worked directly with young programmers of color to build Project al-Khwarizmi (PAK) — a chatbot designed to help their own communities understand how algorithms shape daily life. By teaching youth how AI works, empowering them to design their own tools, and centering Black family histories in projects like her AI-driven oral-history piece Not the Only One, Dinkins has shown that communities traditionally excluded from tech can and should shape the future of intelligent systems. Her work has had real-world impact: it has influenced conversations in AI ethics, informed equity-focused tech curricula, and inspired cultural institutions, universities, and tech organizations to rethink who gets to participate in building AI—and whose stories get coded into the machine.

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More examples for your research:

We don't have a lot of history to look to for artists who are subverting AI and making real world change, because they are just starting to bubble up as we speak-- This is presently ripe for the picking! But we can look to the history of Internet and social media to see some similar examples of artists subverting tech for real world change.

✅ 1. Joy Buolamwini — “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?” → major corporate policy changes

Artist / poet / computer scientistOutcome: Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft halted or rewrote facial recognition programs.

Joy’s poetic video artwork “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?” exposed how facial recognition systems performed terribly on darker-skinned women (Serena Williams, Oprah, Michelle Obama).The video went viral in art, tech, and policy circles — and her organization Algorithmic Justice League was born from it.

✅ Real-world impact:

• In 2020, IBM shut down all facial recognition products.

• Amazon paused Rekognition for police use.

• Microsoft halted sales of its facial recognition API to law enforcement.

• U.S. lawmakers cited her artwork and research directly in hearings.

Art → activism → global tech policy shift.

✅ 2. Ben Grosser — “Demetricator” → Instagram hides like-counts (2021)

Artist / software-subverter

Ben’s project Demetricator removed all the numbers from social media: no likes, no follower counts, no shares.The idea was to make platforms less addictive and less anxiety-inducing.

It got massive traction, and Facebook/Instagram executives publicly acknowledged the influence of projects like his.

✅ Real-world impact:

• In 2021, Instagram rolled out the global “hide like counts” feature, citing mental health concerns similar to the critiques Grosser raised.

• Conversations on “demetrication” entered UX design and tech ethics spaces.

A conceptual art tool changed mainstream platform behavior.

✅ 3. Forensic Architecture — multiple cases overturned, policies changed

Artist/researchers blending architecture, AI, OSINT

Their art installations (3D reconstructions, AI-enhanced video analysis) have been used to expose state violence, police shootings, and environmental crimes.

✅ Real-world outcomes:

• Evidence used in international courts.

• Led to inquiries into police brutality.

• Helped block weapon sales and influenced U.K. government policy.

This is art literally changing legal outcomes.

✅ 4. Paolo Cirio — “Face to Facebook” → sparked EU privacy investigations

Artist / anti-surveillance provocateur

Cirio scraped 1 million Facebook profiles and displayed them publicly as an art project.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Sparked formal EU legal reviews of Facebook’s privacy policies.

• Forced Facebook to confront scraping vulnerabilities long before Cambridge Analytica.

• Became a widely cited case in digital ethics discourse.

✅ 5. Addie Wagenknecht — feminist tech interventions → influenced open-source platform policies

Her collective, Deep Lab (Ars Electronica / Carnegie Mellon), created artworks and manifestos highlighting surveillance, gender, and privacy online.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Their publications became required reading in Mozilla Foundation and EFF circles.

• Sparked shifts in how open-source projects addressed privacy and consent.

✅ 6. Eva & Franco Mattes — revealing content moderation labor → influenced platform transparency

Their artworks documenting hidden content moderators in the Philippines brought public attention to the exploitative labor beneath “clean” social media.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Led to direct changes in Facebook’s content moderation contracts (worker protections).

• Helped spark a journalism wave exposing “shadow labor.”

✅ 7. Max Hawkins — algorithmic identity experiments → influenced TikTok/YouTube discussions of algorithmic bubbles

His “random playlist” experiment exposed YouTube’s recommendation loops years before it became mainstream news.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Research + artworks referenced in design discussions about algorithmic transparency and “anti-bubble” interfaces.

✅ 8. Aram Bartholl — Dead Drops / IRL internet → sparked civic discussions and city-level programs

His “Dead Drops” project (offline file-sharing USBs embedded in public spaces) led to:

✅ Real-world impact:

• City initiatives to create public digital commons.

• Changes in how libraries and art centers approached public access to digital culture.

✅ 9. The Yes Men — hoaxes as art → real policy shifts

While not strictly tech, their internet performances exposed corporate malfeasance.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Duped the BBC into airing fake Dow Chemical apology → triggered global stock reaction → renewed environmental pressure on Dow.

Art as activism with measurable consequence.

✅ 10. Hito Steyerl — “How Not to Be Seen” → influenced media literacy curricula

Her video art critiquing surveillance culture became widely adopted in classrooms.

✅ Real-world impact:

• Influenced digital literacy frameworks in universities.

• Used by educators and NGOs teaching anti-surveillance awareness.

Soft power, but real ongoing impact.

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Things don't have to be like this, and you have more power than you know:

Engage in the conversation of AI critically — question it, reveal its inner workings, subvert its assumptions, shape and reshape it. Don’t stay quiet. Push back. Use your voice and your creativity to make this technology change for the better.

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Clarification on assignment:

Project 4: The Pixel Resistance-- You will become Visual Agents of Mass Disruption!

Now that we have discussed culture jamming movements, activists like the Yes Men, Anonymous, alongside the theories of hacktivism, laughtivism, and retail poisoning, let's put our understanding of these movements to work! By understanding these strategies, we can use remix & AI to critique contemporary societal issues & inspire real-world change.

Your Task:

Collaborate with AI to create original works that challenge and subvert mainstream media messages, consumerism, or some other social/political issue that you want to confront. Focus on crafting a powerful message with the potential for real-world impact. Your final remixed artworks will be showcased in a student-curated art exhibit, demonstrating the practical value of fair use and the power of AI/remix as tools for social critique.

Goals:

• choose the issue/establishment/norm/etc. you wish to confront, research it, and devise a plan to disrupt, subvert, criticize, expose, challenge or otherwise oppose it through art.

• create a series including a minimum of 6 images and 1 time based media.

  • Time based media can be anything from performance/prank captured on video, gif, animation, commercial, music video, video game, fake website or other similar time-based experience. You can use AI to generate videos.

• consider how you will present this at our final exhibition.

  • printed zine, live performance, prints on wall, shared video loop with classmates, a computer screen, etc. Your creative ideas welcome!

• Embrace some of these characteristics: disruption - humor - parody - performance - subversion - prank - risky - innovation - provocation - community orientation - temporality - symbolism - accessibility - impulsiveness - & chaos in order to draw attention - induce thought & emotion - criticize - expose truth, damage perceived enemies and possibly...  ----> to change the world!!<----

• Have Ethical considerations. While I do want you to take positive risks, to rock the boat, to have power in your projects, to be disruptive and critical, it is important that we practice ethical behavior and should take a do no (actual) harm approach. Think about the ethical concerns we have already discussed in this class and use that as your guiding light.

Constraints:

• Do not get yourself, me, or any of your classmates arrested.

Do Now:

Brainstorm and decide the theme of your project in preparation for next week.

Next week I will show you several examples of what we might consider to be "fine artists", who are working in interesting ways that fit right in with these creative activist movements.

Questions?

Questions?