Jeff Crouse: Unlogo

Jeff Crouse: Unlogo
September 1, 2010 - November 30, 2010
http://netart.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Unlogo was co-curated by Steve Dietz, Jaime Austin, and Richard Rinehart and is co-presented by the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive and ZER01.

[img]http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/images/art/Crouse/CrousenetartUnLogo.jpg[/img]

Corporate branding coupled with new media transforms our already cluttered visual environment into a pulsing tesseract of capital. Commercial television and video digitally blur some logos while promoting others. Music videos were introduced as short films and commercials for albums, but today’s music videos are commercials within commercials (Lady Gaga’s music video Telephone features nine product placements.) However, new media also offer new forms of resistance and play.

Enter Unlogo, a new artwork by Jeff Crouse that uses corporate technologies to new ends. Unlogo is an online corporate identity media filter; tactical media used by individuals to identify logos that may occur in photographs or video they take with their phone and to replace them with images drawn from an online databank. The website allows anyone to view and contribute to the databank, suggesting and uploading images that may be substituted for a particular logo. In allowing viewers to identify what constitutes a logo and its alternate, Unlogo asks us to consider our own role in media culture. What image will you suggest as a logo and a logo-alternate? Your Facebook pic? Your garage-band skateboard sticker? Unlogo is starting by collecting your videos that contain logos to make the filter stronger. Participate today!