Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In this respect I come back to my original theme: the need for people to
explore the contradictions discovered in the process of acquiring power from
youth to middle age. My intention is to create a malleable system that will bring
insight and identification as the generation that was punk comes to terms with
its accommodations to that which it once rejected. And I intend to create sys-
tems that can generate new iterations from the intelligent responses it gathers
from those who interact with it.
Why the Rise and Fall of Black Velvet Flag should be database-driven
The three members of Black Velvet Flag provide an unusual combination of
characters and objectives. Two founding members work in advertising and
were once punks who grew up in Southern California in the early eighties.
Their adolescence was spent reacting to the pressures of conformity with LA
punk culture. The ideology of the culture was critical of the political economy
and the social values of the host culture, while paradoxically, punks enjoyed
the freedom of expression and consumption it permitted. The third member
was too young to know what punk was, and wanted to use the band to be-
come a successful pop musician. The band's membership reflects the paradox
that its music so profoundly illuminates. Together they performed hard core
punk song lyrics that other bands wrote, while re-accompanying and rearrang-
ing the score to the lounge music of the fifties and early sixties - the music
of the band's parents. The dialectic between the musical elements is disturb-
ing, polemical and humorous. Most insightful listeners decoded the intent of
the band. They learned something about the workings of media culture and its
relation to youth culture while grooving to some very catchy tunes. Likewise,
the audience contemplated their own passive behavior and politically anemic
incentive to act on behalf of their conscience and convictions.
Historically and cross-culturally, youth in this century have been an active
progressive political force to be reckoned with by every nation organized into
a discrete political structure. For reasons that continue to fascinate me, youth
in the United States since the mid-seventies have been among the most passive
and narcissistic citizens of the world. What I set out to do in my work is to
explore why and how this happens, and to find the examples and exceptions to
this as well. What forces exist to co-opt and commodify the impulse to resist
conformity, thereby making resistance an act of conformity? What forces exist
that teach us to value private property, and then to conform and resist and
conform again to a system that allows an individual to acquire and protect their
