[Metalab] monochrom and BLF: The Great Firewall of China on Google's Mountain View campus

[das ende der nahrungskette]

monochrom and BLF:
The Great Firewall of China on Google's Mountain View campus

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---> http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/05/15/googles-great-firewa.html
---> http://www.monochrom.at/sculpture-mobs/

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As shareholders at Google's annual convention were counting their 
well earned dividends, America's premier billboard improvement 
corporation, <http://billboardliberation.com>Billboard Liberation 
Front, assisted the Austrian arts collective 
<http://www.monochrom.at/english>monochrom in a monumental 
advertising coup designed to celebrate Google's online partnership 
with the Peoples Republic of China.

China's heroic effort to protect their enormous internet market (162 
million!) from an overload of useless information includes a 
moratorium on abrasive, ugly, and thoroughly misleading concepts such 
as truth. China's Internet "Cultural Revolution" is made possible 
through support from America's most leviathanesque behemoth, Google 
Inc. 'Don't be evil' says Google's PR department!

During Dr. Eric Schmidt's keynote address on China, BLF and monochrom 
agents worked feverishly to improve signs on Google's campus.

monochrom came to the USA to promote a singular concept called 
<http://www.monochrom.at/sculpture-mobs/>Sculpture Mobs. "No one is 
safe from public sculptures, those endless atrocities!" explained 
Johannes Grenzfurthner, "All of them labeled 'art in public space'. 
Unchallenging hunks of aesthetic metal in business parks, 
roundabouts, in shopping malls! It is time to create DIY public art! 
Get your hammers! Get your welding equipment!"

At the Maker Faire in San Mateo earlier this month, Johannes and 
accomplice Daniel Fabry trained attendees to erect public sculptures 
in a simulated Wal-Mart parking lot in just 5 minutes before 
"security" was called. Google and the PRC proved to be the ideal test 
case clients for this new advertising improvement technique.

Said Grenzfurthner, "We needed to maintain a low standard of 
political metaphor to give American citizens a chance to understand 
it. From an aesthetic perspective, The Great Firewall is radically 
mediocre. In the end, China's stoic indifference to Western art 
insanity is quite impressive."

As BLF CIO (Blank) DeCoverly pointed out in his power point presentation,
* My god the Chinese masses are so lucky,
o not having to grapple with the incessant flood of information
o The veritable 'Tower of Babble' we Americans and to a lesser extent 
our European cousins have to digest from our
   + iPods
   + Computers
   + Televisions
   + PDFs
* Each and every day

"The truth is a bummer," agreed BLF CEO Jack Napier, "it's confusing, 
and they're damn lucky Google has such a lovingly orchestrated filter 
to shelter them from it"

The BLF 
(<http://billboardliberation.com>http://billboardliberation.com) has 
been improving outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have 
included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, General Motors, Revlon and 
Apple Computers.

monochrom (<http://monochrom.at/english>http://monochrom.at/english) 
is an Austrian based worldwide collective dealing with technology, 
art, context hacking and philosophy since 1993. Some of them are 
afraid of skin cancer.