Roots
Although tactical media borrows from a number of artistic and political movements, it has been suggested that much of its techniques are rooted in the Situationist idea of detournement, that is, in the critical appropriation and transformation of a preexisting workâbe it an artwork, a commercial billboard, or a political campaign. In the case of tactical media, it is the media themselves to be the subject of a detournement.
The dada movement has also been credited as an influence on tactical media, the two often used within activist campaigns. Much like it, tactical media often aims to do the opposite of the media it penetrates: it shocks and reveals an antithesis.
Tactical media also draws from surrealism, borrowing the idea that a "truer" experience than the present one is present. Much like surrealism, tactical media also criticizes social, political and cultural elements of a given society through its domain's techniques.
As for media-related roots, tactical media partly stem from the alternative media created by the counterculture of the 1960s. However, due do their temporary nature, tactical media do not tend to construct alternative media outlets, but rather appropriate existing media channels and technology to transform their usage and/or the popular understanding of their messages. In this respect, tactical media are more akin to other temporary forms of cultural and political intervention, such as guerrilla communication and culture jamming.
Read more about this topic: Tactical Media
Famous quotes containing the word roots:
“A good word is as a good tree—
its roots are firm,
and its branches are in heaven;
it gives its produce every season
by the leave of its Lord.”
—Qur’An. Abraham 14:29-30, ed. Arthur J. Arberry (1955)
“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing—instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“Though of erect nature, man is far above the plants. For man’s superior part, his head, is turned toward the superior part of the world, and his inferior part is turned toward the inferior world; and therefore he is perfectly disposed as to the general situation of his body. Plants have the superior part turned towards the lower world, since their roots correspond to the mouth, and their inferior parts towards the upper world.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)