Happening, Broadcast

The spectacularization of political and pop-culture crowds

Inspired by similarities between images of political and pop-culture crowds, we moved beyond the media representations to the data associated with and generated by the crowds gathered at the events.
Following a strict mode of research, the concepts of Hype, Happening and Broadcast emerged from one small nding. Building on this, we hypothesized multiple combinations and permutations of this simple model which might suggest the structures and roles of crowds in current and speculative events and gatherings.

Initial Research
We began our research by developing a collection of images, projects, writing and research around which we could develop a more focused line of enquiry. We examined, categorized and mapped this collection in a number of different ways. For example, mapping individual versus collective authorship and creating space versus modifying space. Our initial lines of enquiry and research lead to the creation of a large infographic which compared various characteristics of political protests and pop-culture crowds. Each pair of rows links two events; one political and one pop-culture reference.

New York City Los Angeles Cairo San Diego Shanghai

Political & Pop-Culture Case Studies

If the spectacle is central to garnering attention in todays mediasaturated world, what might we learn by comparing significant political protests and crowds from recent years, to the yard-stick of pop-culture assemblies?

Hong Kong

Search Volume Index

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10.0

Occupy Movement, Wall Street

New York, USA September 2011
Occupy Wall Street is a protest movement that began September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park protesting against social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue inuence of corporations on governmentparticularly from the financial services sector.*

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Silly blather of an ungrateful and

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lazyOctober generation of weirdos. January April

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* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street

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CNN News Coverage

Dear 1%, We fell asleep and just woke up. Sincerely, the 99%.
Protestor Signs

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New Moon is an anti-feminist lm

30.0

that reinforces gender stereotypes.

Carmen Siering, The Telegraph

Twilight Eclipse Movie Premiere

Los Angeles, USA June 2010
Hundreds of Twi-hards camped out in front of LA Live for the opening premier of the Eclipse Twilight Movie. Fans began arriving in droves up to four days early in hopes of scoring a ticket for the premier.

Magical Powers of Youth Tradition.

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Christian Science Monitor

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http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2010/06/hundreds_of_twi-hards_camp_out.php

2011

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Arab Spring, 2.0 Tahrir Square

Cairo, Egypt December 2010
The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010. The protests have shared techniques of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship.

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Pray for Egypt, we are all ready to die.

Wael Ghonim, Time Magazine

There are a few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

witness history taking place.

Barack Obama

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Shanghai Apple Store Opening

Shanghai, China September 2011
The opening of this store is part of Apples long-term strategy to increase its presence in China and other parts of Asia-Pacific. Demand for Apple products has created an underground network of fake Apple products being sold both in open air marketplaces and fake retail stores.

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When the Apple Beijing store opened, I missed it because I was sick, but here I can full my dream of being the rst person into the Apple Store.
CNN News Coverage

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/09/23/huge-crowds-attend-shanghai-apple-store-grand-opening/

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State-controlled Chinese media have made a festival of Occupy Wall Street coverage.
San Francisco Chronicle

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Central Hong Kong

Occupy Movement, Hong Kong

October 2011
The Occupy movement in Hong Kong began in October 2011 and ran for more than 100 days. Protests centered outside the Asian headquarters of HSBC Holdings Plc.

I want to tear down capitalism.

Derrik Benig

10.0

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-22/occupy-hong-kong-caps-100-days-as-protesters-leave-for-new-year.html

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They obsess. They critique. They

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proselytize
Nina Gregory, NPR

San Diego Comic Con International

San Diego, CA July 2010, July 2011
Commonly known as Comic-Con, this event founded in 1970 showcases comic books, science fiction/fantasy and film/television and related popular arts. It is traditionally a four-day event held during the summer at the San Diego Convention Center.

Those guys in some ways are the

10.0

gatekeepers of pop culture.

Zach Snyder, Director

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Comic-Con_International

Google Searches Occupy Wall St News References Occupy Wall St

Emergent Theory
One of the most interesting items we discovered in creating the mappings and graphings for this chart was when plotting Google searches for Occupy Wall St against Google News coverage for the same keywords. We noticed that the searches began a significant period before the news coverage. The events we were exploring had three distinct elements. The Hype that saw a groundswell of interest through social media and word-of-mouth. The actual event itself, or Happening, which in many ways seems the least important of the three. And the Broadcast which was when the Media caught up with the Hype and transmitted the Happening itself to a broader audience.

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Hype
Hype is the ground-up, rhizomatic conversations that emerge at a peer-to-peer level about an event; a crescendo of individual urgency which intensifies to form a unified, collective voice.

Broadcast
Broadcast is the capturing of the Happening in audio/video/visual form followed by its reporting and distribution to a dispersed audience via mass media channels.

Happening
Happening: the event itself; the presence of crowd in a physical space.

Urgency of Presence
This model of Hype, Happening and Broadcast which emerged from our study of the data surrounding Occupy Wall Street is linked with an urgency of presence which seems to be an important factor in recent cultural and political phenomenon. Physical presence and occupation without demands as exemplified in the Occupy and Arab Spring movements. The rise of Relational Aesthetics. The explosion of social networking and geolocation services. Where has this urgency emerged from? What desires, affordances or restrictions have driven it? What will be the long term implications of this new multiplicity of publics and multiplicity of presences: virtual presence, physical presence, and media presence?

Speculative Case Studies

As the diagram/concept of Hype, Happening and Broadcast continues to grow and mutate, what might these projected changes mean for the events, crowds and spectacles of the future? The visualization becomes instrumentalized; now an interface we can push and pull to ground these future speculations.

The Broadcast of Past Remembrances

New York, USA January 2020January 2200
As the world population grows, education relies primarily on the replaying of events that hold cultural and historical value. Though the arenas are empty, the town square is long forgotten, and the society is so far removed from the event itself the spectacle re mains, and echo of what once was, what is and what will continue to be.

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Its a poor sort of memory that only

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The continuous echo of past

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January April January July April October July January October April January July April October July

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occurences oating across the broadcast waves

woke up. Sincerely, the 99%.

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Protestor Signs

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Dear 1%, We fell asleep and just 90

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The Collaborative Eorts of Pop & Political

California, USA 1962 & 2011
The noted similarities in imagery between political and popculture events does not go unnoticed. But what does it mean that our understanding of a crowd is driven by the accompanying text? When not present in the crowd, our experience is what has been edited and fed to us through media. As crowd design pushes forward, could we possibly be entering an era of hybrid crowds?

Palo Alto

rs nications Orbit One: 3 Billion Use

Cape Canaveral 5 Billion Monitors

The Event that Never Occurrs

Cape Canaveral, USA January 1964January 2300

Comm unications n Us Orbit Two: 1.5 Millio

Comm Us unicatio ns Orbit Three: 0.75 Billion
25 Trillion Monitors

om As youths we were all promised lives on Mars, the Moon, on giantmu

Space Stations remniscent of Deep Space Nine. And yet humanity continues to degrade the surface of the third planet. Every space shuttle launches into the depths of milky black with the eyes of the world watching, waiting, anticipating. A spectacle beyond belief, a spectacle gathering at an event that will never happen

ers nications on Us Orbit Four: 1 Milli

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Mars is there, waiting to be reached Com ers muni n Us Buzz Aldrin cations O illio rbit Five: 2.4 M President Bush announced that we were landing on Mars today...which
Com sers muni lion U cations Or bit Six: 3.2 Bil

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means hes given up on Earth.

The Daily Show

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This is the rst convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.