Master Beeldende en Audiovisuele Kunsten / Master visual and audiovisual arts MASTERPROEF / MASTER PROJECT 2012-13

Naam/Name: Germn Herrera Atelier: Animation Master Datum/Date: 20/05/12

1. Werktitel Masterproef / Working title master project SPIN-FF: We became what we behold, this is the truthiness behind your perception of certainty (with pictures). 2. Beknopte omschrijving van de MA-proef / Brief description of the master project (max. 100 woorden /max. 100 words)

Propaganda, understood as technology, modifies our Selves and obsolesces the Reality Principle amplifying our desires and impulses. In consequence we gravitate towards information that speaks meaningfully to our priorities and values and either reject or confront the information that doesn't, disregarding its validity in factual terms. The objective of my research is to create an audiovisual product which explains how propaganda not only commodifies our culture but also modifies our process of cognition, the way we relate to facts, reality and ultimately ourselves.
The ability to defer gratification when reality requires it.

3. Probleemstelling en/of concept van de Ma-proef / Definion of the problem and/or concept of the master project (formuleer duidelijk de vraagstelling en/of de uitgangspunten van het project en de door jou beoogde doelstellingen. Maak duidelijk hoe scriptie en praktijkproef zich tot elkaar zouden verhouden, max. 1200 woorden) / (Clearly formulate the line of questioning and/or the point of departure for the project and your objectives. Clarify the relation and proportion between thesis and practical project. Max. 1200 words).
The horseman serves the horse, The neatherd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel, Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ode, Complete Works (1883), vol. 9, p. 73

In the past decade the people of my country has seen andwillingly or nothas participated in the rise of a reactionary, power hungry government under which the use and abuse of Media has escalated to a degree never seen before in our history. The implications of recent political events in Venezuelan are not the purpose of this document but how the successful deployment of imagery transcends the idea of selling fancy phones or introducing politicians, for images have the power to modify our perception and in consequence hijack reality and redefine it. A shift from facts to perception for which there is no reset button. This process of transformation started at the beginning of the 20th century, by now its nothing new however as time passes, and new technologies intertwine with our lives, we are mastering this process. At the heart of it all lies propaganda. In his seminal 1928 treatise, Edward Bernays defined the vilified, war-time propaganda as: The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale (...) in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine. He was not intimidated by the concept or its implications, as he noted: Any society, whether it be social, religious or political, which is possessed of certain beliefs, and sets out to make them known, either by the spoken or written words, is practicing propaganda. And later he introduces the concept of his New Propaganda as ...a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in the minds of millions of persons is very common. Virtually no important undertaking is now carried on without it, whether that enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a university, marketing a moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or electing a president. Bernays' New Propaganda, based itself on the principles of Psychoanalysis developed by his uncle Sigmund Freud, again from his book Propaganda: Human desires are the steam which makes the social machine work. Only by understanding them can the propagandist control that vast, loose-jointed mechanism which is modern society. He conceived it as a tool, independent of any value system: The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life. Like Science, it could be used a for good or bad, either way he considered it necessary to bring stability to the new, post-war, democracies and avoid war. After a little reflection about Bernays ideas it could be argued that Propaganda was itself the core process of Communication. Also of note is the use of words like: Machine, Mechanisms, Order, Control terms usually associated with the idea of technology. Exercising a little imagination one could conceive Propaganda as Technology. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, Technology is defined as: the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area. Bernays New Propaganda was the practical application of psychoanalysis in communications, a trait that would be passed on to the modern manifestations of propaganda: Public relations and advertising. Understood as such we can try to shed some new light on this area. In the book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) Marshall McLuhan coined the term: The medium is the message. He described it as follows: This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any mediumthat is, of any extension of ourselvesresult from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes. For the message of any medium or technology is the

change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. For McLuhan medium was interchangeable with technology and each new technology introduced changes in our environment that in turn modified us. This process of transformation was very subtle to the point the change was perceived as a part of nature itself. Under McLuhans approach the light bulb is a Medium which extends daytime and introduced the concept of nightlife. The written alphabet, a technology as well, introduced the concept of linearity to the western man. Propaganda, when considered as Technology, modifies our Selves proper, it obsolesces the Reality Principle (the psychoanalytic concept describing circumstantial reality which allows us to defer instant gratification) and amplifies our desires and impulses. In consequence we gravitate toward information that speaks meaningfully to our priorities and values, we select the sources that deliver it and either reject or confront the information that doesn't, disregarding its validity in factual terms. The consequence of this process is the rise of the iDividual: I can choose the facts I want, those that complement My lifestyle, nurture My values, and satisfy My desires. Conversely I can reject or confront anything that does not comply with My Instant Gratification. This is not a conscious process but it becomes automatic or natural, a tailor made reality or Propaganda Logic at work. The tragedy of this new iDividual, is that he seeks denial and in doing so obfuscates reality. This mechanism of readjustment, how it happened and how it continues to happen as well as what was gained and what was lost in the process, must be able to be explored and explained. The book Studies in Iconology by Erwyn Panofsky, John Berger in his Ways of Seeing, the very own McLuhan with The Mechanical Bride, Barthez in his modern Mythologies, Jean Baudrillard with Simulacra and Simulation or Nicholas Carr with The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains... All of them approach the impact of images and technology and their effect on the individual and society from many different angles like art, philosophy, semiotics, social critique, and they do it through text, lengthy and sometimes confusing prose. Propaganda was born from communication and remains narrative in its essence, yet it speaks to us in the audiovisual and in our contemporary, mediatized, world this sensory input abounds. Perhaps the video essays of Adam Curtis , The Colbert Report's hyper-reality and Chirs Morris Brass Eye (all audiovisual projects) do a better job at showing the power and possibilities of images and mediatization, than a book . The objective of my research is to understand and explain through the production of audiovisual presentations how Propaganda, as a technology, not only commodifies our culture but also modifies our processes of cognition and as a result ourselves and the way we relate to facts and reality. In the end I expect to gain the insight to understand and explain how did my country, its day-to-day, ended up divided in two parties, two budgets, two types of Media, two Exchange Control rates, two kinds of people and two simultaneous realities, co-existing parallel to each other in constant fear of what will happen when they finally converge. How could this become accepted as normal and how to create awareness about the changes propaganda introduces to our everyday lives.

4. Situering van het project binnen de eigen praktijk / Positioning of the project within your own artistic practice

(formuleer hoe je Ma-proef zich situeert binnen de eigen praktijk, van waar de vraagstelling en/of de uitgangspunten komen en wat je Ma-proef voor je praktijk zou moeten betekenen, Max. 600 woorden) / (Express how the master project positions itself within your artistic practice, where the idea for the concept originated and what the master project should mean for your artistic practice. Max. 600 words).

In 2006 Merriam-Webster, an Encyclopedia Brittanica company, chose as Word of the Year a term coined by Stephen Colbert in his homonymous show, The Colbert Report: Truthiness: "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true". I was attracted to this concept since, more than a buzzword, it summarized the state of modern culture: From message board discussions or newscasts to sitcoms, presidential races and reality shows. It was Choice, the basic concept behind Democracy and Cable/Satellite Services, but elevated to a perception of reality, one that resonates with the core values and desires of the individual but neglects everything else outside those two categories. More than mere cultural commodification it was a way of thinking, Propaganda Logic. However it was not confined to the universe inside the screen, an example of this precise concept was developing right at home. The end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st brought to my country a new brand of government with a new approach to politics. It was a reactionary movement, born from a military rebellion and with the added value of a charismatic leader, the change it introduced was the extensive use and control of massive communication. Images of the triumphs of the revolution were all around and the President became a television personality, with a weekly television program as a tool of dictating Policy to his Ministries and with foreign presidents as guest stars. But the most emblematic exercise of Media manipulation, Spin in propaganda terms, came during the 11th of April, 2002. A massive anti-government protest marched to the presidential palace to demand the president's resignation, but it was met with violent repression. The shoot-outs and dead were televised by the news media covering the events and, as a response to this, the government took control of all radio and television signals to transmit a message from palace in which the president declared there was a state of calm and tranquility all over the country; in reaction to this the TV stations ran a live feed, from the streets, side by side with the official, presidential, one. It was the birth of the Fifth Republic, not from a ballot box but from a TV screen. For a brief time, during those chaotic events, we had 2 realitiesconfronted with each other living in the screen; an event which would foreshadow our future as a nation with 2 realities operating in parallel. The official, government-sponsored, reality and another one for the who oppossed it. After more than 10 years this has become the norm rather than an exceptional event. Perhaps the most overlooked form of technology introduced to our culture at the beginning of the 20th century was Propaganda. Through many years of exposition to its images and procedures we have experienced a shift in the interpretation of our environment, from the factual to the perceptual, and its effects in the way we think are only becoming visible now. Propaganda operates linking images to concepts hence my need as a visual communicator to reflect on

it, its mechanisms and procedures, since little by little they become the processes through which we define ourselves and the world around us.
5. Situering van het project binnen het werkveld / Positioning of the project within the field of contemporary art (formuleer hoe je Ma-proef zich situeert binnen je werkveld. Ken je verwante creaties? Wat zijn inspiratiebronnen? Hoe zou je Ma-proef zich hiervan onderscheiden? Max. 600 woorden) / (Describe how the master project positions itself within the field of contemporary art. Do you know of similar creations? Where does your inspiration come from? How would your project differ from this? Max. 600 words).

With the advent of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, art lost its capacities for representing reality (namely to photography) but also its aura, its tradition, put simply, its own sense of history defined in the moment in time and space it was created (due to mass reproduction). The alternative to this scenario was introduced with the escapade of R. Mutt. Considering The Fountain as a starting point, anything exposed to an audience was art, since the mere exposition by the artist gives time to an observer to reflect on the object; it was from the intellectual processes of this interaction, the space between the observer and the object, that art was made. Context became everything, the medium (gallery, exhibition) became art itself, not the individual art pieces of the exhibition. This was the basis of Conceptual Art. Fast-forward a century and, today, technology has created global audiences. Never before have we been exposed to such a degree of sensory input, nor has it been integrated to our everyday lives like today. Images and symbols are everywhere: In print, film, walls, billboards, our clothes or even ourselves; the connection to the images of our culture is becoming increasingly closer to ourselves. We carry them in our hands and our pockets , in the the daily commute or the lines at the grocery store and, ultimately, in our heads. They become part of our minds, and all of them bring messages in themselves; most of the time we are not aware of their contents but they remain an extension our consciousness and through them we shape our world. Massive communication, or rather communication in itself, is propagandistic in nature; it operates in the same way as art (as defined after Duchamp) in that it detaches objects from reality and in the process of contemplation a second degree of signification is achieved, this second degree is the concept on which the object (piece of art or image) operates. The changes Propaganda (understood as technology) has introduced in our contemporary society and culture, namely the shift from factual to perceptual, is in a way a continuation of the ideas approached by Duchamp with his ready-mades and then by Conceptual Art and it is, perhaps, the logical destination of Postmodernism. As I consider Propaganda the most refined form of Conceptual Art in existence It becomes for me paramount to study, from an audiovisual point of view, the interrelations and implications it has introduced to the new global audience and its symbols .
6. Werkmethodes / Working method (beschrijf hier gedetailleerd het proces en de werkmethodes die je wenst te hanteren voor het tot stand komen van je Ma-proef, beschrijf dit in algemene zin en specificeer voor praktijkproef en scriptie, Max. 800 woorden) / (Describe in detail the process and the procedures you wish to follow for the creation of your project. Describe the general outline and specify for practical project and thesis. Max. 800 words). a. Praktijkproef / practical project

Taking as reference the Human Potential Movement of the 60s and the different fictional organisations created in several works of fiction, particularly in dystopian settings, my Practical Project aims to create a fictional universe within an undetermined time period with a fictional Institution dedicated to the advancement of Individuals through the use of its own brand of Intelectual Instruments.

These Intelectual Instruments are just an euphemism for propaganda techniques and the whole setting constitues a framing device to explore how propaganda techniques operate and how they have been (and continue to be) applied in our everyday lives. The project consists of 4 animation of short duration (around 45" to 1' each) in the style of MockDocumentaries, mimicking Public Service Announcements or Corporate Films. The first one covers the origin of this Institution; its background and their achievements in the field of Intelectual Technologies. The other three introduce the Products of this Institution's research and how they empower and embetter YOU, the individual. Exemplified with their implementation in the areas of: Economics (Added Value), religion (Cult Organization) and politics (Partisanship).
The objective of the practical project is to expose the mechanisms of persuasion present in our everyday lives. The plan to achieve this is by engaging the audience with a series of credible enough fictions and even if the spectator can't completely agree with the statements presented at least they are able to participate in them in some way. Thus it is important to explore the posibility of giving the audience some control on the playback of the animations, even with the simplest of actions, this posibility of control is of course an illusion but serves to reinforce the engagement with the films. Also the idea of an enhanced playback with the breakdown of manipulation devices used in each film must be contemplated. Just like Expositional Mode Documentaries there is only an off-camera narrator guiding the audience with the images reinforcing the already manipulative text. The structure of the narration is based on the codes and conventions of effective persuasion derived from the theorical project (thesis). b. Scriptie / thesis
The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. The world will look different to different people ...depending on the map that is drawn for them by writers, editors, and publishers of the paper they read." Bernard Cohen The Press and Foreign Policy (1963)

The thesys project starts with an overview of the history of propaganda, with special interest in the transition from the WWI Committe on Public Information to the post-war public relations office and advertising agency, its links to psychoanalysis and role in the emerging post-war democracies. The texts How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information that Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe by George Creel, Propaganda by Edward Bernays and the documentary series The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis will provide the frame of reference for the investigation.
Then I will address the way technologies affect our lives and the way we relate to the world, this is a line of thought than can be traced from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by

Walter Benjamin, Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan to The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing ot Our Brains by Nicholas Carr and is the basis of my interpretation of propaganda as technology. At this point comes the exploration of the inner-workings of propaganda exposed in the work of Pratkanis & Aronson and presented in Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion. I wil condense the examples framed in the Four Sratagems of Influence (Prepersuasion, Source Credibility, the Message and its Delivery and Emotional Appeals) into a structure for successful persuasion which will be a road map for my narrative. And finally I will include some reflections derived from Hight and Roscoe's Faking It: MockDocumentary and the Subversion of Factuality regarding the representation of facts and fiction in Media and specially the Mock-Documentary as a reaction to the delivery of information in traditional media and the commodification of visual codes and narratives. The objective of this investigation is to provide the tools to understand propaganda, its inner mechanics, but also to help build a narrative around it in order to expose to a receptive audience the relations between the seen and unseen aspects of Propaganda in three areas of human activity: Economics, politics and religion.
7. Vooropgestelde planning / Proposed timetable (Werk een gedetailleerde en realistische planning uit waarin het proces en de werkmethodes duidelijk terug te vinden zijn. Indien nodig kun je rijen toevoegen.) / (Elaborate a detailed and realistic timetable that clearly states the processes and procedures. You may add rows if you need to). Datum / Date September-October 2012 October November 2012 November December 2012 January March 2013 March July 2013 Praktijkproef / Practical project Early concepts for Story, Identity First Design Roughs for identity and Storyboards. Development of texts for Narration Animatics and production concept pieces Production Release Scriptie / Thesis gather general references, read a lot Define and structure propaganda techniques First Draft Revisions / Final Draft Full-Thesis

Uiterste indiendatum / Final submission

14 september 2013 14/09/2013

17 augustus 2013 17/08/2013