The Divine Rise of the Prosumer

In previous projects my attention has been focussed on the negatives of digital technology. I generally tend to concentrate on the ominous presence of computerisation throughout society. As we move through the precession of simulacra we have now entered into the era of simulation. In the last 3 decades our global economy has shifted from an industrial based culture with the production of physical goods, to an information based society where the collection and manipulation of data is dominant. The pervasive nature of digital media’s has led me to view interaction with such media’s as obligatory rather than participatory. I regard our surveillance society with caution, not the common hyper-paranoia but well aware of the value and danger of personal information to companies and the availability of this private data.

As a reaction to this, I propose to look at the creative possibilities that the digitalisation of media has opened for everyday consumers. With the development of digital technologies and the advent of Web 2.0 the states of user and producer become synonymous, allowing anyone with the money necessary for equipment, to become authors, artists and designers in their own right. In addition the internet gives them unlimited exhibition space to display their works.

I want to exploit the positives of digitalisation, centring specifically on the evolution of Web 2.0 and its consequential endorsement of the user. The virtual world online is the paradigm playground of semiotics with the constant manipulation and subversion of signs.

“The end of the obliged sign, reign of the emancipated sign, that all classes will partake equally of.”
(BAUDRILLARD, 1983, p. 85)

Sites’ content is generated by the users who are afforded as much anonymity as they wish; arguably levelling the difference between the bourgeois and the proletariat, though of course an idea of elitism still survives. This advancement of the virtual world has opened up the platform for the divine rise of the prosumer. Users are increasingly empowered and relatively free to do as they please online. Machinima is a technique where artists use game engines for cinematic purposes, manipulating game play footage to tell a narrative other than that of the intended story. With this in mind I will explore the idea of experimenting with existing online and digital semiotics and reconfiguring them for my own creative means expressing the above statement from Baudrillard.