Customer Reviews

Jamming the Media

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In his book, Jamming the Media: A Citizen's Guide Reclaiming the Tools of Communication, Gareth Branwyn writes about an alternative media, a Do It Yourself (DIY) media, where everybody can produce high quality messages from their desktops. He talks about every kind of medium from zines, which are noncommercial amateur publications, to the most modern multimedia technologies. In every chapter, he provides a "starter kit and resources" section to encourage the reader to experiment with the making of zines, music recordings, multimedia CD-ROMs, WebPages, TV, films, videos, radio and other kinds of bizarre media.

The media, as an institution, have changed their role to an interactive, public access space where everybody can participate. With passion and a particular writing style, Branwyn gives the recipe, step by step, of how to design, produce, package, distribute and promote written, audio, visual and even animate messages. Moreover, he opens the reader's mind to create a new kind of message full of feelings and expressions that crosses the barrier of conventional and commercial media. Talking about media pranks and art hacks, Branwyn affirms: "Anything that's out of the ordinary or worthy of a sound bite will find its way into the local and national media (albeit shoved into a little suffocating compartment)" (p. 248).

The author introduces his book giving an explanation on how the development of new technologies has contributed to the creation of powerful personal computers that can now be used as "a full-color publishing house, a broadcast-quality TV studio, a sound recording studio, or an island in the digital oceans of the cyberspace" (p.13). He then talks about zines, as an easy and funny way to get on the bus in this DIY media. Starting with a brief history of the print media, he tells some anecdotes about how "Factsheet Five", the mother of all zines, started as a two-sheets zine, distributed among twenty-five people, and converted into a nation-spread zine that can also be found over the internet. But Gareth Branwyn not only lays in theory. As in every chapter, when talking about zines, he develops "The Zine Hacker's Starter Kit", where he teaches many different ways of how to create a homemade a zine or other types of media with a very low budget. Other interesting sections are "Words of Wisdom", where specialists about each topic give advice on how can you communicate a message in a properly way, and "Resources", a practical guide with books, directories, catalogs and net sites, where the reader can learn more about each subject.

But DIY media applies not only to print or visual media, but also to the audio. "Never Mind the Music Biz" is the chapter where the author discusses DIY tape recording as an accessible way of self-publishing music productions. Musicians can now stop their search for big record companies to finance their projects. Instead, they can not only produce but also distribute their recordings by mail and by on-line sites (Web Pages with downloadable samples). Furthermore, he introduces other kinds of unconventional audio recordings as audio zines, which are compilations of music, rants, poetry, essays and other sounds.

Talking about audiovisual media, the author also has the answers to how to make high-quality multimedia, like CD-ROMs and broadcast media, like TV, video and film. To combine interactive text, sounds, video, animations and images, Branwyn proposes the CD- ROM. "It's like touring an art gallery" (p. 130), he affirms. Thanks to the use of multimedia technologies, an art multimedia publication, can become a fascinating documentary about the authors life, with video or audio interviews, entertaining games, an original soundtrack and even an interactive paint program. In addition, the CD-ROM technology "is moving into hybrid media" (p. 129), where the disc's content can be combined with on-line data. TV, video and film production, is another type of affordable media for the public. There is a big movement of amateur artists who are proud of making great movies with very low-budgets. Branwyn can convince anybody with some interesting ideas to communicate, to become one of those. One more time, he has all the answers to jump into the visual medium.

Finally, "Media Pranks and Art Hacks" is an interesting chapter were for Gareth Branwyn, the art and different ways of communication have no frontiers. As an example, he talks about "mail art", a kind of noncommercial art that consists in sending a letter to many diverse regions, allowing "people from diverse cultures and walks of life to share art, ideas, and information through the postal system"(p. 270).

I consider Jamming the Media a powerful handbook that should be read by anyone both in and out the communications business. Branwyn theory about how today's technology is reshaping traditional media culture is completely right. People can now open their minds in order to change their role from passive receivers, to active communicators. At least it was able to open mine. My next step is to install an old computer in my room in order to have a server where I can have my own Web Pages and distribute my neighbor's music band over the Internet. Moreover, it encourages me to continue producing short documentaries and enriching my experience in the audiovisual field. Furthermore, I particularly enjoy the author's writing style, with a clear use of the language, a particular bizarre vocabulary and a really attractive design.

Jamming the Media is packed with concise, useful information. The format of the book is designed to treat media types in a consistent fashion. At the end of each chapter, Branwyn offers starter Kits and Resources. The information is invaluable. An excellent writing style, cool format, and great references make this book a nice addition for anyone with an interest in media.

Topics covered: zines, music, multimedia, broadcasting ("pirate radio"), shortwave listening, media pranks -- this is a funny chapter, and electronic publishing.

The book was nothing like I expected. I expected a traditional treatment of using the media. Instead, this book has helped open whole new avenues of media expression. The book is not a how to manual; it is a how to think manual. Excellent work and a nice surprise.

SPREADING THE MEDIA JAM =======================

By ROY BLUMENTHAL (This review originally appeared in Gadget Magazine)

If you're keen on rolling up your sleeves and getting into communicating with the masses, a superb book guides you in the tactics being used on the frontline by some of the most experienced media hackers in the world today.

Browzing at Facts & Fiction in Sandton Square, pretending to myself that my credit card wasn't too over-flexed, I saw a title that stopped me in my tracks. Which meant I had to apologise to the woman who had been walking behind me. Once she had dusted herself off and checked for fractures, she made straight for the alternative health section. I was glued to the media shelf. The book Reclaiming the Tools of Communication" by Gareth Branwyn. Now call me a sucker or something, but I really do judge books by their covers. This cover was seductive, steeped in the new design made popular by Ray Gun magazine, precursored by the boundary-shifting Mondo 2000. We're talking about a cover that would even make a darn good web page.

So what's this book all about and why did it encourage me to spend four hours at the Facts & Fiction coffee table developing concentration scars on my forehead? In short, it's a do-it-yourself book on how to manipulate the media of today for profit, gain and fun..

The media is rightfully ours. The airwaves are actually owned by the American people. (Here in the US) The FCC "lends" them out to companies, organizations and such. The corporate monsters have stolen the airwaves from the general public that gave it to them.

So, it is right that we should be able to use our first amendment rights to use the media to express ourselves.

Pirate radio or microradio, zines, public access television, the Internet, tapes and CD's. It is not about money, it's about expressing viewpoints.

This book shows us how. It's a bit old (1997), but it's still a good reference.

Free DC! (Taxation without representation is against the law!)

This book is the bomb - it is an engaging read, and an indispensable reference. Whenever I have doubt about any of the projects I'm involved in, I open this book and take strength. Clear layout, comprehensive content, and inspiring ideas. A toolkit for media hackers, pranksters, or for anyone who needs to grok our role in media today.

you know, i'm pretty much sick of what the world today has to offer. if i see another Gap or Nordstrom or Slick-Chic sitcom that tries to tell me what i should be, look like, or do (as in "Don't Think For Yourself-Let ABC") i'll choke myself with my own vomit.

Deliberately.

for weeks, i've been nervous about a painting project that's about to come to fruition, i've felt a void begin to eat in my comedy work, i've stopped drinking.

i'm dry.

then, in the mail, i get this gift-this wonderful gift a friend who works in a tie sent me.

"i know you- you'll love this book..." he said to me when it arrived.

and i did.

i'm a Carver fan, an Estep worshipper, a woman who adorrres Bukowski. a faithful commercial-book hater- to Sydney Sheldon i give the finger and the miserable like that dominates the Best Seller list that has to do with that form of smarmy apologia.

it takes alot- fiction or non- to impress me, make me want to write.

Gareth has done that very thing.

in a simply divine, concise use of language, i felt like he was taking me on this heathen-ess tour of areas to infiltrate the media. play with it. no longer try to fight being a consumer puppet-but showed me the way to help sever the strings.

i knew of some but never really put myself in a position, even in my imagination, to really be able to do it myself.

DIY publishing.

zine-dom.

pirate radio.

...Jamming The Media.....

i ripped through this book, read parts over and over again til it sank in if it needed to, began scribbling notes first in the book, then my notebook, then on my drawing board... (yes, i really do have one )

now instead of searching for free pictures of naked people and their friends on the Internet, i am actually up till 2 and 3 in the morning with something constructive.

i'm Jamming The Media...heh-heh-heh...

His book helped show me where to find the plug to HAL.

all i got to do now is pull....

thank you, Gareth.....

Things finally made sense after I read about 10 pages of this great book. Instead of focusing on only one technology, Branwyn steps back and shows how people are remaking the culture by using all the newly cheap technologies to wrest control of the media from corporations and governments. This is no left-wing rant. Real economic realities underly the changes that we are seeing. When you add the fact of the one world economy and the glue of the Internet/email/Web you have a prescription for a phenomenon that will transform the world radically in the coming decades. Just like cheap and loud electric instruments helped change world culture, so cheap media of all kinds are the tools that people will use to remake the world. Branwyn saw it first. This book will go down as one of those prophetic texts that will be studied in school - not just for the subject matter, but for how an anylyst makes sense of a rush of events that seems to many disconcerting. Branwyn, like MCI, proclaims: Is this a great time, or what? This is the first book you should read - before Dyson, Negroponte and all those blatherers the mainstream media has chosen to put in the digerati pantheon. They have great marketing machines. Branwyn has the goods. Particularly recommended for management people in all large businesses - in a world in which ATT recently bought out 15,000 managers, you need to know why. This is why.