Irad Lee
Israeli videomaker
biography
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participant in
VideoChannel Cologne – Found Footage!
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Video title:
Dirt@ #, 2006, 8:00
DiRT!@# is one of a series of audiovisual experiments looking into the nature and behavior of popular internet phenomenon. DiRT!@# is the audiovisual output of a custom-built generative composition software that uses raw data from a private archive of electronic Spam (aka Junk Mail, abusive messaging systems), which has been archived for research and study purposes of the phenomenon.
DiRT!@# deals with consumption culture and society. It examines the medium of Spam as perceived by the individual, who in addition to experiencing Spam, also acts as the main influencing factor over its content and behavior. The generated audiovisual output continuously zooms into the details of electronic Spam and examines it as both a cultural and digital phenomenon, through its different common types. It represents Spam as a mirror reflecting both our natural human necessities and the artificial necessities that the advertisement industry stimulates in us. The work looks into the blurred borderlines between our needs and necessities, and the new needs(?) we voluntarily or involuntarily adopted through our exposure to Spam. Furthermore, Spam, which became the abusive digital garbage of our era, differs from any other kind of man-made trash. While garbage reflects the individual’s lifestyle and needs, Spam works the other way around: it reflects the way in which the individual is seen in the digital world through an everlasting process of classification.