Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs by Mark Dery

In 1993, Mark Dery wrote this seminal discourse coining the phrase Culture Jamming. I think it’s a must read for anyone interested in the subject. This is an open source document and is available on Mark Dery’s Web site. JS


“Culture jamming,” a term I have popularized by articles in The New York Times and Adbusters, might best be defined as media hacking, information warfare, terror-art, and guerrilla semiotics, all in one. Billboard bandits, pirate TV and radio broadcasters, media hoaxers, and other vernacular media wrenchers who intrude on the intruders, investing ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive meanings are all culture jammers. Continue reading “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs by Mark Dery”

Reality Hacking Defined

Here’s a definition of “reality hacking” from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -JS


Reality hacking is an artistic practice that emerges from the intersection of hacking and hacker culture, contemporary art, activism, and net culture. Reality hacking takes as its basis a broad, phenomenological point of view of the world, and considers (often unorthodox) investigations into everyday objects and situations a meaningful way of probing into the working of varied social contexts.

Reality Hacking as Political Activism

“Reality hacking” is a form of activism that relies on tweaking the every-day communications most easily available to individuals with the purpose of awakening the political and community conscience of the larger population. The term first came into use among New York and San Francisco artists, but has since been adopted by a school of political activists centered around Social Redemption. Continue reading “Reality Hacking Defined”

Culture Jamming Defined

Here’s a workable definition of Culture Jamming from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -JS


Culture jamming is the act of transforming existing mass media to produce commentary about itself, using the original medium’s communication method. It is a form of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image. The aim of culture jamming is to create a contrast between corporate or mass media images and the realities or perceived negative side of the corporation or media. This is done symbolically, with the “detournement” of pop iconography.

It is based on the idea that advertising is little more than propaganda for established interests, and that there is a lack of an available means for alternative expression in industrialized nations. Proponents see culture jamming as a resistance movement to the hegemony of popular culture, based on the ideas of “guerrilla communication”.

Culture jamming’s intent differs from that of artistic appropriation (which is done for art’s sake) and vandalism (where destruction or defacement is the primary goal), although its results are not always so easily distinguishable. See the rest at Wikipedia…

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”