Political Challenges - The Art of the Prank

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024

Announcing NYC’s 39th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade

New York’s irreverent April Fools’ Day Parade returns, poking fun once again at the past year’s displays of hype, hypocrisy, deceit, bigotry and downright stupidity. Nothing is sacred. Our satire knows no bounds.

For the 39th year, the public is encouraged to participate, in or out of costume, with or without floats, and may join the procession at any point along the parade route. Floats can be no wider than 10’ and no longer than 30’. They can be self-propelled, towed, pushed or pulled. Customized bicycles, tricycles, baby carriages and aerial balloons are welcome.

The parade will form at Grand Army Plaza at 5th Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan at 12:00 noon sharp on Monday, April 1, 2024, and head down 5th Avenue to Trump Tower and then to Washington Square Park for the climactic crowning of the King of Fools.

This year’s parade will feature a giant mobile billboard truck featuring “Democracy at the Guillotine” which encourages all to vote to save our democracy.

The parade press release and downloadable images are here: http://aprilfoolsdayparade.com

Here are some of the images:

Please share the message widely.

February 3, 2024

Backlash to Forward Motion

Sometimes a red balloon is an egg…

Data poisoning: how artists are sabotaging AI to take revenge on image generators, by T.J. Thomson, The Conversation, December 17, 2023

Imagine this. You need an image of a balloon for a work presentation and turn to a text-to-image generator, like Midjourney or DALL-E, to create a suitable image.

You enter the prompt: “red balloon against a blue sky” but the generator returns an image of an egg instead. You try again but this time, the generator shows an image of a watermelon.

What’s going on?

The generator you’re using may have been “poisoned”.

Read the whole article here.

November 23, 2023December 15, 2023

The Earlville Opera House, Still Standing After All These Years

In 1971, Joey Skaggs saved a derelict opera house that was about to be torn down in Earlville New York. Today, 50+ years later, it is a thriving cultural centerpiece for Central New York. WBNG Channel 12 News covers its remarkable journey.

Earlville Opera House brings arts and culture to Chenango County for past 50 years, by Autriya Maneshni, WBNG Channel 12 News, November 20, 2023

The Earlville Opera House brings about 15 performers to Chenango County every year

EARLVILLE, NY (WBNG) — The tale of the Earlville Opera House is one of perseverance. It’s about how a group of volunteers came together to save an abandoned building from the wrecking ball.

In 1887, the opera house was housed in an old Baptist church. That structure burned down. After a second structure was built, half of that building also burned down a couple of years after it was built. The third reconstructed opera house was beloved in the community and this one felt indestructible. However, the building closed its doors in the 1950s due to the evolution of technology.

In 1971, the opera house was threatened to be demolished. With this threat looming on the horizon, it felt as though the opera house would disappear from Earlville for good. A young artist and social activist named Joey Skaggs decided this wasn’t going to happen. “If I hadn’t come along and decided to save it, it wouldn’t be there. It would be a parking lot,” said Skaggs. Read the rest of the article and watch the video here.

November 23, 2023December 15, 2023

The High Cost of Dissent in Russia

Droplifting–adding objects or messages to store shelves to make a political statement–is treated as a minor irritant in the United States. Placing 5 labels protesting Russia’s war against Ukraine on grocery store items has yielded 7 years in a penal colony for artist Aleksandra Skochilenko.

If we take our freedoms for granted, we might lose them.

Russian artist jailed for seven years over Ukraine war price tag protest, by Andrew Roth, The Guardian, November 16, 2023

Aleksandra Skochilenko replaced five supermarket price tags with pieces of paper urging shoppers to stop the war

…“How fragile must the prosecutor’s belief in our state and society be, if he thinks that our statehood and public safety can be brought down by five small pieces of paper?” said Skochilenko, 33, in a final statement in court on Thursday.

“Despite being behind bars, I am freer than you,” she said. “I’m not afraid to be different from others. Perhaps that’s why my state is so afraid of me and others like me and keeps me caged like a dangerous animal.” Read the whole article here.

September 7, 2023December 15, 2023

The Battle of Burning Disinformation

A war with never ending ammunition.

Ukraine’s fight against disinformation is creating a new startup sector, by Thomas Macaulay, thenextweb.com, September 6, 2023

Counter-disinformation is a growing industry

When Russian troops flooded into Ukraine last year, an army of propagandists followed them. Within hours, Kremlin-backed media were reporting that President Zelenskyy had fled the country. Weeks later, a fake video of Zelenskyy purportedly surrendering went viral. But almost as soon as they emerged, the lies were disproven.

Government campaigns had prepared Ukrainians for digital disinformation. When the crude deepfake appeared, the clip was quickly debunked, removed from social media platforms, and disproven by Zelenskyy in a genuine video.

The incident became a symbol of the wider information war. Analysts had expected Russia’s propaganda weapons to wreak havoc, but Ukraine was learning to disarm them. Those lessons are now fostering a new sector for startups: counter-disinformation.

Like much of Ukrainian society, the country’s tech workers has adopted aspects of military ethos. Some have enlisted in the IT Army of volunteer hackers or applied their skills to defence technologies. Others have joined the information war.

In the latter group are the women who founded Dattalion. A portmanteau of data and battalion, the project provides the world’s largest free and independent open-source database of photo and video footage from the war. All media is classified as official, trusted, or not verified. By preserving and authenticating the material, the platform aims to disprove false narratives and propaganda.

Dattalion’s data collection team leader, Olha Lykova, was an early member of the team. She joined as the fighting reached the outskirts of her hometown of Kyiv.

“We started to collect data from open sources in Ukraine, because there were no international reporters and international press at the time,” Lykova, 25, told TNW in a video call. “In the news, it was not possible to see the reality of what was happening in Ukraine.” Read the rest of this article here.