Culture Jamming And Sniping In The Empire Of Signs

Culture Jamming Summary

In the article, “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs,” American author and cultural critic Mark Dery creates a definition for culture jamming while popularizing the term. He explains how culture jamming disguises itself in mechanisms that are used for social control. In the section, “Empire of Signs,” Dery focuses on a mechanism from a 1975 segment called “Media Burn,” which involved the collision of two American cultural symbols, the television and the automobile, to alleviate the frustration of television. The segment was extremely shocking to viewers due to it smashing and burning an idolized object in American society (Dery). Dery continues by defining other forms of culture jamming techniques, such as sniping and subverting, media hoaxing, adjusters, audio agitprop

Moreover, the term “culture jamming” originated from JamCon ’84, a 1984 cassette-only release by a collage band, Negativland (Dery). According to Dery, the term was used to describe billboard alterations and other forms of sabotage. Dery expands on the concept by adding media hacking, neo-Situationist, sociopolitical satire, and guerrilla semiotics into the category. The overall purpose of the category is to form strategies for individuals to take back their own mind from society. For example, signs, such as billboards or symbols, represent an empire. There are individuals who support the empire while others try to attack the power it contains. The culture jammers, such as musicians and artists, strike against the signs to create an unintended, new meaning for the public. Culture jammers indulge in the alterations of signs for subcultural