What is Saturation Engine?
We live in a world under siege. Day in, day out, we are bombarded by messages in the media. Brands, logos, and guerrilla marketing campaigns fight for our attention from every direction. We are dangerously close to reaching the point of overload. The Saturation Engine is there to speed up the process.
The goal is to reach the "saturation point," the point at which new forms begin to crystallize out of the cultural mix. Images blend into new compositions; new meanings are constructed on top of the ruins. The mass media can dominate the means of communication for only so long. Saturation turns pop culture's strength against itself. The same images fired at us are used to answer back, with unpredictable results.
The Saturation Engine is a true transmedia project. It moves seamlessly across screens, from Web sites to gallery walls, from television to movie theaters. It made its first public appearance in December 2001 as a nonlinear video piece for DJ Spooky's "Under the Influence" tour (featuring the notorious political hip-hop crew known as The Coup). Two linear pieces quickly developed: one for Italy's Cartoobria festival, and another for a gallery show at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
The engine itself was born on the infamous date of September 11, 2001. The initial assault upon the Twin Towers and Pentagon was rapidly followed by a more insidious attack: one waged by the American news media, who cast aside all pretense of impartiality and unleashed an onslaught of propaganda upon the population.
Flags waved, bombs dropped, cities fell. And all the while the American economy plummeted. We built the Saturation Engine as a response to this--a way to reclaim the images, to construct new meanings from the illusions that surround us.
--47
911: State of Emergence
links
and contacts
+ email: billyblaze@four7.com
+ 47: four7.com
+ __billy blaze__: abe1x.org
+ [sic]: phenom.org
+ wind: windistheenemy.com