The Revolutionary War Project: Media Hijacking

The Media Hijacking campaign is a project of The Revolutionary War Project.

For this project, I created four working prototypes that cause interventions into the normal programming of televisions in public places. The devices function exactly as described in this briefing from the The Revolutionary War Project to its army of artist-activists.

Media Hijacking Campaign

"The Revolutionary War Project media hijacking campaign is an effort to subvert the regular flow of popular television culture and force the unsuspecting viewer to think and wonder about what they are seeing. This is the first in a series of munitions in our declared war of information versus disinformation, propaganda versus anti-propaganda.

The munitions in this first campaign take the form of small black boxes, designed to be secretly connected to the backs of televisions in a variety of public situations. Once installed, these black boxes allow the normal programming to continue. At irregular intervals - from a few minutes to a few hours - a text message is overlaid on the screen's normal video content.

The texts displayed consist of a variety of quotations from some of the United States of America's founding fathers. For example, a black box with a stenciled image of Thomas Jefferson spray-painted on it, displays quotes from that President about freedom, public liberty and patriotism. The quotations were chosen for their striking relevance to the political climate in our country today. Given the unspoken mission of the television media to keep the citizenry in fear and ignorance, many viewers may find the quotes to be unpatriotic, un-American, and of terrorist origins. In fact, they are the words of a handful of 18th century insurgents, commenting on the loss of their civil liberties by an oppressive government.

At their best the devices facilitate a history lesson for an uninterested population. At their worst, they are an unwelcome interruption of our regularly scheduled program."

Deployment

"Revolutionaries with few resources and an important political message to disseminate to an unaware public, have traditionally been empowered by the low-tech methods of spray-painted and stenciled graffiti. The technology described here is an absolute analogue to these methods. These devices have been designed to be mass produced very cheaply and to be easily installed on publicly displayed televisions anywhere.

The application of traditional graffiti has historically been done during daring missions undertaken with the cover of darkness. These types of surreptitious activities have become dangerous in our fear-fraught society, however, so with this new technology comes a new methodology for deployment. Retail store employees, bartenders and other service-sector workers often have unique access to our publicly-placed television targets and are encouraged to install the devices secretly during the normal course of their work day. This underground population of dissenters will be key to the mass installation of these weapons of mass media subversion."

1. Public information kiosks can be subverted by facilities staff
2. Bartenders can inject our content into sporting events and news broadcasts
3. Black boxes are attached to gym TVs after hours and subvert normal programming
4. Big box retail store employees can appropriate a wall of TVs with one black box
5. Installation on a security camera injects messages into control room monitors
6. Installed in hotel rooms before checkout or during cleanings

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The Revolutionary War Project

I created The Revolutionary War Project as an umbrella organization for a series of projects that I am developing to enact social change through a combination of art, technology and activism. The Project takes on the persona of a nonviolent paramilitary army of artists and activists, fighting a war against disinformation and fear-mongering as described in The Revolutionary War Project Manifesto.

The Prototype

The black boxes pictured above are working prototypes. Inside each is an Atmel AVR microcontroller, programmed to bring the video line high at specific times during the horizontal and vertical sync. The pules form bright characters that appear to be overlayed on the existing video. The pre-programmed quotations are stored in the microcontroller's EEPROM and relate to the stenciled figure on the box's front. Thanks to Ben Gelb for his clever idea for a method of doing all of this without any extra integrated circuits.