Scrape and Fake

Docent(en)


Lídia Pereira

Workshop wordt gegeven 
 English

Korte beknopte omschrijving inhoud workshop


In ‘Scrape and Fake’ we will introduce you to the practice of extracting the HTML content of a given webpage using Python. You will then be asked to manipulate it for your own artistic purposes. This will be done within the context of cultural jamming, a technique for adding new critical meaning to established cultural artifacts. Think, for example, of the New York Times Special Edition by the YesMen. What about tweaking the content of The Guardian website to give you the news you want?

Omschrijving inhoud workshop


Framed within the context of Internet guerrilla tactics, ‘Scrape and Fake’ intends to present you with the creative and disruptive possibilities of altering the contents of a chosen web page. 
This workshop is an experiment in cultural jamming. Cultural jamming, or détournement, is a technique of injecting subversive/critical meaning into well-known cultural artifacts, thus conveying a new message. As a tactic, it was made popular by the Situationist International. But how can we translate it to the digital age? By means of using Python scripts to search and replace HTML content, new meanings can be created, others made more transparent and, overall, new and critical narratives might be, this way, explored creatively. In this context, the web page is the loaded media artifact, which craves to be turned on its head by means of content subversion.

Leerdoelen
 During this workshop you will learn:

- how to scrape HTML content using Python

- how to replace HTML content using Python

- what can be achieved through critical use of cultural jamming techniques

Voor wie?


Students with a critical attitude towards media

Referenties

http://vimeo.com/2215007 http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/ http://newstweek.com/overview
 http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm