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[[File:Tactical_Media.jpeg|thumbnail|left|250px|[http://%5Bhttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0816651515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0816651515&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=9576ad57c8a4d1e639a6f264ad2011f8%20Tactical%20Media%5D Tactical Media] by Rita Raley]]__NOTOC__In this original and wide-ranging book, Rita Raley examines how technologies of data visualization and gaming can serve as tools for new kinds of political resistance. A literary scholar, Raley approaches websites, installations, and other forms of new media art from an aesthetic perspective, studying these objects more as texts than technologies. When Raley looks at a video game, she examines it not primarily as digital entertainment or a political act, but as an artwork whose political message is embedded in its technological form. Tactical Media is, in short, a contribution to the growing literature on new media art, exploring how contemporary artists have used information technology to challenge capitalism in an age of globalization.

The book unfolds in three chapters that center on immigrationWhen Raley looks at a video game, antiwar activism, and finance capital. As these subjects suggest, Raley is she examines it not telling the story of primarily as digital entertainment or a unified or coherent political movement. The targets of her activists range from McDonald’s and George W. Bush to intellectual property interestsact, which the art collective Ubermorgen skewered by hacking Amazonbut as an artwork whose political message is embedded in its technological form.com and making thousands of books available for free online. A key example is decidedly low-tech[https: the group DoEAT simply pasted new messages on signs along the U//www.Samazon.com/gp/product/0816651515/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0816651515&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-Mexican border meant to warn of immigrants crossing the highway. Activists replaced the warning beneath the silhouette of a mother20&linkId=9576ad57c8a4d1e639a6f264ad2011f8 Tactical Media] is, father, and child with “Free Market” and “Now Hiring,” reminding drivers of why families might be dashing in front of their cars (p. 31). This “border hackshort,” as Raley calls it, is one of many acts that seek a contribution to defamiliarize the signs of everyday lifegrowing literature on new media art, pursuing a series of provocative events or spectacles rather than a program of systematic change. For Raley, groups like Critical Art Ensemble and the Yes Men substitute a “micropolitics of disruption, intervention, and education” for exploring how contemporary artists have used information technology to challenge capitalism in an older leftist paradigm age of revolution (p. 1)globalization.

In this sense, Tactical Media is an ambivalent ====Immigration====The book unfolds in three chapters that attempts to make the case that frequently symboliccenter on immigration, technology-based antiwar activism can illuminate the inner workings of , and finance capitalism and the contemporary security statecapital. As these subjects suggest, Raley positions this activism against is not telling the increasingly abstract representational systems story of a unified or coherent political movement. The targets of the stock market, economic theory, her activists range from McDonald’s and the “information society” in general (pGeorge W. 132). New media art can reveal a “parallaxBush to intellectual property interests,” she suggests, contrasting digital systems of control with which the heavy weight art collective Ubermorgen skewered by hacking Amazon.com and making thousands of life as it books available for free online. A key example is experienced by actual human beings (pdecidedly low-tech: the group DoEAT simply pasted new messages on signs along the U. 143)S. In doing so, she juxtaposes projects like John Klima’s ecosystm, which used Reuters stock data -Mexican border meant to represent stock transactions as bursting knots of light, with Allan Sekula’s photos warn of harbors and shipping containers. The photos unambiguously convey the material reality of a global market that celebrates instantaneity and immigrants crossing the erasure of space, while ecosystm also creates an intelligible experience out of a financial world that seems esoteric and inaccessible to all but its most privileged adeptshighway.

At first, projects like ecosystm seem merely to depict Activists replaced the warning beneath the workings silhouette of the financial systema mother, father, reporting the ups and downs child with “Free Market” and “Now Hiring,” reminding drivers of the very mechanism that they purport to critiquewhy families might be dashing in front of their cars (p. 31). HoweverThis “border hack, ” as Raley convincingly argues calls it, is one of many acts that these works do more than reflect or represent the markets in a one-seek to-one relationship. Rather, they interpret defamiliarize the data (and the vast web signs of social relations that produces them) through modelseveryday life, portraying currencies as flocks pursuing a series of migratory birds provocative events or spectacles rather than a market as a plant that receives light and water based on the success or failure program of stockssystematic change. These metaphors differ from For Raley, groups like Critical Art Ensemble and the conventional wisdom of neoclassical economics, which conceives Yes Men substitute a “micropolitics of markets as dynamic but hermetic systems that naturally trend toward equilibrium. Like DoEAT’s border signsdisruption, such works aim to jostle the viewer into seeing social relations in a new light; a war game in which it is impossible to winintervention, and education” for instance, subverts the typical experience an older leftist paradigm of game play while also calling into question the possibility of victory in the “war on terror” revolution (p. 861).

====Technology based anti-war activism==== In this sense, Tactical Media is an ambivalent book that attempts to make the case that frequently symbolic, technology-based activism can illuminate the inner workings of finance capitalism and the contemporary security state. Raley positions this activism against the increasingly abstract representational systems of the stock market, economic theory, and the “information society” in general (p. 132). New media art can reveal a “parallax,” she suggests, contrasting digital systems of control with the heavy weight of life as it is experienced by actual human beings (p. 143).  In doing so, she juxtaposes projects like John Klima’s ecosystem, which used Reuters stock data to represent stock transactions as bursting knots of light, with Allan Sekula’s photos of harbors and shipping containers. The photos unambiguously convey the material reality of a global market that celebrates instantaneity and the erasure of space, while ecosystm also creates an intelligible experience out of a financial world that seems esoteric and inaccessible to all but its most privileged adepts. ====Understanding the financial systems in new ways====At first, projects like ecosystm seem merely to depict the workings of the financial system, reporting the ups and downs of the very mechanism that they purport to critique. However, Raley convincingly argues that these works do more than reflect or represent the markets in a one-to-one relationship. Rather, they interpret the data (and the vast web of social relations that produces them) through models, portraying currencies as flocks of migratory birds or a market as a plant that receives light and water based on the success or failure of stocks.  These metaphors differ from the conventional wisdom of neoclassical economics, which conceives of markets as dynamic but hermetic systems that naturally trend toward equilibrium. Like DoEAT’s border signs, such works aim to jostle the viewer into seeing social relations in a new light; a war game in which it is impossible to win, for instance, subverts the typical experience of game play while also calling into question the possibility of victory in the “war on terror” (p. 86). ====Conclusion====Tactical Media places these works in a broader historical context by drawing on a dizzying array of thinkers, from philosophers Michel de Certeau and Gilles Deleuze to historian Richard Hofstadter and cyberlibertarian guru Kevin Kelly. At times the succession of allusions to ideas and thinkers leaves the reader feeling that the study connects to everything and nothing, touching on a variety of works without intervening in them meaningfully or decisively. However, the conclusion ties together such diverse strands of thought as Marxist political economy and evolutionary biology in a surprisingly lucid fashion.  Ultimately, Tactical Media provides an occasion to survey new media art and activism in the early twenty-first century and revisit Audre Lorde’s statement in Sister Outsider (1984) that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 112). Can activists armed with websites and video games do anything more than tinker around the edges?

[[Category:20th Century History]] [[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:Media History]][[Category:Videri.org]]