Not current news, but I like the phrase “DARPA of Dissent”. Furthermore, techniques of dissent get repressed, again and again, generation after generation … can’t hurt to redundantly document the good parts.

PROF LEADS “DARPA OF DISSENT”
DefenseTech.net: August 27, 2004

[S]tarting this weekend, the machines put together here by Jeremijenko and her cohorts may get their biggest stage yet, by giving a guerrilla geek’s edge to the protests swirling around the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Months ago, it became clear that the RNC counter-demonstrations were going digital. But most of the gadgetry involved was household stuff — text messages to report cops’ whereabouts, or web pages to arrange housing. Jeremijenko and her group have gone beyond that, hand-crafting devices meant to level, just a bit, law enforcement’s technology advantage over activists.

Their devices include a 10-foot balloon, for counting crowds; a set of pirate transmitters, for taking over local radio stations; and 1,400 face masks that measure the level of pollution in the Manhattan air. Think of the group as a kind of Darpa of dissent — with Jeremijenko’s loft as the headquarters.

[Defense Tech: Link]
[Category = Dissent Tech]

slowLab states:

Natalie Jeremijenko is an inventor and engineer who focuses on the design and analysis of tangible digital media. Her work explores the transformative potential of new information technologies and alternatives to dominant IT design paradigms.

[slowLab: Link]

Google: Natalie Jeremijenko

Wikipedia: Natalie Jeremijenko

Previous post: Natalie Jeremijenko

Kevin Berger @ Salon.com writes: “She is an intellectual and emotional storm. Her renowned public artworks are reshaping the ways we think about science. Activist, environmentalist and former rock promoter Natalie Jeremijenko turns the art world upside down.”

Jeremijenko, 39, explains that her work is “all about creating interfaces that draw people into the environment and get them to reimagine collective action.” She cracks open her laptop and displays an image of 100 polycarbonate tubes or “buoys” that she’s engineered to glow when fish swim through them in the Hudson River …. Did you know the fish were on Zoloft? All the antidepressants that New Yorkers take are flushed through their urine into sewage treatment plants, which overflow into the river …. Go to the Whitney Museum and see one of her drawings hanging on a wall by a bathroom …. It asks, “Why are the Hudson River fish and frogs on antidepressants?” Printed on it in tiny letters are actual studies that attest to the chemical drug compounds in the waterway consumed by the unsuspecting bass, sturgeon and crabs.

When the buoys light up, you can feed the fish food treated with chelating agents to help cleanse the PCBs from their blood, planted there from decades of General Electric dumping waste into the river. The fish food, in fact, will not be much different from the energy bars we’re always eating on hiking trails. “The idea that we eat the same stuff is a visceral demonstration that we live in the same system,” Jeremijenko says. “Eating together is the most intimate form of kinship. By scripting a work where we share the same kind of food with fish, I’m scripting our interrelationship with them.”

[Salon.com: Link]

Thanks, EB.

See also Natalie Jeremijenko: DARPA of Dissent