Swedish Armed Forces launched an advertising campaign, which is prepared by DDB Stockholm, in order to attract more people to join the army. The  campaign, in itself, is a pre-test for the potential applicants that contains a number of psychological, motivational and mental tests as well as psycho-motor tests before they can access the application form.

Hereof ad campaign effort takes my attention probably more than many of my European and American compatriots since (apart from the military education that I received at the Air Force Academy) I live in a country in which it is compulsory for every male citizen to fulfill a national service of at least six months in the armed forces, regardless of his mental, psychological, physical and other crucial abilities or disabilities. Therefore, we probably have the most cumbersome armed forces in the region, which causes it to have a great deal of casualties annually.

This effort by the Swedish Armed Forces should be a precedent for all armed forces in the world for recruiting their soldiers. It is not enough for them to be desperate for money and have the guts to make it by killing people–they have to understand the idea behind it.

Lost in our deep thoughts about work, interactive communication, politics, etc. in our daily life, we walk around in the city as if we are in a transcendental trip. Therefore, we generally do not recognize the ‘little things” around us in our social and urban environment.

That makes me think of an invisible labyrinth that we roundabout every day–to find a new route back home each day. But, are we missing something very obvious and very important on the way? I think we might. We only need to look around more carefully.

Personally, I did not know that people were that absent minded. Sometimes, I experience this in my personal life: I ask a friend that I walk together with if s/he has seen the very odd thing that happens a few meters away from us–and that person has no idea about it. But I have seen it–and some other people. I have always been astonished about their blindness. About how they do not see a thing around them. One of them answered, I am not interested in anything that happens around; I look at stores’ displays; they are more interesting.

If you keep looking around like a blind man does–no offense to the blind–you can’t go much further. Actually, I believe that most of the blind “see” a lot more than most of us.

Watch the video of a social experiment, which was taken in New York City, showing us an ordinary  person, who shapes the pedestrian traffic as he wishes. And he molds it easily. Social obedience lets us do things easily. Ah, the simplicity of social life, I love it.

This is prepared by Rune Madsen, Scott Wayne Indiana, Nien Lam and Nikolas Psaroudakis.

What do you think about the ubiquitous communication and the urge to keep yourself up to date each and every minute? The feeling of being left behind?

Nerdworking, has prepared an indoor mapping project for Tepe Construction Company’s new residential tower in Maltepe, an upcoming region of Istanbul, which is called NarKule (Pomegranate Tower). (You may remember their previous project on the eastern side of Haydarpasa Train Station, Monolithic, which I talked about in a previous post.) The indoor mapping visualizes an impressive combination of internal architecture and visual technology. It is pretty impressive to watch and Nerdworking seems to be promising to create very interesting projects in the future.

Here is more information about the Narkule Indoor Mapping:

Gated communities are accepted fictional living forms of the big cities. Most of the families want to live in a secure and well-prepared constructions with active social possibilities. The construction have also been designed for new communication ways and privacy limits of the visitors. Technologies and eco-friendly approaches in daily architectural visions direct urban planners to add really simple and effective designs on whole area. Taking all this into consideration; gated communities convert all this parameters into a reliable social networks with a specific design path.

NARKULE (narkule.com.tr/​) is located at the top of Narcity, which is designed by Nevzat Sayın (nsmh.com/​). Their first public housing project has a major public building now. Story of our performance is built on facts behind the curtain, such as energy of life and abstract links of the buildings. We covered walls / stage floor / stage background to project our visuals on it. NARKULE, its trade center and C Block of Narcity built by architects as a 1/50 models. We synchronized and projected our visuals on independently mapped 5 different surfaces at the same time.

Art Direction & Visuals: Deniz Kader – Candaş Şişman
Music & Sound Design: Görkem Şen
Project Management: Erdem Dilbaz
Project Co-ordinator: Elif Demirci
Modelling: Canan Erten, Alper Yıldırım, Elif Karaköse
Archive: Mert Şahbaz (photo), Volkan Çağalı (video)
Special Thanks to: Berna Erkartal, Cihan Kandaz, Pınar Karaduman, The Seed
Special Hates to: Dataton Watchout Systems.

Watch the indoor mapping here:

It’s quite a coincidence that one week after my depiction of CNN Turk ads, which won awards in the international arena, that implied that CNN Turk showed “events and their backgrounds”.

Here, in this advertising campaign by the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), we learn that events and their interpretations do matter utterly. And journalists have the power to depict events as they see fit to the current conditions and the status quo–if they want.

via I Believe in Advertising

CNN Turk is not the most reliable news channel in Turkey. CNN Turk is inherently a status quo supporter, pro-power–in this case it is AKP, the prevalent governing party–and pro-capital for many spectators in Turkey.

These notions may not be recognized by many or some (even in Turkey; people who may or may not watch this channel) may object to what I say… But it does not change the facts nor the messages hidden between the lines, within the glimpse of an eye and in the backgrounds of events, things and people.

And the same CNN Turk has launched an advertising campaign recently that is designed to give the tagline:

“Stories with the full background. CNN.”

Advertising Agency: DDB&CO., Istanbul, Turkey
Creative Director: Karpat Polat
Art Directors: Ali Bati, Guney Soykan
Copywriter: Gul Kanik

via I Believe in Advertising

Here you go:

It is maybe the time for a blog post that I was meaning to write for sometime, since we have mentioned about the attacks on art galleries last night by conservatives in Istanbul. Sandow Birk is preparing an art project that is ongoing for the last 6 years, it is called American Qur’an.

Holland Cotter of The New York Times introduces the project in his review by saying:

Mr. Birk began his long-term Koran project in 2004. In a format roughly based on Persian miniatures, he has been transcribing the Muslim holy book, chapter by chapter, into rectangular compartments on sheets of paper, then filling the blank space around the boxes with paintings inspired by the words.

Birk’s version of Qur’an is aiming to create an intercultural and interreligious understanding between the two civilizations. He hopes to (and many who are familiar with the content of all three religions–Judaism, Christianity, Islam–would agree with that) reflect how consistent the similarities are in the teachings of Islam, Judaism and Christianity” and to “enable more understanding and compassion, versus fear of the unknown.”

The project, to agree with Cotter’s statement, is quite unorthodox. Since in Islamic tradition, it is strictly forbidden to create images in the Holy Book or any character in relation to it (i.e. the God, the Prophet, etc.) to prevent the probability of creating false gods (the image of the being vs. the being itself). Yet, Birk’s approach is not creating a visual depiction of the Book itself but more like putting the written word into current context. That is to say, Sandow Birk unconventionally points out to the conditions in current daily life issues, which overlap with the writings in Qur’an.

Therefore, we can take this art project as religious, political, cultural and sociological in a broader understanding. You can see his recent accomplished 17 surahs from Qur’an at P.P.O.W gallery in New York–and I hope you do not go there and attack the people at the gallery–until October 9.

This blog post also fits into the context of current situation of today’s art scene in Turkey: a conservative group fo 20-40 men attacked two art galleries in Istanbul. Art, controversy, intercultural understanding…

Last night there was an attack on galleries located on a central street in Istanbul. Despite the ongoing gentrification that started with the opening of a number of boutique hotels, restaurants, cafes and art galleries a few years ago, the neighborhood is predominantly inhabited by the conservative layer of Istanbul’s population — that is to say the people who live there do not like the changes going on in their neighborhood.

It is claimed that there have been hostilities before, but as Nazım Dikbaş stated in the press conference regarding the attacks, they had never expected that it would never be this big. The windows and the entrances of the galleries have been damaged and many exhibition visitors were injured during the attacks.

The eye-witnesses state that a group of men (between 20-40 people) rushed on to the people at the galleries with metal sticks and pepper sprays, yelling at them to go back to where they have come from. There are a couple of arguments on the reasoning of the attacks: the most accepted (but probably not the real cause) is that the visitors of the exhibitions did exceed the limits of the gallery and drank their “alcoholic” beverages on the street. The other claim is that the region is occupied by a group of “entrepreneurs” that make benefit from a different economic genre (!) and that the recent changes in the neighborhood undermines their “market”. Another claim is that the exhibition materials were offensive and political that may have created a backlash against the galleries.

I do not think that the final claim is a strong cause but I do believe that it has an effect on the attackers. Since some of the art-work are pretty controversial. Here are some of the art-work from the exhibition, EXTRASTRUGGLE 2010.

By the way, I wouldn’t have thought that this would be an exhibition review, but it actually fulfilled the meaning of its title: visit ExtraStruggle website for more controversial art.

Here is a little information about ExtraStruggle since it is a very influential long term project:

‘Extrastruggle is an enormous project which began in 1997.’ Thus began Extrastruggle’s manifesto and continued by stating that Extrastruggle works on imaginary demands from imaginary customers, designing logos for all groups under social pressure. In ‘I didn’t do this, you did.’, Extrastruggle’s first comprehensive show since the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, the big logos, the images of power and the ruling heads meet the forms, rhythms and cul-de-sacs of the real world, with relationships we all in some way try to understand, leading to the emergence of new images, new relationships and new questions: Do our beliefs rest on a pedestal, like a statue? If we really, really concentrate, can we make others do what we want them to? Should we go forward or backwards, or is it best just to mark time?

To create a discussion around climate change, the agency is monitoring a tree in Brussels’ Bois de la Cambre park, using devices like a CO2 meter, pH meter, a wind turbine, webcam and thermometer. The data will be processed by custom software and converted into social media-ready communications.

Visit Talking Tree for more information.