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12		 the interactive gambit (do not run! we are your friends!)

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LIVENESS IN BROADCAST media holds with it the titillation of the uncut, the uncensored, the not fully controlled. It makes the passive viewer that simply receives messages into an eyewitness. To satisfy the appeal of liveness, the broadcast industry delivers variations like, "live for tape," and "taped before a live studio audience." Viewer-call-in is the ultimate authenticated live. "Pay per view" offers live exclusivity. If the camera simply was not there, reenactments aestheticize the look of the live with shaky camera-work, awkward cuts, bad lighting, etc. As air time is subject to censorship, live is subject to a several second delay... enough to remove objectionable material.

Of all broadcast programming, the news is most clearly defined by liveness. News is punctual. Unlike print, electronic journalism is the instantaneous relay of the world. We were asked, with collaborators Stuart Romm and Fred Pearsol, to design media icons for the CNN headquarters. Unlike soft drinks and sports shoes, information is a corporate product employed in much of our work.

CNN Headquarters[CNN Center, Atlanta]
 

While CNN asserts itself globally, its presence is almost entirely repressed in this anonymous '70s concrete building in downtown Atlanta, one of the first mixed use mega-structures in the city. The building houses a hotel and has a vast atrium filled with retail space at street level, where theme restaurants will open in the near future.

Everything about this assignment was conflictual for representation. While we were charged with a problem entirely within the traditions of monument-making: an "icon," an enduring symbol and the embodiment of permanence, CNN is characterized by transience and the continual updating of information. "Headquarters" suggests traditions of place making, marking the center. CNN is identified with dispersion -- a relay station where events from the world are transmitted back to the world. Of course, this relay is never free of filtration.



 
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