HEY YOU!

HEY YOU! Is a research project undertaken by Common Culture (Ian Brown, Mark Durden, David Campbell) investigating particular aspects of celebrity culture and the attention economy. Focused on the ‘throwing of voices’ that occurs within contemporary popular culture, the videos consist of an animated drawing of a ventriloquist’s dummy vocalising news media reporting of the intimate but banal experiences of celebrities’ day-to-day lives. For this part of the research there is a focus on the production and consumption of trivial information as part of the attention economy, using the example of the impact that celebrity divorces have on the custody of their pets.
The animated figure of the ventriloquist’s dummy has its own dummy, in the form or a sock puppet. This highlights the layering of the throwing of voices within the processes of the attention economy. The sock’s voice is, seemingly, only audible by the dummy, hiding that particular layer of information from the audience, and revealing those existing mechanisms, which eventually release information through media outlets..
This work is specifically made to function within, and critique, social media channels. Each video is short and conforms, to some degree, to the expectations of immediate consumption. Conversely each clip demands that the audience invest more time than would be usual on the platform – bringing attention to viewing habits during this very act. The thumbnails for each clip are identical questioning the expectations for continuous novelty within the form.