The Ecstasy of Communicaiton

"-advertising in its new dimension invades everything, as public space (the street, monument, market, scene) disappears." - Jean Baudrillard.

Advertising is so melted into our culture that we no longer notice it as a seperate entity. The "single dimension" of information encoded in our everyday lives comes as natural, as mentioned in the article "Encoding, Decoding", and is swept right over our heads. For instance, the Festival du Voyageurs, an extremely important winter festival for the winnipeg francophones, takes place every february. Snow sculptures are proudly displayed on the boullivard along Marion and on Portage Ave. However, instead of simply representing the artistic culture of the french- these snow sculptures now represent sponsors; eager companys looking to advertise. The beautiful snow scupture of a powerful bison on the corner of Portage and Main is taged, labeled, "encoded" with the words "MTS allstream". However, this is unstrange to us. This is "normal". No longer can the connative meaning of a cultural activity or gesture stand alone without a company to seamlessly dissolve in to it. When we see an image of a bison, it is not manitoba pride we think of. We think of MTS, of course; but only because it has been imprinted into our minds that bison=mts=cellphone=text messaging=communication=convienience, etc. And the cycle goes on....