“Messages travel through violence now because violence travels fastest. Social media showed us that fast, loud and threatening gets rewarded. Then it jumped off the screen. Now the gun is the message.”
July 2024. The assassination attempt on a US presidential candidate was on every screen, at work, at home, on my phone. I didn't wait and think about it later. I built this right then, while it was still looping, because I couldn't get away from it.
It wasn't the first time a gun carried a message and it wasn't the last. The Christchurch shooter covered his rifle in references. Later that year the shooter of a healthcare CEO engraved "deny, delay, depose" on his casings. Fast, shocking, and it cuts through everything. The media picks it up and it spreads everywhere.
So I made a lamp shaped like a rifle. Plywood body, a steel rod for a barrel, a USB LED where the muzzle is, and a red painted stock. It looks like a gun from across the room. It's a lamp. It only ever lets out light.
HOW IT SPREADS
It clicked while I was setting up the LED. Social media is built to get clicks, so whatever gets the most clicks wins: fast, shocking, a fight. Nothing does that better than violence. People don't use violence because it convinces anyone. They use it because it spreads.
So messages go out at bullet speed with bullet force, through apps built to spread them as far as possible. A threat online and an engraved casing get pushed around just the same. Whoever gets hurt along the way is part of the delivery. Then the TV news picks it up and spreads it further.
After a while we stop being shocked, but it still works, so people keep doing it.
“Deny, delay, depose" on the casings. The references all over the Christchurch rifle. "I don't like this presidential candidate." These are ideas, and once upon a time people would just say them. But nobody listens to talking anymore because it doesn't get clicks. So people stopped talking and started killing, and the gun carries the idea for them. That's the lamp: an idea coming out of a rifle.
“Nobody listens to talking anymore, so the idea comes out of a gun. Online or in real life, the apps reward it either way. The shape decides what gets heard.”
HOW IT'S BUILT
Where the bullet would come out, there's a light. An idea coming out of the barrel.
The battery on the stock is the same kind of USB battery that charges the phones we watch all this on. You can see it on purpose.
McLuhan said the medium is the message. Here the medium is a gun, and the message leaves some nasty collateral damage...
I built it while the footage was still looping, because I wanted to make it from inside the moment, not comment on it from a safe distance later. The light points where the barrel points. It shows how things work now. I'm not saying how they should work.
Plywood, a steel rod barrel and a red stock. An LED where the bullet would come out.
Close up of the stock. The USB battery sits right there where you can see it.
Standing up, it looks like a gun from across the room. Up close it's a lamp.
The light points where the barrel points.
Materials: Plywood body with cutouts, steel rod barrel, LED bulb, INIU 10,000mAh USB battery, museum stand
Size: 92 cm long, 1.8 kg
Barrel: Steel rod. It was never made to shoot. At 92 cm it reads as a rifle from across the room. Red painted stock against the natural wood body.
Power: INIU 10,000mAh USB battery mounted on the stock where you can see it. The cables and hardware store screws are all on show too.
Light: Warm LED, always the same brightness. It only points one way, where the barrel points.
Display: The stand puts the light at eye level from 2 metres. You can see how it's made, the wiring and the battery.
Built: July 2024, while the assassination attempt was on every screen.
Status: A working lamp.
Context in Series
#5 of 12, the end of the first part. The Mouse was about my part in it. This one is bigger than me. It doesn't matter what I think, the apps decide what gets heard.
I built it while the footage was still on every screen. A lamp shaped like a rifle, because ideas come out of guns now, online or for real.
Apps built for clicks reward whatever gets clicks, and violence gets clicks. So it keeps working and people keep doing it, and it gets louder each time.
Next is Proto Pistols, and the things I can't do anything about from 13,000 km away.