Lisa Erdman: Ethnivox

 
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Artist Statement:


    Annual Checkup: Pharmaceuticals for the 21st Century uses the me­dium of advertising to speak to its audience about current issues that we often feel uncomfortable talking about out loud; sexuality, religious faith, and politics. Using satirical humor, the ads in Annual Checkup offer the opportunity to strengthen one’s sense of religious faith, promote sexual abstinence, and increase one’s sense of patriotism.

    The pharmaceutical ad format is adapted because of its use of com­forting images and the eternally smiling faces of people in the ads for medication that may or may not work. This pharmaceutical format also speaks of the increasingly popular “quick-fix” approaches to treating a vast array of physical and mental health ailments.

    The goal of the ads in Annual Checkup is to stimulate thought and discussion surrounding some of the issues that have moved to the forefront of sociopolitical discourse in the United States in recent years: freedom to question faith, the definition of patriotism and citi­zenship, personal choice in issues of morality and sexu1ility, and the role that government should or should not play in all of these issues.


Technical Information:


    The video-based ads for Annual Checkup: Pharmaceuticals for the 21st Century were created using the following equipment and soft­ware: Canon Elura 90 digital video camera, Mac G4 laptop, iMovie, Adobe Photoshop, iPhoto, QuickTime, 3ds Max, Amadeus audio software, and Macromedia Flash. Music sountracks for the video ads were created by DJ in Awe, Richard John and Extreme Music, Ltd. The posters were created on a Mac G4 laptop, using Adobe Photo­shop, lnDesign, and Illustrator. Photographs used in poster ads were provided by the Corbis Education Collection.