Death Class Notes

Mail first project Notes Texts Poll

February 28, 2006

Exodus from S. California to Tempe, Arizona. Lack of dress code at Arizona State, weather is good, so lack of clothes. People get a body competition going on. Being “lookist” and creating a spectrum of beauty and ugliness to get statistics. In addition, the corporate take over of universities as faculty battle. The product of student body? The two opposing forces: death topic. Rupture and change, the battle for what is best, right, efficient, ect. Back and forth on death. Continual composting and back into life.

In Tempe, the poles are all underground. When you look up you see no wires. Makes for a cleaner landscape.

Under the Radar film festival by March 17 deadline. The actlab as under the radar. Creativity is unruly and administrators hate that. A way to translate the disorderly work of creativity into structure and make it look convincing for the bureaucracy. The people above the umbrella could look at what was being done and could see structure. The article worked well and people started programs based on the actlab idea of a metaphor on structure. Translator in between. Donna Haraway encouragement to code switch. Doing festivals with crappy equipment.

Power concentrates and aligns itself according to money. Barriers to entry. Webcasting sound was radical 10 years ago and everyone wanted to get their stuff on. All could stream and it was exciting. In a way to market to other people. Large powerful conglomerates raised the barrier to entry by not allowing anyone to stream just by owning a computer. Made it cost millions to do a streamcast online. This echoed television and radio when they first arose as a medium. Anyone could build a cheap radio transmitter and broadcast to their friends, and not step on another’s frequency. Then big money and monopolies…(complexity theory, catastrophe theory). General Electric, Eddison Corp., RKO formed together to create umbrella Radio Corporation of America to pass laws that made it illegal to broadcast. After first wave of laws, gotta have somebody to monitor: thus the FCC. Clean material, now. But the reality is that the innovators could not broadcast their strange ideas. Radio became a medium for the selling of goods. Same thing with t.v. Locally owned t.v. stations by individuals. VHF UHS. Dumont T.V. which made TV receivers. First FM receiver built by an air force guy, then got wiped out by major corporations. Always start out in an undifferentiated field and move slowly toward organization. Fractured points contest until the fault lines become too slippery and everything shifts. This is happening with the internet. Film was similar, but money was more relevant in its innovation, less mass producers. In theory, the net has no barriers. Milking money out of visual narrative requires a controlled distribution.

Creating an aesthetic. Marx: Money creates taste. (“Horizon of expectation” Distinction, Bourdieu.) Abstractions of aesthetics into control of corporations. These guys have no imagination too. All about money making.

Why like this? A story is a story…once upon a time is beginning of everything. Get fancy equipment, then yea, it looks sharp. But what happens when somebody sees that cell phone makes movie. Why is the quality of the narrative related to the mode and quality of the medium??? GREAT QUESTION. The episteme can fracture. The essence of death. Image of change, paradigmatic shifts. Snowball effects such as the festival. Two other festivals going on the same idea. You most likely can’t make money.

Micropennies….how does word spread on what you wrote made…popularity. Micropayment has been fought, too. Creative Commons is more about getting work out there and getting it recognized. The Lonely Island is a good example.

At this moment we are seeing that people are waking up to the reality that you don’t need a bunch of fancy equipment to make good stuff. Conflicts between high civ and tribality. Apparatus of production. We may be at a turning point from which many people are learning…people see the lessons of radio and t.v. and pushed out innovation. There is very interesting stuff happening on multiple scales.

Graduate student experiment to take simple chemicals that were first on Earth. Put them into reaction vessel. How to simulate conditions on the primitive Earth. Lots of lightening then. Spark for the ozone, thunderstorms. Let it sit there for a while. Opening the vessel and discovered the chemicals inside in the presence of excess energy, spontaneously self organized into common amino acids: the nature of life. How energy moves in the universe. It would appear that the universe or basic molecules have a propensity to organize in a certain way to concentrate energy flows. Life as machines that concentrate energy flows. Metaphor for capital flow.

Corporate personhood 1886, the individual as a corporation. Abe Lincoln: slave as person, corporation as person.

Life perpetuates…something that acts like an organism will want to procreate. Corporations do this too. The corporations have not been around all that long, but they rule most of our life patterns now. (Me: Life wants to live, I tend to say.)

Mitochondria have DNA but don’t replicate into more mitochondria. When these were free flowing…a contract with larger organisms to make energetic batteries. Outsource the energy with the mitochondria. A powerful drive to minimize the amount of energy expendenture but maximize energy flow. A game called parasite eve. The mitochondria rebel. What would happen if our cells didn’t outsource our metabolism?

Economies of scale, organize energy, amazing drive to put something in between energy flows. We don’t know the purpose. We may be at the point where larger organisms may not be able to organize or control their flow…

How would this fit into Marxism? Artaudian?