Re: Arnold at the gates [3x]
Try this from the beautiful faery land of Austria, play some "Sound of= Music" tunes and relax... it may not be as bad as you painted the picture= ;-) Cheers, g ### nytimes.com A Boy From Graz October 9, 2003 By ANNELIESE ROHRER VIENNA While Californians were voting on Tuesday, Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser of Austria ended a television interview here about budget deficits and European Union economics with an emphatic "Good luck to Arnold Schwarzenegger." Mr. Grasser, like Austrians in general, has been pumped up with pride over Mr. Schwarzenegger's accomplishments. That's the case even though, or maybe because, Arnold Schwarzenegger's life - from lower-middle-class boy in the bland town of Graz to governor of California - is as alien to the mentality of the average Austrian as a recall vote is to an Austrian political system in which official careers proceed like clockwork. Mr. Schwarzenegger's career, by contrast, has all the elements that the average Austrian - with his dreams of a tenured job in the bureaucracy that leads to early retirement, with his love for his 38-hour work week and his five weeks of holiday per year - would despise: venturing into the unknown, enduring hard work and physical pain, testing the limits of body and mind, and drawing a road map to the top. On the other hand, there is enough in Governor Schwarzenegger that Austrians can recognize and admire, or so they think: a touch of machismo, a moving admiration of one's mother, a bit of a sly dog, a cheeky view of the country's Nazi past, and generally what is known in Austria as "Schm=E4h," inadequately translatable as "patter." So the hype here around California's recall was understandable, but there is something else at work, too. The frenzy is a result, at least in part, of one of the main features of the Austrian national character: the art of transference. In Vienna in 1972, Austrians held their biggest demonstration since the Allies ended their occupation. The cause was not an end to the arms race or any of the other usual issues of the era. Instead, they were protesting the expulsion of the alpine ski champion Karl Schranz from the Olympic Games in Japan for violating his amateur status. Schranz was supposed to be our hero, winning gold medals for Austria. His being barred from certain success brought an outpouring of frustration by his countrymen, who perceived themselves as victims of dark international forces. So, too, Arnold Schwarzenegger represents a success the average Austrian would have neither the stamina nor the inclination to pursue. Nor is he the only object of transference. The stunning success in 1999 of the right-wing politician J=F6rg Haider - wrongly viewed in the United States as a full-fledged Nazi - was possible only because voters transferred their protest against a rigid political system to him. The individual reluctance to openly oppose Austria's two major political parties, which had pooled their power in a joint government in 1986 and dominated every aspect of public life, was transformed in the secrecy of the voting booth: J=F6rg Haider should do the job of breaking up that system instead. Austrians could express sentiments without being publicly known for having them. The admiration that is showered on Mr. Schwarzenegger now in Austria has a parallel in the devotion that the country's elite and public have for Frank Stronach, another Austrian who did well overseas, in his case by founding a Canadian auto-parts company. To the Austrian eye, Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Stronach are larger than life - or at least larger than any Austrian would conceive himself. And that touches a chord in the Austrian soul and stirs memories of the time when there was an emperor - and an empire for that matter; when the country was a force to be reckoned with, not an insignificant spot on the map of Central Europe, squashed between the powers of Germany and Italy and up-and-coming countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic, which once were dependents in the Hapsburg Empire. Besides, Austrians love vindication, and Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory is certainly seen as one: for the humiliation Washington dealt Austria by putting Kurt Waldheim (president of Austria from 1986 to 1990) on its "watch list" of undesirable aliens; for J=F6rg Haider's being called a Nazi in the United States and Europe; for the disapproval when the conservative People's Party and Mr. Haider's Freedom Party formed a coalition government in 1999. Thus Mr. Schwarzenegger's victory is seen as a signal to the world: look here, we too are somebody. A country like Austria that has been downsized by history vacillates between a national inferiority complex and exuberance. Now these are days of compensation. The anxiety with which some Austrians watched the American reaction to reports that Mr. Schwarzenegger made positive comments about Hitler was proof of the uneasiness about any possible new rebuke of the country of his bir
Re: What *ARE* New Media?
The term "new media" was being tossed around in the early 1980s when the idea of convergence was everywhere. The term "new media" was always problematic in that the "new" always heralded undeveloped media over more mature, functional media with better distribution, etc. In other words, video was never a new medium even though much of the power and promise of new media is to deliver video content on demand. > As the fellow who "coined" the term NEW MEDIA (circa 1990, in preparation > for the America Online IPO, whereupon Steve Case awarded me this email > address), I have often been asked -- So what the HECK is (er, are) New > Media, anyway? > > The answer then and now is the same -- New Media are the mediums which > will replace TELEVISION as the dominant *environment* in our lives and > culture. The use of "mediums" instead of the word "media," the correct plural of medium, would help this definition. I hate to think that people will soon be calling themselves "new mediums artists," but perhaps this is inevitable. This use of the incorrect "mediums" in 1990 does demonstrate early misuse. I didn't begin to hear/see artists working in "multimediums" until the mid-1990s. Tom Sherman # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Media Education and Its Discontent
Dan Wang wrote: >To state the obvious, then: It is no coincidence that the dramatic rise in >tuition costs (at all the different types of higher education >institutions, really) rolled in at about the same time that the American >university experience reformulated as a largely predictable exercise in >job and career preparation, as opposed to education. > >The trading in of one role for the other stands as one among many changes >in the character of the American educational experience and academic >environment--changes which are blunting the democratic spirit felt by >significant numbers of students for a generation at least, and which are >effacing the practice and transmission of intellectualism on campus. > Putting this in the context of global corporate liberalisation, it would seem that the purpose of higher education in the US - today - and everywhere, tomorrow, if the WTO via GATS succeeds in privatising education everywhere - is to create a docile elite, one which sees its debt to society no longer in terms of social engagement, but in terms of loan repayment. Insofar as consumerism is the dominant ideology, the powers that be see this as morally correct. As far as (leftist?) intellectuals see their role as questioning this state of affairs, they are the enemy, to be scorned for their "impracticality" in the face of a materialist world. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ars electronica 2003
"Armin Medosch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >There is no such thing as media arts criticism. are you just being hyperbolic as you point towards what you feel is inadequate? i am asking this Q in this way b/c of course, (it may be obvious + redundant but) there are various existing [modes/structures/discourses] that consider themselves + are widely understood as "media arts criticism", i.e. the 30+ yr art-historical [conversation/critiques] [about/of] video art.(this probably snds like a lockedGroove to sum, but) this precise oversight is one of the basic assumptions of the criticalartware project, in that we are concerned w/ + committed to bringing these discourses into proximity as [shared/overlapping/timelapsing/parallel] histories. -- # jonCates # coreDeveloper # criticalartware # http://www.criticalartware.net # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arnold at the gates [3x]
Table of Contents: RE: While Californians vote... Arnold Unplugged (Greg Palast) [EMAIL PROTECTED] arnie's track record coco fusco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> i don't know about anti-intellectualism, but... Ryan Griffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 22:45:16 +0200 (CEST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: While Californians vote... Arnold Unplugged (Greg Palast) After all it is the perfect mise en abyme of Gramsci's notion of hegemony that simply states that you gotta have cultural power before you can have political power, and as the progressive sides do nought but talk, it those who make themselves in movies who get to rule. The actual voting process is completely irrelevant, this is and was a perfectly predictable outcome, necessarily so. -- Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 07:57:02 -0700 (PDT) From: coco fusco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: arnie's track record Actually, there are good reasons to take the Naziallegations seriously...including photographs ofArnold dressed in SS regalia, not for a film role, butfor his own pleasure and quotes on public record inwhich Arnold claimed that Hitler was a reallyorganized guy who got the job done...in addition tothe already known connection via his father who was amember of the Nazi party...It would actually be ridiculous and perilous NOT toconsider possible Nazi connections when it comes to politicians hailing from Arnie's birthplace, ratherthan the assuming no connection until admitted by theRepublican party. Don't forget, IBM, The RockefellerFoundation and scores of other major Americanfinancial entities make a mint off their deals withthe Nazis. American eugenicists defended Nazi"science" all the way through WWII, and thanks toOperation Paperclip the US got dozens of the top Naziscientists into America who left us with a greatlegacy, from NASA to government sponsored mind controlexperiments,cyborg research and genetics.CF --- Curt Hagenlocher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From: geert lovink[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Tuesday,October 07, 2003 3:03 PM > > > > I asked Mr. Muscle's PR people to comment on the <...> -- Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 17:28:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Griffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: i don't know about anti-intellectualism, but... this can't be good can it? "Ronny Zibinski, a 19-year-old Berlin technician, said he liked the idea of a Schwarzenegger-type chancellor for Germany. "We need someone like that to clean up the mess and blow away the lousy politicians," he said." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031010/ts_nm/germany_arnold_dc # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New Media Education and Its Discontent
"It is these places [some universities] that are the guardians of intellectual lifeThey cannot teach the qualities that people need in politics and business. Nor can they teach culture and wisdom, any more than theologians teach holiness, or philosophers goodness or sociologists a blueprint for the future. They exist to cultivate the intellect. Everything else is secondary. Equality of opportunity to come to the university is secondary. The matters that concern both dons and administrators are secondary. The need to mix classes, nationalities and races together is secondary. The agonies and gaieties of student life are secondary. So are the rules, customs, pay and promotion of the academic staff and their debates on changing the curricula or procuring facilities for research. Even the awakening of a sense of beauty or the life-giving shock of new experience, or the pursuit of goodness itself -- all these are secondary to the cultivation, training and exercise of the intellect. Universities should hold up for admiration the intellectual life. The most precious gift they have to offer is to live and work among books or in laboratories and to enable the young to see those rare scholars who have put on one side the world of material success, both in and outside the university, in order to study with single-minded devotion some topic because that above all seems important to them. A university is dead if the dons cannot in some way communicate to the students the struggle -- and the disappointments as well as the triumphs in that struggle -- to produce out of the chaos of human experience some grain of order won by the intellect. That is the end to which all the arrangements of the university should be directed." Noel Annan The Dons: mentors, eccentrics and geniuses, University of Chicago Press,1999, pp. 3-4. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
What *ARE* New Media?
Folks: As the fellow who "coined" the term NEW MEDIA (circa 1990, in preparation for the America Online IPO, whereupon Steve Case awarded me this email address), I have often been asked -- So what the HECK is (er, are) New Media, anyway? The answer then and now is the same -- New Media are the mediums which will replace TELEVISION as the dominant *environment* in our lives and culture. Somewhat earlier, in the context of my work exploring these mediums in the domain of VR, I had also "coined" the term THREESPACE -- which is a "theological" term that helps to define the investigation of the ungoing investigation of New Media. I can now report that the New Media (which are also known as Threespace) are in the process of becoming a commercial reality and, therefore, the new ENVIRONMENT. And, it is something which can be easily experienced -- THREE CHANNEL STEREO sound reproduction -- by simply playing back properly recorded Left/Center/Right material on a system with three speakers. Surround sound is already the medium that replaced television -- for the obvious reason that "home theaters" now dominate the consumer electronics business and, for all practical purposes, they are simply big television sets with multi-channel sound added . . . replicating the experience of multi-channel sound in movie theaters. Based on the events of the past 24 hours at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in NYC (at the Javits through Monday), it is clear that multi-channel sound has jumped from its "home theater" origin into the mainstream of the production (and therefore reproduction) of MUSIC. This is crucial, because in the case of theatrical presentation, the various channels are mostly employed for "special effects." While some multi-channel audio is also effects oriented, more and more of it is intended to present the music -- as it was recorded and as it was intended to be experienced. As the Bob Dylan catalog is released in multi-channel SACD over the next few months, all this will become even clearer. There are already hundred's of multi-channel SACD releases available, in nearly all categories of performances. Philips and Sony are fully committed to multi-channel SACD and Panasonic is equally committed to an alternative format called multi-channel DVD-A. Can Frank Zappa -- who brought on his capacity to HEAR in multi-channels from his home on the fringes of the L.A. movie industry and who used this talent to knock Dylan off his high horse in 1967 in NYC -- be far behind? All of this makes a good deal of sense -- that "acoustic space" as surround sound would replace the "tactility" of television -- as those of you who have studied your McLuhan will quickly appreciate. Remember that ALL media are ultimately a matter of sensory balances and sensory biases. An EYE for an EAR!! As the Internet fell out of favor and the "chamber of commerce" which I founded in NYC -- the New York New Media Association -- was sold off, I was offered back my original "ownership" of the term New Media . . . which, of course, I accepted since I had only loaned in the first place. Noticing that this term has once again begun to echo in the house-of-mirrors that is nettime, I thought that it might be of some interest for me to give you all an update. New Media are the various implementations and the profound implications of the shift by acoustic space from the ground of our lives under the conditions of the electric media environment (i.e. television) to becoming the figures of expression in our increasingly post-electric world -- in particular, as reflected in three-channel stereo (3CS.) Reprising the question which I asked when I first met the original nettime crowd in late 1996 (back when "retired" Wall Street bankers and CIA agents still did such things), "What are we; What are we becoming?" The answer then and now is the same -- New Media. Best, Mark Stahlman New York City # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New Media Education and Its Discontent
Keith Hart writes: >Whatever we think of the country's present government, it has >a lot to do with the fact that America is the world's most >advanced experiment in democracy. To call such a society >anti-intellectual is perverse. To call America "the world's most advanced experiment in democracy" is to provide strong support for Brian Holmes's suggestion, from another thread, that... > Unfortunately (I mean this last word in a strong sense) democracy > also appears to be something less than what it has claimed. When Francis Hwang says: > As institutions grow in size, they > begin to crave predictability, and their natural habitat is a quiet, > placid order. But education is personal growth, which is to say that > it's change. At times it can even look like chaos. It makes me think, of course, of my own scholastic education--which at it's most outwardly formal stage was a fairly unstructured experience. That's not to say that it wasn't intense, because it was. But books and bongs, activism and lazy days, meetings with profs and baking bread for the first time...these were elements of equal importance in the experience, for me and the people around me. I now recognize my experience as having been shaped by the very tail end of the decades-long shadow cast by the experimental American campus environments that emerged in the Sixties. "...like chaos," then...for if we favor E.P. Thompson's quick "one definition of democracy" being the undoing of predictability in social behavior and social choice, then I must say, for all the problems associated with exclusivity and limited access, my experience in an American college approached the democratic ideal in intent if not practice. I fear that this particular manifestation of democratic spirit has ebbed almost everywhere in the US system of higher education. Two observations in particular I'd offer, one totally obvious, the other maybe less discussed. The first is the issue of cost. I attended what is and was a higher priced school. But when I started in the fall of '86 it cost my family not much more than $13k/year. Yeah, that's a lot. But, good god, the tuition for this same school now stands at nearly $30k/year, as it does at nearly all the so-called elite American private schools. My wife and many of our friends went to this school; they could not afford to go to this school today. The people who can afford to send their kids to these kinds of schools now often have zero interest in "personal growth," whether that's through classroom debate or doing elaborate practical jokery or performing a campus job in the dining hall, it doesn't matter...what matters is marketability, the recouping of that $120k investment. To state the obvious, then: It is no coincidence that the dramatic rise in tuition costs (at all the different types of higher education institutions, really) rolled in at about the same time that the American university experience reformulated as a largely predictable exercise in job and career preparation, as opposed to education. The second point has to do with student culture and drug use. For several decades student populations formed the core of that segment of American thinkers who experimented with different states of mind. Based on comparisons of surveys of student psychoactive drug use now and even less than 15 years ago, the conclusion is that full-time students as a group are no longer playing this role. Rather, they are--as a group--playing the new role of young people who fully integrate the use of instrumental drugs (mostly anti-depressants) into their lives starting in late adolesence. The over-diagnosis (often a self-diagnosis) of depression is a problem in that many of the emotions that inform the education of an individual (in the sense of "personal growth" and change) are precisely those of rage, boredom, euphoria, etc--exactly those intensities that bring people to the point of making formative decisions about who they are and what they believe, sometimes even in real or imagined opposition to great societal pressure. Of course these are also exactly those intensities of emotion which are slightly dulled by the panopoly of instrumental psychiatric treatments now available. The trading in of one role for the other stands as one among many changes in the character of the American educational experience and academic environment--changes which are blunting the democratic spirit felt by significant numbers of students for a generation at least, and which are effacing the practice and transmission of intellectualism on campus. My general point is that I believe that the American academy, starting with the students, the pressures they face, and their methods of facing them, is no longer the home for intellectuals (broadly defined as thinkers who want to change things using ideas--and that includes left radicals, liberal reformers, and neocons) that it recently was. Francis is correct when he says that the Right is miles ahead
new education (2010) [warehouse]
new education = media + language + logic + identity ... + NN [(((warehouse songs and stories)))] and walking down the sidewalk, the grass overgrown, heard noises along the old building abandoned years ago, old bike wheel needed patching, it was hot sun... the warehouse's garage doors were opened today, it was usually empty inside, yet today hundreds were all around, it was like an impromptu marketplace had been set up, so they went inside to find out more... ...right after finding passage through the initial crowd the space opened up its logic, this was where the ideas, and the people who help carry them, finally found land. it was granted by a city-state partnership, and the notice of sponsorship on the large sign indicated this was not only happening in this large metropolitan area, but all around the country, and more importantly in a majority of the world's fragmented cities, roughly simultaneously. the sign also had a charter of specific local businesses and government funding, cooperating with individuals, organizations, and agencies working in within a varied sector of the arts, sciences, and technological sectors. it helped make sense of turning around, back into what was assembled. this must be the result of what became known as the great internet isolation of 2004, when the people found that while globally connected, they were also trapped inside a language machine that would in turn limit their ability to engage again in the outside. it was this that drove people back to local networks, nodes of the vast communities abandoned to slum lords as the vacancy and boredom of the public mind withered away. certainly, this felt different, and there was no money that was needed to get in, no security cameras, it was like a bazaar and various patterns would form and reform in the groups and people of all walks of life. some of those wearing suits had signs up for wiring schools as part of volunteer networks, they had brochures on a small table, and some student apprentices in tow. others presented their works, sharing information about their services for this community, such as linking up people with projects, paid and unpaid and volunteer. one of their main goals was to bring the arts to the schools with a partnership with the computer recyclers and rebuilders in town, to use the basic MIDI controllers with the computers that could run them, and bring music, then also photography, and painting with the mass of discarded Wacom tablets still streaming out of the large cities from OS upgrades years earlier. they had photos of such work, and basic templates for their approach which was opened up to a collaborative approach, where people around the world could implement various models and feedback could help various schools and particular situations. next to this booth was a set up of old CRT monitors on a rack, with stools and headphones to listen and watch documentaries of people taped earlier, before their deaths in vast, anonymous nursing homes. it was an- other project from another group, the equipment was donated from local and national companies, and CDs and DVDs were burned for archival storage. you could pick from hearing about how life was during the early process of electrification, as the first electrical irons and lightbulbs and wiring arrived in houses, and how it was advertised and so strange to everyone. another had early telephone switch operators accounts, but many were lost to oblivion as they were never recorded before they died, thus whole eras of the human story was lost, the telegraph, the pole workers. this audio- visual history project would eventually be sent to the national archives, and be made accessible in remote database storage for all classrooms and the network. all one could do is try to sample the content, it was an overflowing hive of activities, in the other corner the pulsing lights and a video-collage on the wall could be seen, yet it was far away to get to in a single day. the SIGs or special interest groups of earlier years online started to work offline in new ways, and the interests in hobbies started to form which made a further transition from the university, back into DIY culture, and the garage educators were back at it, but the meetings apparently were much enlarged. artists were gathering signatures for creating an ad-hoc schedule for off-campus technology classes so they could focus their thoughts on thinking when paying the higher rates in the university system, and as such the ecosystem was changing. people who once focused just on interfaces or HTML were now literate in programming and looking for work in these areas, but it took a programmer who was also in the arts to help those with different thinking to understand the same concepts in ways that were more accessible.
