From Citizen Kane to Knowmadism
Project: Polytopia

Citizen Kane -> aesthetics -> story -> reality -> perception -> senses -> information -> infocologies -> privacy -> Facebook -> data mining -> personal narratives -> human freedoms -> government control -> sur-, sous-veillance -> commodification of personal data -> data-mining personal and collective infocologies -> knowmadism



(75:18 min, 192 kbps, mono mp3 – 51.7mb, DL it HERE)

“that’s some pretty trippy shit, Mr. Ishan” – a student



This is a lecture I gave on May 25th to a class of 14 year old high school freshman. For the last 4 months I’ve had the opportunity to teach three levels of Film courses in high school as a long term substitute, with about 100 students from 14-17 years old. In this time, I’ve asked them to take a closer look at the ongoing sophistication of our relationship with media as consumers and creators, and the roles of story in our identities and existence, individually and collectively – a conversation that is sorely lacking from the education of today’s youth.

I see outdated paradigms worm their way through the plasticity of the minds, solidifying the worldview of these students and I know that its not too late. That if we have the conversation together, they are open, willing and able to reframe their understandings. These Millenials, these Digital Natives (of which I suppose I am one) have an inherent flexibility to adapt to new paradigms – we update ourselves with each new generation of technology that emerges, migrate social networks and services, and live a life of multi-linear existence – its native to our OS.

But this multi-linear existence is being forced to inhabit an old paradigm of knowledge gathering, learning, and perception of the world around us that is propogated by the current system of education. It’s this dichotomy which kills the ”culture” – distractions reign. Since we’re not being told what changes technology brings to our models of reality, we tend to fall into a passive understanding of the world around us based on outdated consensual understandings.

Yet – and the hope is strong – I’ve learned that if you can have the conversation with the youth – tell them something that breaks apart their conceptions and provides a basis on which to build them anew and embrace other points of view – …well, that’s all that you can do.

We have to have the conversation when the youth is young. To implant ideas and concepts in their minds when they are still fresh, models of mind that allow the inherent plasticity of mind that comes with that youth to extend through our lives - that which so many who have lost that plasticity work so hard to overcome.I’ve had the luck to learn from these students during the process of sharing with them – its forced me to learn to communicate my own points of view simply and clearly; it’s deepened my understanding of the reality I’m living through with them. This is a thank you to all my students who have been open and willing to share with me.

In my humble opinion, every teacher must learn to have this conversation with their students – to contextualize what they teach to students with the flow of knowledge and events surrounding us, in our daily existence – to learn how to learn with them, not to teach from a static information ecology, to embrace the fractured flow of information coming from each mind and mutually co-create the narratives our of existence.

Sat, May 29, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: reality, perception, information, privacy, Aesthetics, story, senses, infocology, facebook, data mining, personal narratives, sousveillance, knowmadism
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Interacting Arts
Project: Start your own revolution

INTERACTING ARTS is one or all of the following: a group of cross-disciplinary
artists, media critics, an activist network, a conspiracy, a brand,
a think-tank and a magazine which is circulated both on the web and in
print. We aim to inspire and activate people into becoming our fellow
creators of fully lived and experienced lives. Our theories are nothing
other than the theories of our real life and of the possibilities experienced
or perceived in it. We strive to coordinate our refusal of existential poverty
through affirmation of creativity, co-operation, solidarity, play and
our blistering desire for freedom.

Two issues of the Interacting Arts magazine. Find them also here: IA05, IA06

EDIT: seems like only the first 5 pages are showing up, so either visit the scribd links or the links above for the full versions

Ia International 05 A

During a live role-play we construct a new reality together. As children
of a post-modern paradigm we have been taught that “everyone experiences
the world in a different way” and that “no way of looking at the
world is less valuable than any other”. Ergo, if we create a reality, it has
the same value as the “real” reality. The only difference is that we have
the power over our collectively created reality. We can disappear – live
beyond sheepish politicians, invasive corporations, a troubled past, a fatassed
patriarchy and a state monopoly of violence. Together we write
new social protocols, find an aesthetic, develop a rhythm of life and allow
our bodies to become tools for new, interesting ways to interact.

MIDDLE GROUND
Of course it must be possible to find tools for interaction between collective realities and consensus reality. Why not be satisfied with temporary zones? Perhaps this is what we should do, and what we, in a way, are doing. That means we can pause a while, rethink, and start fresh. Another path is to make collective re-interpretations of consensus reality in order to break free from its constraints.

Ia International 06

There is nothing to stop us from forming many alternative bubbles which
can cooperate within federative structures. They can communicate and
trade in some fitting manner. Perhaps through potlatch, after all. Imagine
being a vagabond of realities – what if a biking trip between Stockholm
and the suburb Södertälje could offer as diverse cultural shifts as between
Wall Street and Mecca? Imagine a network of people and groups with
a common approach – the creation of new worlds.

Sat, Dec 5, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: reality, architecture, entertainment, particapatory entertainment, subjective, subjective reality, interacting arts, ideographics
Sent to project: Start your own revolution

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