Re: nettime Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12 (Lascaux)
Self-conscious-artists-everywhere: By now, Lascaux has grown principally into a massive conservation/preservation industry mobilizing vast resources and hundreds of experts, many more than those actually concerned with its artistic content. Lascaux was NOT meant to be art! These are paleolithic, proto-religious paintings made by pre-historic humans who were not YET self-conscious. Human mentality has undergone *multiple* fundamental changes since then and the mental life that produces *art* today would be completely unfathomable to those who made these cave paintings. In fact, ancient Egypt also had no art. Those objects and hieroglyphics that amaze us are overwhelmingly religious and were not meant to be publicly displayed or enjoyed by an audience at all -- which is why they largely come to us from sealed burial chambers. They were meant for the gods who were presumed to be walking among us. Rarely are museums honest about these matters. I once went to an exhibit in Israel where the curators went out of their way to make this point in the catalog and display tags but this seems to be very uncommon. Merlin Donald's 1993 Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition would be a good place to start to better understand these changes. _http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Modern-Mind-Evolution-Cognition/dp/0674644840 /ref=sr_1_1?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1336651426sr=1-1_ (http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Modern-Mind-Evolution-Cognition/dp/0674644840/ref=sr_1_1?s=booksie=UT F8qid=1336651426sr=1-1) Our confusion about such things is a reflection of how deeply we have forgotten the origins of our own culture, under the propaganda effects of mass-media, and why the digital renaissance now underway will come as a surprise to so many people. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12 (Lascaux)
Religion is no more credible than art, to describe Lascaux, perhaps much less so due to its hyper-explanatory application to cultures (also an aggregatingly suspect term) from a polished view, to gloss raw material with a narrative rationale likely to appeal to consumers, or best, to funders of research most responsive to religious attribution especially if slathered with nationalistic significance. Holy Land, Mecca, Wall Street. Sanctification of cultural sites world monuments is no different than cathedralization nor museumification nor illusory non-proliferation of WMD. And glorification and disparagement of these preenings is a given, verily red-neckish, Marxian, atheistic aesthetic of duplicity. Yet nations promote chauvinistic tourism as a leading industry right up there with faith-based lotteries, voting, and, pathetically, higher education's critical thinking of fey jadism of the cloud mind. Internet monumentalism joining millions of minions ant-hiving at mouse, keyboard, and network as if constructing a pyramid, each ant nudging a blip of quartz up the pile. Look back from ahead, ah, yes, the Lascaux syndrome favoring the imaginary past to avoid anxiety of what's now, fear of what's coming. Nobody venerates the comforting past like the aged. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime Privacy, Moglen, @ioerror, #rp12 (Lascaux)
Lascaux is far from being low cost/free and with global reach, which I had
in mind.
Show me someone who contributes to 'social media' today with an eye on
recognition 10,000 years from now. Which is what transpired in Lascaux -
the style did not change for thousands of years, and very few saw the
stuff during lifetimes of authors.
Lascaux.
By now, Lascaux has grown principarily into a massive conservation/
preservation industry mobilizing vast resources and hundreds of experts,
many more than those actually concerned with its artistic content. Maybe
that is an apt metaphor for the (future of the) ('new') media ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
# distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission
# nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
