Re: LIFESCIENCE: poor vision

[trevor <tebatt@dds.nl>]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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On 22-Jul-99, PROFRICHAR@aol.com wrote:

>to trevor
> Is this a functional basis for a strategy which you actually use as a
guiding
> principle in your daily life -

>yes it is,

Strange, because I have the feeling that your remarks within the forum
generally seem to have removed all the intellectual excitement from the
discussion and replaced it by banality and commercialized popularisation

> it is part of my daily life post-punk strategy

Perhaps this actually means something real to you -but not everybody
involves themselves in keeping up with the latest trends in popular culture
-so to me this is just another "meaningless cliche".

> and it is a strategy treating the topic or life science in the ambivalent or
>dialectic way that i feel about it,

Well, I did feel a certain ambivalence towards dealing with real issues
-but somehow "dialectics" seemed very far away, with an uncritical acceptance
of (commercial) trends being the only position actually being propagated.

> on the one hand there are all the
>uncalculable dangers ahead of us because of the economic hegemony in the
>development

Which seemed to be exactly the point we were not allowed to discuss!

>on the other hand there is always my very out of time favour

Concidering how "fashionable" this attitude is -you must be either "out of
time" yourself -or believe that I am, in order to make such a statement.

> for provocative
>pieces of art like stelarc orlan or strange apocalyptic things like mice with
>ears on their back, this is horrible and fascinating at the same time because
>these beings do not only exist in films they are real.

I should think that concidering recent (and perhaps even current) history, any
reasonably intelligent person would be rather careful about encouraging
potentially "apocalyptic" developments.

It seems rather bizarre to me, that at a time when the computer has added the
possibility of dynamic "objectivity" to the traditional simulatory nature of
art -some people are pushing "reality" instead of "simulation" as as a
suitable arena for dangerous (social) experimentation.

Perhaps this just shows how completely out of touch with reality (or
completely anti-democratic -if this is the percieved "reality") the cultural
establishment has become.

The promotion of apocalyptic situations would hardly seem to make economic
sense in the long-term. So it appears to me to be a rather irresponsible
attitude which may, in the short-term benifit a few people, but is something
for which others must eventually pay a very heavy price (is this what
"post-punk" means?).

Under these circumstances, I can only be glad that the "lifescience" list has
not been successful, although to be honest, I find the thought that such
irresponsible attitudes are being encouraged in students rather disquieting. I
can only hope the students are more critical than their professor.

Perhaps the collapse of the discussion also proves that the strategies used
will not work -because they are not sustainable. Possibly this is even a
suitable definition for "dictatorship" (i.e. the forced preservation and use
of strategies which are fundamentally unsustainable).

History proves that such dictatorships always fail -unfortunately, people are
so unhistorically minded (with so little understanding of the "physical"
nature of the medium/media) that the historical process keeps repeating
itself, with the same catastrophic consequences (destroying the evidence and
defence mechanisms that could protect us against it).

>not very scientific in classical terms but my way

Concidering the outdated (and presumably irrelevant) nature of "classical
science" this remark seems to suggest an attempt to justify a rather confused
fight against self-invented windmills.

Truly, not a very fashionable opinion (among fashionable people) but my
experience!

In the meantime I continue to try and develop "my way" -hopefully, without
inapropriately forcing it upon others.

Intellectual, cultural and biological diversity are essential to our
survival. Anything that interferes with this diversity is not an "exciting
intellectual game" -but a criminally irresponsible act, in fact, a "war crime"
against humanity!

trevor



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