MoM | McLuhan On Maui 2011: May 2011

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

"Understanding is half the battle. The central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them. And this is a vital task, because the immediate interface between audile-tactile and visual perception is taking place around us. No civilian can escape this environmental blitzkrieg, for there is, literally, no place to hide. But if we diagnose what is happening to us, we can reduce the ferocity of the winds of change and bring the best elements of the old visual culture, during this transitional period, into peaceful coexistence with the new retribalized society" -- McLuhan, “Playboy Interview.”

Monday, May 30, 2011

How McLuhan's Mother Gave Him the Leading Edge

Click here to play : How McLuhan's Mother Gave Him the Leading Edge

235 New Vidz From BuzzCoastin (With Many Clever Titles !)

MoMday Night Seminar: Tonight

Start time : 7PM EST [NYC]
The primary conference dial-in numbers are:

USA: +1 760 569 7070.
Canada: +1 559546 1500.

Access Code: 929710.

Check out : McLuhan-On-Maui [MoM] Facebook Page

PROBE: Plexure as "Acoustic Finneganese"

Oswald : " I have been reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
since I was 13 years old."

John Oswald - PLEXURE 1993

12 movements & 21 sub-movements
concept : first 10 years of Compact Disc era concept format : 22 minutes or 1 side of an LP record bpm : 47 > 384 + theme : time & love
1. Open
- Suck
- Rip
2. Urge
- Slow
- Slice
- Blink
3. Manifold
- Philosophy
- Phase
4. Blur
- Moment
- Wow
- Nest
5. Zoom
- Alone
- Gogh
6. Cyfer
7. Compact
- Phase2
- Snap
8. Worse
9. Mad Mod
10. Temperature
- Tempus Amoré (Hyper Love Time)
- Tempo Pact Massive
- Hazzard
- Warning
- Treacherous
11. Velocity
- Tremendous
- Tremulous

" Featured Artists "

Aretha Vanilli,
Bing Stingspreen,
Bo No Ma,
Sam & Deee-Lite,
Sam & Dead,
Engelbert Costello,
Ice Garfunkle,
Bolton Chili Overdire,
Moody Crue,
XTZ Top,
John Lennoncamp,
Bee Jesus,
B.T.O'Conner,
Sinead O'Connick Jr.,
Twisted Steely,
Axl Galas,
9 Inch Monkees,
Bo Dire,
Percy Faithful,
Joni Cocker,
Superloaf,
Jon Bon Elton,
Little Keith Richard,
Twisted Kross,
Madonna & Englishmen,
Fats Bono,
Spinal Top,
Dire No More,
Doobie Osmond,
Debbie Idol,
Frank Sinappa,
Allman Dominoes,
They Might Be Grateful,
Anthrax Squeeze Factory,
Halen Oates,
U-52s,
Depeche Mould,
AC/Dylan,
Marianne Faith No Morrisey,
Blondie Sabbath,
Ozzie Osmond,
Cheap Pixie Peppers,
Beastie Shop Beach,
Lynrd Lovett,
Cream Styx,
Jerry Harry,
Jello Bellafonte,
Milli Fudge,
Ozzy Loaf,
The Captain & Terence,
Joni Shithead,
Spiro Giants,
Stevie Ray Vangelis,
Jethro Byrne,
Mariah Cocker,
Sound Garth,
Yo Yo McCartney,
T.L.C.& C. Meat Factor,
Whitney REMTV Hammercamp,
Bonnie Ratt,
Alannarama,
10,000 Nine Inch Megasmiths,
Bobby Bon Jackson,
Julian Lennox,
Paula McCarey,
and Kool Mo Chuck.

Finneganese :
"funny funereels," "allnights newseryreel," "they leap looply, looply, as they link to light," "cellelleneteutoslavzendlatinsoundscript," and "a ... riot of blots and blurs and bars and balls and hoops and wriggles and juxtaposed jottings linked by spurts of speed." ... "what can't be coded can be decorded if an ear aye seize what no eye ere grieved fore" (482), "verbivocovisual" (341), "sendence of sundance" (615), "plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too" (6), "revealled by Oscur Camerad" (603), "Moviefigure on in scenic section" (603), "great things were expected in the fulmfilming department" (398), "Vouchsafe me more soundpicture! It gives furiously to think" (570), "allnights newseryreel" (489), "funny funereels" (414), "optophone ... ontophanes" (13), "broodcast" (567), "roll away the reel world, reel world, reel world" (64), "thank Movies" (194), "confesses to all his tellavicious nieces" (349), "our moving pictures" (565), "Moviefigure on in scenic section" (602), "if you are looking for the bilder deep your ear on the movietone" (62). "in deesperation of deispiration at the diasporation of his diesparation ... was found of the round of the sound of the loud"

---
Read more about John Oswald : http://www.plunderphonics.com and http://www.pfony.com

Sunday, May 29, 2011

PROBE: X-Ray

1.) Let me begin with your concern about “the effect of visual, communal images (via television) upon the survival of literacy.” In the first place, television does not present a visual image, but an X-ray icon which penetrates our entire organism. Joyce called it "the charge of the light barricade"—part of the Crimean war against mankind. Stained-glass images are not visual either, since they are defined by light through, as in Rouault paintings. The structure of these images is audile-tactile, as in abstract art, both of Symbolist and Cubist kind.

2.) The patterns of formerly hidden processes now begin to obtrude on every hand. Prescience, prophetic vision, and artistic awareness are no longer needed to establish an understanding of the most secret causes of personal and social processes. Mere electric speedup makes X-ray awareness natural.

3.) Some feel that Christianity's existence must always stand in the tension between being in the world and standing outside it. Kierkegaard was keenly aware of this, as were St. Paul and, later, Martin Luther. But the tension between inner and outer is a merely visual guideline, and in the age of the X-ray inner and outer are simultaneous events.

PROMPT: Low Definition

" I like the notes he doesn't play ! "

Saturday, May 28, 2011

PROBE: " We're Starring in a B Movie"

" Before Television, nobody knew the calibre of the clowns governing the country."

In the mid-sixties, McLuhan presaged that TV would prompt politicians to become entertainers as style and image dwarfed substance while "the news" turned into an entertainment package. McLuhan noted that "a four-year stint in the White House is no longer easily distinguishable from something arranged by a booking agency." Furthermore, said he, given the direction of show-biz politics, an actor could very well become President inside of two decades. Ronald Reagan moved into the Oval Office in 1980.

"When Sputnik went around the planet in 1957 the earth became enclosed in a man-made environment and became thereby an "art" form. The globe became a theatre enclosed in a proscenium arch of satellites. From that time the "audience" or the population of the planet became actors in a new sort of theatre. Mallarme had thought that "the world exists to end in a book." It turned out otherwise. It has taken on the character of theatre or playhouse. Since Sputnik the entire world has become a single sound-light show. Even the business world has now taken over the concept of "performance" as a salient criterion." -- McLuhan, "Roles, Masks and Performances"

Menippean Topics : Preface and Almanackers to Autonomous Pen

note to dear reader : HERE ENDETH THE PREFACE

The following list of 'Menippean Topics' was found on several sheets of paper neatly tucked inside the record jacket of the Nino Rota soundtrack LP to Federico Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita,' which was purchased with about a dozen other records at a yard sale in The Annex neighbourhoood of Toronto, on a sunny Spring Saturday afternoon in 1986. As a sidenote, one of the other LPs purchased that day was a 'sealed copy' of Lou Reed's 'Metal Machine Music'2xLP, which was 'nabbed' for a measly 10 bucks. [Which co-incidently, has just been re-released in a digitally remastered edition on Sister Ray Recordings, and released on 180 gram Double Vinyl, AUDIO DVD and BLU-RAY.

MENIPPEAN TOPICS

The chief techniques of defining a work as Menippean satire have been three: either (a) simply by the formula, "a mixture of verse and prose," or (b) by a comparison of its contents with those of a known Menippean satire, or (c) by means of a "definitive" list of features. Each of these is inadequate to deal with the problem of definition of the form, Menippean satire. The first is inadequate both because it allows for the inclusion of works that are not Menippean, and because it excludes a great variety of works that are - that are either wholly in verse or wholly in prose. The second is inadequate because it too makes no provision for innovation. While the third (and most popular) likewise does not provide for innovation, it is also inadequate because critics have not agreed upon what such a list should contain and because, as this appendix illustrates, a complete and thereby definitive list would be unwieldy if it were in fact possible to compile one. Further, in all probability, no Menippean satire would use all of the ingredients of such a list. Moreover, all three techniques are inadequate because they result from appraising Menippean satire abstractly and descriptively, from a distance, and because they ignore the interaction of the satire with the reader.

As has been shown in Part One, descriptive or abstract approaches fail to come to grips with Menippean satire for the reason that it is inseparable from its effect on its audience. All of the features hitherto used to describe the form, or any example of it, may be regarded as tactics chosen by a Menippist to engage and retune the sensibilities of a reader by deliberately violating his sense of decorum in one or another way. If the catalog of features appears to grow with each period of Menippism, then, it does so because the Menippist has a new, or at least a different, audience sensibility to contend with. For each change of sensibility implies both an intensifying of awareness in some areas of experience and a blunting of awareness in others. Furthermore, the catalog may be enlarged for the Menippist by the development, either through his own work or others', of new literary patterns and techniques. This may in some measure account for the paradoxical fact that Menippean satire is at once highly experimental and highly conservative of tradition (it is mimetic).

The following list of Menippean topics does not attempt to be exhaustive: it includes little more than the commonplace features - e.g., those discussed by Frye, Williams, Bakhtin and Korkowski. While its size may demonstrate the futility of a merely descriptive approach, the list may serve another purpose. A structural study of these and other Menippean topics may eventually yield basic patterns of Menippean decorum which will in turn provide greater knowledge of how human perception is altered and managed.

MENIPPEAN TOPICS A :

Almanackers. They were often used as the butts of the satires, as street-level philosophi gloriosi. Cf. The Owle's Almanacke by L.L. (Laurence Lyly). Astrologers have been attacked regularly by Menippists since Lucian's Astrologia. Cf. Nashe ("Adam Fouleweather"), Rabelais, Dekker.

Anonymous Author. The author's anonymity is apologised for in a fake introduction, for example, one written by the printer or bookseller who might plead any of several reasons. A common reason is that the author, a man of quality, does not wish to reveal himself as a writer of this sort of production. E.g.: Donne's Ignatius, His Conclave, Swift's Tale. In a variant, Joyce would often aver that his interlocutors in conversation, or passersby in the street, were composing and writing Finnegans Wake, not he.

Apologiae for the Work. One or more apologies are often used to establish relations to other Menippists, by citation, by reference, or by plagiarism. They can be used to establish tone, to banter with the reader, or to lay trails of red herrings. They may appear at the beginning of the work (as in Donne's Ignatius or in French editions of La Satyre Menippée) or anywhere inside as a digression (as in Harington's Ajax and Sterne's Tristram Shandy).

Autonomous Author. The author exults in a freedom to do whatever occurs to him. This topic is frequent. Examples include Lucian, Seneca, Fronto, Synesius, Erasmus (Folly), the Obscure Epistolers, Agrippa, Despérieres' dogs, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Byron. Sterne: "I have a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy. - Accordingly I set off thus." (Tristram, p.74).

Autonomous Pen. The pen, or the act of writing, is remarked to take control of the author or narrative and to pursue its own course, observed and commented upon by the author who feigns powerlessness to control it. Ancient mock-eulogists had similarly feigned powerlessness to control their rambling oratory. E.g.: Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum (1516); Swift, Tale of a Tub; Sterne, Tristram; Nashe, Lenten Stuffe. Sterne has: "In a word, my pen takes its course... I write a careless kind of civil, nonsensical, good humoured Shandean book, which will do all your hearts good...." And: "But this is neither here nor there - why do I mention it? - ask my pen - it governs me – I govern not it." Tristram Shandy, ed., Work, pp.436, 416)Banquet. A favored Menippean device for displaying gluttony and other excesses, this topic also serves as both a strategy and a symbol of Menippean encyclopedism. The range of users is from Petronius (Trimalchio) through Rabelais to Finnegans Wake. (In the ballad, the party at the Wake becomes so rowdy that the corpse rises and joins in the fun.) The Wake is a banquet in many senses: of history, of learning, of languages, of personae, of words and puns, etc. Other examples may be found in Lucian, Convivium, the symposia of Varro, Athenaeus' Deipno-sophists, Macrobius, Beroalde's (Francois Beroalde de Verville's) Moyen de Parvenir (a philosophic banquet of the dead), La Satyre Menippée and Bouchet's Les Serées (1583-4). In the sixteenth century, the French seem to have enjoyed Menippean banquets particularly. Perhaps this topic is a direct link to the derivation of "satire" from satura lanx. See also Michael Coffey's article in the Oxford Classical Dictionary for a brief conspectus of ancient symposium literature.Blustering Narrator. The author asserts his authority (extreme), an assertion often couched in Herculean terms. This is often accompanied by a teasing of the reader and chitchat or feigned worry about the book's organization. Swift's is perhaps the most complete example. The hack, in Tale of a Tub, claims "Absolute Authority in Right, as the freshest Modern, which gives me a Despotic Power over all Authors before me..." and so on. This remark is contained in a "Panegyrical Preface," which is put in Section V of the Tale. The long line of Menippean precedents includes Lucian's Alexander the False Prophet, Cornelius Agrippa's De Incertitudine, Nashe's Lenten Stuffe, Burton's Anatomy (e.g., II.4.2.1, III.2.3, and I.2.4.7), and John Taylor. In A Voyage Round the World, Dunton demands, as he opens a new chapter, "Room for a Rambler - (or else I'll run over ye)."

Friday, May 27, 2011

Inventory: Mystery Movie

PROBE: Odor and Prayer

PROMPT: un-FINN-ished McLuhan Timeline

PROMPT: Pyramids Attacked by Octopus

"The need to retain an attitude of complete clinical detachment is necessary for survival in this kind of work ... The road to understanding media effects begins with arrogant superiority. If one lacked this sense of superiority, this detachment, it would be quite impossible to write about them. It would be like an octopus attacking the great pyramids."- McLuhan in The Hot and Cool Interview, Stearn, 1967

Thursday, May 26, 2011

MoMday Night Seminar 13: Available for FREE Download

Special Guest: MJ (the hypnotist).

McLuhan on Maui, MoMday night seminar 12, 16 May 2011 now available for FREE download here.

The Tweets from this session follow in reverse chronological order:

MoM NOW: Signing off. The world of matter calls...my thanks to everyone that has participated in MoM13. MoM continues...

MoM NOW: x-raying, the gate of horn, McLuhan on the papacy, defending the mass...

MoM NOW: McLuhan's MoM, Prairie women, McLuhan's announcement of his conversion, life in a protestant country

MoM NOW: McLuhan, the Mass and the Church, liturgy and the homily

MoM NOW: back on hypnosis, ruts, axel wheels, power

MoM NOW: Ion says "its tweetable". Just the facts... pentads hexads mystery landscape

MoM NOW: 3hr 45 minute mark as significant.

MoM NOW: flp into disappearance of mystery

MoM NOW: The Logos, tetrads on IoN, enh mystery landscape, ob all chemical body, astral, tv body (a lot), ret. . fairly tale world

MoM NOW: McLuhan and detachment, the McLuhan archives, the actors voice, macabees, summerians, logos and physics, the enochian

MoM NOW: Purgatory, the 9th gate (movie), Torchia, Johnny Depp

MoM NOW: McLuhan making fun of occult arts, the new unseen, the book of shadows, layers of hell (and memes of)

MoM NOW: the dialectic of violence, becoming what you hate/fear, the minds eye, traditional occult arts and wisdom

MoM NOW: Woody Allen, wow, whale tails and whoopings, super-civilized and subatomic man, playing with old dichotomies

MoM NOW: Hmm..., peruvian, bablylon, larouche, charts, butlers and angels, Haarp, Alex Jones and coast to coast,

MoM NOW: Winters and the mimetic fallacy, putting on the mimetic zone, formal cause, formal causality as obsolesced?

MoM NOW: choice! The magnificence of..., The Wake, ISSY, McLuhan the respectable professor and the dirty and edgey

MoM NOW: new words, dogma, merging, noticing the difference (varigation...), where the rubber meets the road

MoM NOW: cavier, appetites, pixellation, tactility, colour TV, ...and what has changed

MoM NOW: Early America, Orwell vs McLuhan, what Orwell missed,

MoM NOW: carnivals, ash wednesday, the french, ...and the intrusion of a voice purporting to be a new medium

MoM NOW: IoN as current day blasphemous figure, McLuhan as observer and commentator on FRINGE phenomenon, fear greed and boredom

MoM NOW: Lewis revival in the 90s, Captain Beefheart, Bowie on LEWIS. G. bernard Shaw, beatniks, insulting society

MoM NOW: WTF, Lewis on Hitler, and what this meant for McLuhan, Lewis as supporter of monster and being banned from London society

MoM NOW: McLuhan as painter, how McLuhan talked about the mystery landscape, Finnegans Wake, Lewis, Charles Manson

MoM NOW: Angelology, angels vs super-angelic state, nostalgia for superheroes, the movie THOR, portals, Natalie Portman

MoM NOW: [gear shift] media theology, god-making machines, Tony Schwartz, media gods...

MoM NOW: laser controlled bombs, TV war, print orientated perspectives on McLuhan, ... and the esoteric arts, angels, and the media

24 May Favorite Reply Delete

MoM NOW: The Galactic mind (Thompson quadrant) as obsolete image, visual space, Walter Bowart, 911, Santa Monica, gulf war

MoM NOW: Who is the Illuminai now, management, wealth, distributionism, the mystery landscape...the NEW medium

MoM NOW: The Romanov's, Rockerfellers (BoB's old crew), there is no more chamical body control, and what is going on right NOW

MoM NOW: [we are going conspiracy now] Illuminati, secret councils, Android meme and its after-image, Thurn und taxis, Prince Charles

MoM NOW: Lewis and the secret causes of WWII, Self condemed, McLuhan as character in that work/novel.

MoM NOW: The after-image of the disappearance of media, BoB says he was assigned to STOP McLuhan, the Illuminati

MoM NOW: Everyone disappeared in 1945 (says MM), the crisis of the artist, Elvis, ego's and chemical body creativity

MoM NOW: baudrillard (the figure who inspired Matrix) says he will not be involved in making the film. The matrix made the matrix

MoM NOW: Shrinking media and molding media enviornments, the meme of thinking you are in charge, the great liberation-there is nothing there

MoM NOW: 1983/84, computer rebellion, zero, canelling the game, junk bond economy, enron, and the collapse in 2008

MoM NOW: Gamification, Understanding media, games as extension of man, Copeland, THOR, and the collapse of gamification

MoM NOW: Super creativity, youtube, broadcast yourself, passive consuption...everyone as workforce

MoM NOW: FW..who is writing the book, McLuhan on the source of jokes, celebrating the audience.

MoM NOW: How can you tell the hypnotised from the hypnotist (updating Yeats on the dance and dancer). Who is hypnotising who

MoM NOW: legislation in relation to hypnosis, brain-washing of the chemical body, self-hypnosis via media enviornments...and WHO

MoM NOW: McLuhan's writing method, making inventory, naming, charting, and the limitations of creativity....very lazy

MoM NOW: Rumpelstitlskin, how do you name a post-verbal complex TYPHON (multi-headed monster)

MoM NOW: folding back to MoM12, tetrads of formal causality, Eric McLuhan's new book. NAMING and formal causality

MoM NOW: post-ether, E=MCsquared as SCULPTURE, post-media, Einstein, was he aware of radio hypnosis

MoM NOW: Madison avenue could not hypnotise a mouse. Facebook, do I still exist?, what is left of McLuhan...what is the subliminal hypnosis

MoM NOW: McLuhan, television, and the tactile cliche, and the post-tactile

MoM NOW: The struggle to be noticed, environment placement as oppossed to product placement.

MoM NOW: Kroker on Panic this and panic that (Kroker's meme)...good for the late 90s. Panic Hollywood..panic everything

MoM NOW: Twitter has been "overloaded" so the report has been fragmentary

MoM NOW: ipods and private bubbles, sense ratios, private and not private, ...the new hypnosis, crowd dynamics

MoM NOW: shifting ratios in perception, hypnosis in the current media enviornment, McLuhan's analysis of media

MoM NOW: effects preceed causes, the rituals of hypnotism, the difficulties of hypnotism, criminals, distracting the watchdog of the mind

MoM NOW: (Techniques) reverse reaction, repitition, delayed action (anticipating effects), association...pre-conversations

MoM NOW: The study of hypnosis in relation to McLuhan, the basics of hypnotism, the five laws of suggestability, mallarme, defining/creating

MoM NOW: When 1984 becomes cliche, the job of the artist, seeing the ordinary as extraordinary, the task of dehypnotising

MoM NOW: reading strategies, the effectiveness of words, cliche to archetype process, McLuhan on numbing

MoM NOW: dialogue, mental transportation, manipulating conversations...going against the grain, conspiracy theory

MoM NOW: Getting spooked, tapping into strange things, post-hypnotic suggestion.

MoM NOW: hypnotism and memory enhancement. perception. perceptual enhancement.

MoM NOW: hypnotism. self-hypnosis. control. the "potential" to tap other parts of the brain. memory. power.

MoM NOW: Being in the world but not off it. Parrellels between artistic strategies and Christian strategies. How new media envs...

MoM NOW: Slowly setting in. We are currently talking with MJ. He is a hypnotist.

From 7pm NYC time I will begin to Tweet/SPAM the topics and threads being discussed. The topic per minute (TPM) count will be high.

MoM NOW: 10 minutes to MoMday. The primary conference dial-in numbers are: USA: +1 760 569 7070. Canada: +1 559546 1500. Access Code: 929710.

"You-Do-It" Histography: McLuhan's Audience(s) as Producers

INVENTORY ITEM #1.

"Join the story" links though to: http://storey.it/case/1/step/2

INVENTORY ITEM #2.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is marking the anniversary with a suite of special programs on ABC Radio National, culminating in a “pop-up” (temporary) radio station on ABC Digital on the weekend of July 23 and 24, which will include archival material and explore life in the present digital age.

We are also developing a special online space, which will include an interactive infographic depicting a timeline of McLuhan’s life, and the media and communications landscape from his birth until the present day (and into the future!).

We’ve kicked it off with some starter dates and events:

http://dragtotrash.com/misc/marshall/mcluhan/60th/

Now, this is where you come in.

As a part of this project, we would value your input on what you believe to be the best or most significant cultural phenomenon or events during this period of the McLuhan century (1911-2011), in any of the following categories:

Communication Technologies - Significant technological developments or advances (for example, the first colour television broadcast by John Logie Baird in the UK on 4 February 1938), or the first mobile telephone, brick size (2kgs) in 1973, or even Agent 86’s shoe phone, first depicted in the first scene of the first episode of Get Smart in 1965)
Media Events - Ways in which the media has reflected historical events (such as images of the Vietnam War, Apollo 11 and the moon landing, the felling of the twin towers etc.)
Great moments in modern culture - (for example, the opening of Australia’s first Westfield Mall in Blacktown, July 1959, legalisation of gay marriage in the Netherlands in 2001, Vatican II from 1962-1965, First public broadcast of a presidential funeral in 1963 following Kennedy’s assassination, etc)
Advertising - Iconic or representative advertisements (from the Marlboro man to Burger King’s subservient chicken)
Biography - Significant events in McLuhan’s life and work (including publications, television appearances etc)
Future Directions - Your own McLuhan-esque observations, insights and predictions for the future

We will be collating this data and incorporating it into the infographic.