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As already stated, albeit more eloquently
by Hakim Bey,
"We want to control our media, not be Controlled by them."
This sense is at the crux of western society's tendency to critique
mass media. We may bitch about what's on TV - but who's getting rid
of their television? The same arrogance which drives this critiquing
mentality is the same one which conversely raises us up to make DIY
living room productions of every sort of media - and then to distribute
it freely - and for free - across the Web. Currently there appears
to be an interactivity schism between the users (couch potatoes) and
the do-ers (pomme fritz chefs). Of course this schism dates back to
the hunter/gatherer dualism and is beyond this scope of this argument... |
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Parallel to the rise
of postmodern tendencies, the anthropological concern for identifying
the 'rational animal' has fallen by the wayside of discovering a
'self-reflective machine with imagination' (as Dietmar Kamper discusses
in his essay "Between Simulation and Negentropy"). Part
of the transition into this new relationship depends upon acquiring
tools which force one to think beyond one's typical boundaries.
The shift into mash-up awareness is part of what may drive this
tendency, and may only best begin with art and objects. |
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Take for instance Genesis
P-Orridge's suggestion that "the method is a systematic application
of the fragmenting Process to all modes of inherited behavior and
belief. The intention is reclamation of self-determination and self-description
by truly freed choice. The result is to neutralise and challenge the
centre of social control." Consider applying the process of mashing-up
fragments of one's daily appearance with those of, say, Marilyn Manson
- or Marilyn
Ferguson; or to mashing-up one's general response style to questions
by challenging authority if one tends not to or to succumb to passivity
if one tends to dominate - all in an effort to mash-up habitual tendencies
with something uncertain outside of one's common behavioral reality-tunnel.
By playing behavior games one becomes familiar with personality traits
outside one's common associative pattern. By applying systematic,
intentional chance operators to one's belief systems, one introduces
oneself to a deeper 'reality' buried under the blinders of self/social
perception. (Not only can this be fun to try out around strangers,
you can also scare the hell out of your regular friends who will suddenly
perceive you as a schizophrenic maniac.) |
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"With a [mash]-up you can break
down the expected, inherited values and assumptions and retrain yourself
to look at information in apparently random juxtapositions,"
P-Orridge further states. This notion is at the heart of the mash-up
process. If culturally we are to engage ourselves in relationships
with media, objects and imaginative tools, as we certainly are, we
must be prepared to adopt a process, or processes, which allows us
- individually and collectively - to broaden how we interpret trails
of information in order to imbue those trails with personal meaning
via associate patterning. Not merely storage, retrieval and navigation,
but investigation and mixturization. |
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As we may think: Activate. Randomize.
Reinterpret. Liberate. "Neutralise and challenge the centre of
social control." |
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