Ambient Notes #2 (Goldsmiths)

I went to a lecture yesterday by Heather Corcoran from Rhizome.org. The lecture was interesting.

I took down what I call ambient notes - you can see some I took at Wysing Arts Centre here.

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-UNI TECH Internet cafe. New Cross Road.

-The sound of a broken air conditioner interacting with a speaker at the front of the auditorium.

-A certain comfort in the announcements before lectures - things to sign up for, reading groups, offers of human contact.

-Formalities: introductions upon introductions

-Microphone overloading, fuzzy digitised voice

-On the whiteboard behind the lecturer
FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE
F.I.D
Femme sole
femme couverte
Bildungsroman
Genteel bourgeoise
Style-6+6=12 (w/ diagram of 12 blocks in formations of 6 in two different colours, interacting in different ways to make 12)

-Piano in the corner of the stage

-Lecture theatre cold rather than overly warm as would be expected

-Catching the eye of latecomers, slight sense of superiority

-Excitement at the irrelevance of the topic -> meaning is in everything/meaning is in nothing

-On the projector screen: "everything is everything else" "there can be no original copy"

-I have a hair in my mouth

-The lecturer says 'metadata', 'copy', 'control', 'enforced', 'first', 'authenticity', 'proper', 'real', 'copy', 'tracking', 'sharing', 'progressive', 'versions', 'valorisation', 'idolatry'

-Susan Sontag, something like "everything has been photographed"

-"Duplicates update faster than originals"

-The lecturer says 'aggressively disparate', 'meaning', relevance'

-Pirated books w/ new chapters/different endings

-"That which moves with speed comes to dominate that which is slower"

-What is more than capital? Piracy only exists because of capitalist protectionism, it is a part of capitalism, and the upper limit of dispersion speed has to be capitalism

-Women laughing with salad

-The lecturer says 'interruption', 'prosumer', 'market place', 'brutal', 'network', 'paranoid', 'monopoly', 'definition', 'spleen'

-After 4 or 5 tries, I get the hair out of my mouth. It isn't mine.

-'The tide of gif makers'

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[questions from chair and audience]

-Feedback of the mics - resonant frequency of the room
-different feedback tone for the each mic -> different frequencies of their particular parts of the room

-Someone not understanding feedback 'your microphones are too close together'

-Q from student - 'This relates to my own practice and is more just a series of observations than a question'

-An older professor references simulacra, which is totally relevant and describes the situation perfectly, but everyone including me inwardly sighs because it is so out of date, so unfresh.

-Are you critical of or critical in. Critical of suggests vantage point, distance, objectivity.

-Yugoslavia dissolved as a country, but web domain of .yu still existed

-A middle aged professor says 'hacktivists'

-The lecturer says 'legitimise'

-Student says 'joyous', 'creativity'

-Lecturer says 'PDF', 'dilution'

-On the door a "KEEP CLEAR" sign has been ripped to say "LEAR"

-Both of my buttcheeks hurt

-Old people are already dead

-Relevance is more and more momentary/fractured
  +The most irrelevant you can be is on the button i.e., directly relevant

-Same student does another Q 'there's no question at the end of this'

-Older lecturer talks about time. Students sigh, what is time? Trying to make himself not dead. But the students know.