Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued, 1970-71

Cage, John

doi:10.2307/468388

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Either that or we should stop assuming just because we mailed something it will get where we sent it." 70 In other words, a letter will not always arrive at its destination. Cage's complaint is the underlying conceit for The Postman's Choice, one of five ideas for postcards that Vautier sent to Maciunas in 1965.…”

Section: Post Indeterminacymentioning

confidence: 99%

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

Chamberlain

2018

ARTMargins

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The term “network” has often been used to characterize Fluxus's internationalism and to identify its membership. This has led a number of scholars to argue that Fluxus anticipated forms of artistic exchange now associated with Internet-based art. More recently, it has cast Fluxus as a precedent for applying a network model to other transcontinental avant-gardes, particularly in curatorial practice. Yet in the rush to relate Fluxus to contemporary discourses on global connectivity, insufficient attention has been paid to the specific apparatuses that facilitated its cohesion. This article stages an intervention into Fluxus studies (and by extension Conceptual art, mail art, and other transnational movements associated with communication and the “dematerialization” of the art object) by drawing on the field of German media theory to analyze the “paperwork” that makes up much of the movement's material production. Specifically, it focuses on how the artist George Maciunas's engaged the postal system in order to facilitate Fluxus's collectivity, as well to insinuate Fluxus's methods of experimental composition into larger power structures. After an opening discussion of Maciunas's important diagrammatic history of Fluxus's development (a.k.a. the John Cage chart), the article tracks Maciunas's deployment of newsletters to organize Fluxus activities, his infamous mail-based sabotage proposals, his collaborations with Mieko Shiomi and Ben Vautier, and his “Flux Combat” with the New York State Attorney General.

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Section: Post Indeterminacymentioning

confidence: 99%

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

Chamberlain

2018

ARTMargins

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“…the duration of the dice roll (in milliseconds), is then used by the PDS software to seed a random calculation to select two photos. The algorithm uses the pseudorandom number generator provided in the .Net Framework, though we also explored using an I Ching algorithm in reference to Cage's work on chance operations [Cage, 1968] to select the two photos. These photos are presented in its entirety and left on the screen for 10 seconds, side by side, remaining still on the screen, after which the passive mode takes over once again.…”

Section: The Pds In Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nudging towards Serendipity: A case with personal digital photos

Leong

Harper

Regan

2011

Electronic Workshops in Computing

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Serendipity is an engaging, deeply personal and even magical experience to some. While serendipity has been noted to arise during people's interactions with digital photos, we have yet to understand how this occurs or how it could be supported during-and-through the use of technology. Inspired by findings about serendipity arising from people's shuffle listening, we designed a digital photo display system to explore how we could support people's encounters with serendipity with digital photos. Through this, we gained a deeper understanding of this technology-mediated serendipity and found ways that can support and even nudge people towards encountering serendipity.

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“…At the time, John Cage (1971) predicted the 21st century would regard this revolutionary era in the 1960s as one defined by Buckminster Fuller. Seeing his own writings as works of clarification addressed to all humanity, which he regarded and called "fellow earthians" (Fuller, /2008a), Fuller delighted himself with the role of serving as a "prognosticator" and "forecaster" (Fuller, /2008a.…”

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confidence: 97%

“…While he is not as widely recognized today, Fuller was one of the 1960s' most public, and truly peripatetic, intellectuals, and he regarded his Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth as an accessible argument in favor of finding a more ecological and truly sustainable future for humanity's ongoing industrial development (Castro, 2004;Gottlieb, 1993). At the time, John Cage (1971) predicted the 21st century would regard this revolutionary era in the 1960s as one defined by Buckminster Fuller. Seeing his own writings as works of clarification addressed to all humanity, which he regarded and called "fellow earthians" (Fuller, /2008a), Fuller delighted himself with the role of serving as a "prognosticator" and "forecaster" (Fuller, /2008a.…”

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confidence: 99%

Ephemeralization as Environmentalism: Rereading R. Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

Luke

2010

Organization & Environment

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This study critically surveys the environmental thinking and design philosophy Of R. Buckminster Fuller by revisiting two of his major theoretical works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and Utopia or Oblivion. It highlights Fuller's fascination with economic efficiency and environmental justice in his own pursuit of the practices of industrial design, urban planning, and vernacular engineering. In addition, the analysis stresses how the optimism and energy that Fuller gave to rethinking environmentalism so radically during the 1960s are vital qualities that contemporary green thinkers need to rekindle in their works today.As the United States readies the final countdowns for its last three manned space missions flying its now dwindled fleet of four space shuttle vehicles based on three-decade old designs, it is a suitable opportunity to consider the intellectual impact that both aeronautical and astronautical technology have had on the development of the modern environment movement in the 20th century. Al Gore Jr. always reminds the world how significant the riveting images of the famous 1968 "Earth Rise" photographs taken from the Apollo 8 crew capsule orbiting the Moon during December 1968 were for contemporary environmentalists, but they were not the real beginning of this major gestalt shift in ecological thought.Of course, the "view from space," as historians, philosophers, and other social scientists have noted (Berg, 1982;Deese, 2009;Höhler, 2010), seemed to give environmentalism a fresh set of goals and values during the 1960s. Yet it was also the case those earlier widespread opportunities for people to travel rapidly around the planet, using various new flying and new sailing technologies, provided equally radical changes in perspective. Those devices also allowed individuals to survey swiftly and systematically panoramic views of large bioregions and vast ecosystems around the Earth. After the 1890s, then, as dirigibles, submarines, dreadnoughts, and airplanes

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Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued, 1970-71

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

International Indeterminacy: George Maciunas and the Mail

Nudging towards Serendipity: A case with personal digital photos

Ephemeralization as Environmentalism: Rereading R. Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

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