Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 12-1:15PM
Johnson Center, Gold Room (Lower Level)
The end of history or the end of the world, some type of ontological collapse, is written into the mythologies of many cultures including the judeo-christian archetypes that are still quite resonant in our presumably secular society. Unfortunately, where last days prognostications are taken most seriously, they are also taken most literally and in those dim quarters, the end of the world is painted in the gloomiest colors of catastrophe and travail. The world we inhabit is as much a creation of our discursive manipulations over time and through language as it is the product of physics. The manner in which we inhabit a virtual symbolic world has eclipsed in salience, importance, and immediacy our habitation in what used to be called the real world. (Which is now, of course, just a very bad television show.) Hardware apocalypse is when everything melts, burns, or blows up and humanity along with it. Seems very wasteful. Can we talk in the twenty-first century about something like a software apocalypse? That is, a modification of or an accretion to language and/or how it is used that is so massive in its ontological consequences that we, in effect, experience the end of the world created under the old semantic order. Join Dr. Stanley as he uses his experience in life and music to explore and perhaps make palatable something he calls "velvet apocalypse".
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Thomas Stanley is...
* Ethnomusicologist specializing in new and emerging musical practices, especially as these relate to the collective experience of temporal texture on a macro-scale (i.e., history).
* Author of George Clinton and P-Funk: an Oral History (1998).
* On-air music programmer at WPFW-FM presenting an amazing array of underground and experimental musics.
TOPIC DISCUSSION VIA PB WIKI
We invite you to respond to the following question prior to the presentation on March 1 on the CCT Brown Bag Wiki: What does the expression "I-and-I" mean to you? Source it, interpret it, and connect it, if possible to our discussions of consciousness and its transformations.
If you’ve already signed on to the list, you can go directly to the question prompt by following this link: https://cctbbag.pbworks.com/w/page/36203673/March-2011-Brown-Bag
If you'd like to join the list but haven't, please contact Martha Souder at msouder@gmu.edu.
RSVP via PINGG
Please let us know whether you’ll be attending or not. You should soon receive an invitation from Stacey Guenther for a PINGG evite. Please respond there. If you have trouble accessing the evite, please respond here. We’re asking you to respond, so we can ensure we have enough space to accommodate everyone.
BE THERE, Even if You Can’t Be There
For members of the community who can’t physically attend, University Life will be streaming the presentation, so you can be there without physically being there. This should be especially beneficial to those of you on the Arlington and Prince William campuses. To view a live stream of the event, go to http://www.livestream.com/universitylifelive
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