[-empyre-] Re: unwired sustainability (Dale Hudson)

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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:22:58 -0400
> From: Dale Hudson <dhudson at amherst.edu>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] unwired sustainability
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Message-ID: <C4335EF2.A7B7%dhudson at amherst.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Thanks to everyone for the interesting posts this week.  I echo
> Ulises¹s
> apologies for not having posted as actively, as does Sharon, who was
> traveling this past weekend.
> 
> I will also end with a few thoughts/questions on the month¹s themes:
> 
> I found the discussions about the links between oil and digital
> technologies
> interesting.  In my own teaching and thinking, I¹ve focused more on
> issues
> of labor, trade agreements, copyright, and human rights, though not
> as they
> are linked to oil.

It's not oil. It's energy. Oil is important, as it has uses outside of
energy, but its use as an energy source is paramount to our
civilisation, and its disappearance this century is going to be as
central to the social and political events of this century as it was in
the 20th century.

It's ALL about energy. Pyramids? Sure - go on about religion and
metaphysical/mythologies, but it was built by people. And these people
ate food, and they were able to do this because when agriculture was
introduced to the Nile Valley, they were able to make excessive amounts
of grain, grow the population and feed it, and thus Have The Energy To
Build the Pyramids. The food was so plentiful, that people who didn't
make food were able to survive, and thus class structure was born. It
wasn't born from some Evil Idea. It was built from energy.

Art, society, civilisation - it is all built from our ability to store
extra energy, or tap resources that provide energy. All of the artwork
discussed here this month is the product of energy provision beyond the
personally necessary. It's a long way from corn rows in the ancient
americas or north african wheat, or Chinese rice paddies, but that is
at the foundation.

It is the structure between that foundation and our present
hyperstructured status that is threatened by the disappearance of oil.
It cannot, and furthermore, should not, be replaced. Oil is stored and
ancient solar power from 150 million years ago, that took millions of
years to collect and process, and we are taking it all and dumping it
into the atmosphere in a few short centuries. The folly of this action
is stunning.

Art can contribute to this dialogue, just as we are contributing here.
However, its context may vanish - we are an Art Species, or as
Dissanayake says "Homo Aestheticus". It's what we do. However, the
contemporary structure of the Gallery/Museum Industrial Complex as it
is presently constituted (as the intellectual subset of the
entertainment industry) is completely unsustainable and not worth
saving. There are  works of art worth saving, but the social machinery
around them isn't, and will be discarded, and rightfully so.

So, if that is the case, then our art ,especially digital art, is art
of the moment, art of our time, and we should have no pretenses of it
ever surviving or addressing longer time scales, as it will disappear
with the machines that make it.


Pessimists put the end of the industrial age somewhere towrd the end of
this century. I am not so gloomy, but I am also not so sanguine - the
threat of complete collapse is very real, and I would recommend Jared
Diamond's book (Collapse) on the subject. We are not special or unique.
We just live in special and unique times.

Three airline carriers in the USA are disappearing. Expect more. Peak
oil = peak asphalt, so expect a gradual depaving of side streets to be
used as patches on major highways so food can be delivered.

ICT will be maintained long after it is no longer viable - it is far
too valuable to the economy and speculation.

I have a number of thoughts like this, but I am more interested in what
others think this month.

HW