Activation
Licensed under ::
by (daniel@udk-berlin.de)
@ UdK Wissenschaften / Studium Generale

daniel@udk-berlin.de

presented at

UdK Wissenschaften / Studium Generale

Activation

Hello wrldz ;)

Formalities

decide whether You want to validate the course as Studium Generale or Wissenschaften / Theorie

2 ECTS for passive participation (>67% attendance)

3 ECTS for active participation (referat about one sci-fi book You will read during semester and/or contribution to the Congress)

for Art&Media students, the 3 ECTS conditions apply

Hausarbeit possible

10:00 c.t. (cum tempore); 10:15:00 video/music starts; 10:30:00 door closes

always have a sheet of paper and pen or pencil(s)

please leave Your phones in the "actually box"

AIs allowed (&welcome !)

Resources

Two primary means are used to channel information:

https://udk.ai/metamyth resp. https://baumhaus.digital/metamyth for lists of all presentations (refresh / use arrow dawn key to get other contents if the one You search does not appear)

https://udk.ai/metamyth_current resp. https://baumhaus.digital/metamyth_current for most recent presentation recordings

#art-metamyth:medienhaus.udk-berlin.de for asynchronous communication (exchange of links, PDFs etc.)

Why this course ?

This course is hommage to PhDr. Ľubica Gabrišková, CSc. (✝ 12. 2. 2008) whose courses on science-fiction at Charles University's Faculty of Humanities and cosmology I had the highest honor to follow.

Cautionary note

We are going to visit MANY (N~67) different worlds. 

There will be benign forces and there will be daemons. There will be drugs, there will be weapons and there will be artefacts and rituals You Yourself are to deploy and create. 

There will be metatextual references to HERE & NOW.

You have been warned: Fasten Your seat-belts or leave the ship until You can.

Overview

Overview

Seeding myths

Let's start the vertical and horizontal analysis of past, present and future myths.

Antiquity to Renaissance

Dark age & co.

Renaissance to 19th century

Destination 1: The Moon

19th century

Frankenstein
The Sandmann
Erewhon
Paris in the 20th century
The Time Machine

Dystopias and Utopias

1984
Brave New World
Island
Glasperlenspiel
Handmaid's Tale

Birth of a robot

R.U.R.
Metropolis
Astounding Stories
(Asimov's) Laws of Robotics
R. Daneel Olivaw

Space Odyssey(s)

Space opera: epic destiny, cosmic technology, and the quiet suspicion that none of this was strictly necessary.

The New Wave

The New Wave (mid-1960s to late 1970s) was a literary movement that rejected Golden Age rationalism in favor of experimentation, psychology, and stylistic innovation. Influenced by modernism, counterculture, and emerging social critique, New Wave authors emphasized subjectivity, inner states, taboo themes, and linguistic play.

Mythologies of the future

Dune
Star Wars
Foundation
Cantos Hyperion

She and He

Ursula leGuin
Neal Stephenson

Cyberpunk, solarpunk and other punkz


Sowing thoughts, sowing worlds

Olivia Butler - The parable of the Sower
Nnedi Okorafor - 

Congress AE5602

Medienhaus Aula, Gaia

Metamyth

What we / You aspire to deploy is a ΜΕΤΑΜΥΘ - an idealist framework beyond all the other frameworks: a story so consistently inconsistent, so asymmetrically symmetrical that it is able to embrace all other stories (including itself).

Artefact of the day - Indra's Net

“In the palace of the god Indra is a net, which is hung by some marvelous artisan in such a way that it extends infinitely in all directions. Each jewel in this net is clear and bright, and in each jewel are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. In each of the reflected jewels are seen again all the others, and this goes on infinitely.”

Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra by Thomas Cleary (Shambhala, 1993) Book 35 (The Wondrous Adornments of the Ruler of the Universe)

Cybertext

If hypertext is a web of links, then cybertext is a living lattice of reflections: each interaction modifies the total pattern, and the total pattern defines each part.

Lecture - 9 * 10^9 Names of God

Please read at home Arthur C. Clarke's 1952 short story

Practical Seminars

Practical Seminars "Art of Programming" and "AI Embedded ecosystems" start today at 14:00 in Medienhaus R310.

Exercise - Letter to Your future Self

Imagine: it's year 20030 and for the N-th time, You just left Your cryogenic chamber, fresh and ready to act.

On the table, there is a bunch of letters You wrote to Your future selves with an intention to be read (and re-read) thousands and thousands of years in future. 

You open the letter in the envelope with id "0" and read ...

The 0th exercise for You is to write that letter. NOW

Closing Quote

"One of the defining characteristics of Sci-Fi is that it's about worlds. You create a world first, and then you tell one or more stories in that world."

(Neal Stephenson in Locusmag Interview about the Baroque Cycle)