Just more cool than I can metabolize right now.

[frahulettaes]

http://0100101110101101.org/

This is the new version of the Luther Bissett movement.

If you'd like a good recap, here's one from wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_%28nom_de_plume%29
Henry Jenkins is discussing medie convergence with Wu1.


Several years ago, the world of literature was informed that Raymond Carver wasn't really Raymond Carver. Carver's original drafts were much longer than the published versions. All the exceeding parts were cut out by his editor, Gordon Lish. Carver's endings were actually Lish's endings.

I've got a question: what if Mr. Lish weren't an editor, but just a friend of Carver's? Let's imagine that Gordon Lish was a post office clerk living across the street from Carver. One night Carver rings Lish's doorbell and says: "Let's go to the bar and have a beer, I need your opinion about the story I'm writing". Carver reads the short story to Lish, and the latter says: "It's good, but it drags on for too long. Why not cut the last paragraph? That would make a sharper ending, wouldn't it?" Carver goes home and follow Lish's advice. We the readers will never know about that conversation. Nothing strange happens. Carver is still Carver, and we're going to talk about Carver's sharp endings, not Lish's.

Now I've got a few more questions: how many authors happen to talk with post office clerks? How many books are the result of conversations between authors and post office clerks? How many times an author gets an idea from a person she talks with? And is there something she can do about it? Can she confine herself to an ivory tower in order to save "her own voice"? In that case, except for a diary of her confinement, she'd have nothing to write about.

Storytellers must immerge their hands in the sea of stories, and accept the fact that they are just complexity reducers, "filters" between the mythosphere and the people. There's no "originality" out of this, you can be "original" only in the way you filter and re-elaborate what you get from your community.

As a consequence, stories belong to everyone, private property of popular culture is a contradiction in terms. Stories should be free to circulate, fertilize brains, and enhance the open reputation of any author. That's the reason why our books, as physical objects and containers of stories, have a price -- so that we make a living out of writing them -- , while as immaterial stories they can be freely reproduced, in an economy that's based upon abundancy instead of scarcity: there can be no maximum amount of stories, the tank can be filled endlessly.Wu1</>

This just blows my mind. It is so right on and what I've been thinking about most especially the last paragraph. Just yeah.

Here: http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/10/how_slapshot_inspired_a_cultur.html

His blog is very interesting.

Here's a quote from the site:

«History is not given» adds Eva Mattes «it has to be constructed, it’s pure fiction, like in a novel».

Thank. You. I've been saying this for years. History is not truth. It is not objective. It doesn't even exist outside human construction.

History is a concept. That is all.

ETA: another bitchin quote:
«It is no longer necessary to deface paintings or to put a mustache on postcards of Mona Lisa, now art can be downloaded, modified and uploaded again, with absolute delight»

Luther Blissett, Art Hacktivism

Art Hacktivism. I really like that.