RIP_BURN_MIX

a conference by the final year students of BSc (Hons) MediaLab Arts, March 2005, Plymouth Arts Centre, UK

This conference aims to test the relevance of the concept of the ‘Cultural Industry’ in light of new forms of cultural production using digital technologies. Speakers will reveal both resistant and recuperative strategies within Advertising, Information Control, Cultural Production, Digital Society, Identity and Consumerism.

'Interested parties explain the culture industry in technological terms. It is alleged that because millions participate in it, certain reproduction processes are necessary that inevitably require identical needs in innumerable places to be satisfied with identical goods. The technical contrast between the few production centres and the large number of widely dispersed consumption points is said to demand organization and planning by management. Furthermore, it is claimed that standards were based in the first place on consumer's needs, and for that reason were accepted with so little resistance. The result is the circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those whose economic hold over society is the greatest. A technological rationale is the rationale of domination itself.' (Adorno & Horkheimer)

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BSc (Hons) MediaLab Arts is a four-year programme based at the University of Plymouth.

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