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the avant-garde movie and theory
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On Digital Capitalism
 

This site presents extracts from Michael Betancourt's current research and writing projects, with news about current happenings. A portfolio of finished, published writing is posted here.

If you are looking for more on agnotology, digital capitalism or automated/immaterial labor, look at The Digital which presents excerpts from a book on digital capitalism that I am currently revising that builds on my published articles:

  • The Aura of the Digital  [.pdf]

  • The Valorization of the Author  [.pdf]

  • Immaterial Value and Scarcity in Digital Capitalism   [.pdf]

  • Automated Labor: The New Aesthetic and Immaterial Physicality   [.pdf]
  • More articles and translations into Spanish, Portuguese and Greek are posted on MichaelBetancourt.com


     


     

    Experiments in Cinema 8.53 Festival DVD

     

    story ©  | May 16, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    My movie Antag | Protag is included in the Experiments in Cinema 8.53 Festival DVD set. Every year the festival releaases a DVD with movies shown in their programs, allowing people who couldn't make it to see what was shown. I think this is a great idea and I wish more festivals would do something similar.



    New Releases




     
      Dancing Glitch screening @ MUFF 8

    story ©  | May 13, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    My movie Dancing Glitch, nominated for a Jury Prize, will be showing in the Montreal Underground Film Festival 8 "Caffinated Jitterbugs" program. The MUFF 8 website has the showtimes.

    The festival runs from May 24 to 26.



    Shows


     



     
      Agnotology and the 'Free Market'

    story ©  | May 10, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    Capitalism itself is reified in the idealized “free market” as the necessary (and natural) order of the world in the conception of ‘market competition’ as a variant of Darwinian natural selection (evolution); agnotology is the creation of uncertainty and ambivalent ‘fact’; it is a competitive tool incompatible with the idealized “free market” of capitalism.



    The Digital


     

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      A Message from Hank Rudolph at Signal Culture

    story ©  | April 27, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    Signal Culture, a new not-for-profit media arts organization, is rapidly approaching the final week of fundraising.

    If you haven’t already donated, please take a look:
    http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/signal-culture



    News


     

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      Experiments in Cinema 8.53 showing Antag|Protag

    story ©  | March 9, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    This year's Experiments in Cinema Festival will be showing my movie Antag|Protag (2012) in the first screening in this year's program:



    Shows


     

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      My New Book is Now Available for Purchase

    story ©  | February 7, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    My book, The History of Motion Graphics: From Avant-Garde to Industry in the United States, is now available on amazon.com.

    There is also a hard cover edition, appropriate for libraries....



    Betancourt


     



     
      Immaterial Physicality and Marx

    story ©  | February 6, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    My new article "Automated Labor: The ‘New Aesthetic’ and Immaterial Physicality" is now in print on CTheory.

    This essay considers Karl Marx' short essay ‘The Fragment on Machines’ and its relationship to digital automation. The ‘new aesthetic’ described by James Bridle is a typical example of this new, automated labor beginning to impact the physical world and provides a reference point for the examination of ‘The Fragment on Machines’: Marx divided labor into three categories (means, material and living labor) that is in the process of being reorganized by digital automated systems (in both immaterial labor and physical production forms). This reorganization forces an underlying paradox in capitalism into focus, foregrounding the mismatch between a capitalist productive system and the consumer society required to maintain that system, a paradox that emerges precisely because exchange value emerges from the relationship between one commodity and another—from the exchange of a commodity for the acquisition of another: human labor is the underlying commodity required by this entire system, a commodity rendered obsolete by digital automation; the ‘new aesthetic’ provides physical examples of this transition-in-progress.



    The Digital


     



     
      Glitches in Art

    story ©  | January 20, 2013 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    This is an excerpt from a new article I'm working on that is concerned with the use of glitches in art, and how that use related to a critically engaged media practice:



    Theory


     

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      SoundImageSound Festival 9

    story ©  | December 31, 2012 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print

    My movie Antag|Protag will be screening in the Fixed Media Program on Thursday, January 31, 2013 at 7:30 PM as part of the SoundImageSound Festival.





    Shows


     

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      Dancing Glitch (2013)

    story ©  | December 29, 2012 | permalink | Google TwitThis del.icio.us Digg Facebook StumbleUpon MySpace   Print


    Here is a new movie that I've decided is finished, just in time for the new year.



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