Las Vegas

Las Vegas

Well, I have never been to Las Vegas itself or Reno "The Biggest Little City in the World". However, I think Vegas is one of those things that you do not have to go to know what it is all about. At the end of the day seeing is the believing!

“We are living in the most decadent society that has been in the history since the Roman Time”.
(“Virtual Las Vegas” Documentary on C4-1995)

Las Vegas is a unique triumph on its own, nothing has ever been built like it or experienced like it. In my opinion it is an adult fantasy city, a 20th century “Sodom & Gomorrah”, and a sin city that anything happens or can happen. Nevertheless that does not finish there; I would say it is the only city in the world that has been built based on human psychology, technology, as well as, how one can be controlled by one’s mind and manipulated. The psychology of gambling has a great impact on the design of the casinos, that is;

Never have any windows

Never let anybody know whether it is day or night, because if the gamblers start to see the sunrise,

they get pretty uneasy that they get home and get some sleep.

Never have a clock in the casino

Never make it as a separate room that you go in to or go out off. It is simply in the public space.

You become a prisoner of your own greed with your own wishes!
Also the signs are playing a big role in the human psychology as the casino operators discovered. The rule of thumb is; more action on the sign, the brighter the sign the more people become excited and want to have fun and gamble. As a friend once told me, “when you enter the city, there is so much light that makes you want to search all your pockets for money and spent whatever you got on you, just to be part of the excitement”.

The colours in the animations in the signs, as Tom Wolfe says “Right here in the middle of the desert, American architecture was developing a whole new art form”.
You can look at the Las Vegas from miles away on route 91 and see no buildings, no trees only signs but such a signs, they revolve, they oscillate “the sour in shape before the existing vocabulary of art history is helpless”. The architecture of Las Vegas relates to “Disney World” rather directly. This extraordinary performance architecture thought is something that Las Vegas has gone beyond Disney world, it is an arm race of architecture one stage further, it is “Disney part III” combined with gambling.

In my opinion however, Las Vegas pays for its sin that is the beautiful face of it.
Legalised gambling legislation was designed to raise needed taxes for public schools. Today, more than 43% of the state general fund is fed by gambling tax revenue and more than 34% of the state's general fund is pumped into public education.
Legalised gambling returned to Nevada during the Great Depression. It legitimized a small but profitable industry. That same year construction started on the Hoover Dam Project which, at its peak, employed 5,128 people, and this is just small portion of examples

The Production of Space

Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space

"Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa.
(Lefebvre in Criticism of Soviet urban planner’s modernist model of urban design)


This argument is like the famous one “which one came first? Egg or the chicken?”

In theory we can change the meaning of things as we wish, argue them, make them to a theory, lecture them or whatever we want to do with them, but the true meaning of them as we know them, understand and imaging them stays as it is.

I distinguish a meaning between work and product and that to me is, work as a physical activity by consuming energy and product is the result of our work to create something in need, or as he describes it “the energy utilized for the satisfaction of a need” exactly how we create a room or a city, a country.... according their sizes we give them a name to just imaging it easier.

I suppose Venice was built as a result of a need of space or possibly the person or persons simply liked that place to stay and live. For sure Venice was not build based on a plan. You could say “one thing lead to another” or simply the role and effect of the water developed that accidental creation of space. Maybe London is a good example of that development to look at.

On the “Nature” discussion, if I want to follow the theory of “nature create and no produce” or a flower does not know that is a flower, then I would argue that if a flower has a life as a living thing, then it should know is a flower a I know that I am a human and not a tree!

It’s like those theories that recently we have been true that all this happening is nothing but our mind imagination or “Matrix” that even David Icke was supportive of it. Theory of “Big Bang”.

That I could argue that if all this happened by a big bang what caused the big bang, mega explosion or whatever you name it, if no explosive there would be no explosion.... look at the detail of our amazing body, how many of those accident could have happened that eyes are where they should be as your mouth, ears, brain......and this should not make me religious or a man of God.

Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry Eagleton’s After Theory

Terry, a Self styled intellectual outsider who was once the country's "top" literary professor. When he was Warton professor of English at Oxford he styled himself "a barbarian inside the citadel"
The arrival of literary theory from France was broadly welcome, for it crushed with its harshness the worn out grumble of conventional philosophy. Yet while he was theory's ambassador, he always managed to signal his own distance from it. Literary Theory ended with what became his personal statement of the hidden importance of politics in logical life.
It’s a big difference between being an observer and a critic to a “grumpy old man” as he describes the difference between being sexy and sex. In the good old days of 60’s for example the “Woodstock” was a musical concert of political messages of peace and love to the world and the politician in particular. Those participants had a different meaning of having sex in the open air as “love and being loved” rather than a raunchy sex of a porn star couple who want to impress the world by their size or number of positions they know! Yet using the drug was another way to reach the dream of true peace rather than get stoned and stab the innocent as we experiencing today.
In my opinion theory has gone lost, but not because it has encouraged academic of withholding information from the public and severe reductiveness.
It is because it has not been political enough. So, as a "radical", Eagleton is necessarily out of step with even the intellectual fashions for which he once seemed cheerleader. "It is not pleasant to be out of line,"
He is caught between two attitudes to the academic business. On the one hand, he rather wants to laugh at all those serious undergraduates (and lecturers) attaching the same arguments about sexual misbehaviour to whatever they are studying.
There is also a Marxist Terry, who sees the duty of all, intellectuals (in particular) to be revealing the criminal act of capitalism. On this matter he speaks sadly of the shortcomings of "cultural theory". We live in "a social order which urgently needs repair" and we are told that "theory must be harnessed to practical political ends". Yet it is not quite clear what he thinks is to be done. How is the study of culture to effect the revolutionary changes he dimly sketches? He talks about "fashioning a world in which the hungry could be fed", but takes it for granted that this is not something that would ever concern those professionally involved in politics or commerce. He is superciliously dismissive of all politicians. He likes to use the word "democratic" about what he likes, "the whole idea of cultural theory is a democratic one", and so on. Yet his only word for the state in which we live is "capitalist".