Critical Mass Happenings Fluxus Performance Intermedia and Rutgers University 1958-1972 By: Geoffrey Hendricks ISBN: 0813533031 See detail of this book on Amazon.com Book served by AMAZON NOIR (www.amazon-noir.com) project by: PAOLO CIRIO paolocirio.net UBERMORGEN.COM ubermorgen.com ALESSANDRO LUDOVICO neural.it Page 1 Critical Mass: Some Reflections M O R D E C A I - M A R K M A C L O W Icons of my childhood were the piles of red-bound copies of An Anthology that my father, Jackson Mac Low, received for having edited and published it. Despite his repeated declarations that he was not a part of George Maciunas's self-declared movement, my father's involve- ment in the first Fluxus book left him irrevocably tangled in it. I myself seem to have been influenced by my father's experimental, algorithmic approach to poetry, and ended up a computational astrophysicist, studying how stars form out of the chaotic, turbulent interstellar gas. I think there was some hope that with this background I might explain the true, or correct, meaning of the term "critical mass." Unfortunately, as a scientist, I have no special access to truth, and correctness depends entirely on con- text. Let me explain this a bit before discussing the term "critical mass" itself. Science is often taught as if it consisted of a series of true facts, strung together with a narrative of how these facts were discovered. The actual practice of sci- ence, however, requires the assumption that nothing is guaranteed to be true except as, and only so far as, it can be confirmed by empirical evidence. Empirical evidence can ..ERR, COD:3.. Page 2 balloon might splatter when punctured. When these atoms came apart they also released quite a lot of energy. Furthermore, some of the splattered drops were them- selves neutrons, which could splatter other nuclei if they hit them. The consequence of this is that if you bring a large enough mass of fissionable material (plutonium or ura- nium with the right number of neutrons) together and tickle it with a few neutrons from a highly radioactive trig- ger, it can explode. If there are enough other atoms around for the new neutrons to hit and split, rather than escaping, a runaway chain reaction begins. More and more atoms get split, releasing more and more neutrons, which in turn split yet other atoms, releasing more and more energy. The exact amount of fissionable material needed for this to happen is the "critical mass." If the crit- ical mass is not present, too many of the neutrons get away, hitting nothing, and not much happens. Because so much more energy is released from each split nucleus than from any possible chemical reac- tion involving that nucleus, an enormous explosion results from an uncontrolled chain reaction. (Note that a chain reaction can be controlled by carefully using nonfission- able material to absorb just enough neutrons to prevent the runaway: the principle of the nuclear reactor.) The term "critical mass" originated during the period after Meitner's discovery, when physicists realized that a chain reaction was possible but did not know how big the critical mass actually was for any particular mate- rial. A key reason that the German atomic bomb program never progressed far was that its scientists overestimated the value of the critical mass for uranium and plutonium by a factor of several hundred (they estimated tons instead of the correct value of under ten pounds), making the enormously difficult enterprise of purifying enough fissionable material appear utterly impossible. Atomic bombs excavated the term "critical mass" from the scientific jargon and made it into a popular met- aphor as soon as popular explanations of their mecha- nism appeared. Oddly, the idea of a critical mass doesn't appear in the unclassified scientific literature until the mid-'50s, and then in astrophysical papers discussing effects that occurred when stars exceeded a certain size. It is entirely possible that those authors were actually appropriating the by-then colloquial term back into the scientific dialect. Since then, "critical mass" has become a broadly used concept in astrophysics to designate any mass that when exceeded causes something to happen. This enters particularly often when studying the universal struggle of gravity to overcome all opposition. One example of this is the critical mass above which the turbulent flow and pres- sure of a cloud of interstellar gas can no longer prevent its collapse into a star. Another is the critical mass of a star above which, when it runs out of fuel, it will not simply col- lapse to a solid crystal the size of Earth (a white dwarf), but will continue collapsing, squeezing all its electrons into its nuclei and fusing them together to form a giant atomic nucleus the size of Manhattan (a neutron star). Both of these meanings in the scientific dialect seem to have been picked up in the colloquial language. The concept of critical mass that by its presence changes a situation is now used by bicyclists claiming space in city traffic. When dozens or hundreds of bicyclists ride together, they create the flow of traffic rather than having to squeeze into dangerous automobile traffic, thus making a political point as well as engaging in grassroots traffic engineering. The social analogy to a chain reaction occurring when a critical mass is present has become so widely rec- ognized as to be regarded as self-evident: If enough people communicate with each other about a topic or idea, the whole exceeds the sum of its parts and a chain reaction ensues, spitting out new ideas and influencing more and more people. Once again, a critical mass of interested people is necessary. Perhaps the analogy could be extended to include the role of the trigger that kicks off the chain reaction. One could surely argue that this was the role George Maciunas took, to the amusement, annoy- ance, or bemusement of those around him getting kicked. The text on the opposite page may be used in any way as a score for solo or group reading, musical or dramatic performances, looking, smelling, anything else &/or nothing at all. Jackson Mac Low, July 1961 2 C R I T I C A L M A S S Page 3 Jackson MacLow section title page and (below) score from An Anthology ((~.={Oai-•R'4' Pva~~Q$~ÿQy~ a 149 48 a - ny / t y~t -Qt•W d rC' V F Yk Y. yZ Y T L~7 Df• R)f i. EYL ¢ 7 .5au z d J t& $~y U3•J )=Y, "la çII1 d L A I t•EVIY',E¢ M j• 5 x p K D . 01 a oa1 f 51 t vy .; 20 5.b1 - hak p1 d vt 1 8; v g• pfu z k tl 7Jydohl kv <a}. , 1 I • U P 7u AÁáJ & Y D ..ERR, COD:1.. Page 4 Page 5 Notes on the Creation of a Total Art A L L A N K A P R O W It has been inconceivable until recently to think of the arts as anything other than separate disciplines, united at a given moment of history only by vaguely parallel philo- sophical objectives. During certain periods in the West, notably the Middle Ages in the atmosphere and ritual of the church, the arts found a certain theological harmony-a blending perhaps, but not a total unity. Painting, music, architecture, ceremony-were each an identifiable genre. With the advent of the Renaissance, an emphasis on unique personal styles led to more specialization. Conscious thoughts about a total art did not emerge until Wagner and, later, the Symbolists. But these were modeled on the earlier examples of the church: essentially hierarchies of the several arts organized by master directors. The Bauhaus's experiments continued this approach, only modernizing forms and subject matters. A total art could not come about this way. A new concept and new means were necessary. Art forms developed over a long period and articulated to a high degree are not amenable to mixture: they are self-sufficient, so far as their cohesiveness and range of expression are concerned. But if we bypass "art" and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art by first putting together a molecule out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life: the green of a leaf, the sound of a bird, the rough pebbles under one's feet, the fluttering past of a butterfly. Each of these occurs in time and in space and is perfectly natural and infinitely flexible. From such a rudimentary and yet wonderful event, a principle of the materials and organiza- tion of a creative form can be built. To begin, we admit the usefulness of any subject mat- ter or experience whatsoever. Then we juxtapose this material-it can be known or invented, "concrete" or "abstract"-to produce the structure and body of our own work. For instance, if we join a literal space and a painted space, and these two spaces to a sound, we achieve the "right" relationship by considering each component a quan- tity and quality on an imaginary scale. So much of such and such color is juxtaposed to so much of this or that type of sound. The "balance" (if one wants to call it that) is pri- marily an environmental one. Whether it is art depends on how deeply involved we become with the elements of the whole and how fresh these elements are (as though they were "natural," like the sud- den fluttering by of the butterfly) when they occur next to one another.