Generative to Situations

Part of what I like about the Generative Art pieces (the sound machine project) is that inevitably one of the machines goes awry and does something it is not intended to do. Not a huge diversion – but the comments often cycle around “it worked better at home” or “ can I try it again?” I ma amused by this largely because the parameters of this project are set up to insure that something will happen that the creator couldn’t control. The conversation then turns to what this means aesthetically. So – if traditional art making is about control – in the sense of skill, training or technique – then what do pieces like this have to offer? This gives us an opportunity to talk about the whole life/art thing that we addressed with the Fluxus projects. I continue to reflect no Cage’s art should reflect nature in her manner of operation – which isn’t always controlled.

So we talks about how the machines worked and what the process was of creating them in the first place. So, basic questions about approaches – each machine was designed to do the same thing – make a sound – but how each machine went about it was very different. IN reflecting on this we talked a bit about the Flaming Lips Zaireeka – designed to be listened to on four CDs simultaneously. This gave way to a discussion of other indeterminate pieces such as Milan Knizak’s prepared vinyl project Remko Sha’s machine guitars, Terry Reily’s In C and Cardew’s The Great Learning paragraph 7 – all driven by an idea that develops once set in motion. So – indeterminacy as an aesthetic device.

We followed that up with a discussion of Steve Reich’s “music as a gradual process” and Eno’s comments on Generative Music. Staring with Reich’s Pendulum Music – a microphone suspended over a speaker and swung with feedback like a pendulum. The process is both visible and audible – you can see and hear it slow down. It is both deterministic and indeterminate at the same time – it will always come to rest, but not always by the same pattern. Then we listen to “Come Out” – all 13+ minutes of it. It is a process of listening to changes over time. As Reich points out this piece does not develop by chance – once it is set in motion it simply executes the process. This leads to Eno’s generative music, apps, 77 Million Paintings, and Conway’s Game of Life. I love the connection to contemporary scientific models in that traditional science is like classical forms – driven by order, where as contemporary forms are often driven by chaos.

Framing it this way is helping to bring focus back to the class. I struggled with this the last time I taught it. After the Fluxus pieces – which were set just before the break last time and just after this time – the energy seems to dissipate. I think largely because the first two thirds of the term are driven by groups with clear ideological ideas – Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism – which gives way to less clear focus. So for the past week or so I have kind of felt like, well we have this list of terms and ideas and here we are looking at yet another example. Moving past the gen Art stuff helps with this. For me the revelation was Reich learned from his tape loop experiments and then brought that phase shifting into his compositional approach. So – he absorbs that process as a more traditional aesthetic technique. Eno does the same thing, but he is still keeping some of the outcome flexible. One of the students defined that at the difference between destination art and non-destination art. One you know in advance – the other you don’t.

That brought to mind Bill Viola’s note about the statement “if all you have is a hammer you tend to treat everything as a nail” which has become my mantra for the second half of the term (the first half it was Duchamp’s “I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste). The point here is that these ideas become different types of hammers and ask different questions. This led us to the Situationists – seemingly off the topic – but brings together the aesthetic ideas with larger cultural ones. The Marxist/ Anarchist frame. The point with that is Debord’s comment "that which changes our way of seeing the street is more important that which changes our way of seeing painting.” So – the ideas evolve and, with the Situationists, the objects disappear. This links back to the notion f concept art we discussed earlier in the term. What I always like about discussing the Situationists makes me want to roam – so we wandered across campus talking about Detournment, derive, and psychogeographical spaces. I will tie this all in with Punk and the discussion of our next project - the Auto Destructive Art projects.

  

Fluxus and after Fluxus:

I love the Fluxus project – it is often my favorite class, largely because it is built out of what is in the space at that moment. The assignment was to develop three Fluxus event scores on a 3 x 5 index card – one sculptural, one sound oriented, and one performative – so one to be looked at, one to be listened to, and one to the watched. I asked the students not to label their cards, but simply put their name on the back. When they arrive for class I gather and distribute the cards – explaining that students should not randomly pick their own card. Then we begin. The first card each student executes is the one they had an immediate reaction to. So – that is round one. Round two is to pick the one they have no idea what to do with. Round three is open. The pieces take on the characteristic of the class – they are often a mixture of funny, sad, touching, boring, loud, quiet, too short, too long, thoughtful and phoned in. Some touch me deeply, some do not. It is clear once the performances start that this particular moment could never be recreated.

Part of what I like about the Fluxus pieces is the simplicity – they require no special skill or training, just a willingness to follow an idea. But that also means that there is a great deal of room for interpretation. Students are instructed not to read the card prompt until they have completed executing it. Many times students don’t even realize when someone is performing their card. We all also try and guess what the card says. Some times this is easier than others. When asked, many students never saw a particular interpretation as even an option. The question of who owns the piece or who is the creator becomes moot.

Beyond the simplicity I love that these are conceptual pieces, pieces that acquire meaning as we think about them. The prompts that pose a question or a philosophical idea often require a level of engagement that goes beyond executing a task – but not always. It is interesting to watch how the pieces are performed and not necessarily what is being performed.

The follow up class was wonderful. I do try and use these open days as a way of gathering together the ideas that have been developed to this point in the term. We started the day with students creating a sound piece from a situationist psychogeographical map. What was surprising about this was how quickly these pieces came together. Asking this in the first few weeks would have taken ages – now – students just dive right in. It is with these projects that the make up of the different classes becomes much more pronounced. The 8:30 class seems to be much quieter – and so very often their projects have a more introspective quality. The 10:00 – a bit louder and generally more vocally engaged tend to produce less introspective pieces.

So – from this we reviewed the Fluxus material. The main question to start revolved around how we derive meaning from an open work. We listed the traditional aesthetic criteria – things like unity, balance, order, skill, technique, process subsumed into product, etc and then talked about how this could or could not be applied to an open work. This lead to a discussion of the Paths to the Present classes and the major questions. Looking over the list of techniques we have discussed so far I asked has anything changed from the Self, Society, and Cosmos classes to this material. The general consensus – as it often is – is that humans search for meaning – that has not changed – but how they search and what questions they ask has.

This lead to a discussion of modernism and postmodernism – with specific attention to the Internet as a postmodern phenomenon. I do find the recent FCC ruling that the Internet remain neutral an interesting modern/postmodern rift. Wanting to lock it down, control it, monetize it seems very modernist – the openness seems more postmodern. This rejection of authority is dug in deeply to most of the ideas we have discussed. This has translated into placing more and more emphasis on the spectator. So – rebelling against authority allows these artists to rebel against their own authority and pass those questions of meaning on to the audience. When asked what overarching idea tied all of these ideas together the students generated this list:

Consistency of change

Reactionary

Conceptualism

Shake it up

Continual questions

Uncertainty of meaning

The question I posed at the end of this discussion is how succeeding generation(s) rebel against the rebellion? Perhaps we can address that with the final project – now it is on to sound machines.

Surrealism follow up and Cage

Clearly the theme of this blog is how many classes can I cram together in one post. But, due to loss of class time it has also been about how we can get all of the material in in less time. So – that said – students presented their surrealistic projects and we discussed them all in one class, with a bit spilling over into the next class. The projects we fantastic – some wonderful pieces built out of the prompt – put two or more contrasting things together. The difference this time round is that I tried to employ the method of discussing that Lois Hetland used at the faculty/staff workshop on Studio Thinking. Looking at each object we start with ten observable things – not judgments – but observations. This is a much slower process than I am used to, but I have often felt that our discussions about the projects is the weakest element of these classes. By starting just with observables we are able to begin to dissect how the piece is constructed – what elements are at work and how they fit together. After observations we begin to discuss meaning. What are people getting out of this piece – what do they see in it? This allows for a conversation about intent, but also interpretation. Finally the student can then talk about how or why they put the piece together. Doing this with each project takes a long long time, since some pieces could be discussed for quite awhile. The danger is running out of time. With only an hour and 20 minutes to cover 17-18 projects – we barely made it in the first class (largely because two people were absent) and did not finish in the second class. I prefer to do this all at once so we have all of the pieces in the space, but it may be necessary to think about splitting into to presentation days.

We started the next class reviewing the pieces that students were able to bring back – some of which had decayed in a beautiful way after a week off for spring break. Then on to a discussion of intent. Did any of our observations go beyond the intent of the artist? Did we miss anything? What I find interesting about this process is how well we rationalize meaning. Random pieces together must have an intention, there must be an underlying reason – and so we look for it or construct it. This adds an interesting layer to how we discuss works of art. Next was to tie this to Brenton’s surrealistic manifesto. Why, for example, would an artist try to create as many short circuits to the brain as possible? What happens in these moments. Were there any pieces that could not be rationalized, where the logic could not be figured out? What does this do to how the piece is viewed?

The next step was to create a list of terms, ideas, technique we have discussed. We came up with this list:

The next step was to discuss John Cage. Bit of background, but mainly his work as a composer using chance and indeterminacy – so students listened to the Williams Mix and watched a video on how to prepare a piano. I love the fact that Cage was incredibly specific about how the piano was to be prepared – what object, how far along the string to place it, what strings the object to interact with – except not specifics on the objects – so each time the piece is performed is sounds a bit different. One of the really interesting things to develop in the second section was a bit of a argument surrounding 4’33”. In a way, the reaction was to this wry game Cage seemed to be playing – baiting the listener – and how that might deviate from a more traditional artistic form of expression. But, that is exactly the point. Pushing out beyond what is known into the unknown, or unpredictable. Cage’s notion of non-intention – while still showing a great intention – is an interesting approach – but it does seem to contradict itself. We do need to cycle back to these questions after the Fluxus stuff and delve into how this material relates to the Self, Society, and Cosmos stuff.  

Snow, loss and compression

Wow – lost two weeks to snow and me out of town. Whatever rhythm we had established has been curtailed and will take some time to get back. This is interesting, since the last time I taught the class I feel we had really peaked around this point in the term. This time around we still have along way to go – which is good. I always find it odd re-teaching a class since part of the objective is to hit all the same marks that were hit last time, but also discover new material. Today was a compressed day to make up for lost time, and so we did dada projects in the first part of the class and then talked about them the rest of the time.

Three projects – make a dada poem, make a dada collage or photomontage and create a simultaneous poem. Executing the projects in ten minutes each is not the hard part, but missing out on seeing what everyone has created or what happens when the students get board with these projects is not possible in that amount of time. So, t was just a taste. I seem to recall last time I taught the class dada day was what broke some of the energy open.

From the projects it was a quick romp through some basic dada ideas. I am leaning on Roselee Goldberg’s book to provide some of the historical context. It is just impossible to cover both and do projects in the amount of time we have in class. So – the main question was – if, as Danto suggests, the dadas were basically rejecting western culture how did the projects exemplify that? We focused in on things like chance, randomness, and nonsense – with a health dose of not taking any thing seriously, but also seriously at the same time.

One of the connections I don’t think I have ever made as strongly as today is what position the spectator is put into by statements like “dada is a farce of nothingness in which all higher questions are involved.” Ball fractures the notion of western logic by creating a statement that demands you hold “yes” and “no” in mind simultaneously. He doesn’t decide which side to come down on – the spectator does.

The same is also true of Duchamp’s readymades. With pieces like the urinal he is posing fundamental philosophical questions about art but not giving an answer. His pieces, by virtue of being conceptual in nature, demand a spectator to complete the work. In short, the urinal isn’t art unless someone looks at it that way. I am not sure the same can be said for, say, Michelangelo’s David. But possibly it can if it is viewed outside of the western cultural tradition.

In the end, an interesting day – compressed, but not without value.

Bergson and Marinetti and Jarry, oh my!

Clearly I need to get my shit together and blog about this class more often. Another four days have gone by. In that time we have discussed the time projects, Bergson, Jarry, The Futurists, authority, and are at the doorstep of dada. Far too much to encapsulate in such a tiny frame.

The follow up to the time projects was largely driven by a discussion of both time and aesthetics. The day started with an exercise to create “something” that would last one minute – the three categories were something to be listened to, looked at, and watched. Groups were not supposed to share which one they were working on. The project was designed to show how fluid these categories, or how any aesthetic categories, can be. This gave way to a discussion of aesthetic categories and how they may have their own specific criteria. Inevitably, with the Tolstoy article, we get into how traditional aesthetic criteria tend to value what a specific class or element of society values. Yea – kind of Marxist, but kind of right.

Bergson and Jarry proved to be strange but amenable bedfellows. The Bergson article gave us a good way to begin to talk about time as an element of life and art. Duration, simultaneity, dynamism are three ideas Bergson deals with that connect incredibly well with the Futurists. The day begin with an exercise called “one minute late” in which the prompt suggest that: “                                                            awoke this morning one second later than usual. Because of the time gap the following five events occurred.” It is always interesting how dark this gets. Cataclysmic events, death, destruction. Although the occasional bright of humorous story gets told.

Jarry and ‘Pataphysics proved to be both useful and baffling. Wrapping your head around the seriousness or necessity of nonsense seems like an odd path to tread. Particularly because the bulk of western education denigrates this idea or brushes it off as – well – nonsense. But there is power in Jarry’s loopy logic – one that I hope will pay off when we talk about Tzara and Ball and dada.

The Futurists! Ahh – the first legitimate group of the term. The class started with an Oulipo game Homoconsonantism  in which the sequence of consonants in a source text is kept while all its vowels are replaced. It is always interesting to see what sentences students come up with. So this gave way to a discussion of manifestos in general and the specifics of the Futurists ideas. It seemed to be a more general overview than I have done in the past, but we did pick up on a couple of key ideas. The point is to link them to Bergson, but also to changes in technology and the world around these artists. The class concluded with a discussion of Russolo’s “art of noise.” Thinking about how our understanding of sound has changed over time is fascinating. What once was considered noise is now woven into music. The pay off for all of this comes later in the term when we cycle back to generative music and such.

A great example of simulteneity and dynamism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbJi0xtnEA

And – today. As a lead in to dada students read Bakunin’s ideas on authority and Arthur Danto’s notions on the intractable avant-garde. The last time I taught this I think I made it too complicated – assigned seats, students who talked needed to hold a specific object – sort of like Lord of the Flies, and those that didn’t talk needed to remove a shoe every twenty minutes or so. Arbitrary authority, but somewhat silly. This time I boxed students into a “classroom” and assigned them seats in rows. A typical educational structure, but not one we have employed yet in the term .I made certain to arrive a few minutes late.

Immediately in the first class it was apparent that most students were comfortable doing what they were told, but two were not. The two students that decided to sit outside the proscribed area did so openly. We asked to sit with the others they refused. When demanded to sit with the others they asked why. I queried the class. What are my options at this point? Kick them out of class or let them continue to undermine my authority. I could not have scripted it better. One of the things I need to remember about these classes is  if I invite students to play I need to accept what form that play takes. It was a great segue into a discussion of Bakunin, authority, power, natural and artificial laws.

The second class took a different approach, but with similar results. I arrived to find all the chairs turned around and the students facing the wrong direction. I barked at them to restore the classroom and sit in their assigned seats. Oddly, and without griping, they did. This allowed me to ask why? Given the rebellion why were they so quick to right it once an authority entered the room? Again, this led us into a great discussion of Bakunin’s ideas.

The Bakunin material gave way to a discussion of the Danto article about dada rejecting western conventions as a way of rejecting society. In opposition to order and logic, chaos and nonsense become the weapons of choice. This part felt a bit more like a stretch, but the hope is laying the foundation with the Bakunin material that once we get to discuss dada it will all begin to fit together some. I am leaning fairly heavily on the RoseLee Goldberg book to provide narrative and biographical information on these groups. Next we head into dada territory and since I had to cancel dadaday we will most likely look at sound poems, chance, dada poetry next class.

I don’t quite have a read on the class yet. Both sections have totally different vibes, but in each there are students willing to just dive into the material. Right now I feel like I am explaining too much, talking too much, and need to find ways of passing that off to the students.

2015 - new class - the first three days

What a lazy start to the term – here we are three class meetings in and this is my first post. It actually kind of works well since the first three classes fit together well as the “intro.” Like all project-based classes day one is a taste of how the class will be structured. Normal syllabus stuff and then we get into the warm-up and game before discussion. Changing up the “what could be inside’ game I substituted a can with the label pealed off. Unlike where people shake the box to hear what is inside this one yielded some interesting results. The instructions were to try and pitch selling this unmarked item – some good riffing on what might or might not be inside. Like the last time I taught this class we moved on to the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas. This time around “existential vacuum” took the prize for the most visible ideas. Good list of terms and ideas dealing with authority as well as the absence of authority. I suspect we will cycle back to these ideas from time to time – particularly with the Futurists and Dadaists.

The second-class day was focused on aesthetics – so I asked students to bring in something they found beautiful and tell us why. A similar pattern from the last time this was taught in that most students articulated a personal connection to the object or idea. Some even went so far as to point out that while the object may not be aesthetically pleasing they still found it beautiful. A nice distinction I need to push on a bit more when we return to discuss the aesthetics articles. We spent the remainder of the class talking about beauty and how we understand it, learn it, accept it, and address it. Like the SSC ideas – they pay off on this is down the line when we look more closely at what some of the artists we will discuss develop.

The fact the Golden Mean came up in both classes I find interesting – clearly this is being taught either in Liberal Arts or – I suspect – in the art schools. It is a really wonderful idea – particularly because it is drawn from nature and suggests a kind of natural beauty and proportion. This, to me, always links to Chaos Theory – which I suspect we will discuss more than I anticipated.

Day three – first project day. Like the Gen Art class I do feel it is important to get the first project out there as soon as possible. It sets a bar and also allows me to get a read on who wants to play and who doesn’t. The hard part with this is it is not about polish or expertise of ideas, but who is willing to push on their comfort zone – as well as the class’s comfort zone. The project was on time – specifically three different types of time represented in the container of “one minute.” I wasn’t quite strict with the one minute – some played within this frame others did not. Lots of good thoughtful projects – some which could have benefitted from more thought, but the challenge is there to work within a particular level. Some really beautiful work – particularly on an emotional level. Between the two classes there were at least two students who used this piece to concentrate on loss. The sense of capturing something or someone and then moving on. This is what struck me most about these pieces compared to the last time. Memory and how we use technological means to capture that memory seemed to be the prevalent idea. It does raise questions about what we use these things for and how we use mechanical or digital time to segment our day and control our activities. A couple of pieces did the same thing with sound or movement. More performative pieces then last time – which is fine – but does tend to deal with time differently than objects do.

The notion of analogue and digital came up in both classes – both as ideas but also woven into the fabric of some of the projects. This is an interesting space to move within. Headed toward glitch it does begin a process of exploring the differences as well as the cross over points. They both have very different structures and outcomes – it is possible that I will need to specify developing a project with in an analogue world as opposed to digital – if for no other reason that the control factor is completely different. It is interesting that we have seen a handful of projects that could have been presented at any point this term. A good place to start – both classes seem to be a mix of the introspective, the adventurous, the contained, and the methodical. I will see where this takes us in the next few weeks.