Alphabet pasta, rearrange letters and eat them
Write the essay in alphabet pasta
A problem relating to my work related to
Bum dum fizz ode to burt
Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to
happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again,
happens again.
`You cannot see what I see because you see what you see.
You cannot know what I know because you know what you
know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what
you see and what you know because they are not of the same
kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know,
because that would be to replace you yourself.'
`Hang on, can I write this down?' said Arthur, excitedly
fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.
`You can pick up a copy at the spaceport,' said the old
man . `They've got racks of the stuff.'
`Oh,' said Arthur, disappointed. `Well, isn't there anything
that's perhaps a bit more specific to me?'
`Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at
all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it,
so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.'
Arthur looked at him doubtfully. `Can I get that at the
spaceport, too?' he said.
`Check it out,' said the old man.
Sophists.THEUCIDITES phonecian war-recordings of behaviour. Scientists who were chiefly observers
Phenomenology- don’t think about the reality of a thing, just try to describe it as you see. Keep in mind that there may be things we don’t know about the thing. Think about consciousness, our experience. Husserl who was influenced by Kant and Descartes, who rejected relativism and who influenced heidigger.
Essence
How do we know that others have the same kind of consciousness as us
Knowledge has dimension?- communicating our experiences to others and how these others may experience them is something that comes up again and again in my work.
A broader concept of experience
THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT
Find an essence or a beginning
Experiential, phenomenological approach-I am aware that what I am showing is what I choose to see. There are problems and limitations of using a camera as an eye of sorts, as a way of expressing exactly oneself. The camera by no means duplicates what you see. For one, it is operated by the hands and not the eyes, and for another, unless ones viewer is totally immersed in the experience of the film (look into IMMERSION) they will by no means come into contact with anything like the sensory experience you have.
Another fundamental problem with trying to communicate exactly ones own feelings is the awareness one has of doing so. If you have been motivated to pick up a camera you have obviously considered using it for something, and thus you are more likely to be self conscious than if, say, the camera was a part of your body (even then your experience would be fundamentally different from that of most other people, unless everyone in the world were born with a built in camera which, interesting as it would be, is simply irrelevant for the time being).
One possible way of getting round the problem of how to communicate ones precise experience to others is to put them quite literally in your shoes, to have them live your life.* this could be done via sets of instructions sent from one person to another which must be followed as precisely as possible-maybe even to the extent that the person following the instructions should try to get a job as similar to that of the other person as possible.
· For me at the moment this is a possibility-I could ask charlotte for her diary perhaps, or just collect everything I can to do with her. I could even give myself a charlotte makeover. That would be very weird indeed. But I think it would be a good idea. Maybe I could go to her house and investigate her. Did that student at college do the same thing, following a person around? Could I perhaps edit out photos of charlotte and put my face in her place?
So assuming you have successfully immersed your audience, shown them what you see, shown them your very soul or whatever, what next? What if the audience is simply uninterested? The whole venture is, after all, egotistical and mundane. WHY DO I DO IT? Why is it what I want? Will the audience learn anything from seeing my point of view apart from exactly that, my point of view, at a specific moment in time, which will never be repeated. Crucially, actually, that particular moment will be repeated. It has been singled out to be run through again and again. Every time someone watches a pre-recorded bit of film of my life or walks in my footsteps, they are reliving a past moment (though of course this past moment is greatly changed every time it is re-enacted). Is this healthy? Is it healthy to watch re runs of Hollyoaks on a Sunday morning even when you know exactly what happened to libby or louise or whoever? Is it healthy to have someone walk along the exact same path you once did at aged 7, going to school with Theresa, for the sake of it? Why do I want to get people to relive things that are in the past? What do I hope people will get from it? Is it a vain wish to have all my memories preserved in some way? I actually believe it is, and am horrified with myself.
What happens to a moment when it has been pinned down for special consideration? In my recent subtitiled films, I was fascinated by the subtitles but also saw them as a way of cementing that conversation, archiving it, making it into a THING, a history, an object, so I could use that object to create a history. I plucked that conversation out of the babble and squall of day to day conversations, and held it up to a 100 watt light bulb. I drew red circles around all of its peculiarities. And why? THIS IS A PROBLEM.
I am sure it is a problem that has been gone over many a time. But maybe for my personal benefit I should begin to try and work it out.
In this essay I will investigate
· EGO, why people want to show other people what they have done
· Communicated images and ideas, why people use previously unused or unheard of methods to express themselves, and why does it leave us with such emptiness? Or does it? Is postmodernism a good thing or a bad thing?
These seem like very wide subjects, perhaps I could narrow them down by choosing my artefact. But first I would like to ask some more questions about why exactly I want people to watch something so mundane as a moment in my life, why I want them to look at my photos
It is partly because I want to become a part of that huge community whereby everyone shares everything and everything is on the internet. I don’t like it but I feel that I am a definite product of the internet generation and for this I apologise. Why don’t I like it? Because for one, people in the internet age do not seem particularly fulfilled (MARX), for two, the rise of the internet has shortened very, very rapidly almost every time scale. We have less time to think, less time to make decisions, less time to be romantic and to use adjectives, less time to learn the ins and outs of something. For three, the internet is abstract and removes any need for the senses of touch, taste and smell. For four, it opens us up to the entire world, thus making us face a hell of a lot of social norms and conventions, exposing us to much more of everything. I am not sure whether we can cope with this. Everything is accelerating and I wonder how happy we are. Idiosyncracies, stories, friendships, colloquialisms, flesh on flesh, these things we once took for granted now feel unusual.
The individual person interests me within all this. Where does the individual stand now that he or she can have multiple online personalities?
I should read baudrillard.
Perhaps what I am is basically someone struggling to identify themselves as an individual in the internet age.
Something about the internet and individuality.
Get someone to live your life in your shoes and to take photos of the experience.
An artefact to do with ISOLATION, THE INTERNET, INDIVIDUALITY
James ravillious took photos of one devon town for 40 years.
People who spend a long time in one place, who meticulously detail something or who make something very personal.
Art Brut. People who obsess.
Mike Nelson’s rooms
People who make meaningless repetitions of a thing
People who use their family photos
Mike Nelson might be a good person to look into as he has suspended time in his rooms.
John smith is another very good reference as he is aware of what he is doing with time and he describes his time in his words.
SLOWING TIME
People who make old and now unnecessary machinery, who spend time making something meticulous.
I get the feeling that I may be skirting around issues for the 10000 word essay rather than this 3000 word one.
What I should look for is a common theme, an ESSENCE of what it is I am looking for
I think this could well be the idea of the individual, the individual’s response to the world. The problem with this theme is that just about everyone is expressing themselves these days. Maybe what I should look for is not expressing but problem solving-a way of life. What I mean is, rather than looking at ways in which people have shown themselves to be absolute INDIVIDUALS (and in this essay I would probably include Carey Young who very much does this by displacing common experiences, making the usual somehow eerie, as does Mike Nelson) I should look at ways in which people deal with the problem of being in the world. This is more philosophy than art perhaps, hmmmm. Doesn’t every artist deal with being in the world? Doesn’t everyone? In one way or another, through the decisions they make or fail to make?
Aesthetic beauty, people who make beautiful things may do so as a refuge.
I would like to listen to some classical music. And then Nietzsche and Sartre because existentialism seems to have a lot to do with it.
When I get online I will look at why people make art. Maybe Art Brut is the way to go here
Slowing time
I have a personal interest in this and should do it thoroughly.
Internet democratized access to info
Depersonalised mode of interaction
Information overload
Social and economic rifts widening?
PROFUSION OF RESEARCH
More and more is being discovered but more and more SPECIALISATION
We are learning more and more about less and less.
How can I learn without the starting point of myself
The choice one has to make-what university course should one do?
Placing both modernity and the enlightenment on trial (is enlightenment late 19th centrury?)
1 practice and theory of modern politics
2 ideal of objective scientific rationality and progress
=contemporary issues in philosophy
Look up contemporary philosophy online, in Athens etc.
An activist state. A state where everyone has a say
France
Conservatives preserve enlightenment ideals
Free markets?
I should not worry about this too much for the moment-I am writing an essay on art, not politics or economy.
Phenomenology, getting to an essence
Heidigger says that consciousness is a part of our existence (existence precedes essence)-this went against Husserl who said that consciousness was always focussed on another thing, but who seemed to say that consciousness is separate from existence (is this correct? Something that should be treated as separate from day to day function?)
DESCARTES-who agreed with Descartes, who did not?
While for Husserl, in the epochè, being appeared only as a correlate of consciousness, for Heidegger being is the starting point.
For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction is the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. For us, phenomenological reduction means leading phenomenological vision back from the apprehension of a being, whatever may be the character of that apprehension, to the understanding of the Being of this being (projecting upon the way it is unconcealed).[7]
Artists who slow time
http://www.pbs.org/art21/series/seasontwo/time.html
I dunno
I am downloading a lot about baudrillard etc which is wonderful of course
http://movementofexistence.blogspot.com/2007/05/architecture-art-and-meaning.html -a blog looking into art and existence
I have downloaded an essay of his called ‘the trees see me’ which could be very useful as it talks about how when we make something we alter objects
Also lifewithoutbuildings.net
http://farkyaralari.blogspot.com/ a blog full of heidigger related books
am downloading LOADS of stuff, will have to sort through it all when I get home
If I am waiting for something to download and I don’t have facebook to fill the time I get very restless and uneasy. I use it to distract from problems
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2008_home.shtml
http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/baudrillard-pdf.html
to look into how objects are transformed by art.
I could write a list of the books it would have been useful to have
Barthes
I am hovering around a number of areas, I will have to take time out and do some reading
Jacques henri lartigue
James ravilious
John cooper Clarke
In the pdf article ‘lindsey seers and a very good show’ the first section details a show that sounds very good to me-seems to be to do with slowing time.
Of course, all this mediocrity [of contemporary
art) claims to transcend itself by carrying
art to a second, ironic level. But it is just as
empty and insignificant on the second as on
the first level. The passage to the aesthetic
level salvages nothing. On the contrary, it is
mediocrity squared. It claims to be null-1"
am null! I am null!"-and it truly is null.
What we have here is a brilliant diagnosis
of the irony we see everywhere in
contemporary art, the idea that through a
kind of internal self-reflection art is somehow
able to distinguish itself from those
values it appears to be putting forward.
And faced with this irony, there is no point
in accusing the art of being bad because
it is just this judgment that it is already
about. Indeed, it is possible to argue that
this judgment is the real subject of the art,
that it would not exist,until after such a
judgment had been made-A. d yet-this
is Baudrillard's objection-it is e*actfy in"
doing this, in turning a bad judgment into
good art, that art forgets the fundamental
rule of symbolic exchange, which is that no
distinction between good and bad can ever
be made.There.is no outside position available
in the game between good and bad,
between value and the destructioR Ofvalue,
that contemporary art unleashes. The good
(value) can never definitively be separated
from the bad (the destruction of value).
(baudrillard good and bad)
Nevertheless, if`we rea4d
Baudrillard's text closely, we will see how'
those distinctions that he puts forward are
impossible to maintain. The same terms
and figures will play in both positive and
negative registers. For example, as we have
seen, Baudrillard can criticize the irony of
art's reflection on its own worthlessness, but
also praise irony as the "universal and spiritual
form of the disillusion of the world." He
can criticize the art world's "insider" trading,
but also approve of Warhol's "radical
snobbism." He can criticize the indifferent
exchange of objects, which "cease thereby
to exist in their finality;' but admire the
"fetishization" of pure forms that "can only
be exchanged among themselves." And
Warhol, Duchamp, and Baudelaire for their
part, if they are largely seen as positive, are
also viewed at times in a negative light
But in another
,sense it is Baudrillard himself who proposes'this
rule, who is able to putforward
a definition of "good" art in-a situation
where good and bad are inextricably united
(and in so doing reintroduces stakes
into contemporary art).
Baudrillard thus introduces
a distinction that lies not so much within
the existing field of art as between this
field and what allows it. Art-appearance
as such-is precisely the failure to represent
that "nothing" for which it stands
in or replaces, just as this nothing could
not be visualized without its art. And
certain artworks and artists-Warhol,
Edward Hopper, Duchamp-come closer
than others to bringing appearance
and nothingness together, although they
too could never finally do so, inevitably
falling short of the mark.
A
distinction between good and bad must
be made, the exchange between them
must stop somewhere, yet we can never
exactly say where this distinction falls,
what lies on one side of it or the other.
As Baudrillard says, "You can no more
identify the instigator of this plot than you
can identify the victim. The conspiracy
has no author, and everyone is both victim
and accomplice."
Such is the power of Baudrillard's
thought: that henceforth the world is not
as it is but only the failure to realize a
kind of rule. To suggest that the world is
a simulation is not to change anything
about the world or to oppose anything to
it, but is only to demonstrate that the world
inevitably falls short of itself, can never be
entirely realized. It is to introduce a gap
between the world and itself, to make it
seem as though the world is the effect of a
prior crime or conspiracy
(baudrillard good and bad)
Nouveau roman- enclose the real in a vacuum
An objectivity at last liberated from the object
(the hyper realism of simulation-a very useful doc describing what happens to reality when it becomes hyperreality)
Baudrillard is talking about the pure gaze, objectivity etc
A blank stare
A possible definition of the Real-
That for which it is possible to provide an equivalent representation
(scientific definition)
Classical representation was not so much a matter of equivalence as of transcription, interpretation,commentary
The hyperreal=that which is always reproduced. Ie if I take a photo, then that photo is published online, the image published (and also the photographic image) is hyperreal
Personal note- I find it difficult to say whether a photograph is ‘real’. In as far as that it is a piece of paper of some sort then yes, it is real, it can be held. Its surface is different from that of other pieces of paper-so we can say that paper treated in such a way, that has undergone a chemical process so that some of the areas of silver have reacted and some have not can be called a photograph. It is interesting that the photographs that are kept and those thrown away then have slightly different values. A photograph that is overexposed to the point that it is destroyed, or that the photographer simply discards it, will probably never be seen again. (I suppose the word value is simplistic-maybe I should say influence). A photograph taken by a famous photographer will probably have a large amount of influence-it will reach more people, it will probably trigger ideas. It will have a much longer life span than a photograph thrown away. It may be reproduced on different paper, with different ink and different chemical processes.
Very rarely does a photograph’s influence and value come from how it was made-the image is the influential thing. This I suppose is what Baudrillard is talking about-a photograph is an object but how it is made is only part of its identity. The same can be said for any thing, really, which explains why people buy imitation Luis Vuitton handbags or wood pattern linoleum, or indeed why in roman times foods would, at the most extravagant banquets, be made to look like other foods. Of course in roman times this would have been seen as trickery, a clever amusement, whereas today people take their fake wooden flooring much more seriously.
Imitations of objects surround us today, from the aforementioned laminate flooring to a large printed replica of a building hung on fabric over the scaffolding of the building, to the photographs of food at London Bridge station. Why have these imitations been created? The printed image is perhaps there to hide the current ugliness of a treasured building; the photographs of food are probably an attempt to make busy London commuters subconsciously desire the products waiting for them around the next corner. Images sneak in, they are cheekily emblazoned, unquestioned, they dominate the landscape. We, for the most part, get on with our lives, and whatever impact the profusion of images has on us is not immediately obvious (CAN I FIND STATISTICS? HOW DO PEOPLE FEEL ABOUT BEING SURROUNDED BY IMAGES?-CAPITALISM-PEOPLE ARE TOLD BY THE GOVERNMENT THAT ADVERTISING IS BAD AND YET ADVERTISING IS ALLOWED AND ENCOURAGED. IS ADVERTISING FREEDOM OF SPEECH? DO COMPANIES HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHOUT OUT THE NAME OF THEIR PRODUCT? IS THIS ALL AN UNHAPPY SIDE EFFECT OF CAPITALISM? OUI)
Now I will go back to the photograph, taken by the famous photographer, printed onto chemically treated paper smeared with silver halide ions and reproduced on different paper. I did not mention it before but the reproduction is on a larger scale from the original and is mounted. This image, now, may adorn the wall of an apartment, to influence and inspire whoever happens to visit the owner. Is this not a small scale version of a billboard poster? The owner displays her image as a peacock unfurls his tail. Perhaps the image will alter the way visitors to her flat perceive her. Maybe it will make them think she is discerning, dramatic, or colour blind. People use images as masks, emblems and personality extensions. They hope perhaps that the images they choose will subtly communicate something they hope or feel about themselves.
(I AM PROBABLY PARAPHRASING ROLAND BARTHES OR SUSAN SONTAG)
Phenomenology !!!
AESTHETIC FASCINATION IS SIMPLY EVERYWHERE
Why is karaoke embarrassing?
Reserved, polite
Ritual
Zen is to be dedicated, to appreciate and to simplify,
Ritual and repetition
Sending perfect little packages
A dried flower in an envelope
Haikus
My work is sort of about ritual, or about imperfection, or about peace.
Peace and illness
?
Haikus are regulated, they must contain a certain number of syllables and a word to do with spring.
I could perhaps write my essay on haiku. Or something similar, something that simplifies. Maybe something English as I am English, and I could mention the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, the un named thing
Britain has something similar.
And a corrupt history, and bloody warfare, and everything can be removed
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’
What is the difference between the autonomy of modernist and postmodern works?
*What do we understand by the word ‘simulation’?
*How does it differ to ‘representation’?
*To what extent can artists’ use of existing objects (i.e., readymades) be considered acts of ‘intellectual consumption’?
BRANCUSI
DT: Tate Modern recently paired your neon
piece, Work No. 232: the whole world + the
work = the whole world, 2000, with Carl
Andre's 144 Magnesium Square, 1969, which
set up an interesting dialogue.
MC: I was happy with the pairing - partly
because he's a hero ofmine. I think he's a great
artist and his work has been an inspiration to
me, so in that way the pairing was very exciting.
But I think you could just about pair anything
with anything and it would make something.
MARTIN CREED
DT: That's an intriguing concept - the life model
as the artist'sa udience, or 'audient'perhaps.B ut
when the work is exhibited that process and those
thoughts become hidden, that meaning is lost -
all people see is afigurative portrait.
MC: Exactly, and that's always been something
that bothered me. I think that's why I
started making the kind of work I made
because it bothered me that the process was
not necessarily evident in the final work - I
thought the process was the important part.
In other words, if I could tell someone the
story of my attempt to make this thing -
including the final product - that would be
something worth seeing, whereas just seeing
the final object might not be. I often think of
the final work as actually being the bit left
over, after the artist has finished working.
DT: I think that notion relates to Work No.
61o: Sick Film, 2006, which marked a radical
departure from your previous work, in both fonn
and content.
MC: That came directly from doing slide talks
about my work. Over the years, as I was
doing more and more of these talks, I
realised that the slides were a kind of escape
route for me, a way of avoiding actually talking
about something, away from a dialogue.
So I started doing talks without slides and I
decided that the best way of talking about
making work was to try and make a work in
front of people, using words.
DT: Like apiece of pefornance?
MC: Aye, but I was just talking about my
work without slides - I was trying to make a
work using words. I would improvise, there
would be questions and often it would just
end up as a bit of a conversation, but it was
to try to take away some of the conventions
in order to make it more of a direct experience.
It just happened that in those talks I
kept talking about vomiting as being a good
example of what I thought making work is
like - getting from the inside out, trying to
make something on the outside of me that
rhymes with the inside of me. Vomiting is a
convulsion, it isn't a thought-through
process.
Guy Debord is pessimistic, hinting that bad faith has pervaded society as a whole. What did Sartre say about this? About bad faith in SOCIETY?
TO LOOK UP ONLINE
· The original society of the spectacle or Debord’s subtitled film
· Haikus
· Write up on Rebecca wheeler and the gasworks thing
· Artists who work with repetition
· Is guy debord an existentialist ora structuralist or neither nor
· Who was barthes influenced by?
· Find pdfs of nietzche (useful because he says that all knowledge is interpretation so might be a good source for a quote to link with psychogeorgraphy)
· Pdf of Sartre, kiirkegaard, heidigger (for possible quotes)
· Pdf of georges perec
· The names listed in the below article
· foucault
Authors who describe things exactly- the author of A Box Of Matches
Haiku still seems like a good idea
Haiku in relation to the internet age. Though still to consider an English equivalent. ?
Haiku in comparison to a photograph, wabi sabi, time passing
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/rebecca_warren.htm
The photograph reveals a singularity by capturing the punctum, a surprising
moment in time (that once was and is no longer). It is subject to history, belongs
to a certain culture and, above all, can be used as an instrument: photography
becomes an anthropological object.
(riley roland barthes pdf)
The image that knowledge can be reduced to a formula is bound to be criticized by some
and Barthes, himself, refused the universal for the singular. He asks: why could there not be, in some
way, a new science for every subject? A Mathesis singularis (and no longer universalis)?
This is perhaps similar to Husserl? No? it certainly goes against what baudrillard says, that we are becoming specialists who know a lot about a very little
Existentialist view of knowledge-knowledge is the collected experiences of an individual which can be proved ABSOLUTELY TRUE (existentialism book p71, Sartre, bad faith)
Although computer-mediated communication allows for greater connectivity to resources and information, some critics argue that life on the net, contribute to an incomplete lifestyle that
• Department of sociology, Tarbiat Modarres University. Email: info@mmohseni.com
** Iranian information and documentation center. Email: Dowran@irandoc.ac.ir
*** Department of sociology, Tarbiat Modarres University. Email: m_hadisohrabi@yahoo.com Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology. Volume 5 Number 1. January 2008 2
withdraws people from the full range of in-person contact and by getting them so engulfed in a simulacrum virtual reality, disconnects them from their families, friends and communities (Kraut, Lundmark, Patterson, Kiesler, Mukopadhyay and Scherlis 1998; Nie and Erbring 2000). There have been fears that by immersing people in the monitors, the Internet would weaken face-to-face community and domesticity.
(does the internet make people socially isolated pdf)
In light of this opposing sentiment, one can delineate two grand scenarios about how the Internet will affect people's social connections; pessimists and optimists. The Internet pessimists fear the creation of a post-modern world plagued with anomie and loneliness. They believe that global village finally destroys local communities. Internet optimists believe that the Internet provides new opportunities to meet people and increases the efficiency and speed of so many transactions that in turn saves time for other activities, including face-to-face interactions. The purpose of this article is to revisit this issue among Persian Internet users.
Is this article useful? Maybe only as a neat summary and provider of names
The current debate over the impact of Internet use on social ties can be traced back to the publication of Rheingold's (1993) influential book on virtual communities where the Internet was described as capable of bringing strangers together to form infinitive online network.
The debate was later extended to arguments about whether or not the growth of online connections is at the expense of offline relationships. Some studies have suggested that Internet use encourages the creation of online relationships, which in turn replace face-to-face contacts. Some quantitatively oriented researches sought to test the various hypotheses using survey data. Based on a longitudinal quasi-experiment study of 169 people in 73 households over a 2-year period in which they were each given a free computer and free access to the Internet, Kraut et al (1998) found that Internet use was detrimental to offline interpersonal relationships. According to their findings “greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participant's communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle and increase in their depression and loneliness". Kraut et al (1998) have laid out a tentative theory that offers two main Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology. Volume 5 Number 1. January 2008 3
explanations for the negative consequences observed. The first involves displacement of social activities, because the time spent online is unavailable for other activities. The second explanation advanced by Kraut is that Internet users replace strong face-to-face ties with weak online ties. In a sense, depth of social relationship is traded for breadth. Kraut and his associates dubbed the findings as "Internet paradox" because use of the Internet, a technology for social contact, actually led to reduction of offline social ties. This paradox argument received further support from "Nie and Erbring" report by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society (Nie and Erbring, 2000). It shows that on average, the more time spent on the Internet, the less time spent with friends, family and colleagues.
However, the opposite findings have been reported as well. More surprisingly, in a follow up study of their earlier sample, Kraut et al (2001) discovered the exact opposite of what had previously been reported. Participants who used the Internet more, had larger increases in the size of their social network and face to face contacts and interaction with friends and family increased.
Maybe this means that initially the internet was seen to have a detrimental effect but as more and more people had access to it the lack of the internet became the disadvantage
The Internet supports the new society in which the interpersonal connectivity is based on social networks. The developed world is in the midst of a paradigm shift in the ways in which people, organizations and institutions are connected. The traditional human orientation to neighborhood and village-based groups is moving towards communities that are oriented around geographically-dispersed social networks.
Typically, analysts approach social networks in two ways: one approach considers the relations reported by a focal individual. These ego centered (or personal) networks provide views from the perspective of the persons (egos) at the centers of their networks. Members of the network are defined by their specific relations with ego. Analysts can build a picture of the network by counting the number of relations and diversity of relations. This ego-centered approach is particularly useful when the population is large or the boundaries of the population are hard to define. The second approach considers a whole network based on some specific criterion of population boundaries, such as a formal organization, department, club, or kinship group. A whole network describes the ties that all members of a population maintain with all others in that group. Egocentric network studies have often meshed well with traditional survey techniques. Researchers have typically interviewed a sample of respondents inquiring about composition, rational patterns and contents of their network. This approach is used in this research to study personal network of the respondents.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/
The society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, it is fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, which is the image of the ruling economy, the goal is nothing, development everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself.
This could be an important point- maybe I could look at some artists for whom the process is as important as the outcome, who fit in with this idea of the spectacle, but perhaps who are religious about their processes. What about those things in life for which ritual has always been important? Religion and ceremonies? Is following a religion or a ritual something vital for people and why? I think it is, perhaps because it is comforting, because the world seems so huge. In the spectacular capitalist world rituals include shopping and communication (people feel lost if they are isolated). What is isolated? What is being without ones phone in this world? What about people who have few friends and little money, who cannot even afford the expense of the internet café? What are rituals for these people?
Going for a walk?
Going to the library (assuming they can use the library)
They would, if they desired, make friends, probably people they met in the library, people who want to speak to them. Everything is left to chance really.
Are there artists who deal with isolation, with feeling alienated?
I don’t think it is so much the rituals I am interested in, though they are important as everyone has rituals, makes connections in a particular way, has routes they take (or methods for getting from one place to another). What is interesting for me at this second is the question ‘Is being isolated today any different from being isolated 200 years ago?’ Of course, most people confess to being lonely, everyone in fact is lonely, really, because everyone is different. There seems to be more emphasis on the individual today and yet there is still a common language we use to profess our individuality. Facebook and myspace, clothes, the places we go. Status symbols. It is all the same. People see the world differently, there is this layer of the abstract over everything now which was not there in the 18th century. We have more acquaintances, but the same numbers of friends.
Perhaps how we acquire knowledge has changed more significantly than how we acquire friends. Today newcomers to a subject do not have to search for our information in a library, as a summary of almost anything can be found online. Professors have email addresses, there are websites that allow you to download essays, and there are forums for almost anything. The internet makes it easier to access the learning basics and one could assume that this is a good thing-the more people are exposed to learning, the more they are likely to continue learning. The internet makes learning available to everyone, not only the rich. The same can be said for the structure of university learning nowadays. Universities are no longer available to only the rich.
Am I a product of the spectacular society? Am I blind to things? Am I not allowed as much freedom of speech as I was a hundred years ago? How should I know? It seems to me that things have improved in terms of freedomof speech. Although I really can see how much of a difference capitalism has made, shopping is such a big part of our lives-rather than all becoming more comfortable peasants, we have become shabbier aristocrats. I suppose the rich are who people would have aspired to be but why? Why did we follow those who have forgotten how to look after themselves, who know what they want but not necessarily how to get it? Was it the nice clothes? Or the air of superiority? Or simply the fact that these guys were the ones who had the power? It is hard to say. In one of Socrates’ dialogues an opponent of Socrates suggested that virtue was whatever the people in power suggested it was. (the sophists?) is this true? I really do not know.
I would like to hold a series of conversations about a vase
Classes
Discussion groups
Can we discuss this picture of x?
IDEAS in situationism-
Them moment, the transitory moment, how important is this actually in situationism?? The fundamental choice. The feeling of being someone in the world who is able to make choices.
Participation-audience participation, how to get to the bottomof whether something a ‘participant’ does is true. Debord suggests that ‘participation’ in art is a masquerade that proclaims itself able to, as Beech says in the article ‘Include Me Out!’; “fundamentally challenge the cultural distinctions that separate …(artworks)…from the artist and the minority community of art”.
My work is about capturing a moment of time but surely that is invalid when the only people whose it are art students?
Existence, ritual etc
Maybe this initial essay could address problems of participation
Then my dissertation could look at the moment in time, the idea of ritual and of existing and the disorientating ‘spectacular’ world.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/confused-bow-down-north-korea-obama-where-are-you
It is important to distinguish
between the concepts of participative art and
participatory art projects. The latter describes artworks
in which the artist uses participation as a component of
art making. In participative art projects however,
participation IS the project and the artist creates the
framework allowing for participation with no preconceived
ideas of the outcome. As in participative
democracy or participative management it is not so
much the fact that people participate that matters but
rather the fact that participation is the main principle
governing human interactions in such models.
(participation in contemporary art)
An essay on participation would have to take into account relational aesthetics
http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1761&lang=en
(Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects, Suzana Milevska)
Theorists
of "participatory" democracy such as jean-Jacques
Rousseau in the eighteenth century, John Stuart Mill in
the nineteenth, JDrgen Habermas in the twentieth, and
today's Cass Sunstein have stressed that active and
civil give-and-take among people of differing views is a
bedrock of informed and socially responsible citizenry.'
(interactive art for a challenged democracy)
Traditionally artworks last and can be seen or
experienced at any time. Contemporary artists have
explored time sensitive artworks that can only be
experienced under specific conditions or at a specific
date and time.
Robert Barry - Sent a message to let the public know
that “This morning half a cubic meter of helium was
released in the atmosphere”. The artwork only exists
through that message and the connection it created.
Christian Boltanski - Mail-art. Sent a vague and
alarming letter to his friends and acquaintances and
documented their reactions.
On Kawara - Sent numerous telegrams to inform his
public that “he is still alive”.
Liam Gillick - Designed a conference room in 1999 with
geometric furniture and specific walls configuration. A
real symposium was held in the room as part of the
installation.
Karen Kilimnik - Created a series of drawings are based
on her address book thus creating connections between
people on many levels.
Meetings and Conviviality
Artworks can also work as machines generating
encounters or meetings of all kinds. Here are a few
examples:
Braco Dimitrijevic - “Casual Passer-by” a series of giant
advertising posters based on photos of anonymous
passer-by and giving the status of celebrity to unknown
and unaware individuals.
Sophie Calle - Most of her work is based on meeting
with people she doesn’t know: followed passer-by,
hired as a maid in a hotel she searched hotel rooms
etc..
Philippe Parreno - Organized a party at the Consortium
exhibition in Dijon France. His project aimed at using
time rather that space during the art fair. The “party”
generated meetings and conviviality.
Rirkrit Tiravanija - In one famous instance, in a Cologne
gallery, Tiravanija re-created his East Village
apartment, where he cooked and served food for 24
hours. In another instance he created a relaxation
space for artists during an art fair.
Contract and Collaboration
Other contemporary artists have explored contractual
relationship and collaborative art processes.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - “Welcome to what you
believe you see” (1988) the artist documented his
relationship with various gallery owners he worked
with.
Noritoshi Hirakawa - Created forms based on chance
encounter – for a show in Geneva (1994) he placed an
ad in a newspaper seeking a travel companion to
Greece. Documenting the travel was the material of his
artwork.
Alix Lambert - Wedding piece (1992) – got married four
times in six months as part of her exploring marriage
relationships.
Maurizio Cattelan - Designed a costume of a rabbit for
gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin who had to wear the
costume in his gallery as part of the project.
(participation in contemporary art)
Tonight online-
· search the names of those psychologists from the ‘internet’ article
· search some of the above artists to find an artefact
· pdf interactive art
·
There was, as a characteristic
feature of modernist life and thought, a belief
in the autonomous agency of the artist, transcending
history, to speak on behalf of the other. While challenging
western culture's myth of autonomy, especially
as the individual was subjected to the ideological and
economic constraints of modernity, the artist nonetheless
presumed a freedom from those limits. However,
linked with agency in its operation seemed to be a
responsibility for historical critique - if artists could
stand outside history through autonomy, then they,
like the angel of history, were uniquely capable of illuminating
it for those still dwelling in the catastrophe.
Certainly it is faith in the redemptive properties of this
mechanism's operation that seems to impel Benjamin's
writing about modernist culture. In Modernism's
obsolescence this articulation of parts of the apparatus
has become completely detached. This separation
allows artists to make a claim for the performance of
autonomy, inevitably rendered through the material of
the everyday. In this they are, supposedly, reuniting
art and life but without ever accepting the necessity of
critique except when, in acts of supreme nihilism -
typified on the one hand by Banksy's 'how you conform
whilst appearing to oppose' graffiti, and on the
other by the entire mode of 'institutional critique' -
presenting that destructive critique as, itself, a commodity
form to be consumed within the systems it
purports to destroy. The claim that was made for
Sherman and Prince in the 8os, that the very act of
transformation is understood as itself a critique,
neglects the degree to which the autonomous sphere
of art has been subsumed by celebrity, mass culture
and the marketplace.
(knowledge and spectacle)
Do not forget this
Ever
Ever
Is my work entirely narcissistic? Is there any point whatsoever in doing what I tried to do??
KATHARINA SEDA or ACADEMIA
What evidence is there, in fact, that art helps anything, affects anything?
Knowledge and spectacle, the article, makes a very, very good argument for the redundancy of the majority of ‘post modern art’. What does art actually do? Is it not fundamentally self expression, or else something aesthetic?
What I make is not devoted to technical skill. It is not clever. It is not about aesthetics. Many artists do not think about what they are doing. Why repeat something, why go over something that has already happened? What good does repeating things do? What does the audience get from seeing an old film, from making links, from answering a questionnaire? If the art is meant to be ironic, would that irony not be better expressed through writing? I wonder to what extent artists think about what they are making.
- Narcissism in thinking that everyday life can be used as art.
An issue I have is that my work is partly very personal, a collection of things I like, and partly a critique, albeit a weak one, on postmodernism. I clearly do not love the practical side, therefore it makes sense for me to concentrate on the thought
Heraclitus-you never step in the same river twice…in current society,or the society of the spectacle, you run the risk of stepping into the same river again and again.
Guy Debord's thesis number 19o concisely
defines the paradox at the heart of twentiethcentury
art practices-the demand for an impossible
permanent revolution, the mediation of an
unmediated, authentic experience, and the constant
pull of both past and future, progress and
decadence. The recent spate of artists' re-enactments
of historical events and performances
seems caught up in this dialectic, haunted by
Debord's paralyzing circular discourse
Art in the period of deconstruction
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