[PAM] Member Blogs

Picture used with the courtesy of the Vox Populi Gallery
http://www.voxpopuligallery.org/

Magnetic Movie, by artists who call themselves "Semiconductor," is a squeaky, spastic, scientific digital animation (projected on a screen in a secluded dark room) of what magnetic fields and particle movements hypothetically look like (a video still can be seen in the picture above at the bottom right). The work could be viewed as "just" a glorified diagram of the potentiality of physics but it's an enthralling one. Part of what makes the video so enjoyable is that the graphic animations are contained in real environments. One watches neon magnetic fields expand and particles buzz, pop, and fire through what seems to be experimental laboratories. A highlight is when the "real space" seems to get caught in a matter 'quake, blurring the lines between the graphically altered and the actual.

I'm not one who usually likes to bring up the question "What category does it fit into?" but in this case, I can't deny the inquiry. Is it science or is it art (or both)? This dilemma reminds me of Eadweard Muybridge's stop-motion photographs from the late 1800's (which I learned about from Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age by Margot Lovejoy). Muybridge's photos are considered scientific but not science because it was revealed that he "freely edited" his photographic sequences for the sake of continuity.

Eadweard Muybridge The Horse In Motion. 1878
Used with the courtesy of http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/muybridge_galloping_horse.jpg

Whereas the results from Jules-Étienne Marey's "phot-graphic gun" are considered hard science because they are precisely captured multiples without any post-production alterations. So, the distinction between what is and what is not science, according to this example, is a matter of whether or not the photographer's hand distorted the results. In the case of Magnetic Movie, the animations are based off of science but the results are creative interpretations. The artists took the blueprints for what particle movement and magnetic fields could look or sound like and pushed them into artistic territory.

Thanks for reading!

Matthew Parrish 

 Many people lament the historically recent technological shift in our culture. "They" say that it has imprisoned people in a reflection of reality, disconnecting them from the actual, and dehumanized them. Instead of interacting with people proper, so the rhetoric goes, people are now engaging with a screen that only encapsulates a whiff or an echo of humanity.

Of course, some of this is true. The internet and it's outdated predecessor the television can be seen as compact psychological cages. To me, however, it seems that people who hold this view forget the painful, madness-inducing isolation paramount in this world. They must be city-folk who have a healthy social atmosphere for intellectual, social, and pleasurable endeavors.

For most of the population, of America at least (the only country I can speak for), who are suffocating in traps that parallel the technological ones like slave-driving jobs, miserable and self-indulgent neighborhoods, and ignorant relatives, the internet can be a utopian window for cross-state relations. Instead of one being stuck in a sleepy, dull area, one can converse about favorite artists, authors, musicians, etc. through forums which house engaging discussions. One can experience bright and life-affirming personalities through comedic videos on Youtube. One can elevate one's mental faculties by browsing the latest political commentaries on Rollingstone.com or CNN.com. One can learn about anything at the drop of a hat. (What do I want to learn about today? The baboon spiders i.e. tarantulas of South Africa? Done).

Of course there's a lot of bogus information out there but one just has to be smart about sources. When in the history of the world wasn't there a lot of bogus information out there? Woody Allen said, "Everything our parents told us was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college." How many parents force their children to eat everything on their plate? This enforcement leads to enlarging stomachs and tendencies that encourage obesity. Where did they get this "method" from? It wasn't the internet. Everything my father's mother told me, God rest her soul, was B.S. and she never owned a TV or a computer! She believed in fake illnesses like "Liver Groan" (you catch this from jumping in the pool too much--and don't think she was just using this as a method for instilling fear...she actually believed in her diagnosis because her mother told her about it).

I'm more terrified of isolated information handed down from generation to generation than an information free-for-all that, when surfed right, can be enlightening. This new transferral of information may be wreaking havoc on the tightly wound minds of scholars but screw 'em. Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for good professors but many of them seem to be more concerned with tooting their own horn, puffing themselves up, and social positioning. Maybe the internet's insistence (I realize this is grammatically wrong) on collectivity (not that the literary world wasn't already heading this way) will force them to concede a little ego.

If Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead in today's world, someone would have posted a video from his cell phone showing the behind the curtain switch of the dead body with an impostor. It was easy to deceive people who had no other source of information but word of mouth.

Anyway, people who regret the technologically-centered incarnation of reality that we live in for the reason that it is socially isolating and an information bedlam don't really understand that such a state is the nature of the world and that this version helps people who would otherwise be completely cut off stay in the game.

When one looks at an art object, what is the purpose of mentioning intention?  If the artist's intention was successful, then it is in the work.  If the artist's intention failed to achieve its aim, then it is irrelevant because it's not evident in the work. 

 Such is the view of anti-intentionalists.  Anti-intentionalists are essentially formalists who think that viewers, critics, and interpreters should focus on the work and not what the artist is trying to do.  They say all ambiguities should be solved within the formal boundaries of the work and without any deference to the artist.  

 An absolute intentionalist would say that the artwork can only be understood and interpreted correctly if the viewer understands the artist's intention.  If the artist's intent is banished from the equation, the work becomes a pluralistic free-for-all of meaning.  An artwork, as an utterance, is an attempt at communication.  If we don't understand what the utterer is trying to say then we can't comprehend the message.  

 Those are the basics of the intentionalism debate.  It's an argument that has been going on, in this specific manner, since W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's seminal essay "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946) in which they attempted to delineate the boundaries of an artwork excluding any biographical or personal information relative to the aritist.  They made their case in the context of poetry, but the argument extends, albeit in different ways, to the visual arts as well.  

Can an artwork be disconnected from it's creator's biography or any information said creator spouts outside of but in reference to the work? 

 Regretfully, many of these problems can only be resolved situationally.  I mean, in some cases, we don't even know who the author was so how can we put the work in an authorial context?  For example, we don't know who wrote Beowulf.  So, any conception of what we think the intention of the author was comes explicitly from the work.  There's no biographical or personal information that can inform our understanding of it.  In that situation, it's impossible to differentiate between what we think the author meant and what the author actually meant.

 For Felix Gonzales-Torres' Portrait of Ross in L.A. (1991), in which he displayed a pile of candy that exactly matched the weight of his dead lover Ross (175 lbs), it's impossible to separate the artwork from the artist.  The artwork is immediately placed in a biographical context when it is understood and the intentions of the artist are absolutely necessary to the comprehenion of the work.  Without the knowledge that the candy is the exact weight of Ross, one cannot grasp the significance of the artwork.  It's debatable whether that connection can be made solely from the title and the piece or if one needs outside information, but in every case I've witnessed, the "revelation" doesn't occurr without any external assistance.  The fact that the work is a "portrait of Ross" and that it weighs 175 lbs, in my opinion, does not reveal enough information to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  One could argue the opposite but I hold my ground.  Once one understands that 175 lbs was the weight of Ross, it seems obvious...but before?

 Whether you agree with me or not, the work directly leads us to explore the love between Felix and Ross which takes us into the realm of biography and artistic intention.  There's no way around that.  My point is that the degree of relevance of biographical information, artistic context, and artistic intention can only be judged work by work.  

 One could argue that I'm blurring the line between artist's intention and artist's biography too much.  Does an inquiry into intention immediately mean one is searching for information outside of the work?  It seems to me that referencing an artist's intention can only make sense if we go outside the work.  Otherwise, there's no hope of separating the work from the intention.  If we rely purely on the formality of the work as justification for the artist's intention, then we can never know whether we actually understand what the artist was trying to do.  We may think we comprehend what the artist was trying to do but we may be completely wrong.  

 I thought, and so did many other people, that Phoebe Washburn's work was an environmntal commentary.  But if you listen to her, she says he work is about the exact opposite of environmental sensibilities.  She said that her art evolved from "laziness and greed."  Now, Washburn's comments may be made with tongue-in-cheek but she has repeatedly affirmed that her art is not an environmental commentary, that that was never her intention, and that she is really just playing around.  Now, here, if we relied on the collective audience's interpretation of artistic intention, we would have misconstrued artistic intention.  I have LOTS of evidence for the amount of people that thought Washburn's art was environmentally charged but I don't want to make this blog a reference or quote-a-thon.

So, it seems, that intention necessary has to mean outside of the work.  This assertion immediately irritates formalists but who cares.  Isolated formalism doesn't even make sense.  Where can one cut off the stream of variables between artwork and not artwork.  The answer to this question seems intuitive and common sensical but so did the apparent fact that the Sun circled the Earth.  The materials for the piece came from somewhere, the artist's idea is a coalescence of many preexisting components, it's place can determine its significance, it's value is temporally sensitive, the SIZE of the viewer can change the experience of it, etc.  I'm not saying that there is no work but I'm saying that where exactly the work ends and the experience of it or the effect of its context begins isn't crystal clear especially if we're discussing comprehension and interpretation.  If one wants to say, "There's the work.  I can see it.  I know where it begins and where it ends," this statement only solves the problem if we don't talk or don't move it.  

 If the existence of the work is in an indeterminate limbo, then who's to say what informational source is off-limits in terms of interpreting the work?  Who's to say that artists' statements shouldn't be considered when one wishes to comprehend an artwork?  Who's to say that intentions are or aren't relevant?  It seems that none of these problems can really be solved abstractly.    

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7293992.stm

This article (click the link above) discusses how the educated youth of France are choosing too many "soft majors" and not working enough. What do you think? Is America the same way? Are too many of us choosing impractical career paths and then wondering where are money is? And if so, what should we be studying instead?

I think about this a lot. Susan Sontag said something like "Anyone who doesn't work with their hands is a parasite." What she means is anyone who isn't doing hard labor is living off of others hard labor. The latter group includes artists, critics, theorists, etc. Are our paths justified?

Art is a natural part of humanity and its enrichment of life is, to me, self-evident. If we all adapted a utilitarian perspective, what kind of life would we be constructing?

Who or what "decides" who should be a laborer and who gets a spot in the ivory tower? Money? Influence? Academia? Skill?

When one asks an artist about a facet of said artist's work, one assumes that the artist, since she is the creator, has a privileged perspective in regard to her work. But is this assumption valid? When one chooses to act, one is making the decision to transition from being above to in. Prior to acting, one can consider many actions to perform but once one chooses and becomes entrenched in the action, one becomes immediately biased for that action. [1]