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Poem Number 486
she sat looking through the past, like a window pane as the rain cascaded in pain. Each drop a memory. Each trickle melting time.
Puddles of forgotten names and places, rising like the tides of angry oceans.
Pictures in her mind of happier times, washed away by life's anguish.
she remembers as painfully as she forgot
the howling screams that followed her down the hall. His tears
could melt cement
drip through the earth to tap the core
where her father's vacant fragrance waited
curled around the monument, its softer skeletal edge
She was falling through strata, erratic, fusing with the walls
reaching for a reality that was not there,
just one solid grasping place
he remembers as painfully as he forgot
time breaks a rock with water and air
but these tears, this sigh - they cannot fracture time
these tears may not fracture time but they have wet my blouse
I was a good person but everthing changed after he fell in love with the television.
"Speak to me Albert," she would plead.
"I'll be your little monkey if you play my accordion,
But all he could hear was the wind howling through that desolate and forboding place between his ears.
where there was comfusion and thoughts I'd never understand
and was cluttered with millions of depressing and beutiful moments that put him in a trance
Good news. Bad news. Daily strife. Now television took over his life.
butt television is a reflection of life it is no life to live but now entertainment rules him
now life has no meaning but is full of worthless memoies knowlage has no meaning to him and life even less
but life is more important than anything you purchase
but somany people forget that, if the world is going to die let it happen from a natural cause and not from teleivision or pollution
he surfed digital tides she leaked a vicious solution
it was hard enough to keep pace with the infomercials
hARDER TO REMEMBER.
Commentary:
i beleive that the first and second line has the best poetiic voice that I have ever seen and is a great description of the mind I have ever seen
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no no no the first & second lines are very trite whose your penonmenologist?
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i dunno what a penonmenologist is supposed to be or what he is supposed to be really good at maybe if it was a phenomenologist or something he might have a sanctioned thing or two to say about the matter but i forget what i am expected to remember about it but if perhaps penologist was the sly prisonilliterate intimation i contend that it was a disparaging perhaps slanderous jibe at the first speaker with whom i happen to agree; i just cant get the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain from tickling the brain a little too earnestly-- an unfortunate rhyme. really pretty though: each drop a memory. each trickle melting time.
--diogenes
-------
i dunno what a penonmenologist is supposed to be or what he is supposed to be really good at maybe if it was a phenomenologist or something he might have a sanctioned thing or two to say about the matter but i forget what i am expected to remember about it but if perhaps penologist was the sly prisonilliterate intimation i contend that it was a disparaging perhaps slanderous jibe at the first speaker with whom i happen to agree; i just cant get the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain from tickling the brain a little too earnestly-- an unfortunate rhyme. really pretty though: each drop a memory. each trickle melting time.
--diogenes
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did i stutter?
--d
-------
lol.... :) -v.
-------
did you stutter? i certainly didn't mean to offend anyone the poem for me starts out weakly but definitely works up some steam as it goes on i just don't think the whole pane of glass thing is particularly fresh but i do like the music of the first line & really it's okay if it's not fresh as long as it swings--lacook
and most of the poems here do keep up this work
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Thursday, February 7, 2008
Extropic Art Manifesto of Transhumanist Arts
Extropic Art Manifesto of Transhumanist Arts
____________________
We are [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/transart.htm ]transhumans.
Our art integrates the most eminent progression
of creativity and sensibility
merged by discovery.
I am the architect of my existence. My art reflects my vision and represents my values.
It conveys the very essence of my being—coalescing imagination and insight, challenging all limits.
We are exploring how current and future technologies affect our senses, our cognition and our lives.
Our attention to these relationships become fields of art as we participate in the most immediate and
vital issues for transhumanity—extending life, augmenting intelligence and creativity, exploring the universe.
Artists, as communicators, bring together the passions, the dreams and the hopes of transhumanity and
express these emotions in ways that touch us deeply.
Transhumanist Arts reflects an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.
We are voices of transhumanity. Our voices are a synthesis, rhythm and exploration of imagination.
The Transhumanist Arts movement and its genres regard art as more than an artifact.
Art influences social and cultural change: how we live and who we are.
It creates a sense of self, art as being, autonomous yet connected to culture’s
continuum. How we accomplish our intentions is a matter of selective individual choice—
whether abstract or representational, whether artifact or conceptual.
Our criteria for art remain open and we welcome cross-disciplinary innovations.
As we move into the 21st Century,
Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art will suffuse the universe around us.
Our unique ingenuity will spread far out into the capillaries of our culture.
We are active participants in our own evolution from human to posthuman.
We are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming.
Natasha Vita-More
Authored January 1, 1997 ©
2003 ©
transhuman n. an evolution from being human to becoming posthuman
Transhumanist Arts FAQ
transhuman n. an evolutionary process from being human to becoming posthuman.
1. FAQ What is Transhumanist Arts?
Transhumanist Arts is an art period reflecting creative works of transhumanity. Just as Modern Art represents much of the arts of the 20th Century, Transhumanist Arts covers the late 20th Century into the 21st Century. The Transhumanist Arts period coalesces arts, sciences and technologies in reflecting the efforts of transhumans in enhancing and augmenting our minds and bodies as we strive for superlongevity and ultimately indefinite lifespans. The ideas generated by those whose work is transhumanist in scope, exemplifies the content of the transhumanist culture and is generated through many modes, from painting to New Media, and modes yet to be discovered. Transhumanist Arts include creative works by scientists, engineers, technicians, philosophers, athletes, educators, mathematicians, etc., who may not be artists in the traditional sense, but whose vision and creativity are integral to transhumanity.
The [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanistartsmanifesto.htm ]Transhumanist Arts Statement was authored by [ http://natasha@natasha.cc ]Natasha Vita-More (formerly Nancie Clark) in 1982. This is the first time the written words "We are transhumans" has left our Planet on its way through our Solar System. Hundreds of people around the world have signed the Manifesto.
The first Transhumanist Arts piece was made into a high 8 mm film. Performance Art " Breaking Away" which storyline themes human evolution in breaking away from our biological restraints and breaking away from earth's gravity as we head into space. The performance art piece was written and performed by Natasha Vita-More at Red Rocks Amphitheater and sponsored by the University of Colorado Film Department. Don Yannacito, Director of Film Studies Program for independent filmmakers, filmed the performance.
Later Transhumanist Arts works include a painting exhibition at EZTV Los Angles, video "2 Women in B&W" which received special recognition at Women In Video, 1985, "T - and Counting" (in deference to FM-2030, Marvin Minsky, Carl Sagan, Harold Choen, Anais Nin, Susan Sontag and other transhumans, futurists and great thinkers) which was exhibited at the United States Film Festival, 1992. There have been many digital art pieces and net.art pieces covering the 1990s.
2. FAQ What were early influences on Transhumanist Arts?
Early artists who were interested in Transhumanist Arts that I either collaborated with or exhibited with in the art world were [ http://www.leary.com/ ]Timothy Leary, [ http://www.eztvmedia.com ]John Dorr (famous for starting EZTV which is now internationally recognized Video art performance space), Eric Orr (who has exhibited his sculpture throughout the World), Robert Thrumbull (Kinetic artist and architect), Howard Cohen first artist to work with robotics, Bill Viola (video maverick), [ http://www.zoetrope.com/ ]Francis Ford Coppola was an early collaborator and inspiration when I was at his studio Zoetrope in Hollywood and we worked on the first High Definition Film which I was in. Another truly incredible artist is Richard Lowenberg who set up the first Internet community and who I collaborated with on the 1979 project "Arts & Sciences '79" in which 30 well known artists and 30 well known scientists met for a week of brain storming. Other remarkable artist is Pam Lifton-Zoline (established a foundation and school for creativity in Telluride, Colo), [ http://www.artincontext.com/artist/a/vito_acconci/ ]Vito Acconci Italian performance artist and probably the recognized performance artists in the world and who was an early influence and collaborator in the 1980s when I met him in San Francisco. Also, an early colleague and inspiration in the area of video was and is [ http://www.cnca.gob.mx/viola/index.html ]Bill Voila who is an internationally famous video artist. I love his work and am honored that we met early on. Marian Gray was also an early fabulous inspiration and collaborator. As a photographer of performance art, Marian's photographic collection is superlative. Today may collaborate on a mountain muscle Internet piece, and [ http://www.falsegods.com ]Marque Cornblatt's with a transhumanist exhibition. Other Transhumanist Artists include [ http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/minsky.html ]Marvin Minsky, [ http://www.fiorella.com ]Fiorella Terenze , [ http://www.biota.org/conf97/ksims.html ]Karl Sims , [ http://www.stelarc.va.com.au ]Stelarc, [ http://www.word.com/jaime/bionic/page2.html ]Ebon Fisher , Charles Ostrum, and David Bowie.
3. FAQ What is the Extropic Art genre?
Extropic Art is a genre of Transhumanist Arts. The genre was founded by Natasha Vita-More in 1997, Los Angeles.
If you would like names of movements, genres and periods as well as individuals who inspired Transhumanist Arts period and the Extropic Art genre, then it would be all art periods and movements and all creative individuals. Specifically, however, Abstract Art, Performance Art, Kinetic Art, Cubism, Techno Art, science fiction and Communications Art. In these specific genres are numerous artists whose work has influenced Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art and continues to influence. Today, however, Transhumanist Arts is more influenced by the work done in the sciences, especially biotechnology and molecular engineering, which will have great impact on the art of our future. Soon artists will be designing new bodies and new types of senses.
I have a later list from 1997 onward, hundreds of artists have written to me and sent their names to be added to the [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/extropic.htm ]Extropic Art Manifesto.
Also, a great influence and colleague is [ http://www.asci.org ]ASCI which we are delighted to be affiliated with. ASCI puts on excellent conferences in New York and is at the center of arts and sciences.
3. FAQ What is the Transhumanist Culture?
In my self-published short book [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/createrecreate.htm ]Create/Recreate: the 3rd Millennial Culture, I explain the beginnings of transhumanist ideas as presented by FM-2030 at UCLA in the 1980s, and at the New School earlier on. I also cover the extropic influence on transhumanism as well as the influences of science and technology on our emerging culture.
Art works were produced and exhibited at the well known LA Digital Gallery EZTV, at Electronic Café International, at the University of Colorado, UCLA, San Francisco Art Center, and videos were exhibited in "Women In Video", US Film Festival. The art world is an important culture (and a multimillion dollar industry) and has a lot of influence on society. Thus, I would add Transhumanist Arts as an important cultural event in the early 1980s. On television, the first transhumanist show was produced in 1985 called "Transcentury Update" which I produced and hosted with the advice of FM-2030.
4. FAQ Why Art in a World of Science and Technology?
The question of why we want to live longer, healthier and grow more intelligent, live indefinitely and develop an enhanced intelligence, creativity and transhumanist compassion. The art of life.
'We have responsibilities and concerns and the wisdom to deal with them. How we use technology and science, and what type of content we lend to our arts is not a flimsy affair. We must be conscientious and sensible, as well as daring and innovative. We must consider who we are in a world where the machine is becoming smarter and smarter, where the impossible is now quite possible." ("Culture In The Making" from [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/createrecreate.htm ]Create/Recreate)
When we think of the arts, it is necessary to stretch our imaginations to a time when humanity will steer evolution. We are at the precipice of navigating this course now.
There are many concerns and theories about the future of the arts, but if the focus overemphasizes theory, content is neglected. Theory is necessary to assess content, but content must arise out of culture. Content is the pulse. It can reflect culture as a cultural portrait or it can steer culture by presenting a vision. How we engage in new technologies will reflect this.
5. FAQ How do we achieve/maintain direction as Transhumanist Artists?
By checking and rechecking the barometer of society and planning for the long range. If the pioneering technologies are focusing on extreme life extension and the innovative biotechnologies that will augment our brains and bodies are in the forefront, this is a cue. To learn more about the international art movement, please refer to the Transhumanist Arts Center located at [ http://www.transhumanist.biz ]Transhumanist.biz. Here you will find the [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanistartsmanifesto.htm ]Transhumanist Arts Statement.
Create!
Natasha Vita-More
Copyright © 2003. All Rights Reserved.
The above copied from http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm
____________________
We are [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/transart.htm ]transhumans.
Our art integrates the most eminent progression
of creativity and sensibility
merged by discovery.
I am the architect of my existence. My art reflects my vision and represents my values.
It conveys the very essence of my being—coalescing imagination and insight, challenging all limits.
We are exploring how current and future technologies affect our senses, our cognition and our lives.
Our attention to these relationships become fields of art as we participate in the most immediate and
vital issues for transhumanity—extending life, augmenting intelligence and creativity, exploring the universe.
Artists, as communicators, bring together the passions, the dreams and the hopes of transhumanity and
express these emotions in ways that touch us deeply.
Transhumanist Arts reflects an extropic appreciation of aesthetics in a technologically enhanced world.
We are voices of transhumanity. Our voices are a synthesis, rhythm and exploration of imagination.
The Transhumanist Arts movement and its genres regard art as more than an artifact.
Art influences social and cultural change: how we live and who we are.
It creates a sense of self, art as being, autonomous yet connected to culture’s
continuum. How we accomplish our intentions is a matter of selective individual choice—
whether abstract or representational, whether artifact or conceptual.
Our criteria for art remain open and we welcome cross-disciplinary innovations.
As we move into the 21st Century,
Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art will suffuse the universe around us.
Our unique ingenuity will spread far out into the capillaries of our culture.
We are active participants in our own evolution from human to posthuman.
We are shaping the image—the design and the essence—of what we are becoming.
Natasha Vita-More
Authored January 1, 1997 ©
2003 ©
transhuman n. an evolution from being human to becoming posthuman
Transhumanist Arts FAQ
transhuman n. an evolutionary process from being human to becoming posthuman.
1. FAQ What is Transhumanist Arts?
Transhumanist Arts is an art period reflecting creative works of transhumanity. Just as Modern Art represents much of the arts of the 20th Century, Transhumanist Arts covers the late 20th Century into the 21st Century. The Transhumanist Arts period coalesces arts, sciences and technologies in reflecting the efforts of transhumans in enhancing and augmenting our minds and bodies as we strive for superlongevity and ultimately indefinite lifespans. The ideas generated by those whose work is transhumanist in scope, exemplifies the content of the transhumanist culture and is generated through many modes, from painting to New Media, and modes yet to be discovered. Transhumanist Arts include creative works by scientists, engineers, technicians, philosophers, athletes, educators, mathematicians, etc., who may not be artists in the traditional sense, but whose vision and creativity are integral to transhumanity.
The [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanistartsmanifesto.htm ]Transhumanist Arts Statement was authored by [ http://natasha@natasha.cc ]Natasha Vita-More (formerly Nancie Clark) in 1982. This is the first time the written words "We are transhumans" has left our Planet on its way through our Solar System. Hundreds of people around the world have signed the Manifesto.
The first Transhumanist Arts piece was made into a high 8 mm film. Performance Art " Breaking Away" which storyline themes human evolution in breaking away from our biological restraints and breaking away from earth's gravity as we head into space. The performance art piece was written and performed by Natasha Vita-More at Red Rocks Amphitheater and sponsored by the University of Colorado Film Department. Don Yannacito, Director of Film Studies Program for independent filmmakers, filmed the performance.
Later Transhumanist Arts works include a painting exhibition at EZTV Los Angles, video "2 Women in B&W" which received special recognition at Women In Video, 1985, "T - and Counting" (in deference to FM-2030, Marvin Minsky, Carl Sagan, Harold Choen, Anais Nin, Susan Sontag and other transhumans, futurists and great thinkers) which was exhibited at the United States Film Festival, 1992. There have been many digital art pieces and net.art pieces covering the 1990s.
2. FAQ What were early influences on Transhumanist Arts?
Early artists who were interested in Transhumanist Arts that I either collaborated with or exhibited with in the art world were [ http://www.leary.com/ ]Timothy Leary, [ http://www.eztvmedia.com ]John Dorr (famous for starting EZTV which is now internationally recognized Video art performance space), Eric Orr (who has exhibited his sculpture throughout the World), Robert Thrumbull (Kinetic artist and architect), Howard Cohen first artist to work with robotics, Bill Viola (video maverick), [ http://www.zoetrope.com/ ]Francis Ford Coppola was an early collaborator and inspiration when I was at his studio Zoetrope in Hollywood and we worked on the first High Definition Film which I was in. Another truly incredible artist is Richard Lowenberg who set up the first Internet community and who I collaborated with on the 1979 project "Arts & Sciences '79" in which 30 well known artists and 30 well known scientists met for a week of brain storming. Other remarkable artist is Pam Lifton-Zoline (established a foundation and school for creativity in Telluride, Colo), [ http://www.artincontext.com/artist/a/vito_acconci/ ]Vito Acconci Italian performance artist and probably the recognized performance artists in the world and who was an early influence and collaborator in the 1980s when I met him in San Francisco. Also, an early colleague and inspiration in the area of video was and is [ http://www.cnca.gob.mx/viola/index.html ]Bill Voila who is an internationally famous video artist. I love his work and am honored that we met early on. Marian Gray was also an early fabulous inspiration and collaborator. As a photographer of performance art, Marian's photographic collection is superlative. Today may collaborate on a mountain muscle Internet piece, and [ http://www.falsegods.com ]Marque Cornblatt's with a transhumanist exhibition. Other Transhumanist Artists include [ http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/minsky/minsky.html ]Marvin Minsky, [ http://www.fiorella.com ]Fiorella Terenze , [ http://www.biota.org/conf97/ksims.html ]Karl Sims , [ http://www.stelarc.va.com.au ]Stelarc, [ http://www.word.com/jaime/bionic/page2.html ]Ebon Fisher , Charles Ostrum, and David Bowie.
3. FAQ What is the Extropic Art genre?
Extropic Art is a genre of Transhumanist Arts. The genre was founded by Natasha Vita-More in 1997, Los Angeles.
If you would like names of movements, genres and periods as well as individuals who inspired Transhumanist Arts period and the Extropic Art genre, then it would be all art periods and movements and all creative individuals. Specifically, however, Abstract Art, Performance Art, Kinetic Art, Cubism, Techno Art, science fiction and Communications Art. In these specific genres are numerous artists whose work has influenced Transhumanist Arts and Extropic Art and continues to influence. Today, however, Transhumanist Arts is more influenced by the work done in the sciences, especially biotechnology and molecular engineering, which will have great impact on the art of our future. Soon artists will be designing new bodies and new types of senses.
I have a later list from 1997 onward, hundreds of artists have written to me and sent their names to be added to the [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/extropic.htm ]Extropic Art Manifesto.
Also, a great influence and colleague is [ http://www.asci.org ]ASCI which we are delighted to be affiliated with. ASCI puts on excellent conferences in New York and is at the center of arts and sciences.
3. FAQ What is the Transhumanist Culture?
In my self-published short book [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/createrecreate.htm ]Create/Recreate: the 3rd Millennial Culture, I explain the beginnings of transhumanist ideas as presented by FM-2030 at UCLA in the 1980s, and at the New School earlier on. I also cover the extropic influence on transhumanism as well as the influences of science and technology on our emerging culture.
Art works were produced and exhibited at the well known LA Digital Gallery EZTV, at Electronic Café International, at the University of Colorado, UCLA, San Francisco Art Center, and videos were exhibited in "Women In Video", US Film Festival. The art world is an important culture (and a multimillion dollar industry) and has a lot of influence on society. Thus, I would add Transhumanist Arts as an important cultural event in the early 1980s. On television, the first transhumanist show was produced in 1985 called "Transcentury Update" which I produced and hosted with the advice of FM-2030.
4. FAQ Why Art in a World of Science and Technology?
The question of why we want to live longer, healthier and grow more intelligent, live indefinitely and develop an enhanced intelligence, creativity and transhumanist compassion. The art of life.
'We have responsibilities and concerns and the wisdom to deal with them. How we use technology and science, and what type of content we lend to our arts is not a flimsy affair. We must be conscientious and sensible, as well as daring and innovative. We must consider who we are in a world where the machine is becoming smarter and smarter, where the impossible is now quite possible." ("Culture In The Making" from [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm/createrecreate.htm ]Create/Recreate)
When we think of the arts, it is necessary to stretch our imaginations to a time when humanity will steer evolution. We are at the precipice of navigating this course now.
There are many concerns and theories about the future of the arts, but if the focus overemphasizes theory, content is neglected. Theory is necessary to assess content, but content must arise out of culture. Content is the pulse. It can reflect culture as a cultural portrait or it can steer culture by presenting a vision. How we engage in new technologies will reflect this.
5. FAQ How do we achieve/maintain direction as Transhumanist Artists?
By checking and rechecking the barometer of society and planning for the long range. If the pioneering technologies are focusing on extreme life extension and the innovative biotechnologies that will augment our brains and bodies are in the forefront, this is a cue. To learn more about the international art movement, please refer to the Transhumanist Arts Center located at [ http://www.transhumanist.biz ]Transhumanist.biz. Here you will find the [ http://www.transhumanist.biz/transhumanistartsmanifesto.htm ]Transhumanist Arts Statement.
Create!
Natasha Vita-More
Copyright © 2003. All Rights Reserved.
The above copied from http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm
Video Artists, Video Art ...And Television?, Torben Soeborg
A paper for the FIV 95 Festival, Nov. 1995, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Prejudice against video art?
From time to time the discussion about video art and television emerges once again, especially in connection with the discussion among artists and others about how to show video art, how to get video art out to the general public - and not only inside the secluded walls of festivals like FIV 95, however prestigious they might be .
You may state as the German video artist Egon Bunne (and many before him) that: "In modern culture, video art still has not gained the rank it deserves. Though video installations are welcome visual points of contemporary exhibitions, enriching and revaluating them upwards, video art itself is still burdened with prejudices and exposed to suspicious looks, if at all looked at." (1)
This goes also and to a high degree for the television. Both public and private television stations and networks find that "video art is too extra-ordinary to find a fixed place in the program" - with a few and unregular exceptions, "but they are soon dismissed because of low numbers of viewers". (1)
Now you could of course ask - and it has been done before - the "heritical" question: Should video art at all be shown at TV?
For the uncritical person the answer will, I am sure, be: Of course - where else? You do show video art on a Tv-screen and almost all television today is brodcast from video tapes and not "live". Also many artists working with video would answer like this.
Anti-TV - or talking back to media
If we look in the historical rear-view mirror you will find that the first video art in the 60’th were created in contrast to television as an encounter against the commercial television: "a counterpractice", as Nam June Paik said, "making gestures and inroads against Big Brother" (2). Both a critical and Utopian encounter:
"Not only a systematic but also a Utopian critique was implicit in video’s early use, for the effort was not to enter the system but to transform every aspect of it and - legacy of the revolutionary avant-garde project - to redifine the system out of existence by merging art with social life and making "audience" and "producer" interchangeable", and Martha Rosler (2) goes on and notes that "The surrealist-inspired or -influenced effort meant to develop a new poetry from this everyday "language" of television, to insert aesthetic pleasure into a mass form and to provide the uthopian glimpse afforded by "liberated" sensibilities."
You could say that the first video artists created "anti-TV", but later on you find that many video artists take their starting point in the mass media and consciously reflect over, comment on and deconstruct that virtual world the television as a mass media creates.
The artists choose to answer back: "Talking Back to Media", as the organizers called the big manifestation in Amsterdam in November 1985. They wanted through this manifestation "to show the work of artists who use a mass media and who, in their work want to deconstruct the "reality" conjured up by the mass media or, in some other way, to provide a commentary on those media" (3).
The artists now had better equipment, better tools and could as Peggy Gale points out, "reasonable infiltrate - if they were so inclined", but as she goes on: "But video as means of "talking back" does not aim to be TV".(3)
At the manifestation in Amsterdam were shown videos by a number of artists, among them Nam June Paik, Dara Birnbaum, Richard Serra, Klaus von Bruch, and I was asked to participate with the video "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur" which might illustrate the "talking back": This video comments on how the mass media has influenced our sense of time. Måns Wrange expresses it like this: "The effect of the implosive media boom on our grasp of time is reflected in Torben Søborg’s "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur", 1985. In a sequence taken in a living-room we INDIRECTLY see a film being shown on the television. Gradually the TV-screen is zoomed until it covers the whole picture surface. Suddently the film cuts DIRECTLY onto the video, and there is a dislocation between two fictive times in a single picture sequence" (4).
The video also reflects and comments on the sense of reality the mass media conveys: "We live in a world, feeling surrounded by video: music video clips on every TV-channel - almost. some nights two or three channels have MTV at the same time or just following each other. You see part of a video on one channel, flip to the next and see the beginning of that same video - and get the end on the third channel. All these videos melt together in your mind: make their own story, get their own life, a meta life of video - what is life? - what is video? - is it real or ... surreal? (5)
Regarding the deconstructive and Utopian aspect Jean Baudrillad (6) stresses that "...Duchamp, Dada, the surrealists and all those who have tried to deconstruct representation and let the art works blow up all still belongs to an avant-garde and in one or another way to the critical Utopia, but in his book "Theory of the Avant-Garde" (7) Peter Berger states that the avant-garde movement has failed: instead of destroying the commercial art world, the commercial art world swallowed the avant-garde and its "technics" as refreshing new effects: "Anti-art became art" as the creator of happenings Allan Kaprow did express it. The same happened to a certain degree with video art: Television "swallowed" and used the (anti)technics of video art, especially in music videos and ads.
... to be on TV
The goals of Anti-TV and Talking Back to TV was not "to be TV", nor to be shown on TV, but as the well-known American media artist John Sanborn pointed out a couple of years ago a change of attitude developed between American video artists. "Three years ago your honest video artist wouldn’t be caught dead with his or her work on TV. Just not done, old chap", but this gradually changed and now "The fact is we are interested in television ... getting our work on it: the name of the game is T-fucking-V". (8), and this change or tendency you also meet in Europe.
"A still greater number of video art productions meet the demans of television" and the Editorial of the Dutch magazine "Mediamatic2 goes on and states that you have to and must say that "this is a gratifying development that points to the videomaker’s increasing professionalization" (9),
... or do you really have to and must?
Although I have had some of my videos shown on television (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Finland and New York) I am not shure and I want to question the statement that "this is a gratifying development".
To "play the game: T-funcking-V" is not exactly without costs. The statement that "A still greater number of video productions meet the demands of television" expresses indirectly somthing about the costs for the video artists: they are forced to "... establish an alternative aesthetic, one that is not alienating to the public nor economically impractical to the industry". (9)
I don’t think it can be said more clearly and precisely, and with a few exceptions (while writing this I look at a video by Bill Viola, taped from German television) it is, I am sorry to say, quite so. And the question is if its a good thing for the video art ?
Exposure on television means of course that so many more see the video art works, but if its only works of a certain type: those that "meet the demands of television", then the question is: Should we distinguish between video art and art for television, as the Australian-British video artist and theorist Simon Biggs did at a symposium about "Arts for Television"? (10)
About reading video (you look at tv, but you read video)
Simon Biggs finds that a poetic/dreamlike approach is charateristic for video art. Video is in contrast to television a compact medium which you "read" rather than watched - a "medium in which the voices of the author and reader are both foregrounded". By video the "reader" gets the possibility to pick up, to aquire the work because she/he is able to stop it, rewind, fast forward, search etc. - i.g. "read" it rather than only look at it - and she/he is able to brake up its temporal structure and in this way to "translate" it to "the self’s synchronic time".
In this way the video artist works with a medium that gives the viewer access to the role as reader, observer and interpreter. Television is in contrast to this composed of incidents which unfold in a diachronic time, a non-reversible narrative. Television is a medium predicted upon consensus and agreed codes over which the viewer has little control. Television neither affirms the author/reader relationship nor the particularity of the self .
TV and video is each based on different, distinct and special pshycological dynamics both concerning production and reception and even if it is technically possible to place the one medium with another, the "original" will - according to Simon Biggs - get lost in this process and change to a record or document of an artefact - or as Jeremy Welsh puts it: "Once video enters into working relationship with television, the two become functionally indistinguishable, or rather the parent swallows the child". (11)
And for the video art, Simon Biggs claims, this means the loss of what is characteristic about video art and in this way also the loss of its personalising characteristics and thus its nature as art. Jeremy Welsh puts it very short and sharp: "In short, video made for television is television"!
The real, poetic language
"Es bleibt dabei: Die Zeitfolge ist das Gebiete des Dichters, so wie der Raum das Gebiete des Malers"
The Swedish artist Måns Wrange quotes this sentence from Lessing’s book "Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesi" (1776) in a draft about art and time (4), but the video artist must answer: ... aber es bleibt nicht dabei (but it does not stay with that), because the video art can be said to involve a temporalization of space in which the logical and causal (sensomotoric) connection between different kinds of picture sequences has dissolved. Wrange finds, like Biggs, that the effect is that it uges the viewer to an "active textual reading" instead of being automatically restrained to
convention-bound narrative and logic sequences as on TV..
Wrange also finds it tempting to compare video art with modern poetry’s attempt to brake down language to create new and unexpected combinations and engendering poetic effects in the voids between the fragments. Also Wolfgang Preikshat, coordinator at documenta 8 i 1987, assigns a poetical potential to video in his book "Die Poesie der Neuen Medien" (The Poesie of the New Media).
Video art: determine and develop its own way
With these reflections in mind I think we perhaps once and for all should drop these discussions about video art on television. I have no bad conscience about having some of my video art works shown on television. They were shown as they were and they were not created with the purpose to be shown on TV, not created out of an "alternative aesthetic, one that is not alienating to the public nor economically impractical to the industry". I even find it a good thing to get video art on television - let us for all things get as much video art on television as possible - but I do not think that this should be the goal for the artist working with video. The goal must first and last be the creation of an independent art work - an art work which, although it uses the same technical instruments as television, is essentially different from televison.
In "Simulations" Jean Baudrillard gives the famous McLuhan-sentence "The medium is the message" a new meaning:
"The media do not bring about socialization, but the opposite, the implosion of the social in the masses. And this is only the macroscopic extension of the implosion of meaning at the microscopic level of sign. The latter is to be analysed starting from McLuhan’s formula "the medium is the message", the consequences of which are far from being exhausted ... Its meaning is that the contents of meaning are absorbed in the dominat form of the medium. The medium alone makes the event and does this whatever the contents, whether conformist or subversive. A serious problem for all counter informations". (12)
You may ask: Where does this analysis leave video art? Must the goal of video/video art be, "to change the nature of the media, or to change our perceptions of what the media are, could be, or should be? Is it possible to subvert the media’s power, not simply inserting radical messages into its existing form, but by trying to change the thing itself?" (11). There is, Jeremy Welsh goes on, of course not a simple answer to this. It is of course tempting, when you think of the current hostility of the environment, for video to drop its critical guard, take the soft options and give television what it wants without retaining any independence, but for me there is no doubt about that the answer must be, as Jeremy Welsh puts it, that "video must continue to develop its own resources, its own practices" and in this way also by itself "determine the ways in which it will relate to television, to society, to its audience".
Torben Soeborg
References:
1. Egon Bunne: "Videokunst zwichen Warenhaus und Television/Video Art Between Department Store and
Television", Catalogue of European Media Art Festival 1993, Osnabrück 1993, p. 307ff
2. Martha Rosler: "Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment", in René Payant: "Vidéo",
Montréal 1986, p. 240ff
3. Sabrina Kamstra et al: "Talking Back to the Media", Amsterdam 1985.
4. Måns Wrange: "Utkast om konst och tid" in Siksi. Nordic Art Review,4/87, Helsinki 1987, p.32ff
5. Torben Søborg: Text to the video "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur", 1985
6. Jean Baudrillard: "Den maskinelle snobbisme", Copenhagen 1992, p. 8ff
7. Peter Berger: "Theory of the Avant-Garde", Minneapolis 1984
8. John Sanborn: "Clues visual Humming: the Video Artist as Schizoid", in "Video 80, 1989, p. 11
9. "Mediamatic", vol. 2, No. 2, Amsterdam 1987, p.
10. Simon Biggs: "Dreamtime. Speculations on video as Dream",
in "Mediamatic", vol.2, No. 2, Amsterdam 1987, p. 89ff
11. Jeremy Welsh: "Mixed Methaphors: Broken Codes", in René Payant: "Vidéo",
Montreal 1986, p. 213ff
12. Jean Baudrillard: "Simulations", Semiotexte, 1983
above copied from: http://www.videoart.suite.dk/torben/essay11A.htm
Prejudice against video art?
From time to time the discussion about video art and television emerges once again, especially in connection with the discussion among artists and others about how to show video art, how to get video art out to the general public - and not only inside the secluded walls of festivals like FIV 95, however prestigious they might be .
You may state as the German video artist Egon Bunne (and many before him) that: "In modern culture, video art still has not gained the rank it deserves. Though video installations are welcome visual points of contemporary exhibitions, enriching and revaluating them upwards, video art itself is still burdened with prejudices and exposed to suspicious looks, if at all looked at." (1)
This goes also and to a high degree for the television. Both public and private television stations and networks find that "video art is too extra-ordinary to find a fixed place in the program" - with a few and unregular exceptions, "but they are soon dismissed because of low numbers of viewers". (1)
Now you could of course ask - and it has been done before - the "heritical" question: Should video art at all be shown at TV?
For the uncritical person the answer will, I am sure, be: Of course - where else? You do show video art on a Tv-screen and almost all television today is brodcast from video tapes and not "live". Also many artists working with video would answer like this.
Anti-TV - or talking back to media
If we look in the historical rear-view mirror you will find that the first video art in the 60’th were created in contrast to television as an encounter against the commercial television: "a counterpractice", as Nam June Paik said, "making gestures and inroads against Big Brother" (2). Both a critical and Utopian encounter:
"Not only a systematic but also a Utopian critique was implicit in video’s early use, for the effort was not to enter the system but to transform every aspect of it and - legacy of the revolutionary avant-garde project - to redifine the system out of existence by merging art with social life and making "audience" and "producer" interchangeable", and Martha Rosler (2) goes on and notes that "The surrealist-inspired or -influenced effort meant to develop a new poetry from this everyday "language" of television, to insert aesthetic pleasure into a mass form and to provide the uthopian glimpse afforded by "liberated" sensibilities."
You could say that the first video artists created "anti-TV", but later on you find that many video artists take their starting point in the mass media and consciously reflect over, comment on and deconstruct that virtual world the television as a mass media creates.
The artists choose to answer back: "Talking Back to Media", as the organizers called the big manifestation in Amsterdam in November 1985. They wanted through this manifestation "to show the work of artists who use a mass media and who, in their work want to deconstruct the "reality" conjured up by the mass media or, in some other way, to provide a commentary on those media" (3).
The artists now had better equipment, better tools and could as Peggy Gale points out, "reasonable infiltrate - if they were so inclined", but as she goes on: "But video as means of "talking back" does not aim to be TV".(3)
At the manifestation in Amsterdam were shown videos by a number of artists, among them Nam June Paik, Dara Birnbaum, Richard Serra, Klaus von Bruch, and I was asked to participate with the video "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur" which might illustrate the "talking back": This video comments on how the mass media has influenced our sense of time. Måns Wrange expresses it like this: "The effect of the implosive media boom on our grasp of time is reflected in Torben Søborg’s "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur", 1985. In a sequence taken in a living-room we INDIRECTLY see a film being shown on the television. Gradually the TV-screen is zoomed until it covers the whole picture surface. Suddently the film cuts DIRECTLY onto the video, and there is a dislocation between two fictive times in a single picture sequence" (4).
The video also reflects and comments on the sense of reality the mass media conveys: "We live in a world, feeling surrounded by video: music video clips on every TV-channel - almost. some nights two or three channels have MTV at the same time or just following each other. You see part of a video on one channel, flip to the next and see the beginning of that same video - and get the end on the third channel. All these videos melt together in your mind: make their own story, get their own life, a meta life of video - what is life? - what is video? - is it real or ... surreal? (5)
Regarding the deconstructive and Utopian aspect Jean Baudrillad (6) stresses that "...Duchamp, Dada, the surrealists and all those who have tried to deconstruct representation and let the art works blow up all still belongs to an avant-garde and in one or another way to the critical Utopia, but in his book "Theory of the Avant-Garde" (7) Peter Berger states that the avant-garde movement has failed: instead of destroying the commercial art world, the commercial art world swallowed the avant-garde and its "technics" as refreshing new effects: "Anti-art became art" as the creator of happenings Allan Kaprow did express it. The same happened to a certain degree with video art: Television "swallowed" and used the (anti)technics of video art, especially in music videos and ads.
... to be on TV
The goals of Anti-TV and Talking Back to TV was not "to be TV", nor to be shown on TV, but as the well-known American media artist John Sanborn pointed out a couple of years ago a change of attitude developed between American video artists. "Three years ago your honest video artist wouldn’t be caught dead with his or her work on TV. Just not done, old chap", but this gradually changed and now "The fact is we are interested in television ... getting our work on it: the name of the game is T-fucking-V". (8), and this change or tendency you also meet in Europe.
"A still greater number of video art productions meet the demans of television" and the Editorial of the Dutch magazine "Mediamatic2 goes on and states that you have to and must say that "this is a gratifying development that points to the videomaker’s increasing professionalization" (9),
... or do you really have to and must?
Although I have had some of my videos shown on television (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Finland and New York) I am not shure and I want to question the statement that "this is a gratifying development".
To "play the game: T-funcking-V" is not exactly without costs. The statement that "A still greater number of video productions meet the demands of television" expresses indirectly somthing about the costs for the video artists: they are forced to "... establish an alternative aesthetic, one that is not alienating to the public nor economically impractical to the industry". (9)
I don’t think it can be said more clearly and precisely, and with a few exceptions (while writing this I look at a video by Bill Viola, taped from German television) it is, I am sorry to say, quite so. And the question is if its a good thing for the video art ?
Exposure on television means of course that so many more see the video art works, but if its only works of a certain type: those that "meet the demands of television", then the question is: Should we distinguish between video art and art for television, as the Australian-British video artist and theorist Simon Biggs did at a symposium about "Arts for Television"? (10)
About reading video (you look at tv, but you read video)
Simon Biggs finds that a poetic/dreamlike approach is charateristic for video art. Video is in contrast to television a compact medium which you "read" rather than watched - a "medium in which the voices of the author and reader are both foregrounded". By video the "reader" gets the possibility to pick up, to aquire the work because she/he is able to stop it, rewind, fast forward, search etc. - i.g. "read" it rather than only look at it - and she/he is able to brake up its temporal structure and in this way to "translate" it to "the self’s synchronic time".
In this way the video artist works with a medium that gives the viewer access to the role as reader, observer and interpreter. Television is in contrast to this composed of incidents which unfold in a diachronic time, a non-reversible narrative. Television is a medium predicted upon consensus and agreed codes over which the viewer has little control. Television neither affirms the author/reader relationship nor the particularity of the self .
TV and video is each based on different, distinct and special pshycological dynamics both concerning production and reception and even if it is technically possible to place the one medium with another, the "original" will - according to Simon Biggs - get lost in this process and change to a record or document of an artefact - or as Jeremy Welsh puts it: "Once video enters into working relationship with television, the two become functionally indistinguishable, or rather the parent swallows the child". (11)
And for the video art, Simon Biggs claims, this means the loss of what is characteristic about video art and in this way also the loss of its personalising characteristics and thus its nature as art. Jeremy Welsh puts it very short and sharp: "In short, video made for television is television"!
The real, poetic language
"Es bleibt dabei: Die Zeitfolge ist das Gebiete des Dichters, so wie der Raum das Gebiete des Malers"
The Swedish artist Måns Wrange quotes this sentence from Lessing’s book "Laokoon oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesi" (1776) in a draft about art and time (4), but the video artist must answer: ... aber es bleibt nicht dabei (but it does not stay with that), because the video art can be said to involve a temporalization of space in which the logical and causal (sensomotoric) connection between different kinds of picture sequences has dissolved. Wrange finds, like Biggs, that the effect is that it uges the viewer to an "active textual reading" instead of being automatically restrained to
convention-bound narrative and logic sequences as on TV..
Wrange also finds it tempting to compare video art with modern poetry’s attempt to brake down language to create new and unexpected combinations and engendering poetic effects in the voids between the fragments. Also Wolfgang Preikshat, coordinator at documenta 8 i 1987, assigns a poetical potential to video in his book "Die Poesie der Neuen Medien" (The Poesie of the New Media).
Video art: determine and develop its own way
With these reflections in mind I think we perhaps once and for all should drop these discussions about video art on television. I have no bad conscience about having some of my video art works shown on television. They were shown as they were and they were not created with the purpose to be shown on TV, not created out of an "alternative aesthetic, one that is not alienating to the public nor economically impractical to the industry". I even find it a good thing to get video art on television - let us for all things get as much video art on television as possible - but I do not think that this should be the goal for the artist working with video. The goal must first and last be the creation of an independent art work - an art work which, although it uses the same technical instruments as television, is essentially different from televison.
In "Simulations" Jean Baudrillard gives the famous McLuhan-sentence "The medium is the message" a new meaning:
"The media do not bring about socialization, but the opposite, the implosion of the social in the masses. And this is only the macroscopic extension of the implosion of meaning at the microscopic level of sign. The latter is to be analysed starting from McLuhan’s formula "the medium is the message", the consequences of which are far from being exhausted ... Its meaning is that the contents of meaning are absorbed in the dominat form of the medium. The medium alone makes the event and does this whatever the contents, whether conformist or subversive. A serious problem for all counter informations". (12)
You may ask: Where does this analysis leave video art? Must the goal of video/video art be, "to change the nature of the media, or to change our perceptions of what the media are, could be, or should be? Is it possible to subvert the media’s power, not simply inserting radical messages into its existing form, but by trying to change the thing itself?" (11). There is, Jeremy Welsh goes on, of course not a simple answer to this. It is of course tempting, when you think of the current hostility of the environment, for video to drop its critical guard, take the soft options and give television what it wants without retaining any independence, but for me there is no doubt about that the answer must be, as Jeremy Welsh puts it, that "video must continue to develop its own resources, its own practices" and in this way also by itself "determine the ways in which it will relate to television, to society, to its audience".
Torben Soeborg
References:
1. Egon Bunne: "Videokunst zwichen Warenhaus und Television/Video Art Between Department Store and
Television", Catalogue of European Media Art Festival 1993, Osnabrück 1993, p. 307ff
2. Martha Rosler: "Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment", in René Payant: "Vidéo",
Montréal 1986, p. 240ff
3. Sabrina Kamstra et al: "Talking Back to the Media", Amsterdam 1985.
4. Måns Wrange: "Utkast om konst och tid" in Siksi. Nordic Art Review,4/87, Helsinki 1987, p.32ff
5. Torben Søborg: Text to the video "Vidéo: Ceci est la couleur", 1985
6. Jean Baudrillard: "Den maskinelle snobbisme", Copenhagen 1992, p. 8ff
7. Peter Berger: "Theory of the Avant-Garde", Minneapolis 1984
8. John Sanborn: "Clues visual Humming: the Video Artist as Schizoid", in "Video 80, 1989, p. 11
9. "Mediamatic", vol. 2, No. 2, Amsterdam 1987, p.
10. Simon Biggs: "Dreamtime. Speculations on video as Dream",
in "Mediamatic", vol.2, No. 2, Amsterdam 1987, p. 89ff
11. Jeremy Welsh: "Mixed Methaphors: Broken Codes", in René Payant: "Vidéo",
Montreal 1986, p. 213ff
12. Jean Baudrillard: "Simulations", Semiotexte, 1983
above copied from: http://www.videoart.suite.dk/torben/essay11A.htm
Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction, Göran Sonesson
Published in Ensayos Semióticos, Dominios, modelos y miradas desde el cruce de la naturaleza y la cultura. Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the IASS, Guadalajara, Mexico, July 13 to 19, Gimate Welsh, Adrián, (ed.), 1073-1084. México: Pourrua.
Post-photography (like post-modernity) is really the name of a position: the distance from which it becomes possible to analyse photography. This position itself derives from a historical event: the arrival of the computer image. Photography, like many other terms employed in pictorial semiotics, is a common-sense notion, which it is the task of semiotic theory to reconstruct. As such it designates a particular way of producing, by means of a mechanical device, such marking on the surface which give rise to the illusion of seeing a scene of the experimental world projected onto a two-dimensional surface, as well as that peculiar granularity which was until recently immediately recognized as the expression plane resulting from such a process. The dissociation of these two (or more) concurrent qualities transforms the arrival of computer-aided picture construction into an element of social rhetoric.
Photography as texture and construction
Indeed, leading authorities of pictorial semiotics such as Floch (1986) and Groupe µ (1992) have denied the semiotic relevance of such putatively "socio-cultural" categories as photography. There is no reason to agree with such a judgement. First of all, it is difficult to see why society should be excluded form the semiotic domain: at least, analogously to what has been argued in the case of perceptual psychology by Groupe µ, we should incorporate as many social parameters as is necessary for the purpose of analysing signification. In the second place, photography is certainly not merely a social category. Rather, what is socially grounded is our expectation that certain properties should go together, in other words, that they should correspond to what the psychologist Eleanor Rosch (1978) calls a prototype, i.e. the most probable combination of properties (cf. Sonesson 1989a). And probability ("le vraisemblable" of the French structuralists) is certainly a social concept.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that we ordinarily distinguish pictures according to three kinds of categories: construction types, such as oil paintings, linear drawings, and photographs; function types, determined by socially anticipated purposes, such a caricatures, publicity pictures, and pornographic pictures; and circulation types, defined by the channels through which pictures are conveyed from a creator to a receiver, such as posters, frescoes, television pictures, and web-page pictures. Normally we expect certain construction types, function types, and circulation types to go together: art, in the sense in which it was conceived in the last century, and against which Modernism revolted, was ideally an oil painting (construction type), meant for aesthetic enjoyment (function type), circulating through galleries and museums (circulation types; cf. Sonesson 1996). The case of the photograph is more intricate: it involves a particular texture thought to be inseparably connected to a certain origin.
Unlike most other picture categories, photography has already engendered a small body of literature concerned to lay bare the specificity of its sign function (cf. Sonesson 1989b; 1994). According to Philippe Dubois (1983:20ff), the first semiotical theories of photography tended to look upon the photograph as a mirror of reality, or, in Peircean terms, as an icon; then came that most celebrated generation of iconoclasts who tried to demonstrate the conventionality of all signs, supposing even the photograph to present a "coded" version of reality, or, as Peirce (according to Dubois, at least) would have said, a symbol; and finally the photograph was seen for what it really is, in Dubois’ view: an index, more specifically, a trace left behind by the referent itself. Without subscribing to Dubois’ uni-linear story of progress, I will use his distinctions as a handy classification of the relevant epistemological attitudes.
The authorities quoted by Dubois from the first period are in fact largely pre-semiotical: Baudelaire, Taine, Benjamin, Bazin, but also Barthes. Most of the minor classics of semiotics are mustered for the part of the symbol-addicted team: Metz, Eco, Barthes, Lindekens, Groupe µ, and so on. In the part of the daring moderns, we find, apart from Dubois himself, such writers as Bonitzer, Krauss, Vanlier, but also Barthes, Benjamin and Bazin, when considered from another vantage point, and, of course, Peirce. Barthes here appears as a proponent of the iconic conception, because of having opposed the conventional, historically relative, and learned character of drawing to the "quasi-tautological" nature which photographic expression shows in relation to its content. His claim to be a vindicator of the symbol view probably rests on his listing of photographic "connotations". And he is considered a pioneer for the index theory for the reason that he has described each photograph as implying that "this has taken place" ("cela a été"). In fact, also Peirce may be considered as an authority for all conceptions: he sometimes tells us the photograph is an index, sometimes an icon, and elsewhere he observes that all real icons are somewhat conventional.
The mapping rules of chirography
Actually, Barthes’ (1964) defence for the iconicity view may not be as naive as has been claimed by Floch and others. It could be interpreted as the theory that drawing, but not photography, requires there to be a set of rules for mapping perceptual experience onto marks made with a pen on paper; and these rules imply a particular segmentation of the world as it is given to perception, picking up some (kinds of?) features for reproduction, while rejecting others, and perhaps emphasising some properties at the same time as others are underplayed; and all this takes place under given historical circumstances, which are responsible for varying the emphases and the exclusions. Against this, it might be argued that Renaissance perspective, and a lot of other principles of rendering, are built into the camera: but the point is precisely that they are incorporated into the apparatus, and thus not present to consciousness in the actual process of picture production.
The idea becomes more reasonable when expressed as a difference between the types of mapping rules involved in photography and hand-made pictures, respectively. If we look upon the relationship between the pictorial content and its referent in the outside world as a kind of indexicality, more in particular as a factorality (a relation of part to whole), we may interpret Barthes to claim that photography is able to pick up particular proper parts ("son sujet", "son cadre") and perceptual angles of vision ("son angle") of the whole motive, but cannot chose to render just a few of its attributes. In some all too obvious ways this is false: for essential reasons, photography only transmits visual properties, and it only conveys such features as are present on the sides of the object fronting the camera. Also, depending on the distance between the camera and the motive, only features contained in a particular range of sizes may be included.
As long as no trick photography is involved, however, it seems to be true that, without recurring to later modification of the exposed material, photography is merely able to pick up features, or restrict its selection of features, on the global level, whereas in drawing, local decisions can be made for each single feature (cf. Sonesson 1989b:36ff; Dubois 1983:96f). This also applies to all other rules of photographic transposition listed by Ramírez (1981: 158ff) and Gubern (1974:50ff): abolition of the third dimension, the delimitation of space through the frame, the exclusion of movement, mono-focal and static vision, granular, discontinuous structure of the expression plane, abolition or distortion of colour, limitation to scenes having a certain range of luminosity, and abolition of non-visual stimuli,.
The recent turn to an indexicalist position was taken together by Henri Vanlier (1983), Philippe Dubois (1983), and Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1987), yet the three theorists are very different in many respects. While Dubois and Schaeffer base their claims on Peirce’s theory, Vanlier’s notion of indexicality (split into the untranslatable opposition between "indice" and "index") is not really derived from Peirce; indeed, his "indice" is actually, in the most literal sense, a mere trace, of which he offers some very usefully descriptions. Schaeffer takes a less extreme stand than Vanlier and Dubois, arguing that the photograph is an indexical icon, or, in other cases, an iconical index (cf. Sonesson 1989b: 46ff).
Limitations of indexicality
When photographs are said to be indexical, it is contiguity, not factorality, which is meant, and a particular kind of contiguity at that: abrasion, i.e. the particular indexical relationship resulting from the fact that the object which is to become the referent has, on some prior moment of time, entered into contact with, and then detached itself from, what later is to become the expression plane of the sign, leaving on the surface of the latter some visible trace, however inconspicuous, of the event (cf. Sonesson 1989a,40; 1989b:46ff). In fact, as Vanlier (1983:15) notes, the photograph must be taken as a direct and certain imprint of the photons, and only as an indirect and abstract one of the objects depicted. Unfortunately, Vanlier (1983:23, 25) himself rapidly seems to forget this distinction, talking about the scene as being the cause of the picture. In any case, he fails to note that, if the indexicality obtains between the photons and the plate, it does not occur between the same relata as the semiotic function, i.e. the objects depicted and the picture. Dubois (1983:66) at least is more consistent with his conception of the photograph as being an index when he takes the photogram to be its most characteristic instance; yet, if this is the kind of photograph he is intent on explaining, he will fail to characterise what most people would consider prototypical photography.
Certain limitations are imposed on the photographic trace by the support on which it is inscribed. Some of these are mentioned by Vanlier: the quadrangular shape of the photograph, its digital nature, the information it leaves out, its inability to record the temporal aspects of the process giving rise to the trace, etc. This may be restated by saying that the photograph is not only an indexicality of the objects, or even the photons, but also of the properties of the film, of the lenses, of the photographic device generally, of the space covered by the photons, and so on. This observation is quite parallel to the one made in the study of animal traces, according to which the same animal will leave different traces on different ground (see Sonesson 1989a,I.2.6. and 1989d)
The trouble with a purely indexicalist account of photography is that it cannot explain what the photograph is a picture of. There is no intrinsic reasons for considering the cause producing a trace (and even so, we have seen than many more causes than the motif may be held responsible for the trace) to be a more important type of cause than the others. Indeed, we can only explain the importance of the motif, when we realise that a trace, in the most central sense of the term, contains not only indexical but also iconical aspects, and if we begin by admitting that a photograph is a kind of pictorial sign, and that all such signs are first and foremost grounded in the illusion of similarity.
Contrary to Vanlier and Dubois, Schaeffer (1987:101ff) thinks that the photograph may be an indexical icon in some cases, and, in other cases, an iconical index. It could be argued, however, that the photograph, contrary, for example, to a hoof-print, is always primarily an icon (Sonesson 1989b:68ff). While both the photograph and the hoof-print stand for a referent which has vanished from the scene, the signifier of the former sign continues to occupy the place that was that of the referent, and it stills remains temporally dated, whereas the photographic signifier, like that of the verbal sign, is omni-temporal and omni-spatial, tokens of its type being apt to be instantiated at any time and place (although only after the referential event and the time needed for development). In sum, in the case of a footstep, a hoof-print, etc., both the expression and the content are located at a particular time and place; in verbal language, none of them are; and in the case of photography, it is only the content (or, strictly speaking, the referent) which is bound up with spatio-temporality. Thus, the hoof-prints, present where before the horse was present, tells us something like "horse here before"; but the photograph of a horse, which most likely does not occupy the scene where the horse was before, only tells us "horse", and then we may start reconstructing the time and the place .
At this point, it may seem that we could say that, whereas the hoof-print is first and foremost an index, the photograph must originally be seen as an icon, before its indexical properties can be discovered. In fact, however, things may be still more complicated. Schaeffer is of course right in pointing out, against Peirce, that not all indices involve some iconic aspect, but it so happens that the hoof-prints, just like all other imprints and traces, in the narrow sense of these terms, also convey a partial similarity with the objects for which they stand. We have to recognise the hoof-print as such, that is, differentiate if from the traces of a man’s feet, or of a donkey’s, a well as from fake hoof-prints, and from accidental formations worked by the wind in the sand. Only then can we interpret the hoof-prints indexically. It remains true, however, that the essential meanings of the hoof-prints are embodied in indexicality: they tell us the whereabouts of the animal.
In the case of a photograph, on the other hand, we do not need to conceive of it indexically to be able to grasp its meaning. It will continue to convey signification to us, whether we are certain that it is a photograph or not. Indexicality, in photographs, really is a question of second thoughts and peculiar circumstances. It therefore appears that indexicality cannot be the primary sign relation of photographs, although it is an open potentiality present in their constitution, which is exploited in certain cases. First and foremost, the photograph is an iconical sign.
The proof of this is that of two pictures which look exactly alike, one may be a photograph and the other could have been constructed on the computer with the aid of some graphic application, either be combining elements of photographs scanned into the computer, or by using some algorithms for calculating the three-dimensional viewpoint and the position of the sources of light. But it is quite reasonable to claim that, at the present time, both pictures convey a connotation of photographicalness (as do, of course, to a lesser extent, some hyper-realistic paintings).
From chirography to technography
There is certainly some truth in Barthes’ intuition, however confusedly expressed, which locates the difference between photographs and hand-made pictures in the global and piece-meal character of the respective rules of transformation. One of the disturbing facts about post-photographic pictures, however, is that they are not hand-made, but still allow for local transformations.
While contemplating the prospects of a "science of depiction", in some ways analogous to linguistics, the psychologist James Gibson proposed a primary distinction between two large categories of picture signs, or, more generally, between those signs which constitute markings on surfaces: between photographic and chirographic pictures, that is, literally, pictures produced by the workings of luminosity on a surface, and pictures the markings of which are assembled by hand. According to Gibson (1978:228f; 1980) a picture is "a surface so treated that it makes available a limited optic array /---/ of persisting invariants of structure" at some point of observation. But he also speculates that to prehistoric man, just as to the child, the picture make up "a progressive record of movement", a layout receptive to traces, long before it is discovered also to "delineate something". If the record is of a stylus, brush, pen, pencil, crayon, marker or another hand-held tool, the result will be a chirographic picture; and if the traces have been produced by a camera, including its accessory equipment, we will have a photographic picture.
Considered in this way, chirographic pictures, just like photographic ones, are largely indexical: they are indexical of all forces contributing to produce them. It has been suggested that, to the toddler, the marks left on the paper are accidental traces of a motor activity which is at first experienced as rewarding in itself; only at about 18 months, with the emergence of the semiotic function, will the child react with disappointment when no strokes and dots result form the contact of the marker with the paper, and only at 3 years will he refuse to draw in the air (Cf. Gardner 1973:215ff; 1980ff). What was, in Hjelmslevean terms, at first accidental substance now becomes the very form of the act, defined by the principle or relevance known to us as the making of a drawing. Put in another way, chirographic pictures are indexical in origin: only later will iconicity come to the fore. Contrary to the case of photography, chirographic indexicality is thus entirely distinct from the iconic relation.
The "photograms" made by avant-garde photographers such as Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Schaad, as well as preceding the invention of the common photograph in the experimental work of Niepce and Talbot, could be considered limiting-cases: they are actually comparable to the foot-prints left on the ground, light being the operating agent instead of mechanical pressure. When placed directly upon the photographic paper, without a camera obscura as an intermediary, two-dimensional objects will give rise to silhouettes, which can be easily identified; but when three-dimensional objects are used and the source of light is moved, the configurations which result are due to complex interactions, not only between the contiguous part of the object and the emulsion, but between the position of the light source and the non-directly contiguous parts of the object. Paradoxically, it is the camera obscura, which diminishes the contiguity between the object and the expression plane of the pictorial sign, which brings about the illusion of seeing a configuration, and which thus makes it possible to trace the configuration unambiguously back to its real-world source (Sonesson 1989a:64).
To grasp the nature of chirography, it may be necessary to oppose it to something which is vaster and less specific than photography. "Hard icons" is a term coined by Tomas Maldonado (1974) to describe signs which, in addition to bearing resemblance to that which they depict, are related to them as traces to that which produced them. Examples would be X-ray pictures, hand impressions on cave walls, "acoustic pictures" made with the aid of ultrasound, silhouettes, configurations left on the ground by people who were out walking in Hiroshima at the moment of the explosion of the nuclear bomb, thermograms, pictures made with "invisible light" to discover persons hiding in the woods — and ordinary photographs. The real contiguity between the picture and its referent is here taken to guarantee the cognitive value of the picture. It is important to note that "hard icons" cannot simply be signs which are both indexical and iconic, for that is true also of chirographs: there must be coincidence between their respective indexical and iconic grounds.
The case of the computer image
If photography is defined by the double relation of contiguity and similarity between its expression and its content or referent, a few surprising cases of photography, or perhaps rather some curious intermediary cases between photography and chirography, will turn out to exist. During the 18th century a device for producing drawings from silhouettes was in use: it consisted of a chair having a source of light on one side and a screen on which the shadow of the person sitting in the chair was cast on the other. The contours were conveyed by contiguity to the screen, but were not by themselves retained there, because of the lack of photographic emulsion, but had to be filled in by hand. In the case of the curious device known as a physionotrace, a view-finder was moved along the contours of the object, producing a contiguity between these contours and the gaze; thanks to another contiguity, this time between the view-finder and a stylus, the corresponding figure was concurrently traced onto a paper.
At this point, computer-generated pictures again seems to pose a problem. In some rather indirect way, contiguity may be said to play a role in the creation of certain computer images: the computer mouse, and even more clearly the digitalisation board, are clearly hand-held devices leaving a record on a surface, although this surface is not directly the monitor, and even less the print-out. Even though the very notion of a surface seems doubtful in this case, it is certainly true that by moving the mouse, we bring about a record of some kind of abrasion, which may even be accidentally produced by a toddler or a cat more interested in the movement for movement’s sake. The abrasion is not caused by physical pressure (apart from the first phase in which the hand grasps the mouse and presses it to the desktop) or by light, but by electronic impulses.
However, pictures produced, not by means of a mouse or some other hand-held device, but created entirely or in part by mathematical algorithms do not seem to involve indexicality in any essential way. On the other hand, 3D-scanners do not only rely entirely on indexicality, but also supposes a coincidence of the indexical ground and the sign function, in a way which is reminiscent of photography, and perhaps even more of the physionotrace.
As for the indexical relation of factorality between referent and content in computer images, it seems to be identical to that of truly chirographic, rather than photographic, pictures: continuity is suggested by what we know of the connections obtaining in our socio-cultural lifeworld, not by the acquaintance with some individual object of real-life experience. Yet the photographic connotations conveyed by some computer images tend to suggest that some real-world objects have been present around, as well as in front of, the camera.
According to another classification, proposed by Roman Gubern (1987b:46f), chirographic pictures, such as drawings, are distinguished from technographic pictures, which is a group comprising photographs as well as pictures produced by the cinematographic camera and the video. Among the technographic pictures, we might perhaps also locate those produced by the physionotrace and similar devices, and also what Gubern (1987a:73ff) elsewhere terms synthetic pictures, i.e. pictures produced by means of a computer. The disturbing fact about the latter is that they may look exactly like photographs, although they do not regulate themselves on contiguity, but are rather (indirectly) mediated by similarity. Traditionally all hand-produced pictures relied on similarity, since they depended on what Gibson calls the hand-eye-system, whereas all machine-made pictures were indexically derived – until this simple organisation was destroyed by computer graphics.
Espe (1983) has suggested a threefold division of graphics, which comprises all kinds of manipulations of two-dimensional surfaces: photographics, chirographics, and typographics. Like the term photographics, typographics here retains is ordinary sense, but it could perhaps also be conceived to mean, more broadly, the production of markings on surfaces by means of standardised implements. The case of computer pictures is ambiguous: it is one of the remarkable feats of desktop publishing that it de-standardises type-fonts, permitting them to the varied along a number of dimensions (size, obliqueness, etc.), thus bringing them closer to being pictures (Sonesson 1989b.34ff). But the facility with which documents are copied and combined on the computers also makes it possible to create pictures from standardised picture-elements (clip-art, etc.) or from fragments of individual pre-existing pictures, which serves to bring the production of pictures closer than ever to the methods of verbal and other sign production.
From mechanical reproduction and to digital production
When, in 1936, Walter Benjamin described our time as the age of mechanical reproduction, his diagnosis was not radical enough. By engendering ever new tokens, mechanical reproduction effectively reduces all tokens to their type, destroying the uniqueness of the characters of human history, and their infinitely ineffable creations, the nimbus of individual creation in its hic et nunc. Doing away with the "aura" of the work of art, it apparently only leaves the bare bones of categoricalness. Yet mechanical reproduction presupposes there to be an individual object to reproduce in the first place: a chirographic or photographic original, a first token which creates the type from which further tokens are derived. In verbal language, on the other hand, the type seemingly pre-exist to all its tokens, and this is also true, at least in some cases, of computer images: those which are combinations of standardised picture-elements, as well as those which are produced from mathematical algorithms.
It is for this very reason that we should distinguish digital from mechanical reproduction. In the former case, there is no first token, no real original which may be perceived as such. In that sense, digital reproduction, as opposed to mechanical reproduction, is not distinct from production.
If indexicality is seen as being on the side of Nature, and symbolicity on the side of Culture, iconicity could be thought of as bridging this opposition, since it depends on Human Nature, i.e. on the way we, as human beings, tend to perceive the world. The models of transformation built into graphic computer programs simulate the conditions of human perception. This means that the virtual world created by computer imagery remains an extension of the Lifeworld, of Greimas’ "natural world" and Gibsons "ecological physics".
Bibliography:
Barthes, R. 1964. "Rhétorique de l´image", in Communications, 4, 40-51.
Barthes, R. 1980. La chambre claire. Paris: Seuil & Gallimard 1980.
Dubois, PH. 1983. L’acte photographique. Paris & Bruxelles: Nathan/Labor.
Espe, H. 1983. "Realism and some semiotic functions of photographs", in Borbé, T., ed., Semiotics unfolding. Proceedings of the second congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies., Vienna 1979. Berlin, New York, & Amsterdam: Mouton, volume III: 1435-1442.
Floch, J:.M. 1986. Les formes de l´empreinte. Périgueux: Pierre Fanlac.
Gardner, .H. 1973. The arts and human development. New York: Wiley & Sons 1973
Gardner, .H. 1980. Artful Scribbles, New York: Basic Books.
GIBSON, J.1978., "The ecological approach to visual perception in pictures, in Leonardo 11:3, 1978, pp. 227-235
GIBSON, J. 1980. "A prefatory essay on the perception of surfaces versus the perception of markings on a surface", in The perception of pictures: Volume I: Alberti’s Window. Hagen, M., (ed.), New York, Academic Press, xi-xvii.
Groupe µ 1992. Traté du signe visuel. Pour une rhétorique de l’image. Paris: Seuil.
GUBERN. R. 1974. Mensajes icónicos en la cultura de masas. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen 1974
GUBERN. R. 1987a. El simio informatizado. Barcelona: Ediciones Penínsulo.
GUBERN. R. 1987b. La mirada opulenta. Exploración de la iconosfera contemporánea. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
MALDONADO, T. 1974. Vanguardia e razionalità. Turin: Einaudi Editore 1974.
LINDEKENS, R. 1971. Eléments pour une sémiotique de la photographie. Paris & Bruxelles: Didier/Aimav.
RAMÍREZ, J. A. 1981. Medios de masas e historia del arte. Madrid: Cátedra. Second edition.
ROSCH, E. 1978. "Principles of categorization". In Rosch, E., & Lloyd, B., eds., Cognition and categorization. Lawrence Earlbaum Ass., Hillsdale, 27-48.
Schaeffer, J:M. 1987. L´image précaire, Paris: Seuil.
SONESSON, G. 1989a. Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world. Lund: Aris/Lund University Press.
SONESSON, G. 1989b. Semiotics of photography. On tracing the index.. Lund: Institute of Art History.
SONESSON, G. 1994. "Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays", Semiotica, 100, 3, 267-332.
SONESSON, G. 1996. "Approches to the lifeworld core of pictorial rhetoric", Visio, 1,3, 49-76.
Vanlier, H. 1983. Philosophie de la photographie, Laplume: Les cahiers de la photographie.
above copied from: http://www.arthist.lu.se/kultsem/sonesson/PhotoPost.html
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Semiotics for Beginners: Articulation
By, Daniel Chandler.
This is only an excerpt of the larger site.
By the book.
Articulation
Semiotic codes vary in their complexity of structure or 'articulation'. The term articulation, as used by semioticians with reference to 'code structure', was derived from André Martinet's structural linguistics. The term can be misleading, since everyday usage might lead one to assume that it relates to how 'articulate' individuals are. Presumably because of this potential confusion, theoretical linguists have largely abandoned the use of the term articulation in the structural sense, preferring to refer to 'duality of patterning', but semioticians continue to use the term. Its semiotic usage is rather more closely related to the sense in which lorries (trucks) can be 'articulated' - that is, having separable sections which are linked together. Pierre Guiraud comments on semiotic articulation:
A message is articulated if it can be broken down into elements which are themselves significant. All semiotic elements must be significant. Thus the lorry on the traffic sign can be broken down into wheels, chassis, cabin, etc., but the presence of these elements does not modify the sign. On the other hand, the absence of a jacket or its permutation with a jersey changes the significance of the way someone is dressed. (Guiraud 1975, 32)
Following the model of verbal language, an articulated code has a 'vocabulary' of basic units together with syntactical rules which can be used to generate larger meaningful combinations (Innis 1986, 88-9, 99-102). A semiotic code which has 'double articulation' (as in the case of verbal language) can be analysed into two abstract structural levels: a higher level called 'the level of first articulation' and a lower level - 'the level of second articulation' (Nöth 1990; Eco 1976, 231ff). The traffic sign lacks double articulation, but rather than having no articulation, it would more commonly be referred to as having first articulation only.
At the level of first articulation the system consists of the smallest meaningful units available (e.g. morphemes or words in a language). In language this level of articulation is called the grammatical level. The meaningful units at this level are complete signs, each consisting of a signifier and a signified. Where codes have recurrent meaningful units (such as the Olympic sports pictograms and textile care symbols), they have first articulation. In systems with double articulation, these signs are made up of elements from the lower (second) level of articulation.
At the level of second articulation, a semiotic code is divisible into minimal functional units which lack meaning in themselves (e.g. phonemes in speech or graphemes in writing). These purely differential structural units (called figurae by Hjelmslev) are recurrent features in the code. They are not signs in themselves (the code must have a first level of articulation for these lower units to be combined into meaningful signs). These lower units are nonsignifying sign elements. In a code with both levels (a 'double articulated' system) the function of these lower units is purely to differentiate the minimal meaningful units. In language, the phonemes /b/, /p/ and /t/ are elements of second articulation, the function of which is to distinguish between words, such as /pin/, /bin/ and /tin/, which are elements of the first articulation of language. In language, the level of second articulation is thus a phonological level.
Semiotic codes have either single articulation, double articulation or no articulation. Double articulation enables a semiotic code to form an infinite number of meaningful combinations using a small number of low-level units (offering economy and power). The infinite use of finite elements is a feature which in relation to media in general has been referred to as 'semiotic economy'. Traditional definitions ascribe double articulation only to human language, for which this is regarded as a key 'design feature' (Hockett 1958; Hockett 1960; Hockett 1965). Louis Hjelmslev regarded it as an essential and defining feature of language (Hjelmslev 1961). Double articulation is seen as being largely responsible for the creative economy of language. Language is a semiotic system which is highly economical - employing only a small number of signs. Amongst other advantages, linguistic economy facilitates learning and recall. As for creativity, language is infinitely productive. The English language, for instance, has only about 40 or 50 elements of second articulation (phonemes) but these can generate hundreds of thousands of words. Similarly, from a limited vocabulary we can generate an infinite number of sentences (subject to the constraint of syntax which governs structurally valid combinations). Consequently, as Noam Chomsky has noted, the creative economy of language gives us the power to endlessly generate sentences which we have never encountered before. It is by combining words in multiple ways that we can seek to render the particularity of experience. If we had individual words to represent every particularity we would have to have an infinite number of them, which would exceed our capability of learning, recalling and manipulating them. John Lyons comments that 'duality, as it operates in language, is also bound up with arbitrariness. If each phonological element in a given form had to bear an identifiable iconic relationship, whether conventional or natural, to some aspect of its meaning, it is obvious that there would be severe constraints upon the possibility of combining phonological elements with one another' (Lyons 1977, 74). Roman Jakobson observed that
- In the combination of linguistic units there is an ascending scale of freedom. In the combination of distinctive features into phonemes, the freedom of the individual speaker is zero: the code has already established all the possibilities which may be utilized in the given language. Freedom to combine phonemes into words is circumscribed; it is limited to the marginal situation of word coinage. In forming sentences with words the speaker is less constrained. And finally, in the combination of sentences into utterances, the action of compulsory syntactical rules ceases, and the freedom of any individual speaker to create novel contexts increases substantially, although... the numerous stereotyped utterances are not to be overlooked. (Jakobson & Halle 1956, 74)
As Jakobson notes, even beyond the level of the sentence, the ways in which we use words are subject to linguistic conventions which limit the possibilities open to us. If we depart too far from the norms, we may fail to communicate.
Double articulation does not seem to occur in the natural communication systems of animals other than humans. As to other human semiotic systems with double articulation, Nöth notes that these include systematic codes used in library or warehouse catalogues, and 'many codes of data-processing'. He adds that 'there has been much discussion about the structure of codes such as architecture, photography, film, sign language and narratives, but no convincing conclusion has been reached concerning the articulation of these codes' (e-mail 12/8/97). Susanne Langer claims that whilst visual media such as photography, painting and drawing have lines, colours, shadings, shapes, proportions and so on which are 'abstractable and combinatory', and which 'are just as capable of articulation, i.e. of complex combination, as words', they have no vocabulary of units with independent meanings (Langer 1951, 86-7).
- A symbolism with so many elements, such myriad relationships, cannot be broken up into basic units. It is impossible to find the smallest independent symbol, and recognize its identity when the same unit is met in other contexts... There is, of course, a technique of picturing objects, but the laws governing this technique cannot properly be called a 'syntax', since there are no items that might be called, metaphorically, the 'words' of portraiture. (ibid., 88).
Rather than dismissing 'non-discursive' media for their limitations, however, Langer argues that they are more complex and subtle than verbal language and are 'peculiarly well-suited to the expression of ideas that defy linguistic "projection"'. She argues that we should not seek to impose linguistic models upon other media since the laws that govern their articulation 'are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language'. Treating them in linguistic terms leads us to 'misconceive' them: they resist 'translation' (ibid., 86-9).
Some codes have first articulation only. These semiotic systems consist of signs - meaningful elements which are systematically related to each other - but there is no second articulation to structure these signs into minimal, non-meaningful elements. Where the smallest recurrent structural unit in a code is meaningful, the code has first articulation only. Many semioticians argue that nonverbal communication and the various systems of animal communication have only first articulation. Nöth notes that although bird calls make use of basic units, each of these is a complete message, so bird calls have first articulation only (Nöth 1990, 151). Other examples include hotel and office room numbers where the first digit indicates the floor and the second indicates the serial number of the room on that floor. The system of related traffic signs (with red borders, triangular or circular shapes, and standardized, stylised images) is a code with first articulation only (Eco 1976, 232). Some semioticians (such as Christian Metz) argue that codes based on motivated signs - such as film and television - lack second articulation. Metz declared that in film, 'it is impossible to break up the signifier without getting isomorphic segments of the signified' (cited in Nöth 1990, 469).
Other semiotic codes lacking double articulation have second articulation only. These consist of signs which have specific meanings which are not derived from their elements. They are divisible only into figurae (minimal functional units). Nöth suggests that 'the most powerful code with second articulation only is the binary code of information theory' (e-mail, 12/8/97): this has only 2 minimal functional units, 0 and 1, but these units can be combined to generate numbers, letters and other signs. A rather less powerful system with second articulation only is that of accession codes for books, whi
ch are simply serial numbers.
Codes without articulation consist of a series of signs bearing no direct relation to each other. These signs are not divisible into recurrent compositional elements. The folkloristic 'language of flowers' is a code without articulation, since each type of flower is an independent sign which bears no relation to the other signs in the code. Unarticulated codes, which have no recurrent features, are 'uneconomical'.
Some commentators have proposed more than two levels of articulation in verbal language, but Guiraud argues that:
- The two articulations are not to be thought of in terms of syntactical levels. In fact, several levels can be distinguished in the first articulation: sentence, proposition, syntagm, word, morpheme; but each of these complex signs are simply successive combinations of the basic signs which carry the elements of meaning that are picked up at each level. (Guiraud 1975, 32)
Umberto Eco argued that cinema has a triple articulation: iconic figures; semes (combinations of iconic figures); and kinemorphs (combinations of semes) (Stam 2000, 114).
The notion of articulation is, in short, a way of dividing a semiotic system into basic levels: in the case of verbal language the levels can be termed those of sound and meaning. This clearly relates to the Saussurean analytical division of the sign into a 'sound-image' (signifier) and a concept (signified). In a semiotic system with double articulation the levels of the signifier and of the signified are relatively autonomous.
Denotation, connotation and myth are also described semiotically in terms of levels (the 'orders of signification' of Hjelmslev and Barthes). More generally, Saussure noted that signs can themselves contain signs, as in the case of a 'complex sign' such as the word 'twenty-nine' which contains the 'simple signs' twenty and nine (Saussure 1983, 130; Saussure 1974, 131). On a larger scale, an entire text is a sign which may be composed of any number of other signs (Saussure 1983, 127; Saussure 1974, 128).
Related to the idea of levels of articulation in a semiotic system is the notion of modelling systems, since 'secondary modelling systems' are described as superstructures built upon 'primary modelling systems'. Some theorists, following Yuri Lotman, refer to language in these terms. Within this framework, writing is a secondary modelling system and written texts are built upon a primary modelling system which consists of spoken language. Secondary modelling systems are thus presented as if they constitute signs of signs or representations of representations (Culler 1985, 122). Saussure adopted this position, noting that 'a language and its written form constitute two separate systems of signs. The sole reason for the latter is to represent the former' (Saussure 1983, 24; Saussure 1974, 23). Since this stance grants primacy to the spoken form, it has been criticized (notably by Jacques Derrida) as phonocentric (Derrida 1976). If we grant that even perception involves encoding, then speech is as 'secondary' as any other sign-system. Despite his own phonocentrism, Marshall McLuhan emphasized the power of the written word, alluding to its basis in arbitrariness on both structural levels: 'By the meaningless sign [written letters] linked to the meaningless sound we have built the shape and meaning of Western man' (McLuhan 1962, 50). Other theorists have extended the notion of modelling systems to 'texts' in other media, seeing them as secondary modelling systems built out of a primary 'language'. Literary texts have been seen as a second order modelling system built upon the primary linguistic system or upon the modelling system of the written word (Silverman 1983, 27; Sturrock 1986, 103). Cinematic texts have sometimes been seen as built upon a primary modelling system of 'graphic language' (Altman 1999, 175). However, whether a graphical 'language' has basic building blocks and what these might be has been hotly disputed.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
A Statement of Video, Ernest Gusella, March 1979
IN THE PAST YEAR I HAVE MADE THREE TRIPS TO EUROPE- SHOWING AND LECTURING ON MY VIDEO-TAPES AT MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, AND ART SCHOOLS. ON MANY OF THESE OCCASIONS I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO EXPLAIN THE WORK - EVEN AFTER THE AUDIENCE HAS SPENT AN HOUR OR TWO VIEWING IT. SINCE THE MATERIAL WHICH I HAVE DEVELOPED RELIES SO LITTLE ON LANGUAGE, THERE APPEARS TO BE A COMMICATION GAP BETWEEN THE ARTIST AND THE PUBLIC ON EVEN PURELY VISUAL MATTERS. IN ATTEMPTING TO DEAL WITH THIS PROBLEM, I HAVE DEVELOPED A FLIP ANSWER, BASED ON MY OWN PERSONAL HISTORY AND AESTHETIC TENDENCIES - “MY ART IS 1/4 FORNICALIA FUNK, 1/4 NEW YORK PUNK, 1/4 EUROPEAN BUNK, AND 1/4 CANADIAN SKUNK”. DESPITE THE FACT THAT THIS ANSWER EXPLAINS EVERYTHING IN MY OWN MIND, IT USUALLY GENERATES MORE QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE, S0 I HAVE RESIGNED MYSELF TO THE FATE THAT FURTHER EXPLANATIONS ARE NECESSARY.
EXPERTS HAVE STATED THAT THE PURPOSE OF ART IS TO CLARIFY, HOWEVER IN MY OWN CASE (KNOWING MYSELF S0 WELL), AND DISBELIEVING A LOT OF WHAT IS WRITTEN ABOUT ART, I TEND TO IGNORE WHAT ART MEANS IN A SOCIAL SENSE, AND TO PUSH ON INTO OTHER AREAS WHICH I FEEL COULD BE OF INTEREST TO MYSELF. THIS MAY SEEM LIKE AN ARROGANT ATTITUDE TO SOME, BUT AS A SOCIAL BRING THERE IS ALMOST NOTHING THAT AN ARTIST COULD POSSIBLY ENGAGE IN THAT DOES NOT HAVE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND AESTHETIC RAMAFICATIONS BEYOND THE WORK ITSSELF, WHICH AN AUDIENCE CAN RELATE TO (IF IT WANTS TO). ACTUALLY, MY WORK HAS PROVED TO BE VERY ACCESSIBLE - EVEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE HAD LITTLE EXPOSURE TO MODERN ART OR VIDEO.
I CONSIDER MYSELF TO BE AN ECLECTIC ARTIST WHO GETS EASILY BORED WITH THINGS IN THE PRESENT, AND THIS COULD BE THE MAJOR IMPETUS IN MY DESIRE TO CONTINUE FURTHER EXPLORATIONS IN THE VIDEO MEDIUM. I PROBABLY WOULD LIKE TO BE A FORMALIST, BUT RESENT THE ELITISM THAT A FORMALIST STANCE REQUIRES. INSTEAD I AM PROBABLY A NEO-ROMANTIC - A PERSON WHO ONCE STRONGLY BELIEVED IN A CERTAIN SET OF PRINCIPLES, AND WHO, FOR SOME REASON STOPPED BELIEVING, AND IS CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS OF TRYING TO DEVELOP A NEW SET OF PRINCIPLES THAT CAN BE BELIEVED IN. AS A NEW MEDIUM, VIDEO 1S THE PERFECT TOOL WITH WHICH TO SATISFY THESE PARTICULAR DEMANDS. HOWEVER, AS A NEW MEDIUM, VIDEO HAS DEVELOPED ITS OWN UNIQUE AESTHETIC IN A REMARKABLY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, AND IT IS THE OBLIGATION OF THE SERIOUS ARTIST TO AVOID CLICHES AND ATTEMPT TO TRANSCEND THE BOUNDARIES AND DEFINITION OF THE MEDIUM. THIS REQUIRES AN AWARENESS ON THE PART OF THE ARTIST, BUT ALSO DEMANDS AN ADDITIONAL EFFORT IN DEVELOPING AN AUTHENTIC PERSONAL STATEMENT WHICH CAN BE REGARDED AS UNIQUF. BASICALLY, ALL OF MY WORK IS ABOUT THINGS WHICH TURN ME ON - EITHER VISUALLY, MENTALLY OR THROUGH SOUND, AND ARE RITES OF PASSAGE TO THAT ULTIMATE FUTURE IN WHICH ALL THE BEST ASPECTS COALESCE.
ANOTHER QUESTION I HAVE OFTEN BEEN ASK BY BOTH ARTISTS AND NON-ARTISTS ALIKE IS: “AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF BEING VICTIMIZED BY HAVING TO RELY ON SOPHISTICATED MACHINES TO MAKE YOUR ART?”. (THE ROMANTIC VIEWPOINT). MY ANSWER USUALLY GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS: “IF YOU CAN PROVE TO ME THAT YOU DID NOT RELY ON A MACHINE TO GO ON LIVING TODAY - EITHER FOR TRAVEL, TO EAT, FOR INFORMATION, TO MAKE ART, OR ANYTHING ELSE, I WILL QUIT USING MACHINES TO MAKE ART”. BESIDES, AS MARSHALL MCLUHAN SAYS “MACHINES ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN PEOPLE, THEY DON’T TALK BACK”.
-ERNEST GUSELLA
MARCH 1, 1979
above copied from: http://experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=33&page=1
EXPERTS HAVE STATED THAT THE PURPOSE OF ART IS TO CLARIFY, HOWEVER IN MY OWN CASE (KNOWING MYSELF S0 WELL), AND DISBELIEVING A LOT OF WHAT IS WRITTEN ABOUT ART, I TEND TO IGNORE WHAT ART MEANS IN A SOCIAL SENSE, AND TO PUSH ON INTO OTHER AREAS WHICH I FEEL COULD BE OF INTEREST TO MYSELF. THIS MAY SEEM LIKE AN ARROGANT ATTITUDE TO SOME, BUT AS A SOCIAL BRING THERE IS ALMOST NOTHING THAT AN ARTIST COULD POSSIBLY ENGAGE IN THAT DOES NOT HAVE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND AESTHETIC RAMAFICATIONS BEYOND THE WORK ITSSELF, WHICH AN AUDIENCE CAN RELATE TO (IF IT WANTS TO). ACTUALLY, MY WORK HAS PROVED TO BE VERY ACCESSIBLE - EVEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE HAD LITTLE EXPOSURE TO MODERN ART OR VIDEO.
I CONSIDER MYSELF TO BE AN ECLECTIC ARTIST WHO GETS EASILY BORED WITH THINGS IN THE PRESENT, AND THIS COULD BE THE MAJOR IMPETUS IN MY DESIRE TO CONTINUE FURTHER EXPLORATIONS IN THE VIDEO MEDIUM. I PROBABLY WOULD LIKE TO BE A FORMALIST, BUT RESENT THE ELITISM THAT A FORMALIST STANCE REQUIRES. INSTEAD I AM PROBABLY A NEO-ROMANTIC - A PERSON WHO ONCE STRONGLY BELIEVED IN A CERTAIN SET OF PRINCIPLES, AND WHO, FOR SOME REASON STOPPED BELIEVING, AND IS CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS OF TRYING TO DEVELOP A NEW SET OF PRINCIPLES THAT CAN BE BELIEVED IN. AS A NEW MEDIUM, VIDEO 1S THE PERFECT TOOL WITH WHICH TO SATISFY THESE PARTICULAR DEMANDS. HOWEVER, AS A NEW MEDIUM, VIDEO HAS DEVELOPED ITS OWN UNIQUE AESTHETIC IN A REMARKABLY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, AND IT IS THE OBLIGATION OF THE SERIOUS ARTIST TO AVOID CLICHES AND ATTEMPT TO TRANSCEND THE BOUNDARIES AND DEFINITION OF THE MEDIUM. THIS REQUIRES AN AWARENESS ON THE PART OF THE ARTIST, BUT ALSO DEMANDS AN ADDITIONAL EFFORT IN DEVELOPING AN AUTHENTIC PERSONAL STATEMENT WHICH CAN BE REGARDED AS UNIQUF. BASICALLY, ALL OF MY WORK IS ABOUT THINGS WHICH TURN ME ON - EITHER VISUALLY, MENTALLY OR THROUGH SOUND, AND ARE RITES OF PASSAGE TO THAT ULTIMATE FUTURE IN WHICH ALL THE BEST ASPECTS COALESCE.
ANOTHER QUESTION I HAVE OFTEN BEEN ASK BY BOTH ARTISTS AND NON-ARTISTS ALIKE IS: “AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF BEING VICTIMIZED BY HAVING TO RELY ON SOPHISTICATED MACHINES TO MAKE YOUR ART?”. (THE ROMANTIC VIEWPOINT). MY ANSWER USUALLY GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS: “IF YOU CAN PROVE TO ME THAT YOU DID NOT RELY ON A MACHINE TO GO ON LIVING TODAY - EITHER FOR TRAVEL, TO EAT, FOR INFORMATION, TO MAKE ART, OR ANYTHING ELSE, I WILL QUIT USING MACHINES TO MAKE ART”. BESIDES, AS MARSHALL MCLUHAN SAYS “MACHINES ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN PEOPLE, THEY DON’T TALK BACK”.
-ERNEST GUSELLA
MARCH 1, 1979
above copied from: http://experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=33&page=1
Artist's Statements on Fluxus, ed. by Owen F. Smith
From a special issue of Visible Language on Fluxus
Twelve artists, active in various media, reflect on their relationship to Fluxus. Their comments reveal essential aspects of Fluxus that inspire their own work. The offerings are celebratory, ironic and questioning.
Fluxus & the far end of the Freeform-freakout Organization
I CAN NEVER DECIDE JUST WHAT IT IS about the other F-word that has been such a major influence (and a major hindrance) to my work and its development. Having little practical talent I have always had difficulty in expressing my ideas clearly, despite experimenting in many different media. My body of work, for what it is to date, is mainly a collection of half-finished experiments that includes most media from pencil and paper to digital music production. My problem being that I never feel that I have much ability in any of these media, I experiment and play and just see what happens. My very nature seems to prevent me from becoming proficient in any one area, just as it seems I'm going to master something I tend to change tack or even abandon the project altogether.
For many years I made interventions, in my working environment, usually written pieces and usually in offices. For fifteen years I worked in office environments, my studio space was a desk, my materials store the stationary cupboard. I never looked at what I was doing as art-to stick a tiny "be careful" sign, which could only be read by standing on a chair on a desk, was a natural mode in which I was able to express my ideas. I always had trouble in accepting that I was perhaps more comfortable doing this than I was when trying to draw or paint out my ideas as I had focused on doing throughout my schooling. Fluxus, as I first perceived it, allowed me to accept the fact that what I was doing was actually ok.
Stumbling across Fluxus, and my initial perceptions of it, gave me the go ahead to continue what I had been doing. I felt better that there were others doing similar stuff with a similar humor-and that was it initially.
Further reading and particular fascination with the performance and instruction scores marked the biggest change in my work, or rather my level of confidence and conviction. The score format allowed me to share my take on the world without necessarily trying to force my view upon the reader. One of my earliest scores, "Change the Sound of the Sea," invites the reader to do just that, however it makes no suggestion regarding how to do so. Here was one of the first times that I realized that if I regularly visualized one concept in many different ways, then I should allow for an audience to do so too. The score format also allowed me to overcome a severe lack of confidence in myself by allowing me to produce a piece, but leaving its execution up to someone else!
So I suppose the score is the element of Fluxus that has most concretely influenced my work, it is also the most easily published-most of the other things I do never reach the public eye; I'd have to own up to them then! It is the humor, however, an element that I feel is often overlooked, which truly inspired me. Further explanation of this I fear will have to wait for another badly written 500 words.
Evolving Fluxus
BIBIANA PADILLA MALTOS
FROM MY INITIAL EXPERIENCES, COMES A FURTHER DEFINITION OF MY work, separated into three main camps: works which deal directly with language, based fundamentally on the visual poetry I've made; then comes works or activities that deal with the body, with games, with networks, with interaction, based mostly on my discovery and/or relationship to the Fluxus movement. Finally, there comes a series of works that try to coalesce these two, as a form of development or evolution of everything I've done so far, which could end with a life-long project that revolves around my own death.
One of the fascinating aspects of the Fluxus movements (I state it as a plural, for it is still, I believe, an ongoing and evolving experience, not constricted to a historical period) is its emphasis on community and interaction; the fact that anyone can be part of an aesthetic experience, informed by nature, by chance, by a previously set process of interaction with an everyday activity, leads us towards one of the aspects mentioned at the beginning: the setting up of the common, the domestic, the mundane, to a level that may not be necessarily "art" in the traditional sense, but that it may well be one of the most ecstatic experiences someone may have in his or her immediate future.
I started to do Fluxus performances for festivals, AVTEXTFESt, all pieces were done in the context of the festival, but pointing out that said festival, at least in the first case, was done in a public place that did not "expect" to "see a performance." Much to the surprise of the public, they unconsciously and then consciously, and then forthrightly, became part of the spectacle. This is the part of Fluxus that interested me the most, the fact that you could allow for a glimpse of what the distinction between art and life can do for the individual, even though that in the process, said individual may or may not be aware of this process.
Because I believe that Fluxus, as a movement, is an open-ended distribution of experiences, pretty much an ongoing, permanent struggle, I do not want to lead us towards a final destination, regarding the characteristics of Fluxus as a movement based on ideas and notions about the world and reality in general. So if I was to describe some other activities I've done, in a way, I can explain the artistic propositions that happened as a consequence of both the experiments in visual poetry and the discovery of the Fluxus experience.
Thirty Years of Fluxing Around
CECIL TOUCHON
THERE ARE THOSE THINGS WHICH ARTISTS OFTEN DO AS THEIR SERIOUS work, and then there are all of the other things they do when they are playing and messing around in the studio or when hanging out with other artists. That range of other things tends to be Fluxus-like in nature-more concept-based, experimental, contemplative, humorous and expressed in a kind of private short hand. When translated into a more public language you have work that may appear unfinished, tentative and with a lot of open-ended and very loose ends. I think of this kind of art making as more conversational than lecture-like in nature, more private, informal, ephemeral and downright immaterial. This kind of art activity is the product of a shared mercurial mind-world where unfettered creativity, lucid imagination and the immediate cognition of a deeply intuitive mind are of the greatest value. I think this is why some like to relate Fluxus to Zen. I think Zen has a strong interest in this same range of mental activity in search of those moments of creative release and intuitive cognition of the spiritual world, a more fluid state that we are normally not cognizant of. Not that I can claim to know anything about Zen or for that matter Fluxus.
A lot of the well-known fluxsters are well known in part because of their interest in performance, theater and experimental music/sound. These things tend to be done live and in public via scheduled performances, festivals and the like.
I am primarily a visual artist. While I have engaged in the occasional performance, they have always been in the form of a personal ritual accomplished for my own internal reasons and have required no one other than myself as their witness with the location usually being my studio or out in nature.
It was never my fortune or misfortune to ever meet up with any Fluxus people in person. I have never been that interested. I have never been very interested in meeting anybody that didn't find his or her way naturally into my life. So anything of mine that could be regarded as Fluxus-like over the years was developed in relative isolation until coming across the Fluxlist gang on the Internet around 1998-99. When I did I was amazed to find a family of people who shared a very strong affinity with my way of seeing the world. I spent a lot of time with Fluxus after that and was especially moved by Ken Friedman's amazingly clear-headed way of looking at things. He may or may not be altogether right in his general ideas-I really couldn't say-but he is definitely clear-headed about them and you have to admire that.
My main like-like activities these last several years are in the realm of collage poetry and collage sound works. I have also been compiling early works that fit the Fluxus profile that go back to as early as 1975 meaning that this year 2005 represents a thirty year mark. Aside from these things, a broader activity has been working to short circuit the idea that an art movement has a beginning, middle and end, usually of a very short duration and involving a very small circle of associates. With the Internet and mass communication I do not believe that movements have such a cut and dried history or that they involve so few people. I notice that things, especially ideas and the influence of objects that contain ideas, live in a continuum and spread like a virus into the minds of artists all over the world and across many generations. I do not believe historians want to deal with the fact that all art movements are still being played out by whatever artists decide to embody them. This spread across barriers I think is especially notable in Fluxus history with its use of an international mail network and the continued life Fluxus clearly still has on the current generation.
Technology Ephemera & Zen Forevers
DAVID-BAPTISTE CHIROT
THE GREAT JAPANESE HAIKU POET BASHO WROTE THAT THE BASIS OF ART is change in the universe. And the French poet Charles Baudelaire first defined Modernism as a presentation of what is eternal in the ephemeral. To me Fluxus is very much a conjunction of the great Japanese and great French poets' statements. They meet in Robert Filliou's Eternal Network of Mail Art and in the Fluxus use of the most common elements found at hand to create performances, events, scores, sounds and images. In Fluxus, the emphasis on the conjunction of the eternal/ephemeral in a continual state of change has been what most inspires me about it.
I believe that what endures in Fluxus is this spirit of using the most ephemeral, common objects to create a memorable event. Fluxus is a form of tension between the chaotic and the controlled-with more chaotic elements being in Mail Art, with its beautiful embrace of everything being a work of art-to the more controlled aspects of performance directions, scores and scripts.
I also think the Fluxus presents a festival atmosphere, one of celebration, of joy. I think there is also a profound aspect of mysticism with Fluxus-one of open acceptance of the wonder of the moment, and how the moment can in a moment be a deep insight into the eternality of change-an acknowledgement of this. It is a mysticism that comes, I feel in part, from the conjunction of a Western technological use of machines and devices with the Eastern thought of Taoism and Zen. I find this especially expressed in the works of John Cage and Nam June Paik. Along with Dick Higgins, these are the only Fluxus artists (if Cage is considered one) I have met in person and heard and seen perform. (I have some versions of Zen text that were translated by George Brecht, with poetical versions by Dick Higgins.) Nam June Paik especially impressed me with his immense sense of humor. I audited a class he taught at MIT in the late 1970s and he was obsessed with Boston Bruins hockey games on TV. He had banks of TV sets on which endless hours of hockey played, run through a myriad distortions. The flow and controlled chaos of hockey was very much in tune with his thoughts on art. As a sports junky, I thoroughly enjoyed his appreciation and enthusiasm for the game in its visual aspects-the speed, the collisions, the continual strife and bizarre and sublime harmonies of the sport. What I deeply felt in Paik's approach was the sense of ACTION-action coming from an intense attention-a very Zen like approach in many ways. I also enjoyed his use of the found-beat-up, junked TV sets-the technological as the epitome of the ephemeral-cast off, out of date, thrown away in alleys and replaced with a bigger, newer, more expensive machine-or-a smaller, cheaper one! He had a great sense of humor-one that for me I feel is one of the best aspects of Fluxus.
Space, Process & Shakers...
DAVID COLOGIOVANI
I CAME TO FLUXUS IN THE SPRING OF 2OOO. I HAD BEEN
I consider my current video experiments to be a manipulation of space and process. I approach video more like a sculptor; the works should be approached as sculpture. Everything needed for the experience is available in a very short amount of time.
Video-sculpture is the process of creating a symbiotic relationship between the object and video; both have equal importance and in most cases one can't exist without the other. The combination of the two mediums creates a physical space for the video. The video and object combined construct an implied space. Water appears to fall from one screen to the other; a drip falls from the top bucket landing on cue in the bottom bucket, filling the void between the screens. The implied space adds wonder to the piece and takes the video away from the singular existence of a screen. Instead of viewing the piece as we do a video (from beginning to end) we begin to approach the piece as we do sculpture. I'm led to believe I should feel water dripping on my hand if I put my hand between the screens.
My approach is minimal and is derived from my experiments with Fluxus-the everyday-and desire to discover a material's limits and exploit its unintended uses. I seek ways to expand and discover my human boundaries, whether physical or emotional. The works incorporate short individual or private performances to explore the event in a way that offers physical and mental space between the viewer and myself. The camera, this space, provides me with that freedom. These works are documentation of my private performance and in essence a document of my life.
Above Copied from: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3982/is_200601/ai_n17183605/pg_1
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