“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”

Willem de Kooning

Took a few days away from the essay to give time for the presentation  feed back to settle in.

Doing some more reading  brought me back to the abstract expressionists; in particular Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning because of the emphasis on  gesture and physicality in their works.

Here is the link again for the interactive Pollock site that  I posted about  at the beginning of the course back in 2007/8.

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

The interest for me when making these digital Pollock style pieces is that the focus on the  physical engagement of the original works  is gone. I  read recently, that all of our online interaction happens through hand movements on the mouse or keyboard. What used to take bodily physical motion and time to achieve has become condensed in to small low impact isolated physical actions.

How does the concept of the ‘artist’ of 60 years ago may compare to today’s  understanding of the term ‘artist’ … the differences of expectations and contexts of that term; where that may currently fit in to a sense of global identity and propaganda?

Historically, abstract expressionism in the US has been interpreted as an exercise of a form of cultural imperialism by the USA a response to the cold war.

Threads seem to  lead to more questions in philosophical concepts.

Rationally I understand that the essay is an academic exercise. The goal should be to make a good contained job of writing and presenting the essay.

Just aim to get the essay finished.

This Tuesday the chat was based on discussion of our essay presentations.

The  online chat environment is not one I find easy.  It is a very impersonal environment that some how manages to create a very personal one.

Andy asked me two questions I wasn’t able to answer very well at the time, so will try to give a clearer response below:

The first was about the theme of walking and if I felt it dealt as a metaphor in my presentation.

Though I tried to deal with facts in the presentation, the idea of metaphor has been knocking at my consciousness but I can’t as yet articulate it clearly. I am very slow with the academic element of this course. It takes a long time to un-tease things from all the chaos that I go through both dyslexia wise and intellectually. Hope in a week or two when the essay is completed I will be able to include a clear metaphor but at this point in time how to articulate it clearly is work in progress.

Do feel some of these academic aspects have improved since first joining the course. Though  did have  a journey in that area to start with so it may seem very little progress. As long as it is going forward its all good.

The second was around Darwinism versus creationism in relation to themes in the presentation.  This question followed on from some of the issues raised in the previous discussion of Hassen’s presentation.

It is understandable that a work once it is viewed is informed for the viewer through the interpretation that they bring to the piece, based on their set of current understanding, history and experiences. Hopefully the viewer will take something away that may become relevant in a new context at some future point. Art goes with you and keeps re informing as understandings shift. This alongside its ability to raise debate is what makes it invaluable.

At a more personal level I wasn’t sure how to respond to the issues contained in Andy’s question, other than, for me this question focuses on the right to hold a personal belief structure and think we all should have a right to one and have a right to have those views respected and this is something we should all protect for each other; even if those views appear contradictory.

I have always admired Isaiah (or any  visionary), just as I admire Darwin’s tenacity and academic legacy and feel that they stem from the same place and  what is of real value is the on going debate.

Presentation

Got the autumn issue of Mail Art One finished and posted out this week. It has 2 new distributing venues: the long Gallery at the Tron Theatre Glasgow, the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead and also the next issue for 2010 has been accepted for distribution by the DLI museum and gallery here in Durham.

http://mailartone.wordpress.com/

Didn’t get to the Print symposium at Newcastle on Tuesday and also missed the online chat again. Finding it really makes a difference when I miss the session so am making an effort to make sure this doesn’t happen if possible.

Something that has been on the time table for too long now is getting a web site started up. It will be a good exercise as it will require me to clarify what I’m about.  Andy mentioned that  I needed to keep an eye out for this with the abstract for the essay, to be wary of generalizing.

For me it is quite a challenge. Defining and paring down, searching for clarity, almost seems catch 22 situation. A mass of ideas that may or may not be relevant to each other, that hint and suggest rather than provide solid evidence. This may seem an ill disciplined approach, but maybe this very realization of this anomaly helps to clarify  issues to do with my chosen processes and engaging them to meet the requirements of  an MA.

I find the process of clarifying is something that doesn’t come naturally, but don’t want to stop engaging with it. Maybe  the conclusion is that the focus of the outcome should rely on the quality of debate  rather than on the defining of  absolutes.

Though the essay is pressing, also the presentation and compiling the evidence of learning out comes, I need to stop and make some work even if it’s just half a day spent making some collages or out doing some photography.

The touching again on the definition of the process of bicolage by Sherry Turlkle seems appropriate:

‘Bricoleurs approach problem-solving by entering into a relationship with their work materials that has more of the flavour of a conversation than a monologue.’

Making things, taking photographs is a much more instinctive way to process ideas.

Posting this link for this video of an interview with William Forsthye  from the dance tec site as think some of the points made are interesting particularly the point that dance has not had any sustained reading due to its lack of materialization.

The question that came to my mind from watching this video was that it seems there maybe a change in the way we experience or understand/experience movement due to digital technology.

http://www.dance-tech.net/profiles/blogs/dancetechnet-shared-movements

Have been compiling the autumn issue of Mail Art One this week and while I do the binding considering the form for the final piece.

Unfortunately I missed the group chat again this Tuesday due to a further hospital appointment. From reading the archive saw that Andy asked us to research for our final piece and look for practitioners who employ the same out puts.

Cathy Weis  uses what she terms ‘live internet performing structure’ and examines issues to do with failing of bodily control. (Weis herself suffers from a degenerative condition.)

http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-02-15/dance/dance/

The essay is on hold this week as I am waiting for a response from Andy to the abstract I emailed over. So I hope it is ok and I am on the right road with it at last.

Next Tuesday I have booked to attend a print symposium at the Laing art gallery Newcastle. It will mean missing the third chat session in a row if I attend, but I would like to make it there to be in touch face to face with other practitioners.

 

Researching for the essay and trying to get down out the outline this week. Find the ideas behind the subject area I’ve chosen are very exciting, but pinning them down in to a coherent discourse is a slow process.

Have been thinking about the link between the interface of surface, body and embodiment. How when walking you can feel absorbed in to that landscape.

 

 

‘As interface, the skin is obsolete. The significance of the cyber may well reside in the act of the body shedding its skin.’  Stelarc quoted in ‘Natural Born Cyborgs.’ Andy Clark

 

Reviewing and curating the weblog I came across one or two entries where I feel I haven’t been clear enough about the relevance of the content.

The 1st is around the work of choreographer Rosemary Butcher.

Butcher’s work became relevant because she bridges the line between dance and visual arts. Also she was one of the 1st UK choreographers to start using everyday movements to create works. Her work is grounded in the ordinary and banal, everyday movements… walking, running, standing,

 

‘….and the body’s physical relationship to contexts, environments and other objects.’

‘A ‘Conventional Subversive’.’ Josephine Leask: ‘Rosemary Butcher : Choreography, Collisions and Collaborations. ‘  Middlesex University Press 2005( P154)

 

With ‘Undercurrent’  the relevance was the change in the body when suspended in water.

 

‘The water and the trampoline were both what I call ‘interventions’. Their impact upon the movement was not caused by human decision, but by the nature of something else happening.’ 

 

Rosemary Butcher in ‘Rosemary Butcher: Choreography, Collisions and Collaborations.’ Middlesex University Press 2005

 

 

 Another entry I wanted to review was about the example of the traditional Japanese paper making process. The relevance was the level of embodiment involved in this process. In contrast to the level or kind of embodiment experienced using a mouse and keyboard.

Went to Derby to visit relatives on Saturday there was a wheel in the city centre. It’s the 1^st time I’ve been on one. The change in perspective is an interesting experience. Just wish I could get a change of perspective in regards to the essay and the required course work. 

 

 This week has been spent researching for the essay which seems to be a huge wall to scramble over. My peers finished theirs this week and posted them having read through them it is obvious the level hat is expected. The comfort is that reading Tuesdays chat archive (couldn’t attend Tuesdays chat due to a hospital appointment) everyone seems to have taken a journey to get to the finished paper.

 

I decided to do some online research in to the context of walking.

 

 

This is the resulting thread:

 

Walking definition

 

http://pattiebellehastings.net/projects/cyborg/manual/cmbook06.html

 

 

 

Drift

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive

 

 

Situationsit

 

 

Totality of everyday life:

 

And this article by Guy Ernst Debord

 

 

Everyday life is not everything – although its osmosis with specialized activities is such that in a sense we are never outside of everyday life. But to use a facile spatial image, we still have to place everyday life at the center of everything. Every project begins from it and every realization returns to it to acquire its real significance. Everyday life is the measure of all things: of the fulfillment or rather the nonfulfillment of human relations; of the use of lived time; of artistic experimentation; of revolutionary politics.

 

 

It seems to me that this phrase “critique of everyday life” could and should also be understood in this reverse sense: as everyday life’s sovereign critique of everything that is external or irrelevant to itself. The question of the use of technological means, in everyday life and elsewhere, is a political question (and out of all the possible technical means, those that are implemented are in reality selected in accordance with the goal of maintaining one class’s domination)

 

 

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/89

 

 

Have also been considering developing the ideas in the August steps video.

 

Been thinking about how people walk heel to toe, about the way the physical action of walking moves through the body.

 

Wondering about ways to film people walking to see what might be revealed.

Have a couple of ideas around this, based on the small pieces I did at the end of the course last year at the local community centre here. Need a couple of small video cameras, seen some cheap ones on ebay. Thinking of a mobile structure to house them on to attempt to film different view points simultaneously while moving and reduce camera shake.

 

 

 

Tracked down a lecture posted on the Dance Tech web site by philosopher of embodiment Alva Noe, talking about his book ‘Out of our heads: why you are not your brain.’

 

 

In this talk Noe states that:

 

‘Consciousness is not something that happens inside of us- it is something that we achieve’.

 

‘It depends on a dynamic, on an interaction… it depends on our larger bodies, environment dependent capacities, on our emplacement in a landscape of a particular kind and indeed ultimately on other people as well.’

 

 

Have also been doing some research on Stelarc’s and his ideology. His statement that the architecture of our biological body is now obsolete, that humans already exists as cyborgs due to our use of technologies and are developing even further in to a hybrid cyborg creations.

 

Have ordered a monologue on Stelarc and am hoping to build a better contextual understanding of his position.

 

Artist Patti Belle Hastings takes on some of these same issues in her artists’ book and website Cyborg Mommy.

 

http://pattiebellehastings.net/projects/cyborg/manual/cmbook06.html

 

 

http://www.icehousedesign.com/cyborg_mommy/home.html