Philip Ewe (United Kingdom)
Synopsis - The work of art in the age of digital recombination by Jos de Mul
Jos de Mul’s text explores the digital age’s affect on the making, delivery and reception of art. De Mul uses Walter Benjamin’s ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ as a parallel text to compare the influence of digital reproduction (or “recombination”as he prefers to refer to it as) on artwork’s uniqueness, authentiticy and aura. Benjamin’s ideas on the loss of cult value and aura in light of mechanical reproduction play a central guide to Jos de Mul’s, who contests that digital recombinations through their malleableness, transience and immateriality actually add aura to art even if the object or painting is no longer experienced solely through exhibition and one-at-a-time appearances in time and space and the value of being adept in appearances to stand the test of the digital age is pointed out by way of politicians, Reagan being the last exhibition-only President. Aside to this de Mul mentions that computers and databases in the digital age have brought improvements to the practical administration, research and communication central to artists’ lives and working processes. Language and database models in computers are presented as systems of infinite recombinations, allowing for cross-referencing and searches for research purposes and media is then discussed as a material in hand with art. The limits of digital recombination are considered by example of Geert Mul’s Match of the day artwork. In it digital recognition software is used to pair images together that may be close in similarity, in pixel terms and not by interpration, as humans would do and the essay ends on a note on the inapproachability of the workings of a manmade technology.
Synopsis - The Remixing and Remixability by Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich in The Remixing and Remixability runs through various examples of remixing of contents in the current digital climate to describe the modular nature of culture today. He starts by using the analogy of information as a train, stopping at various receptors to distinguish the current cultural communication from the pre-digital. Where it used to be a case of a direct route of source to receiver communication now travels at greater speed in different directions at once through multiple online platforms. The databasing, tagging, referencing and cross referencing that are the organisational traits of the internet further exemplify the remixed ways we handle visual culture. Visual culture itself today he describes is characterised by remixing and Manovich compares the copycat behaviour of graphic and fashion designers with the copy and paste functions of computers. He considers the potential of artworks that instead of being the end of a process could be just the start of further multiplications, remixes and retagging and potentially more discreet to allow our future selves to play more of a part in their remixing. The modular set-up whereby bricks (he uses a Lego analogy) represent units of visual information and data is key to his vision of the future. Data being broken up into smaller units to help with modularity, mass production as modular and modularity becoming universal as a tool - here is where Manovich sees the key characteristics of visual culture.
Andy Warhol The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A-B and Back Again) Originally published in 1975 276 pages The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A-B and Back Again is a collection of anecdotes, thoughts and advice of questionable anthenticity and irony from Andy Warhol (or the character of Andy Warhol) written in the first person in a casual and conversational writing style. There arefifteen topics Warhol dissects through his own one man philosophy, each with its own chapter and approached from various inspirations: a phonecall, a childhood experience, often from Warhol's experience and quoting celebrities he has met.
The chapters include: Love (Puberty), Love (Prime), Love (Senility), Beauty, Fame, Work, Time, Death, Economics, Atmosphere, Success, Art, Titles, The Tingle, Underwear Power. All topics are cast through the prisms of experiences he's had, conversations with friends and referenceing the personal and institutional behaviour of the art world he's experienced.
Warhol approaches subjects through the prism of observations made on his childhood and the worlds of celebrity, commerce and art.
Derek Jarman
Blue
76mins, 1993
Derek Jarman’s Blue is a spoken word film heard against an unchanging frame of ultramarine blue that fills the screen.
Blue’s monologue scripted by Jarman is poetic and observational as Jarman’s anecdotes from London street life and those around him mix with memories and his frictional responses to the hospital visits to receive treatment for HIV all shift into each other without intro or footnoting.
Scenes occasionally include sound affects to set a scene and music which includes harps and electronic set tone as interludes and backgrounds through his dominating monologue and segments spoken by actors and collaborators Tilda Swinton, John Quentin and Nigel Terry.
Throughout the 76 minutes that Blue runs for the screen stays the same flat ultramarine blue and the colour is connected throughout.
Although large parts of the voiceover are original verse, the overriding content is Derek Jarman’s bleak, sharp and poetic commentary of the loss of his eyesight and the climate of AIDS where sufferers are hopelessly stranded with drugs that are not saving lives and a society that is ignorant and detached from HIV sufferers. All this is textured by Jarman's slow, somber and gravelled voice describing his own despair and anger at his imminent death.
NEW
1. You are looking at a big bunch of fresh flowers sitting on the ground: a sunflower, a few tall gladioli, two large tropical leaves spanning out to either side, a large bud-like tropical flower. They are sitting on the ground in water in half a plastic bottle that leans in a wonky fit inside a sloppy surfaced plaster vessel about 30cm tall. There are two other bunches of flowers in two other similarly clumsy shaped vessels, one of them on top of a stool with a table top behind it, one in front of a 2.5m block of polystyrene, all three are near walls. The room has untreated floor boards, white walls, two strip lights and a shop front window. A seven foot tall big-bummed plasture figure that has an Orangina bottle placed in a cubby hole in its side is away from the wall and there are five A3 sized watercolours of rain drops shapes behind it, all of mainly dark blue shades. Opposite is an abstract A3 watercolour, more pointed in style.
2. This is a piece of white polyester fabric 43cm across and 75cm down with unfinished edges, pinned in its top left and right corners by woodwork pins. It has been printed on with large swirls of paint, mostly dark purple and green lines of varying dilutions, opaque in parts and more transparent in others. A greyish turquoise is underneath and all the swirls of colour cross over each other in a 30 by 40 cm patch which has then been reprinted again at different angles. The texture of the fabric remains flat and unchanged across the surface and there are still gaps that show the white polyester underneath. The middle top line dips from its pin pointed corners and the fabric hangs down at the bottom. Overall it is almost entirely uncreased but has enough creases that it is not completely flat.
3. This is a colour c-type photograph which fills a white wooden box frame, the frame is 22cm across and 33cm across and 3.5 deep, the photograph sits 1.5cm inside it and its edges come close to the frame. The photograph is of a girl in her early twenties reacting and looking outside the frame of the camera with an ambiguously dramatic expression in her face, possibly of shock, mouth open, eyes wide. She is sitting down on a sofa or armchair and the photograph has been taken from floor level, her body is pulled in and she is hunched over slightly with her hands held between her legs and is wearing a denim top with black trousers. The photograph is tightly cropped and the place feels domestic, the wall behind the girl is a creamy shade, slightly in the shadow of the flash that’s on the girl. It looks like an unstaged casually taken photograph taken amongst friends.
FIRST DRAFT
1. You are looking at a big bunch of fresh flowers sitting on the ground: a sunflower, a few tall gladioli, two large tropical leaves spanning out to either side, a large bud-like tropical flower. They are sitting on the ground in water in half a plastic bottle that leans in a wonky fit inside a sloppy surfaced plaster vessel about 30cm tall. There are two other bunches of flowers in two other similarly clumsy shaped vessels, one of them on top of a stool with a table top behind it, one in front of a 2.5m block of polystyrene, all three are near walls. The room has untreated floor boards, white walls, two strip lights and a shop front window. A seven foot tall big-bummed plasture figure that has an Orangina bottle placed in a cubby hole in its side is away from the wall and there are five A3 sized watercolours of rain drops shapes behind it, all of mainly dark blue shades. Opposite is an abstract A3 watercolour, more pointed in style.
2. This is a piece of white polyester fabric 43cm across and 75cm down, pinned in its top left and right corners by pins. It has been printed on with large swirls of paint, mostly dark purple and green lines of varying dilutions, opaque in parts, more opaque in others. A greyish turquoise is underneath and all the swirls of colour cross over each other in a single patch which has then been reprinted again at different angles. The texture of the fabric remains flat and unchanged across the surface and there are still gaps that show the white polyester underneath. The middle top line dips from its pin pointed corners and the fabric hangs down at the bottom. Overall it is almost entirely uncreased but has enough creases it is not completely flat.
3. This is a colour c-type photograph which fills a white wooden box frame, the frame is 22cm across and 33cm across and 3.5 deep, the photograph sits 1.5cm inside it and its edges come close to the frame. The photograph is of a girl in her early twenties reacting and looking outside the frame of the camera with an ambiguously dramatic expression in her face, possibly of shock, mouth open, eyes wide. She is wearing a denim top and her hands are between her legs, in black trousers. The photograph is tightly cropped and the place feels domestic, the wall behind the girl is a creamy shade, slightly in the shadow of the flash that’s on the girl. It looks like an unstaged casually taken photograph taken amongst friends.
February Workshop Response to Description 1.
How does it make you feel? I'm not sure this writing puts itself out there for an emotional response so if I had to choose a feeling, bored...?
What kind of atmosphere does it evoke? The writing feels like more of an exercise in not creating atmosphere, reading it now it feels like I have taken a description to mean unimaginative, almost stern list-making of objects, it reads less like an evocative piece of writing or an intro to an evocative piece of artwork and more a shopping list and and intro to a pint of milk.
Where can you position it? As a basic description of the physical material aspects of the work.
When did it begin to exist as an art object? The work from the minute it's in the space, from the writing it feels like the space validates the art of the object.
Does the work have integrity? What kind of integrity? Again as in Liz's work, I'm not sure how the question of integrity would play in this. If it has integrity it is because it sticks to a motive of sticking to a perfunctory description of the work.
What was motivation behind making it? As an exercise in describing something without a subjective or persuasive tone to it, I think I realise from reading this that perhaps when describing one's own work the most important thing for me is to let people in on the motives within my choice of processes. So in describing artwork surrounding elements (the light in the room) or activity can be used to lend a feeling/atmosphere to the work itself, the way that in fiction authors can give a description of surroundings as an indirect way of letter readers in on a character's feelings: "the wallpaper pulsated, the fabriced chairs seemed to shuffle uneasily". Maybe I should describe the objects in such a way to let people in on the maker's (my) feelings and my motivations..."the objects seemed to have rushed to find a spot on the floor, like they were caught in a game of musical chairs just when the music had stopped."
What preceded it? The artwork preceded the writing.
Liz's Description (oh! looks like we have different approaches! :)
Where can you position it? Physically, it is positioned in a white-walled art gallery, a former shopfront. Contextually, in the tradition of the white cube. Specifically, in a tradition dedicated to shape, form and pattern but through the processes of both the artisan and the conceptualist. This positions the work in a politics of plurality within Western culture.
Does the work have integrity? What kind? The integrity of the work relies on the integrity of its combined gestures and processes. Its integrity relies on its commitment to a confident clumsiness in this process. From the confident mixture of POP statements with traditional still life scenes to pointed watercolours. The work possesses an egalitarian kind of integrity, one that values and finds beauty in the slip-shod as much as the blossom.
What kind of atmosphere does it evoke? The diversity of materials, processes and references in the work evokes a casual and playful attitude, and the atmosphere takes this on. The installation is working in a recent mode of sculpture and the knowingness required to work in this style contributes a form of art currency to the atmosphere.
When did it begin to exist as an object? The work began to exist as a series of objects in the process of their making. The installation began to exist as the objects accumulated and were tested together in the studio, and the work finally came into existence as it was reconfigured in the gallery for the exhibition.
What was the motivation behind making it? An experimentation with materials and a love of form and colour was the original impetus for the work. I'm guessing this developed into a desire to test individual elements together which led to the staging of a material cross-disciplinary conversation.
What preceded it? The history of still life painting, decorative art traditions, the readymade, stage/prop design, pop art, the white cube, installation practice. Phil!