Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Aesthetics
Pointing to:
The Conceptual Sublime
What do we learn from paradoxes? That being is far more complex than our minds can fathom. That our
current mode of thinking, despite following logical principles, has lead us to a point at which we must
decide; either turn around or adapt our thinking. When counter-intuitive conclusions present
themselves as facts we are forced to scale up our framework. If we were using the individual as the
standard of measure we now use culture, if we were using culture we now use the cosmos, if we were
using the cosmos we now use the multiverse and so on. If we trust in infinity we will always be able to
find resolutions to paradoxes or realize that an insoluble paradox points back to our conceptual
limits. These protrusions that we call paradoxes allow us to glimpse a reality beyond our limits.
Irony
Irony is another protrusion into our realities that forces us to reconsider our preconceived notions.
As Donna Haraway writes in A Cyborg Manifesto, “Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve
into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together
because both or all are necessary and true.” The multiplicity is ironic. If a contradiction exists it is
not necessarily ironic, it could simply be an error in ones ability to follow logical steps. However, it
could also be that we are examining a multi-system or meta-system from within the limits of a discourse
which does not allow for multirealism.
Anti-essentialism
Being is large enough and complex enough to contain these contradictions, and for multiple and
disparate realities to exist simultaneously. Being lacks an essence. Realizing that everything that
exists is a part of Being does not help us to understand Being as a whole. This is why Being is a
proper class, an aggregate. By saying that an object has the quality of being tells us almost nothing
about it. We can not adequately define Being, it has the characteristics we ascribe to it but it is not
those characteristics alone.
Nonlocalizability
As a conceptual artist I can say that a particular concept is the most important aspect of a work and
all other attributes of that piece are inessential. Yet, ironically, what is most important to that piece,
the concept, the piece itself will never be, just as a particular triangle will never be the concept
“triangle”. We can say that everything that exists is part of being but we can never say what we find is
Being. The deep irony for conceptual artists is that which we care most about we will never create, or
even fully know. Instead we create inexact signs and symbols pointing to an unpresentable idea. Being
is even more elusive and unpresentable then concepts. We can use reason to bring us to the edge of
human knowledge, and even that only gives us an infinitesimal view into Being. Where then do we find
hope of knowledge beyond our limits? Where reason is left Behind and we approach the mystical.
Where presenting the unpresentable is possible.
Aggregate, nonlocalizeable and using a process of Negative Dialectics to emphasize
nonlocalizeability
joseph kosuth
one and three chairs
1965
Irony, Transcoding
rene magritte
the treachery of images
1928-29
Framing: The Masking of Enantiodromia
Collapsing the wave form
The whole of Being is repressed through Semiosis. As Eco writes “A sign is something that
can be used to tell a lie.” Repression is the way in which worlds lie about Being. Because
most semiotic systems and worlds repress enantiodromia we rarely encounter the
multiplicity of Being. We have access only to small fragments of the whole. If we are capable
of conceiving of multiplicity and multirealism we are no longer in a world but a metaworld.
Coding
Contemplating paradoxes is one way in which we can have a direct experience with the
multiplicity. Paradoxes and irony call into question the semiotic structures we are using and
how they create our current reality. Semiosis is sign manipulation, which can also be
thought of as information manipulation, coding and recoding. Given particular coding
schemas, or languages, certain paradoxes will arise and new coding schemas, while resolving
others, will result in new paradoxes. The whole of being is repressed by semiosis as pieces
of it show through the template. Per Wittgenstein, “The limits of my language mean the limits
of my world.” Paradoxes are so powerful because they force us to acknowledge the limits of
our language, and our world, and give us incentive to create new language and new worlds.
Fluidity
Our world being created by language, and the ability to create new language, allows for an
incredible amount of fluidity in our ability to evolve, mutate and transform. All of the
constructs that we have been told are absolute are not. Simply by recoding we’ll find
infinite resolutions to paradoxes. Information itself is essential, yet, Information as
information tells us so little about instantiations of information. The fungibility of codes is
endless. Two simple coding schemas can result in the same information, or string of bits,
being presented in disparate forms. Two things that appear different physically could easily
have the same informational pattern; likewise two things that appear the same could have
different informational patterns. Information can be X and not X depending on how it is
interpreted. The power of the only essential quality of Being being information is the ability
this allows for endless transformation. We are shaped by culture and we have the power to
shape culture. We can reexamine and recode the mundane, the conventional, the known, and
discover the seminal, the Sublime, the Other, the unknown.
Framing (the Null Set)
hans haacke
Fluidity, X and Not X
Joseph Kosuth
Zero and Not
1985-86
In this installation Kosuth partially erased texts by Freud, remaining only
somewhat readable. It becomes both an affirmation of Freud’s work as well
as a rejection.
Anticommunication: A Protrusion from
the Unmapped
In communicating the unknown one is forced into the bizarre mode of anticommunication.
Herbert Brün defines this as “a relation between persons and things which emerges and is
maintained through messages requiring and permitting not yet available encoding and
decoding systems or mechanisms.” When a message is conveyed in a communicative manner,
using the “convenience of recognition,” the informational content in the message begins to
decay so that eventually cliches contain almost no information at all. Anticommunication,
on the other hand, retards the decay by making non-trivial, non-status quo connections.
Andy Warhol
Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times
1963
Différance: The Mutability of Significance
A frame is able to be shifted infinitely to present various aspects of Being and anticommunication
acts as a guide of where to shift the template next. Différance denotes the infinite process of
readjustment between framing and anticommunication. Terms can be redefined, maps redrawn, and
information recoded. Différance attests to the incompleteness and relativity of codes. When we try
to approach the meaning of particular words it is both deferred to other words and definitions
and is always different then the words and definitions themselves. Contrasts and binary opposites
are constructed by language with no absolute foundations. When we come to this realization
distinctions slip and deliquesce.
Transformation
The opposition between man and machine is becoming an ever blurrier and indistinct relationship
and is a relationship of the utmost importance for contemporary artists. Depending on our frame
of reference, we can describe humans, as Ludwig von Bertalanffy did, as both a robot: “a closed
system running on a simple algorithm” and an organic individual: “an open system in the process of
growth and change by way of socio-environmental feedback.” Haraway describes this blurring as a
Leaky Distinction and says “There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal
knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic.” When both can be described as code
many of the previous distinctions begin to fade. The transformation that man is currently
undergoing is not pretty, in fact it is allowing us a direct experience with the sublime. Our
categories, systems of thought and identities are being destroyed by the synthesis of man and
machine. This destruction comes in the form of overstimulation, noise pollution, onslaughts of
imagery and a plethora of new connections in the network, of which we will never keep up with or
understand.
Contextual Meaning
marcel duchamp
fountain
1917
Cyborg Art
Mechanical Destruction
Enfolding: A Labyrinth with Anomalous Fragments
As networks expand and intensify our limits are pushed. We begin to get a sense of Being
as such. As Bataille wrote “anticommunication starts from an extreme complexity and
presents the tip of the constellation to us, which, upon further investigation becomes the
labyrinth where what had suddenly come forward strangely looses its way.” Confusion,
overstimulation, awe and a feeling of humility are all signs that we are accessing the
Sublime. By modeling after rhizomatic structures we can generate and contribute to
networks of greater complexity.
Transcendence
It is time for us to present the unpresentable, know the unknowable and access
information that our systems of thought, neural networks and senses are unprepared for.
As Wittgenstein said, there are things that cannot be said and things that cannot be
known. However, there is also the possibility of showing or pointing to that which cannot
be said or known. God is the ultimate unknowable, which we can never hope to know. Below
God there are infinite unknowns, most of which would destroy us and others that are still
far too complex for our systems to grapple with. Regardless, unknowns that are not
meant for us should be the focus of our attention. By transcending the limits of human
faculties and accessing the Sublime we will eventually go deeper into the unknown and be
presented with what was previously unpresentable.
The Map begins to Approximate the Territory it charts.
Now, with new media objects the map is beginning to exceed the territory.
Victor Burgin
Photopath
1967
As the map (or code) increases so does the complexity
Sol LeWitt
Wall Drawing # 305, 1977
The location of one hundred random
specific points. (The locations are
determined by the drafters.)
Robert Morris
Card File, 1962
each card lists the operations involved in the construction of the card file.
Ex. “Considerations, Decisions, Delays, Interruptions, locations, materials, Mistakes”
Diagram of My Philosophy
Aesthetics
Overview
My work is an accolade to the unknowable, unpresentable, inconceivable and the sublime.
As a conceptual artist my work begins with an idea or question. I am most drawn to
concepts that are infused with an unusual dynamism and that, upon further examination,
open out into a labyrinthian structure. These concepts present themselves as paradoxes,
anomalies, glitches. It is not just that these concepts appear other-worldly, they are
protrusions from other systems of thought, levels of greater complexity and other
worlds of discourse.
There are a number of ways that I point out the Sublime, or what is beyond the known and
sensed, in my work. I do so by pointing to two different aspects of the sublime, the
Conceptual Sublime and the perceptual sublime. Of course these two categories can leak
and we are confronted with conceptualized perceptions or perceived concepts. When
approaching the sublime it is difficult to understand, both through reason and our
senses. By investigating the Sublime through various channels my hope is that I will some
day be able to transport people there instantly and we will continue, in our futile but
inexorable ways, to piece together this divine puzzle.
Conceptual Sublime
Experimental artists, and those working at the edge of any field, get to be explorers,
discovering new language and shifting the template of the current épistémè. In doing so, new
modes of thinking are allowed. There are a number of ways in which the Conceptual Sublime is
currently being addressed including: Leaky Distinctions, Meta-Systems Art, Remapping or
Transcoding and Words as Image, Image as Words.
Leaky Distinctions
Of the utmost importance for contemporary artists is the breaking down of old distinctions,
guided by postmodern and post-structuralist philosophy. I see my work as being aligned with
this project, blurring the lines between order/chaos, micro/macro, systemic/antisystemic,
scale invariance/emergence, difference/repetition, inside/outside, form/formlessness, opacity/
transparency and man/machine. I hope to communicate through my work that complexity lies in
ambiguity and the blurring of binary opposites, leaky distinctions. Something pushed to its
limits becomes its opposite. By neatly quarantining concepts as binary opposites we are
forced to repress a higher level of complexity. By dispelling this repression, even if it is just
a matter of shifting the template, we allow for new forms of complexity to emerge.
john baldessari
throwing four balls in the air to get a square
(best of 36 tries)
1974
Meta-Systems Art, Using ITERATIVE PROCESSES
By using Leaky Distinctions paradoxes abound. If what was something’s opposite in one
system can be reframed as a part of the initial element in another system, what results
are we faced with? By further examination we discover one’s opposite is always already a
part of them. What we at first glance deem as chaotic may later be deemed as the
creation of a new order or what allowed the conditions for a new order to arise. From
pathologies and glitches we find new systems, new thought processes, new networks,
new worlds. By translating, recoding, reframing some things are lost but new things are
gained. Through a process of negative dialectics we gain a bigger picture of pure being.
By using old source material in new ways, painting over old paintings, and continuously
addressing the same ideas and themes in various pieces I am employing a method of coding
and transcoding.
Both artists and writers are employing signs in a process of world making. What happens
when these processes overlap? Why do icon painters describe what they do as writing
icons? Is it possible for artists to act as writers?
Reuse of source material
Strands, 2006
Words as Image
roman opalka
1-infinity Series
218303-252314 description of the world
1967
Perceptual Sublime
Our Sensory experiences can help us access the sublime as well. By pushing our senses to their
limits, seeing, hearing, feeling at the limits of sensation and perception we experience other states
of being. Through contemplation of the electromagnetic spectrum we can hope to see ultraviolet
light just as bees do. The longer we investigate noise, pure color, light and nonsense the more
patterns and sense we find. We must commit to nonsense, both conceptually and perceptually,
before we can find sense. The Perceptual Sublime can also be addressed in various ways, including:
Glitch, Entanglement or the Contemporary Icon.
Glitch
Human faculties are not adapted to experience certain levels of information. Our minds generally
deal with this by filtering out what is deemed unnecessary. However, what if we present the mind
with only unnecessary information? Eventually we can tune our minds to consciously experience
larger amounts of information. New technology plays a large role in this endeavor.
Entanglement
Once we have tuned our minds to handle larger amounts of information we will begin to be able to
hold multiple codings of that information in our minds at the same time. Work that presents us
with Simultaneity gives us a sneak preview of this ability. We can examine the past, present and
future at the same moment, we have access to the singularity. Synesthesia also falls under the
heading of entanglement. When the very senses that we use to perceive the world become tangled
we have access to new coding schemas of information. Literally, perceptual entanglement implies a
tangling and confusion of our perceptions. Altered perceptions, however they are achieved, result
in new experiences of old information and help us to have a more direct experience of the
mutability of meaning and interpretations. We may find ourselves responding to entanglement with
confusion, disorientation, de-familiarization and paranoia. All of these are strong indications that
we are approaching the sublime.
RYOJI IKEDA
DATA.TRON, PART OF DATAMATICS SERIES, 2005-
Questions:
Danto:
“Without theory, who could see a blank canvas, a square lead plate, a
tilted beam, some dropped rope, as works of art?...Perhaps the same
question was being raised all across the face of the art world but for
me it became conspicuous at last in that show of Andy Warhol at the
Stable Gallery in 1964, when the Brillo box asked, in effect, why it was
art when something just like it was not. And with this, it seemed to me,
the history of art attained the point where it had to turn into its own
philosophy. It had gone, as art, as far as it could go. In turning into
philosophy, art had come to an end. From now on progress could only be
enacted on a level of abstract self-consciousness of the kind which
philosophy alone must consist in. If artists wished to participate in this
progress, the would have to undertake a study very different from what
the art schools could prepare them for. They would have to become
philosophers.”