Essay #4: Defending Amateurs & Medium is the Massage

Marshall Mcluhan’s “The Medium is the Massage” repeatedly suggests that people generalize incoming perceptual information by a means of identifying data through preconceived notions. These notions are founded in the belief that one’s ability to compartmentalize information is due to the medium through which one intially recieves or interacts with that specific physical and/or psychic information. I believe that this is a process by which, yes, the mass due interpret data – so is it completely final to assume that one cannot separate himself from the said perceptual process and learn to achieve living amid a scenario in which he or she can operate sincerely (blind to all preconceptions brought about by the language of their medium)? This is a question which MUST be addressed in order for an individual to realize truth in their artistic design.
Specifically, the Mcluhan uses the example of the relationship between a child and the alphabet to support the idea of the process as a means of comprehension. He asserts, “Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and at automatically in certain ways.” There is a sense that this predisposition, through a said learned process, invites one to unknowingly dismiss details in information by merely allowing it to be identified by casting it into whatever categories correspond to a ‘word’. This is clearly a handicap when considering a creative process for visual and aural art. Stan Brakhage wrote, in “Metaphors on Vision”:
Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass, to the crawling baby unaware of “Green”?
Brakhage assumes the same philosophical viewpoint as Mcluhan here. The question of “words” acting as an insufficient substitute for pure and simple perception is one that invites a creator to consider a palate complete and uninhibited. It has occurred to me that in terms of industrial and/or commercial design, however, it is important for the creator to consider a means by which will not bear so much subtlety that it can not be verified for its worth by a consumer market. Perhaps this parallels the approach the Eames’ took when applying minimalism as a means for universal function and a simple, truthful design language.
Mcluhan’s study for the application for electric information as a pool of individualism and an overall creative force has maintained immense relevance since its conception. For artists, technology is not merely a tool anymore but has claimed its own independence in his or her creative discourse and form. Artists deliberate with their tools in order to prepare results. For instance, many sound artists use the limitations of their instruments’ designs as an esthetic advantage, and make use of their limitations by exploiting them. Take the prepared pianos of John Cage for instance. Cage weighted the strings inside the box so that they could not resonate, creating an entirely new instrument altogether…thus characterized by clunks and bangs, instead of resonated tones.

more stockhausen for thought

here's a piece I just found accidentally, on youtube.... of something inspired by gesang der jünglinge by stockhausen. it is pretty intense and wonderfully strange. please enjoy:

I've been thinking more and more about sound design by way of separating lots of channels into a space (having lots of speakers scattered all with different sounds). Today I saw a really simple demonstration of building a speaker out of tin foil and an RCA cable on the internet. I wish tin foil was less expensive, so I could build a towering monster with a mean face and scary noises to boot. ...maybe then I could get that damned stray cat to stop peering in at me from my windowsill. It really creeps me out.

Stockhausen is the man, when it comes to designing sound for multichannel systems. You probably don't have 12 speakers hooked up to your computer, but at least tis might give some sense of his style:

Trash Art

Cartune Xprez

I discovered a fellow weirdo named Bruce Bickford recently on the internet. He made lots of psychedelic meticulous brainy animations to Frank Zappa songs long go, and a clip found it's way in to my line of sight on youtube recently. I really wanted to post his work to spread the joy.

brucebickford.com

In looking into Bickford's new work, I found that there is this art collective that shows films on the road called cartunexprez (cartunexprez.com). They are going to be in town presenting a band called Hooliganship @ Holocene in November. I would check out a clip of them online. Hooliganship is comprised of two members who have choreographed dance and composed music to perform alongside animations in a such a way that the band become characters in a narrative (as far as I can tell). Zany...

Response #1 Week #1

Bryson Hansen

Artd 410 Contemporary Design

Friday Oct. 3 2008

Response #1 Week #1

 

I found something particularly interesting about a note made in Seeing Is Forgetting. On page 127, the author relates Irwin’s notes about some of his conceptions regarding perception and art. Irwin explains that if one is to appraoch “art” with the attitude that it “is” art regardless of his or her experience with it, then that mental framing is what determines art. In addition, Irwin supports that many artists approach their work wearing the idea that they are “interpreters” for their own novel insights to be extended toward the layman, and that Irwin sought to design a situation in which the experience that a participant has with a work of art is the meaningful part (not something buried beneath). Although I believe that art as a form of expression bears its own weight and significance, I can see Irwin’s point. How is an artist suppose to communicate a “feeling” without attempting to invite the audience to take part in it? I feel that it is not a stretch to say that this was Marcel Duchamp’s great point! Duchamp set out to use found objects to explain that everyday objects and experience are each of their own unique design and should therefor not be considered any more or less an artistic “thing”. Art can be very much about an experiential moment or memory for the audience, not just a moment of realization. One example of a contemporary sound artist who, I feel, has achieved creating works that bear this frame of mind is Maryanne Amacher’s “Sound Characters (making the third ear)”. Maryanne Amacher uses psychoacoustic sound design techniques to achieve a perceptual “change” in her audience. In “Sound Characters”, Amacher uses a variance on frequencies, in a setting that involves carefully placed speakers and environment, to offer her audience a moment in which they can percieve a tone coming literally from between their own ears. The frequencies pulse back and forth between the ears to create an individualized tone, seemingly created by the audience member alone. The meaning behind all of this is that the ultimate moment in which the piece becomes realized can only occur with the participation and perception of the audience.

 

I feel that the 9 Evenings project is one that demonstrates an attitude not just in an experimentation of instruments and their related functions, but also in an experimentation of the the artist as an “author”. What determines whether the artist is in control of his or her final product? Many of the individual pieces made throughout the 9 Evenings project raise this question by allowing participants’ performances to articulate the original authors’ ideas. One example of this is with John Cage’s Variations VII. In this piece, Cage arranges a room in which a large number of different noise makers are controlled by a number of people. This goes on in an improvisation for at least eightyfive minutes. It is interesting not only to consider the bridge that was made from artists’ designs for these textural sounds and their correlating engineers’ imaginative construction, but also Cage’s choice to render all of the sounds without preconception. Cage used no prerecorded sounds or music, instead he suggested that the performance of his contemporaries would dictate the actual personality and character of the aural material.

Here is a link to some info about Maryanne Amacher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryanne_Amacher

Blog #2

Here is a work by Frank Stella titled "Flin Flon"-from 1970. Frank Stella is relevant to printmaking and design in regards to the 60's and forward.

37841.JPG

I do not know that Stella and Rauschenberg are necessarily connected, but I do know that some of their work gets mentioned together at times. Also, they both featured significant collaborations with Merce Cunningham (an experimental performance artist/dancer). I suppose maybe that was the connection I made in thinking I should mention any of this...

Here is an example of Stella's more recent work:

Frank Stella, detail, "Severinda," mixed media on Fiberglas, 1995

It is easy to see how much his work has evolved throughout time. I find it pretty amazing.

Blog #1

I have never had a blog until this moment. I'm not exactly sure what we're all blogging about yet, but here's a link to some Rauschenberg that I thought might be interesting for the class:

This is an excerpt from Linoleum, which was made 1967.

http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/aspen/qt/rauschenberg.mov