Shuffle.

Looking over my recent blog posts and considering these two in particular.

http://andrewburgess.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/pd-patch-variation-1/

http://andrewburgess.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/the-importance-of-words-in-relation-to-my-work/

The word Shuffle just slapped me across the face.
Excited by this word it contains everything I need it to.
Obviously it immediately makes one think of the Ipod shuffle and also the shuffle feature that is built into most multimedia players.
I want to push the idea of shuffle further and explore shuffle as a feature of our contemporary mindset. A mindset where we want everything all at once, where time, space and location can be, well ‘shuffled’. This shuffling can lead to a sense of nowhereness, it seems logical that to be everywhere, is to be nowhere. That is how I feel sometimes. Without context.
There is also the phrase ‘shuffling along’ which refers to a kind of slow methodical pace of walking, I like this a lot since walking is a big part of my creative process, lately in my efforts to generate material for my video/sound database I leave the house with my camera and go where my feet take me, arbitrarily shooting anything that I find visually pleasing along the way. I think the term ‘shuffling along’ describes the atmosphere of my work very well.
I guess I now have some ideas for a title for my installation with; Shuffle, Shuffled and Shuffling along.
My mission for the immediate future is to explore the concept of shuffle both within interface design and as an existential concept. And ideally to arrive at a situation where shuffle as a function can give depth to shuffle as a concept (and vice-versa) .

Presentation of work and ideas. Tuesday 18/01/2011

My project proposal was written in the spring of 2009.

I have been meaning to update it in accordance with my current activities.

Reading it back for the first time in a while, I was surprised that it still remains quite accurate as a survey of my underlining interests and ideas, yet the way I visualise the presentation of my work has changed.

I will begin by introducing some key discussion points that I hope will outline my conceptual motivations, and then move on to talk about the practical form of my project.

The industrial era with it’s focus on the mechanical, had the clock as it’s fundamental design principle, the post industrial ‘digital age’ has the Graphic User Interface (and the screen through which it is presented)  as it’s core points of reference.

The GUI is a means of regulating our understanding of time and space in the virtual world.

I often find myself asking the following questions;

Do I navigate the GUI or does it navigate me?

Where does one GUI stop and the next begin?

and

Just as my movements and activities within screen space are conditioned and instructed by the GUI, are my movements between screens also being conditioned and instructed somehow?

As a child I remember watching a moth flying at a light bulb, and I asked my mother why the moth does this. Her answer was that the moth flys at the light bulb because he thinks it is the moon. At the time this answer satisfied me.

Ever since Prometheus stole fire from the gods our culture has come to view illumination as synonymous with progress, empowerment and divinity.

The ‘Age of enlightenment’ sought to chase the ignorant, demonic shadows from our world.

In our era of advanced capitalism the GUI describes life as a flow of seamless experience and stimulation, which one must learn to navigate in order to exert control.

My feeling is that the GUI more than a simple design solution is an important symbol in our understanding of the world, and a principle in how we regulate our lives and organise our society (just as the clock was before it).

Fluidity, navigability, omnipresence and most importantly illumination are principles which inform our sense of order, and by which we find assurance.  Functionality is a performance that must be aesthetically acted out and ritualised by the GUI.

When this performance of functionality is interrupted, slows down or becomes dim  - then a crack appears in the veneer of our world order.

Just as functionality is a performance, dysfunctionality too can be a performance. I Like the idea of an anti-functional design gesture.

I believe amidst the cracks, glitches and dim patches of the digital age there is a potential for superstitious, unconscious and mystical ideas to take hold of us.

The final presentation of my work is going to be a multi-channel sound and video installation, within an enclosed space (suggestions of a shrine, or confessional both are possibilities).

A key strategy in the presentation of my work is to situate unrelated media next to each other within an interface. For me, the split between the media becomes a gap in meaning, and a place synonymous with oblivion and the absolute.

I will use algorithm to create a randomness in the way the sounds and videos are juxtaposed and viewed, it is through this process that I want to challenge the concept of randomness. Is reality random or is it predetermined by some destiny or grand architecture?

Having been involved with amateur video production since 1998 I have accumulated a database of footage which I am breaking apart into clips, meanwhile shooting and capturing new work, which seems to re-Imagine the original material somehow.

I find it refreshing to have overcome the traditional way that video is constructed in terms of pre-production, production and post-production.

The medium is beginning to feel less linear and more open, my creative endeavours have started to feedback into themselves and the symbols and ideas that constitute my work will hopefully start to become fractal and crystallise themselves within this process somehow.

Project proposal 1st draft.

 

Working Title

? 

Aims

I want to consider and represent ideas of embodiment and disembodiment within the relationship between the artist, the art work and her/his understanding of reality.

I want to identify ways in which interactions with the computer can consume artistic processes and create temporal/spatial dislocation and I want to consider the implications of this relative to a psychic and creative sense of wellbeing.

The ultimate objective of this work is to create a sense of unity, or at least a dialogue, between technology, humanity and the immediate and by doing so to appease an existential anxiety that stems from conflicts between these. 

I believe the realization of this could take the form of a site specific installation, that is self reflexive and contextualizes a process of ontological reciprocity between myself as the artist, the art work and our audience, and the space(s) that we occupy both virtual and physical.

I have identified two rather tenuous themes that might serve as a means of mobilizing some of these aims, one is ‘Cut and Paste’ the other is ‘Feedback’, both of these themes lend themselves well to a postmodern visual culture that is said to be incapable of referencing beyond itself and functions on the basis of signifiers pointing only to other signifiers in a process of infinite refraction.  

  I am interested in exploring the digital activity of cut and paste because of it’s essence as an action, all be it an action reduced to the most minimal form, (almost the residue of a physical action), however still an action that mediates between physical engagement and the virtual environment, it is also an action that is often repeated more than once and it can often take on a laborious feeling, it can seem like work. When repeated many times it can feel like a demeaning comparison between the efficiency of human labor compared to the efficiency of the computer processor.

Why I consider ’cut and paste’ to be potentially effective as a theme for a piece of art work is due to an understanding that any mundane task can; through a process of ritualisation, become symbolic and take on an enhanced significance, there are two performance art pieces here that are good illustrations of this, one is Maria Abravomich and her video performance piece where she ritualises the act of  brushing her hair, doing so incessantly over a long duration in a manor that is increasingly violent and painful while all the time drawing attention to ‘the gaze’ of the camera and the construct that she has designed . The other is Sandra Binion who famously turned the act of ironing into a theatre performance. 

So one aim is to explore the digital action of cut and paste and to attempt to use this theme as a container for my principal ideas which as stated are embodiment and disembodiment and the relation between the artist and the art work, a sense of ritualization might be effective within this context, so I will explore the possibilities of this also.

Another theme that seems like it could potentially serve as a container for my ideas/interests is ’feedback’, this could be sonic feedback, video feedback, the feedback of creative interplay/dialogue between the creator and her/his creation (like the feedback between my blogging of ideas and my understanding of those ideas for example), there was a phrase I used in the beginning of this essay which I will now cut and paste here ;- ‘the ontological reciprocity between myself as the artist, the art work and our audience, and the space(s) that we occupy both virtual and physical’  this could be described as an elaborate way of describing a kind of feedback between myself and the work and it’s presentation.             

So there are some reasons why I think ’feedback’ could be an effective container for my principle interests. I intend to study sonic art and the science of sound and to fully consider the potential of using sound and acoustics as a means of expressing my ideas, it is of course quite easy to emphasize a physical act which generates/triggers sound, while the contextualization of sound within a digital/virtual environment is obviously much different than with visual media as sound needs to exist in ‘real’ space/time and can not be assimilated within the virtual environment, this could be valuable or problematic to my work depending on what I am intending to convey, but I think it is defiantly a good reason to explore sound in the relationship between artwork and digital and physical location.           

 

 

Objectives

My project is grounded in academic study and I would like my final piece of work to acknowledge some of my theoretical interests which I will define first before moving on to define my more practical objectives.

I want to explore the body and its social history and to further my research in the evolution of bodily relations/representations until reaching a point where I am able to confidently contextualize the significance of computers and digital technology within this history.

I want to strengthen my understanding of psychology and to gain a stronger understanding of art and technology in relation to Freudian notions of  ‘Death Drive’ and ‘Narcissism’ and Lacan’s theories about ‘The Gaze’ and how these principles which explore anxieties about physicality can be seen as motivational forces in both art and technology.   

I want to study aesthetic theory in order to consider varied approaches to art appreciation and to consider different ideas about the significance of the fabric that embodies artwork.  

Another major academic interest is in philosophy, specifically philosophy of art and ontological and phenomenological philosophy, I want to consider art in a general way in relation to ‘the symbolic order of things’ (beings or phenomenon) of specific interest is the work of Heidegger who in ‘The essence of Art’ defines a situation in which art unveils itself within the physical space that it occupies, he describes a situation invoked by art work in which the world and the earth meet. By the world he means the world of our physical immediate existence and by the earth he means an objective totality of everything (truth?), this seems like a great theory to study since through doing so it will help me to explore my own interests of embodiment and disembodiment within the relationship between the artist and the art work, Heidegger’s theory however references acts of art appreciation, whereas I am more interested in processes of art creation, it seems however that Heidegger seems to describe in this theory a process of meditation through art, though he never defines it as such (at least not that I remember) and I suppose my studies also could be seen more as a kind of meditation, but anyway one of my objectives is to study Heidegger and to try and develop a stronger understanding of his writing. I think the study of Heidegger should automatically extend in to a study of Kant and his theories on the sublime, though I am not too familiar with Kant’s work as yet, it seems like I should explore it, and I think it should work well in conjunction with considerations about artists who have attempted to approach the Sublime; Mark Rothko, Stan Brakage, Bill Viola for example who’s work/ideas I will study simultaneously to this.          

 

My approach to my practical work at the outset of this project is to explore the potential of digital art, to experiment and through practices and processes to understand my own relationship with technology and through collaboration, discussion and observation to consider similarities and differences in the role of digital technology in my own creative practices and those of my peers. 

As mentioned I want to engage with sonic art and to explore noise and sound as artworks.

I would also like to learn how to use sensors and how to convert physical spaces and movement into 

computer data which can then be applied somehow, so I will devote time to experimenting with sensors and using programs such as Pure Data.

I would also like to develop my existing practice of experimental filmmaking and to use the digital arts course as means of enhancing this practice, and as a forum to test work, and receive ideas and criticisms.

 

Rationale

My personal approach to my work until now has been conflicted by a tendency to engage in what I am doing in a manor that is analytical and conceptually driven, to govern my creative impulses through logical restrictions, in opposition to another tendency which is to submerge myself in my work as a means of escape and to indulge my creative impulses arbitrarily in an attempt to lose myself and the pressures of my existence somehow.

I am sure this conflict is not solely a personal one and that it is a situation that most creative artists are familiar with, this relationship can be defined in many ways such as; the intellect versus the senses, the reality principle versus the pleasure principle, the mind versus the soul or the spirit?.

I believe my focus on embodiment and disembodiment is the means trying to explore or appease this conflict somehow.

There is also a kind of strategic idea behind my approaching digital art and the conflict between virtual location and physical location as a means of engaging/representing these ideas, I have a feeling that the way people relate to digital technology might be changing or is due to change (this argument is entirely speculative, and is based more on the way I feel and an assumption that others might feel the same way) however it seems logical that the significance of digital technology and computing within our cultural has to an extent been informed by a sense of wonder, a signal towards a future of infinite possibilities, in short something that represents hope or progress and inspires the imagination. My feeling is that as people are becoming more familiar with digital technology and there is a new generation emerging that were born into a ‘digital age’ the way that we relate to computers is changing and the role of technology is changing, I feel an increasing sense of mundane about digital technology, the sense of novelty has worn off.

However I believe that the demise of technology’s ability to inspire leaves a vacant space in the imagination, in popular culture and in myself. I think it is easy to understand theories about ‘Post human’ in light of the vacation of inspiration in the way that culture approaches technology,  what was once an almost mystical bridge between the future and the present and a container of mystery and possibility, is now just a box full of circuits, micro chips and processors I think the experience of this is what informs anxieties of  Post humanism,  and of the vacancy of soul from the human in a technological age.

My work is then a strategic aim to engage and to seek other ways of filling this vacancy, though not implicitly my ideas do have an inclination towards mysticism and spirituality, I do not really want to instigate what could become an extremely self-indulgent, idealistic engagement with these ideas, however I consider a flavor or an atmosphere of  mysticism, spirituality or occult within my work might satisfy a need for escapist, imaginative, stimulation, a need that the ideal of digital technology is perhaps failing to fulfil as it used to. 

My means of achieving this is to focus on philosophical and conceptual ideas and to push these ideas to their limits, to focus on the questions that science and philosophy have never managed to resolve.

 

Outcomes

I would to like to finish this M.A with a strong understanding of all of the areas I am exploring, I would like to be able to speak and write confidently about these ideas and how my work relates to them. I would like to reach a point where after questioning and challenging the role of technology within my creative processes I am able to feel less suspicious about its presence, to overcome my technophobic tendencies. Through experimentation I would like to design a work ethic or a methodology that will help me to work independently and act as a foundation upon which to develop my work/ideas in the future, and to define some strategic goals that will enable me to realize a future in academic study and art practice

 

Methodologies

I do not have a methodology worked out yet, just a few strategies.

The idea of reflexivity and work that exposes it’s own developmental processes is important to me and so in many ways what I am essentially trying to do is discover a methodology that enables me to contextualize my ideas and my artistic ambitions through an artistic process rather than through a preconceived product or a singular statement, my strategy is to experiment and to experiment in an open way so as to expose failures and successes simultaneously in a fashion that promotes empathy and understanding and defines my own subjective position. I believe in the symbolic significance of actions of artistic creativity and my focus is on artistic processes rather than the art product.

What I am essentially looking for above all else is a methodology. 

My strategy is to experiment and explore my own situation within an MA Digital arts Course, and when possible to engage collaboratively with other students and to act upon impulses, suggestions, instructions, and opportunities when ever possible, and then to attempt to locate these experiences within my own theoretical framework.