Deleuze's concept of becoming is useful because it describes thing not in a fixed state but as constantly changing. Deleuzes uses an example from Alice in Wonderland, to say Alice becomes bigger is to say that while Alice is bigger than she once was, but is smaller than she may become in the future. Thus Alice paradoxically alway both bigger and smaller at the same time. In terms of sculpture the sense of becoming may be related to a sense of provisionality and casualness
Clip form Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951)
ROBERT THERRIEN, No Title (folding table and chairs, dark brown), 2008 Painted metal and fabric
Urs Fischer's works are often exhibited in a state of becoming, in the case of these large candle works, one might say that they are becoming melted, or becoming liquid, the image is disolved as the material asserts itself:
Becoming can be seen as a conceptual tool that allows us to talk about transformations that are ongoing, change that will continue to change.
2 Deleuze and Guattari, Becoming Animal
Deleuze on Becoming Animal:
"The deformations which bodies undergo are also the animal features of the head. There is in no way a correspondence between animal forms and forms of the face. In fact, the face has lost its form in the process of being subjected to operations of cleaning and brushing which disorganize it and make a head burgeon in its place. And the marks or features of animality are moreover not animal forms, but rather spirits which haunt the cleaned parts, which draw out the head, individualizing and qualifying the head without a face. As procedures used by Bacon, cleaning and features here assume a specific meaning. What happens is that the man's head is replaced by an animal; but this is not the animal as form, it is the animal as outline, for example the trembling outline of a bird which spirals over the cleaned area, while the simulacra of face portraits, beside it, serve only as 'witness' (as in the 1976 triptych). What happens is that an animal, a real dog for example, is outlined as the shadow of its master; or conversely the shadow of the man assumes an autonomous and unspecified animal existence. The shadow escapes from the body like an animal to which we give shelter. Instead of formal correspondences, what Bacon's painting constitutes is azone of the indiscernible, of the undecidable, between man and animal. Man becomes animal, but he does not become so without the animal simultaneously becoming spirit, the spirit of man, the physical spirit of man presented in the mirror as Eumenides or fate. This is never a combination of forms, it is rather a common fact: the common fact of man and animal. To the point that Bacon's most isolated Figure is to begin with a coupled figure, man coupled with his animal in an underlying act of bullfighting."
from:
Deleuze, G. (1981). The Body, the Meat and the Spirit: Becoming Animal. The Artist's Body. T. Warr. London, Phaidon.
1 Systems and singularities: One of things I like about minimalism, conceptualism and the movements that follow them is the tendency to make work according to a strict system, either a theoretical/linguistic system or a mathematical system. Here is a collection of material that use systems in one way or another. as usual this is not a comprehensive survey, just a few of my favorites.
Mel Bochner Measurement: Room, 1969
tape and vinyl on wall / size determined by installation
Mel Bochner, Measurement: Plant, 1969
tape and vinyl on wall, live plant / size determined by installation
Mel Bochner Theory of Painting, 1970
blue spray paint on newspaper on floor, vinyl letters on wall / size determined by installation
Mel Bochner, Meditation on the Theorem of Pythagoras, 1972
hazelnuts on floor / size determined by installation
Mel Bochner, Obsolete, 2007
ink on paper / 11 x 8.5 inches
Eva Hesse, Schema, 1967
Several - Eva Hesse, 1965
Tony Smith, Smoke 1967
Tony Smith 1972 'Gracehoper', Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Sol Lewitt
Sol Lewitt
Sentences on Conceptual Art
by Sol Lewitt
Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
Formal art is essentially rational.
Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they
connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this
tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant
to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
The concept and idea are different. The former implies a
general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the
concept.
Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development
that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may
set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be
completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the
artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it
may never leave the artist's mind.
The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist
may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to
physical reality, equally.
If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
One usually understands the art of the past by applying the
convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the
artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought
by that misconstrual.
Perception is subjective.
The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind
and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly.
There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be
used as ideas for new works.
The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and
changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the
material.
Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
First published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969
Related to this idea of a generative system is Deleuze's concept of the singularity. In physics a singularity might be described as a point of infinite density like the universe shortly after the big bang. Manuel Delanda, somewhere in the video lecture below describes Deleuze the singularity is a generative essence, point which expands according to geometric system, like a blowing a bubble, or the rectilinear grwoth of salt crystals.
A reasonably clear description of the Deleuzian singularity is here:
Entropy is the flip side of the coin for systems based art, just as the
systems describes how things are built up, entropy is the of describing
the way that things break down.
Quoting wikipedia is bad, but that's what you get, what with today with today's broken down education system, (see? entropy), but here is a more technical description of entropy:
"Entropy is the thermodynamic property toward equilibrium/average/homogenization/dissipation: hotter, more dynamic areas of a system lose heat/energy while cooler areas (e.g., space) get warmer / gain energy; molecules of a solvent or gas tend to evenly distribute; material objects wear out; organisms die; the universe
is cooling down. Entropy, like time, runs in one direction only (it is
not a reversible process). One can measure the entropy of a system to
determine the energy not available for work in a thermodynamic process,
such as energy conversion, engines, or machines. Such processes and
devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical
maximum efficiency when converting energy to work. During this work,
entropy accumulates in the system, which then dissipates in the form of waste heat."
The most classic example of an artist using entropy as a subject and as a machine to produce work is Robert Smithson. Smithson's work can be read as a critique of the purism of someone like Sol Lewit's work, complaining that "Abstraction rules in a void, pretending to be free of time." Let's imagine what Sol Lewit's work would look like after it has been left to nature, maybe is is rusted or has fallen apart, maybe it is covered in vines. Smithson would like that.
Here is a paragraph:
On Site #4, 1973. This interview took place about two months before
Smithson's death. Although published posthumously, Smithson and Sky
completed the editing of the text together and Smithson provided all the
illustrations.
ROBERT SMITHSON: O.K. we'll begin with entropy. That's a
subject that's preoccupied me for some time. On the whole I would say
entropy contradicts the usual notion of a mechanistic world view. In
other words it's a condition that's irreversible, it's condition that's
moving towards a gradual equilibrium and it's suggested in many ways.
Perhaps a nice succinct definition of entropy would be Humpty Dumpty.
Like Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all
the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back
together again. There is a tendency to treat closed systems in such a
way. One might even say that the current Watergate situation is an
example of entropy. You have a closed system which eventually
deteriorates and starts to break apart and there's no way that you can
really piece it back together again. Another example might be the
shattering of Marcel Duchamp Glass, and his attempt to put all the
pieces back together again attempting to overcome entropy. Buckminister
Fuller also has a notion of entropy as a kind of devil that he must
fight against and recycle. Norbert Weiner in The Human Use of Human
Beings also postulates that entropy is a devil, but unlike the Christian
devil which is simply a rational devil with a very simple morality of
good and bad, the entropic devil is more Manichean in that you really
can't tell the good from the bad, there's no clear cut distinction. And I
think at one point Norbert Weiner also refers to modern art as one
Niagara of entropy. In information theory you have another kind of
entropy. The more information you have the higher degree of entropy, so
that one piece of information tends to cancel out the other. The
economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen has gone so far as to say that the
second law of thermodynamics is not only a physical law but linked to
economics. He says Sadi Carnot could be called an econometrican. Pure
science, like pure art tends to view abstraction as independent of
nature, there's no accounting for change or the temporality of the
mundane world.
Abstraction rules in a void, pretending to be free of time.
Sanibel Island Florida
1969
sand and shells
three mirrors, ea 36" x 36"
Some other artists who make work about entropy or using entropic processes
Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis, latex floor painting, Rhode Island, 1969
Lynda Benglis at the New Museum, New York, 2011
Robert Morris: Untitled, 1968-1969, Installation, 200 Teile, Filz, Kupfer, Gummi, Zink, Nickel, Aluminium, Korten- und Edelstahl
newyorkisdead.biz presents: Depreciation and Devastationfeaturing Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Prince, Piotr Uklanski, Charles Henri Ford, Elizabeth Peyton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tony Smith, Andy Warhol, Sarah Lucas
Karla Black Installation view: Inverleith House, 2009 ‘Acceptance Changes Nothing' (detail), 2009
Sam Durant, Abandoned House # 1, 1994
Foam core, cardboard, Plexiglass, tape, spray enamel, wood, and metal; 30" x 30.25" x 5"
Sam Durant, Abandoned House # 4, 1994
Foam core, cardboard, Plexiglass, tape, spray enamel, wood, and metal; 25.5" x 41" x 4.5"
Sam Durant Quaternary Field / Associative Diagram, 1998
Graphite on paper; 22" x 29.5"
Sam Durant, Partially Buried 1960s/70s Dystopia Revealed (Mick Jagger at Altamont) & Utopia Reflected (Wavy Gravy at Woodstock), 1998; Into the Black, 1999
Mirror, dirt, audio system; Dimensions vary and Mirror, felt; 34” x 240” x 8”
We are going to step back from looking at artworks as such and spend some time thinking more about the concept of transformation.
Today we are looking at evolution, which should be an import topic to understand as an artist or designer, because evolution is a process that describes not just the development of plants and animals but also ideas and objects and social functions. Evolution relates to concepts of iteration (series of new versions of things) and innovation, which turns up in the excellent and good sections of the conceptual box of the marking rubric, so whatever innovation is, might be a good idea to figure out.
standard evolution memes
caturday meme, from the encyclopedia dramatica
Susan Blackmore on Memes and Temes, via TED she says something like: "In any system where reproduction is hereditary and has selection based on fitness for purpose design must emerge spontaneously"
Manuel Delanda, Deleuze and the Evolutionary Algorithm in Architecture
Innovation is closely linked to evolution. When the staff look at student work in presentations often what we are looking for is iteration, that is if you think about how everything that you make is a version of something that could be made slightly differently an infinite number of times. Innovation are those slight changes that make a difference to what you have been doing, the change that makes something good. It is impossible to plan to innovate, rather it is a process of iteration that one must engage in, a process of iterating and thinking with an open mind Often when I am in my studio, one of the things I look for when making a decision is whether or not it makes me laugh, if it does there might be something innovative. Similarly when someone makes important work for the first time, often we feel quite appalled, often the response is "is this some sort of joke?" or "has it come to this?" Paolo Virno might say that this is because the logic of innovation is similar to the logic of the joke, and that the what the joke does is that it makes the rules and limits of a given situation apparent by showing how an example might break the rules and not break the rules at the same time, thus in effect changing them forever. This might be said of Duchamp's readymades
Wit and innovation
Paolo Virno
The
human animal is capable of changing forms of life and diverting from
consolidated habits and rules. We would go as far as to say that the
human animal is ‘creative', were this term not so equivocal. Put in this
way, this is an indubitable observation, but far from a happy
conclusion, it prompts all sorts of questions and doubts. Which elements
of praxis and discourse give rise to unpredicted outcomes? How is a
state of equilibrium broken? And finally, what makes an action
innovative? The tried and tested way of settling the discussion whilst
appearing to fully engage with it demands that the term ‘creativity' is
employed in such broad terms that it becomes coextensive with ‘human
nature'. Thus we rapidly come to several reassuring tautologies: the
human animal is supposedly capable of innovation because it enjoys the
gift of verbal language, because it does not inhabit an invariable and
delimited environment, or because it is historical; in short, the human
animal can innovate because it is … a human animal. Applause and the
curtain falls. This tautology eludes the most interesting and awkward
issue: that transformative action is intermittent, rare even.
To try to explain it by appealing to distinct features of our species is
to bark up the wrong tree: these features are equally present when
experience is uniform and repetitive. According to Noam Chomsky, our
language is ‘constantly innovative' because it is independent from
‘external stimuli or inner states' (and for other reasons that I won't
recount here) (Chomsky 1988: 6-7, 113-46). So far so good; however, why
does this unremitting independence only occasionally give rise to
unusual and unexpected verbal performances? It is no surprise that,
having attributed it to language in general, that is, to human nature,
Chomsky goes on to conclude that creativity is an unfathomable mystery.
Today we shift from looking at objects that have been transformed to objects that that transform the space that surrounds them, including the space of the viewer. These are sculptures that create spaces, we call this space narrative space.
Cady Noland Misc.Spill, 1990
"Cady Noland
Misc. Spill
1990
Cady Noland’s work addresses American mythologies, considering the construction of history and identity coming out of consumer culture and mass media. Noland’s images, taken from tabloids, newspapers, and stock-photo sources, are combined with an array of objects to focus on those moments when a disastrous event becomes a compelling spectacle, when private space is rendered public, when counterculture collides with the mainstream, and when people or objects are transformed into media icons. Misc. Spill is composed of such detritus as an automobile bumper, aluminum awning frames, an Ikea shopping cart, and an American flag—surrounded by metal barricades, fences, pipes, and tread plates that confront and alter the museum’s architecture with vernacular materials of institutional control. Considered together, Noland’s ensemble forms an austere eerie landscape of American life." http://www.moca.org/pc/viewArtWork.php?id=50
Jason Dodge, (the title of the work is the absence of acknowledging the hole, as opposed to a title). Also visible in the image are:You always Move in Reverse, 2005;North, 2007; andWind Made from Things that are Not the Wind.
Thomas Hirschhorn, "Théâtre Précaire 2", 2010, Les Ateliers de Rennes-Biennale d'Art contemporain, Rennes, France, 2010
