curt cloninger
Since the beginning
Works in Canton, North Carolina United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
BIO
Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and Associate Professor of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. His art work has been featured in the New York Times and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Granoff Center for The Creative Arts (Brown University), Digital Art Museum [DAM] (Berlin), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and the internet. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including commissions for the creation of new artwork from the National Endowment for the Arts (via Turbulence.org) and Austin Peay State University's Terminal Award.

Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
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DISCUSSION

Re: Re: considering abstraction in digital art?


Hi Nad,

I don't think he's speaking philosophically. He's speaking in terms of abstract forms vs. figurative forms. If you zoom in on a human form, eventually you get to a scale that makes that form abstract. If you zoom out from a human form, the same thing happens. Think of the Eames powers of 10 movie.

http://www.powersof10.com/

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

curt

+++++

@Curt

>I've been fascinated by the idea that there is really no distinction -- >it's just a question of scale. (matthew ritchie)

??????? this makes no sense to me. What do you think
how he meant that?
How do you apply that for example if you do
the abstraction from "chair" (meaning the actual thing*)
to "chair" (meaning the abstraction as a "thing which
can be used for sitting")??

(*like chair as in a chinese restaurant for eating hot and
sour soup :-))

DISCUSSION

Re: considering abstraction in digital art?


Hi Andre,

I've been reading Paul Klee a lot lately, and I like his take on abstraction. His answer might be "something like both a and b, with certain caveats." If there is a spiritual or a transcendental, we are not going to re-present it simply by drawing the surface of objects with illusionary renaissance perspective. So to get at the life/history/essence of an object, we have to try to represent that object over time, which is hard to do in a single, static, 2D picture plane.

So Klee developed a system of representation to try to get at the source of what something is. And of course his paintings don't look exactly like the surface of a thing. But they always have some relationship to the surface of a thing, because the surface of a thing has at least something to do with the essence of the thing. And since existence is very complex and the language of painting is necessarily more simple and reductive, then the painting will necessarily be an "abstraction," since it can't be a simulation. But the goal is not abstraction for its own sake. The goal is to get at the essence of a thing, and in order to do this using the limited vocabulary of (in Klee's case) painting, it's going to be abstracted.

Interesting that Klee's systematic approach to representation influenced Armin Hofmann who influenced Casey Reas whose Processing software is currently influencing the aesthetic of the generative art scene. All via a Bauhaus modernist graphic design door, which is a funny door for it to come through, considering it winds up in the midst of the late modern, often anti-formalist net art scene.

Some quotations that seem relevant:

There's this sort of ridiculous idea left over from the 20th century that abstraction and figuration are legitimate poles. And I from the very start have incorporated the two things together. I've been fascinated by the idea that there is really no distinction -- it's just a question of scale. (matthew ritchie)

Forms react on us both through their essence and their appearance, those kindred organs of the spirit. The line of demarcation between essence and appearance is faint. There is no clash, just a specific something which demands that the essentials be grasped. (paul klee)

It is not easy to orient yourself in a whole that is made up of parts belonging to different dimensions. And nature is such a whole...

The answer lies in methods of handling spatial representation which lead to an image that is plastically clear. The difficulty lies in the temporal deficiencies of language. For language there is no way of seeing many dimensions at once. (paul klee)

There should be no separation between spontaneous work with an emotional tone and work directed by the intellect. Both are supplementary to each other and must be regarded as intimately connected. Discipline and freedom are thus to be seen as elements of equal weight, each partaking of the other. (armin hofmann)

In the face of the mystery, analysis stops perplexed. But the mystery is to share in the creation of form by pressing forward to the seal of mystery. (paul klee)

The chosen artists are those who dig down close to the secret source where the primal law feeds the forces of development. (paul klee)

To overcome an obstacle or an enemy
To dominate the impossible in your life
Reach in the darkness
(paul simon)

Art plays in the dark with ultimate things and yet it reaches them. (paul klee)

+++++++++++

Andre SC wrote:
Hello List

Just wondering, do you think Abstraction is?

a. necessarily reductive in nature
b. actually inherently transcendental
c. both a and b above
d. depends, if we are talking performative, generative, iterative or
retronascent
e. none of the above , but?

because?

Andre SC

DISCUSSION

Re: sometimes people give me things they made


OK. I'm back. Thanks to everybody who replied on and offlist. It
was a good lunch overall. I actually missed lunch, and was charged
for dinner, and my free meal coupon was only good for lunch, so I had
to pay money. But that's OK because I still have my free lunch
coupon for later, plus I got a new stamp on my new free lunch coupon.

I finished an essay by Michael Meridith in which he more or less
offhandedly described the concept behind an art project I had begun
planning months ago, so that was really strange.

Then I read a print out of this post:
http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/archives20060101.shtml#104664
So even when I'm offline I'm reading online text, which is really sad
and nerdy.

Then I read more in Klee. It is slow going but so amazing. He's
talking about perceptual perspective from his own personal systematic
perspective. There is the idea of asymmetrical balance in modern
graphic design. Symmetrical balance is too static, and asymmetry is
too chaotic, so you skew the symmetry, and then bring it back into
asymmetrical balance. Klee proposes to do this with perspective,
representing up to six different perspectives in a single
composition, and then synthesizing them into what he calls "a single
median collective viewpoint." It's like some kooky minimalist
post-analytical cubism synthesized with Klee's understanding of
appearance, essence, growth/history/life, gravity, and always the
spiritual "quality" of color.

They didn't have the thai curry, but the hot and sour soup was
especially good. I almost braved a Hawaian sushi roll but decided
against it. About halfway through my meal this guy with a very
annoying voice and his parents sat down. He was maybe in his 50s and
his parents seemed old. He was from New York and was visiting his
parents who are evidently down here in a retirement home. He talked
about how all presidents throughout history have been crooks, how he
doesn't trust the media, how even the programmers at Microsoft
couldn't solve a coding problem he had come across. Then when his
father got up and tottered off toward the mongolian grill area, this
guy and his mom talked about how when you pick up the portable phone
off the stand, you don't have to press "on." That actually turns it
off. It's only when you pick the phone up away from the stand that
you have to press "on." This guy was frustrated that his father
couldn't understand how it worked. I've hung up on people a lot
myself making that same mistake. Eventually, I had to put my fingers
in my ears to focus on the Klee. It was like Woody Allen in Annie
Hall standing behind that pseudo-McLuhan expert in the movie line.

Honestly, because of my little Rhizome social experiment, the lunch
was kind of a McLuhan-esque experience ("in the electric age we wear
all mankind as our skin"), and not as relaxing as it normally would
have been. I am not perpetually conscious of the instantaneous,
"primitive" (McLuhan's term) time field that the network creates, but
having positioned myself "between posts" on the network made me feel
inordinately exposed. I was on the grid. But I got my narcissistic
bloggin' fix via rhizome raw, and I'm apparently none the worse for
it.

And what blog entry would be complete without some "currently
listening to" data? On the way home I listened to the last half of
Bowie's Heroes, and then to some Brian Jonestown Massacre. Current
Mood: Full of Chinese food. Someone should do a net art project
where they make up abstract emoticons for extremely specific moods
like "full of chinese food," "girlfriend just dumped me," "three days
on a mescalin bender," etc.

Keep those cards and letters coming.

curt

DISCUSSION

sometimes people give me things they made


http://www.coldbacon.com/books.html
http://www.clamormagazine.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=TRUEMOTION
http://youworkforthem.com/product.php?sku=P0617
http://colorstripping.joshuadavis.com
http://www.geocities.com/genius-2000/animalbreeder/prodserv.html
http://phenixrising.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/fivesimplesteps_1.jpg
http://cool.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/06fivesimplesteps_1.jpg

i asked nikola to give me this:
http://nakituminayashi.com/buythisbook/
but who knows whether he will.
either way, the text is here:
http://nakituminayashi.com/1/

I'm going to eat at the local chinese buffet with a free meal coupon
that my wife gave me. It's the card that they stamp every time you
eat there, and then when it fills up, you get a free meal. Hers was
full, so she gave it to me, which was nice of her. I'm on page 142
of Paul Klee's first Bauhaus teaching notebook (The Thinking Eye), so
I'll be reading that. I usually start off with hot & sour soup with
those cruncy things and a dumpling in the soup. Then if they have
thai curry chicken on the buffet, that's usually all I'll eat. There
are two of these restaurants (Asiana Grand Buffet) in the area, and
the one far away from our house always has the thai curry chicken,
but the one closest to our house doesn't always have it. Also, the
sushi bar at the other one is better, but the drive is kind of a pain.

How about y'all? What are you up to today? When I come back from
the restaurant, I'll check this thread. I wonder who will post and
what they will say?

If you're too cool to just post mundane stuff, I totally understand.
Or maybe you respect the stated boundaries and goals of the rhizome
list, and you limit your onlist dialogue to matters pertaining to
art, culture, and media. Seems kind of socialized and safe to me,
but it takes a village to raise a child, and I respect that. What?
You say you can't post a reply because you're currently working on a
net art project that facilitates and foregrounds the use of digital
networks to connect people in intimate, meaningful, day-to-day ways?
Rock on! What? Why don't I save these mundane personal details for
my BLOG? Don't even go there girlfriend because I am already three
steps ahead of you. (I'm not sure what that last sentence means, but
I like the sound of it.)

I'll be back in a couple of hours to check on this thread and let
y'all know how my meal went.

yours truly,
curt