Jim Andrews
Since the beginning
Works in Victoria Canada

ARTBASE (2)
BIO
Jim Andrews does http://vispo.com . He is a poet-programmer and audio guy. His work explores the new media possibilities of poetry, and seeks to synthesize the poetical with other arts and media.
Discussions (847) Opportunities (2) Events (14) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: what is the name for this type of work?


> This idea of yours has kept me occupied -- do you have a specific
> application in mind? Or are you actually working on something similar??

I was writing about work by someone else that fit the description i offered
and wasn't sure if there was a word to describe that sort of work. Am glad
no one wrote back that it was type whatever. Was thinking of Grafik Dynamo
by Kate Armstrong and Michael Tippett (
http://turbulence.org/Works/dynamo ).

> And -- at least if you mean to "produce" "art" (why don't just quote
> EVERYTHING, Geert) -- you seem to imply that art should be
> meaningful. That the art object should somehow "carry" meaning.

Meaning. Ya.

Well, "meaning is what an explanation of meaning explains," I gather I hold
I carry I hew.

Perhaps meaning is what we construct when we experience things. An ontology
would, then, be a system that permits construction of meaning.

It is a constructed thing, isn't it.

Yet while it's constructed, there are often erm guidelines or rules that we
use in the construction. So that, for instance, when different people read
this sentence, what they think it means will not be identical, but will
share a great deal because language definitions and guidelines and rules are
shared amongst people--though, once again, two people's notions of what
those are aren't identical.

Do I think "art should be meaningful"? Was Duchamp's pissoir meaningful? In
a very unusual way, yes. The bowl is full of it by now, is it not? But the
meaning was not ready-made. It has accumulated over the last century of art
history. In its time, the world was apparently ready for a change, and
Duchamp's pissoir helped flush a few preconceptions about art down the
drain.

It's not so much that I think art itself should be meaningful as this: there
is no type of object to which the activity of constructing meaning is more
intensely directed than the object of art.

> A parable -- the French salons at the turn of the 19th/20th century
> -- invaded from WITHIN by Duchamps by that which was meaningless to
> the point of banality -- the pissoir -- again at the turn of the next
> (I know, I'm pushing this a bit) -- Jeff Koons -- "Ushering In
> Banality".
>
> Isn't that how it goes? The art that really makes a difference
> invades our stockades -- with meaninglessness??

Apparently. Just gotta keep em guessing.

Of course "the art that really makes a difference" is many things. Terry
Eagleton called it "a history of barbarism." In the sense that it usually
validates world views from the dominant cultures.

But not always.

My dad used to call the pissoir the throne.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

what is the name for this type of work?


I am wondering if there is a name for a type of work that is aleatorically
generative (the entities generated are, in part, the result of random
processes) and the idea is to select among the entities as to which are
meaningful and which aren't. In other words, the generation is not intended
to produce nothing but gems but, instead, invites selectivity amongst the
generated entities.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 10 questions/more art


Writing poems on an animal is a vain and pointless exercise.

I don't understand this bit.... could you explain???

Imagine a poet who gets it into his head that he will write poems
(literally) on animals. Tatoo animals with poems. Rather abhorrent. Though I
suppose it could be done while respecting the animal (and probably has been
done). Writing poems on a computer is not equally abhorrent or even
abhorrent at all. But, like the animal, computing is a totally different
page out of a totally different book, has a larger destiny and character
something of its own, and may well successfully resist being used in
ignorance of its nature.

Poetry and poetics, in such a situation, need take some very lively
turns. And analogies that basically preserve the notion that computing is
very like old media miss the radical departure. They just miss it.

How do they miss it exactly?? Perhaps computing isn't a medium??

It is media and, as well, any other types of machines that can be built.

It is one thing to make analogies between old media and computing media.
They can be useful. But if the writing does not give an indication, also,
that computing media departs radically from old media, then they miss the
radical departure.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 10 questions/more art


Computing is much more radical a departure from old media than is commonly appreciated. There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. So it isn't simply a matter of the poem departing from the page (or the painting from the canvas, etc) and taking on a slight change of properties owing to a change in medium. It also involves the page departing from the poem, as it were. The medium itself--computing--is as the stuff of the living. It can reproduce or alter itself. It can change its own code. It can do anything thinkable, can think anything thinkable and then some. Writing poems on an animal is a vain and pointless exercise. This animal is a language machine. Poetry and poetics, in such a situation, need take some very lively turns. And analogies that basically preserve the notion that computing is very like old media miss the radical departure. They just miss it.

Digital art can be radically different from what has gone before. Computing isn't simply an art medium but the protean itself. It is possible to understand this without knowing how to program or knowing any computer science. But to really act on it, the more you know, the better.

ja
http://vispo.com

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: 10 questions/more art


> Computer programing and art are two different methods of thinking
> and perception.

You're very quick to drive a wedge between programming and art.

> When you write a program you already know what
> the result will be.

I have hundreds of files that consist of experiments in programming like i have hundreds of files that consist in experiments in writing. Far fewer finished pieces of each. When you read a published piece of writing or a published work of computer art, you can be fooled that the author knew what the result would be and just sat down and wrote it out, but that's not the way it proceeds. Much changes in the writing. This is true in art and programming. Unless, of course, it's someone else's idea that they just want written out. Imagine if it were typical that the artist just worked on the conceptual level and gave the painter or the musician or whomever instructions on what they wanted. Here, make a piece with these qualities and properties. The results would be pretty boring.

> Art doesn't function in the same way. Often
> an artist uses chance and accidents to create new ways of
> thinking and perception.

So does an artist-programmer.

> Art is an ongoing cultural discussion.

Yes it is.

> Computer art, digital art etc. needs to engage in the larger
> cultural discourse.

Sure.

> Your statements about "good or bad" painting/computer art begs
> the question who is the judge? Usually in a larger cultural
> discourse there is an ongoing debate about what constitutes "good" art.
> I find the insistence by some in the digital art realm that only
> people who know programming are truly digital artists to be
> rather narrow minded.

I don't know any artist-programmers who believe that. But the good digital artists who aren't programmers understand that the art of programming is very important in works that involve programming, and they do not try to relegate it to a technician position but, instead, work with the programmers as artists. If they don't, that arrogance will get them nowhere. It certainly won't allow the production of significant art. If the programmer is indeed an artist, not simply a technician, then you can see how that would go. Basically nowhere slowly. If the programmer is a technician, it goes nowhere quickly.

> The "who signs the checks" question is really amusing. Think
> about what the support structures are for art. You have
> collectors, museums, and governments. You can add the University
> and Academic realm as a support structure for art. Right now
> digital art has the most support from the Academic structure. In
> other words you get a teaching job.

I think I'm missing your point. Are you saying artists should get jobs teaching? To be able to sign the checks?

> Once the novelty of using computers in art works wears off (which
> it has ) the question becomes how does digital art challenge and
> advance the art discourse. That's a much larger dscussion than
> whether someone knows programming or how a computer repaints a screen.

Ah, well, nice to know what the question is. Thanks.

ja
http://vispo.com