________________________________
From: Michael Brady <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 7:25:09 AM
Subject: Re: Heidegger and Singularity-string
William:
> [Me] I did not say art has no function. I said that utilitarian things are
> made *first* to have a function, and their looks are subordinate to that.
> Works of art are made *first* to have a certain appearance, and then perhaps
> to serve an explicit function, as a portrait, a religious icon, etc.
In my haste I propped open a door with a valuable work of art. Did the artwork
become an ordinary doorstop and lose its art value?
>
> [William] How is a "certain appearance" not a function? The artist acts to
> please self perception and that's a function of the act.
Aw, shit. Now you're making this into ambiguity and ambivalence. Seven types of
them, even. Gotta mull this one over.
> [Me] You also say, "The problem is we can't find the location of art." I
> believe that we have no trouble locating a given artifact or made thing if
> it's well within the borders of a category, say, in Kansas. But when the
> artifact is over near the edge, on the beach at low tide, on the border
> between art and nonart, then we have a difficult time, NOT locating the work,
> but locating the boundary.
>
> [William] I was using a common figure of speech when I said "location" to
> mean the identity of a concept among other concepts, not the physical
> placement of an object.
Ah, but my answer was metaphorical. Some encounters seem to be very clear and
unambiguous. "This looks like an X, and I feel comfortable responding to it in
X-terms." Those things are "in Kansas," i.e., well within the limits of the
category at hand. But other things are not so clear, they seem to hover on the
edge between Y and Z, and we pause and ponder what to make of it. "Okay, I'll
take it as Y, but if it seems to be more like Z as I get into it, I'll be
willing to revise my interpretation."
Don't revise, just include. As every scientist beginning with Descartes knows
the fallacy of analogy or the impossibility of a thing being equivalent to the
thing it is being likened to. Ambiguity is a good place to be and I'd suggest
that if it's not ambiguous, it's not art. That implies that art can be
functional or utilitarian and still retain its art identity
> [Me] Are you ever puzzled when you encounter some thing and wonder, "Is that
> a work of art?" I suspect it happens as infrequently as not being able to
> tell whether the voice on the telephone is a man's or woman's, or if the
> long-haired person sitting in the row in front of you is a man or woman. What
> are the cues and qualities of each encounter that guide your first snap
> conclusion? Analogous to seeing something "as art" or not. You make a
> provisional scheme for deciding on the nature of what you are perceiving.
> Things that are well within the boundaries typically don't cause problems,
> but things at the edge--the contralto voice that could be a tenor, the long
> hair and indistinct shoulders that could be a man, the picture that could be
> merely a picture. <g>
>
> [William] When I consciously adopt the attitude that my experiences are art
> experiences, then nearly everything is art, an aesthetic experience; if not,
> I'm not paying close attention to my experience as an aesthetic experience. I
> think when we are conscious the aesthetic realization is always more or less
> insistent. We choose to pay more or less attention to it. I can't
> experience what I am not already prepared to experience. An analogy might be
> that we are always prepared to breath and thus we are prepared to breath
> fresh air, or not so fresh air.
I agree with this, except for the first sentence. I can't calibrate my
experiences to be art experiences, and I cannot, ergo, experience nearly
everything as art. I can--and often do--pay attention to the "aesthetic"
properties of things, such as the keyboard of this computer, and make
observations about its aesthetic qualities. But that does not mean that the
keyboard had been transmuted into a work of art.
Why not? if you regard it as art, then it is one half art if you don't include
the keyboard designer's art interest and it's all art if you loan your
aesthetic regard to the absent keyboard designer or simply force it upon him or
her. Your position falsely assumes that the keyboard designer had no aesthetic
achievement (I've already tried to explain intention is irrelevant irrelevant.
Achievement is not but it is impossible to"locate" as stemming from the
designer or something more complex and paradoxical).
> [Me] My criterion--is the representation contingent on external
> verification--is a binary thing. Either it is (the map must conform to what
> it purports to represent or it's functionally useless) or it's not (the map
> is a imaginary diagram of a yet-to-be-discovered land of praeternatural
> bounty). The saint's image on the wall can be painted in any way, as long as
> certain attributes are shown--and the same saint looks different from one
> church to another. The accuracy of the likeness is an elastic standard,
> modified by the artist's skill and preference for various pictorial effects.
> Not so the driver's license photo.
>
> [William] This is too mechanistic for me. I mean it's too conditioned by
> rules and the comforts they provide. If something purports to represent
> something, then it does, unless there is another previous representation ( or
> prescribed rules for that representation) that has been taken or insisted
> upon by some authority as true.
I didn't assert this as a prescriptive rule, but as a general observation about
perception and experience. I believe that at the fundamental level of
encounters, we parse our sensory information first at a level of threat or
non-threat, and then parse it again and again many times in rapid succession
into personal and social categories, unknown and known, so that we prepare
ourselves to engage the new thing. The old smarty-pants joke about the Dwayne
Hanson sculpture in the gallery ("How do you know whether it's a statue or the
guard?" "The statue has a square taped on the floor around it.") demonstrates
my point: we react differently, based on how we expect to engage the object.
Real guard, nod or speak; statue, pause and look.
You can't resort to unreflective common experience -- call it naive realism --
to shake rather sophisticated reasoning. At this point in our conversation we
should not be resorting to "general observation" always more or less faulty, to
illustrate our arguments. I agree with the sentences re threat, etc. but
what's your point other than clarifying that we do indeed fail to note reality
correctly until more and more cues are processed...and those too may lead to
faulty decisions.
I will finish later.
WC
In fact, your statement above about consciously adopting an attitude about art
experiences describes a condition similar to mine: you are applying a rule
("interpret as art experience") so that the characteristics of the encounter
that best fit your expectations are most evident.
> [William] Also, you know very well that the first thing people do when they
> see their new driver's license photo is judge whether or not it is an
> accurate likeness. That surely betrays the fact that a thousand photos of one
> person's face will show a thousand different faces (and that's why the most
> accurate digital proportional measuring can ID a person regardless of the
> varied appearances of that same person's photo images).
I think either you missed my point, or I am missing yours. I meant to say that,
while painted likenesses may or may not match the model--in fact, some, like
pictures of Jesus, don't even claim to do be actual likenesses--we expect a
degree of reliable correlation between the ID card photo and the bearer
(allowing for the notoriously poor quality of such photos).
> [William] The question remains: Where is art? With the artist? With the
> audience? A collaboration?
> With historical symbols, symbols of culture and its beliefs? I'm inclined to
> think that we all have an innate aesthetic buzz in our consciousness that we
> can tune up or down but never off. That buzz is always urging us to objectify
> it and when we do we say, Ah, there's art! Then, unhappily, we contaminate
> the awareness with explanations, but we are compelled to do so.
I understand this, but we part company at the "There's art" moment. My
experience is that, like you, I have the buzzer constantly on, but when only
when I see something that I rapidly *and provisionally* declare to be
"art-qualified" do I apply "artistic criteria" to it. Aesthetic qualities can
be perceived in things that I do not call "art," such as manufactured product,
type and typography, clothing, living things, landscapes (terrain).
A.
1. You and I are talking. I want to give you directions to some other place. I
point out there, then to the left, to the right, and verbally tell you where to
go. But you are confused. So I draw a map, pointing to the lines and then out
there, then to the left, etc., and you get it. I have made the map resemble to
"reality," to the way things are "out there." This is akin to a "non-art"
image: it is made to conform to "out there."
2. You walk up to me and see that I am drawing something, and ask me about it.
I say it's a map, something I've just come up with from my imagination. Then
you pick up the map and comment that it seems to conform to the local area (or
perhaps to another place). You have shown how "reality" resembles my map. This
is akin to an "art" image: it is made freely and then the correspondences to
"reality" are noted.
B.
1. We're talking. I describe a vase I've seen but cannot locate. You don't
follow the description, so I draw it for you. Then you point to the shelf and
say, "There it is." Non-art image matched to "real" object.
2. You walk up and see that I've drawn a vase, and ask me about it. I say that
it's a drawing of a style of vase I happen to find aesthetic. You look around
and see a similar-looking vase on the shelf. "There's one just like it." Real
thing found to resemble "art" image.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
