Technoglogical Blindspots

Here's a new idea... that technology removes one from being aware of that they're doing.

As I drove down rt. 30 on my bike for the 5th time in two weeks, the stress of cars rocketing by became nerve wracking. It occurred to me that the people in the cars have no idea (or are indifferent, which is the same thing) that they are threatening me by their actions. But that is the nature of the automobile in this regard, that the driver is removed from any NECESSARY awareness of how WHAT THEY ARE DOING (driving) is affecting me.

In general, all technology relieves people of knowing the full extent of what their actions are involved in. For instance, when you drive a car you are not aware that you are pumping fumes into the air. When you use a blender to make a milkshake, you are not aware that you are increasing the energy consumption in the world. When you walk from the train in a crowd of people down a long corridor to the corporate workplace, you are not aware that that form of transport itself is a grim visual stimuli to those who view it from a distance.

Technologies of all kind are used to achieve results. Transport systems get people to work. Blenders make smoothies. And so on. These technologies have arisen in human society due to a complexity of causes.  If history is any indication, the creation of technologies of all kinds (from stone tools to iPads) seem inevitable and good.

Leaving aside the question of whether the endless manufacture of gadgets and consumer items is actually always good… it is clear that such things are sometimes good. For instance, when I go to the doctor, I am glad there is an X-ray machine, and I don't care if the X-ray tech doesn't realize the full extent of his actions. As long as I get an X-ray pic that aids my health, I'm OK with it. As long as the tech gets paid his salary, he's OK with it. And so on.

The problem with technology OVERALL… is that it provides a potential numbing effect in the mind. We conduct our lives mediated through layers of technology, and at every turn we are unaware of the real effects we are having. We can conclude that much of what we effect in the world is unknown to us. We are not responsible for what we don't see. Furthermore, we don't care.

The problem then, is that the MORALITY of life… of how we treat each other… is based on our humanity, not on our technology. The respect for human life, the prohibition against murder, the respect for each others property, the cordiality of treatment we afford each other from day to day. Such things require a humanistic perspective on other people AND of the way we relate to those people But if so much of our lives are mediated through technologies which cut us off from such knowledge, we are potentially in trouble. This potentiality is not a certainty, but if a cursory look around the culture is any indication, the inhuman effect of technological mediation are really obvious.

I suppose this is simply another aspect of the march of human technology. Not only are the previous technologies wiped away, and not only do we recreate our view of the world in the form of these new technologies… but we are forced (thereby) to re-contextualize our view of morality. For instance, it used to matter how you treated someone in public. But when you're in car, you don't care. This lack of caring isn't conscious... it's simply that technology of the car and of roads creates a context where their is no awareness of the affect you have on others. The real effect of this is to not care... to not take care. We do not take care because we don't realize there is a problem.

As a rule of thumb, one is not held morality responsible for things they were unaware of.  This is problematic with technology, in as much as it makes us unaware of so much. We end up excusing ourselves for immoral behavior, simply because we are ignorant of it. But morality is (ultimately) about the outcomes of actions, not simply of states of mind.

The Two Waves of Technology

Technology comes in two waves.

The first wave derives from existing practices, wherein the technology allows us to do something we currently do, only fast, or cheaper, or more conveniently. It isn't until the second wave that the long-term effect of technology becomes apparent. The second wave liquidates the original activity that was "technolo-gized", and replaces it with not only a new activity, but a whole new concept of what is to be done.

To trace the evolution, consider how phone technology has affected human conversation. For the longest time, people would meet in person and talk to each other. Then the telephone is invented, the motivation for which is undoubtedly the ability to converse "as before" but without having to be physically present. Thus, it made the "prior activity" more convenient, fast, and cheaper.

But with this increased capacity to converse came the diminishing of any single conversation.  The technology does not prevent old-school, lengthy conversations from happening. Rather, it gives rise to potentialities (speed, low cost, convenience) that create value trade offs that people must make. When a person can have 10 conversations instead of one, they have to make a choice. The technology does not "necessitate" the choice… but given other cultural factors, there will be a sociologically dominant choice. With conversation, there has clearly been a move away from singular, in-depth conversations in favor of shorter ones… a choice that the telephone created.

The effects of technology always force a choice in this way, and (given any culture) the choice that the majority are choosing is usually pretty obvious. It's not that everyone has to follow the technology or make the same choices… it's that most will. The determinism of technology is not at the individual level. After all, people have free will. But on the social level, the choices that technology offers up will be answered by some majority… and in retrospect, these seem pretty damned deterministic.

For instance, can we imagine any technology that makes things faster, cheap, and easier that isn't taken up straight-away by Americans? And even when such technology achieves these effects by bleeding the value out of something, it doesn't seem to make a difference. There are cultural values at play in American society that always seem to privilege speed, cost, and convenience over anything else.

There seems to be an unlimited potential for technology to sway the culture in this way. If this is so, then a strange logic applies here…. which is… that anything that exists today that contains nuances of meaning and value (i.e., quality) can probably be "automated" in some way so as to make it cheaper and faster. This is because "quality" takes time and money to construct. By removing the cost of quality via technology, we can consume the object a new way. Granted, the object is now "LESS GOOD" (i.e, fewer inherent qualities)… but it is also "FASTER, CHEAPER, MORE CONVENIENT"… and if these latter values are privilege by culture (which they are in America) then the sky seems to be the limit for how much quality can be removed from the object.

You would think that you can only remove so much quality before an object (or activity) ceases to be what it is. This becomes a philosophical question. For instance, what is the nature of an apple? Can you remove the seeds from an apple and have it still be an apple? Probably. Can you also remove the color if the skin? Hmmm. Ok. At least it would still have it's shape and flavor and texture. But what if you removed the flavor from the apple… presumably because a new high-tech apple farm could produce more of them faster, such that the high-tech apples (with no seeds, red color, or flavor) now cost 10 times less than an old-school apple, and will last indefinitely on the shelf, and won't rot if cut into slices. Let's just imagine a whole host of advantages this high-tech apple would have.

It's not hard to imagine that the preference for these high-tech apples would overwhelm the market, pushing old-school apples to the point of being a niche product… indulged in by gourmands who could afford their (now) higher prices. New apples would be everywhere. Old apples would have to be sought out. In time, old-school apples would disappear… and with them… the flavor, the color, the seeds… i.e., everything we formerly thought an apple to be.

Critics would say that the new apples aren't apples at all. Defenders of the new apples would assert that they still retain the shape of the apple, and that the chemically simulated fake flavor is actually just as pleasant as the old-school apple. They would argue that the red skin was simply an accident of pigmentation of a fruit, and not essential to being an apple. The manufacturers of new apples would continue to advertise their apples as before, with images of apple trees and grannies cooking apple pies, etc.

There arises then a conflict.  Is an apple to be understood as the naturally occurring object that grows on a tree, or is it understood to be the new product being referred to as an apple?  The majority (the mass market) will decide this issue. They see the the manufactured object as real. In time, what we know today to be an apple will disappear from consciousness.

By this logic, there is nothing in our world that cannot be systematically annihilated.

No Dialog Required

Here's a thought about the internet... or maybe just blogs in general... they are not an interactive media, despite the possibility of the technology allowing for two way communication. It is the rare person who desires actual responses to anything they say online.

Evey now and then, when I read something on a blog that I find particuarly interesting,  I will send an email directly to the author. I will only do this when I have something interesting to add, or a good question to ask. I will take my time and write a solid email, taking pains to make it neither too long, nor too short... to not be too obvious or too obscure, and so on. I will applaud their work, frame my comments, and then add my own, or ask a question. I can't imagine that the author would mind engaging someone that had a strong connection to what they wrote.

Much to my disappointment, I find that these authors take very little interest in developing a dialog with me. I'm pretty sure that the writer wants their blog to be "hit".. and they want responses to blog entries to show up online... but that is not the same as a dialog. In this respect, they are exhibitionistic. It's as if they stand naked in a window, wanting to be seen... but if you knock on their door, they throw on their clothes and turn out the lights.

I further suppose that this same author (who I am generalizing here)... if they seek some perspective other than their own... will search for it using search engines. In this way, they become voyeuristic... they want to view others from the safe distance of the technology. The want to peak in the windows of others... but if they were invited in by the person they spy on... they run away.

Exhibitionism and voyeurism are a particular kind of bifurcated experience... an indirect contact... which isn't really contact at all. On the one hand, it is the EXPOSURE of exhibitionism... on the other hand it is the OBSERVATION of the voyeurism. But exposing and observing, when done in isolation, do not add up to human contact or communication.

On the internet, everything is mediated from behind the screen of technology. Voyeurism and exhibitionism. If this was someone's approach to sex, we'd say they might have intimacy issues... but online.. it's business as usual.

Social Contexts for Art

I had a breakthrough regarding the requirements of creative work. It was precipitated by a dinner party from earlier in the summer, a party during which I unveiled an outdoor dining table that I had built by hand. The table had been designed and built over the course of the previous 4 days. I was under pressure to produce it quickly, specifically for the party. Naturally, I was proud of the table, and anxious to show it off to the dinner guests.

Upon hearing that I had built the table by hand, the guests voiced their appreciation and said how nice it was. They may have touched it or looked at it differently for a moment, but then they went right back to what they were talking about before… something about  their parents health problems, or about their jobs. That is exactly the way these things go. Somewhere in the collective subconscious, there is an unofficial list of topics that get discussed at dinner parties. Topics such as work, family, health, sports, television shows, vacations, and traffic are high on the list. This is disappointing, but typical.

As the conversation continued, I happened to observe that a beer glass sitting on the table was reflecting the objects behind it in a visually interesting way.  I got up and went to get my camera so that I could capture an image of it. My leaving the table took people by surprise and when I came back, the conversation came to a stop as people seemed confused as to why I had the camera. I told them to ignore me, and to just keep talking. They did, but their tone of voice suggested that they felt it was weird that I would being taking a photograph while seated at the table. Their unease bled into my own sense of bing isolated from the proceedings. I knew that my behavior was not orthodox. I rushed through the picture taking process and put the camera away as soon as possible.

This episode lit a fuse in my mind, which later (after the guests had gone) would detonate in a rush of mental connections. Several observations occurred to me in succession, each one leading to (and amplifying) the effect of the next one… and the succession was so rapid that the effect wasn't of a series of observations, but of a single, unified observation… i.e., an IDEA.  The following describes the several ideas that combined instantaneously.

*****

First, the party guests did no care that I built the table… because most people do not understands what it takes to make something by hand. Most people don't build things. Most lead consumer lives, wherein they work a job doing one thing… to make the money to then exchange with other people who do one thing… so that they can acquire the various things they need in their lives. This division of labor is economically efficient, but has the effect of removing people from the act of creation, and with it… the meanings associated with creation. Further refinements of production (in all spheres) drives out every possible inefficiency (i.e., evidence of human making) and replaces it with the sterile beauty of the machine made. Such inanimate beauty becomes the standard by which objects are judged.

When I announced that I had made the table by hand, the guests probably paid attention to it in a way they hadn't before. Before the announcement, they probably assumed it was purchased at the store. Upon learning it was handmade, their eyes are drawn to it's particulars, where they might have noticed a small irregularity typical of the hand built. At that point they probably downgraded it to "craft" object, and viewed it with the reassuring pity with which people view handmade Christmas gifts.

On top of that, to announce that you made something seems to puzzle people, who would rather that everyone be playing by unwritten rules of consumer society. But in making things, you announce you are outside the system of commodity production… that you desire to stamp your imprint on material life. Further, you announce that the commodity item is not good enough for you. And finally, you are showing that you have the ability to pull this off. Such implications can irritate people. They might think you are trying to one-up them, or that you think you're better than them. Maybe they think of their own lives, where they simply buy what is offered for sale… the product of other minds in the marketplace. The handmade items cuts against the grain of their value system.

A similar series of annoyances also registered when I had gotten the camera out to photograph the beer glass. As with hand-building a table, I was guilty of interpreting reality on my own terms… to turn the moment into an artistic production. This also cuts against the grain of the social conformity. Although there was every bit as much to talk about regarding taking a photo… that is not on the list of acceptable topics and activities for a dinner party. An open conversation about uncharted, personal reactions to the visual world is too dangerous… too revealing… too volatile to do in a group.

If people talk about art, it is never in a moment of creative thought… but rather… in a conformist moment of talking about officially sanctioned art culture. People are willing talk about museum visits or Picasso, but if you pull out your sketchbook to show them an image, they might-could care less. Probably they will downgrade your effort because it isn't as good as the Michelangelo drawing they once saw at the Met. If you hand them a pencil and say "let's make a drawing"… they will not try. Art, like everything else in their lives, is a commodity experience that is bought and sold in the marketplace… not something you do on your own.

Here's another example of the same behavior. Once upon a time I tried my hand at doing standup comedy. I attended a workshop, developed 10 minutes of material, and performed it onstage at a comedy club. I did OK. Myself and another guy from the workshop decided to hit up some open mic nights at area clubs to keep the comedy effort alive. Whenever I discussed this activity with regular people, they show no interest in comedy as an actual activity. Instead, they immediately describe their favorite comics… famous comics like Carlin, or Seinfeld, or Bill Cosby, or whoever. You know… the best of the best comics they had seen on television Again, they had no sense that the creativity of comedy comes from real people, in real moments... that it is a constructed, not simply consumed.

You can literally stand in front of such people and try to engage them in a moment of comedic creation… but they will not participate… they will not collaborate in the construction of humor. To them, comedy is some product that happens on TV. My very real participation in the art-form is marginalized (by them) by comparison to those famous TV comics, much in the way that my table was marginalized in relation to some "perfect" table in a furniture catalog, or that a sketch is marginalized relative to a master artist of the past. The alienation of these non-creative people animates nearly all social contexts, leaving us awash in a world with little room for free, creative play of the mind.

Later in the evening, after we went back inside and sat in the living room, another thing occurred to me. You see, Margaret plays the piano. I play the guitar and the bass guitar. I like to sing. I like music. In fact, everyone seems to like music. But in all the years I have been in social situations people, nobody ever pulls out an instrument and plays it… or makes music… or sings. Never. Well… maybe a few times Margaret played a Christmas carol on the piano, or played a short classical piece.

But even the few times this does happen, the audience (not all of whom were enthusiastic) begin to fidget in their seats, seemingly anxious for the display of art to end so that they can get back to socially acceptable actives. Oddly enough, when the brief piano playing ends, people will talk enthusiastically about how nice it was, or about their cousin who plays piano, or about how their parents once owned a piano, or about how they saw a piano concert last week. These are all socially acceptable forms of discourse regarding music. But what they will never do, is ask to make music, or listen to you make music.

In general, the logic of social interaction DOES NOT ALLOW FOR CREATIVE EFFORT. People don't sing together, don't make music together, don't explore visual art together…. they don't photograph in the moment. They also do not construct comedy together… or explore experimental or subversive thoughts. They don't challenge each other, or make creative arguments, or produce visionary statements about the nature of their life and the world at large. Creativity AS SUCH is simply not on the menu within the social context of a dinner party.

NOW… consider that creativity is also not on the menu for MOST SOCIAL CONTEXTS. Family, friends, school, work, church, paper route, sports, going to the post office, buying a hot-dog at the Wawa. Consider the endless things we do… both big and small… and how so much of it goes down in social contexts that do not require creativity and do not support it, not even a little bit. Now consider that our lives are spent immersed in an endlessly rotating series of such social contexts… then you begin to get the full impact of the creative poverty that exists all around us. The effects of such poverty is overwhelming. It gets into us like a bad odor.. into our pores, into our clothes, in to our minds. It grinds us down all the time.

You may want to get out the sketch book and draw… but between the idea of doing that, and the actual reality of doing it, lies (probably) a series of conventionalized distractions that suck you into non-creative social contexts. Nearly everyone you know and everything you do is NON CREATIVE. They do not participate in a social-context of creative effort. The world is full of non-creative contexts, and the limitless stream of people making them up.

Those are the observations… here is the central idea… followed by related ideas through which I will ramble.

THE IDEA

One cannot engage in meaningful artistic work if one does not have some social context in which to exist as an artist. By "social context"  I mean… the coming together of people for some active purpose… including the reason the activity is being done and the manner of judging it's success. The social group provides ideas, support, and critical feedback.

Everything that gets done in this world takes place within some social construct that is understood by the participants. The most obvious example is work. People go to their jobs and exist within the social context of their particular workplace. Without such a context, they would not be productive. If everyone went to work each day and had to reinvent the reason they were there, nothing would ever get done. So instead, the workplace takes on certain characteristics that allow for a sustainable continuity of productive effort.

Again, everything people do takes place within a social context. Family life, religious participation, diner parties, schooling, entertainment, going to bars, dating women. Anything and everything is done in some way that has precedents in society…  that is, some expected way to engage in it.  Without such social contexts, 95% of the people would not be able to construct contexts of their own. They would wind up wandering the countryside like zombies.

None of this seems problematic until you want to engage in something that has no social context. The life of an artist is very close to this situation. Certainly there are known formulas for being an artist. For instance, art school itself provides a social context for making art. When you're in school, the making of art takes place in a social context that breathes relevance into what you're doing. This can be continued through MFA programs, and then into an artistic life based on teaching within an art institution. What such an approach might lack in imagination it makes up for in practicality.

Other socially recognized contexts for art making include… the female artists marrying a wealthy man to provide for them… craft artists selling stylized objects with broad appeal… and artists who mimic the prevalent high-art styles, and who network within the art-world.

These social contexts are all very practical for those who enter into them. We might reject them for various reasons… and we might also reject a dozen other social contexts for art… but what is harder to reject is the need for a social context at all. They say it's better to be alone than in bad company, and that seems generally true. But the goodness or badness of the company one keeps is less relevant to the artist than that one is keeping company at all. To keep no company… to be isolated… will lead to failure.

This is a very real problem, because as an artist, it is very possible to find oneself without a social context in which to make art. This is not the case for (let's say) an accountant.. who not only ALWAYS works within a social context… but NEVER works outside of one. In fact, the VERY NATURE of being an accountant is defined by the social construct. You never hear about an accountant "working outside the system"… or "doing accounting on their own". What would such a person do?

All of the functions performed in society have corresponding social contexts that define the activity and judge it's success. Everything except art, that is. Art is the one activity in society that doesn't derive from and appeal to the mass judgements of society.  That is the beauty of it, and the danger in it. Given this ambiguous connection between art and society, the artist has to invent his own reason for existing. That is the function of a social context. But when none of the aforementioned social contexts for art are a good fit for you, where do you turn?

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Switching gears for a minute….

I worked for many years as a computer programmer. Over the years I became aware of a tendency of the people in that profession (mostly males) to treat each other in a coldly logical, non-human manner. Everything was subjected to impersonal, logical analysis. The dominant mode of thought in the profession (logic) had imprinted a controlling alignment of attitude toward all issues in life. The emotional landscape in such a culture is bleak and depressive for all involved. I formulated the following description of the problem… "Just because one works with machines, does not make one a machine".

I could extend this logic to the making of art. Because the visual arts are predominantly a solitary activity (as far as making the art goes)… that doesn't mean that artists have to exaggerate that aspect of isolation and (in so doing) construct a culture of alone-ness. But that is exactly what many do. I suppose the logic is this… that if in making art I am alone in my studio… then nothing other than myself is relevant. If the dominant mode of art making is isolated activity, then everything is about maintaining isolation.

For the artist who embraces such an ethos… no social context exists for their art making. The best an artist could wish for in such a scenario is that they have some outlet for their work once it is made… such as a gallery to sell it in, or some venue to display it. But those are contexts for selling the work, not making it. And even those contexts require a kind of involvement with others that the Artist-As-Loner ethos works against.

Furthermore, the isolationist strategy is not realistic for the emerging artist, who very likely has no business contacts or business savvy. To be isolated both in the making and selling of art is to be entirely isolated. Which brings me back to where I started… which is… how can an artist be expected to be productive when he has no social context in which to operate?

I suppose that it is THEORETICALLY possible that some human being might exist on the planet earth that can make art despite total isolation. But I don't know if this person actually exists. The "isolated but productive artist" might only be a theoretical possibility... based on the fact that people have free will, and can somehow WILL themselves to push through all the natural barriers that isolation brings to productive work. But if you look at the history of art, very few significant artists have operated in even relative isolation, let alone total isolation. Even those who are popularly assumed to have been total loners (such as Van Gogh) were actually (upon closer inspection) more tied into social contexts than the Romantic myth of "artist as outsider" would have us believe.

I can imagine a counter argument to this idea that goes like this…. "Despite what you say, I am productive making artwork in total isolation". Assuming such a person exists, I might answer... "Who cares"? I mean that literally… as in… "other than yourself, who cares about the things you create"? The immediate comeback would then have to be something like… "I don't care who else cares"… or "It doesn't matter that no one else cares".

But if nobody else cares, then there is no audience for the work. There is nowhere to display it… to sell it… to put in out there in front of society. To this last observation, the stubborn isolationist artist can say… "Well, I don't care. I don't make art to be displayed, I only make it for myself".

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Let's think about that for a moment…. "I ONLY MAKE ART FOR MYSELF"

How is one to understand such an admission? Why should art be made only for the self? Or, in general, what factors might be considered in how art is MADE and USED?  To think about this, the following distinctions about making and use are necessary.

1. MODES OF MAKING ART OBJECT = isolated vs. social context
All art is (in the making of it) an individualized activity.
This means that isolated art isn't simply art made by an individual, but rather, art for which the artist does not draw upon a social context for ideas, support, or critical feedback. They operate in a very strongly isolated context. Likewise, social-context art is also (in the making of it) an individualized activity. The difference between it and isolated art is that the social-context artist exists within some social context from which he draws ideas, support, and critical feedback.

2. MODES OF DISPOSITION OF ART OBJECT => private vs. public
By "disposition" of the art object, I mean… where does the art end up, and what function does it serve.The earlier discussion was about the making of art, and described the opposed modes of isolation vs. social context. The corresponding modes of disposition of art seem to be (a) keeping the art private vs. (b) making the art public.

I believe that the modes of art making (isolated vs. social context) strongly determine the disposition of the art object (private vs. public).

If we combine the modes of making and the modes of disposition we come up with four combinations.

   A. isolated artist who keeps art object private.
   B. social context artist who makes art object public.
   C. isolated artist who makes art object public.   D. social context artist who keeps art object private.


I believe that the first two are more likely, and the last two less likely.


More likely….
    A. isolated artist who keeps art object private.
    B. social context artist who makes art object public.

Less likely….
   C. isolated artist who makes art object public.
   D. social context artist who keeps art object private.

Let's consider the "less likely" combinations first, and show how they are unlikely to exist.

Consider scenario C, the isolation artist who desires to make art object public.
Even if such an isolation artist wants to make his art public, where would the support for such art come from? Let's not cheat here by pretending that the isolation artist is secretly eavesdropping on spirited artistic debates within a social context he refuses to officially be part of. The isolation artist has to be understood as someone who is substantially isolated from the real effects of social contexts. Obviously, the extent of isolation can vary… so the statement can be refined to this… to the extent that the artist is isolated from the real effects of social contexts for art making, the less relevant his artwork will be to the world outside himself.

Consider scenario D, the social context artist who keeps the art object private.
This seems counter-intuitive. The artist who utilizes a social context for ideas, support, and critical feedback… is thereby part of some larger footprint of meaning in the world outside themselves. Such a footprint may be tiny in comparison to other footprints… but it at least assures them of some audience (if only two other people). Given that their work is emanating from some shared intellectual perspective, it is unnatural that such an artist would break that shared connection by keeping the work private.

Seeking a social context is consistent with external display of the art object, if only to the inner circle of other artist who comprise that social context.  This works the other way too… such that the desire for public display implies some social context that one wants to participate in. One can deny that last conclusion, but consider this… If one produces art in isolation and then displays it, such an act draws into sharp relief the urgent question of why one is displaying art to a public that one doesn't respect. If one cares so little for others as to not involve them in thinking about art, why bother to show them the art?  Some artists might want to sell the work, or get praise…. but such motives have no intellectual function… and cannot sustain the activities of a serious artist.

In general, the desire for public display goes hand-in-glove with seeking out a social context for art making… and vice versa… that making art within a social context leads to relevant public display. Likewise, an indifference to public display goes hand-in-glove with isolation… and vice versa… making art in isolation leads to keeping the artwork object private.

The improbability of these less likely scenarios proves (by implication) the more likely scenarios.
      Scenario A: Isolation (in the making of art) tends toward private consumption of the art object.
    This is probably true because the opposite (scenario C) is unlikely.

      Scenario B: Social context (in the making of art) tends toward public consumption of the art object
    This is probably true because the opposite (scenario D) is unlikely.

I think this demonstrates that the likely scenarios are INDEED likely, and should be taken as a generally true. To what use an artist can put this is unclear… but I hope that AT LEAST it can dispense with the stubborn notion that working isolation is intellectual relevant, and can lead to a relevant public display.


*****

In the above analysis, the motive for making art was either (a) for personal reasons only, or (b) for personal reasons AND for public display. These are two radically different motives for art making.

The motive for making the art object public derives from a need to assert oneself into the world. Motives for this could vary. It could be pure ego and exhibitionism. It could be (on the other extreme) the desire to cooly articulate some view of the world in a detached and transparent manner. But motives aside, the public artist must have something relevant to express about the world. The quest for relevancy will take the artist outside of their own minds… out into the world around them. There, they will encounter a public discourse that they can engage in, or else reject. But if they reject all manner of public discourse, they isolate themselves thereby, which puts them in conflict with their desire to express in an extroverted manner… i.e., have a public display of their art. That conflict will resolve toward one of the two modes… either the isolation/private mode, or the social-context/public-display mode. If it is toward the latter, then the desire for public display mates with the need for engaging a social context… i.e., a public forum of ideas, support, and critique.

The motive for keeping the art object private is quite different. By it's nature, it is not designed to assert oneself in the world. It's purpose is therefore introverted. It serves only the needs of the mind of the creator. Perhaps it engages the artist by presenting them with a puzzle that must be solved. Perhaps it helps the artist expunge thoughts and feelings from their subconscious in a way that is not otherwise possible. These (and other) introverted motives fall under the category of "therapeutic motives". They are therapy for our minds and our lives. Their reason lie only in our selves. They have no requirement to draw from social context, or to present their object for public display.

The private artist is stigmatized as using art as therapy, which suggests that the artist is psychologically weak. The presumption of weakness is NOT simply the need for therapy…. after all… many public artists make work that has obvious therapeutic overtones. The weakness is that the private artist will not push up against the external world and engage it… as if they are too fragile to allow the challenge of public discourse into their minds. This criticism of the private artist is made by the art establishment, who control the views of such things. They control the view precisely because they engage in the public discourse of what things mean. The private artist is mute on the issue precisely because they don't. The private artist is left to either enter the public forum and debate the judgement that is passed on them… or to retreat further into the position of "I don't care". Typically, they retreat… because they don't care about what is said about them… and probably (because they don't care) they aren't generally aware of the criticism to begin with. In either case… they disappear from public life and from the world of art.


**********

A major stumbling block in the mind of the artist is the assumption that seeking a public display is somehow artificial, and that it involves the artist in trying to please OTHER people…. leading to work that sells out to some vague public desire. This is indeed possible. However, selling out to a vague public desire IS NOT equivalent to public display.

Consider this… do you find it artificial when you display your work to other artists who are close to you… with whom you can share confidences and critical ideas? Probably you don't. Some artists actually do. Apparently they are so inwardly drawn and vulnerable to even the most intimate and well meaning critique that they are incapable of public display at all. But this is an extreme case. Their aversion to public display has nothing to do with artificiality or selling it. Rather, they are simply terrified. Their terror is irrelevant and so are they.

But if you not terrified, but are legitimately concerned with not being artificial and selling out, then how do you avoid this without becoming an isolationist? I think the answer lies in considering what gives rise to the "vague public". The public is vague because they have no specific identity. As a group, all these non-specific people floating around society share no common ideology. Therefore, no artwork presented to such a group could connect with them. This gives the artist no basis for making the work, no confidence that it matters, and (peripherally) little hope for selling work.

To alleviate these problems, that artist would have to come up with some idea of what the public wants. In the absence of anything specific, all that is left is to make presumptions about artist tastes of the general public. A short-list would include such categories as… landscape… representational… impressionistic… colorful. But these categories are (the artist knows) simply trite, historical generalizations. Because the public is not sophisticated (probably) they are drawn to these culturally induced simplifications of what art is.

If this was only solution, then it is DEFINITELY a sellout to have public display. If the only audience and motive for making art was to hit such a watered down target, then relevant public display is not possible. MANY artists do exactly this, and you see it all the time. There is TONS of work which channels popular tastes in order to appeal to the broad, non-specific market.

By a strange twist of logic, I think this Sell-Out-Scenario is EXACTLY the fate that most isolation artists will find themselves in if they seek public display. Because the isolation artist seeks no social context, they are building no network for relevant public display. Therefore, their desire to display can only be satisfied by appealing to mass tastes. Some isolation artists work is too weird for that, so they are doomed again. But many who operate in isolation can and do appeal to the mass public. After all, how hard is it to sit in isolation and know that people like impressionistic landscapes? You don't need a network of intellectually challenging artist to come up with that. So here's what you end up with… working in isolation (no critical stimulation) selling cliched artwork work to the public (no critical consciousness). Isolation art and selling out… a perfect match.

So the challenge is to have public display that isn't based on appealing to a vague public. The only way to achieve this is to have a social context for art making, and to leverage that into public displays for a small (non mass market) but select audience. In practical terms, the social context has to come first, and the connections to  opportunities for public display will flow from that. The only alternative is to sell out, or never display work at all…. both of which are artistic death.

**********

These arguments can go on much longer. The isolation artist can find more and more ways to specify why isolation is equally relevant to social context art. The various points of argument presented here can all be unpacked and argued in more complex ways. But I think that even allowing for such expansion, the overall point has been made. So instead of trying to prove anything further with yet more arguments that could (again) be unpacked endlessly, I would rather change direction and talk about common observations that shed light on what I'm talking about.

**********

The first observation is that the isolation artist has to produce a complex argument to defend his isolationist strategy. And though the logic of such an argument can be laboriously constructed, it seems (in the end) to be a universe of denial within a larger world that sees social-context as the basis for all advanced developments in every field. In other words… in all things, we observe that the engagement of social contexts for ideas, support, and critical feedback seems to produce the optimal efforts from all involved… or at least a far better effort than if they are left to their own devices. Why should art be exempted from such social logic?

I suspect that this lies in the Romanticist notion of the artist as outsider… where art is thought to emanate solely from each person's particular "genius" and naiveté (who they are uniquely) … both of which are crushed upon contact with the corrupting influences of the exterior world. The desire to keep oneself PURE in this manner is utterly Platonic… viewing the world as a duality between the pure and the impure… between perfect forms and their imperfect reflections in the actual world. Regardless of the merit and meaning of such a philosophy… and even granting that many artists couldn't even articulate Plato's theories… the cultural legacy of such dualism (being written into modes of thinking that people embrace unknowingly)  is to cut off truth from the real world. In art, this has produced a long tradition of "purification" strategies, which pit the artist against the outside world. I think the isolation-artist is part of this tradition.

But why do this? Why isolate oneself in the face of the obvious downside to being outside all system.  I'm not talking about being outside of particular systems, or particular points of view. Obviously there are terrible points of view that one wouldn't want to be part of.  I'm talking about being outside of any system… of being removed from any social-context. The isolation is numbing and destructive of creativity.

**********

As if all this isn't bad enough, consider this…. that even if one rejects social-contexts within art…. one cannot reject social-context in every other area of life. Everything else that happens all around us is being driven by some social logic… and this logic washes over us all the time… like radiation. We are faced with endlessly repetitive social contexts that don't' allow for creativity. It seems to me that the ONLY chance for the artist is to find (or more likely) construct a social context for art.

For the creative or artistic type… having been so long faced with uninspiring social contexts… they probably have adopted psychological isolation as a means to avoid being driven mad. Further, they have probably come to view any social group as being bad. This handicaps the artist greatly, as they have cut themselves off from connection to ideas, support, and critical feedback that they could get from an appropriate social context.

One has to be strong… one has to have fortitude and vision. But without a social-context for creative expression… is it possible at all? Can one exist totally isolated against a backdrop of a non-creative, post-modern, conformist life, yet still be a productive creative force? What superhuman requirement does that place on us? And though super-humanity is a glamorous notion, is it a relevant goal? Or is it simply the fantasy we engage in to sooth the transition from wanna-be artist, to the failed-artist, who was martyred by the cruel world. If victory in such matters is the priority… if succeeding at art and getting your vision out there is the goal… I think the bullshit and fantasies and Romantic notions of noble isolation have to be rejected in favor of something that has half a chance. I've been arguing that this "something else" is a social-context for creative thought and activity.

But because artists might typically be isolationists and introverted, such a shift to a more public consciousness (as required for developing social context) necessarily involves them in a radical reorientation in their thinking about how to work with others. That is the topic of PART TWO of this essay.

Hard Rock Absurdity

Click, click, click… ahhhhhh….. the Palladia music channel is showing Pink Floyd in concert. Something recent, as they are all old. They're playing "Breath" from Dark Side of the Moon. I really loved that song. But honestly, I loved the version I had on an old, blue Memorex mix-tape in 1982.  There's something about the clickity-clack of the cassette experience that felt more real than the effortless remote-control experience that channel-surfed me to this moment. And sure, cassettes are old and don't sound so good anymore. But they sound a lot better than this shit.

Jazz musicians get cooler with age. Blues musician get cooler with age. Rock musicians do not. They get worse… much worse… all the way bad. Having suckled at the GIANT TEAT of popular fame for so long… having milked it so dry… having toured and toured and packed stadiums and had breakups and outrageous personal histories… and in general having passed through every stage of mega-stardom stupidity… they arrive on the other side culturally exhausted and meaningless.

The flame that burns twice as bright may certainly burn half as long, but in the case of rock stardom, it burns ten times brighter… and the intensity of the burn not only consumes every resource within the artist, but exhausts those resources completely. In the end there is nothing left… only the burnt ash cinders of their Stratocasters. In time there arises undead from that tumultuous grave the endless string of periodic mega-tours… the rock star afterlife. Arrogant, self-aggrandizing vanity projects before a middle aged fan base all too eager to shell out big bucks for tickets.

Such scenes are cultural in this sense… that they actually happen in our world. But they are very middlebrow. They reflect the commodification of the music, and the inability of the viewer to find any thing new in the world, such that they have to reengage the past to stave off boredom in the present. It's a symptom of what the culture lacks, not culture itself. Or, by that logic... it's a culture defined by what isn't there.

Click, click, click… ahhhhh…. there's David Gilmore again… in front of massive outdoor stadium crowd.. singing something-or-other. The stage is completely black, spotlit dramatically from above as he crouches over his guitar like a sorcerer staring into a crystal ball. A full orchestra in the wings lays down lush thematics, as the smoke machine constructs the necessary mythology.  Jesus H Christ!!! If the psychological weight of Dark Side had ANY MEANING AT ALL… it is all lost in this venue. How can you sing "Money" with any integrity to 50,000 fans who paid big bucks to sit in a stadium to hear you sing about the absurdity of money?

Roger Waters should write an album called The Dark Side of the Dark Side of the Moon. But nobody really wants to hear that either. Late career albums describing the down side of fame are an embarrassment… like middle aged men crying on the shoulders of their twenty-one year old girlfriends, while she texts friends behind his back. They should just date someone their own age. And if that's too boring, then maybe they're too boring too. And so all the boring shit in the world gets recycled onto the Palladia channel… Pink Floyd, Bad Company, Queen, and so on. There they stand in pudgy splendor, extending every song to opus lengths worthy of Springsteen at his most boring, as the crowd goes wild upon the inevitable crescendo and thunderous last note.

I think I have more admiration for Blue Oyster Cult playing "Don't Fear the Reaper" before 300 people at Hershey Park, than the Stones doing their 10,000th performance of Jumpin' Jack Flash at the Superbowl. Why don't they just produce a hologram of the Stones playing Satisfaction and play it 24/7 in every town square in America. It could be the new national anthem. And every time you looked at it a sensor would register your eye movement and deduct 99 cents from your EYE-tunes account. Ha ha.

Click click click… ahhhhhh… Oh my god... Palladia is now showing a Rolling Stones video. I watch with the sound off in order to deconstruct the visual logic. In the video, The Stones are playing in some super-cool dive-bar aesthetic, squeezed onto a tiny stage being very Stones-ey. The club patrons are young and beautiful... essentially they are models hired for the video shoot. Their lithe sexual bodies gyrate in languid dance moves. We are to understand that The Stones have seduced them with music and attitude. Such is the power of The Stones to channel the primal desires of every generation.

Mind you... we are not supposed to think the patrons know that these are The Rolling Stones. The Stones are playing it as if they are just some ordinary band on stage... but that they are so inherently cool that even kids FORTY YEARS younger than them ignore the age difference and make a psychic and sexual connection with them. This includes connections with Keith Richards, who hides his craggy face behind sunglasses that have some kind of silver bangle dangling off the side. At one point he smiles devilishly, revealing crooked teeth. Ron Wood winks to a girl, who is transfixed. Of course, Jagger dances directly into the camera, essentially breaking the 4th wall, and letting us know that he knows we're watching. He aggressively engages the video viewer... because Mick cannot be seen without seeing you first.

REEKING PHONY PATHETIC

Every major rock act will (when interviewed) express the desire to get back to their roots and play small clubs…. just like when they started out. But such conceits on materialize as fantasy within music videos. When it comes to reality, they only every play the largest stadiums possible. The bands usually claim it's an unfortunate compromise required to allow all of their fans to see them. But the truth is that within the culture of the music industry, it is a sign of weakness and failure to take a step back from profit maximization.

Top acts become top acts through ambition and business savvy. They do not accept anything less than what they can get. They do not walk away from the big payday in order to pursue a project like playing smaller venues. As required, they will pull the old amps out of storage and call forth their old manager, who awakens from his disco-slumber to begin hard-balling everyone in sight for max money.

When the whole corporate, big money, mass media juggernaut finally rolls into your town and delivers the guitar god onto the smoke filled stadium stage... and as the 100 foot high monitors show images of the performer who is too small to see from 80% of the seats... then nothing is left to complete the absurdity than that the performers will muster all their practiced earnestness to sing socially conscious songs derived from ideologies so far in everyone's past as to be non-existent.

Click click click… ahhhh…. It's the end of the world, as we know it.

What makes a city a music city

It's interesting how some U.S. cities are known as music cities. Cities such as Austin, Memphis, Chicago, and New Orleans are music cities. What makes these cities music cities, whereas a city like Philadelphia is not?

To think about this, I look at the analogous situation of the theater. What makes New York a theater city? The obvious answer would be that it has Broadway, with its big time theaters. But other cities have a large theater houses, and they aren't theater cities. What New York has is not just more large theaters, but many smaller theaters off Broadway. It is this grass roots presence that makes a city a theater city. 

Any city can build a grand theater, and usually do. Philadelphia has the Kimmel Center. Does that make Philadelphia a theater city? I don't think so. When I go to the Kimmel center, I leave feeling like I just consumed high end architectural luxury, complete with high ticket price, parking garage fee.... and a night-on-the-town, dinner and drinks, dressed-up, upper-middle class consumptive attitude.  I do not like the feeling that culture costs 100 dollars per experience.

Philadelphia is not a theater town and it is not a music town, and building palaces dedicated to music and theater will not change that. When you consider what makes Austin or NYC or Memphis or Chicago music towns... it isn't that they have giant music venus (though they do)... but that the spirit of music is alive and well in all the small venues. That is where the true culture resides.

As Robert Henri says in the opening paragraph of his "The Art Spirit".... "Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums."

I could also ask, what makes a city an ART city? A great museum? If you put the Metropolitan museum of art in Las Vegas... would that make Vegas the art capital of America? Sadly, I think it might... and it wouldn't take long to put a thousand room hotel over top of it, and slots in the lobby... and take a cab right from the airport.

If small venues are the key to being an art city, and if the "art spirit" is required to sustain small venues... then what exactly is that art spirit?  I'm not sure I know what the "art spirit" is in essence, but I can think of an example that seems to exemplify the art spirit. The example I have in mind is that of New Orleans, and it's small music venues.

In New Orleans, there are a lot of small music venues where many different types of bands play. Some of these places are simply bars, with an area for the musicians to stand in. The musicians play for tips, it seems, as often there is no cover charge at all. I get the impression that the proprietors support the presence of the musicians not because it profit-maximizes their business, but rather, that it is simply what they do. Having musicians play live music in your bar is just how things are done. In this regard then, the presence of the musicians is part of the culture. It is part of the culture because culture is really only made up of the things that people do without thinking about it. Culture is the unquestioned, the pervasive, the given. Culture is all those things that do not change, and thus provide a stable identity to a place. This cultural attitude toward music is exists in some cities, but not in others.

In a non-music city, the presence of musicians in bars is not a given. In a city like Philadelphia, the bar owners only use musicians if they can bring in revenue. If they can't, the bar owner will use a jukebox, PA system, or karaoke machine to pump music into their bar. And not even this is a commitment to music, because if the bar owners could make more money by not having those things, then I'm sure they would do that instead. In short, bar owners in non-music cities do not consider having live musicians to be a given. They don't have the music culture.

The commitment to music found in a music culture isn't so much something that the members of that culture consciously choose day by day. The commitment is actually simply present in the culture, and no one much questions it. It is culturally induced. This commitment is what allows the music and musicians to live and thrive in these cities.

Reflections on American Museums

One of the interesting issues that comes up when you study art is the issue of museum culture. After all, the art we see (in person) comes to us by way of museum visits... and so the rationale and thinking behind museums impacts what we see, and how we see it. The history of museums in America begins with the formation of vast fortunes in the 19th century, by certain families. The wealth generated was so vast that these families were released from any normal economic concerns, and entered the stratosphere of wealth, where the only question became HOW to spend the money.

These newly super-rich Americans looked to European royalty for examples of what to own and how to live. They built immense mansions on 5th Avenue, reminiscent of palaces. They built summer homes in Newport. They dressed and ate and comported themselves in a generally regal fashion... and in general lived a life that denied the democratic roots of American culture... the became the upper class. Very European. And when it came to art... they turned to the art of the Renaissance as being symbolic of their position in society. Renaissance paintings had served the powers of the church and state in Europe for centuries, and now the super rich Americans wanted to claim that legitimizing influence for themselves.

Thus began the great "looting" of Europe of it's great art treasures by super-rich Americans who were out to prove themselves worthy of their money. Emissaries were sent out to locate, authenticate, and procure artwork. This drove prices to unheard of levels, which propelled the European art dealers, who were only too willing to get rich on American art-materialism. Wealthy Europeans did not have the same view of art. The art they had might have been in their families for generations.... like furniture. It did not have the same connotations that it had to the Americans, and so they did not bid against Americans in buying it.

These facts, and many others explain one basic fact of American art culture... that it is loaded with examples of Renaissance art.... and this art serves as the foundation for most of the great museums in America. We take it for granted that when we go to the museum, we will see paintings of Christ on the cross by some Italian painter from the 15th century. We may not even wonder what such a painting has to do with our culture, our lives, our view of the world. We don't even get that chance, because we don't get to wonder what the point of a museum is... because all we ever see are museums constructed in the same way.

The second major factor in our museum culture, is the 19th century idealism among these super-rich, that art could have a civilizing and cultivating affect on the lower classes. This is (for the most part) a conceit amongst the rich that the lower classes need civilizing at their hands, and that their art collections can do it. The construction of the major American museums flowed from this idealism. They were built as marble palaces to house the collections of the rich, for the betterment of the poor. This "democratic" view of art still prevails everywhere. Every museum justifies itself in terms of bringing art to the masses. I suppose this isn't a problem per se, but it turns into a problem when you step back and consider how it all actually goes down in real life.

In real life, the typical American doesn't really understand art... and doesn't (therefore) really care about art. Art is not taught (in any meaningful way) in most grammar schools or high schools.. or even college.  We are a visually illiterate culture. Our visual culture is not derived from drawings and paintings and sculptures... but by television, the computer, and mass media in general. Mass media images do not challenge the viewer to interact (the way that fine art does)... they require only a passive absorption. Americans become good at (if you can use the word "good" for conditioned response) grasping the message embedded in images (typically meant to convey specific meanings, such as buying a product or accepting something as "sexy"). But Americans are lousy at understanding fine art. One might wonder why fine art museums would even matter to Americans... in as much as they get their fill of the images that matter to them, by simply switching on the TV.

Museums of fine art exist in the American cultural landscape as oddities... the last bastion of things that are supposed to matter, but really don't to most people. Visitors enter the museum the way they enter a church... oddly aware of how out of sync the whole place compared to the rest of the world. Museums themselves are constructed  like churches... large spaces, marble that is cool to the touch... over-sized rooms... everything out of scale to humanity. The art work placed on white walls... no context for the art... no clue as to where and how it was originally meant to be seen in. A total abstraction. Art ripped from it's historical context.. like an angel floating on a cloud... the idealization of a human spirit ripped from it's bodily circumstances and considered as pure spirit. We are meant to kneel and somehow commune with the art. But being visually illiterate, we are left to wander around on sensory overload, scanning the walls like we channel surf the TV.. .waiting for something "interesting" to grab our attention. I suppose that if (in any museum room) there was a flat-panel TV showing ESPN... that many people would gravitate toward that. The other alternative to viewing at the museum, is to conscientiously read all the cards on the wall that explain the art.. or else get the headphone tour and listen to someone with a slightly British accent tell you what's up.

Given the disconnect between fine art (old masters fine art, I should say) and real life... one wonders how museums continue to attract visitors. They do so (of course, through promotion)... and a big part of promoting the museum is by putting on BIG SHOWS that can be promoted well. Certain artists are BIG NAMES. Picasso is obviously one. He is like the Tom Cruise of art, in that his work in a show guarantees people will show up. The same goes for other BIG NAMES... Dali, Wyeth, Pissaro, Van Gogh, etc. One could ask if this is a meaningful artistic experience... but one does not get the chance to ask that... an in fact the point is moot. Americans love spectacle... they love the BIG THING.. they love Superbowls and march madness and the world series and being number one and skimming the best of the best from a list of BEST THINGS that is set before them in the passive TV-Based world we live in. We are more obsessed with consumption than with understanding what we consume. For museums to offer up the same experience dressed as art, is a natural outgrowth of all this.  In a sense, consumption of socially constructed products IS what american culture is about. Materialism in all it's glory.

But...AH... something is lost. The thing that is lost is suggested to us in those moments during our museum visit, when we become bored. When we wander around the big rooms not knowing what to do. Or when we go to the Dali or Picasso  show, and stand in line to get in... and stand shoulder to shoulder in a crowd to see innumerable works of art produced 100 years ago by someone we know little of, from a culture we aren't part of... and we can't even get a good look at it... and even if we could, we are too visually illiterate to make much of the opportunity.

But what are the alternatives? As I said before, this state of affairs really reflects American mentalities... so there is not really an alternative. But we might ask, how could it really be better. I don't know for sure. As an art student, I know that I would rather see a greater variety of works on the walls. I know I don't want to see the same collection on the walls every time I show up. The typical museum has 5 times more stuff in storage than they exhibit. I want to see that stuff too. I want to see more drawings and fewer paintings, since drawings are revealing of many artistic impulses. I would like the art to be easier to get to. I wish that there wasn't just one super large museum, but that there were smaller museums that were scattered in different locations.

I think about the metaphor of the theater in NYC. Of course you have Broadway, with its big time theaters. But you also have lots and lots of smaller theaters off Broadway. So I ask the question... "Is New York a great theater town because it has big theaters, or because it has many small theaters?"  When I go to the Kimmel center, I leave feeling like I just consumed high end architectural luxury, complete with high ticket price, parking garage fee.... and a night-on-the-town, dinner and drinks, dressed-up, upper-middle class consumptive attitude.  I do not like the feeling that culture costs 100 dollars per experience.

Philadelphia is not a theater town and it is not a music town, and building palaces dedicated to music and theater will not change that. When you consider what makes Austin or NYC or Memphis or Chicago music towns... it isn't that they have giant music venus (though they do)... but that the spirit of music is alive and well in all the small venues. That is where the true culture resides.

As Robert Henri says in the opening paragraph of his "The Art Spirit".... "Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is the art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums."

So what makes a city an ART city? A great museum? If you put the Metropolitan museum of art in Las Vegas... would that make Vegas the art capital of America? Sadly, I think it might... and it wouldn't take long to put a thousand room hotel over top of it, and slots in the lobby... and take a cab right from the airport.

At any rate, it's interesting. You go to the museum looking for insight into the world... and you may get it.. but maybe not what you expect. You think you're looking out a window.. but in many ways its simply a mirror reflecting a distorted image. The consideration of that image... the consideration of the nature of that distortion... goes a long way to understanding what the hell a museum is really about, or not about.

Despite all that, I do enjoy going. These critical comments flicker on and off in my mind like a neon sign, but that's ok. They keep me sane in these somewhat insane situations.

( 4/13/2010, on the occasion of seeing the Picasso show)

The Artist and The Viewer

I was thinking about the relationship between the artist and the public. I came up with two very different ideas about it all. The first one I'll "The artist and the viewer"... and the second I'll call "The artist and the public". The idea of the viewer is an abstraction of any single person who views art. The idea of the "public" is an abstraction of all the people who look at art.

Artist & The Viewer.

It seems to be an accepted truism in art, that the reaction of the viewer is important. One way in which it is important is in selling artwork to individuals, right? Because they won't buy it if they don't like it. But even beyond this, the reaction of the viewer seems to be integrated into the very idea of why art exists at all. We hear of the power of art, or the purpose of art, etc.... as being the communication of some effect into the mind of the viewer, or into their emotions, or psyche, etc. We hear too about the therapeutic affect of art, or the ability of art to raise the consciousness of the working man, or to give visions of pure aesthetic beauty to those whose lives are ugly. And so on and so on.

These ideas all place the position of the viewer as very dominant, even more dominant than the artist who creates the work. I was wondering if this situation derives historically from the growth of individualism and democracy in Western European thought. As more and more aspects of the world are delivered over to the governance of the common man (with great success), it seems that the common man (in the noble sense of the free individual) becomes the locus of meaning of things in the world. When the world becomes a marketplace on which not only goods and services, but ideas and attitudes are exchanged in a continual flow... then the agents of that exchange (the individual) seem to be the makers of meaning. They make meaning individually, and those meanings accrue through various social mechanism to become the "social meanings". In such a world, it becomes difficult to speaking of "meaning" apart from "social meaning", and the two become one, and a social-metaphysics results.

I could hardly call social-metaphysics evil, considering that the marketplace itself is a social-metaphysical thing. But the truth of the market is the truth of all the individuals brought together by a market mechanism that reflects supply and demand. The truth of the market is knowledge of socially metaphysical groupings. No problem there. But, not all truth is social metaphysical. We don't have a social mechanisms to determine what people think that "2 + 2" equals. It is understood that some kinds of knowledge is validated in other ways, and that the role of the individual is to "learn" those facts... those truths.. those meanings.

[An aside]
I was thinking that things must have been different during different periods of art history. For instance, were classical Greek sculptures made to achieve therapeutic affects for Greek citizens? Did the viewers of these sculptures talk about "what they got from them".... or "how they made me feel". Were they built for the purpose of bringing beauty to the masses, and making the working man's day more spiritual?

Was Notre Dame Cathedral built with the point of view of the common person in mind? Did the architect care about their reactions? Would those who built it stand in front of it later, and eavesdrop on public opinion in order to feel justified?

Probably not, to both of these examples. I think that the meaning and purpose and justification for art in past epochs must have been along different lines. In our own day we couldn't imaging discounting the common man from our estimation of what we're doing. And I'm not talking about "human consciousness" in some abstract way, as I'm sure considerations of human consciousness informed the making of all art... but did so by informing the construction of the ideologies out of which the art sprang.
[end of aside]

So where does art fit in? Is art a kind of truth that forms only in the mind of the viewer, or is the truth of art something that exists on it's own.

The idea that the truth of art is in the mind of the viewer leads to problems. For one thing, it biases artistic perception toward the reaction of the viewer. This leads to the further problem of figuring out why people react as they do. If one subjective reaction is hard to swallow, what do you do with countless subjective reactions. Obviously, all these subjective reactions will cancel each other out to a large degree, and will lead to the kind of skepticism that is popularly explained as cultural relativism. Varying subjective reactions to art (or anything) will be explained as stemming from the differing cultural backgrounds of the viewers, such that no-one can claim knowledge of the art work. Since the artist is not immune from the conditions of cultural influence, they too become simply another subjective voice... despite the fact that they created the art.

Another problem is that the individual viewer has no guidance in viewing art. They are told that their gut reactions are all important starting points. How does one go from "gut reaction" to "informed viewing"? Not easy. Informed viewing requires a process of learning. But more than that, it requires a re-statement of the relationship between the viewer and the thing viewed. To embrace informed viewing, the viewer must draw their gut reaction into question to some extent. They must come to understand that reaction is a complex process wherein their emotions and their knowledge work together, such that they can change their reaction by becoming more informed viewers.

BUT... what is it that they can be "informed" about. What exactly is the "learning" that a viewer can undertake? Of course, we know the types of things that can be learned, so that question is rhetorical. The point is this... that to say that someone learns something about art is to say that some truth about art exists beyond simply reacting to it. This means that reaction and knowledge are not the same thing.

So, there must be some truth to art, and that truth can be made to exist in any particular work of art. This truth has to be put there by the artist. This all seems to make sense... but like I said in the beginning, the bias toward always considering art from the point of view of reaction... and the strong tendency of modern democratic society to legitimize art based on what viewers make of it... these things distort what is going on.

Of course, the danger in supposing that art can ignore the viewer, is the idea that art can rely solely on assertions of meanings by the artist (or art establishment)... which I take the phenomenon of conceptual art and post modern art to be... where no aesthetic qualities even exist to be reacted to, and the viewer substitutes belief for reaction. Basically, you're told what to think, and what your reactions should be in regard to.

I realize that the dichotomies discussed above smacks of a false alternative. We could say that the truth isn't solely "in the viewer" or "solely in the art"... or solely anywhere for that matter. We can say that all truth is a relation between viewer and viewed. But how that epistemological abstraction solves the problem, I don't know.

Given the dichotomy as it exists, I get the impression that one can go in one of two directions (reflecting these dichotomies). One can make art that is viewed favorably by the viewing public without requiring that the public do anything but "react" to it in a natural fashion. The "public" could be everyone in society, or it could break down into smaller groups, such as lovers of landscapes, or abstract art, etc. In fact, it can break down into any number of groups EXCEPT one... it can't become the sophisticated insiders who make up the post-modern artworld's upper echelon. Because that group doesn't react, it buys into ideology.

This dichotomy sucks, as dichotomies always do.

If there does exist an "art world" that has an ideology... then why not participate in it? If one could stomach producing conceptual art, at least one could reap the benefit of having your art viewed other than via gut reaction. You can assert what your art means, and be taken seriously. Your claims would be part of the viewers mind. You could exist in a high-minded fashion among other high-minded people, and feel like you actually knew something. The problem is, I find these ideologies lacking... and can't believe them, much less align myself with it simply for some careerist benefits.

So, you reject such group nonsense, and you are isolated. Sure, you have your own ideology and your own standards, but you have no public that gives a crap about such things. The only thing you can be sure of that the public knows, is that they "like what they like, and know it when they see it". It's an honest statement, but depressingly narrow in actual fact. Just as relying on "gut" reaction gives no guidance to the viewer... delivering your art to these "gut reaction" viewers gives no guidance to the artist. I suppose artists cultivate a style of work that they can consistently sell, and that's that. But what does "consistent sales" have to do with artistic truth? Potentially very little.

I suppose that the way out of this dichotomy is to stick to your guns... produce work that you can verify to yourself has meaning... and to cultivate a following among some informed people who both believe in what you're doing, and who react favorably to it based on such belief. This presumes too, that the belief is rational, and not simply that you cultivate your own brand of artworld nonsense. This seems like a very idealized solution, the kind I love to identify, but the kind that experience has taught me seems never to exist... or for very long.

It reminds me of how it's difficult to find rational people who can discuss philosophy. People who can do so are not group oriented, and so drift in and out of view. And even when you can nail them down to a time and place, their natures cause them to argue to narrower and narrower points of distinction, so they break apart soon enough over differences, rather than on their 99 percent of agreement. There is NO GROUP POWER in such things, and so they cannot be the basis for movements or institutions or a market, etc.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about the artist and the viewer. The topic of the artist relation to the public at large is the other idea I was thinking of... but I don't have that written down yet.

Killer DeTocqueville quote

"When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality that renders him independent of each of his fellow citizens, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to it's beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence."

Alexis De Tocqueville

Sarah Palin, MaxHeadroom, and celebrity culture

I think I just figured something out.

I noticed that Sarah Palin has a new reality type show on TV called Sarah Palin's Alaska. I haven't watched it, but the commercials I've seen for it show her and her family doing stuff in a semi-wilderness setting. Obviously it is a way to keep the candidate in the public consciousness. If a candidate simply bought TV time for the same purpose, they would be seen in the same poor light that Ross Perot was back in the 90s. Not to mention that it would cost a fortune.

I suppose Palin's ability to host such a show is underwritten by the public's desire to watch her. She is no different from any other celebrity in this way... famous for being famous. And that fame has a political heft that far outweighs the ineptitude that was in evidence in the last election.

Here's another observation... I was in a book store tonight and I think I saw Sarah Palin's face staring out from any number of shiny hardback covers, or other visual products, available for holiday shoppers. How it is that she is such a (literally) visible character is strange, considering that she isn't an elected official anymore, and that she was held up to public ridicule in the last election.

Another observation: While surfing the web, one is inevitably subject to being hit with advertising, or news stories, or entertainment-news stories, and various other types of promotional stuff. As a high speed surfer of the internet, one is tempted to just assume that the virtual billboards you zoom by are simply random images with no pattern in them. But over the course of a week or so, you will experience a gradual crescendo of focus on many of those “random” sightings.

For example... Sarah Palin's daughter (Bristol) participated in Dancing With The Stars, the reality show. I only knew that because it started showing up on the internet. At first, it shows up as an innocuous passing reference on something like (for example) the AOL login screen. A few days later it might show up as a slightly longer story on some other web page.. and then you'll see reference to a video on youtube... and then you’ll see a TMZ reference to it a few days later.. and finally you'll see that she will be dancing for her life tonight at 8pm. By the time the full focus of an internet “exposure cycle” has hit your consciousness, your curiosity is so piqued that you have the sense that it is a “must see TV”. Not only has your interest been piqued to the pointless life of Bristol Palin, but you're kept always in mind of Sarah Palin.

And so it goes, day after day, week after week. I keep noticing the same crescendo of engineered interest in thing after thing. No doubt there are forces at work behind the scenes orchestrating this phenomenon. They aren’t devious forces.. it is simply the advertising and promotional industry doing what they do behind the scenes. In fact, they are just doing what they’ve been doing since the beginning of mass media... which is creating public interest.. because public interest has economic value.

Public interest in a person raises that person to celebrity status, which makes them valuable. And like any asset, you must first invest capital to develop it. You have to spend money to make money, and in the mass media celebrity industry, the investment is in exposure. Which brings me back to what I think I discovered about Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin is a right wing celebrity. She is a huge asset on the political balance sheet. She might seem like a liability in terms of intelligence or fitness for national leadership... but she holds enormous potential. Why? Think of what Arthur Jensen told Howard Beale in the movie Network. Beale (the TV anchor man) asks Jensen (the money behind the network) why he chose him to preach his corrupt corporate message... Jensen replies... “Because you’re on TV, dummy... Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.”

So if you wonder why the right looks to Palin as a potential party leader in the years ahead, no doubt the reason is... “Because she’s on TV, dummy”.

When Sarah Palin can materialize in mass media at will... when she masters television, “the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in this whole godless world” (to quote Howard Beale again).... then “who knows what shit will be peddled for truth” (Beale again). And so on and so on.

Of course, we know the shit that is peddled for truth. The shit is Sarah Palin.

But in the virtual world of mass media, there is no Sarah Palin. She is just a face. She’s no different than MaxHeadroom, other than the fact that we know MaxHeadroom is artificial, whereas we assume Sarah Palin is real. The real force isn’t the celebrity... the real force is the power of the media to make celebrity, and that power is financed by interested parties that we never see.

Sarah Palin is on TV... and except for genuine news stories... nobody gets on TV without someone behind the scenes investing money in it... and that money is goal directed. The very fact that Sarah Palin is so exposed right now means that she is being invested in, and the scale of that investment suggests that she is being targeted as a presidential candidate.

The disturbing and sobering thought in all of this is not that a dummy like Palin could be president, but that the machinery of mass media makes this... and things like this... a reality, every day of the week, in every possible aspect of culture.

Lost In Translation... Reflections on an e-card...OR... The Christmas Card in the age of Mechancial Reproduction

I received an electronic christmas card (back in December). The e-card I received showed a horse drawn sleigh full of Christmas presents being drawn down the street of a (presumably) olde-english townscape, while snowflakes fell and a traditional Christmas carol (the holly and the ivy) played in the background.

As I watched, I had a strong emotional response to it...which was, I felt deeply how absurd it was. I hadn’t felt this way about an e-card before. This is not a put-down of the person who sent it to me. Everyone sends e-cards these days, and up until today I had never considered them absurd. They’re not as nice as a traditional card, I supposed... but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

The sense of the absurdity that I felt was no doubt due to some readings I have done in the past few years... readings in “art theory”. The first one that comes to mind is Walter Benjamin’s well known essay from 1936, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In this essay Benjamin discusses how, with the advent of photographic reproduction of art, that the work of art thus reproduced loses it’s aura, and it’s authority. Aura and authority are derived from it’s singularity and uniqueness of the object, and both of these qualities are lost in reproduction.

Benjamin goes on to consider the implications of this shift away from the original to a copy. Being a Marxist type of social critic, he seems intrigued by the “democratization” of the image... of how reproduction allows it to been consumed by “the masses”... and of the loss of the singular authority of the artist and art object. Etc, etc. His conclusions are less interesting at this point than the observation about loss of aura and authority.

The other reading I had done was this book that I am just reading now, called “The End of Art”, by this art critic Donald Kuspit. In this book, he argues that art has entered a phase that he refers to as post-art. He sees contemporary art as no longer being concerned with any of the issues that previous art (both modern art and more traditional art) had been occupied with. He traces the nature of this shift from Duchamp to the present day.

Part of his argument involves the aforementioned democratization of art that occurs due to photographic reproduction. The stripping away of the aura and authority of the original is consistent (in his view) with other factors that had been delivering art to the masses in order to legitimize it. He sees art as having lost it’s authority in general, due to conceptual attacks on it by (originally) Duchamp, and later by conceptual artists starting in the 1960s. Having lost it’s authority as a meaningful individual experience, the art object is forced to be “relevant” in some social or political way.

The issue of mechanical reproduction of art comes up all the time in readings on art, and they always cite Benjamin’s original essay. Having come upon this issue times in readings, I have thought about it a lot, and was convinced of the truth of it. However, I have never had a strong, visceral reaction against photographic reproduction. Sure, I’ve had moments where I was aware of the disconnect between the original and the copy, but I’ve never had the break-through moment of deep realization of what it truly means to rob something of it’s aura, originality, and uniqueness.

Perhaps it’s because I was raised in a culture of mechanical reproduction, and an age of technology. I am not at the plugged-in level of today's youth.. not by a long shot. But still, things like television shows, commercials, billboards, magazines, digital photography, internet, computer graphics, and art history books filled with little tiny pictures... these all seem normal and above suspicion to me. As did e-cards.. until today.

As I watched the e-card dance across the screen, I was struck (as I said) with the absurdity. It is not absurd in terms of what it is, but in what it pretends to be. It pretends to be the original. But it is not an actual card. What is lost in the translation?

A real Christmas card can be held and felt and occupy real space in your world. A real card comes to the house in an envelope, delivered by the postal worker. The real card was chosen by the sender, and required physical effort to locate, select, and purchase. The real card has handwriting in it that comes from the tip of pen that had to be pressed into the paper, which gives evidence of the person sending it. The real card has an address on the front written by an actual hand, and a stamp that was licked. The real card was processed at the post office, and bears evidence of the machines and processes that deliver it to your door. A real card has to be opened, removed from it’s envelope, and read... then set down somewhere to observe. At some point you are forced to consider what to do with the card. Presuming you throw it out after the holidays, you can see the real card as having a life span of several weeks, and as having passed through the hands of many people on it’s way to you.

The e-card has none of these qualities. The e-card is a phantom projection of a real card... a projection of the mind, based on memories of real cards. The e-card has only two properties... the first is that it is symbolic of a real card, and can thus function to put us in mind of a real card.... the second is that it is convenient to send and receive.

If we imagine a time in the future where real cards are made obsolete by e-cards, so much so that people stop having actual experiences with real cards... then we can see that the symbolic property referred to above (the invoking of a memory of a real card) will be lost. At that point, all that will be left is convenience. But convenience is not a property unto itself, but a property of something. When the “something” is gone... the convenience loses it’s meaning.

So I was feeling very directly that the e-card had no meaning other than what I projected... which was a dim memory (at best) of the tangible meaning of a real card. I could see (also) how this is true of mechanical reproduction of art. Such reproduction is a terrible necessity if the objective is to make viewing of art convenient, but which trains the mind to see art as a photographic image, and in that sense no different from the countless images we see every day. Art loses it’s singularity, it’s uniqueness, and it’s authority. It becomes subject to the laws of mass distribution and mass consumption, which change the nature of the art object.. changing it from “art object” to “image of art object” to eventually simply “image”... then “bitmap”... to “digitial information”... to “information”.

And so on, and so on.... until POOF... it's gone. Then the world has to be reborn and recreated by primitives, in the real world.