Page 39 - Studio International - October 1969

Some recent art, evolving through attention
both to the conditions under which objects
are perceived and to the processes by which
aesthetic status is attributed to certain of
these, has tended to take its essential form in
message rather than in materials. In its logical
extremity this tendency has resulted in a
placing of art entirely within the linguistic
infrastructure which previously served merely
to support art. In its less hermetic manifesta-
tions art as message, as `softwear', consists of
sets of conditions, more or less closely defined,
according to which particular concepts may
be demonstrated. This is to say, aesthetic
systems are designed, capable of generating
objects, rather than individual objects them- less, 'things' have not come into being. At the
Photo path ICA 1969
selves. Two consequences of this work process level of optimum discrimination for practical
photographic prints 3 x 63 ft
are: the specific nature of any object formed living, objects are identified and meaning 2
Memory piece
is largely contingent upon the details of the attributed. But both primary experience and
One of two similar units 36 x 36 x 36 ft
situation for which it is designed; through pragmatic interpretation are simply modes of
attention to time, objects formed are inten- consciousness, alternative states of awareness, stayed their welcome. Many recent attitudes
tionally located partly in real, exterior, space and as such may be conceived of as points to materials in art are based in an emerging
and partly in psychological, interior, space. along a psycho-sensorial continuum. Between awareness of the interdependence of all sub-
Conceptual elements in a work may to some these points, to pursue the schematic analogy, stances within the ecosystem of earth. The
extent be conceived of, and accounted for, lie all degrees of discrimination. artist is liable to see himself not as a creator of
through analogy with the experience of sub- Schematically and in terms of discrimination, new material forms but rather as a co-
stantial elements. Consider these instructions : any path of consciousness through time might ordinator of existing forms, and may therefore
suppose an interior wall of a room to be con- be represented as a meander. Attention to choose to subtract materials from the environ-
cealed by a skin. The skin is parallel with and objects 'out there' in the material world is ment. As art is being seen increasingly in
an eighth-inch above the surface it conceals. constantly subverted by the demands of terms of behaviour so materials are being seen
The colour of the skin simulates that of the memory. Wilful concentration is constantly in terms simply of quantity rather than of
concealed surface. dissolving into involuntary association. Even quality.
The preceding paragraph is not intended as beyond familiar types of conscious association Life exists by virtue of the one-sixth of one
an object in its own right, although it could there are more subversive mechanisms at per cent of impurities which exists in a uni-
be considered as such,' but 'objects' may be work: `...we now have direct evidence that verse composed mainly of hydrogen (about
generated through the perceptual behaviour signals become distributed within the input 90 per cent) and helium (about 10 per cent).
it recommends. The existing substances of system. What we see... is not a pure and Viewed from this tangent, all artefacts may
the room serve to locate and particularize the simple coding of the light patterns that are be seen as belonging to a continuum of forms
object and no new materials are introduced. focused on the retina. Somewhere between of common elements. Consequently, a paint-
An immaterial object is created which is the retina and the visual cortex the inflowing ing could be said to represent a point of
solely a function of perceptual behaviour but signals are modified to provide information particular cultural significance located in an
yet which inducts attributes of physicality that is already linked to a learned response.... elemental continuum somewhere between
from its material setting. In 'fitting' the con- Evidently what reaches the visual cortex is geological and organic forms and gases and
ceptual elements into this setting an act of evoked by the external world but is hardly a dust. Although obviously irrelevant to some
attention is required which is similar to the direct or simple replica of it.'2 of the more sophisticated aspects of con-
act of handling material substances—it is Accepting the shifting and ephemeral nature noisseurship, such an attitude towards
styled by kinaesthetic analogy. of perceptual experience, and if we accept materials does enable us to view their use
In moving through real, 'sensorial', space we that both real and conceptual objects are simply in terms of their suitability for a
may touch immediately near objects. Distant appreciated in an analogous manner, then it situation—in a given context, some will seem
objects in real space are 'touched' in the mind becomes reasonable to posit aesthetic objects more appropriate than others.
(we say the mind 'reaches out'). The manner which are located partly in real space and Once materials are selected according to
therefore in which we make our mental partly in psychological space. Such a placing largely fortuitous criteria, depending on their
approach to a distant object of attention is of aesthetic objects however involves both a location, their individual status is diminished.
styled through analogy with, and expectation revised attitude towards materials and a The identification of art relies upon the
of, the bodily experience of near objects. reversal of function between these materials recognition of cues which signal that the type
This mode of appreciation, learned in exterior, and their context. of behaviour termed aesthetic appreciation is
sensorial, space, is applied when we negotiate Cage is hopeful in claiming, 'We are getting to be adopted.4 These cues help form a con-
interior, psychological, space. Kinaesthetic rid of ownership, substituting use' ;3 attitudes text which reveals the art object. The object
analogy then, an understanding in terms of towards materials in art are still informed itself, in being displayed, may be termed overt
body, is constant to our reception of perceptual largely by the laws of conspicuous consump- and in the case of the visual arts it has been
experience which shifts freely between sen- tion, and aesthetic commodity hardwear con- predominantly substantial. Any attempt to
sorial and psychological data in the life-world tinues to pile while utilitarian objects, whose make an 'object' of non-overt and insubstan-
`tangled, muddy and perplexed' which pre- beauty might once have been taken as con- tial conceptual forms demands that substantial
cedes the ordering of experience. clusive proof of the existence of God, spill in materials located in exterior space-time be
We exercise discrimination towards percep- inconceivable profusion from the cybernated used in a manner which subverts their
tual fields. At the level of zero discrimination cornucopias of industry. Each day we face `objectness' in order to identify them as
our experience is non-objective and meaning- the intractability of materials which have out- `situational cues'.5