Page 50 - Studio International - November 1968

Richard Smith, Joe Tilson, Michael E. Vaughan.
and Emmett Williams.

Between November 15 and November 25, Alecto
Gallery, Albemarle Street, W I, is exhibiting a
limited edition, 75 copies, newly published in Paris
by Czwiklitzer of seven Calligrammes by Apollinaire
and ten signed etchings by Zadkine illustrating the
Calligrammes. The etching are reversed out of black.
The edition, which costs 200 gns, is being produced
with texts in French, German and English, and a
small number of copies on Japan paper is available
at 400 gns.

Left
Louis Marcoussis
Portrait of Apollinaire 1912
engraving
lent to the I.C.A. exhibition by
Mme Halicka-Marcoussis

'Stephen Willats: Visual Automatics
and Visual Transmitters' at the
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford—to
November 16
The controlled triggering of creative behaviour
within an area of randomness, the subsequent
directions of behaviour within the area being self-
determined by the receiver (viewer) has been an
important factor in the development of my work.
This has required that the audience become, not
just an afterthought, but the prime reason for the
provision of triggers. This has meant that (a) the
audience becomes an integral part of the work and
(b) an examination of audience behaviour is essen-
tial in order to obtain a practical level of perform-
ance. This has therefore required the correlation of
areas of information which had previously been
thought of as outside the inherited Art framework.
The relationship that the observer has with most of
these works is that of a receiver to a transmitter, the
problem becoming one of transmitting the neces-
sary conditions for triggering via the shortest rout(
with the minimum of 'noise' (interference) in the
shortest time; the feedback between the audience
and the work being a result of this triggering.
The earlier works of the series of Visual Auto-
matica and Shift Boxes of 1963-5 took the form of may cause branching, expansion of the existing Above
limited sets of automatic variables operating at a line, reorganization or a complete shut down. Stephen Willats
set frequency, but with infinite random subsets and Visual transmitters Nos. 2 and 3 have a mosaic Visual transmitter No 2 Feb. '66—Feb. '68
combinations, the observer being forced to dis- format with linear nets reinforcing the movement 10 ft long x 4 ft 9 in. high x 3 ft wide
criminate between various random sets and build from area to area, the nets being mapped intuitively
his own order. A game of prediction is set up where in order to add to the randomness within the
the observer tries to impose an order, and work out structure, and also to create omni-directional
the probability of an occurrence of events. The movement. Again, rotors with the light reflected
later works of the Visual Automatic series use from them add to the randomness within areas and orientating itself to encompass the receiver in its
sparsely deployed triggers which are added to and the flash rates also operate at control frequencies. programme. Most of these objects require a period
filled in by the audience. These works use rotors in Visual transmitter No. 3 uses a Space Ratio be- of time before any level of performance is obtained
order to subliminally randomize the surrounding tween areas operating at a stroboscopic flash rate, and they are also only designed for an audience of
areas and rotors rotate at frequencies that trigger with the orientation of the location of stimuli being one. The problem involved in programming for a
perceptual orientation behaviour. In addition a restricted. large audience would necessitate the introduction
repeated flashing signal acts as a reinforcement. Future work will operate a more complex and of different tactics. In a society whose structure
With the Visual Transmitter series, the dominant direct relationship between receiver and trans- seems to be moving increasingly towards a position
model employed is concerned with Tolerance mitter, which will cause instability in the pro- of equilibrium in man's relationship with his en-
levels. A Tolerance level is reached when a line of gramme that the object is trying to attain, by vironment, the artist might well perform as a
communication between the audience and the means of the interference of a homeostat by the creator of areas of randomness in order to trigger
object becomes overcrowded and results in the audience. An equilibrium between the receiver creative behaviour.
operation in the audience of a self-regulator, which and transmitter is forced by the transmitter
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