Month: October 2018

Chat Session 1.4: Library Induction

Alexis

Today the main subject of the meeting was the library induction by Gustavo Montero. He took us through the organisation of the library and the process of selecting and acquiring text and other resources online. There are various pathways to reach a given text. Each pathway gives rise to a different set of results. A powerful tool is the database catalogue. It is worth looking at the video again and experimenting searching with the aim to develop a familiarity with the catalogue and develop a research method that suits my needs. Also remember that the library is an excellent repository of images, videos, ebooks, sound archives and programmes. 

It would be a good idea to link this to referencing software such as Zotero because the reference list can become quite extensive. This is particularly important for accessing specific sections in publications. I can translate the references manually, I am more comfortable with keeping a separate bespoke database of references of my own. However, I have to bear in mind that this process may become too onerous.

Long Words: short hand for smaller ones

Alexis

I used to be fond of big words like epistemology, ontology, intertextuality (never been fond of that one really) and so on. I think of such words as short hand for simpler language. But then, if I cannot explain a complex idea using simple words then I should reflect on whether I understand that idea well enough in the first place. There are times when an unusual word is called for. Perhaps to avoid repetition or to give a phrase a better meter. But to use big words wantonly when something simpler will do is to try to assume authority in the matter without warranting it. Big words can cover up confusion. Indeed I have often found myself confused with the words I use. 

Then there are situations when a big word is indeed needed. Usually because it stands for an idea, a theme, a topic. Take the word phenomenology, is that not simply talking about building a world view through the senses rather than through theory? Is it not the antithesis of metaphysics, solving problems of perception by abstract thinking? So unless I am talking about the subject itself, phenomenology, in which case referring to it as such makes perfect sense, I would rather talk about forming ideas through feelings and experience.

The what does one mean by the word ontology when talking about art? Why not say it as it is, talk about the way it was made, what it was made of, why it was made. That is so much more direct and pertinent. Meaning can be lost otherwise. It might be valid to talk about the epistemology of a painting in relation to its ontology, as short hand, but it would be equally valid to talk about looking at how the painting came about and the context in which it was made in relation to where we find ourselves now in order to undertand how we the perception of it has changed over time. This is another, but longer winded, way of saying the same thing. But perhaps more precise in helping to understand what is being meant. Approaching the verbalisation of ideas in this way I may get a much clearer idea of the relationship between two things and perhaps more importantly communicate that to myself and perhaps ultimately to the reader.

Action Research and Reflection: Jonathan Kearney Lecture

Alexis

Note to self – watch the video again, before reading once more what I have written. This is not a regurgitant of content, it is a spontaneous assimilation awaiting future reflection. So watch the video from time to time even if I think I already know what it says.     www.bitly.com/MA-youtube2018-19

This lecture is an excellent exposition on methodology and how not to suffocate with dogma, prejudice, lack of direction, inappropriate and imposed expectations: to be all you can be as an individual amongst individuals. But to have it so clearly and concisely laid out belies the time and thought that has gone into such a simple explication. It brings together complex aspects of creative thinking without even touching the medium used or the work itself. This deft handling of practice methodology leaves matters open and flexible. It is not a prescriptive way or approach but a practical philosophy based on experience, knowledge and research. I feel very at home with the ideas and to have them put across in such a clear and simple way helps me identify where and how I can improve on my thinking or better said, how I can avoid wrong thinking.

But avoiding wrong thinking is not the same as avoiding mistakes. Mistakes are part of the learning process and the finessing of a craft. It is necessary to make a mistake to know what not to do. This may appear counterintuitive but to aim for the ‘right’ or correct thing, to have a set paradigm, often leads to wrong thinking. Wrong thinking starts out as knowing exactly where it is going and as it starts to loose its way, asserts its stance with greater force, but it is only heading towards a mirage. This is a cycle in which learning is reduced and can only lead to frustration. Mastery is the removing of veils, it is a reduction to the core of something. It is not about making it right but avoiding mistakes once made: knowing what not to do. 

I have often wondered what action research is. It is the everyday process that an artist engages in. It is to focus from within what is being done regardless of the esternal world. Perhaps this is what is meant by the much abused term, art for art’s sake. It is a cyclical process that never ends, where learning never ends, and that is exciting. 

Reflecting on reflection: at the start of these two years, three weeks ago, I stated in my first Project Proposal draft, that I was looking for the connective tissue in my practice. What is starting to appear is a picture where writing links the various means and outcomes I am involved in. This journal is beginning to create a framework. I have so many things to write about in relation to my practice, ideas, experiences. I am excited to see how the framework emerges, a body constructed with the elements of my practice acting as organs, limbs and manifestations of the whole. After all, what Jonathan talks about in the lecture is about knitting together a holistic dynamic process of integration, accretion, assimilation, and making it your own. Where this might lead is an open question that will only be resolved later along the course of these two years; even then the process does not end but starts, again. It is not something that cannot be hurried, only intensified. 

Jonathan also talks about the idea of reflection on and in-action. To reflect in-action is so much easier if you are already practiced at what you are reflecting on. When learning something new, I aim to understand, then do and finally, usually after a pause during which assimilation takes place, I can fully immerse myself in the activity so that I can step outside the doing while being in the action and reflect as it is done. This process is one of detachment and integration at one and the same time. I become one with what I do and also aim to be able to explain what is being done. That is why simplicity is essential. If the matter in hand is made complicated or appears complicated (makes no difference), reflection in-action becomes thwarted. This is why practice is so important. Practice makes something ‘automatic’. However, there is something about practice that is little understood. Practice does not of itself make perfect. Practice makes permanent. That is the reason why it is more important to know and focus on what not to do rather than on striving towards a paradigm.

[I have to say that since I started this journal, writing has become easier and each piece of writing takes less labour. But I still have to focus equally; it is just that it comes more easily and takes less time.]

Jonathan’s list of what to keep a record of in the blog journal is worth revisiting regularly:

  • actions
  • decisions
  • thought processes
  • successes and failures
  • issues you are dealing with 

The lecture also covers the difference between art and science research. Science is what I started with. I loved the themes and ideas but to have done research was not for me. Science is a victim of its own success. It is constrained by the scientific method. This can be summarised as the need for repeatability, falsification and personal detachment. It is the antithesis of artistic practice which emphasises individuality, uniqueness (which is very different to originality) and verification. Scientific ideas are universal, open to appropriation and waiting to be shown as false. Art is personal and subjective, it is also universal.

I am a metaphorical being seeing the world and explaining it in terms of labels: that is how language works. Language is the basis for reasoned thought. Whereas science looks to tropes as ways of explaining and understanding but always with caveats, art embraces metaphor and other tropes as means of opening out to nuance and subjective communication and of asking questions. I wanted to be nuanced and have the possibility of portraying ambivalence and ambiguity in my work, speculate and imagine. That is why I did not continue with science. I still attempt to be logical but not as a reductive, deductive mechanism for inference. The logic of what I do is often hidden in the weave and texture of the work and reflection is part of teasing it out and making it more apparent to myself, to start with. This is a principle aim of my MA research. It is a matter of constructing a valid argument but not necessarily a sound one. The reason for a sound argument not being desirable or even possible lies in the very way art practice evolves. By every definition that contains humanity at its core, art is subjective. A non-false premise, for that is what a sound logical argument must have, need be objective. Therein lies the point of potential conflict in any artistic discussion. Validity and soundness of argument are two very different things. To believe in the soundness of an artistic argument is a false notion and requires as back up falling into dogma and faith, something that an artist might well have difficulty in contending with if they are to maintain openness and follow a holistic approach. 

An interesting proposal nearing the end of the lecture was that science leads to no change in the world whereas art does. This opens up a whole new and long discussion but I would like to finish off by reminding myself that science is not technology. Science is about finding explanations for how the world is. Technology applies these but it also applies social, economic and other non-science based ideas. Technos comes from the word techne which although closely related to the meaning of episteme (knowledge and understanding), it emphasises active application of knowledge. Whereas science is about understanding, technology is about applying understanding. Both techne and ars refer more to human activity than disembodied knowledge. Note that this disembodiment of knowledge becomes a universal idea that can be appropriated by anyone whereas technology and art very much bear the stamp of authorship. This is embodied in the concept of copyright, you can copyright a means of doing something and an artwork but you cannot copyright an idea.

Post Truth Hurtling

Alexis

A reworking of Source of Motion and A Foreign Land from Familiar Things : juxtaposing the two to evaluate their relationship and how they work together. (Best with headphones)

Distorted, by the unseen cause of its motion: it is cast down by light towards innocent surfaces bearing the scars of altered perspectives, reasoned at distances by the movement of multitudes whose affect is close, so close. It only looks down and away from where it has come and in small instants vanishes entwined with the light that gave it shape. It dare not look at the source of its making as it hurtles into the silence [silent frozen circle] of its own darkness.

More on Tags

Alexis

I soon realised after writing the post, What to do with Tags?, that not all tags were showing in the cloud. I subsequently found out that WordPress will only show the top 45 tags in the cloud. This limit can be circumvented with a bit of coding but it requires messing with the php of some templates and this I am not prepared to do with my insufficient knowledge. In any case, it is some sort of blessing: I have come to realise that putting down any number of tags is somewhat crazy; akin to throwing a box full of things in the air hoping that they fall in a neat ordered arrangement. I know this analogy is flawed, in that a heuristic approach is not random but it would create an awful lot of work curating the avoidable. Time better spent on other things.

The upshot of this is that, I shall have to go through my posts and select out the words contained within them or that best describe them. I know that in academic papers, the abstract is followed with five keywords. This is probably a good practice to adopt for each blog. The limit this puts on the number of keywords should have two desirable outcomes: a simpler and more consistent systemisation throughout the blog site and, perhaps more importantly, make me think more deeply about the content of each post. Some flexibility is required here: for short posts fewer that five keywords may be more appropriate and for long posts the number could perhaps be stretched to six or even seven if the content demands it. However, I have a feeling I should stick to a limit of five in any case. I shall see how I get on.

A Foreign Land from Familiar Things

Alexis

Distorted, by the unseen cause of its motion: Cast down by light Towards innocent surfaces, Bearing the scars of altered perspectives, Reasoned at distance By the movement of multitudes Whose affect is close, So close; It only looks down, Away from where it has come And in a small instant, vanishes, Entwined with the light that gave it a shape, It dares not look At the source of its making Hurtling, into the silence of its own darkness, Its own darkness.

Posterior Cogitatio

28 October 2018

Shaping a poem is possibly the hardest thing for me when writing. Discussing this with Janet, we looked at how it could be positioned with the preceding video sketch Source of Motion . I came to the realisation that prose as in Ancestral is how I think. This may reflect the difficulty I have with rhythm. I am currently learning hand drumming, and it is quite challenging for me to follow movements which I would have expected to have come easily. Poetry is very much to do with rhythm, internal rhythm, whereas I am more tuned into the cadence and melody, the movement of ideas that flow in prose writing. In prose there is also rhythm but it is free and unencumbered by what I see as an externally imposed form.

This is the same poem written as I would perhaps have done had I not tried to write ‘verse’. (See Post Truth Hurtling)

Hurtling

Distorted, by the unseen cause of its motion: it is cast down by light towards innocent surfaces bearing the scars of altered perspectives, reasoned at distances by the movement of multitudes whose affect is close, so close. It only looks down and away from where it has come and in small instants vanishes entwined with the light that gave it shape. It dare not look at the source of its making as it hurtles into the silence of its own darkness.

Premiere Pro

Alexis

I have begun teaching myself Premiere Pro. It is a steep learning curve but I have taught myself other complex digital software before. I have used Final Cut before but my apple computers are now too old to integrate easily with the new PC I built last December. Using the PC platform and windows has taken a little while to get used to but building the machine and integrating all the software has helped in my understanding of how it functions. Since then I have also built a smaller portable NUC. It is so neat. It uses laptop hardware but works as a PC with its own monitor, keyboard etc. I travel with it everywhere.

Unseen Cause

Alexis

In my last post I started to talk about the shadows projected by sculptures. I also talked about the shadows projected into the studio from the lime tree. It brings together many aspects of interest and this is the beginning of a project.

The shadows of objects in the studio are projected onto surfaces. They move as the light constantly changes by virtue of the movement of the leaves in the lime tree. The leaves move because of the wind. The wind is unseen. The shadows move yet the cause of their movement is unseen.

The leaves obscure the light and let the light through intermittently. This causes a change in the apparent direction of light altering the objects projected shadow. These changes superimpose one another in succession. The surface is set in motion, animated. The shadows moved by an unseen cause and I am set in motion and transported to another world for an unseen reason.

The projection from three dimensions onto two is a transformation of the world. I saw this in Chaos Contained, I see this everyday. The flattening creates multitudes in the mind with its own reduction. These multitudes inhabit the imagination and give rise to abstract thought. Shadows cannot be touched, smelt or heard. They cannot be walked around or picked up. They are only seen, ghosts of another world.

An unseen wind moves the shadows, what if Storm Callum recording were to be attached to such shadows? Next Post.

Reality and the Shadow

Alexis

One of the aims of this blog is to bring ideas together and forge new works and trajectories. As this process moves on, the bewildering breadth of possibilities presented before me makes it clear that I have to know where to dig deep and what to leave behind. Along the way I will make mistakes: this is the essence of selection.

Despite the title, this blog is not going to be about Plato’s Cave. His is a fable told to demonstrate that our reality is restricted by our bodily senses and willingness to think beyond them. Its elegance far outstrips what it has to tell us about reality. Nevertheless, although Plato got a lot of things wrong and was responsible for much of the wrong headed thinking that followed, particularly since the advent of Christianity, he does present a paradigm to push against.

Logic is not always the friend of an artist. Absurd juxtapositions and non-sequiturs, intuitive thinking and metaphorical rhetoric often lead to far more affective productions than through logic and reasoned argument alone: that can be left for building an argument between stages or after the fact. Plato has inspired far more artists than Aristotle who did not consider it much at all other than the moral benefits of drama theatre. There I go again, talking about the very thing that I said I was going to avoid. However, I do so because it is relevant to what I saw yesterday. 

During the period of Chaos Contained  I noticed that the shadows projected by the sculptures, as part of the installations, held a fascination that went beyond the curious and had the potential for future work. I have held onto this idea and played with it in my mind until now: I have started to experiment… I will talk more about this in the next post.