Futurism: the art of the future.
Iian Neill
Frank Herbert, the award-winning author of the Dune series, once wrote
in an essay that he considered there to be no ONE future, but a
plurality of them. He called the styles which depict these futures,
Futurism.
Frank Herbert's insistence that the future is dynamic - that its borders
and landmarks change as often and sometimes as quickly as a
battle-ground - is the statement of a independent mind. Whilst it is
true that the literary conceptions of the future are diverse, it is
actually quite rare to find an artistic vision of the future that is
individual; that isn't, in some way, an amalgam of Blade Runner or Star
Trek.
But more than being a statement of the nature of Futurism, Frank
Herbert's observation opens up the way for a new field of inquiry: a
comparative study of the styles of future-art.
It is obvious to anyone that the visions of the future presented to us
in films as diverse as Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, or the Star Trek
franchise are not actually from the future. They are imaginative
creations of what we - being the artists of the present - believe the
future will look like. But, so far, they seem immune from criticism
because they are not so much seen as a style in itself (like the
Baroque, Rococo or Art Nouveau) but rather as the expression of the
prophetic purpose popularly believed to define science-fiction.
What I mean by this is that science-fiction is often invested with an
importance beyond its merely aesthetic qualities; it is seen to have a
socially instructive goal, to present us with visions of utopias or
dystopias as a form of incentive or warning. Science-fiction, also, is
sometimes looked upon with the kind of curiosity people must have once
had for fortune-tellers; we always want to stay one step ahead of the
times, to be the FIRST.
This impulse is present in everyone from the stock-broker to the
fashion-conscious teeny-bopper who wants to be the envy of her peers. In
short, science-fiction has become invested with a dual purpose: a
didactic and a speculative one. The former seeks to instruct us in
morality (we should not pollute the planet, create artificial
intelligences, let governments invade our privacy), and the latter seeks
to satisfy our curiosity (what will we be wearing, driving, or eating in
the future? what governments will be in power? will mankind have changed
fundamentally at all?)
It is my view that the dual-purpose science-fiction has been given
distracts from the aesthetic qualities of the genre. We are all too
ready to ignore the aesthetic blemishes of a science-fiction novel so
long as it tells us something new, plausible, and sometimes wonderful.
Science-fiction epics of that type risk going down the same road as the
Victorian social novel or - more despairingly - the entire genre of
Victorian social painting. Is there a fundamental difference between the
rantings of a Victorian novelist-preacher and the strident warnings of
the dystopian science-fiction writers? Both are, perhaps, a
psychological necessity of the times - they draw the public's attention
to serious problems - but they tend to be forgotten by history.
What I am calling for here is a study of the Art of the Future. It is my
view (and it is not a new one) that each generation creates the future
in the image of itself; in most cases it seems incapable of imagining a
world that isn't a larger, busier and more industrialised vision of
itself. It is therefore of paramount importance that we - in the study
of Futurism - trace the connections between the art of the present and
that of the future.
It should be obvious to anyone after even a superficial glance at such
films or series as Blade Runner, Star Trek, or Star Wars - and on the
British side Doctor Who, Blakes Seven and Red Dwarf - that their
conception of future architecture is very much a present-day one. Star
Trek, in particular, is the perfect example of corporate post-modernist
archictecture visualised on a galactic scale.
What is in common with every one of these shows is that none of them has
freed itself from the influence of the present. They always assume that
the art of the future will be dominated by present-day conventions. All
of these series forget that art and architecture has changed enormously
in even the past millenium in the Western cultures alone. And all of
them pretend - in their own way - to be authentic glimpses of the future
tarred, as I mentioned before, by the belief that science-fiction has a
prophetic goal.
The reason I have sent this letter to <rec.arts.fine> particularly is
because there are people here much better versed in the evolution of
post-modernist art than I am, and who would be more equipped to spot
similarities and (just as significant) differences from present-day art.
This letter is also a appeal to those science-fiction writers and
painters who really want to innovate to consider their designs more
carefully. If you really want to stand out from the pack, you might want
to entertain the outrageous notion that the art of the 1990s won't be
dominant in the year 100,000 AD. Hell, the United State of America might
not even be around by then and the whole system of capitalism. Who knows
what the art and architecture will look like? One thing IS for certain -
it will never be the same at is now, even if there is a revival.
If you want to be innovative and original (at least from our
perspective), you might want to consider taking the art of another
culture, particularly an ancient historical one.
What sort of spaceships would the Mayans be making today, if they had
become a world-power? What would happen if the Middle East became the
dominant cultural influence in the future? How would this affect the art
and architecture? What would happen if were we to blend two styles and
work from there?
Best regards,
Iian Neill.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Tomi Holmberg
old "pro-war" attitudes and other political crap the movement used to
hang with. i wouldn't use the term anymore without clearing the table
and redoing the statement; world has changed..
>What is in common with every one of these shows is that none of them
>has freed itself from the influence of the present. They always assume
>that the art of the future will be dominated by present-day
>conventions. All of these series forget that art and architecture has
>changed enormously in even the past millenium in the Western cultures
>alone. And all of them pretend - in their own way - to be authentic
>glimpses of the future tarred, as I mentioned before, by the belief
>that science-fiction has a prophetic goal.
>This letter is also a appeal to those science-fiction writers and
>painters who really want to innovate to consider their designs more
>carefully. If you really want to stand out from the pack, you might
>want to entertain the outrageous notion that the art of the 1990s
>won't be dominant in the year 100,000 AD.
well put, but don't underestimate the need of packing or marketing the
product.
you know OT3 by l.r. hubbard? it's a sci-fi space opera about a
galactic overlord, xenu, who used the 'technology' of the 60's 75
million years ago to spread some body-thetan-spirits-whatever to spoil
people's lifes. so, what is the power of this drug-induced tale?
now there is a big number of people paying hundreds of thousands of
dollars to study the tale and get rid of the spacealiensouls in the
name of 'religious-applied-philosophy'. the teaching is, if you do your
art well, you get tax-exempt and your government even pressures other
governments to freely spread the psychosis all around. :)
Oliver Gili
Iian Neill <nei...@kraz.tafe.tas.edu.au> wrote in message
news:85e9g9$adl$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
reflects the society/culture/etc it is created in.... and that includes
science fiction....
>
> The reason I have sent this letter to <rec.arts.fine> particularly is
> because there are people here much better versed in the evolution of
> post-modernist art than I am, and who would be more equipped to spot
> similarities and (just as significant) differences from present-day art.
>
> This letter is also a appeal to those science-fiction writers and
> painters who really want to innovate to consider their designs more
> carefully. If you really want to stand out from the pack, you might want
> to entertain the outrageous notion that the art of the 1990s won't be
> dominant in the year 100,000 AD. Hell, the United State of America might
> not even be around by then and the whole system of capitalism. Who knows
> what the art and architecture will look like? One thing IS for certain -
> it will never be the same at is now, even if there is a revival.
>
> If you want to be innovative and original (at least from our
> perspective), you might want to consider taking the art of another
> culture, particularly an ancient historical one.
The most innovative art/music/whatever comes from people free of the mantle
of "innovative" or "orgininal" i.e. they follow their own dirrection... how
can one ever know that what one creates is "original" or "innovative"
without hinesigh (spelt wrong I know)
>
> What sort of spaceships would the Mayans be making today, if they had
> become a world-power? What would happen if the Middle East became the
> dominant cultural influence in the future? How would this affect the art
> and architecture? What would happen if were we to blend two styles and
> work from there?
this is irrelivant to art... ok, ok, Picasso took from african art etc, but
only because it spurred thought. The point is if one sets out to innovate
creativly, one doenst....
>
> Best regards,
>
> Iian Neill.
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
Oliver Gili
my post surely is an example of don't drink and type......
Erik A. Mattila
Thought you was out chasing kangaroos - it's been a while since you've
posted.
Very provocative post. I don't know where to begin.
Sci Fi, to me, seems to be about the present, although it is couched in
images of the future.
Have you ever seen the works of Vladimir Propp (Theory and history of
folklore or Morphology of the Folktale (1928))? Propp looked at these
enourmous catalogs of folktales, such as compiled by Seth Thomas of the
Finnish School of Folklore, and questioned the way that the types of
folktales were classified. He offers an alternative, and that is to look
at the stories structurally, and classify them according to 'functions' of
the actors in tales. While the catalogs showed hundreds of 'types' of
folktales, Propp reduced it down to 37 distinct types, when viewed in terms
of functions. The 'function' is simply a matter of the King, the Princess,
the Woodman, the Mayor all doing the same thing in several tales - it's as
if the actors are interchangable within one type of tale.
I think when you look at Sci Fi this way, what appears to be diverse from
one perspective becomes less so when viewed from a structural perspective.
For example, compare Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" with Ridley Scott's
"Bladerunner." There is so much shared by both films. On the front line
is the portrayal of the "city" itself. Metropolis is a city of levels
whick evoke social class had human history (the lowest level the catacombs
on which the city is build). Bladerunner's LA is portrayed the same way -
the highest levels occupied by the elites, and the lowest by the unwashed
masses. Both films story is about robots (the robot of Maria and.the
Replicants). In both, scientific evil is responsible for the robots -
Rotwang in Metropolis, Tyrell in Bladerunner. At any rate, the list could
go on and on, to the degree that we could say that both films are
recapitulations of the same generic type.
Here's what sticks in my mind. I was talking one time with an old American
Indian wiseman about the value of cultural traditions. As he explained, as
humans we always need to have some sense of where we are going. He picked
up a straight twig and balanced it on a rock, then rotated it around "See,
this is where we are going - it can be anywhere unless we can anchor it to
where we have been." He pressed one end of the stick into the dirt, and it
then pointed in a direction.
I believe artists do the same time when they contemplate statements about
the future - the intellectual gaze points backward into the past. Having
some sense of where we are, anchoring the work of art in the past provides
the trajectory that is needed.
Having said that, I would like to look at Italian Futurism again with that
thought in mind. Off the top of my head I don't know of any clear examples
of how the Futurists were 'anchored in the past' but I suspect they were.
One of the strongest influences of the Italianss can be seen in
post-revolutionary Mexican Art. Rivera, Orrozco, Sequeiros et al were very
responsive to the Italians - but what an irony. The Mexicans wanted to
express the hope of Marxism, while the Futurists seemed to have wanted to
express the hopes of Italian fascism (but that may be debatable). But when
you read statements such as Sequeiros' "Tres Llanmento" you see that part
of the manifesto of art also included the iteration of Mexico's past,
namely the precolumbian art element. In Sequieros' words, it was the
'confluence of two great rivers' that would join and create a new "Mexican"
art form.
In my mind, the idea of anchoring in the past in order to create a vision
of the future nearly cancels out all possibility of originality (if that is
valued at all in the first place). But look, both sci fi literature and
film must respond to market forces. It's no mystery how ruthless editors
and producers can be in selecting works for publication or film, in terms
to market potential. I think this is a huge determining factor.
Fortunately for Sci Fi literature, we have had the pulp magazines such as
"Astounding" which allowed questionable material to be published in the
first place ('questionable' to the degree that the editors had no idea if
it would be popular).
I have more to say on this topic, but work calls, and I have to end it
here.
Thanks for a very interesting post,
Erik Mattila
Erik A. Mattila
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Iian Neill.
> >
> >
> > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > Before you buy.
>
> Oliver Gili
>
> my post surely is an example of don't drink and type......
Oliver, how did you do that? When I read your epilog, "...don't drink and
type," suddenly the entire post went blank. Pretty good trick - but when I
reopened it, there your words were. I'm expecting it to disappear again at
any moment.
Erik Mattila
br...@wralaw.com
Iian Neill <nei...@kraz.tafe.tas.edu.au> wrote:
> Frank Herbert, the award-winning author of the Dune series, once wrote
> in an essay that he considered there to be no ONE future, but a
> plurality of them.
This is consistent with Quantums uncertainty principle, the Idea of
Free-will etc.
> He called the styles which depict these futures,
> Futurism.
Sorry Ian, I guess if I let these things bother me they will...
but isn't this inderterminism, and doesn't futurism mean
belief in the future?
Also Futurism is a name of an aritistic movement that seemed
to come about around 1920? I think, It was largely associated
with italy I think too...
Otherwise I liked Dune the Movie, and am a big fan sci-fi in
general, and real sci. I tend to follow science too and tend
towards thinking the many-world interpretation of QM is valid
and that some sort of seed-instanton Universe is probable, I
also think that truth can easily be stranger than fiction if
not stranger than what can be imagined...
Oliver Gili
Erik A. Mattila <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote in message
news:387BDB80...@tomatoweb.com...
> Oliver Gili wrote:
>
> > > Best regards,
> > >
> > > Iian Neill.
> > >
> > >
> > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > > Before you buy.
> >
> > Oliver Gili
> >
> > my post surely is an example of don't drink and type......
>
> type," suddenly the entire post went blank. Pretty good trick - but when
I
> reopened it, there your words were. I'm expecting it to disappear again
at
> any moment.
>
> Erik Mattila
>
>
expressed within this post directly reflects the amount of alcohol and lack
of sleep of the poster.... :-)
But I still stand by my main point, paradoxly those whose primilary goal
(creativity) is to innovate, don't. Innovation is a by-product....
Oliver
Ormasyna
wrote:
>for myself, the word "futurism" leaves a very bad taste mostly for it's
>old "pro-war" attitudes and other political crap the movement used to
>hang with. i wouldn't use the term anymore without clearing the table
>and redoing the statement; world has changed..
I'm glad this has come up. I've recently had a few discussions on
this topic which led me to believe I'd don't fully understand the
concepts of futurism or--gasp--neo-futurism. I'd like to know how far
off base I am.
Your average Italian futurist, circa 1917 or so, appears to have been
profoundly influenced by a lot of the same cultural baggage--imported
straight from America--that gave rise to dada, surrealism, absurdism,
and all of those other great -isms over the next forty or fifty years.
So much so, in fact, that I'm having trouble distinguishing between
the ideas of those early folks--the mid-40s work of whackjobs like Max
Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno--and the sudden resurgence of interest
that one sees in contemporary music journalism (note The Wire's
insistent hard-on for Russolo, Schoenberg, et alia, which strikes me
as being a fairly cynical grab for 'street cred').
Perhaps there isn't much to distinguish between them at all, what with
the notion of new art for a new age apparently being central to all of
them, including the recent interest in defining the music of the 21st
century before it arrives (arrived?). But if anyone would be so kind
as to cough up even a couple of vague sentences or a "Futurism for
Dummies"-style primer, I'd be most grateful.
Ormasyna
>examples of the cultural
>baggage you are refering
>to, ormasyna?
Just about any sort of cultural ideas that were brought along by the
American military presence in Europe after 1916: minstrel shows,
notions of Ford-ist economics and assembly-line production as a part
of everyday life, brands of cigarettes that can be found in Krazy Kat
comic strips twenty years later, and the general style of advertising
that so completely overwhelmed the continent prior to WWII. And while
I can't make any definite claims this way, what about
corporate-sponsored radio dramas?
Hell, five years later, that whole "lost generation"/Hemingway thing
was in full effect, with packs of expatriated American artists and
writers swarming the cafés of Europe, smoking their exotic
cancer-sticks and listening to their strange jazz music. In this
respect, anyway, it's hardly surprising that jazz and most other
cabaret-related music and art was promptly banned in Germany when the
Nazis came to power: "entartete kunst", twice-contaminated by virtue
of being a product of an American-capitalist mindset and 'degenerate'
black music (check out Decca's Entartete Musik line of CDs for an
interesting assortment of so-called degenerate symphonies--Eisler's
"Deutsche Sinfonie", for example--and '30s cabaret songs). If this
sort of product- and image-minded culture didn't eventually prompt the
surrealists to start looking at unusual conjunctions of subconscious
images (such as advertising?) and the "true meanings" of individual
objects, I don't know what did.
That, at least, is why I made the connection I did between '40s
culture theorists, both waves of European image-fuckers, and current
music journalism. I'd still like to get a better grip on how the
movements, if they could even have been called that at the time,
differentiated themselves from one another at the time, though. My
school's library has a relatively sparse selection of material on
dadaism, surrealism, etc.
>i too am looking for
>some form of definition
>of a neo-futurist...
>could it be those of us
>who are web artists?
A while back, the Dead Voices on Air website became something of a
free-for-all while Mark Spybey and a couple of his friends staged a
ten-hour performance at theLAB in Chicago. People were invited to
submit images and sounds that would be linked up on the website
(sounds could even be worked into the performance if one of the
musicians happened to hear something neat during a potty break),
or--even better--to edit and cross-link material as it was submitted
and generated. The site, in effect, became a constantly-changing
experience that wasn't being directed by anything more than individual
whimsy or aesthetics (your choice).
That's the closest thing to any sort of futurist probing that I can
think of online, and--if anything--I'd see it as the root of another
wave of dadaist free-association popping up in the darker corners of
the Web at some point. Or maybe people filing their teeth down and
living in scrap-metal structures in the upper frames of domed cities
and constructing amplified floors that...? Nah, fuck it.
runawa...@my-deja.com
baggage you are refering
to, ormasyna?
did the futurist truely
influence surrealists?
i see them as almost
complete opposites...
the futurists on one
end of the specturm
re-creating obejects
in motion and the
surrealists on the
other end slowing the
objects down so much
that they could peer
into them, disect them,
and understand their
true meaning.
and dadaists... they
didn't even want to
be associated with any
form of art, be it
literature or painting
or sculpting... to an
extent.
i too am looking for
some form of definition
of a neo-futurist...
could it be those of us
who are web artists?
those of use who use
each aspect of the letter
to it's fullest capacity
without abstracting it
in the least bit? perhaps
someone will enlighten
us.
love.
matt
mark webber
(snip)
> ....But if anyone would be so kind
> as to cough up even a couple of vague sentences or a "Futurism for
> Dummies" -style primer, I'd be most grateful.
Futurism, or as I like to call it, Spaghetti Cubism, is one of the first
"isms-for-the-sake-of-isms" in that it didn't evolve out of a genuine
sensibility or voice, but was rather a response (and a mistaken one at
that) to the imagery of Cubism.
Because the issues raised are more akin to those of German Expressionism
than the formalist tendancies of French modernism, one can think of it as
more content-oriented.
The principal culprits were Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni, Luigi
Russolo Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla and the master of ceremonies, F.T.
Marinetti. Manifestos were announced and written in 1908 - well over a
year before any paintings appeared - and published shortly after.
Manifestos continued to be published by the original Futurists well into
the middle of the second decade of the century.
The essential demands included a turning away from past art and a focus on
the busy, noisy environment of the industrial city/age. The shuffling
shapes of cubist imagery were lifted in an attempt to evoke this effect.
Here are some snippets from the many Futurist Manifestos, written works on
which the writers clearly spent more time than their paintings and
sculptures:
[From Marinetti's 1908 "The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism"]
1. We intend to glorify the love of danger, the custiom of energy, the
strength of daring.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and
revolt.
[scrolling down a bit]
7. There is no more beauty except in struggle. No masterpiece without the
stamp of aggressiveness. Poetry should be a violent assault against
unknown forces to summon them to lie down at the feet of man.
[and]
10. We will destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism,
feminism and all utilitarian cowardice.
[Here is something from the Technical Manifesto of 1910]
"The gesture which we would reproduse on canvas shall no longer be a fixed
moment in universal dynamism. It shall simply be the dynamic sensation
itself (made eternal). Indeed, all things move, all things run, all things
are rapidly changing."
[and]
"We demand, for ten years, the total suppression of the nude in painting."
Fortunately, however, Marinetti included this very valuable bit in one of
his earlier writings:
"The oldest among us are thirty; we have thus at least ten years in which
to accomplish our task. When we are forty, let others - younger and more
daring men - throw us into the waste basket like useless manuscripts!"
Seeing as they never made any paintings that compare favorably to those of
Picasso, Braque, Derain, Matisse, Dufy or many other fine modernists
(working from their own sensibilities, and with a great love for the art
of the past) I suggest we take Signor Marinetti at his word and trashbin
him.
hope this helps,
Mark
Ormasyna
<webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote:
>1. We intend to glorify the love of danger, the custiom of energy, the
>strength of daring.
>
>2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and
>revolt.
To my mind, this seems like precisely the sort of thing that's
currently being dredged up in punk rock 'zines, glossy art rags,
and--oh yeah--music journalism that prizes experimentation and
iconoclasm über alles.
Thanks for the post.
-O
Oliver Gili
mark webber <webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote in message
news:Pine.PMDF.3.96.10001131...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU...
> strength of daring.
>
> 2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and
> revolt.
>
Rather than a response to cubism. I thought it was an artistic response to
mechanisation, the motor car etc.... but I could be sorely mistaken
you also forgot to mention the links between Futurism and Italian
Fascism....
Oliver
mark webber
> Rather than a response to cubism. I thought it was an artistic response to
> mechanisation, the motor car etc.... but I could be sorely mistaken
Right - the manifestos were written early - maybe even before the
paintings - and were in response to conventional thinking about art/art
history. When it came time to actually make some pictures the cubist
imagery came in handy.
So cubism, which (in spite of the huge mis-information doled out since its
beginnings by those who didn't understand it) was not about subject matter
but about form, provided the form/structure for a subject matter-oriented
art. Illustration by way of Braque.
>
> you also forgot to mention the links between Futurism and Italian
> Fascism....
>
Yes, true. Although I think the snips I used convey the general
intollerance fairly well. Not being expert at 20th century Italian
history, I can't say for sure in which decade Italian Fascism appears. My
gut reaction is that it might not have been around in the second decade
yet, but maybe they got into it early.
ciao
Mark
Erik A. Mattila
anarchists were. As for fascism, it's a bit early, although you could probably
make some ideological connecins -- but I don't think that it would result in
futurism = facism. It's really a nihilist sort of thing, in my opinion.
But futurism seems to me to be quite distant from cubism. What is the argument
to the contrary?
Erik
Oliver Gili
> No, the futurists were interested in war, much like the nihilists and
> anarchists were. As for fascism, it's a bit early, although you could
probably
> make some ideological connecins -- but I don't think that it would result
in
> futurism = facism. It's really a nihilist sort of thing, in my opinion.
That isnt my point futurism didnt nessiarily equal facism, its just that
people like F.T.Marinetti were fascist "fellow travellers"
>
> But futurism seems to me to be quite distant from cubism. What is the
argument
> to the contrary?
>
> Erik
>
"Marinetti took a group of Italian painters to Paris to show them how they
should be painting and particularly expose them to Cubism"
(from http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng63.htm)
Oliver
mark webber
On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Erik A. Mattila wrote:
> No, the futurists were interested in war, much like the nihilists and
> anarchists were. As for fascism, it's a bit early, although you could probably
> make some ideological connecins -- but I don't think that it would result in
> futurism = facism. It's really a nihilist sort of thing, in my opinion.
Yes, I think that's a better summary. A little early for name-brand
fascism.
I found the anti-feminism stance to be somewhat odd....
>
> But futurism seems to me to be quite distant from cubism. What is the argument
> to the contrary?
I don't think there is a well-founded argument to the contrary. Even the
original chaps claimed it was unrelated to Cubism. But the imagery is
indebted to that of Picasso and Braque, as was that of several other
"movements" like Orphism, Purism, etc.
I'll be offline for a couple of days, so don't panic if I'm not present in
my notoriously bad-mannered way.
best,
Mark
Iian Neill
Thanks for a thoughtful reply. My curiosity was particularly piqued by
your references to the work of Propp and the Morphology of Folktale.
While I can't say that I've read this work, I have come across it in my
meanderings in the landscape of British folklore (courtesy of Katherine
M. Briggs). Your application of folklore-theory to science-fiction is
very pertinent. I'm not sure if it was in "Daemonic Reality" that I read
it, but I remember encountering the idea that what science-fiction and
fantasy (the self-conscious creations of the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries) had in common was the age-old desire to locate
utopia and dystopia in infinitely distant realms. Science-fiction -
generally speaking - is set in the future, which is in a sense always
one step ahead and therefore out of reach; fantasy if usually set in the
past (real or imagined) and thus is also out of reach of the present.
What puzzles me stems from a simple fact: fantasy and science-fiction is
created by real people from the present. Yet academically it seems to
exist in some kind of limbo. Why shouldn't a class be taught concerning
the similarities between corporate post-modernist architecture and, say,
the Star Trek vision of Federation Headquarters in San Francisco? The
simple fact is that no matter how much these sci-fi shows tout
themselves as prophetic and futuristic, the people who make them are
very much contemporary. Which ends up meaning that what they're making
is CONTEMPORARY ART. Which means that we have a minefield of new styles
and innovations contained in the labels of sci-fi and fantasy. What a
realm to explore!
> Thought you was out chasing kangaroos - it's been a while since you've
> posted.
I decided not to write until I felt that had something new I could
contribute. I haven't been chasing kangaroos so much as the griffon,
phoenix and the sphinx, with a copy of Flaubert's "Salammbo" in my
back-pack, with an edition of "Sexual Personae" as my guide through the
safari of art history. And Walter Pater and Gombrich, of course. But
I've barraged you with enough images.
> Sci Fi, to me, seems to be about the present, although it is couched
in
> images of the future.
Perfectly put, Erik.
> Having said that, I would like to look at Italian Futurism again with
that
> thought in mind.
While I'm glad to see that the group has taken another look at Futurism,
I ought to mention that my choice of that word for the purposes of my
letter was perhaps ill-advised. At the time I did not intend to make
reference to that historical movement and used it in the sense that
Frank Herbert meant it in the context of his article. Just wanted to
clear up that point.
Just to summarise my main points:
- Science-fiction art and architecture is created by artists of the
present.
- Artists of the present - as everyone knows - exist in context with
their contemporaries.
- Therefore, science-fiction art is a very contemporary art movement. At
the same time, it is very tradition in that it seeks to create a
dystopian or utopian vision of a cosmos out of reach. Instead of
locating Hell in the spiritual dimension, we see it in a future run by
Big Brother, or a world polluted with toxic waste. Our Heaven is now
found amongst the stars in an all-American galactic federation.
- If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
studies being made between it and existing movements?
Cheers,
Iian
Iian Neill
> > Frank Herbert, the award-winning author of the Dune series, once
wrote
> > in an essay that he considered there to be no ONE future, but a
> > plurality of them.
>
> This is consistent with Quantums uncertainty principle, the Idea of
> Free-will etc.
My knowledge of QM is pretty sketchy. Would you mind outlining the
relationship between free-will and an infinity of indeterminate futures?
> > He called the styles which depict these futures,
> > Futurism.
>
> Sorry Ian, I guess if I let these things bother me they will...
> but isn't this inderterminism, and doesn't futurism mean
> belief in the future?
Futurism (with the context of my letter) could be used to denote
a wide variety of styles which are yet related by some distinguished
characterstic - in this case, their being created to envisage a
particular "future". We could use the term "Futurism" in the same sense
that we use the word "Orientalism", to denote an attitude of the the
West to the East, regardless of the different techniques and goals of
the artists involved. What matters is that they ARE depicting the Orient
in some way.
> Also Futurism is a name of an aritistic movement that seemed
> to come about around 1920? I think, It was largely associated
> with italy I think too...
Yeah, that's where the use of the name was ill-advised; it gives off the
wrong connotations.
Cheers,
Iian
Erik A. Mattila
> Hi Erik,
>
> Thanks for a thoughtful reply. My curiosity was particularly piqued by
> your references to the work of Propp and the Morphology of Folktale.
> While I can't say that I've read this work, I have come across it in my
> meanderings in the landscape of British folklore (courtesy of Katherine
> M. Briggs). Your application of folklore-theory to science-fiction is
> very pertinent. I'm not sure if it was in "Daemonic Reality" that I read
> it, but I remember encountering the idea that what science-fiction and
> fantasy (the self-conscious creations of the late nineteenth and
> twentieth centuries) had in common was the age-old desire to locate
> utopia and dystopia in infinitely distant realms. Science-fiction -
> generally speaking - is set in the future, which is in a sense always
> one step ahead and therefore out of reach; fantasy if usually set in the
> past (real or imagined) and thus is also out of reach of the present.
Ha ha. I had a very quirky thought a few years back. What is the
'present?' I was considering that perception involved time - i.e. the
microseconds that transpired between sensing, conversions to nerve
impulses, cataloging by the brain etc. So when is that magical point we
call "now." By the time we percieve what is before us, it is already
history. We are prisoners of the past. It's much like the pardox of the
potter's wheel -- what is the exact point that everything revolves around?
What are the dimensions of that point? (some argue that the potter's wheel
is the 'seat of higher learning' -- mostly potters.
> What puzzles me stems from a simple fact: fantasy and science-fiction is
> created by real people from the present. Yet academically it seems to
> exist in some kind of limbo. Why shouldn't a class be taught concerning
> the similarities between corporate post-modernist architecture and, say,
> the Star Trek vision of Federation Headquarters in San Francisco? The
> simple fact is that no matter how much these sci-fi shows tout
> themselves as prophetic and futuristic, the people who make them are
> very much contemporary. Which ends up meaning that what they're making
> is CONTEMPORARY ART. Which means that we have a minefield of new styles
> and innovations contained in the labels of sci-fi and fantasy. What a
> realm to explore!
I agree entirely. Last year I was looking on the internet at the web site
for the production of the new Star Wars movie. I can't remember the set
designers name, but at any rate the web site presented his vision of that
city where the Jedi headquarters were - can't remember the name. I thought
the 'vision' was right out of a text book on Albert Spiers (Nuremburg
Stadium). Spiers was quite 'forward looking,' you might say, given his
assignment to create the monumental architecture that would last for the
thousand years of the Third Reich. And obviously Spiers himself looked
back at Rome for his inspiration. Utopia and Dytopia indeed.
> > Thought you was out chasing kangaroos - it's been a while since you've
> > posted.
>
> I decided not to write until I felt that had something new I could
> contribute. I haven't been chasing kangaroos so much as the griffon,
> phoenix and the sphinx, with a copy of Flaubert's "Salammbo" in my
> back-pack, with an edition of "Sexual Personae" as my guide through the
> safari of art history. And Walter Pater and Gombrich, of course. But
> I've barraged you with enough images.
Well, us non-Aussies always think of Kangaroos and large beer cans - sort
of knee-jerk stereotyping. But hey, Peter Wier is a great sci-fi maker, in
his own curious way. As a matter of fact, I think Wim Wender's "Until the
End of Time" sort of broke some of the sci-fi molds. (speaking of
Australia).
> > Sci Fi, to me, seems to be about the present, although it is couched
> in
> > images of the future.
>
> Perfectly put, Erik.
>
> > Having said that, I would like to look at Italian Futurism again with
> that
> > thought in mind.
>
> While I'm glad to see that the group has taken another look at Futurism,
> I ought to mention that my choice of that word for the purposes of my
> letter was perhaps ill-advised. At the time I did not intend to make
> reference to that historical movement and used it in the sense that
> Frank Herbert meant it in the context of his article. Just wanted to
> clear up that point.
Yes, I understood that you weren't talking about the Italians -- but I put
that in there since other's made the connection.
> Just to summarise my main points:
>
> - Science-fiction art and architecture is created by artists of the
> present.
> - Artists of the present - as everyone knows - exist in context with
> their contemporaries.
> - Therefore, science-fiction art is a very contemporary art movement. At
> the same time, it is very tradition in that it seeks to create a
> dystopian or utopian vision of a cosmos out of reach. Instead of
> locating Hell in the spiritual dimension, we see it in a future run by
> Big Brother, or a world polluted with toxic waste. Our Heaven is now
> found amongst the stars in an all-American galactic federation.
> - If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
> contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
> studies being made between it and existing movements?
Somehow I think that sci fi suffers the stigma of being something 'less
than literature.' It's not a definitive statement, but I think that there
is a tendency to treat science fiction as a sub-category of literature. Of
course Orwell and Huxley have escaped the stigma -- and subsequently we
think of their works as something other than SciFi. This may extend to the
visual arts also. But in film, I think it holds its own. We have a broad
range of films, from Goddard's very 'arty' "Alphaville" or Tarkovsky's
"Stalker" to the ultra-kitsch "Attack of the Killer Tomatos." There
doesn't seem to be much doubt that SciFi is a viable genre for the film
arts.
I think there are serious studies - I'll look around and see if I can't
find some. But I'm thinking about one of the clunkyest things in SciFi
films, and that is when the makers want to show what futuristic art is
like. Have you noticed it is always 'short of the mark?' Like music of
the future - it is never really convincing. Hmmm. This is an interesting
area.
What I wanted to broach in my last post, when work called me away, was the
possibility of computer related art being something that we could see as
futuristic. I think the possibility is barely scratched. It may take a
while for artist to get a handle on the various features than can be
exploited in order to create new art forms. What we see around now is
pretty basic. I think the most penetrating advances have been made in the
computer gaming industry. A few years ago I read a literary critics essay
on Cyan's "Myst," which was pretty fascinating. The critic approached the
game just as he would approach a literary work, and in the long haul he
found no literary virtue in it, but nevertheless suggested that such a
media could be developed into a literary production (multimedia). My
feeling is that there are some wonderful possibilities there, but it will
take a while to see them blossom out into full-fledged art forms. What I
have seen done so far, as 'art,' is pretty fledeling, almost looks like the
older 'experimental art' we have seen in the past.
BTW, my all time favorite Sci Fi book was Bestler's "The Stars My
Destination." I'm a great fan. Herbert is class A, although I liked his
character Jorj X. McKie, of the Bureau of Sabotage (BUSAB) (Whipping Star,
The Dosadi Experiment) better than the Dune characters.
Regard,
Erik
Alison A Raimes
gili.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>That isnt my point futurism didnt nessiarily equal facism, its just that
>people like F.T.Marinetti were fascist "fellow travellers"
You are quite right, Oliver. The *agenda* of the Futurists was typically
*macho* of the times - the declaration of male dominance and an
aggressive manifesto that sought to rid the modern day of anything that
threatened *progression* through the celebration of the dynamics of the
new industrial world, has often been likened to Fascism. There are
certainly fascist links but the Fascists rejected Futurist art. Fascism
with a capital F and fascism with a small one are as different as
Futurism with a capital F and futurism with a small f. Those with a
capital have an agenda - the other has a tendency or attitude. Most
people don't seem to be able to distinguish between these when
discussing art and yet it is one of the first things taught in art
history theory studies.
In the 1937 Great Exhibition of German Art, Hitler, in his inaugural
speech declared that " Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism etc.
have nothing to do with the German people. For these concepts are
neither old nor modern, but are artificial stammerings of men to whom
God has denied the grace of a truly artistic talent and in it's place
has awarded them the gift of jabbering or deception. " (sounds like Mani
eh ? ) The link of Futurism to Fascism came about by the interpretation
of Marinetti's manifesto which celebrated war as part of the fight for
freedom.
>"Marinetti took a group of Italian painters to Paris to show them how they
>should be painting and particularly expose them to Cubism"
>(from http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng63.htm)
>
Again you are correct, Oliver. You might want to look up the link
between Cubism and Futurism in their interest in the writings of the
philosopher Henri Bergson, in particular *Creative Evolution*, 1907. His
concerns were to map human consciousness in terms of flux, change and
sensation. Umberto Boccioni has cited his writings on several occasions
as well as Georges Braque and is often used to compare the two
movements.
What have you been reading, Oliver - or have you been doing your
research across the Net ? Oh yes, and did you get me a copy of the
Kandinsky text ????
See you soon - I have piece of work (Crit. Inq into Chaos 1) in a group
show opening on February 12th which you must come too - there could well
be a showing opportunity for you and I want to introduce you to a new
group of artists - one of them is on the list to join us at Skylark.
Cheers !
--
Alison A Raimes
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
Oliver Gili
Alison A Raimes <ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:yNIl3GAL...@raimes.demon.co.uk...
> In article <85nevh$gqg$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk>, Oliver Gili <Redoliver@o
> gili.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>
> >That isnt my point futurism didnt nessiarily equal facism, its just that
> >people like F.T.Marinetti were fascist "fellow travellers"
>
> You are quite right, Oliver. The *agenda* of the Futurists was typically
> *macho* of the times - the declaration of male dominance and an
> aggressive manifesto that sought to rid the modern day of anything that
> threatened *progression* through the celebration of the dynamics of the
> new industrial world, has often been likened to Fascism. There are
> certainly fascist links but the Fascists rejected Futurist art. Fascism
> with a capital F and fascism with a small one are as different as
> Futurism with a capital F and futurism with a small f. Those with a
> capital have an agenda - the other has a tendency or attitude. Most
> people don't seem to be able to distinguish between these when
> discussing art and yet it is one of the first things taught in art
> history theory studies.
True, true... intersting distinction. I found an example of F.T.Marinetti's
work for magazines in the late '30s and it was a picture of the Italian
African empire...
one of the reasons why post-impressionism is my fave period of art history
was their attempt to deal with their present (Orphism and electric light,
Futurism and mechanization etc), or forge new ways of depicting the now
(Pointillism, Cubism, the Fauves etc). Which I suppose fits in to my liking
of Detroit Techno, and Kraftwerk.
>
> In the 1937 Great Exhibition of German Art, Hitler, in his inaugural
> speech declared that " Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism etc.
> have nothing to do with the German people. For these concepts are
> neither old nor modern, but are artificial stammerings of men to whom
> God has denied the grace of a truly artistic talent and in it's place
> has awarded them the gift of jabbering or deception. " (sounds like Mani
> eh ? ) The link of Futurism to Fascism came about by the interpretation
> of Marinetti's manifesto which celebrated war as part of the fight for
> freedom.
>
he he he.... I find the visual art of Nazi Germany interesting only in its
sheer mediocrity...
> >"Marinetti took a group of Italian painters to Paris to show them how
they
> >should be painting and particularly expose them to Cubism"
> >(from http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng63.htm)
> >
>
> Again you are correct, Oliver. You might want to look up the link
> between Cubism and Futurism in their interest in the writings of the
> philosopher Henri Bergson, in particular *Creative Evolution*, 1907. His
> concerns were to map human consciousness in terms of flux, change and
> sensation. Umberto Boccioni has cited his writings on several occasions
> as well as Georges Braque and is often used to compare the two
> movements.
>
> What have you been reading, Oliver - or have you been doing your
> research across the Net ? Oh yes, and did you get me a copy of the
> Kandinsky text ????
Erm, the 'net, and that Kandinsky text had gone from the second hand
bookshop by the time I had got there, which caused much constination. I've
got a book on nature and art by Kenneth Clark (not the tory politician I
hasten to add) which I'm ploughing through.
The university of sussex's library is public access and in fairly easy reach
of me (with cheap colour photocopying machines aswell) it also has a fairly
decent art history section, (I used to go and look at the pictures :-)) so I
mean to revisit it with a sketch boot and take note. Allthough I'm also
reading an essay by Nehamas on Beauty and Judgment, which I could forward to
you.
>
> See you soon - I have piece of work (Crit. Inq into Chaos 1) in a group
> show opening on February 12th which you must come too - there could well
> be a showing opportunity for you and I want to introduce you to a new
> group of artists - one of them is on the list to join us at Skylark.
cool, you have my email...
I've taken a leap in the unknown and started actually titling my images...
Oliver
Alison A Raimes
ili.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>The university of sussex's library is public access and in fairly easy reach
>of me (with cheap colour photocopying machines aswell) it also has a fairly
>decent art history section, (I used to go and look at the pictures :-)) so I
>mean to revisit it with a sketch boot and take note. Allthough I'm also
>reading an essay by Nehamas on Beauty and Judgment, which I could forward to
>you.
Is it this one ?
Winter 2000 issue of "The Threepenny Review."
The full text of the essay on beauty as "a promise, an anticipation, a
hope as yet unfulfilled" at:
http://www.threepennyreview.com
I would like to discuss that. In the meantime there is five days for the
deadline for my MFA application - and my mind is a mass of blanks. I
managed to compose the proposal in my head at five o'clock one morning
but failed to write it down. Delighted with myself that morning, went to
the computer and nada - rien de tout. And so it has been all week !
Hence I sit here looking at blank screen and writing about Futurism
instead.
>I've taken a leap in the unknown and started actually titling my images...
Yeah ? Like what ? beats the hell out of *that blue and purple rectangle
one* that someone wrote in the Skylark sales book when they were
describing one of mine.
TTFN
--
Alison
ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
Oliver Gili
>
> Is it this one ?
>
> Winter 2000 issue of "The Threepenny Review."
> The full text of the essay on beauty as "a promise, an anticipation, a
> hope as yet unfulfilled" at:
> http://www.threepennyreview.com
yup, allthough sent to me by a friend...
>
> >I've taken a leap in the unknown and started actually titling my
images...
>
> Yeah ? Like what ? beats the hell out of *that blue and purple rectangle
> one* that someone wrote in the Skylark sales book when they were
> describing one of mine.
>
well, I chose to title my images for 2 reasons, firstly to keep better order
of the files (as uptil now I've been giveing them private names, and then
numbering them for when I exhibit them in public which got kinda confusing),
and secondly they will hopefully make my images more sale-able without me
having to compromise anything within the actual image, as people seem to
like there to be at least implied meaning
But the titles seem to make themselves apparent to me, for example,
listening to the re-released Joy Division box set, the line "the stretches
between godliness and sin" sorta sounded appropriate because thinking about
the line, it is actually fairly ambigous in meaning, or "the organs of
degeneration" (a phrase I got from reading an essay called "The Geography of
Desire: Gender and Power in an Eighteenth-Century Pornotopia" which I had
downloaded for my ex's doctoral thesis, which genitalia were refered to as
"the organs of generation") which sort of had a nice ring, so to speak, to
it.
Oliver
Oliver Gili
>
> I would like to discuss that. In the meantime there is five days for the
> deadline for my MFA application - and my mind is a mass of blanks. I
> managed to compose the proposal in my head at five o'clock one morning
> but failed to write it down. Delighted with myself that morning, went to
> the computer and nada - rien de tout. And so it has been all week !
> Hence I sit here looking at blank screen and writing about Futurism
> instead.
>
Oliver
Walter Alter
of the future (a helicopter in every garage, etc.) is to understand the
functional laws of technology. No one, in my opinion, wrote as lucidly on
the impact of technology on society as did Marshal McLuhan in his 1956 book
"Understanding Media". Below is an old essay of mine based on McLuhan about
assembling the tools of prediction
Walter
--
walter alter artist - heretic - savant
www.geocities.com/yollopoliuhqui
walter alter- the list of recalibrations
1. gauge function is the highest order of cognition. comparison is
measurement. why do you think we have two eyes? corrolary: a
non-varying field goes imperceived, yet maintains it's field effect.
this is why "The Medium Is Not the Message", sort of. this is why
increased intelligence requires constant zooming in and out of category
flux fields. any category is a unit of measurement.
2. the level of technological development in any given society is the
primary measurement of the state of its intellectual and cultural
maturity. the result of technological advancement is axiomatically the
production of free time, that is, time available to an expanding array of
choices rather than to an expanding array of necessities. freed from
necessity, a society can invent forward, project a wide field of ideals
determined by curiosity and exploration rather than inventing backwards
within a narrow field determined by irritants.
3. up to now, invention has concerned itself with the creation of
objects in space. in an electronic free-time society, invention will
emphasize organizational schemata for information throughput.
information throughput will tend to be undramatized, gradiently
accessable and diagrammatic. info-inventors will be busy mainly with
creating gradient skill upgrade kits for various starting level
demographics. info intake skills will amplify our capacity to both
perceive (structural) and to organize (conceptual) larger quantities of
information. the impetus will be to design frames of reference
unfettered by ideology. the virtuous application of these newly acquired
skills will follow naturally as a result of the intrinsic nature of the
self-amplification process. fulfilled, creating beings are intrinsically
virtuous. scarcity and scarcity alone makes for social pathologies.
scarcity and scarcity alone makes for social pathologies. stereo.
4. technology is inherently democratizing. period. technophobia is
increasingly perceived to be against the interests of humanity. in dense
information fields, social uncertainty or trauma is dissipated when full
attention can be applied to gathering information for problem solving
applications. technology supplies the tools for amplifying intelligence
to every citizen. the economics of mass production dissolves hierarchies
of priviledged access to resources. what were considered luxuries of the
priviledged classes in the past- education, transportation, sanitation,
good diet, free time, and so on, are now taken for granted by citizens in
the industrial nations. read McLuhan.
5. technology, on account of its abundance producing efficiencies,
shares created wealth, rather than concentrating exploited wealth.
technology requires educated workers in the production end. under
feudalism, divisions of labor were decided upon by tradition, birthright,
wealth, privilege, etc., and resulted in caste system boundaries that
tended to freeze the evolution of intelligence, hence the tendency of all
pre- capitalist societies to exploitation, self-cannibalize and
eventually collapse. ruling class control of technology is now an
historic futility. the genie is out of the bottle. human knowledge is
approaching the threshold where it can self-amplify at a geometrically
accelerating rate rather than at the pre-electronic, pre-TV linear rate.
6. imaging technology is the primary organizing principle of 21st
century social forms for two reasons: a) information density- "a picture
is worth a thousand words" really means that a picture oriented society
has more accuracy of detail about its status (look-down/look-forward) and
needs and can better predict the outcome of its policy decisions. this
makes for stable social evolution. image breadth also provides a basis
for concluding that all other human beings are very much like oneself b)
image plasticity- a wider variety of imaginary constructs can be brought
into mind, integrated and re-synthesized back out onto the 3-D world and
tested for reality. it is no accident that invention springs from an
interplay between necessity and daydream imagination. as necessity
becomes less a factor, creative imagination will be the posession of
everyone and everyone will be an artist both born and conceived.
7. in an image rich culture, individual eidetic prototyping, ie.,
fantasizing, becomes less bound to subjective personality loops and
better able to engage problem-solving efficiencies within the measurable
realm of the externally perceived universe. over half the brain's
neurons are used to process and understand visual input. the human
imagination is a perfect laboratory for the construction of reality
models. when deeply engaged, imagination is capable of all the
resolution, memory referencing and tactile positioning of the dream
state, but with analytic faculties accessable. the biological brain's
visual input data channel has a bandwidth estimated to be about 2
gigabits per second. 99% of this data channel is available to the
imagination for plastic inner construction. consciousness is a heads up
display, kids.
8. an imaging screen (TV, computer monitor, flat panel display, etc.) is
plastic within its own frame of reference and allows for multi-functions
of the same instrument. with the addition of touch screen, data glove or
other "hot screen" technology, a PC computer can multi-function as memory
storage, data computation, gauge display, media interface, and process
controller. this multi-function capability is a powerful form of
throughput amplification. any tool that can lessen boundary pile-up and
discontinuities between phases or objects is more efficient. that is
what efficiency is- the reduction of boundaries around simultaneity and
velocity shockfront boundaries, ie., societies' generational boundaries.
the human mind is very good at alternating or simultaneous functions. it
can walk and chew gum; it can both perceive and conceive. the imaging
screen tool best reflects our capacities to both view and visualize and
will probably be the first component of an artificial intelligence array
that exceeds the primary limiting factor of human individual sentience-
our built-in focus outward from a binocular being point singularity. an
A.I. setup with multi-points of view, many eyed, will accelerate the next
revolution in applied knowledge.
9. artificial intelligence efforts and their mathematical modeling
tools to date have been flawed by the impulse to mimic human perceptual
and cognitive abilities. this will remain and impossible task for the
forseeable future mainly because we are the product of a billion or so
years of biological evolution built upon miniaturization from the
molecular level. attempts to reverse engineer even a fraction of what
occurs within cellular metabolism is an absurdity. our minds represent
the integration of an uncountable number of experiments with the aim of
insuring biological survival over an incredible array of hostile physical
circumstances. had humans evolved to fulfil functions such as one sees
mimicked in A.I. laboratories (a machine that can carry a pizza up a
flight of stairs, for example), we'd probably now have the stature of a
large spider with a brain to match. A.I. research is finding itself
better served by efforts concentrating on a limited range of precise,
directed autonomous primary tasks rather than emulating broad band human
physical or mental attributes. spinoff from A.I. research has been
unfulfilling and, insofar as increasing our understanding of human mental
function- crippling. human cognition has nothing to do with quantaic
digitizing or binary, on/off processing. japanese industrial robotics
are a samrt application of A.I. and were forward engineered for specific
task application and the utility of that approach has not only paid their
economies in real terms, but is dictating the shape of current A.I.
research globally.
10. multi-screen image display arrays are key to solving the problem of
information overload. there is not too much information, there is too
little cognitive ability to handle it. the synthetic capabilities of the
visual cortex (mass-free mental imaging, thought pictures, whatever you
want to call it) coupled to the synthetic potential of our
matter-composed universe (molecular leggo kit) provides us with a very
large number of invention activated problem solving avenues. actually we
are over-engineered for survival. meeting the necessities of biological
survival is a piece of cake, an amoeba can do it. but systems propelled
by discomfort are limited in that they focus backwards upon point-causal
determinants. (see #2) these rearward facing systems are automatic
(reflexive/instinctual), not autonomous. systems attracted by pleasure
are area-diffuse rather than point-focused. they exercise forward acting
(future oriented) area/multiplex-causal field apperception over a range
of possibilities. the implication of choice requires a modeling system
which allows the comparative consideration of options in an autonomous
manner. this modeling system should borrow as much as it can from the
"dimension of simultaneity" in order to hold several or many choices up
against each other for comparative judgement and pattern
synthesis/re-synthesis. for this reason, external modeling systems which
most closely mirror the internal one are ideally multi- screen with zoom
in/out potential at all foci and inclusive of the peripheral (diffuse)
field as well.
8. various studies on the nature and effect of television upon culture
have been made, their results and attendant opinions published. none,
however, have taken into account a hitherto unknown potential of the
video medium, that of active, analytic multi-screen viewing. when
television is discussed it is always within the parameter of a single
screen, much like cinema. Marshal Mcluhan first hypothesized an
important characteristic of technological advance- the tendency for the
previous technology to dictate the form its subsequent evolution will
take. for example, the first automobiles looked like horse carriages,
but as velocities increased, they reflected more the streamlined shape of
their potential and the unpredicted forces at play near maximum
efficiency performance boundaries. this is a societal shock reducing
mechanism which serves to validate the past in its form while
incorporating a new utility and its consequent new IDENTITY. so it is
with television. we have a medium imprisoned within the form of its
predecessor, cinema/theater. it has been captive to cinema's physical
form up to this point, (a single screen) and theater content (the
presentation of dramatic pathos). television, however, is actually
ideally suited to multi-screen arrays. furthermore, being electronic and
portable at both its point of origin and its point of reception, its
content is ideally suited to instantaneous update and real time look-in
on relevant events.
8a the ability for the viewer to switch through channels, to view
within the autonomous framework of the home environment and to utilize
the autonomous potentials of VCR and camcorder is lessening the power of
remote authority as well as "theatrics" in political life. theatrics, or
overly emphatic caricaturing, is the tyrant's first line of attack and
can only operate in a controlled social environment characterized by the
absence of comparisons. it is the "dictatorship of the modality".
however, with electronic (simultaneous-with-event) media, a comparative
modality, or a modality of modalities, is now beginning to be felt
politically and culturally. the sheer density of of global electronic
communications pretty much precludes its being "jammed" physically, and
is making it harder to "jam" ideologically. media monopolies are giving
way to media autonomies, first via cable TV and soon via computer
multi-media.
9. multi-screen arrays imply more than one point of view which is the
basis for the dimensionality of space, among other things. we perceive
time from the standpoint of a succession of temporal points of view. we
perceive space from a binocular point of view, the conceptual fusion of
which gives us 3-D. we see "behind" appearances to find true causes.
multiple points of view is a very powerful attribute of full awareness
and, moreover, is the primary means by which awareness amplifies itself.
putting oneself in the other person's shoes, for example, is a key to
successful communication and the generation of understanding. having the
flexibility to adopt many points of view during the analysis of a
situation is the creative way to avoid traps in cognition. multi-screen
arrays are tailor made for collaborative problem solving via tele-
conference hookups. we can map out facets of a situation like a cubist
painting and come upon a more complete picture. completing our picture
of the universe is the name of the game.
10. problem solving is very simple given enough information. the facts
usually sort themselves out into necessity fields and mental effort is
potentially freed up to pursue more and more pleasure of creativity. the
inability to solve a problem is invariably the result of an incomplete
set of facts, ie., a set of blindnesses, which most characteristically
takes the form of a mind set, an ideology. we are going to have to learn
how to operate anti-ideologically with freedom of choice within an
incredibly dense global information matrix. the densest personal info
matrix is the visual one. the human retina is capable of differentiating
about 2 million color hues and intensities and probably a larger number
of shapes, spatial attitudes, distances and motions. we mainly use only
a small portion of the visual field at any one time, a pencil thin cone
of maximum attention, and we presently pretty much see as we read, in a
scanning manner. this leaves the peripheral visual field almost unused,
merely a cue-up function; like hearing- an attention director. expansion
of peripheral apperception is desirable because it allows a wider field
of view for the simultaneous comparative gauging of visual info which
will, in turn, amplify that same potential within the memory and
projective areas of the mind. in short, we can make parallel processing
abilities accessible to consciousness. one can get a taste of this
ability by setting two TV sets side by side, tuning in two different
stations with audio up on both and concentrating on getting the gist of
both programs simultaneously. within ten minutes you should be catching
on.
11. high definition tv (HDTV) should be perceived by the media aware
public as more than an embellishment upon the world of entertainment.
1,120 scan line resolution will transform our perceptual field and its
resultant social appetites much as photo-journalism via "life" and "look"
magazines helped to transform america from agrarianism to industrialism.
HDTV viewed upon a living room tv set will make such superficial genre as
game shows, soap operas, sitcoms and allied exercises in inanity naked to
our faculties of analysis and skepticism. nature does not represent
itself to us in low definition. we do that. low definition
communication leaves us in a state of mystery. mystery does not fulfil,
it leaves hunger. HDTV fills in the blanks. if the TV program content
is a mismatch with the detailed configurative capability of the retina,
the viewer will change channels to program content which does that
capability justice. with HDTV, video as a single-screen artifact reaches
its maximum point of exploitation. it is suitable for nothing less than
a documentary approach at all times. low definition sectarian ideology
is incapable of instantaneous update and will be perceived as a
retrograde, obstructing cartoon. the viewer will be freed from any frame
of reference which locks interpretation into pre-orchestrated categories.
fields of knowledge will become wide angle, making apparent the
interconnectivity of event flux and causality. requirement will supplant
style. the demand for precision in all bio-necessity aspects of life
will dictate a form-follows-function structuralist aesthetic. HDTV is
available now to anyone with a high resolution computer screen by the
addition of a video signal interface card which allows broadcast or video
tape programming to be seen at over 1,000 scan lines. the combining of
what has heretofore been an entertainment medium with an information
processing device will force entertainment towards a basis in reality and
force info processing towards a basis in fun.
12. the compact handicam allows us to look in on areas of human
discovery as they occur without the mitigation of commentary or editing
or political top spin. exploration, laboratory and field research,
global conferences, classroom lectures, etc. could be tuned in to for
personal enjoyment and university credit. the key is "real-time". CSPAN
is the most important network currently in existence. emergency
situations already benefit to a degree from this technology, particularly
in the medical field where difficult procedures are accessible to world
wide expertise while in progress. the recent events in china were
covered in large measure by students with smuggled handicams. we are
witness to events as they unfold. abuses of police or government
procedures captured by a palm-corder, cannot be denied without the peril
of full discovery and blown cabals. video testimony and video documents
are being recognized as legally true. the drama is reality itself.
13. Mcluhan's prediction of the electronic "global village" is no joke.
we are beginning to see into the cultural lives of our global neighbors
on an unprecedented and intimate scale, independent from the force
feeding of "us vs. them" stereotypes via ideological and governmental
channels. the most important network program to date is "America's
Funniest Home Videos". the most important broadcast demographic was
eastern europe. they cast off a doomed economic system in order to "get
their MTV". real life is far more transformative and entertaining than
entertainment, touches us more deeply, and bonds us together at the level
of reality. truth is manifold viewpoint, manifold and cross-referenced
verification. the hottest new category of programming is the talk show,
because, though superficially esploitive of human frailty, presents the
human drama as worthy of beholding in its plain, base and democratic
form. essentially- art is dead.
14. we no longer have the option to select whether or not we perceive
an event, but only where to place it within our frame of reference- what
causality and, hence, predictive importance to give it. in an era of
remote telecast, nothing remains remote, everything is right in front of
our face. your hand held channel selector is a marvelous anti-gravity
device. you don't have to get up to change the channel, consequently you
don't tend to get trapped inside mass/inertia systems. the tendency,
then is to not pattern your mental life after mass/inertia systems. the
remote channel selector is democracy's most powerful weapon. truth is
never boring, particularly in large, 500 channel therapeutic quantities.
15. digital signal processing (the quantaic sampling of video and audio
continua) and the accessibility to professional quality multimedia gear
will decentralize all media production and distribution networks.
professional studio quality results will be available on consumer
multimedia equipment. the entertainment industry will have to cope
with a citizenry able and content to entertain itself. needless to say,
the star system as a mystery religion will more and more appear to be
composed of quaint, if not clownish, eccentrics. computer multimedia
capabilities will spin off to the family album level. Andy Warhol's
prediction of 15 minutes of fame for everyone was stingy. we'll all be
the stars of our own media extravaganzas until the magic wears off and
it dawns on us that we have in our hands the most powerful tool for
autonomous self-evolution yet devised. in the face of abundance,
previously scarce media commodities-of-the-mind such as "fame" wiil
become the domain of compulsive fetish collectors.
16. up to now, what we call communication is really sound wave
communication carried out in our atmosphere at relatively slow speeds
within a linear sequential framework. light travels 100,000 times faster
than sound. this is the speed of vision- 5 orders of magnitude faster
than sound. that's a lot, but a conceivable lot. the full visual field
is also somewhat simultaneous. you can recognize several objects at a
single glance. the advantages of incorporating a visual language into
everyday affairs is readily apparent as a way to graphically update the
viewer on a very broad front of world events, given the "problem" of info
overload. the nature of that language is totally wide open. it could be
any mix of graphic symbol, color cues, positional cues, motion cues, 3-d
display, audio intermix, you name it. fast cut advertising is the
beginning of a visual language where situations themselves become icons,
an advance over fixation on a content composed of object icons. the
trick will be to communicate bidirectionally in real time and in high
resolution. "lemme tell you one thing, kid. diagrams."
17. Nikola Tesla, in his later years, claimed to have invented a
process whereby mental images could be transferred to an external imaging
screen. his absolute mastery over the theory and application of
electro-magnetic phenomena is a matter of historic fact. we use his
patented AC current, polyphase motors, broadcast radio, flourescent
illumination, transformers, trnsducers, etc. on a daily basis. in the
early '70's the U.S. military took the threat of Soviet deployment of
Tesla-physics' electro-magnetic resonance and diffraction weapons very
seriously. it was the impulse to develop the SDI program and that
program's subsequent tchnological accellerations which led to the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the current world political
reallignment. we should make the attempt to understand electro-magnetic
phenomena as Tesla did, the vacuum being no vacuum at all, rather a
seething sea of electrostatic potential, a stressed vacuum. Tesla also
claimed to have knowledge of a revolutionary broadcast technology wherein
upwards of a million discrete high-bandwidth channels could be broadcast
without interference or signal degradation resonantly through the earth,
from anywhere, to anywhere.
18. the leading edge of media research is currently to be found in the
field of aircraft cockpit instrumentation display. whenever you have two
systems in relative motion, the requirements for rapid information
updating rise exponentially as a function of the increase in velocity.
necessity dictates accuracy, ie., a high volume of data, a dense data
flux. these lessons can be applied to everyday life where the velocity
and instability factors are less than in-flight systems, but the
simultaneity factors are greater. information throughput density is
constant in either case. information density is conceptually akin to
object velocity. the more of it that pours through your visual
perceptual field, the faster you are going, even though you may be
physically at rest. this is why television "couch potatoes" are actually
rocket sled pilots travelling at warp speed.
19. what we presently enjoy as technological progress has, up to this
point, been essentially a spinoff from military R & D. national
destinies has heretofore required the motive of an external political
threat to unify and drive science via weapons research. with the easing
of Cold War tensions, technology can, for the first time in human
history, be harnessed directly to global human needs, but the motive of
discovery must be powerful enough to supplant the motive of war threat.
space exploration and the defense against interplanetary
civilization-destroying chunks of rock (meteors) is vital as a
replacement "science driver" because only in that realm is the crucial
factors of emergency and power vs. weight, ie., miniaturization and its
subsequent high level of production knowledge and skill, the primary
factor. in the wake of the comet Shoemaker/Levy impact on Jupiter, we
become aware of our vulnerability in this corner of the Universe. we
have here an opportunity to employ a motive of global survival more
powerful than the environmentalist motive. the previous "survival of the
folk" employed by all nations can be universalized into the issue of
human survival capable of emploing hard core militaristic factions in
ways that environmental emergencies cannot. were the military/industrial
sector of global economies to find themselves facing extinction, the
subsequent global economic collapse would act upon society as did the
stock market crash of 1929 upon Weimar Germany. beware, you technophobic
morons.
20. tele-synthetic reality- virtual reality imaging and allied tactile-
referent systems are intrinsically spatial/simultaneous rather than
acoustic/sequential. their greatest lesson is that the inner and outer
worlds are identical in vastness. its spinoff developments are already
showing potential. two forms of goggle-type display technology have
recently been made available which will have consequences beyond their
immediate markets. the first goggle display places heads up data
overlayed upon the normal visual panorama. the prototypes do not have
head movement tracking and directional capabilities, but can superimpose
any word or symbol code upon the real world. no reason why one couldn't
read the paper while driving the car, for example, simply a matter of
depth of field awareness. the other goggle technology projects any video
signal directly in front of the eyes, but blanks out real world image.
this British invention is designed as a substitute for regular television
viewing with stereo earphones and goggle display in an integral unit.
the remarkable potential in these videophonic goggles is that they will
effectively cause the reintegration of the imaginative processes of
cognition away from the subjective and towards the objective, real world.
the effect is to put the viewer into the scene. documentary visual
uptake will immerse the viewer within the docu-world and further
accelerate the citizen's potential to participate in world affairs beyond
the mere possession of an opinion.
21. in the recent discussions about the most strategic of our nation's
industries, electronic design automation (EDA) has received undeserved
neglect. the computer design of computer components and software is an
absolutely crucial technology. file compression algorythms can shrink
certain kinds of data, particularly visual, picture data, one
hundredfold. phone line transmission of encyclopedic quantities of info
will lead to the computer bulletin board/Internet supplanting colleges
and universities as centers of learning. EDA is also key to rapid and
coordinated manufacturing of upgraded and new hard products. the amazing
fertility of electronic technology is constantly shrinking the "shelf
life" of products, now down to under a year. rapid obsolescence has
brought EDA into its own and is currently forcing the issue of standards
for image compression, storage and transmission types. the implications
of EDA, however, are far deeper. EDA is laying the practical foundations
for productive artificial intelligence capabilities, in particular, the
ability of a piece of hardware or program to educate itself about a task
and then improve its performance on that task.
22. computer aided design, animation and engineering will integrate
within the entertainment industry and will eventually replace sets,
actors, locations, cameras, everything, in fact, that we call "Hollywood".
photorealistic animation will burst out of its "special effects"
containment to take over the entire production. feature-length
entertainment will be produced start to finish by a handful of men and
women in an editing suite at a hundredth the cost. photorealistic
animation will be as detailed as modern cinematography with the
advantage of absolute creative freedom. the division between "amateur"
and "professional", "b" grade and studio, "artistic" and "kitsch" will be
dissolved by the power of the animation hardware and programs
themselves.
23. fears about digitized media's ability to be counterfeited with
undetectable alterations are misplaced. any hoax perpetrated on a large
scale or on an important matter runs a very real risk of being blown, and
once blown, will ruin any organization or agency attempting it.
"national geographic" magazine was charcoal grilled recently for merely
combining parts of two photographs into one on the magazine's cover. the
tabloids" fake alien/elvis/two headed baby photographs are believed only
by people who would believe anything anyway- witless hysterics and bar
stool philosophers.
24. given proper in\out and control interface, any software program can
be made to function in the form of electronic circuitry. any
digitizeable signal can be softwared through a computer to make the
computer function in any way, as audio, video or radio gear, electronic
testing and diagnostic gear, electronic gauge and monitoring gear. this
potential plasticity is analogous to the multi-functional plasticity of
the monitor screen, itself. the combination of the two makes digital
computing the most powerful tool since the lever.
25. the economics of surplus 1st generation obsolete gear removes
overheated costs from still viable technologies and promotes vigorous
experimentation and "re-prototyping" into new and unusual functions.
this area should not be overlooked for its potential to provide
breakthrough applications of off the shelf gear and conceptual leaps
unfettered by specialist myopia. rapid creation of surplus gear through
design revolution and subsequent obsolescence allows low budget
experimenters, hobbyists, tinkerers and artists to play fast and loose
with previously expensive equipment, often minus the hindrance of the
instruction manual, and often making discoveries far beyond the original
design specs of the gear in question.
26. computer modem communication has given birth to a new cultural
phenomenon known as "virtual communities" in which the prime modality of
personal relationship formation is the domain of the cerebral, ie.,
shared thought rather than shared action. the implications here are
staggering insofar as thought is the medium of the ideal and human
interaction is ultimately shepherded away from the banal and
inconsequential by virtue of the nature of the technology itself. this
community is both global and instantaneous. it's members are
recognizeable to one another not by their appearance, but by their
substance. with land line/satellite linkage via portable laptop
computer, no corner of the planet exists in isolation, and no private
news network has a monopoly on perception. furthermore, enough expertise
is accessable on a 24 hour basis so as to consitiute a global university
rivaling any accredited center of learning anywhere. soon, a three year
apprenticeship with "futurenet" and its associates will be more
prestigious than a degree from M.I.T. we will teach ourselves
autonomously and hunger for knowledge like no commodity.
27. up to this point most futurist projections have been hampered by
either a simpleminded "gee whiz" approach or an underlying
social/political agenda or a philosophical opposition to technology per
se. in absolutely no example of popularized futurology have authors
exhibited an understanding of the process of mind that results in
efficient, applied human invention. the origin of human genius is made
into a mystery, an eccentricity, a matter of luck, or, incredibly, the
"flipside of insanity". this outlook robs us of a great sense of
security about the intelligence of our forebears and robs us also of a
sense of confidence in our ability to educate ourselves out of any
problem- eventually even that of mortality. without an optimism based on
the potential of a culture to create intelligent beings at an increasing
rate, we hobble and retard human progress to a great cost of unnecessary
misery. it is a shame that the names and stories of the great inventors
are not a universal part of our folk culture as are our movie stars and
sports heros and that the power of their method does not animate the
hopes of every citizen.
28. "ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the
option to "make it" on the planet and in the universe. we do. it can
only be accomplished, however, through a design science initiative and
technological revolution" r. buckminster fuller in his 1981 book
"critical path" .
Walter Alter
storefront and grabbed everything they could get there hands on before the
vorticists clicked their clackers in alarm and."Ice PIck" Dzugashvili
arrived with the airbrush patrol .
Walter
--
walter alter artist - heretic - savant
www.geocities.com/yollopoliuhqui
snipppp!!!
Erik A. Mattila
> In article <85qec6$u9t$1...@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>, Oliver Gili <Redoliver@og
> ili.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>
> >The university of sussex's library is public access and in fairly easy reach
> >of me (with cheap colour photocopying machines aswell) it also has a fairly
> >decent art history section, (I used to go and look at the pictures :-)) so I
> >mean to revisit it with a sketch boot and take note. Allthough I'm also
> >reading an essay by Nehamas on Beauty and Judgment, which I could forward to
> >you.
>
> Is it this one ?
>
> Winter 2000 issue of "The Threepenny Review."
> The full text of the essay on beauty as "a promise, an anticipation, a
> hope as yet unfulfilled" at:
> http://www.threepennyreview.com
>
> I would like to discuss that. In the meantime there is five days for the
> deadline for my MFA application - and my mind is a mass of blanks. I
> managed to compose the proposal in my head at five o'clock one morning
> but failed to write it down. Delighted with myself that morning, went to
> the computer and nada - rien de tout. And so it has been all week !
> Hence I sit here looking at blank screen and writing about Futurism
> instead.
Somehow I can't imagine your mind going blank, Al. I guess it's just too
important to you -- I know that feeling. My suggestion is that you access a
copy of OED, close your eyes, choose random volumes, open pages arbitrarily,
and, with eyes still shut point at words. Collect twentyfive or thirty of
these, and build your essay around them.
Then, when you are doing your editing, eliminate the original words completely,
and replace them with the ones you would have thought of if you hadn't had
writer's cramp from the outset.
Seem reasonable?
Erik
Chris
Alison A Raimes wrote:
>
> I would like to discuss that. In the meantime there is five days for the
> deadline for my MFA application - and my mind is a mass of blanks. I
> managed to compose the proposal in my head at five o'clock one morning
> but failed to write it down. Delighted with myself that morning, went to
> the computer and nada - rien de tout. And so it has been all week !
> Hence I sit here looking at blank screen and writing about Futurism
> instead.
>
Well, I wouldn't wish that block on anyone...Personally I find that it
really helps in such a situation to turn off the computer, and start
working it out with pen & paper.
Best of luck;
Chris
Alison A Raimes
ili.freeserve.co.uk> writes
>But the titles seem to make themselves apparent to me, for example,
>listening to the re-released Joy Division box set, the line "the stretches
>between godliness and sin" sorta sounded appropriate because thinking about
>the line, it is actually fairly ambigous in meaning, or "the organs of
>degeneration" (a phrase I got from reading an essay called "The Geography of
>Desire: Gender and Power in an Eighteenth-Century Pornotopia" which I had
>downloaded for my ex's doctoral thesis, which genitalia were refered to as
>"the organs of generation") which sort of had a nice ring, so to speak, to
>it.
That's the way ! Keep it ambiguous - if you cast meaning on it then it
ceases to be Abstract Art. My paintings were once titled for me by a
really funny guy in a pub - he called them things like *Orbital Foetus*;
*Spermal Spaghetification*; and *Nocturnal Emissions*. Fun at the time
but I couldn't come up with the same titles and he disappeared !
>oh and good luck, what is (an?) MFA anyway
Masters in Fine Art. There are only a couple of courses actually titled
that in Britain - mostly they just call it MA in Fine Art and can be
anywhere between one and four years long. In the USA they distinguish
between MA and MFA because the structure of their courses is so
different - a bit like our new (and ghastly) modular systems where you
hardly get any time in the studio. An MFA identifies that the student is
primarily studying art in the USA so I call it that to stop the
Americans getting confused ;-) Actually, the Slade School of Art do a
post graduate diploma (9 mths which can then be turned into MFA); an MFA
(18 mths studio and critical theory course over two years); and an MA
(24 mths studio and theory studies over two years leading to MPhil).
The Slade is one of the only places in Britain where an artist can split
time between theory and practise and is renowned as one of the best
research schools receiving the highest assessment grade possible. I am
actually going for the MA and then MPhil ... which this morning feels
like a complete waste of time, especially knowing that twenty times as
many people go for the course as get a place. I know: cuckoo, cuckoo !
Alison A Raimes
<emat...@tomatoweb.com> writes
>Somehow I can't imagine your mind going blank, Al. I guess it's just too
>important to you -- I know that feeling. My suggestion is that you access a
>copy of OED, close your eyes, choose random volumes, open pages arbitrarily,
>and, with eyes still shut point at words. Collect twentyfive or thirty of
>these, and build your essay around them.
>
>Then, when you are doing your editing, eliminate the original words completely,
>and replace them with the ones you would have thought of if you hadn't had
>writer's cramp from the outset.
>
>Seem reasonable?
What is *reasonable*, Erik, can you give an absolute definition ? ....
only yoking, old bean.
The problem is not really a block, but trying to define two years of
research into 1000 words - what to leave out, what to emphasise - how to
convince the experts to take a risk and give me a place instead of the
other eighty people they will reject in the process ! My mind wants to
do anything but think about it. I think you commented some time ago, on
the difficulties of writing condensed posts when someone complained
regarding the length of your answers. All my notes are hand written and
hundreds of pages of them - its useful that I speed read and make notes
at the same speed. The problem is for most students, they are asked to
reason when they don't actually know what they are reasoning at the
onset, they just know they have a passionate interest - and the
difficulty then is that it is going to be judged against heavy
competition, it has to be convincing that the student has something
worth researching. It's much easier to ramble on, isn't it ? or look at
a blank piece of paper ! Anyway, if I wake up in the middle of the
night with a good proposal whizzing around in my head, I'll be sure to
get up and write it down next time ... better be in the next five
nights.
mark webber
Well, thanks.
Mark
Iian Neill
> Ha ha. I had a very quirky thought a few years back. What is the
> 'present?'
The present is the middle of the hour-glass.
> I was considering that perception involved time - i.e. the
> microseconds that transpired between sensing, conversions to nerve
> impulses, cataloging by the brain etc. So when is that magical point
we
> call "now." By the time we percieve what is before us, it is already
> history. We are prisoners of the past. It's much like the pardox of
the
> potter's wheel -- what is the exact point that everything revolves
around?
> What are the dimensions of that point? (some argue that the potter's
wheel
> is the 'seat of higher learning' -- mostly potters.
Some fascinating thoughts here. At the risk of jumping off the rails
into irrelevancy, I too have a pet-theory regarding time. It's not the
sort of thing I'd write a paper about - or even a brief history - but it
raises a few questions.
First off: my theory defines time as simply the patterns that matter and
energy takes at a given point, or over a period. My understanding of
time is also contextual - time runs at different speeds and even
different directions in different parts of the cosmos. Sounds nutty,
with the flavour of fruit added? Here's an example of what I mean.
Where have the monuments of ancient Greece and Rome vanished to? The
molecules which made of the temples, the ports, the libraries, the
courtyards, and the pharoses (or is that phari?) are still present in
the world. According to the law of energy conservation, energy can
neither be created nor destroyed - which indicates that the raw material
which made up the past is still in the present. All that has changed is
the positions of the atoms as they once were. Time therefore becomes
"the position of the molecules at a defined point".
We say that time has stood still when nothing has changed; this is an
acknowledgement of time as change. We say that time has sped up when
patterns change more quickly than expected. In any case, time is defined
as the changing of patterns - patterns of information. The past is the
patterns that once were - the present is the evolving of patterns now -
and the future is a hypothesis of later patterns. But really, there is
no difference between the past and the present - in a fundamental sense
we LIVE in the past because all of the atoms of the past are still here;
merely in a changed form. We play different games, but the pieces are
the same.
The past does not vanish, ergo, into some mysterious fourth dimension;
but, rather, it lives on and is continually changing, evolving. The
present is merely the first moment extended into infinity, ceaselessly
changing. Time travel, according to this theory, is therefore impossible
in the classic sense, because there is no place called "the past" to
actually travel TO. The past is an information-pattern; the only way to
travel backwards would be to imprint that pattern onto the now, which
would require omnipotence. (The exams you need to take to acquire this
are a real bugger. It's much easier to acquire omniscience, which many
people assume they have naturally.)
I'm not sure if any of this has made sense, but it's not important as
it's only a diversion.
> I can't remember the set
> designers name, but at any rate the web site presented his vision of
that
> city where the Jedi headquarters were - can't remember the name. I
thought
> the 'vision' was right out of a text book on Albert Spiers (Nuremburg
> Stadium).
It would be interesting to find out whether he referrenced Spiers
deliberately, as a subliminal clue to the nature of the Jedi Council. If
so, he's somewhat more subtle than "Starship Troopers" (which was
nonetheless effective).
>As a matter of fact, I think Wim Wender's "Until
the
> End of Time" sort of broke some of the sci-fi molds. (speaking of
> Australia).
That's another film I'll need to catch up on. My sisters keep on
recommending it to me.
> Somehow I think that sci fi suffers the stigma of being something
> 'less than literature.'
> It's not a definitive statement, but I think that
> there is a tendency to treat science fiction as a sub-category of
> literature.
Serious literary critics have long regarded anything that deals with
fantastic realms, whether they're in the past or the future, as rather
juvenile. The same stigma stuck to fairy-tales and folk-lore for a
considerable period. It may be a by-product of the ascendency of the
Realist novel.
> But in film, I think it holds its own. We have a
> broad range of films, from Goddard's very 'arty' "Alphaville" or
> Tarkovsky's "Stalker" to the ultra-kitsch "Attack of the Killer >
Tomatos." There
> doesn't seem to be much doubt that SciFi is a viable genre for the
> film arts.
Absolutely. Televised science-fiction seems to be met with a more
sympathetic response these days thanks to the high-production values of
shows like "The X-Files". What with the growing industrialisation of the
world, the information technology industry, and so on, science-fiction
is looking decidedly contemporary. It's problems are our problems.
But regardless of the literary merit of science-fiction, regardless of
the issues it brings up; the art and architecture featured in books and
films is an art in itself and should be treated as such. Personally, I
would be quite happy to see a review of the AESTHETICS of Star Wars and
not the actual plot and acting.
There is also room for a study of "The Music of the Future" - and I
don't mean Wagner and Liszt. How do contemporary composers portray their
ideas of the future in music? What technical devices do they use and
what significance do they have with regards to the plot? When John
Williams dips into the Brahms/Wagner/Elgar well, is he trying to suggest
something to us subliminally, other than that this is a movie score and
here's Post-Romantic music to order?
The stories behind "Dune", "2001 : A Space Odyssey", and "Blade Runner"
have probably been exhaustively studied in academic and sub-academic
(ie., underground) literature. It's time to evaluate the role that the
visual arts played in these films, and to acknowledge by analysis the
work that went into creating it. There's a task for someone's PhD!
> I think there are serious studies - I'll look around and see if I
can't
> find some. But I'm thinking about one of the clunkyest things in
SciFi
> films, and that is when the makers want to show what futuristic art is
> like. Have you noticed it is always 'short of the mark?' Like music
> of the future - it is never really convincing. Hmmm. This is an
> interesting area.
The primary reason for this lies in the power of the cliche. For some
reason we expect the year 2500 AD to be identical to the year 1990. We
expect the music to be some louder version of rock'n'roll or some more
tedious version of hip-hop and techno. We expect the architecture to
look precisely the same as our metallic corporate behemoths, just on an
even larger scale.
It is a very sobering thought to look at the nineteenth century's
conception of the future and our own. How much of it was rooted in their
ideas of themselves and of progress. Like I said before, often our
conception of the future is merely a more industrialized West. But it
doesn't take long to look back at the changes in art history and notice
the differences; how many Renaissance palazzos are being made today? -
how many people continue to dress like someone out of a Titian portrait?
- how much of our music is similar to the works of Palestrina?
Someone in another response to this post pointed out that those visions
of the future that were most convincing showed the past underlying and
interfused with the present. And this ties in with my understanding of
time given above. The present is the past continually evolving; the past
is the bones under our flesh, supporting us, defining us, visible
beneath even muscle and flesh. Therefore a convincing "future art" will
show the bones of the twentieth, and nineteenth and the other centuries
subtly interpentrating the fabric of the future, but not dominating it.
We'll see brand new twentieth century buildings falling into disrepair
or perhaps grown over, or half-torn down, with future architectural
additions.
As for the music of the future; it can't hurt to read Ernest Newman's
review of the German text "The Rhythm of the Generations", and its
theory that every three hundred years sees a fundamental shift in the
approach to art. Given crudely and quickly: the thirteen hundreds saw
the change over into the dominance of polyphonic music (space-music),
and the sixteen hundreds saw the change over into homophonic music
(time-music). The nineteen hundreds also saw another change. The idea
behind this being that there has been no true artistic revolution
without the approval of the culture itself; the culture, in effect,
demands the change and promotes the man who expresses itself best. We
see the "man of the moment", the artists, writers and musicians who
express the concerns of the generation; ie., Rossini, Meyerbeer, Wagner,
etc.
The importance of the past for this lies in the prediction of the
future. That there are rhythms underlying these artistic changes
(supposing the theory holds water) at least allows us to know WHEN the
next shift is due, and perhaps predict what SORT of shift it might be;
without actually knowing its expression.
If the "rhythm of the generations" theory can be applied to art and
architecture as well as music, then we can actually have a fair stab at
what to roughly expect in the year 2200 AD.
Just a thought!
> What I wanted to broach in my last post, when work called me away, was
the
> possibility of computer related art being something that we could see
as
> futuristic.
I'm also interested in the impact that computer-generated art might have
on the future. Particularly the program EMI (Experiments in Musical
Intelligence) which can emulate the music of any composer living or
dead, or blend the styles of two, three, or more. Whilst it doesn't know
what good or bad music is, the music itself is convincingly in the set
style.
So - what happens when programs like these become refined and available
commercially on the market? Will we then start seeing producers and
movie execs and advertisment designers using these tools more and more,
in the way that the synthesizer has become a standard tool of the
industry?
What will be most interesting is the reaction of living composers to
these machines which can write in the style of Wagner, or Liszt, or
Shostakovich, or even John bloody Cage. How will living composers react
to music which can convincingly emulate their own works, and produce
more at a much faster rate than they can? How will living composers
develop to meet this new threat? The same question can be asked of the
future chess players competing against the descendants of Deep Blue.
What will the landscape of chess look like in the aftermath of
Kasparov's defeat? Will the day come when our musical Kasparov's will
lose to a composing Deep Blue?
> I think the possibility is barely scratched. It may take
> a while for artist to get a handle on the various features than can be
> exploited in order to create new art forms. What we see around now is
> pretty basic. I think the most penetrating advances have been made in
the
> computer gaming industry. A few years ago I read a literary critics
essay
> on Cyan's "Myst," which was pretty fascinating. The critic approached
the
> game just as he would approach a literary work, and in the long haul
he
> found no literary virtue in it, but nevertheless suggested that such a
> media could be developed into a literary production (multimedia).
Perhaps we're seeing the development of a new art. A kind of
Neo-Berninian or Neo-Wagnerian combination of art-forms into a gestalt.
> My
> feeling is that there are some wonderful possibilities there, but it
will
> take a while to see them blossom out into full-fledged art forms.
Absolutely, Erik. How many composers and artists are there in history
who were innovators in their time, but forgotten later on? Newman sites
Telemann in comparison to Bach. Telemann was a great innovator and a
prodigious composer; he introduced new forms of music into Germany and
was acclaimed by his contemporaries as a breath of fresh air, as a
foreward thinking modernist, in comparison to stuffy old Bach. But who
is the more remembered today, and, indeed, the most respected musician
in history? Old Bach, the arch-conservative. The same can be said of
Mozart or Brahms or Elgar.
So, we'll see a lot of mediocrities stuffing around with these art-forms
for years; we'll see a hundred, if not a thousand, Perugino's before the
Raphael of the future turns up. Salvador Dali was right when he pointed
out that the art of Perugino ennabled Raphael to climb the heights he
did; if the great artists in history have to spend their time creating
the new art-forms, they take time away from actually composing good
work. The great works in history - like the best meals - always come
after lunch has been thoroughly digested.
Regards,
keb...@my-deja.com
visit website:
In article <hFZWLSA3...@raimes.demon.co.uk>,
> Cheers !
> --
> Alison A Raimes
> ali...@raimes.demon.co.uk
> http://www.raimes.demon.co.uk
>
Alison A Raimes
>
>
>
>
>visit website:
>
> http://www.nvo.com/ambessa
Had the same problem as Erik - couldn't access anything - curious as to
why it was attached to a post of mine and thought perhaps there was some
relevance to asking us to look in regard to the thread it appears in. I
would actually love to see some Caribbean Art, having lived in the West
Indies for three years so if its a genuine site please post instructions
or let us know how to get a password. If its a scam then I don't see how
it could work - why would people pay to look at work they aren't even
given a taster of ? On the other hand its interesting to think this is
where we are heading - viewing art through a screen instead of museums -
perhaps we should all start charging to look at our websites ;-) Damien
Hirst is good at those sort of scams, he could make a bomb - he already
charges 17,000 pounds for one of his spot paintings. The buyer receives
the relevant tins of household emulsion and instructions on how it
should look on the wall ... for extra, one of Hirst's assistants will
even paint it.
mark webber
> If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
> contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
> studies being made between it and existing movements?
It isn't taken seriously as an art form because it is subject matter
- oriented. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, science
fiction is unlike literature in general for that very reason. Same with
westerns, detective stories, and other "genres".
This isn't to say that fine art can't be made of science fiction - as
Plato said, genres are non-qualitative - but when the focus is the subject
matter rather than the form the work becomes illustration.
hope this helps,
Mark
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and
yells. Fine jazz is when a tenorman lifts his foot in the air. Great
jazz is when he heaves a piercing note for 32 bars and collapses on his
hands and knees. A pure genius of jazz is manifested when he and the
rest of the orchestra run around the room while the rhythm section
grimaces and dances around their instruments." - Charles Mingus
Brian Shapiro
> is CONTEMPORARY ART. Which means that we have a minefield of new styles
> and innovations contained in the labels of sci-fi and fantasy. What a
> realm to explore!
It is interesting enough to see how much representations of the future, the
past, or an imaginary fantasy world as done earlier in this century seem
retrograde and enmeshed in the styles and motifs of the designers'
contemporary milieu. I think however, as the post-modern condition is
progressing there is sort of a realization of a diversity of style, which is
in turn as it relates to depictions of imaginary or distant eras manifests
itself as a leaning towards a wanting for authenticity. In turn, there is a
movement away from romanticism and idealism towards a sort of naturalistic
materialism. You can see the results of this in new period movies which both
strive to gain an authenticity of the of the culture's style's and motifs
and claim to be attempts to remove all romanticizing or idealizing elements
to reveal the brutal nature of reality. This is, of course, an
impossibility, since every expression contains an embodiment of ideals, so I
expect it to eventually lead to a crisis in film criticism about the nature
and aims of the cinema itself.
> > Sci Fi, to me, seems to be about the present, although it is couched
> in
> > images of the future.
> Perfectly put, Erik.
A better way to put it, I think, is to say that science fiction projects in
hyperbole concerns of the present in what is set up as a future
environment---to serve as a means for evoking a sense of crisis in the
present about issues or ideals.
> - If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
> contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
> studies being made between it and existing movements?
That's a simple question---because some in the academic community are still
trying to protect their views about the distiction between high art and low
art. They feel threatened by anything that isn't done within the context of
their intellectual discourse.
--Brian Shapiro
Brian Shapiro
> First off: my theory defines time...
It is interesting how everybody seems to think that there is even such a
thing as a present and that we are always living in the 'now.' To examine
whether there is a present we have to determine what we mean by it.
Obviously we can't mean to infer that it is some distinct point that we can
divine in the span of time, because time when seen as progressing linearly
can be divided continuously into infintesimal parts. What we mean by the
present is a reference to a 'moment'---an experience in time in which a
certain set of circumstances and situations are taking place. By giving the
present now this definition I am not only referencing to the fact that 'now'
can not only refer to a small quanta in time but a large one (in which we
can refer to the current state of events in the contemporary world as being
'now'). I am also refering to the fact that even when taking the present as
the smallest quanta possible, things are still not stationary and the 'now'
is not merely a snapshot in time. For example, if one were to be walking on
the streets and wind were to be blowing on his hair and the sound of cars
rushing by on the streets were audible---the sensation of the blowing and
that of the cars rushing would also be defined as the present 'now.'
It becomes clear that what we as humans label the 'present' or the 'now' is
not an empirical or scientific measure at all but rather a holistically
percieved set of processes occuring around the observer. When this
experience vanishes, we say that the 'present' that we refered to before had
passed and that there is a new experience--a new set of processes and
events---that constitutes the present. Immediately it becomes clear that the
present is transitory and fleeting and no clear distinct units of time can
be made according to the specifications of the present, because in the
stretch of time the present is in itself a state of transition.
With what has been said we could still claim that there is a present but
that it's boundaries are fuzzy. However, we cannot leave it at this----we
cannot itemize reality as an entity that is occuring outside of the
perceptory experience of the observing mind. We must notice that the sensory
experiences are being percieved after they occur---and that what we at one
moment call the 'present' is a memory even before we think to call it the
present. So, because of this we must envisage the train of thought of
observers as running as a process within time, and all known moments fading
into a layer of the past. What becomes the 'present' moment to the observer?
It depends on how long you can consider a 'moment' to be, I suppose. The
moment---the present---is a running and transitory process that is existing
in the past, and encompasses the totality of memory. The present becomes the
state of reality as believed by the observer.
However, since the present passes as soon as it begins, and the present can
be defined by the totality of what memory tells us about reality, we are
quickly drawn to the point at which the string of present moments leads
us---to final extinguishment of the individual. Thus, it could be said that
we are literally living within our memories and our consciousness is merely
retracing our steps towards death.
How then, with this view of time, is there place for a belief in liberty and
free will apart from the deterministic actions of materialism? Are we merely
trapped, like Rip van Winkle, in the fairy ring of day-to-day circumstances,
awakening on our deathbed? It is hard to say, but it becomes clear that our
lives are part of a continuing process of the transformation of reality---in
which no present can be said to exist. This leads me---along with some other
facts which have to do with Einstein's theories---to agree with the view
that time exists as reality as does space.
--Brian Shapiro
Brian Shapiro
I realized that, while affirming my belief that it is the -present now- that
is an illusion and not time itself, I didn't establish my sentiment that
time can be viewed as an entity. I already described time as a process---a
pattern just like space---in which we are subject and part of the flow. What
is left to be done is to ask what makes a real object or entity? We tend to
give this status to things that we visualize holistically because their
whole is readily apparent and undeniable. However, even the links which tie
spatial objects together into whole entities are arbitrary and can be
considered 'abstracted' by our mental apparatus much in the same way we
abstract anything else. If we reject the notion that the explicit links
which are apparent in sensory perception are somehow 'priveleged', then the
only think left to embrace is the idea that all entities are binded with
implicit links. In such a way, a social construct, such as a nation, can be
considered a 'real entity' in so far as it has particular qualities, based
on implicit links, that our mind is able to correlate and thus understand.
In a similar manner, time itself can be given entity status as easily as we
give it to space.
I reject the notion of 'causation' in entirety and believe we are in an
underlying flux that reflects itself and builds microcosms in substructures.
The process of a life, or of other process that spans time---such as
evolution---can be demonstrated to be in itself an entity, with boundaries
just like spatial objects have. Chardin quite richly demonstrated the
applications of this kind of 'fourth dimensional thinking' with respect to
evolution in his Phenomenon of Man.
--Brian Shapiro
Erik A. Mattila
> > > Sci Fi, to me, seems to be about the present, although it is couched
> > in
> > > images of the future.
> > Perfectly put, Erik.
>
> A better way to put it, I think, is to say that science fiction projects in
> hyperbole concerns of the present in what is set up as a future
> environment---to serve as a means for evoking a sense of crisis in the
> present about issues or ideals.
Why is this a 'better way to put it," Brian? At least you can easily
understand my line (he hee he).
> > - If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
> > contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
> > studies being made between it and existing movements?
>
> That's a simple question---because some in the academic community are still
> trying to protect their views about the distiction between high art and low
> art. They feel threatened by anything that isn't done within the context of
> their intellectual discourse.
>
> --Brian Shapiro
Well, I meant to get back to Iian on that point. There is actually plenty of
serious studies being done on Sci Fi. Any full blown literary critique is
going to be a comparison. But I agree that there are many in academia who
guard the threshold, and want to keep sci fi out there in pop (vulgar)
culture. At any rate, here's a smattering...
http://www.panix.com/~gokce/sf_defn.html
"Definitions of Science Fiction" Interesting -- a bout fifty sci fi authors
offer their definitions - a broad range of ideas. Kind of reminescent of
Chipps "Theories of Modern Art."
http://www.sirius.com/~treitel/sf.html
"Definitions of what Science Fiction is and is not" Author compares sci fi
with such imaginary agencies as "non-speculative genres" which strikes me as
funny.
http://www.sfu.ca/~delany/market1.html
“Hardly the Center of the World”: Vancouver in William Gibson’s “The Winter
Market”
From Paul Delany, ed., Vancouver: Representing the Postmodern City. Vancouver:
Arsenal Pulp Press, 1994. Pp. 179-192. Plenty of references to top dog
theorists here. Touches on the literary theme of mechanical decay, which
should be of interest the the 'Matrix' afficianados.
http://taxus.ccs.bbk.ac.uk/newsite/eh/courses/sfsc/welcome.htm
BA English 1998-9 24. Science Fiction/Social Criticism Whoa-Hoa. A course
outline for Sci Fi lit. criticism -- some terrific bibliographic references
here for anyone who wishes to persue this topic, like "Fredric Jameson,
‘Progress vs. Utopia; or Can we Imagine the Future?"
http://www.uiowa.edu/~sfs/
Science Fiction Studies at the Univeristy of Iowa. Fascinating site - makes me
glad I'm doing this pointless exercise (har har har). Abstracts of articles
published in this journal. a sample, pertinent to this discussion: #78 =
Volume 26, Part 2 = July 1999
Editorial Introduction.Towards a History of Science Fiction
Criticism
Arthur B. Evans. The Origins of Science Fiction Criticism: From
Kepler to Wells
Gary Westfahl. The Popular Tradition of Science Fiction Criticism,
1926-1980
Donald M. Hassler. The Academic Pioneers of Science Fiction
Criticism, 1940-1980
Veronica Hollinger. Contemporary Trends in Science Fiction
Criticism, 1980-1999
There's also an abundance of very kewl graphic on this web site.
Anyway, that's just a peek at www on sci fi criticism. I didn't even get into
any of the heavy weight lists on CR. So I think it's safe to say that in fact
there are serious studies being made between sci fi and other existing
movements.
Erik Mattila
amb...@my-deja.com
caribbean art and download for only $99.99
email: amb...@hotmail.com
Iian Neill
> It [science fiction art] isn't taken seriously as an art form because it is > subject matter - oriented. There are exceptions, of course, but on the > whole, science fiction is unlike literature in general for that very
> reason. Same with westerns, detective stories, and other "genres".
The covers for novels like "Dune" or "The Mote in God's Eye" are
illustrations. They are subject-oriented paintings. But can we say the same
of the architecture depicted in the movie "Dune"? I am not asking so much for
a qualitative assessment of the story or its translation into the movie
format; rather, I'm suggesting that we take the architecture, the costumes,
the space-ships, land vehicles, weaponry; the furniture and all other
decorative accessories, and consider these as entities in themselves. In the
most rigorous sense they are "subject-oriented". But so is the architecture
for City Hall, or Microsoft's buildings, or even the design for MOMA. They
are "subject-oriented" in the sense that they exit to reflect the nature of
something; of municipal power, corporations, cultural establishments,
institutes of higher learning, and so on. One doesn't dismiss the
architecture of Gaudi or Frank Lloyd Wright as "subject-oriented" in this
sense.
And it is THIS sense that I am referring to here.
There are some obvious difficulties: namely that the architecture we see in
science-fiction films (indeed, in any film whatsoever) is never complete - it
consists of sets - a collection of facades giving the impression of a
complete edifice. In this sense it is not as "real" as buildings that are
actually made. Yet even if complete designs for these hypothetical structures
don't exist, they give us enough material to discern a STYLE. This is what I
am interested in here. Not the covers of science-fiction magazines and
novels, not Boris Valejo illustrations (which come under a different area of
study), but, rather, the visual conceptions of these imaginative worlds. Why
shouldn't the costumes, weaponry, clock-work, furniture, architecture and
machines of these films be studied with as much attention as contemporary
products? They are, after all, contemporary, and their focus is primarily
form. The architecture of the Jedi Council Headquarters in "The Phantom
Menace" can scarcely be said to "illustrate" anything in a tangible sense.
It's architecture. The same applies to H.R. Giger's work in "Aliens", or to
the designs in "Metropolis". These aren't illustrations.
-- Iian
mark webber
Hi Iian,
It's nice to see you back; let me stress that my remarks about sci-fi are
not meant to sound patronizing or brusque. I read Dune over twenty years
ago, enjoyed it, as I enjoyed a number of other sci-fi and fantasy works.
(I don't read sci-fi or fantasy anymore. I like Henry James, Joyce,
Nabokov, Faulkner, for example, because they give me infinitely more
pleasure.)
My purpose for chiming in was only to try to articulate the point of view
of those who have come to see a distinction between writing that reflects
a love of words and writing that reflects an interest in subject matter.
But let's have a look:
On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Iian Neill wrote:
> The covers for novels like "Dune" or "The Mote in God's Eye" are
> illustrations. They are subject-oriented paintings. But can we say the same
> of the architecture depicted in the movie "Dune"?
This is a little complex, I think. First of all, it seems very important
to me to remember that the movie has no "depictions" of architecture.
*Sets* were designed and built to evoke an architecture.
Second, I am wondering why we would want to call architecture
subject matter-oriented? Architecture is by nature functional, so how
would this description be useful?
Lastly, the really important question, I think, is whether or not the
movie itself is any good. It is the movie, not the sets, that is the
completed work. The sets could be terrific and the movie quite awful,
right?
> I am not asking so much for
> a qualitative assessment of the story or its translation into the movie
> format; rather, I'm suggesting that we take the architecture, the costumes,
> the space-ships, land vehicles, weaponry; the furniture and all other
> decorative accessories, and consider these as entities in themselves. In the
> most rigorous sense they are "subject-oriented".
More so than the sets and props in any other film?
> But so is the architecture
> for City Hall, or Microsoft's buildings, or even the design for MOMA. They
> are "subject-oriented" in the sense that they exist to reflect the
> nature of
> something; of municipal power, corporations, cultural establishments,
> institutes of higher learning, and so on. One doesn't dismiss the
> architecture of Gaudi or Frank Lloyd Wright as "subject-oriented" in this
> sense.
>
> And it is THIS sense that I am referring to here.
Ok, first of all, when I was mentioning in my last post that people
seriously involved with serious literature often dismiss sci-fi as
genre-focused or subject-matter oriented, I was addressing the question of
why sci-fi doesn't appear to rank as equal for many people of letters, not
the question of sets and props.
Second, the sets and props of a movie probably shouldn't be confused with
architecture in the real world - it seems more accurate to compare the
*movie* - *in which sets and props appear* - to the architecture - and
even then, the aspect of function may not be adequately addressed.
Also, I don't see how Wright's architecture differs in levels of evocation
from a building for Microsoft (do you have one in particular in mind?)
or a city hall. I think Wright is wonderful. I think the NYC ATT
headquarters looks foolish. Both seem to have the same level of evocation.
But most important, I wouldn't dismiss any architecture as
subject-oriented. I would simply dismiss architecture that failed.
(snip)
> Why
> shouldn't the costumes, weaponry, clock-work, furniture, architecture and
> machines of these films be studied with as much attention as contemporary
> products?
Well, I think they are by sci-fi fans. Obsessively, it appears. (I'm
thinking of some students of mine...)
Now, I don't think it is unfair to say that, except for architecture, the
items on your list are not fine art. And the architecture in Dune, as I
have pointed out, probably isn't either, because it is sets and props -
not something in the real world standing on it's own. If you are asking
why people who have made a study of fine arts don't take these things
seriously as worthy of study perhaps it is simply because they aren't fine
arts.
But it seems to me that what you are really asking is for others to share
your enthusiasm for the cool stuff one sees in these movies. And I can
relate to that. But I doubt you really think that Luke Skywalker's little
shuttle thing that coasts on air should be considered in tandem with
Michelangelo's Pieta. A 1968 MGB, sure. But not Fine art. Right?
> They are, after all, contemporary, and their focus is primarily
> form. The architecture of the Jedi Council Headquarters in "The Phantom
> Menace" can scarcely be said to "illustrate" anything in a tangible sense.
> It's architecture. The same applies to H.R. Giger's work in "Aliens", or to
> the designs in "Metropolis". These aren't illustrations.
Of course they aren't illustrations - especially not in the sense of
"illustration versus fine art" - but that doesn't make them fine art.
Everything in the world probably shouldn't be catagorized as illustration
or fine art, right?
best,
Mark
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"...an American critic suggested that _Lolita_ was the record of my love
affair with the romantic novel. The substitution 'English language' for
'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct."
-Vladimir Nabokov, 1956
mark webber
Hi Mani,
Nice to see someone writing about art in here. I'd still enjoy reading a
reply to the post I wrote for you and since I usually don't reply to a
post that is directed to something I wrote unless it addresses the points
I make, please consider this a warm invitation to address the post I wrote
for you. In the mean time:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, mdeli wrote:
(I wrote, on sci-fi art)
> >It isn't taken seriously as an art form because it is subject matter
> >- oriented.
>
> Michelangelo, Leonardo, Poussin, Delacroix, etc?
No offense Mani, but if you would address the aforementioned post on Form,
you would see why the great master you list - and every other great master
- is *not* subject matter - oriented. They have subject matter, yes - just
as any mediocre artist does. But whee they differ has nothing to do with
subject matter. It has to do with Form and their orientation to it.
You may not like or understand this simple fact, but the fact is that it
is form that unites all great masters of any stylistic tendancy, whether
representational or not.
Again, I don't wish to put you off, because for the moment you are one of
the few people around who remember that this is rec.arts.fine and not
alt.brallen, where the assholes usually fan the flames of each other's
burning sphincters. But this happens here now and then, and some people
have no other interest than "defending" themselves against the "plots"
that appear "thicker" than their skulls. So until they tire - and they
always do, claimimg they have to "get back to work", etc., let's go ahead
and have that chat. It would be fun, I'm sure.
best,
Mark
mdeli
<webb...@TIGER.UOFS.EDU> wrote:
>
>> If science-fiction art (the so-called "Art of the Future") is as
>> contemporary as "Fight Club", why the hell aren't serious comparative
>> studies being made between it and existing movements?
Because museums are rum by idiots whose aim to get the public to
imagine that only artwork of the Modern Academic style is worthy of
representation and a label called "Art." However, most of the public
unlike Webber and most artzy fartzies, hasn't bought into the theory.
>
>It isn't taken seriously as an art form because it is subject matter
>- oriented.
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Poussin, Delacroix, etc?
> There are exceptions, of course,
Like most everything up to the 20th Century---
>but on the whole, science
>fiction is unlike literature in general for that very reason. Same with
>westerns, detective stories, and other "genres".
Webber believes painting representing nothing is where its at. Look at
his work.
>
>This isn't to say that fine art can't be made of science fiction - as
>Plato said, genres are non-qualitative - but when the focus is the subject
>matter rather than the form the work becomes illustration.
Form is the main focus in all painting except Modern Abstraction which
is mostly little more then flat looking patterns.
Illustration when used as a derogatory term as Webber does, is a
label assigned by the modern art critic when he wants to pan a picture
which doesn't conformity to the precepts of Modern Art theology. In
this sense the word illustration means blasphemy (kitsch and
commercial are also terms carry the same stigma). More often than not
this also means "bad art end of discussion."
Art teachers often say what amounts to "We teach Art here not
illustration." This is usually a tip off that they can't draw and
don't know technique. The result is that most art students are
totally ignorant of the commercial aspects of art along with 3/4 of
the best 20th century artwork. As a consequence art schools produce
large crops of disgruntled failures.
There really is no concrete aesthetic distinction between fine art and
illustration. Picasso produced paint on canvas and so did Norman
Rockwell. In the long run viewers assign merits to all varieties of
artwork, regardless of any song and dance, high brow distinctions,
illustration labels, long winded definitions, or Modern Art theology.
Mani DeLi
...no skill no art
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/