Towards Embodied Meaning in Sculpture and Electronic Art

Kunstuniverität Linz

Interface Cultures

*

Christa Sommerer, Laurant Mignonneau , Martin Kaltenbrunner.

Master Thesis

Towards Embodied Meaning in Sculpture and

Electronic Art.

– ~ –

Oliver Kellow

Linz, Austria

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Towards the Embodiment of Meaning in Sculpture and Electronic Art

Oliver Kellow

Bachelor of Arts (Art) Curtin University of Technology.

Perth, WA.

2010

Submitted to the University of Art and Design Linz,

Institute of Media Studies,

as partial fulfilment of the

Interface Cultures Master Program

Linz, Austria

2013

Supervisors

Univ.Prof.Dr. Christa Sommerer

Univ.-Prof. Dr Laurent Mignonneau

Univ.Prof.Dipl.Ing.(FH) Martin Kaltenbrunner

Special thanks to

Univ.-Ass. Mag.art. Michaela Ortner

Univ.-Ass. Mag. Dipl.-Ing. Marlene Hochrieser

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to my supervisors and professors who guided me through. Thanks for the contribution of your time, knowledge and enduring support.

To Mum, Dad and Sister for long enduring patience and support.

To Raphaela for forgiving the strange hours and screen-lit nights.

Tim and Pippa for being the family at ground zero.

Geoffrey Drake-Brockman for your mentorship and guidance.

I would also like to thank the following people for helping along the way:

Tiago Martins, Gebhard Sengmüller, Georg Russeger.

The folks at the Artifactory Hackerspace, Perth: Brett, Daniel, Scott and Jenna,

Those at Times-up that took me in and helped me out.

Finally, all my colleagues at Interface Cultures.

Thank you all for having faith in me.

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Table of Contents

1 ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................5

2 BACKGROUND..................................................................................................5

2.1 Practical............................................................................................5

2.2 Artistic Stance and Role of the Artist...................................................6

2.3 Frustrations and Motivations...............................................................7

3 THE LANGUAGE OF NATURAL SCIENCE AS AN ARTISTIC TOOL.........................10

3.1 An introduction to the Natural Philosophy and Natural Laws................10

3.1.1 Why not modern taxonomy.................................................................13

3.2 Natural Law as the elemental component of the Natural Sciences.......13

3.3 Demonstrative Experiments and Comparable Artworks.......................14

3.3.1 Science and the Artist.........................................................................18

3.4 Natural Law and Semiotics................................................................18

3.5 Scientific Vernacular:........................................................................21

4 MYSTICISM IN ART AND SCIENCE...................................................................25

4.1 Reconciling Science and Technology with Mysticism...........................26

4.1.1 The mystic and philosophical interpretations of electricity......................27

4.1.2 Change of roles. The Artist and Inventor as the Archetypal Genius........28

4.1.3 Is Mystification a legitimate tool for the artist?......................................29

5 ARTE POVERA................................................................................................30

5.0.1 Introduction to Arte Povera.................................................................30

5.0.2 Change over Time in Artworks.............................................................31

5.0.3 Slow Experiments...............................................................................35

5.1 Joseph Beuys: Alchemy, Shamanism, Epistemology............................36

6 MATERIALIST MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY. THE GERMAN APPROACH.........................38

6.1 Media Archaeology...........................................................................38

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6.2 What is German School of theory......................................................39

6.2.1 Kittler's Legacy. Technology as the Primum Mobile................................40

6.2.2 Return to Materiality: Erasure of the Subject and Media Materiality........42

6.2.3 Materialism is an analytic tool..............................................................45

6.3 Non Linear History, Atemporal technologies and Variantology.............46

6.3.1 Variantology.......................................................................................46

6.3.2 Deep Time Relations and Time Critical Media.......................................47

6.3.3 Operative Media.................................................................................48

6.3.4 Atemporal media history.....................................................................48

6.4 Case studies....................................................................................49

6.4.1 Evolvable Hardware, A case study in physicality....................................49

6.4.2 Mechanics to media- Shift from the lens to the array.............................51

6.4.3 Transitional technologies, early data storage........................................52

7 FROM THE OPEN MECHANISM TO EMBODIED MEANING..................................55

7.1 Opening the mechanism, From the Tinkerer to the Crusader...............56

7.1.1 The Environment of the Hacker-space and DIWO.................................56

7.1.2 Workflow............................................................................................60

7.2 Tinkering, the Intimacy and Aesthetics of DIY....................................62

7.2.1 Circuitry in Sculpture and Interaction...................................................63

7.2.2 Disambiguating Electronic Art..............................................................65

7.2.3 The Open Mechanism. Transparent Design...........................................65

7.3 Norbert Wiener's Operative image.....................................................70

7.4 Open Works and Interaction.............................................................74

8 THE TOWARDS EMBODIMENT OF MEANING....................................................78

8.0.1 A. Danto and Embodied Meaning:........................................................78

8.1 Embodied Meaning as a Principle......................................................79

8.2 Execution in practice........................................................................80

8.3 Dogma............................................................................................82

8.4 Critical analysis................................................................................85

9 RELEVANT WORKS AND EXPERIMENTS BY THE AUTHOR.................................88

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10 EARLIER WORKS..........................................................................................88

10.1 Panning Machine & Drift-Thru bar....................................................88

10.2 Cross to Bear.................................................................................89

10.3 Drifter series and Snowdrift Redux..................................................90

11 RECENT WORKS...........................................................................................91

11.1 Fly in the ointment.........................................................................91

11.2 Crucifixion after Beuys....................................................................92

11.3 Synchronisis...................................................................................93

11.4 Load Test after Burden...................................................................94

11.5 Frustrated Creator..........................................................................95

11.6 Reverse Miracle..............................................................................96

11.7 Answers in the bottom of a Glass....................................................97

11.8 EarthCircuit Rock............................................................................98

11.9 Bright Devices................................................................................98

12 BINARY HOURGLASS:.................................................................................101

12.1 Binary Hourglass Design process...................................................102

12.1.1 Bulb Behaviour...............................................................................103

12.1.2 Interaction.....................................................................................105

12.1.3 Intervention...................................................................................106

12.1.4 Sculptural construction....................................................................108

12.1.5 Summary.......................................................................................109

13 CONCLUSION.............................................................................................110

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1 ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to explain my current creative process in a way that codifies my research method and design approach cumulating in a document describing “Embodied Meaning” as an effective design method for sculptural and electronic artworks.

I will describe my process of learning and my motivations, showing it to be historically justified and demonstrating its contemporary relevance.

As evidenced in the Practical section I have formulated this practice and created certain key works via the appropriation and study of scientific and artistic influencessuch as 'Demonstrative' Science Experiments, Arte Povera, Alchemy, Hacking/DIY movements, the 'German School' of Materialist Media Archaeology and by following mysticism throughout media and art history.

The outcome of this will be a defined research approach and codified set of design principles based on the above influences, the sum if which I have been calling “Embodied Meaning” due to its ultimate goal to seamlessly marry the conceptual meaning of an artwork with its physical form.

This can be viewed as a kind of loose manifesto document that allows me to refine future practice along this guideline and encourage or identify others doing the same.

This will be backed up with regular case studies of exemplary artworks and artists and an exploration of media theories that potentially support or deny this idea.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 PracticalMy artistic history lies in Sculpture, Assemblage and Performance, often using sculptural objects as props or as part of installed environments.

I was never much of an artisan, preferring to assemble and curate found objects and materials according to my creative wants and needs.

To me this search for aesthetic 'rightness' in pre-existing materials trains a sensitivity to the overall texture of an object, much as a wood craftsman would readinto the knots and grains of a prospective piece of wood I felt that it was important to treat objects sculpturally also, feeling the cultural texture they carried as well as their own physical make-up.

My main topic of interest was with contemporary Australian mythology and cultural poesis.

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Background

In the more recent past I have moved strongly towards electromechanical artworks and interactive sculptural devices, and while I have experienced a disconnect with the Australian roots as a consequence of living in a foreign country I have maintained my interest in Mythology and the artists role in mythopoesis and culturalmatters.

2.2 Artistic Stance and Role of the ArtistArt proposes questions or precipitates thought. In my view it does not have to be aggressively political or topical, or create a spectacle of cutting edge technology.

I always saw art works as cultural artefacts, and I view social consciousness as a long term and ongoing process so my artworks tend to avoid topical themes.

I imagine the purpose of creating art as dealing with the social consciousness in what has been described as a Shamanistic role1: to mediate with the unknown and invisible, different states of consciousness. to serve a societal healing function through criticism and by communicating with the basic needs and desires of communities.

The artist “Performs community service in response to psychological, social, or spiritual needs.” 2

"contemporary artists are like the shamans of tribal cultures, messengers, "sentinels" of society. artist and shaman, both conquering chaos through rituals and cathartic masterpieces."3

This could also be assessed as modernist stance, still preoccupied with the 'grand narrative', universal meanings, subjective truths and other utopia’s in an optimistic resistance of more post-modern focuses- although the two are not necessarily exclusive.

The nature and structure of a timeless art work alludes to a larger process, and it isperhaps partly this thinking that drives me towards the conclusion of this thesis, a doctrine that promises some kind of solid innate integrity in a creation.

Utopias indeed.

My current research is in the direction of Media Archaeology, specifically towards hardware and the materiality of technology.

Hardware and materialism may seem directly opposed to the cultural and humanist approach of shamanism however, a large part of a shamanistic role is mediation, communication with 'higher forces' or 'the other' (real and imaginary) in order to identify community needs.

I approach research as research, comparable to divination it is an attempt to explore and identify humanistic concerns by observing life through a very different lens.

1 (Tisdall, 2000. p37) See J. Beuys, T. McKenna, J. Durham2 (Benyshek, 2008)3 (Loisy, 2012)

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Background

From here, the dislocated research and the theory, we draw purpose and direction, but the practical application of this it must come back to human concerns and culture.

2.3 Frustrations and Motivations

As a sculptor I perhaps need a sensitivity to materiality that was not being provided by the software and screen based practice I was experiencing in coding and 3D design.

Perhaps too the tendency of today’s electrical components to be micro-chipped and miniaturised left even my Physical Computing4 and mechanical works lacking the visual and structural appeal that I enjoyed in designing the object, a luxury I was accustomed to working with only large visible components: motors and pulleys and switches in my previous mechanical practice.

I find the popular media art scene to be saturated with flash-words and hot topics, full to bursting with fracturing virtual horizons, temporal acceleration, virtual/informatic disorientation, distributed consciousness, and so on ad-nauseam. A constant arms race to be cutting edge and the first adopter.

It has also been said that Media and Information-Technology has developed it's ownGaian mythology5 that is very prevalent and does not really apply to my current vocations aside from a brief brush with the early history of information storage.

Threads in “German Media Theory” have discussed how contemporary philosophy has eroded confidence in Subjectivity and Materiality6 as the formation of the Information-age has preoccupied philosophical discourse with networking, communication and informatics for whole decades.

My interest in archaic hardware based sculptural works and the long, process baseddevelopments is perhaps a step away from the pressurised energy of information.

This is not an escape into history motivated by fear of contemporary art practice buta thoughtful revisiting of timeless processes and forgotten parallels that I believe contemporary art practice needs.

Another core motivation behind this thesis would be issues of integrity and conflicting pressures I perceive in the field of Electronic Art.

The electronic-artist straddles the gallery and the institution, both demand very different properties from artworks leading in my opinion to an underlying tension, an anxiety of rejection.

4 Physical Computing is the use of a combination of software and hardware to create interactive physical sys-tems. Arduino and Raspberry Pi are examples of devices created as a bridge between software and hard-ware.

5 (Davis, 1999)6 (Groys, 2011)

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Background

"Pure art" is for arts agenda. Any 'hyphenated' cross disciplinary art like protest-art, feminist-art, abstract-art has a dual agenda, by definition it is trying to make a fusion between the one sides (political, social, technical...) demands and responsibilities while creating an artwork stands as art as well.

This is a different object to an artwork about something, it is buying into another large pool of meaning with its own system of priorities and rules which must be used and respected to create a work that will be received in both contexts.

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Illustration 1: Representing the concerns and interests of the respective fields, the union of which is Electronic Art. Many everyday aspects of Art and Electronics are unlikely to overlap and may be excursive or contradictory.

Illustration 2: Represents the coverage of an Electronic Artwork biased towards an audience receptive to electronics by its own merits, perhaps a technical conference or a research lab. It may display a complexity or specialised nature that is pleasing to technical minded creatives andengineering types, but would have trouble maintaining the interest of the average art gallery viewer.

Background

In my experience, A common outsider criticism of electronic art is that it is often toofunctional (often of device art, utility or design oriented projects) or conversely the workings too arcane (often with works based on complex or obfuscated systems.).

On the other side of the spectrum, the Electronic-Art clique will often complain of the wilful mystification of the medium or the obscuring of the mechanism or design,disappointed sometimes by the inelegance and inefficiency of the mechanism they can observe.

Often works have a level of complexity that allows it to be understood as a system if that system is revealed, but also seen as 'magic' if practitioner wishes to conceal or obfuscate its workings.

In the art world it is a matter of course that elements of the work are hidden or misleading, the mastery of illusion is considered a skill, curation is manipulation.

It is how the painter makes clear that the painting has nothing to do with the canvas, or the sculpture not intrinsically about the marble or concrete (while accepting that these do carry their own meanings, they are rarely used as core signifiers in figurative works.)

As an electronic artist you are given the opportunity to play the technician or the illusionist, or measures of both while running the risk of being left sitting on the fence.

There is an entirely self imposed pressure of aspiring to be a polymath and the 'heroic' artist7.

As a practitioner it seems obvious that neither of these ideals are really expected from the scientist or the artist, however as a cross-disciplinary mutant, you will constantly find your limits and limitations probed as people try to understand your biases and expertise and to rate your credibility to the title. This of course cuts in two directions and also supplies many of the advantages of such a practice.

These are some of the things that drive me forward and the problems I encounter and try to address within this thesis.

7 (Daniels, 2008)

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Background

3 THE LANGUAGE OF NATURAL SCIENCE AS AN ARTISTIC TOOL.

The following paragraphs will discuss the viability of using fundamental cause-effectinteractions of nature (Natural Laws) as a creative tool. I will start by attempting to clearly delineate which fields of scientific research can be easily incorporated into a physical art practice like my own.

I will then explore how the formal and physical languages of science (vernacular and methodology) can, and have, been used for artistic means. Special attention will be paid to 'demonstrative experiments' and examples of artworks that mimic this style.

My interest in science history and historically significant devices led me to explore the possibility of using them as tools and references within my own art practice. Reading analyses and histories of technological development I came across many instances of observers and inventors compelled to poetry and worship during their respective “eureka-moments”. I am interested in these moments where their activities stopped being scientific inquiry and became introspection.

The elemental feeling of truth and finality evoked by physics seemed to inspire powerful emotional reactions in mankind throughout history.

As an artist already interested in process or time based artworks, I wanted to find away to exploit these powerful moments of awe and contemplation caused by the sublime feeling of witnessing physics in action, the observation of works in motion.

In an attempt to elucidate this distinction further I also continued to investigate the specific language and early history of the scientific-process and experimental science.

3.1 An introduction to the Natural Philosophy and Natural Laws

“In 1965 while climbing the volcano Stromboli where [Giovanni Anselmo]discovered at sunrise that the rising sun, below the horizon line of the volcano had cast his shadow into the apparent infinity of the sky. This elemental transfiguration of the artist's usually earthbound presence (in the form of his shadow) into the infinity of space awoke in Anselmo a sense of responsibility towards making works of art in accordance with the vast, eternal and unseen physical and elemental laws of the universe. “8

-Giovanni Anslemo8 (Chilvers and Glaves-Smith, 2010)

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THE LANGUAGE OF NATURAL SCIENCE AS AN ARTISTIC TOOL.

The use of the word “Natural Philosophy” in this situation refers to the scientifically obsolete precursor to the modern Natural Sciences.

Natural Philosophy was cumulative product of the study of nature and philosophy beginning with the early Greeks and hermetic traditions and coming into its own as the 'age of reason' through the 16-18th century before metamorphosing into modern science as we know it by the early 20th century.

Today its current form, Natural Science it is a term that can be used to distinguish scientific practice that relies on observation and reproducible experience rather thandata and postulation as seen in the social sciences or 'formal sciences' of logic and mathematics.

To further qualify my choice of the phrase Natural Philosophy over Natural Science, Natural Philosophy also excludes branches of physics outside of Newtonian 'ClassicalMechanics' such as Relativistic Physics or Quantum Physics which were yet to be formulated in its time period.

My own basic investigations have been in the realms of Electro-magnetics, Physics and Chemistry so they are somewhat over-represented.

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Illustration 3: The Branches of Science, Image courtesy South Carolina State University.


The life sciences (Botany, Zoology) and physical sciences of Geology and Astronomyare also within the scope Natural Sciences, and there are many great examples of these sciences represented in many artworks9.

The study of Time is conspicuously absent from physics before the theory of Relativity was popularised in the early 19th century. The relevance of Time in artworks is addressed later in relation to Arte Povera and process based works.

The Scientific Method of the modern era evolved from Natural Philosophy. The role and methodology of the scientist as we currently understand it was not yet formulated and the profession was approached very differently. The genesis of the modern scientist can be found in historical documents such as the proceedings of the Invisible College of natural philosophers.

It was this organisation, followed by others that published the earliest prototypes ofscientific journals in which it was made clear that corroboration and technical examples of relevant experimental apparatus were to be provided along with your alleged observations if your work was to be taken seriously.10

This tradition of peer-review and published proofs is a mainstay of modern science.

9 See Symbiotica, Hackteria 10 (Shirky, 2010)

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Illustration 4: Title page of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. I. 1665 , The Royal Society

These Invisible Colleges were the influence that ushered disparate natural philosophers into a cohesive system ofscientific methodology featuring as Peer Review, scientific method and Journals that we expect today .


3.1.1 Why not modern taxonomy.

A more technical reason for my referencing a defunct field is a problem encountered while attempting to isolate and classify the relevant areas within the contemporary taxonomy of the sciences.

Some areas that are mere subsets of other fields in purely scientific terms enjoy a different status in the popular perception and common use, leading to misleading assumptions.For example it would feel wrong to use the blanket term “Physics” as an area of interest because it technically subsumes such hugely represented areas as electrodynamics and mechanics which are commonly encountered in art and everyday life. This is bad for use in non scientific discourse, as the colloquial use of the term Physics perhaps brings to the mind a simplified perception of kinetic movement and classical mechanics which does not do the term justice.

I cannot list Electrodynamics alongside Physics as equal fields of interest because electro-magnetics should be considered a subset of Physics if I am being scientifically correct.

Unfortunately Electrodynamics and mechanics are areas that are individually enormously important to the electronic artist and popular art practice and therefore need to be acknowledged on equal terms in any approach that takes artistic or cultural considerations into account.

Natural Philosophy is also more applicable to my purposes than contemporary taxonomies because as a 'closed topic' it implies the acknowledgement of the approach, aesthetic and the philosophy of its time rather than as a note in a hierarchical system of technical divisions.

3.2 Natural Law as the elemental component of the Natural Sciences

The term “Natural Law” is not chosen arbitrarily either, it is intended to delineate a certain subset of elemental scientific effects, specifically those which an artist may encounter in researching natural phenomena or novel interactions within Physics, Electromagnetism or Chemistry.

The investigatory approach of the Natural Philosopher was to conduct experiments with the purpose of creating an observable situation and then attempting to verify itvia repetition. These could then be correlated with many other rules to formulate a more reliable 'Law'.

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Physical Laws are different from scientific Theories in their simplicity. A physical lawis an observation of strictly falsifiable matters, whereas a theory is a model that accounts for the observation, explains it, relates it to other observations.11.

This is not so important for artistic uses, the simplicity of Laws are a benefit whereas referencing complex scientific theories is outside the scope of most artworks.

It should also be made clear that in the paradigm of Natural Philosphy 'observable' was limited to a level not far beyond than natural human capabilities. Lenses and various mechanical visualisations were the limit of sensory augmentation and modern appliances such as computer vision and data storage were absent of course.

3.3 Demonstrative Experiments and Comparable Artworks

The purpose of most experiments is to isolate and control an observed phenomena.

The need find a pattern, or demonstrate a Law means that many of the scientific discoveries of this era were proven by physical demonstration.

This required the engineering of elegant apparatus optimised to convey that one effect only.

By definition this excludes practices that exert little or no physical effect or are too abstracted from physical reality to be useful artistic tools.

Alternately, many demonstrative experiments12 are carried out especially to demonstrate the non-intuitive nature of some interactions. These novel effects can be very dramatic and at first glance and cannot effectively be explained as a logical cause-effect progression in a learning situation, making observation and demonstration very important.

Non intuitive interactions happen in electrostatic situations for instance, or complex patterns in swinging objects. Other situations arise where the interaction is simply to complex to model mathematically, even though the effects can be anticipated. The Chladni plate is a good example of this, we can observe strict order form out ofchaos according to a system we cannot decipher or model.

11 (Swartz, 1985)12 (Bertolotti, 2014)

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These demonstrative set-ups are still used for education or hobbyist purposes or sometimes for art and metaphor.

If the apparatus is being used as a research, manufacturing or production process itis usually built for efficiency with the emphasis on reliability and safety at the expense of visibility and clarity of purpose.

'Demonstrative' applications may be differentiated from Experimental set-ups by thefact that Demonstrative experiments may allow for unnecessary variables and sacrifice reliability in trade for visibility or even dramatic effect.

Experimental applications, though still attempting to demonstrate a single property, would opt for reliability as the aim is to prove a hypothesis conclusively.

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Illustration 5: Liquid-Body Chladni plate. Oliver Kellow. 2013,

This is documentation of my own experiments observing harmonic patterns in a gel bodies, avariation of the classic “Chladni Plate” apparatus. These patterns are observable and clearly

ordered, but have not been successfully modelled or simulated.

Illustration 6: Rubber and Glass Rods with Tinsel andBalloon, 2009, MIT Department of Physics Technical

Services Group. Accessed September 2013

This is a classic example of a Demonstrative Experimentcarried out in an educational setting.

Illustration 7 Benjamin Franklin's Electric Motor, c.1750, Image courtesy ieeeghn.org

This device is built to demonstrate the concept of a device driven by electrostatic forces.


Due to the necessarily demonstrative nature of their research, the inventions and apparatus of the Natural Philosophy era are especially applicable for use in sculptural installations or process based works because they specifically reference physical and observable phenomena.

By taking experiments and repeatable effects and using them as artistic tools I am utilising Natural Laws as a creative medium.

Modern hobbyists and artists also use arrangements reminiscent of Demonstrative Experiments.Please refer to Maria Abramovic's Rest Energy and Paik's Magnet TV for examples ofworks that exhibit these fundamental laws as their conceptual core.

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Illustration 9: Magnet TV, Nam June Paik , 1965.

One of his earliest experiments, this TV was rewired toignore broadcast signals so that the magnet gave himfull control of the image. This is an example of making

the device stand alone to demonstrate only theinteraction between invisible magnetic forces and the

device.

Paik us using a simplified apparatus to embody magneticfields for metaphorical purposes.

Illustration 8: Rest Energy, Maria Abramovic , 1980.

This is a textbook illustration of the concept of potentialenergy, again, embodied in a context that encourages

metaphor.


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Illustration 10: Youtube Still: Guitar Oscillations Captured with iPhone 4, Kyle Jones, 2011

This is an llusionary image of waves created by the oscillating frequency of each string becoming staggered bythe capture speed of an Iphone's “rolling shutter” .

This is not what the string looks like in slow motion, but an Illusion caused by the slow data rate and continuous (rolling) partial capture by the digital capture mechanism. This is an example of how digitisation places you one step away from the event and “mediates” the image. It was captured unintentionally by Kyle Jones, a graphic designer.

Illustration 11: Youtube Still: Amazing Water & Sound Experiment #2, Brusspup, 2013

Comparable to the above rolling shutter example, except instead of a rolling shutter a faster CCD camera is tuned to capture images at the same rate as the waters displacement caused by sound concussions from a large speaker. This is like setting the trigger point in an oscilloscope, it catches the water at the same phase of the cycle each frame so it appears to stand still.


It is my hope that in the course of this document and my own practice, all these elements of Natural Philosophy and Natural Law: the practical mentality, physicality, the idea of open design and their spiritual origin as philosophers and alchemists should be implied by the umbrella term “Natural Philosophy”.

3.3.1 Science and the Artist

It is important that I do not imply that I, myself, am a scientist.

'Science' is not a thing made of facts. Science is a method and a philosophy, from which anyone may borrow freely.Neither is the artist the 'voice' of the scientist, working towards the same goals.

The artist without training can only become an artist that is borrowing scientific methods.I am not necessarily interacting scientifically or even acknowledging the science behind the devices that I may borrow adapt or use.

As an artist I do not expect to understand the intricacies of any of these scientific fields, but as an interloper interested chiefly in Interaction and Experimentation, thesimplified and pragmatic definition of Natural Science and Natural Law fits perfectly.

To put this into perspective in relation to my physical and research practice I can quote E.A.T director Billy Kulver

“Science is science and art is art. Technology is the material and the physicality.”13

3.4 Natural Law and Semiotics "Demonstrating a novel idea was different than using it towards artistic ends"

-Michael Naimark 14

After using Natural Sciences as a historical reference and a focus to outline which fields of science can and cannot be applied to Embodied Meaning, we can move on to the specifics of its use in artistic works.

Natural Laws could be as close to an un-mediated mode of communication as it is possible to get, it works with the most fundamental interactions it can and attempts

13 (Hertz, 1995)14 (Sommerer and Mignonneau, 1998. 12)

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to reduce unwanted variables.

It is not only the materiality of the devices that can be used to carry the meaning but the Laws they represent and the interactions they produce can equally and of themselves be the content of the work.

This process of simultaneously embodying the connotative meaning and physical process or object is key to understanding what I mean with the phrase Embodied Meaning.

I propose that the fundamental reactions and interactions created in experimental science, especially those classified under “Natural Law” and used in demonstrative contexts can function as a complete symbolic base for artworks, and when framed as such can become an effective artistic medium.

These connotations I refer to are in reference to Semiotics, the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), which is an attempt to codify how signs create meaning.

To clarify the idea of Second Order meaning I say, as it is described by Roland Barthes, that a physical action can contain two layers of meaning, denotative (first order symbols) and mythological, second order meaning.15

A flame for instance can not only be read as a 'first order sign', a denotive reading such as “combustion” or something similar, but also on a second order of meaning.

The second order of meaning will be elaborated upon according to the viewer, gaining cultural meanings and interpretations.

The viewer may think of camp-fires, passion, abstract emotions, gods or politics, whatever the context and their own subjectivity offers.

This is at the core of how art functions and how artists manipulate and use symbols.

This becomes an important concept once you understand how fundamental physicallaws, as the foundation of the world around us have been assimilated into languageas equally fundamental carriers of meaning.

Descriptive and denotative language was built to describe observation, and higher forms language (myth, connotation, metaphor) are also built on this. Evidence of this can be found in the Greek and Latin deconstruction of many English words, finding at their roots in operative and physical descriptors. For example metaphor a non-physical word is of the Greek meta- "over, across" andpherein "to carry, bear"16.

15 (Barthes and Lavers, 1972)16 Online Etymological Dictionary, http://www.etymonline.com/ Accessed Jan 2014

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Sculptural and process based artworks can be composed of semiotic systems made of simple rule-based interactions (ie: natural Laws, the simplest 'modules' of interaction).

Interactions can be seen as building blocks containing elemental signifiers- the conceptual foundations and main form of communication in most artworks.

The interaction between electricity and magnetism for example (referred to as electrodynamics), with such concepts as flowing energy, invisible fields, waves, balance, charge and the elemental earth/ground provides a fertile structure with demonstrable rules and controllable effects and oddities that provides an irresistible platform for metaphor.

Part of the beauty of this is that because these interactions are so fundamental and reliable, the connotative meaning of these works is so concrete that it can be used as a metaphor while still retaining its literal meaning, and in most situations the parallels will still hold even with added complexity.

This linguistic attractiveness could be exemplified by the enduring popularity of pseudo-scientific devices and the complex argot observed in the more esoteric side of alternative medicine and “woo science” which takes pains to use the incorporate the most grandiose and far reaching implications of otherwise scientific processes and terms.

Harmonics, vibration, energy, fields and so on are taken as spiritual foundations andbuilt upon until they represent hidden dimensions, elixirs and other utopia’s reflected by natural human fears and desires.

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Illustration 12: Website Capture: Immortality Devices by Alex Chiu, Alexchiu.com, Accessed January 2013


The runaway success of fraudulent magnetic wrist bands and alternative medicines reinforce the idea that the language of science is creatively stimulating and versatile.

It follows that the vernacular, the specialised language of scientific discourse is alsoa powerful connotative carrier.

3.5 Scientific Vernacular:

“Witchcraft to the ignorant,.... Simple science to the learned"

-Leigh Brackett

Comparable to how the physical-language of nature can be used as described in theprevious chapter, the methodological language and scientific vernacular can be usedin artistic discourse and as a way to de-construct the interactions used in artworks and discuss their meaning.

The formal language of science is very explicit and very precise, this includes both language of scientific discourse and also the “language” of experimentation and lab work- the scientific method.

This can be seen in the standards and procedures codified by laboratory rules, 'bestpractice' and safety in the scientific context.

In its intended use scientific discourse is desired to be objective and clear. This is useful to an artist as it can be taken and used to exemplify a very clear system of relationships, which may then have layers of meaning implied via cultural and semiotic associations according to the context, materials used and the nature ofthe system presented.

The language used by Joseph Beuys for instance, both in interviews, transcripts andin his art is absolutely littered with chemical and electronic terminology and iconography.

Polarity, Crystallisation, precipitate, conductors, accumulators, isolators, transformers, always passing with barely a nod towards their technical workings andfixating instead on a full appreciation of their aesthetics, symbolism and meaning -their ascribed processes are applied to humanist or metaphysical dialogues.

'FOND', interpreted as 'foundation' is a series of works created by Beuys over a period between 1957 and 1968 but conceptualised as a single installation.

21


Although diverse in physical appearance all examples of the 'FOND' series follow a thread of energy storage and creation, as do many of his other accumulator and battery based works.

Other consistent themes on his work include a shamanistic approach to societal healing and mediation with the higher forces- both natural and supernatural.

The structures of FOND progress from home preserved fruits (FOND I), to a functioning high voltage device (FOND II), to a non functioning felt and metal voltaic-pile device (FOND III) the visual appearance of the works are widely varyingbut the coherence of meaning is not affected.

They appear as devices due to the sense of familiarity and apparent functionality outlined by apparatus however the clearly non-functional totemic nature of many ofthe devices and materials force one to take an alternate reading, leap to second order reasoning.

The familiar devices become glyph-like symbols that encourage the abstract conceptof condensing, accumulation and discharge for example, but refuse to be simply accepted as such due to their obvious lack of functionality and therefore must be approached as devices of a different nature, conjuring parallels with spiritual or emotional energy such as love or vitality.

Fat Battery, for example is clearly identified as a battery and superficially resembles the kind of primitive voltaic piles one would construct in a high-school class or science-101 however it is built of Beuys' signature materials- fat and felt and copperwhich to anyone familiar with his work represent something along the lines of healing, protection and flux respectively.

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Illustration 13: Illustration 4: Fat Battery, Joseph Beuys, 1963, Image courtesy Tate collection


Thus the work can be read as a kind of totemic accumulator for emotional or spiritual energy. Table with Accumulator is another installation featuring a box equipped with terminals and wires leading to mysterious clay spheres.

Richard Serra's work is also directed toward exposing the physical properties of his material arrangements.

Serra created a series of Infinitive (Verb) based process works in 1967-8 using molten lead to explore the relationship of language and action to physical processes.

His "Prop" works in the late 1960s relied on suspended weight and balance revealing the tense possibility of stored potential, even inevitability contained in such arrangements. The slow oxidisation process and patina on his steel works are also important to conisder.

This is also mirrored in the dialogue and literature of many Arte Povera artists, with works often purifying (such as Gilberto Zorios 1969 'Per purificare le parole' which passes speech though an alcohol filled tube), crystallising, transitioning, using potential energies (seen in Giovanni Anslemo's Torsion and Suspension works) and the use of changing chemical or material states.

Jean Tinguely describes his sculptures as “meta-mechanical” processes, named by analogy with ‘metaphysical'. To quote:

23

Illustration 14: Richard Serra, Malmo Role, 1984, image courtesy Bloomberg


“ ‘meta' can be used to mean both ‘with' and ‘after' - which seemed just right. the association of ideas with words like ‘metaphor' and ‘metamorphosis' seemed to me to be very appropriate”

Similarly, Paul DeMarinis uses the term Mechanophor17 to describe his own works.

17 (DeMarinis, 2011. 129 )

24

Illustration 15: E 7523,Servulo Esmeraldo,, 1975

In Esmeraldo's “Excitables” the artist imparts energy to an artwork by rubbing the glass to generate static charge.In dozens of design variations this will cause elements of the work to dance and move in response

Illustration 16:Direzione, Giovanni Anselmo , 1967-8

Passing a Beaker containing a tin compass through a wet cloth generates and holds electrostatic electricity to deflect the magnetic field the compass follows according to the “trail of energy”.


4 MYSTICISM IN ART AND SCIENCE

“MIT AI Lab's PDP-10 computer. The switch has clearly been installed by a hacker and not a computer technician and is labelled by hand with oneposition marked "magic'' and the other "more magic". The switch is currently in the "more magic'' position. The switch is flipped to the other position and the machine crashes instantly. They follow the switch to its source, but the wires don't seem to go anywhere that could influence themachine in any way. So they boot the machine and try again. Again as soon as the switch moves from "more magic'' to "magic'', the machine crashes. The story ends...We still don't know how the switch crashed themachine. There is a theory that some circuit near the ground pin was marginal, and flipping the switch changed the electrical capacitance enough to upset the circuit as millionth-of-a-second pulses went through it. But we'll never know for sure; all we can really say is that the switch was magic.”

-Erik Brunvand18

As an artist as interested in mysticism as I am in science, I must also explore how mysticism comes into the creation of artworks that so far seem reductive, materialist and rooted in the aesthetic of science.

I have already mentioned my pre existing research concerned with myth and culture and an attraction to the Shamanistic approach to art this implies.

18 (Brunvand, 1996)

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Illustration 17: Cybernetic Seance, 3rd Marcy Conference, 1947.

MYSTICISM IN ART AND SCIENCE

For me Culture its-self is the bridging point between the Logos of technology and science and the Eros of creativity and mysticism.

Culture exists as a manifestation of human achievement. On a cultural scale technology, art and industry is often seen as the result of culture, but the cause, the forces that drive these results is given less thought.

In this section I will review evidence of mysticism as a driving force in technologicaland scientific development proving that technology is not in fact counter to mysticalor spiritual activity, but in fact a result of mysticism that is embedded in human nature. This will later be compared to my use of Materialism as a research approach.

Mysticism is a practical reality in art and culture that I fully embrace, whereas Materialism is an analytical filter and Techno-determenism is the result of a parallel a materialist drive that is just as real, but manifests as a result of the interaction of matter as a separate culture effecting our own.

4.1 Reconciling Science and Technology with Mysticism

Mysticism is a by-product of Human nature.

While socio-political and technical concerns evolve fast, our spiritual mind is still rooted in the long-ago.It is visible through history how this aspect of cultural lag and other forces influenceand shape our societal goals and technical development.

The myth that technology is non-spiritual is not necessarily true, its development and usage is driven and imbued with our own basic drives, fears and obsessions.

It is easily observable that the genesis of technological discoveries and scientific progress lies not simply in pursuit of knowledge but are motivated by much more personal journeys and significant internal motivations.

Erik Davis and his book TechGnosis argues that the religious imagination, far from receding, continues to feed the “utopian dreams, apocalyptic visions, digital phantasms, and alien obsessions that populate today's technological unconscious.”19

Pre-modern phantasms did not disappear. They were sometimes sublimated, sometimes acknowledged, often (thinly) masked in self ironic shrines of pop detritus, specific or illusion.

The trade of the artist and other tools of the shaman are such remnants

19 (Davis, 1999)

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Are artists exploring with esoteric avenues of Techno-Mysticism simply harnessing the "crude power of the irrational"20 or are consumers parched of meaning "reaching for the oldest navigation tools known to humankind?"21 to face the strangeness of an everyday life that is built on the innate whims and insecurities of humanity.

The desire to experience life with a wilful and perhaps delusional sense of purpose and control is also a very human feeling, once again driven by existential fears and the desire for greater meaning.

4.1.1 The mystic and philosophical interpretations of electricity.

There is a long history to the theology of electricity since it was first observed and manufactured. This can be taken as a case study of the way our mystical needs anddesires intermingle with reason and science.

The theoretical model of electricity passed over centuries from bio-viality to aether, to fluid, to particle.

Interested parties arguing for theories of vitalism- a semi divine electrical life force, were in conflict with those that modelled life as a corpuscular mechanism in which the body was seen as bio-automata a newtonian/chemical machine. Essentially this was a nerves vs. organs type dispute before either were biologically well known.

Batteries, developed around the time Volta’s famous 18th century demonstrations of muscle stimulation in frogs legs, were a blow to the Vitalism movement as suddenlyone could seemingly bottle life force.

Accompanying these examples came a multitude of religious readings, alchemical systems and animism in varied forms.

Suffice to say, both in the dark ages and the scientific renaissance Mysticism and Science were heavily entwined.

In more recent history Edison, who worked practically with electricity for years theorised on etheric force, a mix of spirituality and wireless technology.

Tesla, another pioneer, sought explanation via cosmic processes to theoretically connect the material and the spiritual, cumulating in late-career grandstanding about whole earth resonance, spirit communications, aliens and weather control22.

You could comment that while their practical research and resulting patents were effective enough, both their imaginations and their theories were far in advance of

20 (Treister and Larsen, 2012)21 (Treister and Grayson, 2007)22 (Seifer, 1998)

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their understanding, and tellingly, much closer to their mystical dreams desires thanthe answers we have extracted today.

These dreams I would suggest, were much more efficient motivators than the lure of experimental knowledge or resulting wealth.

4.1.2 Change of roles. The Artist and Inventor as the Archetypal Genius

Dieter Daniels in his book “Artists as inventors, inventors as artists“23 proposes that in the late 19th Century the inventor (or man of science) overtook the artist as the archetype of the genius in the public mind, carrying the mythos of 'divine favour', or'extreme drive and focus' that was previously the domain of the artistic practitioner.

He presents Morse, now remembered for his game-changing invention of the automatic-telegraph as one prime example showing the contrast between the publicimpact of his artistic career and his success as an inventor.

After a failed painting career in which he lobbied to bring European culture and the arts to the United States, (a new country lacking in museums and masterpieces), hebecame interested in electronics and went on to develop the automatic telegraph machine, outstripping his more tech-savvy competitors by virtue of his more personable business approach and the automatic, self contained function of his system which eliminated the human hand from the relay process and storage of themessage, a new notion at the time.

Daniels chooses Morse as a case study because he exemplifies (in a single lifetime) what Dieter sees as a gradual shift from the celebration of the artist as genius, to the celebration of the inventor as genius.

It must also be noted that while Morse became the "inventor" in this case, he still retained his artist mentality, and saw his telegraph work as an extension of his original mission to allow a cultural exchange between the US and Europe- realised with the first undersea cable transmitting its fitting first message: "What hath god wrought?"

From the beginning electrical communication was framed in a mythological perspective, both in the language used and in function.

With the telegraph the transmutation of language to energy can be seen as the birth of the abstract ideal of information.

Tesla, working on his early radio receivers heard repetitive signals he attributed to communications from a distant planets24, aiming for the stars so to speak, he announced this publically.

This transition of mystical 'genius', the divinely driven, from the artist to the technologist supports the idea that mystical motivations are just as prevalent in technical fields as in art and creative fields.

23 (Daniels, 2008)24 (Seifer, 1998)

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4.1.3 Is Mystification a legitimate tool for the artist?

Why should the hieroglyph seem mystical and the XML sheet not.

Ancient Egyptians benefit from the stigma of antiquity and a whole mythology whileXML is used as a coders version of a shopping list.

In my view obfuscation and mysticism it is a legitimate tool in art if the causes and intent are legitimate.

To inspire wonder, or confuse and delight is morally far removed from belittlement and inspiring false authority in the manner of "the great and powerful wizard of Oz".

In my view mysticism a valid tool assuming that your artistic or poetic aspiration outweighs and justifies the exclusion of the mechanism or foundations of your work.

We suspend disbelief in a painting because its meaning is in the illusion, and we may excuse the irrelevancy and the concealment of the canvas as a structural and artistic necessity.

Each work may be judged on its own merits, history and context, however it is a common enough practice in media installations the obscure, augment or unnecessarily mystify the mechanisms of otherwise technically involved or open artworks for reasons that may range from unnecessary glorification to insecurity to concerns of intellectual property.

Sometimes an oscillator is just an oscillator, no matter how many cool antennas are attached.

Personally I choose to avoid it, preferring to try for the raw and often humble awe of the sublime and the beautiful rather than the belittling effect of showmanship and bravado. This comes down to respect for the medium and of the audience.

Curation is another avenue in which conscious dissection and arrangement of a body of works allows the artists hand to conceal, direct, and manipulate- this is of course the agency of the artist.

The act of curation is by definition mystification, mysticism is in our job description.

Another common curatorial approach is documentation, and supporting documents.

Adding documentation or flyers as an optional supplement is an interesting way to add 'dimensionality' to a work but brings the risk of distributing the meaning too thinly across different modalities.

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ARTE POVERA

5 ARTE POVERA

“...the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change”

–Joseph Beuys25

5.0.1 Introduction to Arte Povera

Arte Povera describes the aesthetics and values of a group of mostly Italian artists beginning in the late 1960s.

As a movement it was never particularly self-aware in the sense that many art movements self-identify and self-promote their agenda. Rather it was surveyed and formalised from a group of only loosely related artists by Germano Celant who wrote the definitive essays26 about Arte Povera and organised key exhibitions27

Arte Povera however was never had a theoretical 'roadmap' as it was never heavily theorised or de-constructed.

Translating to “Poor Art”, it was typified by the sculptural use of rough, accessible materials and construction.

Simplicity was prized over complex symbolism as there was a general withdrawal from both popular culture and the existing art culture.

The Artists were typically radical and had political motivations but these varied to a degree where it could not be generalised for the whole movement.

This meant that the use of natural and the everyday components were often comments on either industry or land use, very socially relevant issues at the time. Interestingly this makes for an equal and unbiased use of natural materials like wood, earth, stone and industrial trappings such as perspex, steel, chemicals and electromechanical devices.

Arte Povera appeals to me as a sculpturally eloquent, materially sensitive movementwhich is motivated by the social agendas.

Focused on the 'end' rather than the 'means' it circumvents the Luddite sentimentalities and ascetic purity prevalent in other approaches that share a similarworking aesthetic (minimalism, abstract sculpture, environmental art for example).

Indeed, if the work required it, the materials used could often be quite sumptuous and some artists have been known to incorporate complex geometric and mathematical systems in their works as well as devices and chemicals.

25 (Beuys, 2004)26 (Celant, 1967)27 I(Celant, 2011)

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ARTE POVERA

Alhigero Boetti created systematic postal works (Dossier Postale 1969-70) and Mario Merz combined geometric igloo installations with neon lighting and chemical reactants.

5.0.2 Change over Time in Artworks.

A very important influence I have taken from Arte Povera is the use of processes and change over time as integral components of the work.

Sometimes, as in the case of works by Merz, constructions are ramshackle, once-only temporary installations, other times they can be impractical but poetic chemicalreactions as in Gilberto Zorio's "Rosa-blu-rosa", sometimes processes of decay (Anslemo's Eating Structure) or frozen tableaus of immense potential energy ( Giovanni Anselmo Torsione 1968).

Trecento Millioni di anni (Three Hundred Million Years) simply states that in all its apparent mundanity, as an object it is the cumulation of a truly epic train of events.In the course of the next three hundred million years, perhaps its form will be loose of the Anslemo's wires. Art Auction sites including Sotheby’s posting on Artnet.com pointedly list Time in its bill of materials.

31

Illustration 18: Detail: 8-5-3, Mario Merz, 1985.

ARTE POVERA

32

Illustration 21: Rosa-blu-rosa, Gilberto Zorio, 1967

“A half-cylinder of asbestos cement that contains a mixture of cobalt chloride. This causes it to changes color from pink to blue in relation to changes in atmospheric humidity...time becomes a constitutive element of the work....to experience the work, the viewer must be present, since it is his or her presence that necessarily transforms the appearance of the work. The change of color is not dictated by aesthetic principles, but by an extra-artistic element."

-Germano Celant

Illustration 19: Torsion, Giovanni Anslemo, 1968

Illustration 20: Trecento Millioni di anni, Giovanni Anslemo, 1969

ARTE POVERA

Often it is only in retrospect and in banality that the peculiarities of Natural Law become uninteresting in their predictability and tameness.

Germano Celant categorically states Arte Povera "explored changing physical states instead of representing things".

This can be observed in two levels.

Firstly, as a reaction to commercial “art objects” the works themselves are often constructed of found objects or disposable materials.

With temporary installations, the creation, development and removal of the work becomes a ritual and the crux of the work is the fulfilment of the ritual, not the components, as in traditional sculpture or installation.

This can perhaps be interpreted as a sculptural parallel to 'Happenings', performance art and other ephemeral forms of creation that also found their genesis in the 1960s.

In the second level it can be observed that many works exhibited the very “changing of states” as conceptual building blocks, embodiments of their own meaning.

You could interpret Arte Povera as an artistic parallel to the discussion of Natural Laws for use in artworks, and compare some of its materials and techniques to Demonstative Experiments.

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Illustration 22: Giovanni Anselmo, Struttura che mangia (eating structure), 1968

Illustration 23: Corner Prop, Richard Serra, 1969

ARTE POVERA

Along with important visual and theoretical references Arte Povera is distinct from Natural Law and Demonstrative Experimentation, in that it emphasises the element of time and change-over-time as a definitive part of artworks.

This is important because though inherent in scientific demonstrations the passage of time in that situation is considered merely a stable variable not a process to be understood as important in its own right.

The Arte Povera examples feature decay, chemical transformation, fermentation, erosion, movement, performance, ritual and other forms of dynamism or stretched time to emphasise the properties and effects of time in the artwork.

Traditionally art objects are physically and conceptually resistant to time.

Artists also utilise the distinctive halting of time, loaded stillness, in the concept of physical and creative "potential" (as in stored or paused energy).

Dynamism and energy are then embodied in the work, physically stored within the material, but also visually and situationally represented.

The Japanese “Gutai” group was another comparable movement that expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things are damaged or created.

In Gutai performances, the process of damage or destruction is celebrated as a wayof revealing the inner "life" of a given material or object. The group featured performance and other happenings with sculptural components such as clay and large stones.

Richard Serra and Joseph Beuys are two artists that also fit this set of criteria, and are both sources of great inspiration, but were not part of the Arte Povera dialogue.

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ARTE POVERA

5.0.3 Slow Experiments

These slow experiments are examples of Demonstrative Experiments that incorpor-

ate time a key component.

35

Illustration 24: Oxford Electric Bell Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, 1840

This voltaic pile coated in sulphur transfers static charge back and forth between piles byelectrostatically attracting and repulsing a small pendulum. It has been running uninterrupted

since 1840.

Illustration 25: Pitch Drop Experiment, T. Parnell, Department of Physics at the University of Queensland, 1927

This “is an experiment to illustrate, for teaching purposes, the fluidity and the very high viscosity ofpitch.” After 3 years of settling the stem was cut and consequently the pitch falls approximately once in

ten years. The average time is taken and used to calculate the viscosity of pitch.

The drop event has been recorded only once.

Illustration 26 The Beverly Clock, Department of Physics University of Otago, New Zealand. 1864

Wound once in 1864, this clock draws energy from a diaphragm flexed by atmospheric pressure and wood expansion and contraction.

ARTE POVERA

5.1 Joseph Beuys: Alchemy, Shamanism, Epistemology.

“...on one hand, I was a kind of modern scientific analyst, on the other hand, in the actions, I had a synthetic existence as shaman. This strategy aimed at creating in people an agitation for instigating questionsrather than for conveying a complete and perfect structure. It was a kindof psychoanalysis with all the problems of energy and culture.” 28

-Joseph Beuys

An alchemical mix of shamanism/spirituality with science and temporal materialism, Joseph Beuys (1921—1986) represents an important early inspiration for me, it is also a perfect example of many of my creative approaches "in practice".

Beuys, introduced to me as a performative and sculptural artist, also occupied a significant space as a teacher and political environmentalist during his career.To me this wholistic approach is very admirable, and clearly had a strong effect on his artistic practice.

Beuys worked with metaphor, symbolism and with a strong connection to both materiality and spiritual mysticism that managed to span the organic, the mechanical and the aetheric. His shamanistic art practice was informed by both his professional roles as an educator and sociologist.This foundation of skills and mysticism allowed him powerful artistic a tool in line with his political and social roles.

For Beuys, the production and storage of energy was a metaphor for the creative and spiritual energy both in the individual viewer and in society as a whole.

There is nothing esoteric or pseudo-scientific about this process (in the nature of magic or orgone accumulators) it is merely referencing the implicit meanings of the configuration of elements in a battery-like state to bring forth a metaphor of a different field.

Alchemical literature and practice was almost entirely contained within a double layered material and metaphysical space. Every experiment and device was bound to its magical twin meaning, with reality falling somewhere in-between.

The mystical taxonomy was a result of very real observations and reactions, a poetical rendering of patterns and logical conclusions in a way more desirable to thehuman mind and its hunger for meaning.

28 (Rosenthal and Bastian, 2000)

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ARTE POVERA

It was when the alchemist began to extrapolate observational signifiers and their second order meanings into larger predictions based on humanistic, narrative-mythology that the materialist activity ended and the mystical search for the Philosopher's stone began.

Perhaps,

“we must seek out and energise our spirituality and link it to our thinkingpowers so that “our vision of the world must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact.” 29

- Joseph Beuys

29 (Beuys, 1975)

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Illustration 28: Paul DeMarinis, The Messenger, 1998

Illustration 27 Bentronix:INTERVENTION ELECTRO_CHEMICAL TEST_1122, Marko Batist, 2013

ARTE POVERA

6 MATERIALIST MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY. THE GERMAN APPROACH

6.1 Media ArchaeologyA historian is a prophet facing backwards”30

-Friedrich Von Schlegel

The “Archaeological Method” as a historical and literary research methodology is a consummation of Foucault's “Archaeology of Knowledge”, a text discussing the possibility of methodically applying different philosophies and techniques to a field or history in order to comprehensively explore its phase-space. Specifically, this is to combat the natural human instinct to project narrative and structural patterns on history according to their own context and perception of reality.

Foucault comments that, while the Grand-Narrative is grand indeed, it is formed with near-perfect hindsight and also one foot in the future and the present. Taken as a single great piece, history is highly glossed- only showing great fractures and events.

The history of ideas, history in general is read as a narrative and defined by major breaks in continuity without much thought to low-profile events, dead ends and unarticulated ideas.

The Archaeology of Knowledge is an approach that, like its anthropological namesake, gets into strata of history. Each layer is not a cutaway plane, but a vast flat deposit of castaways, loose sand and midden heaps, the physical record of dailylife and the minutia of unarticulated ideas and conceptual diversions that didn’t acquire the critical mass to feature in narrative history.

It is the ruptures as much as the continuities that unify this method of study.

The more specific field of Media Archaeology is a fusion of Media Studies, New Historicism, Social Science and Cultural Studies. It borrows political and economic analytic methods (like Longue Duree), and incorporates Materialist Philosophy.

It corresponds with German Media Theory, but should be set apart in that it does not entirely focus on materialism and there is equally strong activity in software, online and other less 'Materialist' Media Archaeological interests.

30 "Athenaeum" fragments and other writings #80 Friedrich Von Schlegel

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MATERIALIST MEDIA ARCHEOLOGY. THE GERMAN APPROACH

6.2 What is German School of theory.The 'German School' of Media Theory is a loose grouping of philosophers and researchers that are currently rethinking 20th century German media theory as the study of New Media culture and history passes from its early progenitors31 (made poignant by the recent death of Friedrich Kittler.) to another generation of active theorists, many of whom grew up in a media landscape extremely different to thoseof their predecessors.

Some of these theorists have seized upon what are regarded as traditionally Germanophone materialist trends and expanded them into a discourse focussed on the ecology of physical archives, hardware and machinery in relation to culture and society.

German Media Theory that is manifestly connected Media Archaeology is propounded heavily by researchers such as Jussi Parikka working alongside others like Wolfgang Ernst, Garnet Hertz, Erkki Huhtamo, Dieter Daniels, Siegfried Zielenski, and Lev Manovich.

It implies a general research approach based in the legacy of researchers and foundations stemming from, and still loosely based around Germany and Central Europe.

Though the range of discourse and implementation is broad, certain sentiments are at the core of this approach such as “media materialism” and investigating alternateinterpretations of history and its implications in a non-linear and also atemporal perspective.

The role of technology and mechanisms in society is a central theme, usually skipping the usual “content” of history (texts, discourse, ideology and narrative) in order to analyse the more concrete effects and underlying infrastructures.

Removing the traditional human-centric elements of analysis is an important technique to investigate the ecology of the machine and technology as an autonomous cultural unit.

This is not out of disregard of human or fetishism of the machine, but as an analytical filter to extract hidden genealogies and autonomous or parallel histories from our own past and present.

My investigation of the materiality and functionality of art objects shares and borrows from a lot of these ideas, especially concepts such as Operative Media Archaeology. 31 See F Kittler, M. McLuhan, L. Mumford, P. Virilio,

39


Operative Media Archaeology views the functionality and mechanism of a device as part of its materiality, which has important implications to the sculptural treatment of interactive art and process based works.

Electronic devices are also viewed as objects in their own right rather than Input/output boxes of purely utilitarian importance.

The various ways Media Archaeologists treat time and history is also very informative, as art too tends to thrive on the dead ends, parallels, failures and circular discourses which Archaeologists seek to explore.

This has already proved a wealth of inspiration to me, and continues to be an effective way to approach practical work and theory.

6.2.1 Kittler's Legacy. Technology as the Primum Mobile

"Nur was schaltbar ist, ist überhaupt- Only that which is switchable, exists"

– F Kittler

German Media theory is largely defined by the legacy of Friedrich Kittler, an assertive materialist and media historian.

Philosophically, Materialism holds that the material of a thing gives rise to its form and interactions, applicable right up to human consciousness. This also implies the absence of significant non-physical entities and denies their effect on reality.

This could be criticised as rather narrow and reductionist strategy if taken as say a spiritual precept, or a world-view.

In the case of Kittler's academic legacy and its current use, this can be ignored as itis intended primarily as a deductive lens through which to investigate complex and large scale systems such as human society and culture.

Kittlers view was that with the ability to store, process, send and receive information as well as perform industrial and mechanical functions, technology and communications or “instrumental infrastructure” had become the equivalent of an independent cultural agent. This is in contrast to human-centric views, such as the reading that technology is basically an extension of humanity in the McLuhanist sense.

He notes that people tend to take for granted that technology “takes its meaning from the pre-existing discursive contexts within which it is introduced.” 32 32 (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011)

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Kittler calls these infrastructures “discourse networks” of machinery and sees it as anatural force in human development, benevolent, symbiotic but still very much a causative force in human development. This sentiment is named technological determinism or techno-determinism.

Autonomy is a factor that distinguishes this brand of techno-determinism from others like Paul Virilio, or Lewis Mumford.Mumford's interpretation is also techno-determinist, but takes the form of the dehumanising and malevolent 'mega-machine', which represents a single Societal techno-political unit whose actions are defined by the tools and technology that makes up its parts. This, he states, comes at the expense of individuality and human values, the erosion of ethics. Kittler is also rather unusual in that he is very positive about the idea of humanity losing (or not even realising its lack-of) control of its own creations, let alone being subject to its subtle pressures.

In an effort to elaborate on Kittler, revivalists explored Kulturtechniken: cultural techniques. This is the 'donkey or the carrot' argument to do with disputing the Primum Mobile and the guiding force behind (or in front of) our culture. 33

An example of this idea is that we could understand and use rudimentary counting before there were numbers.34

Operational necessities of life were carried out in primitive forms, the necessity of which soon led to their formalisation as Techné and inclusion into culture.

This flips the determinist force from human-discursive agency to pre-existing environments and processes, a demonstration of apriori knowledge which we as historians would prefer to be read as posteriori, (the product of deduction) for our own sense of gratification. This again posits that human development is a direct result of material and physical needs, while also underscoring the unconscious hubris of human thought- projecting our current values and desires into historical narrative.

Kittler saw that by cutting out our humanist wants, “Taking the Human out of the Humanities” and objectively analysing a history we thought we knew, we could come to new conclusions. Wolfgang Ernst calls this the “cold gaze” 35.

Through this gaze, the long interplay of matter and material could be seen as its own history rather than simply the casual side effect of human progress.

Furthermore, in anticipation of its flexibility as media analysis tool, he claimed that materialist media analysis could be expanded upon to “transversally join together

33 (Siegfried and Ernst, 2012)34 Macho, 2003 http://monoskop.org/Cultural_techniques35 (Parikka, 2011)

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the themes and methods of literary criticism, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and electrical engineering“36

The many methods and sources aggregated in the field of Media Archaeology are also a good representation of this diversity.

After Kittler, the more modern “German school” is less of a homage to the 'primum mobile' (first mover)37 than a call to re-asses the importance of material technologies in a discourse otherwise dominated by historic personalities and the study of information and language.

I should note here that my previous discussion of the mystical drives behind humanadvancement are a parallel, Humanist counterpoint to Techno-determinism.

Kittlerian Techno-determanism doesx not deny that humans are driven by human emotion, in fact it derives its usefulness precisely because of this situation.

We are motivated by our wants, but motivation and wants do not necessarily determine the course of reality.

Materialist readings of history it merely ignore human drives, much as we in turn tend to ignore the interplay of matter on a cultural scale.

The mystical drive, this unconscious hubris, is what allows humanity to ignore the Mega-machine and the materialist Primum-Mobile in return.

6.2.2 Return to Materiality: Erasure of the Subject and Media Materiality

“a certain positivist cast of mind continues to nurture the illusion that, thanks to scientific and technical progress, man and woman may live as a demiurge, single-handedly and completely taking charge of their destiny.“38

-Pope John Paul II

One of the underlying reasons Materialist Media Theory is important to physical art practice, and in particular my idea of “Embodiment” is that it stimulates discourse counter to the prevailing themes in current philosophical thought.

36 (Geoghegan, 2013)37 (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011)38 Encyclical letter fides et ratio of the supreme pontiff John Paul II to the bishops of the catholic church on the

relationship between faith and reason, 1998

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For decades writers have been very preoccupied with discussing and analysing language and deconstructing modernist tenets such as the positivist concepts of the“Grand Narrative”, Rationalism and the Objective “Subject”

Interpreting this through an appreciably narrowed lens of Embodied Meaning and German Media Archaeology, the philosophy behind Materialist Media is often a criticism against Post-modern theory and the erosion of “the Subject".

The “subject” representing objective surety (read: materialism) was effectively 'thrown under the bus' during the creation of the Information-age Gaia and the western reassessment of language and culture after the enlightenment.

“Philosophical Anthropology” (philosophy of humanity) as critics have called this, is too human centric for my purposes.

Philosophy has been deeply preoccupied with exploring information age and language for so long that the discourse is lopsided.

Compounding this, the post-modern predilection for deconstructing what came before it has fragmented ideologies we had relied upon in the premodern era, further pushing alternate philosophies into the past with incredulity (Lyotards “incredulity of metanarratives”).

I do not belittle the need or the importance of post-modernism and I do not charge any malice or human agency to this trend.

Perhaps it could be read as an example of Kittlerian techno-determinism, as the philosophy certainly reflects the impetus of the technology we have surrounded ourselves with.

An instance of Kulturtechniken? We were culturally/mechanically enabled to build the system before we were equipped to “unpack” and understand it.

Regardless, in my own practical microcosm of Embodied Meaning as a sculptural artistic practice, Materialism and other modernist sensibilities play an important role and the friction between Materialist theory and the state of contemporary philosophy could reveal the place and importance of Embodied Meaning and so should be fully described.

Heidegger's "Language Speaks", Humans as "machines of desire" and actor-networks and many other philosophical threads tend to give weight to language andthe transformative, unpredictable qualities of language as a Medium.

From this perspective, all real action and meaning takes place and is altered in the liminal space of discourse and ideas, this erodes confidence in the Subjective, and in volume far outweighs analysis of the Subject and its objectivity.

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“every man's world picture is and always remains a construct of the mindand cannot be proved to have any other existence, yet the conscious mind itself remains a stranger within that construct, it has no living space in it, you can spot it nowhere in space...To learn that it [the personality of a human being] cannot really be found there [in the interior of a human body] is so amazing that it meets with doubts and hesitation, we are very loath to admit it."

-Schroedinger39

In the light of post-modernism the subject appears to be caged-in by an abundanceoutside meaning that seems so interconnected and prismatic that perception and communication is no longer a thing that can be trusted to the simple subject, the subjective observer is no longer dignified with even the illusion of objective reality.

“post-modernists de-constructed each and every scientific and moral certainty as if these were no more than big stories, meta or grand narratives.” 40

With the deconstruction of the Objective world came the dismissal of the Subjective, and Objective Truth with it.

The debate around the Subjective Self can become a little ambiguous in that early proponents of Post-modernism charged modernist grand-narritives with the offence of homogenising theory into a “lifeless uniformity41” only for critics of post-modernism to level the same accusation later on, claiming that that the deconstructionist tendencies of post-modernism simply replaced “lifeless uniformity”it with its own bland sameness of différance in the sense of Derrida, fundamental meaning is forever deferred in the pastiche of signifiers .

This replacement allegedly took away the possibility of the closest of all narratives, that of the Subject itself.

A self described German Materialist, Boris Groys argues that in the debasement of the Subject, even the Subject becomes a medium.

With confidence in subjectivity erased the subject becomes a "Server"-like entity (the human becomes the medium), subordinate carriers of the 'messages' of the network, say, messages transmitted and shaped inside autonomous culture of the networked and archived machines.

39 Forward by Roger Penrose.(Schrodinger, 2012)40 (Heartfield, 2006)41 (Heartfield, 2006)

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Perhaps the ritual of photographing food for social media replaces “the Saying of Grace” with “Placate the Machine”, an action not for the good of ones self, but to maintain access to the embassy of a machine culture which we have built around ourselves.

Groys cites Cabaret Voltaire's technique of deconstructing language as a method to regain some agency and control over the physical action of speech.

This ritualises the return of confidence in the Subjective. Becoming detached enough to begin observing the workings of media, and mediate right back at it.

Although concerned with poetry and the spoken word, this could be analogous to the celebration of hacking, open-hardware, materialism in order to regain some control over the meaning of media as an object divorced from the greater culture oflanguage and information technology.

If, instead of becoming post-human we become only Post-machine, or perhaps Sub-machine. (Ernst's Archive, Groys, Mumford) and ourselves part of the language of that Culture, should we not now de-construct that machine in order to gain some objective insight, free of semiotic indeterminacy?

Ernst explains that

“it is the machine in which the past gets archived as a monument and that is the true subject of technical media culture, not the spectre of the human subject idealistically looming between the words and as summoned by modes of literary writing [as we are inclined to assume].42

Those of the Materialist view see a single meaning object like "PRINTER" that prints, and imagine seeing the system: Paper, roller, gears, reader, digital convertersand so on.

We should see media not as a simple tool, a linguistic network which we guide.

Not a simple 'communicator, archive and mediator of human ideas', but as 'translator, archivist and curator of human ideas' which is its actual operative function.

6.2.3 Materialism is an analytic tool

As a researcher I need materialism as a tool, but as an artist I need both the spectator and the network.

Phenomenology, the eventual fusion of experience and the subjective satisfies this need in the reality, but for design and research purposes: satisfaction of mind and

42

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self integrity I continue to value materialism, the meta-narrative, the “machinic coldgaze” and the operative reading.

I am not committing myself unequivocally to the larger implications of hard line materialism, but using it as a research tool.

I will continue on from here to describe the various approaches I found typical to Media Archaeology, and how they formed and guided my research to the final synthesis of Embodied Meaning.

6.3 Non Linear History, Atemporal technologies and Variantology

I think [progress] can work.. in reverse too; if you encounter one of these technologies that’s old by only a few decades, people often perceive those things as magical: 'how can sound come out of a fire?’ Because it’s never been marketed.”

-Paul DeMarinis43

In a tactic to achieve an alternate perspective and new insights on the relationship between humanity and technology the “German School” modify the perception and importance of time in relation history in a few different ways.

6.3.1 Variantology

Zielenski offered “Variantology” for instance, which imagines diverse 'genealogies' of media.

Earlier media theory, that of McLuhan and Kittler has been criticised as being rather western-centric.

Elements of this include reading history as a linear narrative as one thing progressively leads to the next in a logical order. It may focus on historical figures and events, playing into a sort of retroactive confirmation of Manifest Destiny and giving primacy to human agency.

Variantology encourages seeking different cultural perspectives, western media and technology as experienced by Arab-Islamic cultures or Eastern media history for example.

This approach rejects linear historical accounts and embraces plurality and multiple perspective in history.

A more pop-culture comparison could also be made to alternative history stories and even such fantasies as steam-punk and cyberpunk.

43 (Doorley, 2006)

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While often regarded as simple fiction, it is indicative of a reflexive probing of human motivations, missed turns in history and important developmental “what-ifs” that formed contemporary culture and technology.

6.3.2 Deep Time Relations and Time Critical Media

Deep Time Relations44 and Time Critical Media45 are concepts used to analyse history on each respective end of the time scale.

Deep Time is borne from historian Fernand Braudel's “Longue Duree”: the study of long term historical structures.46

This approach was developed to investigate the possibility of unexpected socio-economic developments happening as the result of slow, indiscernible inertias and pressures supposedly above the scale of conscious actors. These could include pressures of technology, climate, historically forgotten cultural traumas etc.

'It is easy to forget that the antiquity of people on earth had to be discovered.’

- archaeologist Donald Grayson,

Deep time follows this theme, but less occupied with socio-economics.

This can be used to investigate the long term roles of materiality, art, science and technology on a geological and biological time-scale, “the long histories of materiality as a term, and also the long legacies of non-human thought”47

Some explore this more literally in the relationship between raw-materials, technology and e-waste and its impact on humanity and the environment.

Information Technology is never ephemeral for instance, it has an elemental, chemical structure, it has an alchemy and an e-waste ecosystem and mineral industry just for itself.

This is the kind of ecology you have to observe on a geographically global scale, over the span of decades at least and continue doing so into the future as measured in biological standards.

It also serves as a strong reminder of the physical reality behind digital technology, one that is often ignored and actively hidden from sight.

Time Critical media48, discussed by Wolfgang Ernst represents the micro scale, events that take the temporal form of impulse rather than duration. 44 (Zielinski, 2008)45 (Ernst, 2012)46 (Wight, 2007)47 (Parikka, 2012)48 (Ernst, 2012)

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This can be bitwise electronic data or simply events beyond our sensory threshold. An apt example would be the phenomena of observing the activity of nerve cells in the brain- To do this we are using instrumentation to observe activities that are necessarily taking place faster than our own perception- limited fundamentally by our nerves.

The “Critical” aspect of Time Critical media is that it is bound by crucial moments and timing, if the media is to be preserved. You could say the base component of a story is a narrative, whereas the base component of an audio recording is a bit.

Text is not time critical, but a telegraph is. Once encoded it can be interrupted.

6.3.3 Operative Media

Ernst implies using Critical-Time as a tool to implement a “Materialism of Process, Flows and Signals”49,instead of just considering the hardware and machines as the entirety and limit of the physical strata of technology that influences Media Materialism.

This focus on the temporal and operational aspect of hardware is called “Operative Media Archaeology” by Ernst and Parikka.

The implications of the development of Operative Media are media further explored in relation to Norbert Wieners' Operative Image.

6.3.4 Atemporal media history

Atemporal media history rejects the idea that one technology builds on the other, then drives its predecessor to oblivion, but that each technology retains its own atemporal space and that the echoes of its operative nature continue to exist in consciousness and therefore future design.

Tecnology develops recursively and with the echoes of prior media constantly being reintegrated and re-purposed.50

This can be used to map shifts in perception and the perceived use and importance of certain technologies, and how that "modulates" over time. Other times technologies might be found to be culturally unimportant but inextricably involved inan operative capacity, buried in the technological infrastructure for instance.

Wolfgang Ernst's Operative Media Archaeology51 is a re-mediation of media history as a functioning, process based material monument.

49 (Parikka, 2011)50 (Kittler, 1999)51 (Geoghegan, 2013)

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This parallel between function and mechanism and a sense of “monument” as a simultaneously timeless and time anchored object raises questions about the relation between temporal and operational space represented by many fundamentaltechnologies.

Perhaps this Atemporality suggests that operative-technologies exist in their own phase-space as a direct result of their particular materiality and physicality which guides interaction and use.

This is certainly a mainstay of materialist philosophy, that at its core everything is the result of physical properties. A kind of extreme reversal of form follows function,extrapolated out to such extremes as consciousness and whole cultures.

The material advantages of the components of batteries and antennas are examplesthis, changing in form factor, scale and implementation but operatively they are practically unchanged in their developmental history due to their materiality operational possibilities.

Power systems in Server-farms maintain the spin on massive flywheels like some kind of steampunk fantasy in order to store kinetic energy like a medieval grindstone.

There are certain incontrovertible properties at play.

This approach involves a reassessment of vestigial structures- The physical viscera of the information age is rapidly becoming the unwanted appendix, the vestigial tail of the 'cloud' organism in an online ecosystem that rarely acknowledges it.

However it wont soon disappear like obsolete software or devices such as mercury valves which continue to live on in niche applications. For the foreseeable future (not to mention past) we must have the basic material functionality locked in by its atemporal properties.

6.4 Case studiesThe following cases studies explore ways in which materiality and physical media have real world effects.

6.4.1 Evolvable Hardware, A case study in physicality.

A situation that demonstrates the effects simple physicality exerts on seemingly digitalised things, and exemplifies the importance of considering the innate properties of the objects you work with is within the field of Evolvable Hardware.

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The pioneer in this field is Adrian Thompson developing Evolving Circuits since 1993combining hardware in a way that allowed autonomy and fault tolerance to evolve architectures that could perhaps develop artificial intelligence.

In a break from standard practice in the field, he decided that he could not cheaply and quickly simulate circuitry as it did not take into account for physical effects or simulate "analogue" reality to the appropriate resolution. (There were programs that simulated the basic physics involved, but not actually reality.).

He could not reasonable be expected to build circuits by hand, so he allowed a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) of 100 simple transistor logic cells to program its-self using algorithms generated by cross breeding an original 50 randomly seeded instruction codes which were continually cross then bred according to their coherence or success (The definition of Success starting as "Features that did not seem totally random”. For instance, in the beginning even a steady 4.1v output regardless of input would be desirable because it is at least consistent.")

The final goal was to differentiate between 1 or 10 Khz signals by outputting any kind of steady signal.

In 220 generations it was almost always outputting signals mimicking the inputs- similar results to a single linear wire- but not steady outputs as defined by its instructions

By 2800 it was giving noisy results which were ironed out by iteration 4100.

It came to 0v and 5v outputs although this was never stipulated in the design, it could have been any two distinct signals.

The circuit solution was analysed and was incomprehensible to a human- it contained no clock for example (Regarded as an essential component for a signal producing device) but a series of complex loops that presumably allowed a reliable delay due to the components switching speed- although again, they could not decipher how it functions.

This was achieved in an unprecedented 100 cells, with only 32 cells used.

Importantly, there were 5 other cells that were not electrically connected to any others nor the Input or Output, but if removed they changed the results of the output.

Presumably they were interacting via physical properties in ways other than direct electrical current or measurable magnetic interference, a situation impossible to

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simulate and from a logical point of view an impossible solution. His work continuesto be important for research in adaptive systems and analogue circuit design

Thompson arrived at a startling and unique result by refusing to divorce his physicalwork from its reality of physics and electronics.

Just like certain electronics components exert tiny but perceptible pressures on a system, larger scale electro-magnetic industrial noise can interfere with electronic art installations at times, and equally, components and materials of a sculpture can interact conceptually changing the expected output.

6.4.2 Mechanics to media- Shift from the lens to the array.

The whole thinking was switching away from a Newtonian, Corpuscular idea of the material universe to a wave and vibrational model.

Sound offered the possibility of looking at waves, of imagining waves, of experimenting with waves. [There was no] profound interest in sound itself as a cultural topic or applications to music or anything like that.”

- Paul Demarinis.52

In the time of Newtonian physics, interaction was conceived as a “corpuscular” system of whole object interactions based classical mechanics and other observable phenomena.

52 (Doorley, 2006)

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Illustration 29: Phonautograph sound-wave recorder, Pisko, J ,1165 . Image courtesy Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

Illustration 30: Vibrating Reed Tachometer, The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition, 1979


The development of experimental apparatus to extend human senses allowed the transition from Corpuscular thinking to a wave based model allowing for vibration, visualisation and other measurable manifestations of invisible forces.

Mechanical stylus', magnifying lenses and other analogue devices retained the materiality and texture of the transcribed events as they are transferring directly from one physical effect to another.

Interestingly the underlying physicality of curves and circles carries through the translation. Vibrations are transcribed as oscillations, lenses radiate or focus images to points.

Fundamentally this translation is still analogue, not comparable with the abstracted digital encoding of the array. Even with a recorded image, the circular modality of the lens is squared and sectioned into pixels.

The cathode ray tube is a peculiar example of transitional technology. The time critical data is encoded and sent to a ray tube that desired to do just what rays do, radiate. The heavy lensed screens on CRT televisions was a kludge designed to fit regular arrayed information into the analogue display of a lensed, circular mechanism.

Arrays present organised information, data. The materiality of the subject is destroyed as the whole is dissected and quantified.

6.4.3 Transitional technologies, early data storage.

A continuation of these strange and beautiful transitional hybrids between the materialist Newtonian modality and the Data array can be observed in early memorystorage technologies.

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Illustration 31 Delay Line Memory, Image courtesy vintagecalculators.com


The circular 'delay line memory' is a very long high tensile wire designed to reliably transfer mechanical vibrations at the speed of sound from a transducer at one end to a receiver at the other.

Because these vibrations, acoustically encoded data, would always be embodied somewhere along the wire at all times the electronics were free to send the received signal back as it arrived, but much faster this let it to resubmit the data before the previous data was lost, never having to retain the signal electronically. Imagine remembering a sentence by constantly listening and repeating your own echo.

This is a magnetic core array. This is now a true memory array, allowing un-powered storage. This clever and elegant system allowed a grid of wires to access specific nodes which were threaded through a magnetic ring. By pushing current through both wires in one direction or the other you could generate a magnetic fieldstrong enough to flip the polarity of the physical magnet. The diagonal wire is a sense wire. By monitoring the current in the sense wire and pulsing a low current tothe desired node you could tell if the core was set to a direction complementary or against the magnetic field because the current induced in the sense wire in response. No current is induced if the core is complimentary, and a spike if the magnetic fields conflict (but not enough to flip the logic state again.).

Essentially this is an elegant and physical combination of the physical properties of certain materials and their electromagnetic properties. In this prototypical stage, data is physically embodied in a human readable manner.

Kittler emphasises the 1870s as a point of paradigm shift ("Mediengriindetzeit) wherin memory- new forms of technology allowing the storage sound and vision, entered popular use, rivalling for the first time the supremacy of writing as the arbiter of knowledge and history.53

53 (Simonson and Peck, 2013. P261)

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Illustration 32 Magnetic-Core Array, Image courtesy vintagecalculators.com


This focusses on memory and proto-media rather than the other media go-to, the printing press. While the printing press represents a major shift in the demographics, economics and the perception of text, it is nevertheless still text.

Memory represents a true shift of medium, not modality. Manovich in his book “The Language of New media” concludes that culture changes significantly slower and soour use of media, including memory and storage is still significantly influenced by the modalities of text and word.54

54 (Kittler, 1999)

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7 FROM THE OPEN MECHANISM TO EMBODIED MEANING

“Russian Formalists defined the twin tenets of aesthetic modernism as

(a) "defamiliarization," or estrangement (making the world wonderful) and

(b) "laying bare the device."55

-Ross Chambers on Shklovsky.

Taking the material I have covered as background and theory the course of my thesis so far has followed the stylistic influence of Demonstrative Experiments and Arte Povera, including the use of Time and Scientific Language.

The mystical drive behind Modernist thought, the method of the Shaman and the Archaeology of Knowledge.

I have discussed the alchemical Materialism behind the culture of mankind and the machine-ecology, with deference to the importance of reviewing the alternate perception of change and time as both a material tool in Operative Media and as a research method in Media Archeology.

I now have to put this to use as a functional approach to creative practice.

Here I will discuss different approaches of Openness, starting with movements suchas DIWO, Makers and Hacker-spacesm, Open Hardware and Design which heavily inform my work-flow and practical research approach.

Exploring the intimacy of DIY and tinkering as an aesthetic will culminate in the framing of Norbert Wiener's “Operative Image” as a technique that mixes technical design with illustrative and pictorial elements comparable to medieval text Illuminations. These topics help explain how I incorporate circuitry into my work as a sculptural component and pictorial image.

I will follow up on this with an analysis of Interactivity according to Umberto Eco, Lev Manovich and Ken Fiengold and how that can relate to open artworks containing both physical interactive modalities and Illuminated circuitry.

55 (Chambers, 2008)

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From the OPEN MECHANISM TO EMBODIED MEANING

7.1 Opening the mechanism, From the Tinkerer to the Crusader.

Aside from simply studying basic electronics, I was interested and the social and technological boom of Hackers, Makers, DIY, DIWO, Open-Hardware, Critical Engineering, Open Design and Thinkerers.

This boom is spurred in part by new accessible technologies like the Arduino and the rising popularity of hacker-spaces, maker labs and perhaps a corresponding fashionable tend towards 'geek culture'.

DIY and backyard Hacking evolved naturally out of curiosity or necessity, whereas more modern Open Source and Maker initiatives are engineered social movements.

This is a progression from the individualist DoItYourself to group DoItWithOthers (DIWO) follows an evolution from a loose underground movement attacking closed-ness and encouraging ingenuity to a celebration of openness as a philosophy drivenby epistemological ideals.

This comes complete with a variety of manifestos, discussion and economics.

I will not discuss the wider politics and economics of these various movements here, rather I will explain my experiences in this environment and how both the group and individual aspects of it influenced my development as an artist.

7.1.1 The Environment of the Hacker-space and DIWO

Organised Open Source initiatives favour sharing as a form of mutual respect while encouraging technical engagement at a much lower level. Collaboration and free interaction of ideas should lead to a varied and more streamlined development pipeline adding value to both the technology and the wider audience of human participants.

This idealistic combination of transparency and sharing provided me with a wealth of both technical data and pre-existing discourse.

I will be talking more specifically about the slightly more anarchic hacker-spaces and backyard DIY initiatives primarily. These tend to lack the design and marketing savvy of “Makers” (a newer, partly commercially driven movement), and the focus and professional airs of funded Research Labs.

I do this because of my own formative experience as a member of the Perth “Artifactory”, and my extensive touring of hacker spaces across central and eastern Europe. This environment is what first sparked and maintained my interest in technology and also various Open Source politics and initiatives. I found it an incredibly fertile working space and it has had a strong impact on the way I work.

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Hacker Spaces represent “a community-operated workspace where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, digital art or electronic art, can meet, socialize and/or collaborate.”56

In my personal experience the clientèle of these spaces is made up of a few core members, usually highly trained and working in the tech or computing industry whouse the space to relax, socialise and help less experienced or differently skilled members problem solve for their creative projects.

The ratio of hackers of the 'geek' persuasion is often far higher than those from the creative industries, so many elaborate group projects are simply inspired by intellectual curiosity and displays technological bravado. A sort of 'experimentation for experimentations sake', often ballooning from a curious query to a many-forked group project.

At times the furious ilinx, the playful disorientation of the breadth and speed of discussion at a hacker-space brainstorming session can be quite overwhelming (although the content is generally mechanics, physics and logic), bringing to my mind the wandering dérive and détournement approach of Debord and the Situationist International.

Many projects are contextual, inspired by the challenge of combining of general interests and skills with the materials on hand, something I find irresistible in the workshop.

The idea of sharing and collaboration goes a long way to ease the uncertainty of thestandalone artist-as-genius and undercuts the classical desire for the artist to be thesole creator.

The methodology of the these environments are forgiving, even amenable to failureand diversion, featuring flexible and iterative design.

Observe and repeat, trial and error and often plenty of educated-guesswork and intuitive reverse engineering can be involved.

The test and copy approach to learning helps with the demystification of technology, removing the fear of the unknown and enabling, empowering the participants. I believe a measure of this demystification can be transferred in the playfulness and approachability of interactive artworks.

Due to the lack of rigid goals, emergent properties can be noted for further study orembraced and built upon rather than get designed-around or buried.

This is less cerebral and more creative than the do-or-die optimisation of pure engineering but is less directed, and therefore can struggle with tight design briefs and deadlines.

56 See: hackerspaces.org

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Due to the lower stakes, and often fuzzy aims of these projects, an operational disaster can be interpreted as an object-lesson or at least a successful demonstration of design flaws.

One thing I have learned is that the results of catastrophic failure often make a better more involved story than the impeccable design. Indeed destructive testing

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Illustration 33: Video Still, LG Plasma Arc Panel Death Run-Where's My Hammer!, Aussie50, 2013.

In which a high current microwave transformer is connected directly to a Plasma Display, quickly breaking the array and then arcing violently as it physically burns away the electronic infrastructure of the screen.Aussie50 works exclusively in his back yard and presents his videos as “stress tests”in the no-frills style of tech demonstrations.

Illustration 34 Oreborous, Kristoffer Myskja, 2009.

This work takes advantage of the poor “switching time” of mechanical relays utilised to create a beautiful phenomena. This specification exists in the space of the barely skimmed corners of the Data-sheet, and the all to obvious operational realities.


and creative failure is considered by some to be a particularly illuminating form of research.

This can reveal system dependencies, fail-safes and fall-back mechanisms, over-spec parts and bizarre and non-intuitive behaviours stemming from unusual interactions.

This can be applied from the level of tossing a brick into a clothes-dryer57 to power starving a complex circuit58.

Another criticism of this type of project is the lack of self reflection and sensitivity tothe subtleties of meaning involved, which is entirely understandable in the context but good to be aware of in research situations.

Historical references include the “Tech Model Railroad Club” of MIT, Phone Phreaking, HAM enthusiasts, and the CCC.

The contemporary Standuino project honours part of a strong tradition eastern European hacker history born of censorship and necessity.

57 Aussie50, Self Destructing Washing Machine Epic, 2011, youtube.com/watch?v=6_PLnInsh7E58 Leaf Audio, noisefoc, leaf-audio.com/en/audio_workshops/noisefoc

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7.1.2 Workflow

I consider the act of experimentation and tinkering as research to be a process that helps to build a mental catalogue of conceptual “building blocks”, documented and analysed like modular packages.

Documenting and recording these explorations provides physical and experiential data (behavior, texture, feel) and generates conceptual components: connotations or metaphors corresponding to abstracted meanings such as flux, weight, openness, lightness, fluidity and so on.

Recalling the earlier discussion of Natural Laws as carriers of meaning and the use of scientific vernacular as conceptual units, these building blocks can be arranged into complementary systems and functioning devices, creating a more complex system of meaning.

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Illustration 35 A workflow diagram illustrating the relationship between book learning, iterative experimentation and finalised works.


This work-flow is rewarding of constant research and experiment.

The larger the backlog of physically tested and 'experienced' building-blocks, the more variations of metaphor can be explored as inspiration or need arises.

This is why I can feel content sinking days of research and tinkering into even an archaic device or technology when I know I can easily enough purchase the miniaturised, reliable solution for less than the cost of its parts.

In this phase of my career, as a student in the transitional phase between a traditional art education and the breadth of practice implied by 'Interface Culture' I can justify this inwards facing practice as an investment, a significant retooling of my skills and experience to call upon in the future.

7.2 Tinkering, the Intimacy and Aesthetics of DIY

Moving from group mentality to the more intimate process of tinkering, circuit bending and DIY we can explore the aesthetics and priorities of the Hobbyist and the hacker as an individual.

Bordering on the trashy and the folksy, the methodologies of circuit bending and hacking recall the thrifty, practical roots of DIY in the vein of Popular Mechanics.

The backyard-inventor is typically motivated by reuse, repair and utility and seeks alternatives to consumerism and forced obsolescence driven by the glossy, high-tech, but black-box “Californian Ideology”59 of technology.

59 (Hertz and Parikka, 2012)

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Illustration 36: Electric Kettle: Transparant Kitchen Tools. Jesse Howard, 2012

He calls his designs “Open Structures and Transparent Tools”


DIY and tinkering is a loving and intimate process for the hobbyist, a strange combination of idolatry and understanding that does not particularly claim to be anykind of art, engineering or design, but often exhibits surprising creativity and profundity.

The object becomes “The bride stripped bare by her bachelors” if you will, especially in the case of Hacking which adds an element of risk and illicit pleasure to the process via the rip of a warranty-void seal or the eventual perversion of the devices designed purpose.60

Where Open design with others inspired much of my work-flow, the individualist tinkerer intimacy with components and materials contributed a lot to how I build and present electronics in my works.

Online groups based around DIY include Hack-a-day, Instructables and ElectronicsStackExchange.

7.2.1 Circuitry in Sculpture and Interaction

I give the investigation and study of electronics in Electronic Art significant thought because although circuitry and hardware was my main skill focus of in the last yearsit struck me as a conceptual sticking point when it came to including it in my art practice, as it stood in 2011.

Through further investigation and rethinking, this apparent obstacle proved to be a massive conceptual catalyst to me and an important feature in where I want to takemy future work.

The sticking point I mention is that I had to explore the philosophical, aesthetic andmetaphysical implications of working with electronics before I felt confident about its effect on the material poetics and mythological elements in my artworks and how it could be applied to interactivity.

I was also unsure what the impact the addition of programming, 3D design and Rapid Prototyping (Arduino, Processing, CNC, 3D Printing) to my skill-set should have on my artistic production.

I always found it stunning to read about electronic mechanisms in detail- the simplicity and absurd complexity of some implementations, the mechanical poetry of clever sensors and devices and the runic meta-language of schematics and

60 Note: In these circles, Hacking denotes creating, reusing or altering ready-made or store bought products. 'Cracker', or Black Hat is the terminology for malicious or illegal activity such as IP Theft which is not encour-aged.

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diagrams and their parity with the (imagined) reality of flowing, eddying electrons and invisible fields.

Furthermore there was the alchemical practice of tinkering with the devices and components themselves, forming a 'whole greater than its parts' and then putting such things in an imperfect, living world full of people and other interacting forces.

The conundrum of putting this into sculpture with all of this gravitas intact while maintaining my materialistic values was a source of vexation to me, and can be observed in the formation of my earlier electronic artworks.

As I had mentioned in the introductory passage, one of my motives in exploring thephysicality of hardware in interactive and electronic art was that I had seen various mechanisms and electronics bandied-about in many different fashions and in many different guises. Even when openly displayed, rarely was the mechanism human readable or particular relevant to the concept beyond a sense of knee-jerk appreciation of complexity, which was not how I wanted to work.

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7.2.2 Disambiguating Electronic Art

I believe in the course of discussing materiality I have made it clear that media art is fundamentally built on the machine and the mechanism, no matter how nebuloussoftware, net-art and “the cloud” seem.

I have also mentioned how the virtual products of the information-age have their own Gaia, their own unique mythology.

The problem I address now, is that due to the current prevalence computing and virtualisation in contemporary art, it is hard to find a term that differentiates my narrowly focussed interests and preferences from the popular conception of New Media Art, Digital Art, Electronic Art, Interactive Art and so on.

My personal reading of 'Electronic Art' relies on the fact that the descriptive word chosen implies that the fundamental power-source, and its carrier 'the electronics' are at the core of the artworks rather than the 'output as in Digital' or the 'function as in Media'.

Digital Art should not be considered a subset of Electronic art just because it fundamentally runs on electronics. It should be seen as existing in and parallel, differing only in that it describes works featuring or focused on Digital systems and outputs.

It should follow that in using this term Electronic Art one should envisage electricity,circuitry and powered mechanical art.

7.2.3 The Open Mechanism. Transparent Design

My interest in electronic components evolved from my early studies of sensors of invisible and subjectively peculiar forces such as static charge, VLF atmospheric radio emissions, electromagnetism and so on.

I was also researching the invention and development of electronic components through history- from electrostatic generators to the firstintegrated circuits.

To achieve this I was replicating simple components in their most primitive forms. This was a learning process for myself but also because of their basic nature they were some of the most “human readable” components available.

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Illustration 37: First Integrated Circuit, Jack Kilby, 1958. Image courtesy of Texas Instruments

Dimensions 1.6 x 11.1 mm


Human readable is a term usually used in reference to computer code meaning thatit is intuitively decipherable to an untrained viewer.

A good example would be the contrast of an “ice cube” relay with a solid state relayor a transistor.

The former is a mechanical clear cased component with visible switches that click and move in response to current, whereas the latter are simply matt black boxes with component markings only.

They have technical differences and different applications of course which cannot be dismissed, however for aesthetic and design considerations it is very clear which is more accessible and visceral.

As a design approach, having an intimate understanding of a components is like an artisan understanding the materiality of wood or clay and allows an artistic sensitivity to dictate how you treat these materials.

In the case of an artwork the transparency is a sign of respect to the medium comparable to the working style of an Impressionist painter: capturing both the materiality of the paint and canvas (using visible daubs of paint and revealing the texture of the canvas) and the qualities of the light its-self as the subject of work (using false colour, implied movement) in the same art object.

I think it is important to reveal the reality of an artistic device, baring the mechanism and craftsmanship of a handmade construction is like revealing the 'artists hand' in painting, giving a work personality.

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Illustration 39: An example of a mechanical relay in "ice cube" style packaging. Image courtesy ES Electronics

Illustration 38: An example of a dual solid state relay in DIP packaging. Imagecourtesy Futurlec.


Soldering, wiring and mounting is a surprisingly personalised craft and operationallyidentical devices can have drastically different circuit designs, form factors and construction.

Most electronic artists make a clear decision to be opaque about their workings and reveal their structure as part of the work, or use obfuscatory methods in order to inspire a sense of wonder or invoke other feelings.

The seed of this idea lies in the artists sense of conceptual integrity. It is a perfection which I strive for: to establish conceptual integrity in my work down to the most basic achievable level.

Often this can be something only the artist or designer can appreciate- software implementation or internal logic for instance. This comes from a sense of both

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Illustration 40:Detail: Circular Acceleration, Peter Vogel, 1980

Illustration 41: Jim Pallas Song for Luke, 1976.

All solid state circuitry (tin-flashed copper on epoxy fiberglass) utilizes TTL logic devices.

Two LDR sensors. one "eye" sees light, the other "eye' sees darkness. Each"eye" emits a frequency. The results of comparing the two frequencies creates the light patterns on the shrine display.


personal pride, and respect for the history of the materials and techniques applied.

It is plain to see from my works that I do not particularly emphasise craftsmanship or technical achievement in my work as I wish for the materials to speak of themselves not my own hand.It is not structural integrity I admire but the clean follow through of a line of thought in which a curious viewer can ask over and over 'why this' and 'why that' and still be satisfied that no part of design or function compromises the authenticityof the sum of its parts.

Examples of things often cut short, or sold as what they are not are feedback systems and generative or 'intelligent' works- these are often mystified and glorifiedand implied to be what they are not. In these situations tiny details can conceptually break an artwork- the difference between a software random variable or a hardware generated random seed can have huge effects visually and conceptually when applied to generative works for example (using the same seed will allow you to replicate results). Consider showing a randomly generated pattern at three conferences only to notice the output was identical in every run.

In other situations you are called on to adjust the sensitivity of sensors which serve an artistically relevant role. Do you risk false positives in the attempt to make your work more sensitive perhaps providing a more lively show, or tighten the sensitivity in order to reduce noise, but possibly boring an audience expecting a more direct interaction. This can be a problem when detecting otherwise invisible signals that may be erratic and unpredictable, and tuning a device is entirely up to the operator- “more of an art than a science” you could say.

Illustrative screen-printed decals as seen on open devices such as the Standuino board, serve much the same function as medieval Illuminations on manuscripts, communicating the basis of the function and construction of the device while serving simultaneously as aesthetic ornamentation.

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Manuscript Illuminations were far from simply decoration. In common with much religious art they served as a focus and visual aid for the illiterate and a diagrammatic blurb for the more educated, able to impart at a glance the general mood and direction of the body of text. Often they would add meaning, containing allegorical or contextual 'easter eggs' for those versed enough to unravel them.

Interestingly enough, they were often literally illuminated in gold leaf and silver, conductive metals in their own right.

Many beginners breadboarding kits include paper guides through which you orientate and insert the components, almost like an illuminated punchcard for physical computing.

In an escalation of this, a few artists like Jim Pallas create elaborate circuits designed to illustrate their own functionality in electronic tracks. Printed copies of

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Illustration 42: “B” 13century illuminated manuscript, Bernhard Clairvau, c.13th Century.

Illustration 43: Standuino PCB 2.1, O.Merta V.Peloušek, 2013. Image Courtesy standuino.eu

Illustration 44: Breadboard Arduino, Oomlout, 2009. image courtesy oomlout.com


the copper tracings could be used with very few annotations to illustrate the functional logic of the artworks.

This leads nicely to the concept of the “Operative Image” a concept outlined in Norbert Wiener's short treatise on the intersection of Cybernetics and Religion.

7.3 Norbert Wiener's Operative image

“As we know and simply do not say, no human being writes any more. […] Today, human writing runs through inscriptions burnt into silicon by electronic lithography […]. The last historic act of writing may thus have been in the late seventies when a team of Intel engineers [plotted] the hardware architecture of their first integrated microprocessor.”

-Fredreich Kittler

In ”God and Golem, Inc.” Norbert Weiner, one of the founding researchers of the science of Cybernetics used the phrase “operative image” in order to discuss the phenomena in electronic engineering whereas a schematic representation of a circuit could be rendered in copper and become a functioning circuit- a “pictorial image” representing only itself could transfigure into an “operative image” one that simultaneously carries out a function and pictorially describes itsself at the same time.

He uses the story of Pygmilion by way of explanation; to paraphrase,

Pygmilion created a representational image of his ideal love, which was given life and then became an operative image of his beloved. 61

61 (Swanstrom, 2013)

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Illustration 45: Jim Pallas, Senate Device Diagram, 1980. Illustration 46: Jim Pallas, Senate Device, 1980.


An Operative-image seems a well phrased and relevant example of electronic circuity in Embodied Meaning, and a very good representative of what I am trying to carry out in a wider sculptural context.

To both functionally and representationally carry one meaning is analogous to an artwork that embodies its own meaning.

This perspective alone was massively important to my attempt to incorporate circuitry pictorially and operationally into a sculptural context. I wanted the circuit itself to be human readable, to carry its own pictorial story explaining its function via its materiality and its form while at the same time carrying out that function as part of a larger system both functionally and symbolically.

From here Weiner continued to elaborate on proofs and limitations to this reading ofcircuits in a literal sense and circuit designs as transmutable 'ideals'.

“an electric circuit may fulfil a relatively complicated function, and its image, as reproduced by a printing press using metallic inks, may itself function as the circuit it represents. …

Thus besides pictorial images, we may have operative images. These operative images, which perform the functions of their original, may or may not bear a pictorial likeness to it. Whether they do or not, they may replace the original in its action and this is a much deeper similarity.'”62

In this passage Weiner further develops this phrase operative image, stating that it is the operational capacity and the pictorial description that are important factors.

An operational image may differ visibly from the original, as long as it still mimics the operational outcome of the original. This implies that the link between function and intent are primary factors, with the means- the form it takes, inconsequential.

A kind of 'proof' for a working operative image is that it can produce the same results (operative reading) as the original or the pictorial source.

62(Wiener, 1966. p31)

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A key point is that Wiener's practical example specifies that extracting a working circuit (a white box) from "operative image" inferred from a “operational reading” does not guarantee any structural similarities within “black box“, only that it achieves the same effect or output.

“they may replace the original in its action, and this is a much deeper similarity.“

This is like the construction of a temporary structure that inspires the same effect as a previous work, or repeating a time based work.

Many artists, including Beuys, Serra, Anslemo produce series' of works probing a single topic with many physical variations attempting in all iterations to evoke the same effect.

Beuys' thematically identical but physically disparate FOND series is a good example.

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Illustration 47: This diagram describes using a Shot Effect device to create a 'proofed' operationalimage of a circuit from a black box.

A black box is any device which will reliably output a result according to an input. The workings ofthe device are hidden and considered irrelevant.

Though usually used as a theoretical tool, any physical device, or set of devices with a reliable I/0pattern can be seen as identical black boxes. In this case we assume the device is a linear system because parallel systems produce Operational Images much more complex to reverse engineer.


This reflects the experimental, iterative work-flow and also the willingness to experiment and fail and reassess. The fusion of the ideal image and the execution of that ideal, whatever physical form that takes becomes Operational success, and Embodiment of meaning.

Weiner uses the word machine a lot, referring to an idealised 'flavourless' and lossless device that merely alters the I/O messages.

In reality, and in extending this metaphor, these machines have a strong role, and aheavy influence on meaning beyond the operative and the pictorial.

For me, using Embodied Meaning is like using an Operative Images as the Pictorial Ideal.

These of course are idealised machines, as Embodied Meaning is an Idealised goal.

The machine is a signifier only.

The results, the metaphor, the reading or the “outputs” become mechaophors from metamachines.

This passage illustrates this situation, as well as its allure.

„...the statistics of the message arising from a given transducer under a given standardised statistical shot effect input constitute an operative image of the transducer, and it is quite conceivable that they may be used for reconstituting an equivalent transducer in another physical embodiment“... „the transducer- the machine, as instrument and as message- thus suggests the sort of duality..so dear to the physicist.“63

63 (Wiener, 1966. p35)

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Illustration 49: Ulla Wiggen , Kretsfamilj (circuit family), 1965. Courtesy of the Artist.

“a pataphysical flow of induction, capacitance and impedance based on spatial abstraction." - Ulla Wiggen


7.4 Open Works and Interaction.

"A threshold of ambiguity or confusion must be reached before thought is compelled to experiment in a manner that is open to conceptual reform.

-Gooding, on teaching children.64

64 (Cavicchi, 2006)

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Illustration 48: Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923, Diagram extracted from Duchamp's notes by Jean Suquet (includes parts never completed).

This combined object of the object and the “The green box” a hand written manual for the LargeGlass represents a perfect storm or Mysticism and Mechanism. Duchamps “mechanomorphic” works have been described as 'Playful Physics' influenced by Victorian science (Linda Dalrymple), seeding the diagrammatic, mechanical style with abusrdist arrangements and pataphysical narritive.


Interaction with works built to allow open ness is an interesting conundrum as by design they tend to be both open and delicate due to either or both the DIY manufacturing process or the experimental set-up involved.

Artworks with free wiring and open casings are specifically open to you and suggests an openness in return.

To inspect the internals, the guts and viscera of a device is to open a dialogue that is different to the average art object.

In the manner of the anti-establishment sentiments of Arte Povera the object is taken off the pedestal and offered to you as an accessible, even an antagonistic fashion.

You are not kept at a respectful distance nor are you offered the mechanism on a silver plate, laid out and predigested like an info-graphic. You must crane your neck and trace the wires to decode and infer extra titbits of information according to yourobservations.

A more open modality is achieved, a freedom of interpretation and expansion of theinteractive phase space.

Umberto Eco in his book “The Open Work” talks about viewer accessibility and mental collaboration, as a form of interaction.65

I will apply this as well as commentary by Lev Manoich and Ken Feingold to the more literal application openness previously covered, elaborating on how Operative Imagery and open design in circuitry can add to a sculptural work.

A key concept Eco encourages is the artist's decision to allow certain components ofa work to be supplied or altered by the participants or even left to chance.

Through this process viewer becomes a participant in the work, not just in its interpretation but in its creation and fulfilment.

This is not simply Openness as in Open Design or even the Phenomenological sense, but physical interactivity in the process and experience of, and by, the artwork.

Eco qualifies this, acknowledging that they are "interpreting a datum that is alreadyorganised in its structural entirety [by the artist]”66.

Even though the viewers actions changes the work, this happens within a “field of relations” that is dictated by the author. The artist presents a curated series of possibilities upon which the viewer can interact.

The second important qualification Eco adds is that these are “works for which: an incomplete knowledge of the system is an essential feature”67

65 Note: I believe it is fair to take discourse relating to textual and new media as relevant to physcial interactiveartworks as Operative Images transcend the gap between pictorial imagery and materiality.

66 (Eco, 1989. p30) 67 (Eco, 1989. p33)

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He goes further, explaining "Openness based on theoretical, mental collaboration ofthe consumer.", maintaining that a dynamic intellectual engagement is a form of interface as long as it is an evolving dialogue.

In 'The Language of new Media' Lev Manovich discusses68 how all digital art requires cognitive effort and is therefore innately interactive; in doing so, he also equates interaction with cognitive action.69

This is important when one comes to use operative-images and circuity which is further removed from natural law and traditional sculptural objects that are immediately observable.

The observer can intuit certain functionalities in an illuminated circuit, an operative image that can be interpreted correctly or incorrectly, the point being that by applying this philosophy of 'mental collaboration' each outcome is equally valid.

This is more flexible than simply demanding a visitor to reverse engineer an entire circuit to obtain an acceptable reading, which may seem to be implied by certain aspects of Embodied Meaning, but is in fact not the case.

The artist as a communicator and occasional illusionist is in most situations attempting to narrow the possible avenues of interpretation so as to communicate the intended message with the minimum of conceptual 'noise'.

To be effective, modes interaction either have to be robust or playful enough to be interacted with freely, or somehow limited or ritualised in order to happen 'correctly'or within the planned field of relations.

For me this idea of setting out 'fields of relations' and alternate, perception based modes of interaction is an interesting and relevant approach.

This allows conceptual works to function in a field of relation that includes physical interaction and conceptual dialogue more complex than the intrusive action-reaction'playfulness' that is almost expected today.

Ken Feingold, an interactive artist whose interactive works I admire also writes on interactivity and artistic control70.

He talks about avoiding the natural, adversarial desire for control over the non-human entity (the artwork) and the narcissistic expectation of direct returns from interaction, informed by day to day interactions with vending machines and other human-machine interactions .

“I wanted to be quite clear that I was not offering people "choices", "menus", or any of the other fare well known at that time...”

68 (Manovich, 2002)69 (Swanstrom, 2013)70 (Feingold, 1997)

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By building non intuitive and process based works he tried to disarm these frustrations by focussing on the journey, as Eco would say- encouraging mental collaboration and embracing the incomplete knowledge of the system.

You need confusion and ambiguity in the mix in order to open up a dialogue with the work. If not there is simply no reason to question its existence, 'it exists and it is' does not inspire either introspection or interaction.

I would correlate this mentality with some forms of playful interaction, which I see as a somewhat hackneyed interactive modality in its literal interpretations, but a valuable tool if used subtly, Sutton-Smiths writing on ambiguity71 and Callois' description of ilinx72 as altered perception within a controlled space of play73 particularly influence me both as a research approach and an interacti.

71 (Sutton-Smith, 1997)72 (Caillois, 2001)73 (Huizinga, 1955)

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8 THE TOWARDS EMBODIMENT OF MEANING

8.0.1 A. Danto and Embodied Meaning:

I must mention Arthur D anto, if only to associate and differentiate my terminology from his pre-existing discussion of embodied meaning.

Danto wanted to describe the balance of matter and meaning in art in response to the problem of his time, the blurring of art and the everyday beginning in the 1960s. The zeitgeist was that art is all things, art for arts sake and so on which led to some pretty obvious problems both in and out of the gallery concerning the institutional definition: what is art?

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Illustration 50: Fields of art especially applicable to Embodied Meaning

The TOWARDS EMBODIMENT OF MEANING

Danto developed a philosophy, the centrepiece of which is an essentialist definition of art: something is a work of art only if it has meaning, and only if the work embodies the meaning that it has.74

The problem is that this is rather circular logic: the meaning must dictate the form which dictates the content. The meaning is the content.

This is fine for my purposes of figurative sculpture, however addressing the taxonomy of art and not-art it lacks any kind of entry point, a cue when approaching a suspect object we are supposed to be able to tell when meaning is embodied, but without the help of unembodied meaning.

“Embodied meaning is in the work of art while unembodied meaning is something external to the work to which it refers only begs the question;“75

The solution is either to have an institutional pointer declaring it an embodier of meaning or to only use universal meanings, transcultural and transhistorical signifiers, which once again are at the core of my approach. Other artists however may certainly find this unacceptable and it also invalidates many of my previous works.

Luckily for me, as I came upon this late in my research, this definition supports my concept of Embodied Meaning, and none of its criticisms apply to me, as I am not defining an exclusive essentialist taxonomy, but a design and research guideline anda framework for defining a reliable field of relations.

8.1 Embodied Meaning as a Principle

As a research and design approach I wanted to Embodied Meaning formalise all my interests and influences into a kind of code that satisfies, but also restricts my artistic practice allowing me to become more directed in the future and have a clearsystem to work within and an ideal to work towards.

Embodied Meaning should be a physical art practice based in sculptural materialism.Embracing an extensive definition of the physicality that acknowledges Natural Lawsand an acute awareness of time and process as physical extensions of what sculpture can be. While based in fundamental laws of interaction, more complex systems of meaning,both of technology and of language, can be constructed from these basics.

This commitment to channelling the elemental and the sublime into symbols and language systems lends its-self to cultural mediation, the societal role of the Shaman, using mysticism respectfully and legitimately as a tool to explore the possibilities of greater truths or at least to deal with our cultural tendency to believein them.

74 (Rotili, 2010) Danto's Philosophy of Art (in Brief)75 (Herwitz and Kelly, 2013)

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Openness and integrity should be paramount in design and presentation, allowing for honest artworks and challenging but rewarding modes human interaction. True to the influence of Demonstrative Experiments and Shamanism, Embodied Meaning should value epistemology and education both in the research process and as a possible function of the work.

For an example of good “Embodiment” refer to the Rubens Tube, a device that combines the materiality of its own structure, the material properties of flammable gas and the physical laws of acoustic resonance to demonstrate the interaction of these components without any extraneous materials or input other than the interaction of these components.

For a better definition of Meaning, refer to the chapter on Semiotics and Natural Law. In short, I assert that due to the fundamental nature of Natural Law, languagewas formed around these pre-existing materialities and therefore connotative meaning is structurally embedded in Natural Law and vice versa. Metaphor is built via the interaction of multiple meanings and of course individual interpretation.

8.2 Execution in practice

In a more pragmatic sense Embodied Meaning is an attempt to create artworks thatcombine conceptual clarity and physical functionality without concession.

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Illustration 51: 6 Rubens Tubes, Mathew Kneebone and Yuri Suzuki, 2012.

Invented by Heinrich Rubens in 1905, the device was able to demonstrate acoustic standingwaves and accurately portray the relationship between sound waves and pressure.

Sound is applied to one end of the tube while the other end is capped. The distribution ofinternal pressure is a direct result of the standing wave created by the sound reverberating.

This forces the gas out at different velocities according to its location.


Each structural element and material component should stand alone and together as a physical embodiment of the desired meaning of the artwork.

At its simplest Embodied Meaning can be evidenced within a single expression of a Natural Law arranged in a meaningful fashion- a Demonstrative Experiment with intent.The object becomes both the carrier and the embodiment of its own meaning.

As a result of my theoretical studies and justifications so far, it can also become as complex as a system of interacting processes- embodied Natural Laws interacting with invisible forces, routed through pictorially illuminated circuitry as operative media, all mounted on a sculptural core, and open to human interaction.

All this together must be encountered as a singular 'meaning', ideally justifiable down to the last component.

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Justifiable not simply as 'I needed something to hold the rock up', but justifiable in the sense of 'holding that rock up while adding an awareness of energy in stasis in complement to process Y and even implying the historical importance of rock-holding in the development of component X'

To achieve this in totality is of course is an improbably ideal situation.

Technology is essentially an arrangement of natural laws at various levels of observability, this concept is contained in the idea of “Operative Media” and supported by the functional embodiment of pictorial information in the example of “Operative Imagery”.

This is what reconciles electronics, circuitry and other invisible physical processes with sculpture and Embodied Meaning.

I repeat this specifically as it was partly the challenge of embodying the physicality and meaning I perceived in electronic circuitry in a sculptural fashion that catalysed this thesis.

8.3 DogmaDue to the convoluted route taken towards my formulation of Embodied Meaning, and the manifold, overlapping principles that inform it, I decided to list important points in a simplified, dogmatic fashion, to be used as a kind of reference guideline at points of indecision in the future.

• Practice applying rules Embodied Meaning dogma to existing artworks, devices and other arrangements.

• Embodied Meaning can be a single metaphor or a system of metaphors.

Sculptural• Elegance can be conceptual or physical or both.

• Embodied Meaning needs embodiment, and as such should be physical.

• Pictorial elements are allowable but must acknowledge their physicality (See Operative Imagery).

• Be sensitive to the connotations of any object or device you use.

• Be sensitive to the connotative 'texture', the materiality of any object or device you use.

• Be careful to research the industrial, technological and local history of any raw material you use, especially minerals.

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Time

• Time is like any other material component.

• Although the content may be timeless the work does not have to be “withouttime”

• Once symbolically evoked, time will not leave a work.

• Deep time must be implied to be noticed.

• Be aware of cultural lag. Reactions and readings may be rooted in mysticism and recursive media modalities.

• Try to be atemporal. Your works should not fail via obsolescence, for example, reject the use of propitiatory or geographically specific connectors and adaptors if simpler connectors are available.

• Avoid topicalism.

Technology

• The layout and choice of components themselves add to the validity and metaphor of the work.

• What sounds like hardware-fetishism is only concreteness.

• Be aware of fetishism. Remember why materialism is important and keep thisin perspective.

• 'Electronic' becomes 'media' with encoding. This is by definition mediation, and not desirable.

• Try to convey information using its own substance or through other analoguemethods rather than encoding it as data and then displaying it otherwise.

• Every layer of mediation is a step away from Embodiment.

• 'Electronic' becomes 'digital' when the digital processes/inputs/outputs become more important than electronic processes/inputs/outputs.

• The mechanism should be made visible.

• A value is placed on elegance of mechanism, poetry of form. Treat it as you would sculpture.

• Construction of components from first principles is desirable.

• “Discreet electronics” are given priority in electronic situations. These are passive parts that do not store memory.

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As an extension to this, to a reasonable degree ICs are discouraged as they are literal black boxes.

• As much as possible Components are visible, open and decipherable (human readable).

• It is acceptable to use unnecessarily primitive or high-spec components if they illustrate their role more effectively.

• Simplicity can be a matter of perspective. For instance is purchasing an internally complex integrated-circuit more or less complex than hand-craftingan operatively simple bi-metal switch from base materials?

• Pictorial image and diagrammatics can be used, but it helps if they are operative at some level. Can they be used as an antenna, etched into a touch pad?

• Complexity and non-linearity is welcome in the functionality, Embodied Meaning does not mean spartan, Its should not be an intentional barrier to comprehension however.

Experiment

• Scientific demonstrations are a physical embodiment of themselves, this is a good starting point.

• The purpose of most experiments is to isolate and control an observable phenomena.

• Experimentation is a process of embodiment.

• Direct experience is invaluable.

• Embodied Meaning can be a product of research and experimentation. Meanings will assert themselves.

• Embodied Meaning fundamentally uses the forces of nature, technology is simply a careful arrangement of these laws.

• Materialist ideas such Operative Media can extend the definition of physicalityto invisible forces, but bear in mind that most human understanding is rootedin Newtonian mechanics.

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• Even time critical or invisible events can be symbolised by their knock-on effects or even a simple reminder of their presence. This is like a process of invocation.

Mysticism

• Mysticism is not counter to functionality.

• Mystification is not analogous to obfuscation.

• Mysticism is not automatically esoteric

• Ambiguity is a valuable tool in interactivity, Though the information should beavailable, making the participant work for it encourages freer association andintrospection.76

• Curation is a form of Mysticism.

• The elements of Shamanism are a personal choice, however consider what meaning a material arrangement can embody if it is not relatable to humans.

• Do not let materialist concerns distract you from the fact that art is about people

8.4 Critical analysis

To recap possible criticisms and responses to these perceived criticisms,

I talk about poetry and simplicity according to physics as a basic meaning, sublime nature and so on, but my works are often untidy compilations of messy, barely functional parts.

The forms of simplicity and poetry that I envision are embodied within conceptual building blocks, units of meaning rather than the aesthetic appearance of the art object.

The poetry should emerge from intimate knowledge and observation, which is gathered and catalogued via experimentation and research.As my body of research and experience grows, works should come easier and morenaturally.

At this point I do not have many building blocks so I am forced to picture a work in advance and try and force it to exist against nature more often than not. 76 See Dali's Critical Paranoia, Callois' concept of Ilinx, Debord's making strange, Pataphysics, absurdism, Real-

ity Hacking and Discordia for ambiguous research approaches.

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Embodied Meaning is not a good design approach from an engineering point of view.

The research methods I use to arrive at Embodied Meaning (and the works I produce) are explicitly obtuse and inefficient, working instead towards the accumulation of a library of knowledge.

This is why my aim is not to immediately achieve the ideal of Embodied Meaning but work towards it and this is the first step along the road to refining my practice.

Another question I am frequently asked is if I expect people to literally read circuitryin order to understand a work. I would say that, yes it is too much to ask a viewer to follow and understanding the intricacies of a mechanism.

Instead I try to build circuitry in modules with clear signal or power wires in and outso they can be followed in order of operation, much as you would a flowchart. I do what I can to use open and mechanical components further illuminated by descriptive board decals.

Supplying this information and allowing for some ambiguity, an “incomplete knowledge of a system”77, implies a certain playfulness in not being presented everything.

There is a sort of 'easter egg' aspect to puzzling out intricacies if you desire to knowmore.

Embodied Meaning differs from other sculptural practices like Arte Povera, Minimalist sculpture and Structuralism by adding additional emphasis on the interaction of the components, the time and process-based parts of a sculptural work. Kinetic art also has many similar aspects, but does not typically incorporate electronics and circuitry.

The physically reductive techniques seen in High Modernist movements such as minimalist sculpture and abstract expressionism could be superficially compared to Embodied Meaning, however the reductionism seen in Embodied Meaning can be classified as functional, rather than in a material sense.

A simplification of the system of meaning is desirable, which can allow for the physical components to be quite complex or cluttered, as long as its manifestation as a system of meaning is discernible. In this respect it is a reductive practice.

The paring back of electronic components to their most primitive is also somewhat puritanical, as is the hermetic idea of universal meaning through Natural Law. I have already stated my modernist sympathies.

The self-referential autonomy in the High Modernism era was an expression of confidence in the subjective and of universal truths. It claimed that artworks ought

77 Feingold,See open works and Interaction

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to stand by themselves, reducing artworks to subjective projections of abstracted ideals devoid of humanity.

This attempt at universal accessibility instead caused resentment and accusations of'ivory tower' elitism. The pursuit of significance without meaning, that of the elite, becomes abstraction.

I do not necessarily support the hermatic nature and arrogance of what high modernism became and I am well aware of its criticisms, even as I admit to similar motivations.

What is to stop me from delving so deep into abstracted meaning that I lose touch with materiality and the ability to even try explaining it to others.

I would argue that I am bound to figurative, demonstrative and operational necessity in the way that I work.

This and my strong commitment to the exploration culture and myth in the healer and mediator role of the shaman.

I am also invested in the strong community ethos of collaboration and sharing in the open source and hacking movements. Despite my high minded artistic sentiments and sometimes reductive approach, my practice is very much rooted in humanism and community, making this retreat from reality an unlikely pitfall for me.

In terms of the idealised nature of Embodied Meaning as a goal, as long as it is understood that compromise is inevitable and unique to each context this causes me very little worry.

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Relevant Works and Experiments by the Author

9 RELEVANT WORKS AND EXPERIMENTS BY THE AUTHOR

Within this section I will show some examples of my work and discuss my experiences in experimental design and research. This will cumulate into a discussion of key works in greater detail, explaining how they were built and how they work.

These works should illustrate the evolution of Embodied Meaning in practice and contribute to an understanding of how I came to this conclusion.

It should be noted that all of the works shown are not as a result of Embodied Meaning in theory and practice, rather a physical illustration of the journey towards formalising it, for use in further works.

10 EARLIER WORKS

10.1 Panning Machine & Drift-Thru bar.

These two works, an installation and a still-frame from a video work provide a brief example of my very basic use and understanding of electronics and mechanical sculptural props in artworks.

The first, Drift-Thru Bar was a carnivalesque installation encouraging slapstick stimulus-response type interactivity. Pushing open the saloon doors would cause them to rapidly return to hit you in the back, and there was a hacked toy pistol that allowed faux duals with a scarecrow-like motorised gunfighter in the image of an Australian folk hero Ned Kelly. There was also an “Endless Tumbleweed” on a hamster-wheel like machine. Technically these were all extremely simple but it marks the first use of electronic mechanisms in my art practice.

My Panning Machine was a modular gold-panning device, designed as a cross-country sled complete with battery and water pump. I performed a ritual where I dragged it through university campus to a sandy, disused car-park and attempted to“fossick” for gold in the urban wastelands. Gold, or the lack of gold was a thread

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Illustration 52 Video Still: Panning Machine, 2010

Earlier works

throughout many of my works of this period including the original Drifter Video-series (See: Drifter Redux) and was used as a metaphor for a kind of cultural Philosophers Stone, a quixotic quest for impossible 'truth'. It also serves as an example of ritualised interaction with devices and early electronic artwork.

10.2 Cross to Bear

Cross to bear is another performative work. Once again it includes an example of a home-made device used as a metaphor in a process based artwork.

“Cross to bear” is a crude rendering of the Southern Cross tattooed on the artists back without the use of ink. This takes place to the tune of the Australian Anthem. The artist wears a flag over his head concealing his identity, representing the dualityof pride and shame involved in this process.

The wound bleeds, and the work is accompanied by pictures documenting the scabbing, healing and rejuvenation of the skin.

The Southern Cross is an Australian symbol of country and patriotism featured on our national flag. Over time it has been increasingly adopted as a symbol representing casual racism, bigotry and violence in our culture.

It is worn as a large shoulder or arm tattoo or on the back of the thigh.

There is very little cultural backlash to this stigma, many people continue to perceive it as a badge of honour and pride, receiving no condemnation unless it is directly linked to outright mob violence such as the Cronulla Race Riots in 2005.

The painful initiation tattoo represents the reality of growing up immersed in this half-heartedly concealed sentiment, and the perversion of a proud icon to a hate symbol. The healing process represents hope for redemption and change.

Iconography of this magnitude has effects on a cultural scale, and represents some of the less desirable mythopoesis and culture building in effect in modern Australia.

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Illustration 53: Video Still: Cross to Bear, 2010

Earlier works

10.3 Drifter series and Snowdrift Redux.

This is a recapitulation of my 6 part video series “Drifter“, which used Australian mythology and Romanticism to refer to a search for personal life-meaning, and analyse the quirks and insecurities of modern Australian Culture.

In Snowdrift Redux I acknowledge the geographic shift and mental drift by revising and reworking the videos in order to draw comparisons to these metaphors from anAustrian perspective in an Austrian context, including new footage and sculptural elements. It was installed in the Ukradena Mobile Gallery during a snowy winter night, a screen wrapped in kangaroo furs on a cart surrounded a shamanistic tool-kit of mystical viscera referencing both the desert environment and the local environment.

Such viscera includes Earth-Apples (dried potato skins shrink fitted around potato shaped rock fragments), a split bread loaf revealing a centre of crusted salt from a nearby salt mine, horn, cacti, icons and religious texts, candles, light-bulbs and glass lenses.

This demonstrates a continued interest in cultural and geographical mythologies andshamanistic practice.

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Illustration 55: Video Still, SnowDrift Redux, 2013Illustration 54: Video Still: Drifter: Kelly (6 of 7), 2010

Earlier works

11 RECENT WORKS

11.1 Fly in the ointment

This is a short video created in the Hamburger Bahnhof museum of Berlin. Filmed inguerilla style, I transport and release a living fly into the room housing Joseph Beuys' 1977 work Unschlitt/Tallow, massive slabs of tallow fat previously used to fill the void of a pedestrian underpass.

In his work, fat functions as a metaphor for healing and insulation, a cultural balm ifyou will.

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Illustration 56: Detail: SnowDrift Redux, 2013

Illustration 57: Earth Apples, 2013

Illustration 58: Video Still: Fly in the Ointment, 2011

Recent works

“A Fly in the Ointment” is an idiom describing the appearance or possibility of an insignificant defect that spoils a larger whole. A certain pessimism that there is something wrong, but hidden, like discovering a worm in an apple.

This represents a time when I was investigating Beuys' work, and transitioning in my own practice. I felt caught between its spiritual and artistic beauty and its confusing use of technology and form.

The absurdist action of playful vandalism was a representation of my initial reaction and a humorous relief of the uncomfortable truths and revelations one must uncover in their work and practice.

11.2 Crucifixion after Beuys

This work, though never yet exhibited acts as a kind of focus for me, a totem.

Two simple Leyden Jars store high voltage positive and negative charge, the swinging metal pendulum is attracted, charged and then repulsed repeatedly with each physical contact and is pushed back and forth according to Coulombs Law of electro-static interaction. It is triggered by movement.

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Illustration 59: Crucifixion after Beuys, 2012Illustration 60: Crucifixion, Joseph Beuys, 1962, taken in situ StuttgartKunstMuseum

Recent works

On a visit to the Stuttgart KunstMuseum I came across the work “Crucifixion" by Joseph Beuys which is a strongly metaphorical and symbolic piece alluding to the complex nature of love, guilt and sacrifice by abstracting the biblical event.

To me its form was an almost exact replica of an experiment I had set up at my work-desk for testing some simple Leyden Jars for a Franklin’s Bell mechanism.

At this stage I was aware that Beuys often mimicked electrical systems using implied batteries and transformers as a conceptual motif in his works. Although I am certain that this was not his intention in this particular case, I enjoyed following through the thought-experiment, imagining the conceptual implications electrostaticeffects would entail.

In this case the hanging pin, representing the crucifying nails and the suffering of Christ would oscillate, repelled and attracted alternately by the two flasks, identifiable by weathered newsprint fragments as “Guilt” and “Engagement” (love?),and interpreted (according to the documentation) as John and Mary looking on.

This relationship between symbolic meaning, elegant mechanism, and physicality inspired me to take my investigation of elementary electronics, chemistry and physics and explore the process of researching and creating works using these tools.

11.3 Synchronisis

"Synchronisis" is an interactive work that provides a meditative environment made for two, in which the participants can pursue harmony by matching their breathing patterns.

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Illustration 61 Synchronisis, 2012

Recent works

The breathing apparatus provides feedback not directly from the individuals, but by comparing the relative states of the two Participants.

Once in a reflexive pattern, the equilibrium becomes self-sustaining, trancelike and is hard to snap out of. A shared, intimate experience.If the breathers are in sync, the lights pulse slowly together.

Likewise, the sound slowly harmonizes to a throbbing pulse caused by natural harmonic resonance - Closely matched waveforms of similar structure.The act of sharing breath is both a symbolic and a corporeal experience often foundin mythology, spiritual texts and literature. It is often accredited as to ethereal agentrepresenting the passage of soul or 'essence'. Imposing conscious control on autonomous functions is therefore common practice in concentration and meditationexercises.

This represents a shamanistic approach, using technology as a mediator in a human-human interface for emotional and spiritual exploration.

I found myself unsatisfied by the “black box” construction of this work and subsequently returned to more transparent designs where circuitry itself played a greater aesthetic and sculptural role.

11.4 Load Test after Burden

This simple schematic was the product of an attempt to simulate Christopher Burden's 1973 work Stairway to Heaven as an electronic circuit. In his words: “A few spectators watched as I pushed two live electric wires into my chest. The wires crossed and exploded, burning me but saving me from electrocution.”

I tried to interpret this as a time critical event from the electronic perspective, simulating his burning flesh with a resistor matching skin resistance and a NTC Thermistor that lowers resistance as the 'skin' resistor heats up, as if the skin was turning to carbon which is a better conductor, finally shorting out as the components overheat and resistance drops.

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Illustration 62: Load Test after Burden

Recent works

The schematic is very flawed, I would like to improve it in the future and perhaps build a circuit. It was fascinating to me how the emulation of time changed an extremely linear circuit to a parallel one, and how removed the strictly materialist view was from the reality of the situation.

A load test is the process of stressing a system in order to measure its response when under heavy burden.

11.5 Frustrated Creator

The Frustrated Creator is a grid array of simplistic simulated life presided over by a caretaker program with a god-complex and a hard coded depressive personality.

If the randomly seeded ecosystem fails naturally or is destroyed at the whim of a callous entity such as a curious human, the frustration variable builds towards a critical level, cumulating in spectacular 230V suicide bid.

This work could be seen as an exploration of physicality and agency within circuitry and physical computing. I am testing the viability of using the intangible software and physical circuitry as a conceptual system that is open to the viewer and represents the content of the work. The idea is that to understand the work you must seek to understand the process and mechanism.

I found that needing to explain the inner workings via supplementary text was less than satisfying, and began to move away from software/microcontroller based works and more into pure hardware and discrete electronics.

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Illustration 63 Frustrated Creator

Recent works

11.6 Reverse Miracle

Reverse Miracle is a mechanised reversal of Jesus Christ’s first alleged miracle, the timely feat of turning water into wine at the wedding of an unnamed friend.

This Alchemical machine that turns Wine into Water, questioning the customary belief of machines and technology in general as cold, impassionate contraptions.

Modern technology and science is often viewed as a symbol of the hubris of man, a rejection of human mysticism and spirituality. This work challenges this, evoking thehermetic tradition of alchemy as a fusion of science, theology and philosophical mysticism. The imperfect deconstruction of this miracle explores the material elements of the myth (splitting wine into ethanol, water and solid precipitates), echoing the occult maxim “as above so below”78, which could be seen as a materialist approach to theology suggesting that base matter and energy is derivative of mystical higher forms.

The mechanism consists of an Arduino microcontroller running an adaptive PID-algorithm that controls the duty-cycle of a hand crafted Heating Element. Using the feedback obtained via an immersed thermistor, the algorithm calculates precise temperature control that improves in fidelity over time.

78

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Illustration 64: Reverse Miracle, 2012. Photo courtesy Veronika Krenn

Recent works

This fine control allows the device to specifically evaporate different components of the wine (according to boiling point) into the crude copper condenser coil, which is fan cooled. This separates the ethanol and then the distilled water out of the wine over a period of many hours. Three Jars on a motorised platform collect waste, ethanol and water. Once the wine is installed the work is completely autonomous.

The work was accompanied by a mass produced illuminated Jesus shrine that had been modified to the Infrared spectrum, restricting his ‘holy aura’ to only those whothought to mediate their mystical encounter via computer-vision device such as a digital camera or a phone.

Once again I resorted to software control, and in this case software was not conceptually important. This was a long process based piece with a clear, linear set of actions and devices that were easily human readable. In retrospect and with a more codified design approach I could redesign the work to be mechanically controlled, perhaps with bi-metal strips, clock mechanisms and switches.

11.7 Answers in the bottom of a Glass

Participants can enjoy a beer at the apparently normal bar-table.

When the empty can or glass is placed in certain areas, vibrations are communicated through the table to the receptacle and amplified to sound via the material of the glass or can its-self, causing your empty beer to randomly abuse you, question your life choices, or try various pickup-lines on you.

To add to the confusion, each participant will be listening to one of two separate randomised audio channels, creating a layered, disconnected narrative.

This work is unique for me as in this case the entire mechanism was entirely hidden. I enjoyed the curious properties of contact speakers that would only interact efficiently with brittle materials or resonant containers.

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Illustration 65 Answers in the bottom of a Glass, collaboration with Veronika Krenn, 2012. Photo Courtesy Veronkia Krenn

Recent works

11.8 EarthCircuit Rock

Earth circuit is an attempt to explore different formats of circuit design and breadboarding.

In this iteration, instead of appending the circuit to a larger sculptural mass it is created as a direct fusion with the material, the circuit layout is dictated by the shape of the rock.

This is an unexhibited experiment, the rock circuit is mounted as a 'shield' on an Arduino micro-controller and controls a motorised sun tracker.

11.9 Bright Devices

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Illustration 66: Soldering into bubble cavities in volcanic rock.

Illustration 68

Illustration 67

Recent works

Bright devices is a series of light-bulb treatments that explores the past and the future of filament light bulbs. Each work uses its power supply or its heat output in relation to its illuminative function

The first is a candle with a solder wrapped wick and two striped wires embedded a few centimetres apart in the wax, halfway down the candle. As the wick burned down beads of solder would melt, fall and solidify in a heavy accumulation around the base of the flame. When this growing pool reached the embedded wires the conductive slag closed a circuit, turning on an incandescent bulb. The candle, now the lesser light giver is extinguished.

Second is an arrangement of pulleys and a counterweights which allows a hot bulb to slowly burrow through a larger candle. Where the flame should reside there is only a brightly burning bulb.

The third is a pitch dipped bulb. An engineered race between the long running pitchdrop-experiment and the legendary ability of a filament left un-interrupted to burn steadily for decades. As the heated pitch either softens or bakes onto the bulb we will discover the outcome. Perhaps the pitch will slough away allowing the light through, or perhaps it will bake and crack allowing slivers of light. Perhaps the light of this bulb will never be witnessed at all.

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Illustration 69

Recent works

Atemporal and non-linear technology is echoed in Bright Devices, the circular re-appropriation, obsolescence and then an erosion of the past as the bulb melts the candle stub. Both the candle and the filament bulb are atemporal devices, so rootedin consciousness and so basic a mechanism that it is unchangeable without losing its candlen-ess or bulb-ness.

These were experiments and have not yet been exhibited.

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Illustration 70

Binary Hourglass:

12 BINARY HOURGLASS:

The “Binary Hourglass” is an abstracted hourglass form set in granite and extendingan antenna towards the sky.

Like sands running down, the ‘Binary Hourglass’ will change states when the upper bulb expires. The viewer may touch the frame of the hourglass, changing the powerconfiguration and increasing the stress on the bulb filament.Symbolically, it represents the consciously marked passage of time and energy but poignantly providing no reference point to gauge the amount remaining or previously spent.

The only known value is that as a physical and familiar device (filament lightbulbs) it must degrade and expire. The moment of transition is pure serendipity, unpredictable to the both author and the viewer. This consciousness of time, energy and decay is accentuated by the physicality of the high consumption, antiquated 'Edison bulbs' used, a kind of mechanical memento mori.

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Illustration 71

Binary Hourglass:

12.1 Binary Hourglass Design process

As a recent work, and the first work I built specifically with an early formulation of Embodied Meaning in mind, I will describe in greater detail the design process of this work.

I ran into many aesthetic and technical conflicts which caused me to concede some parts for Integrated Circuits and ruled out some of my preferred components.

What I came away with was that material testing is very important, working from theory and calculations is unreliable, especially for primitive or home-made devices.

A run-through of my failed designs perhaps outlines my work flow of designing for the most primitive, transparent components and working backwards up the until I could make the device operate.

I knew the general system of behaviour I wanted with the lamp:

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Illustration 72 Circuitry

Illustration 73: Front and left-hand panel circuitry Illustration 74 Right-hand and rear panel circuitry

Binary Hourglass:

A binary behaviour of the bulbs representing a 'low resolution' hourglass. I wanted to represent only one bit, not the possible two bits if the two bulbs could both be onand off independently

I wanted the human to be able to interact via physical touch as a deliberate intervention.

I wanted the intervention to trigger a reaction that would effect the lifespan of the device, but in a controlled cumulative fashion.

12.1.1 Bulb Behaviour

To control the bulbs behaviour I needed to know the condition of the upper bulb, waiting for it to break, after which power could be flipped to the lower bulb.

This was the most troublesome aspect for me, especially as I wanted to make the purpose of the sensors visible, and as linear as possible by being attached to the wire leading into the globe.

I originally wanted to sense the current via induction using a Current Transformer.

I first tried simply coiling a wire around the line to measure induction, which is ineffective because it does not intersect with the shape of the magnetic field and is proportionally more sensitive to noise.

A large wire-wrapped magnetic torus around the supply wire would be easily identifiable as a parasitic of some kind that I believe would be decipherable for mostviewers, demonstrating elementary physics.

Unfortunately, as it relies on flux to induce current into the Current Transformer it isincapable of sensing DC, causing false readings during the interventions where the supply is rectified for a short time.

I also noticed that if the sensor was placed before the lamp filament (which would become the break-point in the circuit), the wire would still provide a significant signal due to it still being attached to a live power source, even though it is not

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Illustration 75

Binary Hourglass:

drawing current. This also interfered with capacitive sensors which are using capacitive coupling to detect the voltage difference, not current.

I then investigated Hall Effect sensors which use a similar magnetic core to collect and focus magnetic field onto specialised semiconductor changing its resistance according to the field. These are difficult to assemble by hand and typically come in a small, unremarkable DIP package. I would also have two output modalities- a 60hz pulse and a sustained signal which would require extra circuitry to incorporate.

I would consider Current Transformers as more direct, and therefore more desirableas create their own power inherently via induction whereas Hall Effect sensors require external power.

As a lo-tech alternative to this I also tried winding the supply wire around a larger straight magnetic core in order to shape the magnetic field into a linear electromagnet instead of measuring the electrical induction or magnetic field.

The idea was that a tiny reed switch would be tripped (pulled by the magnet) when normal AC current created a field, and the noise of unsmoothed DC would maybe provide enough “holding” current to keep it closed for those short periods. This is adapted from power conserving techniques used in mechanical relays where the “activation energy” required to pull the switch is significantly more than what is required to maintain it once pulled. This does leave it vulnerable to physically being jarred on knocked loose. This did not work well in practice, although it was a functioning electromagnet.

This was inspired from the mechanism in mechanical Ammeters. As with Current Transformers, the low current draw of the single globe became an issue as it was not enough to produce strong results.

After this I decided to investigate optocouplers or 'Optos', exploring the possibilities of using small 230v appliance bulbs or LEDs along the supply line, borrowing a small amount power to signal current flow. I did not initially want to use the obviouslight source of the actual bulb, in order to make a separate, in line sensor that people could observe as a ‘node’ in the logical/operational process.

Optical sensors can be hand constructed and made transparent.

First I considered a smaller 230V appliance bulb in series however this would use enough current to perhaps mitigate the stress applied to the main bulb, and there isa possibility it might fail before the primary bulb, leading to a false result.

Another option was using a voltage divider to power a LED opto.

This was inspired by what I read about 'shunts' and sense-resistors, usually used in high current industrial applications .

In this attempt the Bulb is taken seen a resistor and used as a component in a Voltage-divider. This attempts to draw a minor voltage from the high voltage supply

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Binary Hourglass:

line in order to light an LED, a pair of which are wired in parallel in opposite polarities so that one is always lit in the case of AC and one is lit steadily during DC.Despite the ~200V difference between these states, I believed I could find an overlap where the voltage divider would output an LED safe voltage in both cases.

Unfortunately this was ruled out due to curious physical properties of filament lights.

Heat can significantly change the resistance of a conductor, especially in the vacuum of the bulb where the filament can reach around 2000C. This meant that during a ‘cold start’ the bulb has a resistance of 77ohm, quickly increasing to a measured 200ohm when hot. Between these transitions there is a huge amperage spike and calculated resistances of around 880ohms. Given that the voltage divider is proportional, this was creating momentary situations well outside of LED tolerances.

In the end I opted for the direct and suitably simple solution of mounting the light-sensor directly on the globe, a solution that was obvious from the start, but not at the top of my list of operationally and poetically desirable mechanisms.

I believe this narrative is a very telling example of the unexpected and emergent behaviours of physical systems, and how testing and experiencing devices through iterative experimentation becomes necessary.

It also represents how disparate parts of systems can influence and eliminate other solutions, exacerbated by strict design rules and aesthetic/conceptual considerations.

The quirks and limitations discovered along the way could well provide a basis for their own works in the future, which can now be approached with a better understanding after being physically experienced.

12.1.2 Interaction

The touch interaction is meant to represent conscious intervention in the simplest “reach out and touch it” sense. This was in the hope of making the work personal

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Illustration 76: Discussing design limitations online with Electrical Engineers in electronics.stackexchange.com

Binary Hourglass:

and relatable, incorporating a sense of responsibility for the consequences of your interaction by contributing to its mortality.

This, along with the campfire incandescence attempts to give the device some ‘warmth’ as opposed to a cold, inscrutable mechanic feeling of many devices.

This mechanism did not cause many problems, relying on the noise introduced by the antenna-like properties of water filled humans, which triggers a 'signal stretcher'IC to ensure reliable results- another compromise in the use of an IC as I considered it beyond my abilities and did not want to clutter the circuit boards too much.

I am also wary that these ‘tuning’ opportunities become conscience-call on the partof the creator, a desire to minimise false positives or maximise responsiveness potentially effecting the integrity of the design, even if it is not directly apparent to any users, or indeed anyone but the creator.

I did not encounter problems with ambient electromagnetic noise, that are a result of the wider electromagnetic environment, and was therefore able to use a one wiresensor- omitting a second grounding contact at the risk of hysteresis or interference.

The major design compromise in this case was that of safety.

My work encouraged physical contact, originally even contact with the wire frame of the hourglass however the globes becomevery hot and there are dangerous voltages passing though accessible parts of the work.Finally I decided to use a mounted bell jar tolimit the interaction to an etched copper touch-pad below the work, while leaving the circuitry bared and still accessible.

To remove the risk of electrocution and oxidisation I chose to use shellac as a sealant and clear epoxy/shellac mixtures for covering more dangerous contacts.

This is in homage to a long disused but historically significant insulator created frominsect exoskeletons. Shellac can be translucent and is applied freehand, unlike moremodern epoxy ‘potting’ methods which obfuscate intellectual property and discourage modification in addition to providing insulation and stability.

12.1.3 Intervention

Initially I believed that rectifying the AC current to over 400V without including any smoothing capacitors would damage the filament and both increase the light outputand introduce flickering.

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Illustration 77 Illustrative touchpad designs. Acid etched.

Binary Hourglass:

To my confusion tests did not produce any noticeable differences.

Discussion with trained Electronic Engineers revealed that while the voltage was increased, the current was not and the 'RMS'79 was essentially.

I had also assumed that the 60hz supply performed like a duty cycle, a technique used to throttle devices such as motors or welders and reduce wear.

In reality, it did not allow time for cooling and removing it was minimally effective, perhaps even beneficial to the lifespan of the filament.

After further research I discovered it is anecdotally observed that bulbs usually blowwhen turned on, not in the middle of extended use. This is probably due to the power spike, heat expansion and electron-wind.

The power spike is caused by the changing resistance of the filament as it heats, asdiscussed in relation to the Voltage Divider opto. The 60W bulb will draw up to 3 ampere for a short time in which it heats up very fast.

Once hot, electromagnetic hot-spots caused by tiny physical defects in the filament can slowly blast particles off with ion wind: electrostatic repulsion, exacerbated by the mechanical expansion and contraction caused by heating.

Though stored in noble gasses, impurities can cause slow oxidation which adds to the degradation.

Filament bulbs have been known to last over 100 years in some cases, especially when rarely switched on or off.80

To accommodate for this I left the rectifier in place (because I enjoyed the beautifulbridge rectifier and relay design) and inserted a pair of “Glow Discharge” bimetal switches taken from a Fluorescent light starter (ironically, the device orchestrating the damage is part of the technology that pushed out the Filament lamp, one of thefew widespread technologies to be actively suppressed.)

These impressive devices, usually stored inside a plastic cap, feature a glass bulb filled with neon gas. High voltage travels up the bi-metal arm of a switch and arcs through the neon to the other fork, creating plasma which in turn heats the bimetal strip and closes the circuit. When the evacuated bulb cools, the bimetal relaxes, causing another arc, heat and contact. This process is both elegant and beautiful, causing radiant blue-purple flashes of light and providing an irregular ~1hz pulse. I allowed redundancy and increased the irregularity by wiring two in parallel.

79 Root Mean Square: a way to analyse average power dissapated by a load, especially when values are both positive and negative during a Sine wave (alternatinc current for instance).

80 http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-4000/longest-burning-light-bulb/

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Binary Hourglass:

While triggered, this intermittent flickering allows the filament to cool and shrink before being heated again by voltages beyond its design specifications, which may introduce arcing or fusing between the closely coiled, but non-touching windings of the filament.

This method had the great advantage of doing appreciable damage while also producing dramatic flickering, which was quite sudden and somewhat unsettling due to its irregular timing and the purple flashes

and clicking sounds from the Glow Discharge mechanisms and the mechanical relayinvolved in current rectification.

12.1.4 Sculptural construction

The sculptural form consists of a cobblestone base, familiar as ground component or earth, both materiality and electronically.

The wire cage was intended as a counterpoint to the ground, a rising antenna like structure into the open air.

To preserve the ‘hourglass’ taper of the bulbs reveal the black glass insulators I chose to reject standard bulb connectors like the bayonet or the E27 screw, instead treating it as a direct metalcontact, soldering wires directly to the inputs and taking a wire out of the touching ground contacts in the centre.

I chose to acid etch and cut the circuitry myself, hand crafting them complete with illustrative symbols on the board in order to help illustrate the function of each panel.

Despite having to use a significant number of black IC's I still wanted to mount the boards in modular sections with clear inputsand outputs allowing a certain amount of readability as you couldtrace the wiring from module to module. All significant switching

involved clear mechanical relays and I only used open package potentiometers.

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Illustration 78 Detail: Two Glow Discharge switches mounted on a Relay.

Illustration 79 An experimental alternative to standard light bulb adaptors

Binary Hourglass:

12.1.5 Summary

I feel the work was received well, many participants experimented with the interactive element and stayed around to inspect the structure in more detail.

I do believe the radiation of heat and mechanical feedback served to make people aware of the flow and control of energy within the work and the physical processionof stress and decay on the filament.

Some participants linked the hourglass motif to the decline of the filament bulb in favour of fluorescent globes.

I would liked to have made the protective glass dome capacitive, perhaps by lightly silvering it with half-mirror which I had experimented with previously. This would have incorporated it functionally into the work instead of being an appended safety barrier.

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Illustration 80 Illuminating symbols imply the function of the boards, pictured here just before etching. They are visible on both sides.

Binary Hourglass:

13 CONCLUSION

I believe this document explains in detail my theoretical grounding for Embodied Meaning as a concept and describes the practical application of it as a research approach, work-flow and design method that promises to act as a guide for a my artpractice in the future.

I believe in working towards the formulation of Embodied Meaning I have resolved a series of problems in my own art practice that resulted from a shift in medium and new areas of study.

Selecting a niche area of interest in which I found myself comfortable and felt able to contribute was the first challenge overcome, a focus on Physical Computing and then discrete circuitry which took me away from most new media media and into the more physical exploration Media Archaeology and the technological history books.

Taking cues from my time in hacker-spaces and DIY communities I picked up experimentation as a research approach, tinkering with items from technological history as a practical research method allowing me to explore technology and material objects simultaneously.

With the influence of materialist theory I have formed a framework with which I believe I can begin to work sculpturally with circuitry and electronics without the loss of artistic integrity.

I have even expanded my approach to sculpture in the process, including operative and time based process and the fundamental interactions of Natural Law, hugely diversifying my creative tool set and refining my aesthetic.

I have even been able to reconcile my enduring interest in the mystical elements of society and mythology with the surprisingly fertile scientific and technological modalities of electronic art and the history of science and technology.

My practical section documents this process chronologically so you can see the development and gradual incorporation of these ideas into my artworks, especially the final work “Binary Hourglass” which stands not as an exemplary work of Embodied Meaning, but the first concerted attempt to do so. It represents my first prototype of Embodied Meaning in practice, but certainly not the last.

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CONCLUSION

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

14 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Benyshek, D., 2008. Art Audience as Shamanic Community: How Art Meets

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Bertolotti, T., 2014. Generative and Demonstrative Experiments, in: Magnani, L.

(Ed.), Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, Studies in Applied

Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp.

479–498.

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Universitätsbibliothek Hauptplatz 8 A 4010 Linz Tel.: +43 (0) 732 7898 255 [email protected] www.ufg.ac.at

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Erklärung zur Abgabe einer Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation: Name: ……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Vorname: .……………………………………………………………………………………......

Matrikelnummer: ..…………………………………………………………….................

Titel der Diplom- bzw. Masterarbeit:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Studienrichtung und Studienkennzahl:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

BetreuerIn: ...……………………………………………………………………………………..

1. Ich erkläre hiermit eidesstattlich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen nicht benutzt und die den benutzten Quellen wörtlich oder inhaltlich entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. 2. Ich bestätige hiermit, dass die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation von den Begutachtern und Begutachterinnen approbiert ist. Die abgelieferten analogen Exemplare und das digitale Exemplar stimmen in Form und Inhalt vollständig mit der benoteten und approbierten Fassung überein. 3. Die Kunstuniversität Linz ist berechtigt, aber nicht verpflichtet, die digitalen Daten der Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation und alle damit verbundenen Begleitmaterialien in ihr digitales Repositorium hochzuladen und zum Zweck der dauerhaften Archivierung und Zurverfügungstellung in andere Formate oder auf andere Speichersysteme zu migrieren. Es ist mir bewusst, dass bei einer Datenmigration eine Änderung von Form, Umfang oder Darstellung der Publikation aus technischen Gründen nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann. Ich bin als (Zutreffendes bitte ankreuzen)

O alleinige/r InhaberIn der Nutzungsrechte an der Publikation O Bevollmächtigte/r der InhaberInnen der Nutzungsrechte

zur Einräumung einer Nutzungsbewilligung befugt. Ich räume hiermit der Kunstuniversität Linz das zeitlich unbefristete, nicht ausschließliche Recht ein, die abgegebene digitale Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation sowie alle damit verbundenen Begleitmaterialien im weltweiten Internet zu veröffentlichen und damit einem unbestimmten Personenkreis unentgeltlich zur Verfügung zu stellen. (Zutreffendes bitte ankreuzen):

O ja O nein

Oliver

Kellow

1175099

Towards Embodied Meaning in Sulpture and Electronic Art

Prof.Dr. Christa Sommerer, Prof. Dr Laurent MignonneauProf.Dipl.Ing.(FH) Martin Kaltenbrunner

X

Interface Cultures 380

Universitätsbibliothek Hauptplatz 8 A 4010 Linz Tel.: +43 (0) 732 7898 255 [email protected] www.ufg.ac.at

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Soweit das für die Realisierung der von mir oben gewählten Zugriffsoption und zur damit einhergehenden Realisierung der Verfügbarmachung meiner Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation erforderlich ist, räume ich der Kunstuniversität Linz das unentgeltliche, nicht ausschließliche, zeitlich und örtlich unbegrenzte Recht ein, meine Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation ganz oder teilweise zu nutzen, insbesondere zu vervielfältigen, zu veröffentlichen, zu verbreiten, zu senden, zu archivieren, der Öffentlichkeit drahtgebunden oder drahtlos zur Verfügung zu stellen, zu bearbeiten, etwa an der digitalen Version der Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation Veränderungen vorzunehmen, die aus technischen Gründen oder mit Rücksicht auf die Erfordernisse der Langzeitarchivierung geboten sind. Ebenso räume ich diejenigen Rechte ein, die durch künftige technische Entwicklung oder durch Änderung der Gesetzgebung entstehen. Die digitalen Medienobjekte unterliegen dem Schutz des Urheberrechts und soweit nicht anders angegeben dem folgenden Creative Commons Lizenzmodell: Namensnennung – Keine kommerzielle Nutzung – Keine Bearbeitung (BY-NC-ND): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/at/ Ist die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation mit einem bewilligten Sperrantrag von der Benutzung ausgeschlossen, wird sie erst nach Ablauf der Sperre angezeigt. 4. Ich verpflichte mich, die Kunstuniversität Linz schad- und klaglos zu halten, wenn Dritte in Bezug auf die von mir eingereichte Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation, insbesondere in Bezug auf die hier erfolgende Rechteeinräumung und internet-basierten Verfügbarmachung Ansprüche wegen Rechtsverletzung gegen die Kunstuniversität Linz geltend machen. 5. Ich wurde davon in Kenntnis gesetzt und erkläre mich damit einverstanden, dass die Kunstuniversität Linz keine Haftung für aus technischen Gründen auftretende Fehler irgendwelcher Art übernimmt. Des Weiteren wird von der Kunstuniversität Linz keinerlei Haftung dafür übernommen, dass die Diplom-/Masterarbeit/Dissertation oder Teile davon von dritter Seite unrechtmäßig heruntergeladen und verbreitet, verändert oder an anderer Stelle ohne Einwilligung aufgelegt werden. Ich räume der Kunstuniversität Linz das Recht ein, etwaige Rechtsverletzungen meines Urheberrechts an meiner Arbeit zu verfolgen. 6. Ich habe das Merkblatt zur Abgabe von Diplom-/Masterarbeiten/Dissertationen der Universitätsbibliothek gelesen und zur Kenntnis genommen. Linz, ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Datum Unterschrift

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