If we had the chance to have a Gallery that works to combine the interests, to the best of its abilities, of the maker, seller and buyer then this might be the rough sketch of its manifesto, declaration of intent etc.
Manifesto
Given that any entity of an economic nature has to survive and grow within the framework of an existing system, be it capitalist, socialist or otherwise, and to ensure its continued existence then its foremost activity must be efficiency. Efficiency of purpose, direction and ability.
Given also that the economic activity is an Art Gallery then the constituent parts are maker, seller and buyer and that this combination should be regarded as a gestalt and as such each part be equal to the others in it's ability to strengthen the overall entity.
The best way to ensure that makers, sellers and buyers combine to be as efficient as they can is to ensure that each part of the system is allowed the room to move to be all it can be; no potentials are un-regarded or stifled to the supposed benefit of any other part of the system. This efficiency of potential then also requires that new growth be sheltered by old growth and the two aware of their roles in co-existence.
To enable the exchange between parts to be as efficient as possible the moral and ethical structure that exists between parties must always hold fair play, respect and trust as uppermost. Therefore the existence of pragmatism is always preceded by idealism.
Growth of the entity, as a whole, must always be with regard to the whole and care given that no part should expand without due regard to other parts of the system.
Also consideration must be made to understand that though the entity might stand alone the fact is that it exists in competition with similar entities within a much bigger system of economic activity. This means that the same rules of due respect and acceptance that are maintained within the entity should also be maintained outside the entity and towards other entities so that a core of honesty, integrity and care is allowed to grow outwards.
Of ultimate importance is a belief in the ability to understand oneself through action and that models of activity grown to acceptance as common are not neccessarily the boundaries of that activity. They are merely the modes that have come to be accepted through the definition of action as it stands. Understanding core actions, with greater regard to potential, then allows that those boundaries of activity can be widened and though this may come to be regarded, by outsiders as a form of treason this is merely the inertia within the overall system making itself known.
Inertia is within all systems and is there to slow, and therefore control, growth to accepted levels but when the inertia stifles growth then it is obvious it must be freed as energy; transformed to potential and linked to the core activity to ensure growth is in symbiotic accord with abilities.
Growth stifled by inertia but transformed to potential is mutation. Mutations occur for the overall benefit of any system and are there to allow the system to avoid stagnation by co-dependency which is a toxicity built up by an over abundance of inertia. If this toxicity is allowed to build up the system loses it's validity within the overall system of economic activity but while being detrimental it also allows the potential of mutation to re-balance the system and bring forth new growth.
An overly toxic system will see mutation as a threat and act to enforce inertia upon potential but outwardly the potential is seen for what it really is, new growth, and this potential shall be welcomed and rewarded by increased activity from without which in-turn mutates to invite communication for mutually beneficent outcomes.
Therefore this Gallery shall do it's utmost, with due regard to overall balance, to grow all it's constituent parts, being an amalgamation (integrally beneficent) of intents and abilities by maker, seller and buyer, to their greatest potential under a moral framework of mutual trust, respect and commitment to having all be all they can be.
The gallery shall also see all its constituent abilities in the light of their potential and strive to grow those abilities with due consideration of nurturing strengthening and making free those abilities to nurture, strengthen and free the foundation of mutual trust,respect and commitment that the whole of all parts may be greater than the sum.
Gestalt, therefore, is a recognition and acceptance of potential as an equal measure in and of itself. Gestalt is quantifiable.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
ThinkTank; a European initiative for the Applied Arts.
So yesterday me and my friend, Shaun, are going to the top of the hill, out Clevedon way where he lives, in my little car. I've got it in second gear and it's roaring up the steep incline. Not going fast mind but revving it's little 850cc heart out and Shaun says "This is just like being in one of those landing crafts, world war 2 style, going up the beach"... Think Tank. Sorry but I had to...
The idea of even putting think and tank together is almost as ludicrous as the little aside I just started with but lets put that aside and use a perhaps less common but more apt use. Tank, as a storage container, and put it together with think... well, maybe thats a little closer to a visage of something that may be of use when discussing applied arts.
But before I even go there what is it about art, in general, where the people who don't actually make the art are so beset with categorisation. Applied art, and yes I know what it is, but what is this thing where fine art, applied art, naive art, ad infinitum are thrown about like restraining pens despite the fact that art keeps breaking down those supposedly solid but almost always altogether jerry built structures that are always trying to label that which does it utmost to teach, or at least by osmosis or capillary action enact, un-labelling?
Anyways, theres a load of stuff coming out of Europe whereby a mixed bunch of Artists and Art Academics get together and thrash out a bunch of writing, with a show or two of objects (given it's applied arts after all) and call it all ThinkTank.
Masterworks, having changed from being a craft gallery to an applied art gallery, have brought the resultant output, in the form of five book cum booklets, to New Zealand for us outlanders to add to our library of stuff from overseas that may be of interest to us... and today, being the 23rd Feb 20011, they had a woman of notable craft pedigree, who has met and hung out with ThinkTank here and there, but mostly there with the help of creative NZ, have a little talk about the thing that is ThinkTank.
I went along as a secret agent, or at least as a person with industrial espionage being the motive, so that I might glean some useful tools in my own quest to, basically, have the world made in my own image. The long explanation for that is that I have some ideas about the way I think the arts in New Zealand could be, so as to be a far happier and beneficent place for everyone so inclined, and these ideas are reaching a point whereby a suitable "forum" is being sought to chisel them into something I think might be worthwhile publishing.
And todays little foray might have even created a slow growing epiphany as some rather obvious things came to light during the talk. One of the things I often look at when I try to figure out what I'm actually looking at is what am I looking at.
I know that sounds really stupid but when I looked at a room full of obviously well educated and quite well off people with a slightly bohemian air who were sitting on the floor, inside a high end craft gallery, listening to a woman speak about what some other people have and are doing somewhere else what I actually saw were a roomful of people mystified as to why they weren't recognised as being so obviously talented, and therefore making the kind of money that that understanding should initiate, and what, they all seemed to be asking as well, the new way of solving all those problems (or the demystification of mystery), imported wholesale of course, might actually be... what colour and price was the new pill?
Nothing new about that though. We've all been in that boat; well, we basically have to live in that boat. But today I saw the ramifications of that pretence; the significance of how a great degree of pretence creates the need to allow outsiders to be the rectifiers of problems. Enter then the noble excuse.
The Noble excuse is related to the cultural cringe and the tyranny of distance as another shorthand term to explain the reasons why our art world is so...
un-open to our plundering to our own ends.
When the panacea to save our mortal souls comes from on high and is swallowed with the waters of globalisation but we can't get the currency to buy the cure... this is the noble excuse!
When the Europeans academics have had the good sense and the bravery to stand behind it, ThinkTank, and consequently carve out their only own little niche of money making potential.. the fact that they receive funding from the EEC to do so, becomes the tantamount reason that we can't do it as well. The fact that we are so lazy that we just want to copy what they've already done isn't asked, being that it's somehow obvious that we should only do what those so obviously better than us have done, but disregard our own ability to be like them simply because funding will be so hard to obtain. This is the Noble excuse.
And it's really so sad that we as New Zealanders are still so reliant on the northern hemisphere as a homeland for our required assurances.
Oh, the created blight of a previous government that thought chucking money at the Arts might make it strong when all they've done is created a pool of Artists that need harder drugs to make them feel normal. Where once all we needed was to sell a work now we need a book published as well as a spot at a big European Disneyland of the Arts... Venice, Munich blah de blah de blah.
So much for criticism, while entirely fun, doesn't really achieve much purpose unless it's constructive so heres my version of constructive.
Well, I have been somewhat constructive in that I've set out how to look at something for what it really is instead of just looking at the ideas we have of something. The system whereby art finds an audience in New Zealand are by one main route, the dealer gallery system, and one subsidiary route, the public gallery system. The public route has it's merits but it's basically become a false economy, or a place of fiat currency, so I'm not really interested in that though it does deserve some looking into... not now or here.
The dealer gallery system though has a viability and validity simply because it's a capitalist system and creates an honesty by virtue of the tenets of supply and demand. The supply and demand parts can be easily broken down to artists as supply and buyers as demand. The dealer then is the system by which supply fulfills demand and is the glue which holds the system of exchange together.
Some may well think that this simple system works fine and in a sense it does but it does have problems and it could be better. The buyer, though fragmented by individual choices, is the power in the system and has the freedom to roam at will but that power, being fragmented by individual choice, renders it somewhat colourless and formless but a distinct qualitative regard is it's subservience to fashion.
Power then is somewhat dictated by the supply as it sets the fashion: and this again is fragmented to a great degree but even then forms and shapes can be discerned by those clever enough to look for them. Actually it might be better to say that the power is in the hands of those who can see the current shapes and forms and can make educated guesses, or even subtle moves to modify, as to the direction of transformation of the shapes and forms.
But any system is rife with inertia. It's a law of nature. Something growing will begin to take a form or direction, depending on climate, growth mediums etc, and it will build up inertia, as part of its bulk, to resist change from that form or direction. Changing the dealer gallery system to make it more efficient, richer and more beneficent to all, requires understanding the system as it is and understanding the laws of inertia that govern any directional change and being able to modify one or two small areas of the system, usually areas where change occurs anyways alike the fashion context, and be able to use the inertia itself as the energy to change direction.
Fashion is a very interesting phenomena of the human condition. Underlying all fashion is bravery and confidence. Bravery exists because we believe in things and have a value system. Confidence results from the amount of truth there is in that system. Truth rests in a comfortable nest of validities. All these things come together as a wholeness that makes things right and the emulation of this is fashion.
Okay now we have a brave and confident artist whos uses his art to discover the truth of his or her own existence. Homage is paid to that which has been and offering made to that which will hopefully come to pass. The valley of family and friends nurture this artist that he or she will allow them a fuller richer vision of their own lives and this, in turn, enriches the artist to widen their vision. This is "of a fashion" or a way that works for all and makes it all glow beyond the energy given and received. The sum is greater than it's parts and those, as spies, on the ridge who look to an easy way forward read the outer manifestation of this inner glow and take it back to their own...Fashion.
Of a fashion and fashion are seen to be the same but of a fashion is intrinsically linked to its habitat. Fashion isn't. Fashion is imposed upon a habitat whereas "of a fashion" is that habitat as a form and as a result of function.
This then is the way forward for New Zealand art. Be intrinsically linked to habitat so form and function are intuitively arrived at by the links to that habitat. It is of where it is derived... all else is pretence. Copying a European form derived and formed to function in Europe is pretence. Stealing the underlying motive from which the European model is derived and using it as a spur to start within the natural confines of ones own habitat is... natural! Simply because it's not stealing... motivations are universal so the act is actually remembering!
The idea of even putting think and tank together is almost as ludicrous as the little aside I just started with but lets put that aside and use a perhaps less common but more apt use. Tank, as a storage container, and put it together with think... well, maybe thats a little closer to a visage of something that may be of use when discussing applied arts.
But before I even go there what is it about art, in general, where the people who don't actually make the art are so beset with categorisation. Applied art, and yes I know what it is, but what is this thing where fine art, applied art, naive art, ad infinitum are thrown about like restraining pens despite the fact that art keeps breaking down those supposedly solid but almost always altogether jerry built structures that are always trying to label that which does it utmost to teach, or at least by osmosis or capillary action enact, un-labelling?
Anyways, theres a load of stuff coming out of Europe whereby a mixed bunch of Artists and Art Academics get together and thrash out a bunch of writing, with a show or two of objects (given it's applied arts after all) and call it all ThinkTank.
Masterworks, having changed from being a craft gallery to an applied art gallery, have brought the resultant output, in the form of five book cum booklets, to New Zealand for us outlanders to add to our library of stuff from overseas that may be of interest to us... and today, being the 23rd Feb 20011, they had a woman of notable craft pedigree, who has met and hung out with ThinkTank here and there, but mostly there with the help of creative NZ, have a little talk about the thing that is ThinkTank.
I went along as a secret agent, or at least as a person with industrial espionage being the motive, so that I might glean some useful tools in my own quest to, basically, have the world made in my own image. The long explanation for that is that I have some ideas about the way I think the arts in New Zealand could be, so as to be a far happier and beneficent place for everyone so inclined, and these ideas are reaching a point whereby a suitable "forum" is being sought to chisel them into something I think might be worthwhile publishing.
And todays little foray might have even created a slow growing epiphany as some rather obvious things came to light during the talk. One of the things I often look at when I try to figure out what I'm actually looking at is what am I looking at.
I know that sounds really stupid but when I looked at a room full of obviously well educated and quite well off people with a slightly bohemian air who were sitting on the floor, inside a high end craft gallery, listening to a woman speak about what some other people have and are doing somewhere else what I actually saw were a roomful of people mystified as to why they weren't recognised as being so obviously talented, and therefore making the kind of money that that understanding should initiate, and what, they all seemed to be asking as well, the new way of solving all those problems (or the demystification of mystery), imported wholesale of course, might actually be... what colour and price was the new pill?
Nothing new about that though. We've all been in that boat; well, we basically have to live in that boat. But today I saw the ramifications of that pretence; the significance of how a great degree of pretence creates the need to allow outsiders to be the rectifiers of problems. Enter then the noble excuse.
The Noble excuse is related to the cultural cringe and the tyranny of distance as another shorthand term to explain the reasons why our art world is so...
un-open to our plundering to our own ends.
When the panacea to save our mortal souls comes from on high and is swallowed with the waters of globalisation but we can't get the currency to buy the cure... this is the noble excuse!
When the Europeans academics have had the good sense and the bravery to stand behind it, ThinkTank, and consequently carve out their only own little niche of money making potential.. the fact that they receive funding from the EEC to do so, becomes the tantamount reason that we can't do it as well. The fact that we are so lazy that we just want to copy what they've already done isn't asked, being that it's somehow obvious that we should only do what those so obviously better than us have done, but disregard our own ability to be like them simply because funding will be so hard to obtain. This is the Noble excuse.
And it's really so sad that we as New Zealanders are still so reliant on the northern hemisphere as a homeland for our required assurances.
Oh, the created blight of a previous government that thought chucking money at the Arts might make it strong when all they've done is created a pool of Artists that need harder drugs to make them feel normal. Where once all we needed was to sell a work now we need a book published as well as a spot at a big European Disneyland of the Arts... Venice, Munich blah de blah de blah.
So much for criticism, while entirely fun, doesn't really achieve much purpose unless it's constructive so heres my version of constructive.
Well, I have been somewhat constructive in that I've set out how to look at something for what it really is instead of just looking at the ideas we have of something. The system whereby art finds an audience in New Zealand are by one main route, the dealer gallery system, and one subsidiary route, the public gallery system. The public route has it's merits but it's basically become a false economy, or a place of fiat currency, so I'm not really interested in that though it does deserve some looking into... not now or here.
The dealer gallery system though has a viability and validity simply because it's a capitalist system and creates an honesty by virtue of the tenets of supply and demand. The supply and demand parts can be easily broken down to artists as supply and buyers as demand. The dealer then is the system by which supply fulfills demand and is the glue which holds the system of exchange together.
Some may well think that this simple system works fine and in a sense it does but it does have problems and it could be better. The buyer, though fragmented by individual choices, is the power in the system and has the freedom to roam at will but that power, being fragmented by individual choice, renders it somewhat colourless and formless but a distinct qualitative regard is it's subservience to fashion.
Power then is somewhat dictated by the supply as it sets the fashion: and this again is fragmented to a great degree but even then forms and shapes can be discerned by those clever enough to look for them. Actually it might be better to say that the power is in the hands of those who can see the current shapes and forms and can make educated guesses, or even subtle moves to modify, as to the direction of transformation of the shapes and forms.
But any system is rife with inertia. It's a law of nature. Something growing will begin to take a form or direction, depending on climate, growth mediums etc, and it will build up inertia, as part of its bulk, to resist change from that form or direction. Changing the dealer gallery system to make it more efficient, richer and more beneficent to all, requires understanding the system as it is and understanding the laws of inertia that govern any directional change and being able to modify one or two small areas of the system, usually areas where change occurs anyways alike the fashion context, and be able to use the inertia itself as the energy to change direction.
Fashion is a very interesting phenomena of the human condition. Underlying all fashion is bravery and confidence. Bravery exists because we believe in things and have a value system. Confidence results from the amount of truth there is in that system. Truth rests in a comfortable nest of validities. All these things come together as a wholeness that makes things right and the emulation of this is fashion.
Okay now we have a brave and confident artist whos uses his art to discover the truth of his or her own existence. Homage is paid to that which has been and offering made to that which will hopefully come to pass. The valley of family and friends nurture this artist that he or she will allow them a fuller richer vision of their own lives and this, in turn, enriches the artist to widen their vision. This is "of a fashion" or a way that works for all and makes it all glow beyond the energy given and received. The sum is greater than it's parts and those, as spies, on the ridge who look to an easy way forward read the outer manifestation of this inner glow and take it back to their own...Fashion.
Of a fashion and fashion are seen to be the same but of a fashion is intrinsically linked to its habitat. Fashion isn't. Fashion is imposed upon a habitat whereas "of a fashion" is that habitat as a form and as a result of function.
This then is the way forward for New Zealand art. Be intrinsically linked to habitat so form and function are intuitively arrived at by the links to that habitat. It is of where it is derived... all else is pretence. Copying a European form derived and formed to function in Europe is pretence. Stealing the underlying motive from which the European model is derived and using it as a spur to start within the natural confines of ones own habitat is... natural! Simply because it's not stealing... motivations are universal so the act is actually remembering!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Currency in Art
Yesterday I popped into Masterworks, The gallery in Ponsonby Rd, and was shown a set of books by a bunch of Austria Artists and Academics that were full of essays about Art. They meet once a year and discuss a particular facet of art and then go off and write essays.
Countries like the Austrians, and most other 1st world European countries at the top of the economic pile do things like this in a hip and funky kinda way because they are old countries that have an inate understanding that the arts have to be fostered at all levels to ensure that their base of art and design is constantly being re- invigorated.
New Zealand, which still acts rather colonial in spirit, does not do these sorts of things with anywhere near the energy and vigour that the old europeans do and questioning why is a good idea. On one hand the simple answer may be that we don't need to as our still unblemished childish skin feels still the freedoms and fantasical potential of youth and we are constantly re-invigourating our art world, even as it is un-recognised and underated, simply because our energy levels are still high and un-encumbered by the notions of stability that old countries wrap themselves in no matter how hard they try to throw off those shackles. The land constantly walked over centuries must be different to a land where many potential paths have never been and exploration is still a national pastime.
But this question is muddied and made complex by our interactions with the old we still try so hard to impress which is, of course, destined to happen, even as the languages of each are so different, minefields of mis-interpretation, as we try to span the gaps between generations to answer the questions we all still ask, whether readying for the many small deaths or seeing universes expanding before our eyes.
Even as I write this the Taniwha of New Zealand duty is calling to me to wrap up all these loose ends of in-consequence and get out to the shed and do something tangible. We almost can't help ourselves to be outside and running through the still untrammeled ghosts of the Bush instead of sitting in the classroom and building, one paper leaf at a time, the ramparts and buttresses of the fortress to the seriousness of mature existence.
But this writing to now was meant only as an introduction to my thoughts on one of the underlined and set in bold Titles as set forth by those people of a land of big mountains and great calm lakes called the Austrians... and I've picked currency. So I'll carry on and abruptly end what I've already started with a natural Kiwi disregard for defined protocols as inclement weather speaks truer of where our regard and duties lie than any lists of rules made only to fulfill it's own shrouded needs.
Currency; in the arts.
One of my favourite ways to define anything is to look closely at the word used to describe it and to try and get to the heart of what a word really is trying to convey to us. Current has two important meanings to me. One basically means now; but a fairly widish now that also means the near past and the near future, while the other is current as an electrical term. Current is a way to measure a flow of electrons, in an electrical circuit, to derive an amount of energy being used. The interesting thing is that while energy seems to go from the point of supply to the point of load the reality at atomic levels is that a single electron of one single atom jumps from one outer orbit to the next atoms outer orbit while simultaneously bouncing that atoms single, ready to jump, electron to the next. So while 99.99 % of the mass of the conduit stays relatively still... energy is passed.
So the meaning of current. as in now, mimics that of electrical theory in that now is a single atom and the jumping of electrons is the near past and the near future. And these meanings have a almost polar difference to our understanding of current as we have come to understand it in the flow of water; which is also called a current. With water, and any other mass for that matter, we have an inate understanding of actual movement as regards current. What was previously there... is now somewhere else and this occurred by transporting.
These two analogies applied to the art world have profound differences and alike electrical transference and mass transference have very different uses and applications but both are real and can be utilised for the benefits they entail.
The big difference between us in the colonies and those Austrians back in the old world is that they use both of them while we laud one and refuse to recognise the other.
In New Zealand when talent is recognised by the powers that be they physically start a transformation that transports the artist from one place to another. They pick up the mass that is the artist and transport it along the constructed river of commercial and sometimes intellectual consequence, through gates and "dams", often against any gravitational constraints the surrounding land may have, to a place where the waters may be seen to be blessed with profundity... in those high mountains where we measure heights against the heights others attain. No wonder that the cultural cringe is in regular parlance.
But what of this other version of current, as in now and electricity, where the mass itself doesn't move and a mere vestige of possibility is thrust forward and at the speed of light this sense of movement recurs all along the conduit of energy in passing?
How can we apply this to art? Is it about ideas as current (not currency; God forbid!) where the artist lives in the world "as" art, with all the other ideas, and ideas jump and bounce at speeds almost beyond measurement between artists who pick and choose that which concerns them or interests them. The artist is the unmoving mass, ideas the passing on of energy received, and the art itself, supposedly the purpose of the existence of the artist, merely a magnetic field around the act of transference?
Ideas then, as current, questions the relevance of the art object by defining it as a mere by-product. A useful and measurable by-product but an effect of a cause and not as a cause created by effect.
Pedantic? Incredibly so especially to our colonial mindset. Why should we be concerned with the free movement of ideas when our survival depends on the concreteness of production? Against the winters of scarcity and until the spring of new growth and harvests in Autumn we must build our storehouses of real and solid stuff; no matter given with such virgin soils that revitalising the fields to re-invigorate tired pastures is a matter of consequence only to farms much travailed by the needs of humanities hungry mouths.
"A River runs through it" is one of my favourite movies as it helps me with a set of ideas that I have that people, in any land, are the result of the geographies they inhabit; the rolling hills of mediocrity and the high mountains and raging rivers of freedoms... and the prices each extracts from us.
Taken as a given then I ask myself constantly why we try to impress our older cousins, accross that much vaunted tyranny of distance; which for me is not a physical gulf but one of metaphysical river cut canyons under stratosphere climbing cloud banks, with our nonsensical bridge building efforts when we should be just enjoying our emancipation from objective similarity and building glorious structures on our own lands as towers to objective difference... if we do, indeed, require such efforts and create enemies in this mad rush to define ourselves?
Countries like the Austrians, and most other 1st world European countries at the top of the economic pile do things like this in a hip and funky kinda way because they are old countries that have an inate understanding that the arts have to be fostered at all levels to ensure that their base of art and design is constantly being re- invigorated.
New Zealand, which still acts rather colonial in spirit, does not do these sorts of things with anywhere near the energy and vigour that the old europeans do and questioning why is a good idea. On one hand the simple answer may be that we don't need to as our still unblemished childish skin feels still the freedoms and fantasical potential of youth and we are constantly re-invigourating our art world, even as it is un-recognised and underated, simply because our energy levels are still high and un-encumbered by the notions of stability that old countries wrap themselves in no matter how hard they try to throw off those shackles. The land constantly walked over centuries must be different to a land where many potential paths have never been and exploration is still a national pastime.
But this question is muddied and made complex by our interactions with the old we still try so hard to impress which is, of course, destined to happen, even as the languages of each are so different, minefields of mis-interpretation, as we try to span the gaps between generations to answer the questions we all still ask, whether readying for the many small deaths or seeing universes expanding before our eyes.
Even as I write this the Taniwha of New Zealand duty is calling to me to wrap up all these loose ends of in-consequence and get out to the shed and do something tangible. We almost can't help ourselves to be outside and running through the still untrammeled ghosts of the Bush instead of sitting in the classroom and building, one paper leaf at a time, the ramparts and buttresses of the fortress to the seriousness of mature existence.
But this writing to now was meant only as an introduction to my thoughts on one of the underlined and set in bold Titles as set forth by those people of a land of big mountains and great calm lakes called the Austrians... and I've picked currency. So I'll carry on and abruptly end what I've already started with a natural Kiwi disregard for defined protocols as inclement weather speaks truer of where our regard and duties lie than any lists of rules made only to fulfill it's own shrouded needs.
Currency; in the arts.
One of my favourite ways to define anything is to look closely at the word used to describe it and to try and get to the heart of what a word really is trying to convey to us. Current has two important meanings to me. One basically means now; but a fairly widish now that also means the near past and the near future, while the other is current as an electrical term. Current is a way to measure a flow of electrons, in an electrical circuit, to derive an amount of energy being used. The interesting thing is that while energy seems to go from the point of supply to the point of load the reality at atomic levels is that a single electron of one single atom jumps from one outer orbit to the next atoms outer orbit while simultaneously bouncing that atoms single, ready to jump, electron to the next. So while 99.99 % of the mass of the conduit stays relatively still... energy is passed.
So the meaning of current. as in now, mimics that of electrical theory in that now is a single atom and the jumping of electrons is the near past and the near future. And these meanings have a almost polar difference to our understanding of current as we have come to understand it in the flow of water; which is also called a current. With water, and any other mass for that matter, we have an inate understanding of actual movement as regards current. What was previously there... is now somewhere else and this occurred by transporting.
These two analogies applied to the art world have profound differences and alike electrical transference and mass transference have very different uses and applications but both are real and can be utilised for the benefits they entail.
The big difference between us in the colonies and those Austrians back in the old world is that they use both of them while we laud one and refuse to recognise the other.
In New Zealand when talent is recognised by the powers that be they physically start a transformation that transports the artist from one place to another. They pick up the mass that is the artist and transport it along the constructed river of commercial and sometimes intellectual consequence, through gates and "dams", often against any gravitational constraints the surrounding land may have, to a place where the waters may be seen to be blessed with profundity... in those high mountains where we measure heights against the heights others attain. No wonder that the cultural cringe is in regular parlance.
But what of this other version of current, as in now and electricity, where the mass itself doesn't move and a mere vestige of possibility is thrust forward and at the speed of light this sense of movement recurs all along the conduit of energy in passing?
How can we apply this to art? Is it about ideas as current (not currency; God forbid!) where the artist lives in the world "as" art, with all the other ideas, and ideas jump and bounce at speeds almost beyond measurement between artists who pick and choose that which concerns them or interests them. The artist is the unmoving mass, ideas the passing on of energy received, and the art itself, supposedly the purpose of the existence of the artist, merely a magnetic field around the act of transference?
Ideas then, as current, questions the relevance of the art object by defining it as a mere by-product. A useful and measurable by-product but an effect of a cause and not as a cause created by effect.
Pedantic? Incredibly so especially to our colonial mindset. Why should we be concerned with the free movement of ideas when our survival depends on the concreteness of production? Against the winters of scarcity and until the spring of new growth and harvests in Autumn we must build our storehouses of real and solid stuff; no matter given with such virgin soils that revitalising the fields to re-invigorate tired pastures is a matter of consequence only to farms much travailed by the needs of humanities hungry mouths.
"A River runs through it" is one of my favourite movies as it helps me with a set of ideas that I have that people, in any land, are the result of the geographies they inhabit; the rolling hills of mediocrity and the high mountains and raging rivers of freedoms... and the prices each extracts from us.
Taken as a given then I ask myself constantly why we try to impress our older cousins, accross that much vaunted tyranny of distance; which for me is not a physical gulf but one of metaphysical river cut canyons under stratosphere climbing cloud banks, with our nonsensical bridge building efforts when we should be just enjoying our emancipation from objective similarity and building glorious structures on our own lands as towers to objective difference... if we do, indeed, require such efforts and create enemies in this mad rush to define ourselves?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Is it irritating or just plain funny?
The thing with any marketing tool is that it has to share supposedly diametrically opposite needs if it is to do the job we want it too for us. On one hand we have to be almost immediately drawn to it on a subconscious level while on the other hand it has to appeal to that very constructed notion we have of ourselves in a logical and intellect driven world.
So the notion of networking tools like facebook being used as marketing tools for commercial enterprises has to take notice of the underlying motivations of humans who frequent facebook and understand what humans are trying to acheive in using it's pages... or even nation if current quotes of Facebook being the third largest nation in the world are to be believed.
The interesting thing about this notion of facebook as a nation is that nations usually have a national language and if facebook is indeed a nation then what is it's national language? On the surface one might say that having so many people communicating within the same conduit defines the nation but that doesn't help us to define the language... or why the nation is formed in the first place and why it even exists.
Simply accessing a numerical value to something by participation within the borders of a definition doesn't make something a nation. Understanding the geographical definitions and playing those back through the culture that has grown from those geographical constraints... thats what kind of creates a nation. the idea of borders and a national language come afterwards so if we have this notion of facebook as a nation then what is it's defining geography and what cultures are or have developed, or been enhanced, by the nature of the geography?
Understanding why we have facebook, as a thing that has grown so large in the cyber world, and why people are a part of it is important to defining a geography of motivation and becoming aware of the cultural aspects that grow from this flower of nationhood. If the commercial aspects of our own non-cyber existence are to become enmeshed in the realities of the facebook "nation" and be a force that enhaces our lives and not another instance of the monotony of commercialism deadening vibrancy of expression then some careful thought must be given to the uses of commercialism in general.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Gimpin'
Gimp is a freeware program that comes with Ubuntu ,as in Linux, and it's basically in the photoshop territory and could even be construed as better!
Despite the fact I worked for two hours this morning and lost everything... I think time will prove that Gimp is both easier to use and somewhat more attuned to artists.
This is from a black and white, see previous post, and is the basic colouring in done, detailing to come, as a poster for my brothers business and will be printed on 180 gram glossy paper in A1 or A0 size. Later I'll redo the basic artwork as separations to do cards and all that other kind of stuff.
Despite the fact I worked for two hours this morning and lost everything... I think time will prove that Gimp is both easier to use and somewhat more attuned to artists.
This is from a black and white, see previous post, and is the basic colouring in done, detailing to come, as a poster for my brothers business and will be printed on 180 gram glossy paper in A1 or A0 size. Later I'll redo the basic artwork as separations to do cards and all that other kind of stuff.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
MPG
Whats a MPG?, and yes I know that should be an MPG?, but theres some rules of the English language I don't agree with... or don't know... or care about. Anyways, an MPG is a 'Mad Professor Grin!' and life should not be without the not too infrequent MPG.
So the exact details of an MPG are the cackle and tittering sounds associated, plus the facial expression including a not too, but not completely un-, demoniacal grin, that occurs when something happens that quite possibly won't, shouldn't or couldn't but does. This also includes those things that will most probably happen but have a quite high probability of not happening and that probability is swayed by the good fortune we engender in the process of getting to the precipice of the MPG.
Perspective is obtained, in this instance, of the discussion when I, this morning, put a newish battery into the pen part of my USB drawing tablet and having it work when Ubuntu fired up... therefore an MPG ensued because after yesterday having my scanner not work with Ubuntu, and requiring some downloading of drivers and configuration into Ubuntu i'm not yet bothered to try and attempt, my tablet does!
Therefore I am able to work in the Linux equivalent of Photoshop, Gimp, without the encumbrance of using a mouse and the sheer accepted comfort of using a pencil like device... drawing... to do this latest piece of work in that enjoyable pastime of colouring in. This time for my brother and his new business.
The thing with an MPG, and notice how I'm always using the an now, is that it is usually followed by work. The MPG is the smirk of cleverness that proceeds an amount of luck to get to a point whereby the hypothesis is somewhat proven but it's now time to actually prove it by doing the nitty gritty work.
You notice that the picture is upside down? Indeed it is... oh well, I'm a lazyish Mad professor who often gets tripped up by details such as this. So maybe not a mad professor after all but merely a Mad Master... or even a Mad Bachelor, to use high school, as in highest school, parlance or nomenclature... but it doesn't ring true does it?
Yet again this diatribe proves that life is best when made up as we go along and pray then to the Prophet Tom Robbins of "Even Cowgirls get the Blues" fame!
So the exact details of an MPG are the cackle and tittering sounds associated, plus the facial expression including a not too, but not completely un-, demoniacal grin, that occurs when something happens that quite possibly won't, shouldn't or couldn't but does. This also includes those things that will most probably happen but have a quite high probability of not happening and that probability is swayed by the good fortune we engender in the process of getting to the precipice of the MPG.
Perspective is obtained, in this instance, of the discussion when I, this morning, put a newish battery into the pen part of my USB drawing tablet and having it work when Ubuntu fired up... therefore an MPG ensued because after yesterday having my scanner not work with Ubuntu, and requiring some downloading of drivers and configuration into Ubuntu i'm not yet bothered to try and attempt, my tablet does!
Therefore I am able to work in the Linux equivalent of Photoshop, Gimp, without the encumbrance of using a mouse and the sheer accepted comfort of using a pencil like device... drawing... to do this latest piece of work in that enjoyable pastime of colouring in. This time for my brother and his new business.
The thing with an MPG, and notice how I'm always using the an now, is that it is usually followed by work. The MPG is the smirk of cleverness that proceeds an amount of luck to get to a point whereby the hypothesis is somewhat proven but it's now time to actually prove it by doing the nitty gritty work.
You notice that the picture is upside down? Indeed it is... oh well, I'm a lazyish Mad professor who often gets tripped up by details such as this. So maybe not a mad professor after all but merely a Mad Master... or even a Mad Bachelor, to use high school, as in highest school, parlance or nomenclature... but it doesn't ring true does it?
Yet again this diatribe proves that life is best when made up as we go along and pray then to the Prophet Tom Robbins of "Even Cowgirls get the Blues" fame!
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