I’ve recently been invited to exhibit in the International Festival of Contemporary Art in Ptuj, Slovenia.  The work that I am showing is a video piece created especially for this exhibition, premised on concepts of fluid identity, dispersed selves, and the despatialisation of subjectivity. Here it is, hear the lion roar:

For The Time Being, 2010 from nathan stevens on Vimeo.

About the festival:

According to the festival’s website, “ART STAYS, International Festival of Contemporary Art, is with ART PTUJ the main annual visual art event in the region of Ptuj. It started in 2003 as a visual art workshop for young European artists. This year’s programme includes 10-day residency working sessions and several four-week-long exhibitions.

The 8th edition of ART STAYS 2010 will host over 50 artists from 15 different countries: Italy, Slovenia, Germany, Spain, Slovakia, Hungary, Switzerland, USA, Bulgary, Great Britain, Austria, Singapore, Australia, Finland and Ireland and 4 continents:  Europe, Asia, North America and Australia.

Jernej Forbici, art director of ART STAYS said: “This year’s ART STAYS will be the richest ever. It will host artists of great artistic quality and what is especially important for us, also great projects designed specifically for the city of Ptuj. For ten days we will be witnessing an outstanding development of different art projects and then for an entire month admiring the results at the exhibitions, taking place in more than ten exhibition spaces all over the city and elsewhere. The music festival Arsana that will take place in Ptuj at the same time is an outstanding music event that together with ART STAYS creates a big “festival happening” that we named ART PTUJ.”

The forthcoming edition will feature a total of 40 artists including painters, video artists, performers, graphic designers, sculptors, media and sound artists that will be present in 5 European national pavilions: Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia and in 5 additional international projects: Video art, New media exchange Main USA, Performing art, Site specific projects, Art Factory.”

The festival runs from July 20 - August 31.

After the past three months of critical introspection into my multi-dimensional artistic practice and reflexive self-analysis, the time has come to delve back into the “real world” and find myself making something again.  I’ve begun a new project after a brief hiatus from the more practical pursuits of being an artist. No better place to begin then in the third space! For sure.

The “Third Space” is an international collaborative art exchange developed through a unique creative partnership between the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (China) and Edith Cowan University (Australia).  The impetus for this project, according to Professor Clive Barstow (ECU), the chief coordinator, “[…] is based on what Homi Bhabha refers to as ‘the third space’ a notional space between cultures, and in our case a space in which we will engage through creative collaboration.

Bhabha describes this space as ‘incommensurable’, a space that creates tensions and incompatibility within cultural groups forced together through global migration:

” The non-synchronous temporality of global and national cultures opens up a cultural space — a third space—where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences… Hybrid hyphenisations emphasize the incommensurable elements as the basis of cultural identities” 1 (Barstow, 2009).

Here, in the ‘third space’ there are some central themes that emerge ripe for artistic exploration.  Broadly, these include personal and cultural identity, communication, globalisation, and hybridisation.  Personally, I’m attracted to the concept of identity hybridity and how identities might develop collaboratively and communicatively within a ‘third space’.

Considering one’s identity outside of cultural boundaries, the ‘Third Space’ project focuses a concept asserted by Nikos Papastergiadis; “that what we are is where we are now, rather than where we were from” 2 suggesting that our cultural histories have little bearing on our current identity within a modern hybrid society.” (cited by Barstow, 2009).

This notion is of course contextual, in that our present context, being a matrix of our own trajectories (and histories), culminates in what we perceive as our current situation through which we create identification of self and other within various relational contexts, i.e. ontological, phenomenological, etc. In other words, our present context carries more weight in our understanding of who or what we are in comparison to the limiting perspective offered through the lens of all other past contexts. This train of thought seems to lead towards that old “the end of history” line. Are we continuously forgetting our past in exchange for a fresh mind for an open future, free from the restraints of historical ideology?

Before I forget what I was talking about…coming back to the project, the group consists of 16 artists, (eight Chinese artists and eight Australian artists). We are paired with a counterpart and given four months to collaborate on a work of art, exchanging the work either via snail mail or digitally via FTP. The work can be in any medium we choose to incorporate.

“This shared form of collaboration places certain demands on the artists, such as surrendering the individual right of ownership of the work along with many established methodologies of art production that are common to both western and Chinese cultures. A collaborative approach will promote the need for individuals to communicate across languages, and/or let the work communicate to prompt the partners response. Works should be exchanged a number of times to develop the notion of hybridity.” (Barstow, 2009).

Another interesting facet of the project is the final exhibition, which will be shown in Perth and Shanghai.  The exhibition will be visually communicated in its entirety. Designers from the School of Communications and Arts are given the task of designing the media for the exhibition and  “asked to explore non-textual and cross-cultural means of expressing time, place and direction.”

In the near future, we Australian artists will be off to Shanghai to kick off the project, beginning with a brief residency at USST where we will meet our partners and get a taste of Chinese contemporary art culture. This almost feels like cheating…..

Some pressing questions that I hope to work through:

Is there really a third space? Or, do we each develop our own third spaces?  If the third space is between culture, a space that has no common means of identification, and is incommesurable (having no common standard of comparability), is it possible to bridge this space? And if so what type of bridge can do it?

More to come… from a third space.

1 Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

2 Papastergiadis Nikos. 2003. Complex Entanglements Art, Globalisation and Cultural Difference: Rivers Oram London. Reviewed by Ian Maclean at http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-April-2004/maclean.html

this post is in progress…

Title: FAIR 87.9 FM

Date: March 18, 2009.

Materials: Pirate radio station, FM transmitter, Internet, Computers, Microphones, Speakers, Automobile, Radio

Dimensions: Variable Dimensions

Location: Spectrum Project Space, Northbridge, WA, Australia

Keywords: Interactive audio installation/event, free radio, interact, collective art, transmission

Description:

An instant community pirate radio station was set-up in downtown Perth, Australia for the duration of four weeks in March 2009, during which beta broadcasts were assembled by the surrounding local community. Consisting of a dynamic plethora of incredible sound art, live and recorded music, interviews, rehearsals, spoken word, noise, and silence, all produced by the guests, viewers, and passers-by, a range of programming was created and streamed/broadcast through the station.

The impetus for the project was based on largely on ideas propagated by past initiative such as Radio Alice and Berkeley Radio. Looking for a way to develop the lines of communication using an art gallery as a hub to invite interested parties into a space through which the boundaries of radio broadcast and podcast could be explored.  What happens when you create a functioning free-range radio station/recording studio and open it up to the audience, local and global?

The ‘free-range studio’ was open to the public from 10:00am- 8:00pm Wed. thru Sun.  Subsequently, some regular programming developed, seeing what became coined as the Open Mic Free-Range Studio Sessions on Wed evenings.  Also, the FAIR 87.9 FM hosted a series of workshops and live music events aimed at developing community involvement and providing a creative outlet for the locale.

Tuning in…

Working Analysis

The FAIR FM project was developed in response to current shifts in social paradigms brought into perspective through the recent explosion of ‘social media’ and Web 2.0 culture.  Working from the conception of a ‘one-to-many’ communication and ‘user generated content’, FAIR 87.9 FM explores these relationships in an open, immediate context.

Within the more specific cultural context of the art institution the project seeks to explore fluid, alternating, and multiple roles of the artist as simultaneously a consumer and a producer of art contexts.  In many ways this art work as a medium of the individual practice of the artist, is an extension of the artist as (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan (1964) suggested all media function in a capacity to “mediate our communication; their forms or structures affect how we perceive and understand the world around us”. Here, as an extension of the individual, the artwork exists as process and medium as message.

Communicative Inaction

This radio station, with out any content, broadcasts, djs, exists as a purely communicative space.  Whereas the concept of broadcast, or one to many communication, is inherently teleological, by breaking the rules, so to speak, and pirating the form of radio, and subsequently leaving this space open and raw in a sense, the communicative action can exist in a purely communicative state of affair. This communicative inaction is broken by silence via the first program developed by myself, the first dj to make use of the station, in a radio broadcast program, Organized Silence ®.

Interaction within the artwork as an agency of socialization.

Grass-Roots direct action information dissemination.

How is the project responsive to the relationship between the individual practitioner and social media?

Is this art?

Relational aesthetics.

so you think you can make art?

nathan stevens: splendid arts lab 2009

AS THE SAYING GOES, “TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE”, SO 10 HEADS MUST BE SPLENDID. FROM A UNIQUE INITIATIVE BETWEEN LISMORE REGIONAL GALLERY AND THE MUSIC FESTIVAL SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS, IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL, NORTHERN RIVERS PERFORMING ARTS (NORPA) AND ARTS NORTHERN RIVERS, COMES SPLENDID, A NEW EXPERIMENTAL ARTS PROGRAM AIMED AT PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN ART AND AUDIENCE, PUTTING THEORY TO THE TEST………..

Click here to read the rest of the article at realtimearts.net

Essentially, this is a defining article, a brief essay that sets out to reify some definition to my art, and its relationship to my self; and some definition of this self as espoused through the ensuing relationships.  This is essential in coming to any consequential understanding or meaningful perspective and experience of my existence as an artist, or at least current discourse on the topic might have us consider.

As I consider my artistic practice as a means of generating, developing, and exploring my self, it quickly becomes clear to me that this is a process that could stand to be mapped out and reconsidered within this context.

Thinking back through my past practice of art, I begin to see the patterns emerge from these works. Many of the projects involved producing a representation of myself, a part of myself, an image of myself within a specific context, which I became at once subjectified/objectified.  These works seem to place myself in such a manner that I could actually watch myself perform some strange activity within an equally bizarre context, i.e. pretending to bark like a Döberman pinscher on a television chained to a small doghouse in the basement of a popular contemporary art gallery.  This is diametrically opposed to, say, a version of this situation in a virtual dream state.

At the time of creation of such projects, I was simply using myself as an actor, or model, or participant, as I was really the only volunteer that I knew that was available 24/7, and for free (how much better can it get?). I suppose in some small, yet unrealised manner, I was very much aware that this was a possibility of the events that were unfolding.  As the work evolved intuitively from feeling, as opposed to a calculated and constructed action through thought and from concept, I might have known in the back of my mind that what I was doing was, in some context, very much introspective as it was an externalisation and expression of certain feelings towards situational circumstances of the (cultural) time, in this instance perhaps it was an expression of feelings of subordination to the media constrcuts through which we can be limited in our abilities to effectively communicate.

In other words, I knew that this was an exploration of the self, the concerns, attitudes, feelings, thoughts and beliefs I held at that point in time. Looking back upon this practice as a whole practice comprised a series of similar works, I see that in my volunteerism I was in another sense exploring myself as a subject, or an individual subject to cultural conditions, ideologies, and environmental circumstances.  Considering the ontology of my existence, within the microcosm of the sculpture studio, I was an adept supernummery, a qualified extra available for free.  However, within the macrocosm of my cultural circumstance (Western contemporary art culture in the early 21st century), I was an individual installation and media artist.

From this scaled perspective, at once being very different within in varied contexts; from a physical, animate body/entity to act on the camera, to an independent individual amidst a cultural field and all the levels in between, this practice which I regularly engaged with was a phenomenon of my being, my self, how I felt, what I thought, and the agency of this being to produce an expression of this consciousness.  Art was a means of both advancing and developing of my self as well as moving away from this self in order to generate an understand and gain knowledge of this (my) self. In fact, this specific body of work embodied this duality of 1st and 3rd person, the subject-object situation. As a means of objectifying myself within a video object, I was able to examine my self from an alter perspective.  Simultaneously acting as the subject and object of scrutiny, when in the presence of these works, I had the experience of being in the work and outside of the work at once. A personal impersonality. Similar to watch home movies of ourselves, or looking at photographs of ourselves, these types of observation are necessary for objectification of our life-world and our relationships to these phenomena.

These specific projects were more like real-time snapshots of dream sequences in their ethereal, outré characteristics. The gave me multiple perspectives as they traverse the void between the actual, the virtual, and the real.  Moreover, they operated as almost a form of metacommunication, or portals into an introspection of the role that my self plays through the cultural consctructs that afford this self the possibility to become, to develop language, meaning, and communicative practices; artistic practices.

Here is a good place to contextualise my current ontological stance in regards to the orientation and situation of existence. These writings are presupposed by a philosophy that the ‘world’, its being, knowledge and experience of this existence are existent as multiplicities, all co-habiting a simultaneous existence. In short, everything conceived exists, right now! This is sort of a phenomenological theory of relativity of self reification. It is the movement of perception and of the phenomena of these states of existence that, in part, determine the emplacement of its being and our epistemological, ontological, and phenomenological relationship to this phase/form/version of being.  Furthermore, existence is existent in terms of an experience or lack of experience of the possibility that a thing may or may not exist within any context, state, or representation of its existence.

Art allows one to experiment with one’s position within the fields in which they awaken. We awaken in different fields continuously, throughout our being. The activity involved with the creation and realisation of art, the processes of art, is our means or technique of engaging with our self within these fields.

This is a technique of self, or a technical knowledge of the self which is adjacent to a relational model of work (technical) knowledge, practical knowledge, and emancipatory knowledge as suggested by Jürgen Habermas (Foucault, 1993).  Foucault (1993) describes this concept of the technology of self as an additional technique of the individual within society:
“…in all societies whatever they are, another type of techniques [exist]: techniques which permit individuals to effect, by their own means, a certain number of operations on their own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct, and this in a manner so as to transform themselves, modify themselves, and to attain a certain state of perfection, of happiness, of purity, of supernatural power, and so on. Let’s call this kind of techniques a techniques or technology of the self? “

Art, in this context, is an agency of self, or a method of this technology of self, made possible by the cultural conditions that foster the possibility of an individual within a society.  The concept of society is founded on the basis of the existence of selves, or individuals acting (working) independently and democratically within a structure that incurs interaction and counteraction,  interdependence and counterdependence.  This is evidenced in the relationship between self and other, as demonstrated through society.

My practice as an artist has allowed my to come to an understanding of my existence, the existence of my practice as an artist, and the relationship between my self and this practice through the emplacement of my self and this practice within various frameworks, one being my practice as an artist amongst other artists within a field of art, another being my practice as an individual amongst others within a social framework or field, such as art or the academy.

Furthermore, as this practice, and the reflection of this practice are not separate but co-exist in an evolving relationship my practice is reflexively shaped by my exploration of it, and extensions that develop through presentation and representation of this practice, .ie. media.  This is a type of emancipatory knowledge production that exists (Habermas).

Because the concept of self is a reality within a broader social reality, or at least conferred by this social state, and art too is a specific form or field within this broader field of social reality, art can exist as a means of constructing the self in relation to the social reality that constitutes and contextualises the existence of the other (in this case me and the things that I do and make within this context).

Because I exist in relation to others, I perceive and experience my self as a self amongst other  selves, and ‘theirfore’ constituted by this relationship.  I often think that if no other existed, or was experienced in any possibility of the definition, would I exist (in the epistemological and phenomenological sense of the concept)?  If the only entity in existence was my self, I would have no frame, no point of reference, no horizon to measure up against, I would correspond to nothing, relational to only a singular dimension of my self (perhaps not even ‘my’ could exist, but rather a self, which would yield to the oblivion of being or the creation of an other).  I envision this as the point where either a singularity (white hole) or a black hole becomes.

Coming back down to Earth, where I exist with my practice, my peers, and all my art surrounding me in boxes it is here within these relationships that my self develops. Self projects acquire meaning through their situation in relation to other self projects within an approximate cultural correspondence.

Unpacking these boxes in a specific place, with specific conditions (physical, cultural, environmental, etc.) avails certain relations. If I unpack the art in one time and place, I might see it as valuable to a specific project, at another time and place it may remain undiscovered, unrelated and too distanced to promote capital; dependent on the strength and value of the relationships that are produced through a relational presence. However, art as capital seems to operate under different circumstances than other types of capital.

Art carries a surplus value, as Diederichsen (2008) puts it. The surplus value of art is the added bonus that releases art from the subordination to any globally dominant law, such as economic value, or meaning.  Art is an interstice, a space that can exist outside of normal relations (Bourriaud, 1998).  Artistic Mehrwert, according to Diederichsen,  “...refers to the fact that art is ‘good for something’ and therefore has a use; it is legitimate and must exist, despite the fact that its meaning lies precisely in not being useful. “(1)

It is precisely here, that art as a field, yet a field with no edges, it is a desert of a field, slowly expanding and consuming its periphery as it gains relational ground through the multiple practices occurring within its margins.

References

Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Les presses du réel.

Diederichsen, D. (2008). On (Surplus) Value in Art. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Witte de With Publishers.

Foucault, M. “About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth”. Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (May, 1993, 198-227.)

Habermas, J. (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press.

Title: “yeah…you are all true data” (HAL2009)

Date: February 13, 2009.

Materials: Chrome tubing, copper elbows, steel wire, audio cable, speakers, microphones, computer programming / software

Dimensions: 3m H x 8m W x 20m L (Variable Dimensions)

Location: The Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, Fremantle, WA, Australia

Keywords: Interactive audio installation, communication feedback, artificial intelligence, articulation, collectivity, speak, listen, interact

Description:

The creation and development of HAL2009 was an exercise in producing a type of artificial intelligence system through which an audience was confronted with each other by way of their conversations, utterances, and verbalisation within the exhibition space. Entering the lofty open space of the gallery, viewers are greeted by a seemingly rambling monotone voice of an automated computer system echoing long incoherent strings of words (English). Some of the words seem to fall into place, producing a half coherent sentence or pronouncement. Much of what is heard is incoherent in syntax, yet intermittently flowing in subject.

The central exhibition space houses a mess of entangled chrome pipe work, suspended from the large, wooden rafters at the height of the room. The pipes cut through the room, interrupting the space, occasionally dropping down to head height throughout the center of the space.

On opposing walls in the space the pipes neatly adjoin shiny, metal boxes mounted to the walls. Each box accommodates a small black dome, as used in closed-circuit surveillance cameras. Above the black, omniscient dome is a small plaque card which reads “HAL2009” in neatly rounded lettering.

The boxes seem as if they were appropriated from a retro 60’s science fiction movie set. They are speaking, or more appropriately, droning on. In a robotic voice, words filter through the boxes and into the gallery atmosphere. Often the voice repeats bits and parts of its previous maundering. Someone in the gallery mutters a sentence or responds to the installation with a few words. The boxes retorts in a poetic rant that seems to be recycled from not only words from generated in its own monologue, but also an arrangement of words from the audience respondents. An excerpt from “…yeah, you are all true data…” (HAL2009) reads as follows:

“…and and and and and and and and is as it is in or you don’t do this and it worked and lived a sure it’s drones on Gordon or in conjunction virtualities embracing an experienced them to their shape and in camera with and do all those individuals saw this from sculptures abjuring this new millennium absorbance refund arsenals amidst unaccelerated landscape of information about instantaneously Chinook salmon are different students in Iran since some newsreel something appears to be renewal were all raw consummately towards digital post your number one fruit on the ground of one for him nowhere somewhere else on sawhorse this nostalgic visit stir your spectrums…”

“yeah, you are all true data…(HAL2009)” is an interactive audio installation which mockingly explores the social effects of increasingly mediated communication and human’s eternal quest for true intelligence.

Transforming the gallery into a spaceship, set course: the unknown; autopiloted by the ambient collective intelligence of those in seek of the truth, or a prototype for a movie set where the actors don’t have the script, HAL2009 is premised on a paradoxical state of artificial intelligence searching for intelligent life in the outermost realms of …ummm… (art) space.

Is artificial intelligence anything more than the calculated, algorhythmic mediation of our collected knowledge; rather, not what is known, but what is asserted and at best articulated? Is this collective intelligence or artificial intelligence; mediation or interpretation? HAL2009 asks these very questions, literally! His poetic ranting responds to our ‘collective voice’ as an audience. What we say to one another in ‘his’ presence is interpreted and translated into a richly ironic monologue of bits and pieces of our own conversations. As we listen to HAL2009 we not only listen to the abstracted mediation of language, commentary, and discourse of those surrounding us within the ‘white cube’, but we are also asked, if not forced, to listen to ourselves with more critical ears. Drawing the parallel between the collective intelligence of the audience and the ‘artificial’ intelligence of the computer, HAL2009 demonstrates a communication filter that begins to operate on the verge of intelligent.

Explaining HAL2009: processing….

The development of HAL2009 was the result of many weeks of working through a project initially premised on my creative exploration of certain acts of communication associated with the exhibition of art. The artwork was in response to the theme of the exhibition, Ummm…The Articulate Practitioner, the show that the work would be exhibited in. The genesis of “yeah…you are all true data” was based on the simple concept of the “gallery talk”, a phenomenon inherent to art culture and the ‘art world’. It was this practice of speaking about the objects and subjects of art in the sanctified spaces of art’s exhibition that I took interest in through this project, or rather visa versa.

According to artist Jennifer Blair-Cockrum, a gallery talk can be loosely defined as “an opportunity to hear from the artist at the gallery where their work is on exhibit; perhaps see a demonstration, hear about their process and inspiration, and meet them and ask questions. Gallery talks provide the public access to the artist in a very intimate way that is casual, educational, and fun.”

I initially had the impulse to explore this concept of “access to the artist”; the engagement between the artist and the audience or the public and the boundaries of the exhibition space of art. This exploration many institutional conventions of the art world have been central themes or impetuses of large number of my works, particularly of the spatial attributes of the exhibition of art and artistic practice. Specifically concerned with the range of art and the media by which art as a communicative activity was in turn communicated, the Gallery Talk project aimed to discuss these concepts of space and articulation. Taken quite literally, what would a gallery space say if it could speak?

This work began premised on the idea of art as an advanced form of communication and how this communication is specifically affected by the cultural circumstances of the physical spaces in which it occurs. In this initial generative phase, the project can be broadly summarised as an artistic exploration of interpersonal communication impacted by the conditions/conventions of specific cultural and social spaces, i.e. the art gallery and exhibition space of art.

At the time I was reading Brian O’ Doherty’s “The White Cube” and William Mitchell’s “City of Bits”. Also, watching Stanley Kubrik’s 2001 Space Odyssey had become a monthly ritual. Considering the gallery space, a.k.a the white cube, as simultaneously confining the artwork to a very specific context and audience, yet also as a means of emplacement, locating art general and openly as art within the socio-cultural matrices of contemporary society, the project began to take on paradoxical dimension. I began to think about the space as a private-public space, where by virtue of the creation and dissemination of highly personal and individual knowledge and vision embodied and communicated via artwork, the exhibition space of art is a marginal meeting ground of a very public space with a very private nature. (writing in progress….. 05/10/09)

(20/10/09 resumed writing)

Thinking about the artist as director, or conductor within this public-private space, I was interested in the exchanges involved in this type of space, specifically the possibility on an interchange of roles and activities of the public, from audience, to viewer, to user, to director, to artist. With the transformative power of the process that art can create in mind, there is a type chain through which reactions and/or interactions can occur, similar to a chain of molecules, or a food chain.

How can a work of art operate as a communicative site or object between members of the audiences, between the artist and the audience? It was here at this juncture that the concepts of social and cultural relationships inherent in art practice and art experience began to take on some definition.

A few scenarios that might evince these public-private concepts and the communicative act of art crossed my mind. I envisioned a series of couches on the main floor of the exhibition space.  The audience might be lounging on these couches talking exchanging ideas, stories, laughter.  A convivial atmosphere might develop.  In its idyllic simplicity, this hybridised, autonomic event-performance-installation would, in its ‘normalcy’, fluidise the delineation and divisions of viewer/user/performer/artist through the movement and interchange of participants. Or would it just be a bunch of people looking at couches with the occasional snide remark on the quirky resemblance of a used furniture store?

Beyond the couches and the bodies, beyond the spatial, the visual, the physical it was perhaps the use of language that was produced in this environment, this communicative verse, the conversation that I was after, that I wished to en-art, or make art with.

Another scenario that developed from this initial kernel of an idea was a pedestal with a series of microphones connected to a series of loudspeakers placed throughout the gallery. Like a podium at a press conference, each viewer would have the opportunity to use the gallery as a space to speak to people, a place to disseminate information, communicate a thought or a feeling through spoken word or sound.  Furthermore, loudspeakers would placed outside of the gallery in public, therefore seemingly giving the gallery its own voice amidst the crowd of buildings lining Henry Street.

If the spaces that we create could speak to us, could verbalise, what might they say?  Or are they already speaking through us in an indirect manner by virtue of the succession of our own interactions enveloped in the spaces and the relational proximities that develop as a result of our habitation of these places and the situations of our sites?

This work slowly evolved from a pedestal and a rack of loud speakers to a stage with a curtain and P.A. The curtain which was originally a prop, icing on the cake of the installation, took on a prominence in the development of the project. Whether it was people sitting or standing around couches in conversation, or someone speaking from a podium, there was still an immediacy between the audience members and the users that needed to be subverted. The division between viewer and user needed to remain connected yet pronounced.  The stage and curtain facilitated this division, and it was this line of flight form the initial gallery talk conception that took the work into its next developmental iteration and transformation.

I began to consider the purpose of the curtain and stage, thinking about concepts of the “4th wall” and performance. The site of a stage signified this performative role that the viewer adopted as a user, or an actor within the site of the project.

To recap, at this point I was working with a number of ideas: the gallery talk as a voice of the site; the divisions and flux between viewers, user, audiences, actors, and artists; and communicative interaction through the site and exhibition space of art.

From here the work took a thematic turn, adopting the Wizard of Oz as a source of conceptual and formal inspiration. From Gallery talk to Wizard of Oz.  I had been keen to work with some of the forms of the The Wizard of Oz, as the story had a particular resonance with my new home here in Australia (Oz).  The conceptual figure of the Great Wizard of Oz, the meager man behind the curtain that portrayed the Great and Magnificent, a god-like figure that inspired through his mystifying awesomeness. The possibility that each viewer might have the opportunity through a work of art to adopt the role of the ‘Wizard’, a powerless commoner, who through the smoke and mirrors, through a performative act, might give hope, guidance, or purpose to our interaction with the strange world we awaken in.

Perhaps, this is a quality that, as artists, we indulge in within our own practices, aesthetic revelations and presentations and representations of truth, beauty, and passion.

However, it soon became apparent that it would not be one singular viewer would be the Wizard, but rather the collective whole of the viewers, as espoused through their communication and interaction with one another that would transfigure the great ‘Wizard’. Behind the curtain on the stage, would not be a singular person, but a conglomeration of all of the occupants of the space represented through the amalgamation of their collective conversations. The Wizard would be the whole of verbal, spoken communication that occurred in the exhibition space.

The installation took on the form of a small stage in the round surrounded be a 3 m tall, satin curtain which housed a machine, much like the Wizard’s contraption from the original movie, that would record, remix and broadcast the speech within the exhibition space.  This machine however could be overridden when an individual entered the curtained pillar and spoke directly into a microphone, thus announcing, dictating or narrating there own singular impressions, thoughts or feelings on anything that came to mind. (writing in progress…21/10/09)

(resumed writing…26/10/09)

In developing this system three central components were necessary; audio input, speech recognition processing, and audio output. Within the stage-in-the-round was an audio processing apparatus constructed from a series of microphones, loudspeakers, and a CPU. A series of high-sensitivity condenser microphones capable of picking up the most subtle voices from all areas of the space were used to gather the speech audio. This audio was then input into a custom-built audio program which processed the speech using the speech recognition software Macspeech Dictate implemented through a custom AppleScript program. The resulting assemblage of speech was then broadcast throughout the gallery on a series of loudspeakers (also hidden behind the curtain).

Essentially, the apparatus (eventually known as HAL2009) would record all of the speech from within the gallery space, process this speech, combining all separate dialogues, conversations, and speech, into a continuous aggregation of all that was said, and regurgitate this monologue back into the space.  At any point in time you could hear all of what was said in the gallery, however with all context stripped away. One conversation might be garbled with another. A string of words confused with similar sounding words. All that was spoken in the gallery became a singular collective monologue, simultaneously interpreted and misinterpreted.

The system would undoubtedly begin to input parts of its output, and with no outside input from animate actors in the exhibition space might eventually lead to a closed feedback loop, a monotonous thundering repetition of a singular phrase, word or sound. It was here that the thematic facade of the project made a dramatic jump cut…from Wizard of Oz to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From the Emerald City to the Discovery Space Shuttle…HAL2009 is conceived.

Upon the successful build and beta tests of the audio processing program, somewhat of a minor epiphany occurred. I realised that this system was more or less the very rudimentary groundwork for somewhat of an artificial intelligence system.  Moreover, ‘Alex’ the stock voice on the Macbook Pro laptop I was using for the programming, uncannily resembled the voice of the infamous artificial intelligence computer ‘HAL 9000’ of Stanley Kubrik’s 1968 epic “2001: A Space Odyssey (based on the story written by himself and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark).  After watching the film a number of times, considering the concept of artificial intelligence, and more importantly its ironic role in Kubrik’s film, artificial intelligence used to search for intelligent life in the depths of space, I decided to abandon the stage, curtain, and Wizard of Oz theme entirely. It was the phenomenon embued within the communication that unfolded within the exhibition space, and within an art experience that became central in the project, rather than the correlation between the audience and the an ambivalent collective meta-narrative that rested on the engaged interaction with the space between performance and behaviour.

Working intuitively, the formal qualities of the installation were revamped.  The formal elements of the installation would now be premised on the design of HAL 9000.  I envisioned the gallery as more or less a space ship, a vessel in which we (the audience) could move through space, a space made up of cultural galaxies, social worlds, political asteroid belts, and other bodies in the art space. Auto-piloted by the communicative activity within the space, the space ship would take the audience through parallel dimensions where the forms (the sentences and phrases) within language became abstracted and reformulated.

Working out from the concepts of confused communication, artificial intelligence and collective conversation, the project’s form and architecture developed as a function of these arguments. Using the film as my primary reference, or model, the resulting installation would consist of a series of interfaces where the audience would be monitored.  These interfaces took on the form of a home-made HAL 9000 all seeing eye.  A microphone and a stereo speaker housed within a small metal box fixed to the wall of the exhibition space simultaneously recorded the raw speech and broadcast the automated speech within the installation.

I constructed a prototype using a stainless steel IKEA brand storage box, internally mounting a small electret condenser microphone capsule on a custom rubber mount made from a chair foot. A 3-inch, 8-watt stereo speaker was also mounted within the box.  On the exterior of the box I face mounted a small black dummy dome used for CCTV monitors. This is what I imagined a HAL 9000 original prototype interface to resemble, possibly as the HAL computer-user interface existed in its trial phases of development in the early 1990’s.

According to a Wikipedia description of HAL 9000:

The many boxes of HAL were networked throughout the gallery’s multiple rooms by a reticulation of metal tubing suspended from the ceiling, representing the entanglement of lines of communication that ensued as the installation’s performance evolved. These lines not only served a symbolic role, but also a functional role as a means of concealing the 350+ meters of audio cabling on which the system relied for operation.

With the exhibition drawing near and the final form of the original project kernel (Gallery Talk) still in a conceptual phase it was time to begin constructing HAL2009. Due to the sheer scale of the final installation, anticipated at 172 linear metres of tubing throughout five rooms at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, it was only feasible to build a small portion of the installation for testing.  This meant that I would essentially be constructing the installation for the first time at the gallery for the exhibition.

With the program nearly complete, the hardware hooked up and testing about to begin, tie came for the final act of voice training HAL2009.  As the HAL2009 system was based entirely on the ability of speech recognition software to recognise people speaking, and to transcribe this speech into its memory, the need to train the system to recognise not only a range of voices, but also to recognise itself. For those of you familiar with speech recognition software, you’ll understand the capricious nature of this media, as it is normally tuned to the voice of only a single user (which even still causes complications). Initially, a bit apprehensive of the quality and capacity of SR software in general, I was pleased to discover that Macspeech Dictate was very well suited for this project, due to its inaccuracy (which can be manually adjusted with the program’s preference pane!).  Training HAL involved a series of sessions teaching the SR software to hear the voice of HAL (Apple’s Alex) as well as not solely recognise this voice, and to hear others as well. In essence I was reverse engineering SR software by training the program to not distinguish between a computer speaking and any other speaking entity, not to recognise the variance in voices, which the speech recognition is premised on. I can’t help but applaud the irony of this. This was the key to the project, that the computer could at once not distinguish between itself and the audience or user, between its output and its input. This is an entry point into the evolution of the system as exhibiting an artificial intelligence.

The initial trials took sometime to fine tune the voice (mis)recognition.  However, within days the system seemed to take on a life of its own. Strangely, HAL2009 exhibited almost a cyber-clairvoyance, which can only be attributed to the program’s use of an associative database of the English language from which it places corresponding words in a hierarchy of their probability of registering with the system as incoming speech is processed. For instance, ‘misunderstood’ words might lead to other words that strangely coincided with underlying concepts or topics within the project. I would start with a sentence and HAL would feedback the sentence until it came up with a wholly new monologue of different content. For instance, I spoke the phrase ” What is the meaning of life?”. The following is the response of the HAL2009 system from this speech trial:

“Meaning of life meaning is what is this where you where you live many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning is what is her anywhere in my many producers are you in her house meaning of life he is going to remind many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning is we are and weren’t on any producers are you proud meaning of life meaning is what is he wearing my many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning if we are on any show…and live meeting is what is he wearing why many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning is leaner and more finding producers argue NASA is home to my many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning isn’t there were many producers are proud meaning of life meaning is what is he wearing my many producers are you and everyone else in your life meaning is not a shudder has to live his homes by many producers are and everyone else in your life and he’s American of Jerry meaning of life meaning is what is this freeware”

(And I was expecting something simple, like 42!)

So, with the system in place and the testing commenced, HAL2009 was born, on the 12 of January 2009.

Constructing HAL2009 at MBCAG:

Construction of HAL was a three day event that involved many long hours of troubleshooting the complexities of the installation process as they arose. Coupled with the mad rush to get this installation up and running in such a short period of time, documentation of this process was limited.  Working with the invaluable help of my assistant, Anja, we were able to ‘hang’ the work and get HAL ‘trained’ in situ.

After the interface boxes and pipework was in place.  All systems were go and HAL2009 was introduced to his new (temporary) home.

Working Analysis

Concepts of power, control, and communication.

Collective intelligence vs. artificial intelligence

Staging Science Fiction: HAL9000, the Wizard and 21st Century interactive installation art

Humbug- Pretenses of the roles we occupy on the grounds of our cultural site of art.

Our own False Idol:

Feedback in the Chinese Room

The Dreaming Astronaut: Complexity and Emergence in the Models of Film and Life

Other worlds: selves and other bodies in space

Input, Output, Indifference: Misrecognition in communication as evolution

Language is a pipeline

It Lives! The narrative of the work

The primary concepts addressed through this project:

What does the site say? If a site is not the spatial factors of place, but also the cultural (social, political, technological, philosophical) what might this voice say?  How do sites speak? Is what is experienced at a particular site communicative in essence?  How is this ‘situational language’ translated through the participants and characters of the site?

From this broad approach to these concepts of (meta)communication, there are certain specificities that arise necessitating this dialogue.  Considering the roles of participants as cultural actors within the social, political, and technological framework of the art experience, and the creation of this experience and interaction with art as a process, this project affords a form of emancipatory alienation through its automation.

By creating a collective monologue that is continuously eliminating individual ownership by scrambling dialogues and essentially detaching conversations from their specific sites within the exhibition summoning a collective voice of the space. This activity highlights the accumulation of the social sites that are produced within the gallery, encouraging their production in order to harvest them for the greater production of the site of HAL2009.

language and communication in collective form-

the emergence of understanding

decontextualised communication-

reticulated articulation

Within this white-cube exists a complex web of communications. Language and systems for the transmission and communication of these languages become an important aspect of the project. There are multiple layers of communication that are occurring in the art gallery, that “yeah…you are all true data” takes into consideration. On a gross level is the broader communication between the artist and the field of art, which is facilitated through the institution of the gallery, museum, or in this case exhibition space. The interaction and relationship between the place and space of exhibiting artwork and the creator, maker, or doer of art as an artist is

Important in any analysis of a project is not only how the project sits in relation to its field and its peers (so to speak), but also how the project sits in other scales, such as the projects history and development. This can be thought of in terms of axis of the project. Every project can be thought of as multi-dimensional. A model of this might have the historical development of the project on a Y axis.  For instance, in “yeah…you are all true data” the project transformed over time through a succession states, each with varied formal elements.  These formal elements were thematic in nature, i.e. a gallery talk, a film, an artificial intelligence computer, etc. , with each theme acquiring different forms that articulate specific concepts inherent with the theme. For example, characters, settings, props or other cinematic constructs within the Wizard of Oz can be thought of as specific forms of this theme which convey certain concepts based on their relation and correspondence to other constructs within the narrative. The Wizard, Dorthy, Toto, the Emerald City, Kansas, the ruby slippers all represent core concepts in their relationships within the story. While these themes morphed and shifted, the core concepts underlying these formal qualities, remained in less fluxus states. It was the concepts at the core of these filmic relationships that became paramount as the project drew parallels between states as embodiments of the different themes it endorsed in its evolution as a work of art.

Within both contexts, the Wizard of Oz and 2001 A Space Odyssey the interaction remains similar in affect.  The audience is confronted with a space that cumulates their communications, stripping away context and meaning, by converting, processing, and representing the speech as raw information, which is then arbitrarily fedback into the system. The forms within the space shift leading to the formulation of different sites for this interaction to occur. The Wizard of Oz is a stage where a singular person becomes emphasized as they enter the stage as the sole actor within the installation.  2001 affords a heightened state of anonymity to individuals within the system, thus taking the emphasis away from the sole individual at the center of the work, i.e a viewer/user on the stage in the middle of the gallery, and allows the system increased authority over the commencing audio artifact. This is evinced in the actual spatiality of the installation where performing audience viewers/users are relocated to the periphery of the exhibition space as the 2001 model networked the spaces of the gallery across a series of rooms as opposed to the singular central stage within the middle of the gallery as modeled in the Wizard of Oz semblance. This highlights the varying levels of

Becoming a User: From Artist to Audience

This project is grounded amidst a point in my practice where I am questioning my role as an artist, and in turn the roles of those whom I am connected to through this role.  Within the framework of the greater system of art, a cultural system for the creation, expression, and communication of value; as a means and method of experiencing relationships and correspondences within multiple worlds of selves and others

By creating a type of artificial intelligence, and relinquishing control of the art to a sort of autopoietic system that in essence determined its own development, I was removing myself from the role of artist, in an abstracted conceptual sense, whereas I could become literally de-contextualised as just another voice in the gallery.  In the face of the computer, in the simplified binary language of the machine, the hierarchy of the artist-viewer relationship is changed. By creating a system that is scripted as an abstract model, a mathematic model, my context was reduced to a stream of 1’s and 0’s.

As a method of de-contextualisation, the automation of a system that converts and simplifies sender and receiver as a fluid role

Randomising communication.

The act of creating systems of chance or the act of randomising as a means of surrendering ones control over the various cultural, social, political, and economic systems and structures at work has its roots in the process art of artists such as John Cage, movements such as Dadaism, Fluxism, and the Theatre of the Absurd. The concept of randomness implies a lack of predictability and method of deterministic pattern.

My language as communication became irrelevant and purposeless.  As an artist within the space I had created, my voice was as equal to all other voices in the eye of HAL2009.  In making an interactive work, my interactions were no different than those of the other users and viewers. This brings into view the idea that as an artist, once art is created and released into the world, the only control that remains with the artist are abstract cultural notions of ownership and authority.

Coming back to the theme of the exhibition, Ummm…The Articulate Practitioner…

Title: Other Side
Date: June 01 2008.
Materials: Scavenged wood, paint, fake lawn, wheel barrow, earth, grass, time capsule
Dimensions: 4500 H mm x 4000 mm W x 2000 mm D
Location: Gomboc Galleries and Sculpture Park, Middle Swan, WA, Australia

Keywords: Sculptural, site-specific, time capsule, upside-down, emergence, displacement, memory, rhizome.

Description:

A sculptural installation consisting of a 4.5m x 4m x 2m shipping crate build from scavenged materials, constructed on-site at Gomboc Galleries and Sculpture Park in the Swan Valley, Western Australia.  Having been dropped by an airmail cargo shipment from the adjacent airport, the crate has crash-landed upside-down in (ironically) a sculpture park.

Within the crate, on what is now the ceiling is a small patch of fake lawn 4m by 2m bisected by a white picket fence.  The fence appears to have been damaged in the crash, broken open and hanging.

On one side of the fence is a wheel barrow, neatly cut by the inner wall of the crate, as if it the space had been sliced out of a movie set. Before the wheel-barrow are a series of small holes dug in the lawn, exposing the soil below (above), and a few odd mounds of dirt from the digging of the holes. A shovel hangs, stuck into one of the piles.

On the other side of the fence, is what appears to be a a volume of sod with soil intact, hanging open in the manner of a trap door, opening up into a large empty space above (below) the fake lawn. On the floor of the crate, directly beneath the sod trap door is a very large mound of actual soil that appears to have fallen through the hole in the lawn above.

Within the large pile of soil inside the crate, partially visible, is small, red metal container of some sort, which appears to have been buried in the earth (above), thus exposed accidentally as the soil came crashing through the sod trap door.

Unpacking this crate: processes of Other Side

This was the first project of a recent series of experimental and generative works focused on developing my praxis as an emerging contemporary artist engaged in the initial stages of my doctoral studies, researching my practice within the context of developing  a concept of sociality in contemporary art and media. This project, in particular, will prove to be substantial in the genesis of a relational perspective of self and my method of praxis and reflexivity.

At the time of this project’s conception, early March 2008, I had recently relocated to Australia to begin my doctoral studies and develop my practice as a contemporary visual artist. I was living in a share house, where my room was in the center of the house.

Behind the house was a sand pit covered in fake lawn Astro-turf with a large metal skeleton of a cage in it. While at the time I wasn’t cognisant of it,  these initial forms and spaces in my settlement down under seemed to have greatly influenced the development of this project.

Reflecting upon the premise of the project, constructing a very large shipping crate in a field amidst sculptural works, the initial idea was in response to this specific environment, a sculpture park full of monumental abstract formalism. I was attracted to the tongue-in-cheek allure of installing a monumental sculptural work, however not unpacking the work from its shipping container, thus the shipping container which houses the work itself becomes the sculpture.

The Other Side developed from here. While the satirical minimalism of the mismanaged shipment of art was amusing enough, I felt that the vast empty space inside of the crate was crying out for some creative invention.  Like a Trojan horse, the crate could take on an internal layer and silently infiltrate, or infil-‘crate’, this formalist theme-park with a more sophisticated conceptual intervention. It was from this point that “the crate” (as it came to be known by) began to grow and change, evolving through its various stages until it reached its current and final manifestation.

Infil-‘crate’-ion

What would this parcel to contain?  What would I ship to myself? Why was I shipping it?  My initial thoughts were of disruption and displacement.  As this was an aesthetic that I have been exploring in many of my past works, particularly in many of my video installations, ie. It happened just like that (2007).

Thinking on the site of the Other Side, a large green, grassy field, I immediately considered the possibility of extracting a portion of that field and encasing it within the crate. I also considered how the grass underneath the crate might grow up between the boards. The use of grass within the work was not only influenced by the site, but also had a strong parallel influence by the work of American installation/video artist Jeroen Nelemans.  I had the fortune of attending a residency with Jeroen the previous year at Vermont Studio Center and was inspired by his dynamic, living installations using grass or mold.

I began to think of the crate as a space where something dynamic could occur.  I envisioned, as the crate was upside-down, whatever was shipped within the crate might now begin to interact with the new contents of grass as it grew up through the crate into its shipment. A parcel containing a parcel (of land). The possibility of me shipping a patch of lawn and earth from an old site in my past to this new site in my present become a reality of the project.  Trans-planting an environment of my past into an environment of my present. In this way, this act was a metaphor of my relocation to Australia.  I began to consider what I was bringing with me, and within me to my new place of being.  The upside-downess of the crate I could now perceive as a convenient metaphor for my movement to the Southern Hemisphere, and a wry spatial consideration of my possible crash-landing down under.

As I thought through the concept of shipping something or place of my past to my present, I began to view the crate as a time capsule. A space were the memory and the presence collide and intersect. Where the artifacts of past are suspended until they are unearthed by the present. Where the past is sent to the future in a static state. The concept of time encapsulation developed.  Shipping my past into my future, when it arrives it collides with the present.  The Other Side is a variation of this process.

The crate was developing into a container, a capsule, for two diametric spaces, or two sites to meet. The intersection of these sites was a marginal space of the fake and the real, the virtual and the actual, the past and the present. This was a metonymically rhizomatic space. As I worked through the formality of these concepts, using the grass on the site as a means to begin to think about these diametric spaces, and how each space was to influence the other, I considered ways of focalising this intermediary margin between the two. As I envisioned rich and vibrant grass growing up from the floor of the crate into the dense, fake lawn hanging from the ceiling I became concerned with separating this space.

The fake grass on the ceiling was not simply a memory of a patch of grass, but perhaps could serve to demonstrate a process within a site that it represented. The crate could capture, like a photograph, or a snapshot, a memory of doing something, performing some task that could represent something meaningful from my history.  This spatial snapshot, this model could then be juxtaposed into a new space, and the event of this meeting, this crash landing could suspend them in a state of intermixing, thus this work is a snapshot of this collision or spaces, times, and activities.

An entry in the project logbook notes:

“May 01, 2008: I knew I would be shipping an environment, thinking about how the items in that environment formed as a condition of that environment, which was really what I was shipping, my experience of those conditions. After moving here [Australia] and realizing that I didn’t need to bring anything at all, I have begun to view environments a little differently.  I have always have attachment to objects and clothes, and these facades that we adorn our selves with or in in order to feel a certain way. Whether it is for pleasure, comfort, acceptance, etc. Things all provide certain levels of this.  Things are the vehicles that bring these feelings to us, rather than just instrinsically being that feeling, it is the experience of a thing in a context that allows us to find a certain feeling or idea within ourselves, as we relate to that relationship and the phenomenology of the world around us. SO I didnt even need to send anything, as it would become “lost in translation” so to speak.  Just needed to send the context for that experience, the environment, including all surroundings and conditions, including people…”

What was the task?

Somehow the idea of a lawnmower crept into the crate. Looking back to my logbook for the project it was unclear at the time.  The logbook reads:

“March 24th, 2008: Not sure where the [lawnmower] idea came from.  I thought of grass.  I thought of mowing it. Maintaining it and managing its appearance… Control.  So there was also this binary of control and out of control in the missing parcel property of the work.”

Perhaps the lawnmower was the representation of this control over the environment that I was encapsulating within the crate.  It was my attachment to the environment and the crates new destination, in the field of that sculpture park would provide a new environment for this ‘control’ to negotiate.  Yet, as I noted in the logbook, there was a certain lack of control that is explored through the haphazardly ‘dropping’ of the crate. It is this juxtapositioning of these contexts that I find motivating in the work.

Still not sold on the mower for its lack of personality, I opt for something more…well…me.  I recall a piece of advice given by a past mentor, “Your art should be personal, it should come from inside you.” From this point I began to think about the core concepts in the work and how they related to me.  The idea of a time capsule, the idea of shipping and moving, relocation, the ideas of memory and presence.

Over the last three weeks of building the crate in the studio the contents of the crate changed radically.  Everyday it was something different.  At some point a fence worked its way into the crate, triggering a memory of one of my many back yards growing up as a child who tended to move every two years or so.  It just so happened that in this back yard, as 11 year old, I buried a time capsule as 11 year olds do.  Eureka!  All this diggin and I’ve finally struck gold!

This was it.  It was this memory of this site where I buried a time capsule that I would extract from its virtual site, pack in the crate, and ship from my childhood as an archaeological pioneer of Cedar Forks subdivision circa 1992 to my present site as an arts researcher standing in a sculpture park in Western Australia, 2008.

I’m workin’ on a buildin’

Constructing the crate was no simple feat.  It required a great deal of initial thought and planning, not that dissimilar from planning the construction of a house.  In fact, most of the time while constructing the crate, I felt as if I were building a house, and in a strange way I was.  The crate turns out would house a space where realities meet.

In order to build the crate, I would need timber, and a lot of it.  The initial dimensions of the crate measured 4 metres cubed (as shown in Fig. 1 above). This equated to approximately…too many board feet.  Not only would the acquisition of these materials be expensive, structurally the 4 metre cube began to seem out of reach. I scaled the dimensions back to a more manageable 4 m H x 2 m W x 4 m D.

After being rejecting by all of my hopeful material sponsors, I decided the most appropriate source of timber would be from discarded shipping pallets.

I was collecting my material for the project from used shipping pallets scavenged from various building sites and businesses throughout the greater Perth area.  The pallets were then systematically stripped, de-nailed, counted, stacked, measured sawn, and restacked. The total number of pallets collected and prepared for use in the project: 101.  This equates to over 1100 boards, each containing a minimum of 6 nails to be pounded and pryed out.  In the industry, we call this ‘art work’.

After all of the material was collected from various nooks and corners of the city and prepped for construction,  the task of making 4.5 metre structural timber supports was no easy thing.  These had to be scabbed together with nail plates at alternating lengths.

The crate was constructed in bays with facade paneling, all entirely prefabricated in the studio and assembled on-site. Twenty-eight 1 x 2 metre panels were constructed.

The crate was designed to be modular, in that each panel would be interchangeable with any other panel in the crate, thus making assembly fast and simple.  Due to variability of the materials and other factors beyond control, this was not the case.  In fact each panel ended up in being colour coded to aid in the correct placement in the crates assembly.

Fieldwork

With a the shell of the ‘crate’ constructed and fairly stablised vision of the interior of the crate, the ‘fieldwork’ commenced 61 days after the initial conception of the project. The location was chosen after a few visits to the site.

May, 04, 2008: Install Day 1- Impact crater.

After the site was prepped with an instant impact crater and four corner supports anchored in the earth, the sod was left for ten days to re-root before the crate was to be constructed.

May 15, 2008- Install Day 2- Framing

With the help of my construction team, Graeme and Stu,  we transported the crate sections (4 stud-bays, 28 panels, and foundation) to the site and framed up the skeleton of the structure.

May 20, 2008- Install Day 7- Finalising construction

The framing and paneling of the crate was nearly finished after 5 days of building. The interior ‘roof’ of suspended fake lawn was installed, nearly ready for the contents of the crate to be installed.

May 21, 2008- Install Day 8- Interior Design

The interior of the crate was then ‘in’-fitted with various sized holes, white picket fence, large pile of real earth, custom wheel barrow, and other components of the ‘shipment’.

May 23, 2008- Install Day 9- Stenciling

The crate was nearly complete, just needed a paint job.

June 1, 2008- Install Day 11- Open to the public

Working Analysis

• Snail Mail?: The Rhizomatic Act of Sending and Receiving.

• Relocating memories and the act of re-membering.

• Crash-landing past into present in the future.

• Trojan Horse of Self: The emplacement of self into an other self.

• Other Spaces: Heterotopian memories of simulation, representation, and location

Keywords: Heterotopia, opposition, disruption, displacement, memory, rhizomatic, virtual, emplacement

(19/09/09 in progress…)

The project developed as an exploration of virtual and actual spaces of me, and the relationships between the two; the virtuality of a remembered history, the actuality of a presence. Looking at the boundaries between where these spaces exist. the relationships that become exposed through a circumstantial, unintentional act of uncovering.  Turf became a poignant metaphorical medium, where the grass of the project grew.

It was this space and this dynamic of becoming that I’m interested in. In the early designs of the project, fake grass ‘growing’ towards real grass was the key form. There is a dualism that occurs in this investigation, yet the work begins to open up towards multiplicity, which is rhizomatic in its essence.

There is a relationship to philosphers Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guttari’s concept of rhizome, the “theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation”. [1] Other Side is a model of certain relationships between my present and my past, this I suppose becomes the data within the Deleuzean/Guttarian rhizomatic model.  The memory, in its remembered form, in manner, is virtual.  My manifestation of this memory, in present, or in action, creative activity of producing the Other Side, takes on an actual form or quality.  The imitative quality of the forms used within the crate exhibit this virtual nature of the memory as a meme.

Coming back to the circumstances of the conception and development of the Other Side, it is important to consider my physical, spatial, cultural, and personal situation as me, Nathan that has recently relocated to Australia alone, living in room in the centre of a share house, planning his research as an artist, etc. In a lot of ways all I had was memories. Without much stuff, the only comforts I had were inside me.  Memories are directly influenced by the environment at the time of reflection and vision.  There is a connection that is made.  In some ways the Other Side embodies these connections in one instance, one imitation of the relationship as occured in my situation.

What did/does the work do for me?

It asks me to consider these relationships within myself.  How does my past relate to my future?  How am I present, presented, or represented through the processes I engage with as an artist? Specifically within this project, I focused on the relocation of my self, and how through time my self becomes continuously relocational from one perspective.  However, when this perspective is inverted through memory, or activity, or another process of engaging with my existence, or presence in the world, my self becomes static or suspended.

Relating the project back to myself,  thinking about the process, the act of collecting and sourcing the materials to build the crate, I had to rely on myself to resource the material to build the crate. The project became more about building this crate, designing the project.  At times during the building process, I felt as if I where building a home in the sculpture park, and actually home here in Australia.  Building a structure of my past self that was relocated to a new location, a new site for development and growth.  This new site would inevitably slowly overgrow the past, which in its suspended, remembered, virtual state would change and become enveloped by the grass of the present.

Unpacking this idea, it wasn’t my past self as a collection of experiences at a recent point in time, but rather based on a memory of something I had done as a child, 16 years prior to my relocation to Australia. The externalisation of this memory, focused the processual nature of the act the memory was based upon.  The memory that I was re-membering through the installation was that of the creation and burying of a time capsule in a childhood backyard.  I do not recall what was in the time capsule, but more so the feeling I had, awe, wonderment, and excitement of the act of burying things that I held as valuable, personal, and attributable to who I was at the time and how I understood the world.

(05/10/09)

Not only is the installation based upon a memory of this feeling, but also moves one step further in a symbolic act of virtue in a suspended state of attempting to recover, locate, or re-discover this ‘time capsule’. It is a multiplicity of the time capsule, relational to self, to others, to the environment.

It is in some ways a simulation of a memory, of a processual activity, a representational space that is at once many spaces.  In essence, the project formalises a “heteropology” via a heterotopian model of the mulitple spaces and encounters of memory and site. Michel Foucault discusses these concepts in his text Des Espace Autres (1967). Presenting the concept of a heterotopia, Foucault describes this “heteropolgy”, or the “simultaneous mythic and real contestation of the space in which one lives”, of the juxtaposing of relations to ourselves and the spaces that are occupied in one’s memory, culture, personality, knowledge, and being:

It is here, that the heterotopia exists.  The Other Side (the crate) exposes and comes to rest at this culmination of sites. The crate is a site that encounters the set of relations amongst the multiple sites of memory, presence, and process. Within this heterotopia of the Other Side, a sort of erosion, or a rupturing of the boundaries of these spaces occurs. It is here through this erosion that the unearthing of a new site, one that is at once a simulation and a real site is created.  This site is the collision of historical sites of memories, contemporary sites of artistic practice, personal sites of experience and enactment all within the field of my knowledge, expression, and being of self through intersecting spaces and times, presented, performed, and represented.

[1] Rhizome (philosophy). (2009, August 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:12, October 5, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rhizome_(philosophy)&oldid=308191501

[2] Foucault, M. (1984). “Des Espace Autres”. Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité.

Thinking about four recent projects (Other Side, HAL2009, FAIR FM, and Splendid),  I reflect back upon my past works and consider how they functioned, how they were purposeful for me, what they did for me and/or allowed me to do?  Recently, in examining my artistic practice, how it functions and what it does, and more importantly why this is valuable, I have come to some conclusions on the my process of reflection and the value of reflexivity in artistic practice, which I will discuss here.

I have adopted a new framework, or a thought structure, for thinking reflexively about my artworks and looking at my overall artistic practice (and other’s artistic practices for that matter). Setting up a binary structure of opposition, I try to think about each artwork on a descriptive level and on an analytical level.  This can be further reduced to what the work is being, thus framing the work within descriptive questions of how it is and what it is; and what the work is doing, thus considering, or analysing what the work does, how it does it, and why it does it.  The distinction lies within the separation of what something, a form, an action, an object, or a subject does as opposed to what it is.

Scaling out to a macrocosmic level of my overall practice as an artist, I can then consider the gestalt of my art as a relationship amongst a series of individual, microcosmic artworks, how they are, how they be (holistically) in relation to what my practice does, or what each artwork might do in relation to how my practice is and exists. These comparisons can quickly become complex as multiple works, and even multiple practices enter into the equation. This structure becomes necessary as a means of contrasting my processes and methods as an artist, as my works develop intuitively and much so through a felt and visceral knowledge of the world.  This thought structure’s oppostional form, provides me with a very simple way of approaching each work and outlining its conceptual foundations, thus allowing me to create connections between multiple artworks, and thus begin to visualise an overall aesthetic or dynamic to my practice as an artist.

As I read through past descriptions of my practice, or of singular works of art I have produced, I would generalise how each artwork explored concepts of boundaries, disruption, and separation.  These are the conceptual characteristics of the works that I identified with. By describing the work I would arrive at an analysis of how these characteristic functioned within the work, but for some reason I would stop just shy of considering what the purpose of this function of the work was doing for me. I was describing the art and what it might do for others within various cultural contexts, but not what it was doing for me, in a personal context. This prevented me from experiencing my practice on a macro scale, and rather kept me focused on the internal mechanism of the art that I produced. Perhaps, as the artist, as my self making the artwork, as it is felt, and intuited, there was no need to see the work on this scale, no need to think about the work.  From this understanding, the work was for me.

What has changed?  Why do I now feel it is important to think about the work, as it is felt and experienced?  Thinking vs. feeling?

I am at a point of change within my practice as an artist. I have developed a large enough body of work, with multiple bodies within that some contrast begins to emerge, and thus there are immediate aesthetic divergencies and congruencies. It is here that the descriptions of these differences begin to develop into more fully realised analyses. As I begin to analyse my past work in contrast to my recent work, I find the communicative importance, the agency, the power of the artworks, in their abilities to communicate and span the margins within my self and between others. It is here that my practice congeals.

REFRACTORY ANALYSIS

As I begin to look at the work from another angle, or refract upon my work, I begin to see what the work was doing for me (as opposed to how I was doing it, or what the work was being).  As I step out away from the processes involved, I can catch a glimpse different effects the work may have produced.  Moreover, I another step out I could see my relationship to the work, beyond my attachment to it through the processes of conception, development, and creation. What was I actually doing in the process of making the work? This is a separation of being and doing, this is part of praxis and reflexivity. Moving to a place where I can understand this is empowering, as it gives me a broader vision of the multiple plains that this work exists upon.  Taking this step back to look at myself making the work, going through the various processes and actions of collecting, transforming, distributing, disruption, displacement, and facilitating allows me to start to understand and decide how this is important to my self, outside my identity as an artist, how this as an extension of my self can be influential and important in relation to others.

This was a complexity inherent in my practice, as my artistic activities were strongly reflexive in their content.  My work on one level is about looking at oneself suspended through the media that we extend through. I increasingly became the subject of my own practice.  I was researching myself in a way, ever work was very personal, yet starkly impersonal and detached. In these works, mainly video installations, I simultaneously objectified and subjectified my self via media channels.  Works such as PiP (2005), Beware! (2006), It happened like that (2007) all represented this displacement of self, this video objectification/subjectification. It is here that could communicate my self to myself in a way that is very unique, I could channel in on my self.

Coming back to the idea of stepping outside of my practice and witnessing myself in action, making art, it is here that I actually come to know these parts of my self in a ‘knew’ way.  This is through a creative act of reflecting upon myself, through a reflexivity of reflection. As described above, I found mass and new forms of media to be highly versatile and practical medium for these creative communicative acts. The screen, in particular, affords a dimensionality to this form of reflexivity that supports its dynamism, and the ‘degrees of separation’ that a reflexive process and practice espouse.

This is the nature of my self as artist and my practice as me simultaneous being and doing me.  This is me becoming or creating (doing/making) myself through the process of being myself.  This is a form of self-reliance, self-exploration, self-consciousness.  For me, this self-becoming is done intuitively, and it is through the conscious act of thinking, reflexively, that this can then be communicated, a communicative act.  Therefore by describing this to you, I’m at once being and doing, and thus I am conflated once again, ready for the emancipatory process of reflexivity via artistic process.

This is the concept of ‘Dasein’, the concept of ‘presence’ that Heidegger theorizes on our experience of one self in the world.  I, my self, am quite interested in Dasein as impacted by my concept of ‘uniplicity’ (a singleness exhibited amongst multiple subjects), particularly as it is influenced by forms of media, especially new media. Expressed through many past works, I have employed various forms of new media, i.e digital video, physical computing, Internet, etc. into this process of reflexive introspection, as well as traditional media forms, such as radio and printed text.  These are the tools (objects) and processes by which I can transform parts of my self into forms that function within the reflexive situation of my practice.

Thinking about how these works subjectified my self as at once the object and subject of my observation, it becomes apparent that the art that I was concerned with was in my relationship to these works.  I was at once objectified and subjectified through the mediafication of my self within my practice as an artist. From this perspective, the works were activated in my presence, and in effect, types of models waiting to be put into use in my absence.

I believe that all that is art, at times, demonstrates these qualities or a relationship to these reflexive qualities.  This is the surplus value of art as described by Diederichsen (2008), or the interstice value contemplated by Marx via Bourriaud (1998), it is valuable in infinite contexts beyond itself.  These artworks that I describe are not solely one thing.  They do not only represent some thing in the world, they are some thing in the world at once.  Just as we are at once a subject and an object, being and doing (making) our selves as individuals.  This is the parallel dimensions of self, the mulitplicity of self and identity.  So it is not a question of what does it mean, or what is it, or what anything… it is a question of why is it where and when it is and how is it to me, you, or us?

Splendid in progress. Phase one of the Splendid Art Lab initiated.  Artists and provocateurs are hard at work, conducting various social and psychological experiments in creativity.  Read the full observational report at:

http://blog.splendid.org.au

Meaning is meaningful. It’s what we all search for, often relentlessly in, dare I say, all that we do.  Are we looking for value in a valueless world?  Do we want assurance of a purpose as conscious beings?  Do we merely need to experience ourselves as of a greater significance or symbolism than the economic, political, and social systems that we manufacture and perpetuate can support?

I was cleaning out my studio the other day. As I was pulling off sticky-note after sticky-note of unrealised projects and halfed-up ideas, it dawned on me that all of the sketches and scribblings had something in common.  In all that ‘data’ there was some kind of meaning that could be attached to it. (PAUSE). I realised that all of these projects seemed to be centered around or tangent to some form of singularity. Black holes, the ‘ice man’, amoebas, time capsules, chameleons…the list goes on.  These were all images that popped into my head at some point of time while hanging out in the studio brainstorming new installations and art projects.  As I restacked this pile of sticky-notes, it became  increasingly evident.  All of these projects were about something that was  inspiring in its singularity.  These forms, the ice man, a black hole are essentially anomalies, the differences that provide enough contrast or distance from being to offer a glimpse of something sublime and perfect, something truly meaningful.  Additionally, there is also something nearly magical about the these things, at least for me personally.

So how do these projects relate to me.  This is the ad infinitum question of the hour.  Are they metonyms of my conscious existence? Do they signal a quest for absolute greatness, not dissimilar to a Holy Grail of consciousness?

Thinking about reasons for why I have this creative urge that assumes these singular anomalies, I began to think about myself as something singularly unique in my individuality.  Not only in my form as matter, but also in my identity, my conscious being. So what exactly makes these other forms of singularities, and beyond that what gives them reason to be attractive?  Why would I even care about this idea of a black hole?  Well, I suppose behind the facade of its imagery, it reminds me of something, something personal, something inside me that I know.  Perhaps something that I am, something that we all are.

These objects, forms, things are not solely attractive or of interest to me alone.  For this reason alone I can only assume that due to the fact that others hold stock in the idea of a black hole, enough to construct the world’s largest particle accelerator in order to study it, the idea must hold some meaning; it must be important and of special consequence.  So why I am I attracted to them?

Are they symbolic?  I suppose another factor is that many of these singularities I have never actually seen, or witnessed with any acute sensibility.  Therefore I am only aware of the black hole through representation of it in images, words, and stories. The other quality about the black hole is “Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can reveal its presence through interaction with other matter.”

It is here that we can observe something.

How does the concept of a black hole relate to me?  I started to think about myself, if I were a black hole how would I feel? Black holes can never look in the mirror, so reflecting upon ones self isn’t possible.  Black holes become ones self continuously. Black holes are because they are absorbing everything else, and only know to exist through their “interaction with other matter”.

(REWIND)… the amoeba is similar but in an opposite kind of way.

Back to meaning. From these perspectives…Can there be meaning in any one singular thing, if the singular thing is always becoming through everything surrounding it?

Perhaps meaning cannot exist within the singularity.  There is no meaning in one single thing alone, as is matter in a black hole, but rather meaning is constructed by proximities and relationships. Furthermore, it is not simple a spatial or relational matter, but also a matter of agreement, communicated agreement.  As artists we are continuously explore new and changing ways of communicating agreements.

Moving these ideas to the concept of value, this concept suggest that we are not valuable in our selves. As humans, as people, as artists. In fact art may as well have no value. According to Bourriaud (1998), contemporary art and its delivery can operate in many arenas as a “social interstice…a space in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly in to the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities other than those in effect within this system” (p.16). As Bourriaud describes, “It has been said of art, and Marx was the first, that it represents the ‘absolute merchandise’, because it is the actual image of the value” (p. 42). Art is immediately devoted to, and often created solely, for the worlds of exchange, communication, and commerce.

Just as art acquires an exchange value, people too can embody this value. We, as some-one, are nothing without someone else, or are we?  We are conferred and confirmed through the awareness of another, through our differences and deviations.  It is the through the connections between ‘some-ones’ that anything meaningful can even be considered, yet communicated.

Much of my past work as an artist has been near these ideas.  In many ways I’ve been concerned with singularity. I’ve been concerned with examining myself in relation. Through the use of media as a vehicular mechanism of communication to communicate myself to myself at a singular point in time-space.  In this way, I bend back upon myself.  Like making a media-instant clone of myself that somehow got caught in a feedback loop before I could communicate something to myself.

I think of watching myself watch myself in a hall of mirrors.  I am my audience.

One question that is begging an answer.  Do I have anything meaningful to communicate to myself?