show and write

with spring just around the corner, and the last of my exhibitions coming to an end (until april kicks off a new series of shows), i can turn my full attention to my phd.

a two-pronged attack is required:
1. thesis writing
2. exhibition planning

the thesis is the main focus for now as it has to be submitted by january 4, which gives me 4 months. the guideline is 20 - 30k words, so assuming i max out at 30k, my writing schedule should be about 7500 words a month, or about 1800 words a week. i have about 40k worth of notes, so i should be ok.

the exhibition was going to be a garden of plants trading on the stock market, but it was brought to my attention that a swedish artist made an artwork called Yucca Invest Trading Plant that hooked a yucca plant up to the stock market back in 1999.

Ola Pehrson, Yucca Invest Trading Plant, 1999

so i'm rethinking my approach. my idea was different enough to warrant pursuing it, but other technical limitations are also making it a less and less attractive proposition at the moment. 

in the spirit of keeping my options open i am still looking at exhibition ideas. i stumbled on this today and liked it a lot. it stirred ideas and reiterates my focus on the system synthesis:

A Negative Garden of Eden

the idea of a network of plants coupled with a cultural network is the driving energy of my intention.

but i must thrust my attention into my writing now, some of which will i'll be placing in here as a way or airing ideas and trying out writing style, clarity of voice etc etc.

wiffle waffle

so there's a little under 8 months to go in my phd and i have to really start bringing everything together. so here's a quick little rundown of where i'm at and where i think i'm heading:

exhibition:
the idea is to create an indoor garden of terrariums and pot plants, all hooked up to a variety of sensors. at the end of each day, the information collected from the sensors will be processed, and the results will trigger automated software to buy/sell shares in selected commodities on the australian stock exchange (probably industrial stocks for companies that mine rare earth minerals).

i need to consult experts in sensors and experts in trading software, which i'm in the very early stages of doing.

thesis:
revisiting systems theory, and its application to both art making processes and art criticism/analysis.

systems theory was of interest to artists around the late 1960s and early 1970s during the growth and development of conceptual art practices. it fell out of favour about as quickly as it was first taken up but i think there's still untapped potential in some of its approaches. the main theorist who brought systems thinking to art was jack burnham, who began to write less and less interestingly on the topic before abandoning it completely and disappearing into esotericism. much of what he echoed about systems thinking was translated across from natural sciences and has been consistently evolving in that area - into complexity, emergence, chaos theory and network theory - whilst still being pretty much left along by the fine arts.

much of the ambivalence in the art context to systems theory, stems from its associations with militarism and corporatism and its apparent implication of logical processes - all things anathema to any considerations of the creative avant garde. however, the internet has its foundation in the military and yet has gone on to be considered the most democratising development since the printing press, so abandoning or ignoring systems theory on these grounds is limiting. additionally, i think the variety of names applied to this way of thinking - systems, networks, analysis etc - raises concerns about its application in the fine arts, where freedom of intuition, randomness, non-heirarchical concerns are the touchstones of practice.

ironically, aspects of systems thinking goes straight to the core of these very 'art-centric' issues.

in some ways i am looking to work backward from the most recent developments of actor network theory (ANT), and most recently 'compositionism' as developed by the founder of ANT - Bruno Latour, to the origins of systems theory and touching on the art-focused ideas raised by Jack Burnham. this takes a path through mostly scientific-style theories, with foundations in anthropology, sociology, metaphysics and economics, and their potential application to the practice and analysis of art making.

system animals

interesting little point made about the interrelation between the human animal and the systems we build, with an image of the chris cunningham video for bjork that, coincidentally, i used to show in my tutorials:

from nextnature, click here

title adaptation

small note: minor title change.

considering hermes just wasn't doing it for me any more. i've swung back toward the initial driving idea of my work which is related to amalgamation/integration/hybridisation of the natural and the cultural spheres.

still drawing out, literally, my major thematic premise through sketching. it's all there. in the stippling. in the flora. in the ropes. but the final articulation of that into a form suitably proscribed by words, phrases and sentences is a matter of continued coagulation.

title consideration continues

recent thoughts on titles has brought on a change in thesis title. a small change. the actual head title remains system synthesis and seems to be more and more accurately reflective of my ideas as more work is produced.

fortunately, i've got a colon descriptor option in my thesis title, the second part, which acts as a second explanatory option in the meaning of the work. 

i have been thinking for some time that perhaps a focus on the way in which elements are joined in systems and organisations is required. the way in which nodes are connected is the actual architecture of the organism. 

in greek mythology, hermes is the god that is the messenger. the information flow. the connecting bridge between nodes. metaphorically, hermes is information. he is the electrical charge between firing synapses, the water in rivers and the waves of sub-sonic sound that vibrates when elephants talk across plains.

brain functions are biological functions

got word that i will be included in a group show at monash university's art and design faculty gallery some time in august. very excited and humbled to be included - curated by michael vale, my first and second year painting lecturer. a true 'teacher' in the actual sense of the word and someone who inspires, motivates and energises. something of a rarity in the analytical/critical deconstructionist environs of an academic art school.

i have started thinking about investigating economic matters as part of my art work. i recently saw a documentary about the battle between rational economics and behavioural economics. in essence, these differing approaches to understanding market systems come down to, on the one side, a mathematical rationalisation of economic activities, able to be articulated accurately in repeatable formulas, and, on the other hand, an acceptance that economic patterns and activities can only be understood with an appreciation of the irrational behaviours humans can elicit in particularly economic conditions.

much of my early education was in these fields - economics, accounting, management practice and marketing. i've always been conscious that that knowledge base feeds into my art practice and at some point may come more to the fore of my concerns. my renewed interest in systems synthesis is perhaps stimulating this even more at the moment.

rock paper scissors

 assemblage as network

                   network as system              
 
             system as assemblage

what is synthesis?

so, it really only just dawned on me - the name of this project includes the word synthesis. obviously i chose it, but i never really thought about it. well, i mean, i did think about it. but i never really analysed it.

the reason i chose it was because it describes, quite simply, 
 "the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole"

really, that simple.

that's what art is, of course. regardless of medium, method or conceptual content, the process of art is exactly just that.