<x-flowed>Hi Dawn,
You wrote:
Not only is what you're saying stimulating (content) but it's presentation
is fantastic (form/context). What is so beautiful about this passage is
the interjection of web pages that flow right into and out of the
sentances. I was imagining what it would sound like if we were actually
talking to each other. Would one speak the links? As I am reading am I to
jump to the link at the moment I come to it then return to the passage and
read to the next link then jump to it and so forth? Plus the links all show
up blue on my screen so it has a visual beauty as well. It's got this
fractured thing going. A multiplicity - many streams flowing into one or
many related thought lines all going at the same time. It's amazing how
much information we can handle at once anymore.
Divizio responds:
Yeah, this is "Hypertext"...great meshing, huh?!
This particular webpage on Content (previous mail) overwhelmed me when
presented with the Roundtable discussion "Content and the Seeming Loss of
Spirituality in Technologically Mediated Works" (Thanks again Yacov...for
the discussion...THOUGH I was a little disappointed in that overall IDAT
discussion. Perhaps I should have beforehand alerted the other participants
to this page. The discussion I felt fell short of its' potential. Maybe
we'll get to do it again? It's a REAL topic of concern...considering that
so much of art (historicaly speaking clearly has its origins in "Spirit".)
Content is a critical aspect of the work I've been doing with that OCR
PDA...as a writing/research/performance.
Divisio:
Are we talking "dance" here, or "art"? Not necessarily the same. If your
interest is art I suggest the problem is falling into a satisfactory
definition by people who possibly don't know the difference.
Dawn:
Maybe the term "art" could be a heading over any of the subcatagories or
dance, music, painting, poetry etc. Meaning there is dance that is art and
dance that is not just like there is painting that is art and painting that
is not (think dentist office landscapes). How one defines which is which is
totally an individual bias. It almost seems like "art" is used to describe
something that isn't popular, that has no other purpose except to be itself
(doesn't sell something) and that has a hard time getting funded. Right?
Divizio responds:
Well, yes, BUT more, the entire question of what IS "art", in a contemporary
historical Context
OH, here, BTW:.
CONTEXT: Context means the varied circumstances in which a work of art is
(or was) produced and/or interpreted. As in the case of content, there are
three levels of complexity, arranged numerically here, but without an
intrinsic hierarchy that holds true for all audiences. Conventional wisdom
would have it that primary context is that pertaining to the artist,
although there are equally good reasons to assert the primacy of "historical
and material conditions of production," as in Marxism. However, similar
conditions are known to produce very different artists (e.g., Raphael and
Michelangelo), so we will adopt the convention simply for convenience.
Primary context is thus that which pertains to the artist: attitudes,
beliefs, interests, and values; intentions and purposes (however, see
intentional fallacy); education and training; and biography (including
psychology). Secondary context is that which addresses the milieu in which
the work was produced: the apparent function of the work at hand (to adorn,
beautify, express, illustrate, mediate, persuade, record, redefine reality,
or redefine art); religious and philosophical convictions; sociopolitical
and economic structures; and even climate and geography, where relevant. The
tertiary context is the field of the work's reception and interpretation:
the tradition(s) it is intended to serve; the mind-set it adheres to
(ritualistic [conceptual, stylized, hieratic, primitive], perceptual [
naturalistic], rational [classical, idealizing, and/or scientific]; and
emotive [ affective or expressive]); and, perhaps most importantly, the
colour of the lenses through which the work is being scrutinised -- i.e.,
the interpretive mode (artistic biography; psychological approaches
[including psychoanalysis, Jungian archetypal theory, ethology and Gestalt];
political criticism [including Marxism and general correlational social
histories]; feminism; cultural history and Geistesgeschichte ; formalism
[including connoisseurship and raw scientific studies]; structuralism;
semiotics [including iconography, iconology, and typological studies;
hermeneutics; post-structuralism and deconstruction; reception theory
[including contemporary judgements, later judgements, and revisionist
approaches]; concepts of periodicity [stylistic pendulum swinging]; other
chronological and contextual considerations. It should be clear, then, that
context is more than the matter of the artist's circumstances alone. Cf
determinants.
BTW: Here's that FABULOUS page:
http://www.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/c_list.html
Robert Belton of Okanagan University.
Divizio:
MUCH better if we give up all ideas of communicating the art....ie...the
delivery of the "Art" and try something "other" like refining our art of
Communicating.....WHICH, I might add, dancers are in a rather fine position
to assist in the ensuing "adjustment".....historically ...or herstorically,
if you must ...though I prefer An-storically..... in the wake of the Post
Modern upheaval.
Dawn:
Why are dancers in a better position to refine the art of communication
over other kinds of people? I'm not sure I follow.
Divizio responds:
Ah, yes. This was left rather sketchy.
In th econtemporary art world, which I suggest is at the crux of a swithch
from the Post Modern, (see Belton)
POSTMODERNISM: It is something of a gross oversimplification, considering
that modernism and postmodernism are difficult concepts circulating in
disputed territory, but it is safe to say at least that modernism tended to
have faith in the perfectibility of mankind through technology and
rationalistic planning. It is now felt that these were instruments of white
European males interested only in maintaining their own hegemony, so the
result was a certain homogeneity which disallowed cultural differences. Art
which seemed to illustrate, foster or otherwise exemplify values like faith
in perfectibility and rationalism was modernist art. In contrast, today's
emphasis on the cultures of women, peoples of colour, and gays and lesbians
might be seen as postmodernist by default. Examples of modernism include
such things as Le Corbusier's house designs and Piet Mondrian's geometric
abstraction, both of which were supposed not only to be aesthetic but, more
importantly, to affect viewers in salutary ways. That the world could always
supposedly be improved upon also led to two other characteristics of
modernism in the arts: that art could progress, suggesting that the worst
thing one could do would be to repeat something which had been done before,
and that the way to progress in art was to focus on its only essential
characteristic -- i.e., that painting would only be about painting,
sculpture would only be about sculpture, etc., as in formalism. In contrast,
postmodernism seems gleefully to assert that there is nothing new under the
sun and that works which speak only about their essential characteristics
really say nothing at all about the human condition. Colloquially, what is
often simply described as "modern art" included types of work which actively
critiqued modernist values, so while it might have been chronologically
modern it was not modernist. In fact, what might be called anti-modernist
art bears many of the characteristics of what we now call postmodernism. For
example, neither Dada nor Surrealism had any faith in reason, preferred
uncertainty, adapted imagery from other cultures and eras, and exploited
irony, mockery and humour. (Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q, a reproduction of the Mona
Lisa with a mustache and those letters applied summarily, is a prime
example.) All of these traits appear in postmodernism. For example, in
postmodern architecture we find allusions to illogical mixtures of
historical building styles, many of the references turning the source on its
ear in the same way as historical mannerism. See, for example, the use of
the unexpected in James Stirling's Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart or
Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans. Because of its critical
stance towards the certainty and homogeneity of modernist tradition,
postmodernism is far too complex to characterize with one simple set of
stylistic criteria. In any case, it is more a matter of any attitude which
invokes an unconventional fusion or overt diversity of historical and/or
cultural styles (e.g., David Salle), with particular emphasis on critique,
irony or mockery (e.g., Guerilla Girls). Charles Jencks, for example,
describes it as "characteristically double-coded and ironic...,
[emphasizing] conflict and discontinuity of traditions, because this
heterogeneity most clearly captures our pluralism." Linda Hutcheon asserts
that postmodernism and parody are nearly synonymous. Warren Montag argues
that "We act within a specific conjecture only to see that conjecture
transformed beneath our feet, perhaps by our intervention itself, but always
in ways that ultimately escape our intention or control, thereby requiring
new interventions ad infinitum" (see Postmodernism and Its Critics, ed. E.
A. Kaplan, for these and many other explanations). One of the better known
proponents of postmodernism is Jean-François Lyotard, whose Postmodern
Condition: A Report on Knowledge offers lengthy meditations on the subject.
In the introduction, for example, he defines it simply as "incredulity
towards metanarratives," where "metanarrative" means the set of values and
expectations underlying faith in reason and science. Elsewhere he argues
that a postmodern work is not made according to preestablished rules and
cannot therefore be judged by applying familiar categories of analysis; in
fact, the very purpose of the work is to search for and create new sets of
rules and categories. See also culture jamming, death of the author,
Derridean, prolepsis, skepticism.
Divizio continuing:
SO, I see this as being concerned with a search for a NEW form
integrating(?) extending (?) human interactivity with Technology...and the
untold potential of interacting with myriad technologies to create a
"Form(s)" that will Anstorically speaking represent the current era in art
history (ie, the late early 21st century)
I believe you won't have to look far to find concordance with the notion of
the importance of the "Performative" insomuchas "im-mediacey"
and "becoming" (.....at least potentially so :) ) are thought ot be
characteristic of what will come to be thought of as the "significant" "art"
which we all imagine we are participating in.
Much has been written through Post-Modern studies of deconstruction
regarding Biosemiotics..the relation of Biology and Semiology towards a NEW
understanding of the meaning of "signs". The connections of "Body" and
"Text".
I contend that by opposing the age old idea of 'the communication of "the
Art"'... in favour of the 'art "of Communication"' we will be making REAL
inroads into a lasting "Presentation" of just what we are doing here on the
welcome mat of the Aquarian age.
Now piecing all these little tidbits together, wouldn't you agree that
people in our field (Dance and Technology...for lack of a better
nomenclature) are in a rather fine position of having a lasting influence?
I personally believe in excellence....the perfection of the
Circle...mistakes intact!
Cheering too!
Any thoughts? Further queries?
0!Z!^!P Z P!^VP
@
d^vid 2 diviZi0
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