Ordinary Aura

kirk

I thought I had the proper disk to upload some new images, but I goofed... all I had on this is Kirk Cameron passionately talking about Christ.

Barb and I are going to the beach tomorrow. I'll get some new pics up soon.

Printmaking in 2004

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

"the last months of summer months are upon us folks, and sweat is pouring down our brows in grand rapids, michigan. the sweat upon a brow lightly browned by outdoors virginia, plain virginia. that's right, ladies and gentlemen, virginia's beach, virginia'a printmaking, ferric chloride, the sun."

upon my arrival back home in grand rapids, it's been nothing but printmaking inspired thoughts and activities: continued renovation of the calvin printmakers group facilities, moving a press to the heartland, making a stamp for our postcard, and just today preparing a budget for a proposed collaboration with integrated architecture and herman miller. i have also been acting as if i have been bitten by the printmaking mosquito, "sweatin' side by side."

why am i telling you this, you might ask? why am i talking about printmaking in 2004? well, i'm excited about the whole thing, making prints, working toward an ordinary aura textbook with possible editioned components, stamping 1000 postcards, renovating a shop. i am reminded that printmaking is a social activity, i am reminded about the aura of a multiple, i am reminded about chemistry and plates and naptha and newspaper. also, the blog has been so very quiet these days. my friends, in 5 weeks we will all be in grand rapids. what's to come? any thoughts about implementing projects in the fall semester to be part of OA? more thinking about our saturday session? dietary restrictions?

Storage Space

Shattered Lives

A very difficult image to deal with. I have been carrying it around in my sketchbook for several years now. Of course it evokes a myriad of political views and emotions from individuals. Again it is a harsh image, but because it has affected me so, I thought I would bring it to the conversation.

Movable Auras

Anonymous Aura

Lift the Veil

Image Building

grunewald

Here is a new painting entitled "grunewald". It is 76 inches tall and 42 inches wide. It's scale is similar to that of a door. "Grunewald" being a reference to a somewhat shrouded painter who painted the Isenheim altarpiece.

Everyday Project

This is the newspaper project I mentioned. All images are clipped from the daily newspapers, then taped together with scotch tape. After this is done the images are then erased with a vinyl eraser. It is nearly 10 feet in diameter. About one more week worth of work to complete it. Images stretch from the triumphal to catastrophic to the mundane.

Eclipse

Here is one of the 24 x 18 paintings. Chris, many more are on the way.

A Tree

ptngs and boards

desk corner

yellow page

desk wall

group

window remnant

dark window

baseball

aura in process

Here's an early tech demo for the pieces that will appear in the show; dynamically generated text. I'm curious how, or whether, they fit into our recent conversations. Got aura?

This one uses a single, limited text (actually the title of a Yo La Tengo album, which is the first thing that popped into my head). This one draws on a database, which for the moment consists only of seven quotes, each of which is something that was posted to this blog at some point. I kind of think the first one works better, seeing the same text reinvented over and over, but I'm not sure. I think, following on our recent conversations, that the effectiveness depends on how well you recognize the source text. The second version, database version, occasionally works well when recognizable bits of scripture jumble together; but the first one, using a single phrase, invents its own context; due to the limited amount of text being used, the viewer is immediately aware both of the re-invention and of the source text. That's my impression, anyway.

Now for the disclaimers; this isn't really how the final work will look. The idea is that these text blocks will more closely resemble large city regions, within an outline map; they'll be appearing and disappearing, re-filling the same space; and also "cutaways" will appear showing the supposed contents of those regions. Also, right now I'm imagining four different templates for dynamic maps, representing four different future cities: modular, monumental, expansive, pluralist. Here's a static mockup of the modular city; changing regions, made of text, with cutaways also appearing at random on top. In this mockup, the idea I'm working with is that the "regions" are made of text, and the "explanatory" labels write themselves in in that spirit writing stuff I did earlier.

for flying

this is just silly. but I'm tickled and inspired by the combination of adam's and seth's comments. and i'm not even on the phone with the phone company...also eager for some humor here perhaps.

dry bones

i just sent some horror movie images to ct for drawings
this one interests me, thought i'd post it

aura test

Some of you may have seen this work before - it's by Jon Haddock, from a series of web-porn images in which he quickly photoshopped out the figures.

Does this image have aura?

I'm still interested in finding ways of finding limits to how we've been using this word.

aura test 2

Another one for the mix here - 'erased de kooning' by jasper johns.

In what ways does this have aura?

aura test (sound)

here's another one.

a theme here developing - I'm curious after rowley's repsonse to the book cover (and after our choice of card image) about the relationship of "pictured absences" to aura.

this one's a sonic example, an mp3 I posted here.

It's a short work by a guy named John Dreyer. Don't know much about him. He set up a microphone in rural England somewhere next to a cattle grate - the recording starts with one car going over the grate, and ends with a second car going over the grate.

aura test (sound 2)

the dreyer piece doesn't relate to the "abence through erasure" of the images, so maybe this is better:

Does this work by Matt Rogalsky have aura?

It's a recording of W's television speech to the world in which he gave saddam 24 hrs to get out of dodge before the bombing started. Rogalsky edited out all the words, leaving only the silences.

aura test (monument)

I gave a little talk at a conference here last week about the privileging of absence in recent memorials - here's an image of the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, which seems to have influenced many of the WTC memorial proposals.

Aura detection?

aura test (remote)

I met Elliott Malkin in NY last May - this project got some press by new media art types.

Again, where and when does picturing absence evoke the kind of aura we're talking about?

Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye

Vertov, from "From Radio Eye to Kino Eye:"

Kino-eye = kino-seeing (I see through the camera) + kino-writing (I write on film with the camera + kino-organization (I edit).

The kino-eye method is the scientifically experimental method of exploring the visible world --
     a. based on the systematic recording on film of facts from life;
     b. based on the systematic organization of the documentary material recorded on film.

...

Kino-eye is the documentary cinematic decoding of both the visible world and that which is invisible to the naked eye.

Kino-eye means the conquest of space, the visual linkage of people throughout the entire world based on the continuous exchange of visible fact, of film-documents as opposed to the exchange of cinematic or theatrical presentations.

Kino-eye means the conquest of time (the visual linkage of phenomena separated in time). Kino-eye is the possibility of seeing life processes in any temporal order or at any speed inaccessible to the human eye.

...

Kino-eye plunges into the seeming chaos of life to find in itself the response to an assigned theme. To find the resultant force amongst the million phenomena related to the given theme. To edit; to wrest, through the camera, whatever is most typical, most useful, from life; to organize the film pieces wrested from life into a meaningful rhythmic visual order, a meaningful visual phrase, an essence of "I see."

What strikes me about Man With a Movie Camera, relative to this show, is Vertov's insistence on losing the spectator in the experience of seeing, and on moving through ordinary life in such a way as to extract its real essence, to which our ordinary human senses may be deadened. He was a very quixotic filmmaker in that way; he sees the movie camera as transformative, even, in a communist way, redemptive of normal human experience and behavior.

on disappearing comments and reappearing content

There's a new kind of spam going around, in which spammers post automatically generated posts to random threads on random blogs. These posts link back to the spammer's site, giving the illusion of a popular site, which boosts their ratings in search engines. We've been getting a comment or two like this here and there; I've been quietly deleting them as soon as I find them. If you're puzzled by nonsequitur posts from people you've never heard of, that's what it is.

Also, I've been asked to expand the number of past days visible on the home page; so I have. The last 28 days of posts are now visible on the index page. Hopefully this doesn't make too long a load time for any of us.

That is all. Carry on.

McSweeny's

good morning
just yesterday the creative capital application was completed and sent off
so right away i am thinking about our OA textbook
this morning i have posted a series of scans from books that i feel are relevant to our text. the form of these books speak to the aesthetic vision i have for OA.
so first is the cover of mcsweenys no.12
embossed gold leaf, which they have used again in no.13
the amazing comics issue
i have just subscribed to mcsweenys for one year
and also cabinet magazine, which is amazing
both of these periodicals should be looked at

could you all post book forms or images relevant to the OA textbook
let's start thinking about this project, as it will inform in a different way the upcoming exhibition

also post more recent work and sketchbook pages- i think this will help in gearing up for our installation. i am stockpiling cardboard.
sprecher, welcome back.

richter's atlas

i love this book, i'm sure you've all seen it
source material
cataloguing and collecting
lists
the grid
banality
aura

sears roebuck 1932

i use these catalogues a lot for collage source
i love how there are sometimes multiple pages of variations of an item
like shoes or hot water bottles
cataloguing and collecting are of great interest to me
i assign to my visual culture class a semester-long collection
at the end of the term they must catalogue their collection somehow
we plan on including envelopes for collecting in the OA text
Found Magazine is based on a form of collecting
i also think about lewis and clark, adam in genesis, audobon, and crazy people

lifestyle

this is from bruce mau's lifestyle
a must have
in thinking about our text, i can't help but think of lifestyle
gorgeous design
this is a page of transcribed sketchbook
see the dr4 comments
can we post some pages from our current sketchbooks?

spine

cross-section of the art of looking sideways
chris and i have talked about this surface of a book before
beautiful

choose your own

multiple possibilities
interactive
totally absorbing
rereadable
a childhood favorite
this is the cave of time

one more marey

this is what his photos eventually looked like. here's a guy walking - he's got lines painted on his black leotard so that all you see is the lines. multiple exposures on one plate was marey's preference to muybridge's cut-up (and often faked) sequences of single positions. you can see the futurist painting here...they dug this stuff of course.

wow.

this is for real - marey would tie up birds like this to measure their wing movements, eventually creating a mechanical bird that could imitate the same movements...without flying, I think. (oh, man.)

marey drawing

this is a drawing made of some kind of insect's wings - he put charcoal on the wingtips and measured the frequency/motion of the insect by letting it fly against the paper.

more marey

"Graphs showing the frequency of wing beats"

this looks like sprecher to me.

writing time

SPHYGMOGRAPHIE

Some thoughts and images about writing, presence, drawing, (acrylics vs. oils?), and animals.

it's great to rely on walking to get around, but the problem is that it gives you time to think of more things to say...i don't mean to dominate the posts here this weekend but this seems to be the way i work.

in the interest of pursuing some of our topic more specifically, I'd like to leap off of Seth's interest in spirit writing and tie it to the presence question and repetition.

the image here is a drawing of an instrument by etienne-jules marey, a guy I've been real interested in lately. He's commonly known as the french rival/counterpart to California's more famous and lusty hero, Edward Muybridge.

The instrument is for measuring and recording pulse - a little watch motor moves the tiny vertical tablet while the pulse moves a little needle/lever which draws on the tablet.

It's indicative of Marey's approach to recording temporal events, and relates to a large debate about time and the recording of time that existed in the late19th/early 20th century between scientists, artists, and philosophers.

The question was - can time be divided into tiny increments, or does that negate time? Everything else at that time was getting divided into little increments, grids and units laid all over God's earth in the process of atomization called for by Enlightenment science.

Marey's quest was to know movement - all movement - intimately, so intimately that dividing it into little bits was never accurate enough. though he made great advancements in the use of photography toward this end, and is credited by some with aiding in the invention of cinema, drawing/writing was always his most ideal form. He would build these machines that attached to things that move - every single part of movement would drive a stylus that resulted in a drawing. The lines that remained were absolute and truthful records of a physical gestures, unlike Muybridge's famous photos that divided a smooth horse gallop into discrete moments.

Marey attached these amazing devices to everything - birds, wasps, heartbeats, horses, feet. He felt that these drawings gave him such a true picture of movement that he could actually BECOME the movement - he actually never felt satisfied until he had enough measurable drawings to recreate the movement in a machine! He would build these little mechanical birds and bugs and legs that didn't just imitate the real thing - they were tied to the real thing through these drawings.

Think here of the electronic musician Seth and Chris visited. All digital approaches to sound are atomized - they divide the sound into discrete elements (samples) that are autonomous and indiscriminate, not only able to be rearranged bu pre-disposed to it! Many (not all) analog sound recording methods are closer to maray's - every part of the sound pushes some physical object to draw/inscribe a record of the event.

Some interesting things about all this for our topic - (keywords in CAPS!)

1 - Analog methods of recorded time are less given to REPETITION, because of their aversion to division/atomization.

2 - Digital methods are pre-disposed to REPETITION.

3 - Analog methods are more difficult to replicate. Every analog copy you make of an analog record of movement loses resolution (think of a trace of a trace of a trace, or a taping of a tapingof a bootleg of a taping.) The closer your copy is to the original record, the more AURA it has.

4 - Digital methods of REPRODUCTION of movement are easily replicated, perfectly, rendering the copies indistinguishable from the original record. Less AURA.

5 - Analog methods of recording movement often require more physical contact between the moving thing and the record/drawing. Marey was always concerned that his wires were interfering with his subjects, and thus his later reluctant move to photography.

6 - Digital methods of recording/analyzing movement allow DISTANCE between the subject and the record. I can measure the contours of a rock on Mars through digital means, but I can't push my hand against it to see the impression it makes.

7 - In the end this comes down to a question of PRESENCE in illusion - should a record/drawing be seen as evidence of a past action, something now ABSENT, or as an attempt to recreate the past as a PRESENT event, a SPOOKY unseen PRESENCE? ("Is it live or is it Memorex?")

This is also the stuff of debate about recording musical performances - should we aim to understand recordings as records of specific moments/events, or as attempts at re-creating the event over and over?

SOUND

we should really do something about a sound element in the space
kevin, any thoughts?

workshop and collaboration

this started as a comment on my earlier point (see the post "workshop?") but it got long...

This question reminds me of the discussion last month about our differences of approach. The workshop brings up some other questions for me about our relationship to our topic.

I'll hit a few points here.

1 - the "interventionists" at massmoca is a show of work that is basically the stuff I'm most likely to call my aesthetic home. it's caused a huge buzz in the worlds i run in, especially because it was supposed to include critical art ensemble's work before steve kurtz was so ridiculously terrorized in the name of the patriot act. (the artwork was confiscated by the FBI). The massmoca show is not about 9/11 or even explicitly about the current political scene - but since the work all seeks to affect its surroundings socially / politically, i guess they saw it as appropriate to talk about the event.

2 - I'm pretty suspect of collaboration or audience participation as automatically inclusive, or desirable as a way of providing access to the work. for example, in our art education program at UIUC they spend all their time showing kids matisse or whatever and then having them paint with the same colors and from the same subject matter as a way of understanding the work. this is too narrow. what makes matisse matisse isn't just colors or goldfish or naked ladies - matisse found an entire worldview through working for a lifetime, one that we might only ever understand through looking, talking, reading, writing. though I'm sure art historians would gain something from trying out the media they study, I'm more confident that Erwin Panofsky understood more about perspective without making a drawing than any art student who spends a month making a perfect perspectival rendering of his dormroom.

Admirably, art insitutions are looking to include broader audiences - PS1 has pool parties, the Met sells childrens' books about Van Gogh. But I've seen few, if any attempts at such evangelism that acknowledge the differences between artist and audience, or that nurture sustained engagement with the art itself. They usually err on the side of safety and superficiality, and almost never raise serious questions about the definitions of art, audience, or institution.

3 - "inward looking" - related to my last meandering point, I guess I see collaboration as typically occupied with interrelations between the collaborators, as they try to figure something out together and learn where and who they trust. it's tough work, and the more people are involved the more likely that they focus on group dynamics and the challenge of communication. Though there are ways in which this practice may model the world, it is not primarily engaged with the outside world. i have seen collaborations that face outward, instead of inward, but typically this only happens when the collaborators choose a very specific problem/challenge. I think Paul Wittenbraker's ,Civic Studio has accomplished this sometimes, as have Temporary Services. In these instances I think that collaboration is not privileged or even talked about - it's just a given that collaborative practice makes sense for their inquiries. I don't really think we have enough in common as a group to come up with this narrow an inquiry.

4 - It sounds like the workshop is intended to provide some access point for the audience/public, so as not to say "here are the artists, here is their work, have at it." With as diverse as our approaches are, I can see where something (hopefully not a wall-text) is needed to tell folks why we belong together. Why is a participatory art-making exercise the way to accomplish this? Why don't we discuss the need more before filling it?

Our topic and approach as a group still looks very vague to me. We have accomplished some things though:
- we've engaged in conversation around content (still unfortunately uncommon in the artworld)
- our subject is not often addressed by the artworlds we run in
- we've assembled despite radical differences in approach, method, medium

These are the things we can address in the Saturday event - in fact, I think we owe it to the public if we are responsible to our task. (Since vagueness is not a responsible artistic strategy.) What can we do on Saturday that would truly address what we think we have or haven't accomplished in this conversation? Even the blog is an insurmountable and disorganized object to hand to a new viewer. We need to give them a more intentional and organized chance to see what we're up to.

I guess what I'm saying too is that I'm not really confident that the work is going to speak for itself on our subject matter. That doesn't make for bad work - there are obviously a diverse range of approaches to the form/content relationship here - but it could make for a bad exhibition. Of course I'm not looking for the audience to get hit on the head with a message or something, but I think we need to let them know what we think in order to be responsible.

Panel discussions are often ill-attended and dull, but maybe there's something related to that we can do. I think we owe it to our audience to do more work for them, not ask them to do the work. Could we organize a discussion around some example, a film, a piece of music, an artwork? Do we each give a 5-10 minute blurb about the topic of ordinary aura and then open it up to discussion?

On the 911 question, it's not that I think we have to help people grieve. But I think we have to acknowledge that strong context for anything that happens on that day, especially when it's printed next to the numbers 9/11. (Can't we just say "Saturday?") I don't see it as appropriate on that day (or most any other day) to say "come, try out what we did and see if you can understand us better." We need to be looking outward, at the world.

daisy days page

StudioResource sample

From a book that flavored the Ruins exhibit... here, the book provided certain material for the exhibition. In Ordinary Aura, the exhibition fuels the book.

ruins '02

As Adam posts tangential work(daisy days), I wanted to put this image of an older exhibition which he and I installed at Penn State using many artists' work...

We still need to keep in touch about what type of work is being made so that we can attempt to conceive of the exhibition as a whole. A while back, Kevin and Seth talked about Ordinary Aura not necessarily being a collaboration and I would disagree. This isn't like a typical show where we all show up and drop off work and it gets arranged so it looks nice...
I would hope that we make a try to link common themes and visuals to help convey what we have spent all this time discussing on the blog and working on in our respective studios.
The time is getting short and maybe we can turn our conversations directly onto the work being produced... ask questions of one another. Make points... there is only so much linkage and other things we can look at and criticize or refer to. What do WE have to show? And, importantly, how will we create a clear, visual experience (statement?) for our audience?

Jered, how about posting some works in progress? I am so curious.

Creative Capital application notes

The following is one of the attempts to clarify our purpose in making a book based on collaboration... this artist book, studio text/workbook is being proposed for a Creative Capital grant.
The deadline is this coming Wednesday, the 8th. Please, if you've got any ideas pertaining to this, post some comments. Thanks.

1 As a professor, what would I like this book to do?
Firstly, make art interesting and show that art can come from places that everyone is familiar with. Allow students to relate their lives and interests to this thing called art-making which in my definition is about translating one’s experience into a form that others can consider. Thus, everyone has a valid place in the studio class- from advanced students to freshman, undecided in their majors. In light of Ordinary Aura, this ties into the believer/nonbeliever aspect of reaching audience.
Secondly, encourage students to be active in their work and give them a place to explore their interests and talents. As a sketchbook, it would be understood as a tool that is integral to the thought process. Work being done visually, in writing, in terms of collecting like a scrapbook, or a journal would all be contained and, most importantly, exist in the same place so that connections among these approaches might be made. As a textbook, it would contain (and be continually updated) relevant factual information about art historical periods and figures, movements that would tie into study as well as contemporary theory to encourage debate. A link would be formed between the old and new in a way that is open to the students’ input and editing. (Remember, this is more a STUDIO resource than an ART HISTORICAL one. This means that rules can be bent.)
Thirdly, I would hope that the book as a form, as an object, would be significant to students in this digital age. Aspects of bookbinding, structuring of image and text, ordering of thought, pacing… all these things are inherent in the printed form of a book and would definitely form a component of any curriculum stemming from Ordinary Aura. Not everyone has access to a computer and the needed software to do web design or layout. On the other hand, most everyone can find scraps of paper, pencils, collage bits, etc. that can be used to learn the same visual language for personal expression.

2 What makes this book different and indispensable?
Instantly, the look of the thing separates it from the normal, dry “Design I Foundations” text. Right now, the book may be bound with inserts, perforated, various kinds of sheets, transparencies, stencils, envelopes… it may not even be bound, coming instead in a case with many loose sheets waiting to be reorganized, substituted by the student, etc. Shouldn’t creativity be exercised in the product if that is what your product is trying to inspire and teach?
Ordinary Aura is in no way an end point where, if purchased, it will serve a class for a couple of semesters and then be retired for the next edition which is, more r less, the same thing only in a different package. Ordinary Aura is a flexible tool for studio professors and students. Its main functions are to inspire conversation and the sharing of ideas by promoting collaborative working, an exploration of materials and the forms of visual communication (especially in book form) and will be constantly supplemented by both the work the students do and also annual, gust edited, theme-based magazines. These annual supplements will be able to address in depth particular, timely themes allowing professors to engage their students in issues of politics, religion, contemporary art and theory, film… anything! Which makes Ordinary Aura an endlessly useful text. In fact, it is the students and people who use the text who actually become its authors.
(Down the line, say in five years, I suggest a contest or something where artists and users submit their most intriguing work to be included in a “2nd edition”. Also, the WIKI or website could be an ongoing version of this publicly written book for artists and art students)

3 Who is the target market?
College level art students in art, writing, and film. Also, professors who wish to bridge relevant contemporary theory, teaching and their personal artistic practices to create a studio environment for students that is energized, rigorous and self-fulfilling.

4 How does this book attract this market?
Well, the aesthetic of the book will be a major, “make or break” aspect. It will seem very unusual to some and extremely dynamic and exciting to others. I don’t necessarily care about the former. The aesthetic of the book which is at times raw, refined, sophisticated, grungy, eclectic, et al. Seeks to inspire by being from the outset a VISUAL and TACTILE experience. The way it is made and what it is comprised of will illustrate to students that their own worlds, the things around them are filled with potential. As John Cage said, “Anything can be art, all you need to do is change your mind.” The book, Ordinary Aura has connections to artists like Martin Kippenberger and Dieter Roth in that it seeks all-inclusiveness, expansiveness of thought and material exploration while deconstructing its very form as a book. Other artists such as Gabriel Orozco and Rirkrit Tiravanija come to mind.
Ordinary Aura is timely since the way it is made mirrors in a physical sense, what websites and blogs do virtually (And as a matter of fact, there will be a Web component of Ordinary Aura). Our text will be constantly rewritten by those that use it. This sense of authorship and exploration seems to me a very attractive element for those with artistic minds.

5 You say there will be a web component?
Certainly. A WIKI seems like a likely way for a constantly growing, publicly written “encyclopedia” of thought to be formed. Through this, classes and individual artists from around the world could meet, work together on ideas, search information, share their artwork, notify others of relevant links and information, exhibitions, etc. The possibilities are, as with the textbook, as endless as the imagination of the artists using it.
With the Web, elements such as sound and moving images can be utilized which expands the potential to other media and also more people.

daisy days cover

here are a few samples from the chris thomas/adam wolpa collaboration
perhaps relevant to the Ordianry Aura textbook-
an example of collaborative bookmaking
an assignment?
this one about nostalgia
to see almost the whole book go to
daisydays

daisy days1

daisy days2

daisy days3

workshop?

hey i know there was some talk about this collaborative workshop before -

but I don't really understand what it is.

when you see it in print on the card it sure looks weird to see it next to the numbers "9/11."

that's not exactly a public gesture I'm excited about tying myself to on a card- the decision to have a "collaborative workshop" on the anniversary of an event that still carries HUGE implications for our nations' political condition. it sounds kind of....inward-looking.

i hear massmoca is hosting a panel on that day in connection with their "interventionists" show.

card back

card front second option

card

possible card combination? We'll send these off in the next day or two so please comment if you've got one.

dr 4

dr 5

dr 3

dr 2

dr 1

super mario clouds

It's been quiet on the blog lately, so I thought I'd kick off July with a link to a programmer who hacked into Super Mario Bros. to remove everything but the clouds.

http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/21c/21c.html