Techno Fashion....

[what's up with those guys in the background, they share this opacity!]

What is the body of the future? Is it a visual form that we build towards, or is it an idea that forms the image?  Who's imagination determines the future body? What is it based on, what does it reference? 

According to the text, Twenty First Century Bodies, a revolution is taking place between the body and its material extensions, clothing in this case.   Once it was fashion that made a predominantly female audience surveillant of their own body forms, however, the artists and designers discussed in the text approach the fashion field with methods and ideas that begin to re-explore the relationships between body and clothing, giving the body's terrain authority over the evolution of what fashion can be.

When we discuss fashion, we can talk about it as if it were any casual material extention with a daily function, to protect, to disguise, to beautify, to criticize.  Fashion also bridges over to the ritual world, and then, becomes costume, which can also characterized by daily function.  Fashion is special, and normal.

Hussein Chalayman's work featured above, brings two casually functioning objects into the area of the body.  A table, and a skirt.  Individually, the two daily objects maintain their own separate relationships to the human being, as they function differently, the human body accesses these functional entities in different ways. By allowing two creations to exist as one on the human body, Chalayman gives a consolidation the ways in which humans interact in a space between themselves and their extentions.  If a woman decides to sit down at a table, she can simply take off her table skirt and set up.  Moreover, she can do it anywhere.  The table is no longer separate from the body.  It becomes part of the body; a detachable, occupying space as a human part, and then as its own as it is removed.  

Occupying space as multi-faceted objects, reconstructioning the relationship between the body and what lays outside of it...what else is the future body?  I recall the spacial and functional relations to a woman's being to begin before the 21st century.    For example, nomadic cultures are mobile, therefore, their casual objects must be as well.  Women carried babies in backpacks.  Perhaps Chalayman's table-skirt is not a new evolution of the relationship between body, object, and space, but rather a critical perspective of older ideas in the 21st century lens.  Although, his specialty is a nuance, because a skirt can also be a table, where a backpack functions as a mother's hold, it remains a backpack.  And still, with the function and space consolidated, what is the future body? Where are its current limits? 

Man and Art Figure

An interesting conception of the human body as a construction in a space with a diversity of possibilities for creative outputs, as confirmed by Schlemmer, explaining his figures, "These are the possibilities of Man as a Dancer, transformed through costume and moving in space" (28).  In "Man and Art Figure", the physical possibility of the body as a creative engine and as a living sensor in space and time is put into scientific and philosophical abstraction, giving creativity itself, an environment surrounded by rules.  Later in the work, the writer explores the possibility of the body in relation to technological advancements and how these communions give progress to art form in the post-modern age, yet, how they also corner the artist by three abstractions, "He may seek realization within the confines of the given situation...Or he may seek realization under conditions of the greatest possible freedom...Or he may isolate himself altogether from the existing theater".  It seems that these abstractions continue to shadow the artists of today, only, the platforms of these abstractions have become crossed, a designer also works as and artist, working with or without rules at the same time give the creative individual the "greatest possible freedom". 

This is the tragedy that continues to haunt the modern artist.  For instance, the failure of a metaphysical body, to be the object, or to be free of these rules themselves remain the challenge of both science and art. 

However, the second abstraction exploring the "greatest possible freedom" is the most successful out of the three. The geometrics of body and space presented by Schlemmer begin to confirm that man begins with his body and ends with it, he is the measure.  The first base of geometry realizes the point, which is imaginary. Going on to build lines and planes and volume, the world rests on a base of dematerialization, leaving a possibility for another conception of the body wide open.

NEURO SENSO

Assuming that "I" is the current intrastructure of sensory organs and all other functioning or non-functioning organs, all working and converting information to stimulus into feeling, then feeling into emotions, but not exclusively in this order, who then, is the "I" if the current intrastructure of functional or non-functional organs is re-arranged or absent?

It is correct in this sense, to view the human body and its parts as prosthetics; this concept objectifies the "identity" of the parts of the human body and this leniency makes re-arrangement possible.  The conceptualizing of body parts does not end.  In the text, "On the Subject of Neural and Sensory Protheses", Lisa Cartwright and Brian Goldfarb write, "We propose, however, that prosthetics exist in a continuum with orthotic and surgical hardware and software that are designed to facilitate nerve function, sensory function, and motor ability" (126).  In deconstructing the aware sense of the body and focusing on the variability of nerve function and developement, the materiality of the physical body is invariable.  Does that reconstruction make a new consciousness? 

The cultural variability of body awareness confirms that sensory and feeling are conceived differently among different cultures.  In asian cultures, for example, chi is the flow of life energy, comparably, electricity.  Inflammation is a disturbance in the balance of the energy flow.  Accupuncture, aims to reconstruct the inflamed region of the body, and the distantly effected areas.  In this sense, the goal of the chi kung, is to use the body's current intrastructure to consciously manipulate the chi flow to better oneself, ideally, another type of recruiting of body parts.

The question still remains.  Who is "I" in the midst of the body? Where is identity found within the body's extent? And excitingly, how is identity found in "machine" prostheses; where is the threshold between human and cyborg? [I think this was Norbert Wiener's interest]

I would like to bring forward a threshold that is difficult to collapse, but one in which I find to often presuppose the feelings of the body in a reality, and that is language.

Cartwright and Goldfarb examine the discernment of sensory stimuli into meaning, frequenting its subjectivity with the term "intrasubjectivity".  When does the consciousness confirm what its body senses, as a determined feeling?  When is red, red? When is red, love, anger, stop? When does "I" look great in red? When the network of language develops to categorize perception, the variability of perception is reduced, in theory, the congruent variability of nerves is reduced psychologically. Say, a humble individual cannot determine that he sees red, he responds grey to a sample of grey and a sample of red.  Logically, the individual would be determined as colorblind. Fibromyalgia Syndrome is the name of the malady, which is found to be rooted in brain damage or nerve damage of the eye; some are born with it, some develope it.  In the realm of science, diagnosis seems simple. However, what is one reality over another?

Great books, relative ideas: The Order of Things, Michel Foucault; Remarks on Color, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

VISUAL POST: youtube live puffer fish sushi.  while it is quite a psychologically nauseating tradition to me, it is a great an example of consciousness being parsed into some state, approximate to death, as the sushi chef cuts down the body of the fish (unfortunately, one of my preferred animals) organ by organ, its living function is reduced, and while still "alive" they are all separated from each other. what does it feel like?

WORDS ARE SPACE as waves and molecules

INTERACTIVE COSTUME PROGRESS

 silver mylar+ alcohol+cotton ball+gloves = opacity and transparency embodied in one divine material!   THANKS COLLEEN!

Japanese

An interesting correlation arises between Japanese sensibilities of art, and the theory of Literalist art explored and destested by Michael Fried in his text "Objecthood and Reductivity".  In his work, he describes certain ideas on which the work of minimalist artist Donald Judd  concentrates his work, explaining that Judd is concerned with the "whole" of the work, in a sense, the purity of a work, disconnected from references, and interrelationships that manifest within the work, perhaps out of the artists' control.  Fried later establishes in his text, that Literalist art sensibilities attempt to bring the work back to the realm of life, that its own trajectory is only whole and complete when it blends back into some kind of "normative" level.  For example, minimalist sculpture is not simply about the body of the artwork, it is interactive with the space in which it is presented, giving itself a stage and therefore drawing in themes of theater and performance instead of being a purified form lost in any time and place.  

The gravity between a work of art and its place in life or in human reality is where I believe the Japanese condition explored by Kusahara's text begins.  

In the beginning of her work, Kusahara  explains aesthetic value in Japan as being well incorporated into the living realm, meaning functionality, spacial, and not excluding adoration, which is conditioned by the person in the state of adoration.  This means that aesthetic value in Japanese culture is not independant of the viewer.  It is influenced by the viewer, and "aesthetic truth" has more variability, it changes as its viewing environment changes, as language changes, as its function changes.  The development of Japanese aesthetic value is "indirect", and this is confirmed in the text when Kusahara writes:

It is obvious that drinking a cup of green tea is not the final goal of the ceremony.

Tools that are fully functional and yet aesthetically beautiful are appreciated, while

they represent the taste or even personality of the owner.  Naturally, a playfulness

of elements is regarded favorably.  For example, tea bowls with an unexpected

design or choice of material are highly appreciated, if they function well (286)

Within this indirection of aesthetic value, this certain Japanese condition explores all of the interrelations of a work of art, or a body of artistic value, for what is it itself, and what it is in a condition of change.  Japanese art and Literalist art come together as they explore a view and complete it, and this inherently brings it back to life. 

So how does this interaction between artwork and wholeness contribute to Japan's interest in technology, and contemporary art-making? What does "kawaii" (superflat, non-depth in post-modern age) have to do with it?

THINGS FROM THE OTHERSIDE BROUGHT INTO THEIRS

The scientific, constructive condition imported from the west has been successfully adopted into the Japanese way (not to mention that certain aspects of the "whole" are already evident in systems of Western thinking, like Tautology).  

What is popularly conceived as "Japanese" is much more than "charming" or "repulsive".  I am simply going to state that the over-exaggeration of imagery in Japanese pop culture is an observation and is then demonstrated as an extension from Japanese culture to Western culture.  Anime characters are not simply Japanese imagery, they are more or less exaggerated forms of the interpretation of Westerners with a Japanese flair, similar and more playful to exaggerated images of race in the US, such as "Black face" or the flock of little yellow "Chinamen".   Of course, japanese animation has also been turned into an obsession, like many pop culture epics, such as Star Wars.  (more coming)

A Sample of Japan's Complex Visual and Electronic Culture

[this place is real, by the way]

check out www.aec.at, www.internationaldanceparty.com, www.beatbots

I want to be a sound intercepter/sound collector

Still interested in the changes of personal spaces and the focus on the self brought on by technology and consumerism (cell phones, i pods, lap tops), I am interested in the idea of WIRELESS, and mobility.  These technological conditions of the current world have brought people together in a different way, as much as it has dispersed, and I believe that the sense of "sociality" has changed. Although, it may not be noticeable because these changes are concur with our own lives; we view these changes as we live them, which is much different than coming to the present day from the 1800's.

To remark the current "sociality", I have decided to recruit the senses of mobility and the wirelessness of pico to fabric a hybrid between an interactive costume and a sculptural object to push the relationship between people in a space and what is happening to it in this digital age.  My intention is not negatively criticizing technology, or the current sociality between people, I am simply asserting the SENSE OF HEARING and the SENSE OF SIGHT to pave a way in the invisible realm of wireless technology and reflect or collect (which I will explain) the sounds of people to send off my own affect on a space.  For instance, if a group of people are talking, how would they respond if a human being wearing or holding a disc collecting their noises  reflected them off to by-passing individuals?  Does collecting sound create positive spaces or negative spaces? How will my own presense affect the space, as a trespasser and a reflector? Do I have to get close to people or can the nature of sound and sight affect people from a distance?  Would I be stealing information, in a sense?

My vision is to be able to wear MATERIAL with the most sound reflective capabilities.

I originally wanted to create sound discs, but I felt that it might be too much of a visual quality.  The Pico blocks will function to give motion to the reflectors and collectors to move them at random or towards people, I have yet to decide.  If the choice is to have the attention of the collectors towards groups of sounds or people, I would then be interested in using Infra Red Tracking.  

My struggle with interactive work is this awareness of the otherside of the work, which is the hardware.  Engineering will be the struggle.  Aesthetically, I don't want my hardware to exist entirely in the secret realm "back stage", nor, is it going to be dangling around my face. 

COUNTER PROJECT: make sound stop

or use it in a way that it cannot be

identified as a sound

(on the thoughts of EMP...)

Camille Utterback v.s. David Rozin v.s. Olivia Robinson

view Olivia Robinson's Negotiations at www.olivarobinson.com/web/content/negotiations

Digital Art-Is it unresolved? Is it an opening for a cultural voice?

Clark, Oiticica, Pham.

The following vocabulary from the text is what I found to be highly thematic not only in the text, but also in my introductory level interpretation of the Interactive Arts: participation, body-based, action-based, telecommunication space, optical-formal, immaterial.  From other digital art classes of the same spirit, I gathered: generative, kinetic, behavioral, performative.

I am interested in the non-distinct state of the work and the complex aesthetic values found within the work's openness seemingly "inherent" by the themes addressed.  I want to pose the question, "How is interactivity resolved as an art form? Or, how does its disclosure contribute or comprimise its aesthetic values?"

Interactive arts is not a new form, nor is it an old form.  I consider it young.  I also consider it a form of sculptural practice, taking flight.  As interactive media is contributing and changing aesthetic sensibilities and artistic realities, it is easy to be skeptical of its growing merit.  For instance, looking back upon the works previously studied in this course, Matthew Barney, Rebecca Horn, Joseph Beuys, I understand this work as having existed before my experience with sculptural practice.  These artists have already established their sensibilities.  The way their works fulfill their theories has already become a vision embraced by other artists and institutions, and when I myself create work, it is made within their shadows.  Themes of time and space, metaphysical exploration, language, culture, science, society and reality are probed by post-modern art, the work of this era still enthusiastic on the search for purity.  

I accept the search for purity in art because it is emotionally and artistically valueable, however it creates a skepticism for interactive arts.  The problems I have found with digital arts is within a reality shared between the physicality of the artwork and my own tastes.  Throughout the article, "immateriality" is the word used to characterize this growing digital aesthetic.  While immateriality is completely interesting to me, my focus in sculptural sensibilities find interactive arts to be unresolved.  How is walking into a behavior-aware environment controlled by machines as potent as a meditative duration of an icky fat performance by Joseph Beuys?  Does art lose merit as it moves away from direct contact or command of reality?  Do you find piano more artistic than techno? Sometimes, I find that participation and interfacing have not gone far in the art experience, again, my skepticism exists because this form is still young.

The closure of many interactive works I have seen are so current, I myself am included in this aesthetic dimension, I am responsible for contributing to these developing values, and I can only dinstinguish aesthetic value that I have grown from.  

In the youth of interactive media, there is an oppurtunity for a cultural voice, as this field explores bodies, language, space, and metaphysical experiences in a way that welcomes world cultures.  The text itself confirms the fertility of body-based digital arts for the cultural experience, describing western aesthetics to privilege visual and metaphyiscal knowledge, while in Afro-Indigineous oral traditions in which knowledge and history are encoded in the body and ritual is profoundly concrete (280).  Encoded.  

More coming...

Objecthood Literalist sensibilities and interactive arts getting back to life

In the fourth paragraph of Art in Theory, the literalist idea is given an interesting description which I find, links its self-separating sensibilities to modern art.  The author writes, "In fact, being distanced by such objects is not, I suggest, entirely unlike being distanced, or crowded by the silent presence of another person; the experience of coming upon literalist objects unexpectedly-for example, in somewhat darkened rooms-can be strongly, if momentarily, disquieting in a way"(826).  According to this description, the literalist intention wants to bring art works back to life, or reality.  It sets a perspective for the conditions of viewing a work, or, anything for that matter, and it is that the viewer himself is within the work; interaction between the viewers presence and the work and the space and rest of the audience are constant.  On such a level of, it theoretically becomes close to the non-art. In bringing the view back to the normalness of reality, literalist sensibility considers everything that frames a view of a work; therefore, what is termed, the everyday, is factor to strengthen or weaken the wholeness of an artwork (827).  I find the "nonrelational" and the "everyday" ironic in a way, since that seems to be the last achievement of literalist works if all audience members form their own separate relations with the work and their level of the ordinary.  

The literalist sensiblity finds its concept in seemingly formal aspects of work, such as shape and size, however, it is on these grounds that teeter back and forth between being interpreted as it wants to be, for example, a canvas, and what it is, a rectangle image in three dimensions that give literalist works their control.   

There is deconstructive character to the literalist achievement, in that brings they viewing of a work to the surface level, between what the object fundamentally is in reality instead of what it is in attempt, again for example, a painting.  This surface valuing then implies that there is no inherent value or relational meaning between things; nothing truely belongs together; anything can be put together.  

But I think this has been the goal of modern art for quite sometime.  Literalist ideas are just further extensions of this modern exploration.  The search to find new value, or, at the least, to break away from the old seems like an ancient characteristic, or a relation to, the literalist realm.  A difference between modern works and literalist works is that they are separated by ages of technological progress, which drastically changes the everyday, nonrelational experience.  Literalist ideas begin to separate from these modernist roots, but still retain the sensibility of sculpture, or painting; its former distinctions.

Since performance and interactive arts are growths of sculpture into a nonrelational sense, perhaps of art form, in some ways, interactive arts become relational as the work itself builds specific relations with viewers, based on their physical size, their shape, etc.

Ceiling, Florian Slotowa, Germany

Body Dialogue.

From Lippard's interpretation of the sculptural performances and art objects of Rebecca Horn, in the text, "Rebecca Horn: A Special Touch", the idea of "dialogue" between a body and a place is a very clear action throughout the works discussed. At the end of the text, Lippard writes about Horn's concern for balance throughout her work (71). The search for such between body and environment is strongly present, but attaining that balance is not always possible, which lends the work its sensibilities of torture and entrapment. In this case, the body in struggle exhibits a constant reinventing or relearning of the way it is balancing itself in a place (which can also be understood as functioning comfortably). In imagining Horn's sense of balancing opposites, I wondered whether the inanimate work itself-the costumes and extensions-was capable of "struggling", or if a struggle was visible "extension" of the performer. Does the bodily function grow onto the object?

Several motifs between Rebecca Horn and Matthew Barney become apparent through the lens of tension and growth. Both apply the concept. In addition to sculptural performing, the two artists attain sensibilities of ritualism in exploring the body in a place. Moreover, the body in certain conditions. Horn and Barney produce work that inherently triggers learning or transformation, such as Barney's Restraint Drawings or Horn's Finger Gloves. These works force a body and a consciousness to find systems or "ways" to identify themselves and what might be possible of them.

Not only do the artists's work bear dialogue between body and place, but there is also a recombinant quality to certain pieces, as Horn and Barney refer to their other works within a work. Horn's Dialogue of the Paradise Widow refers to her other works (Lippard 71); Barney showed his work in a place in video, which was shown as a video sculpture in the same place (Trottman 146). Although the products of the two artists are rather different, the reappearance or continued life of the work becomes symbolic, and gains ritual character as it gains meaning.

Ana Mandieta

In view of Barney

In Nat Trottman's "Ritual Space/Sculptural Time", which does openly suggest modern physics's concept of space and time as a single continuum wherein a point in a space versus another point in space share a duration of time*, from "space/time" as a condition for the becoming of a ritual practice, the writer abstracts what I have come to accept as a fluent quality of modern art, which is, to defy the reality of binaries.  Through many attempts towards such an impossible goal, of total truths and total falses-which is then an infinitely true situation from a separate plane-I have learned that the word for a binary reality, is contradiction. Something will stand out from the other.  In the opposite condition, things would not be distinguishable.

Into his text, Trottman pulls these ideas from reviewing the sculptural performances of Joseph Beuys and Matthew Barney.  Describing Barney's Radial Drill, in which the artist uses the same objects from another work, Trottman interprets, "By juxtaposing two videos that related to the same space, Barney opened up multiple, distinct temporal zones, all of which were experienced simultaneously by the viewer"(146).  By video and the ritual, or practiced space, the objects were given a way to "exist" twice in one, sculptural space/time.  Trottman elaborates this reconstruction of time and place perception, writing, "Barney's audience was drawn at once to the distinct but equally distant points of origin.  By displaying the videos on a loop, he furthered the impression of disorientation, stretching each action's duration into an infinite repetition and generating a new, mediated sense of ritual time"(146).  Space is not collapsed in brutly physical terms, although it is indeed, a collapse of perceived space caused by a material perception.  I identify with the latter, I would describe the effects of Barney's work to operate on a level of micro-materiality, where in Barney's videos are still material; light displayed by Barney's ritual enters the eye; it is real. While Barney poses two true situations, my mind can only flicker between the two, so quickly it seems they themselves, have disappeared into one moment.*  The repetition of their plays supports my idea that ritual functions to bring back or maintain a time, even though time has changed, conditions have changed.

Barney's intended effect in Radial Drill  is well-explained by Nancy Spector, who in her work, "In Potentia: Matthew Barney and Joseph Beuys" describes the differences between the two artists, writing, "Where Beuys envisions resolution, Barney identifies tension"(25).  Nancy also states about Barney, "Within Barney's universe, form cannot materialize or mutate unless it struggles against resistance in the process"(25).  Barney's infinitely causal representations creating awkward spaces and times is stressful.  Barney's work is ironically, realistic-in contrast to his surreal actions and costumes and landscapes-in that the artist exhibits that things exist and evolve because they contradict and they do not rest at a "disappearance", things identify each other as they identify themselves.  Casual tension is always there.

True and wonderful, but, preference draws me to Joseph Beuy's theory of Social Sculpture because it also searches not only to use ritual and symbol to understand the spatial conditions in which humankind develops, it celebrates it, which also identifies with a certain "cultural ritualness"-Barney is also abound with "cultural ritualness" though it maintains a distance as well***-and requires other-dimensional scopes to bring together search and celebration as their very own.  In Beuy's universe, it seems that humankind is believed to have a small power to halt the tension that Barney exhibits, at least for a bit.

*which fully involves the second dimension and third dimension, leading off into the "fourth".

**The only word I find sufficient enough to match Barney's effect is a vietnamese word that describes the experience of numbing, slowing down, or preventing but not entirely stopping-inhibiting.

***Drawing Restraint #9, with the occidental guests.

I have questions about the two artists, in regards to ritual/symbolism and science.

Such a coincidence that modern science and modern art begin to form certain common denominators, from tubed paints during the impressionist age to computer technology, allowing reconstruction of perceptible spaces and disorientation of course,  demanding new learning and new rituals. Does this mean new science, new art forms?

My second curiousity is concerned with ritual and disorientation.  Why do we always practice rituals and symbols to imbue meaning?  How else?

Words Learned

From "Mundus Inversus, Mundus Perversus"

Rapacious: predatory, living by preying on other animals.

Canonical: appearing in a biblical canon.

Caste: hereditary social group limited to persons of same rank; any group or social class sharing common cultural features.

Metasubject: metaphysics metasubjects??

Gabriel Orozco, then Rebecca Horn

Extensions of a Reflection
Finger-Gloves

I Was Left Thinking That Kentridge Filled A Gap

This was a more difficult reading to absorb, primarily because I could not successfully draw the suggested meaning from the language of the text.  However, I did cling onto a mention of South African artist William Kentridge's use of reference involvment in his works, which is a similiar use of allusion as I understand the concept.  Kentridge exhibits something which bears significance of another thing, to extend his own intentions.  Kentridge extending also reminds me of abridging; acting as some conjunction in a strange middle of two, more familiar worlds.  Perhaps his place is also a pending one.  In "Mundus Inversus, Mundus Perverus", Cooke seems to make a point of Kentridge's fleeting place in which he identifies as the artist's place.  Throughout the text, Cooke provides situations that exemplify these less accessible places.  One begins with Kentridge addressing apartheid, reading, "These two elements-our history and the moral imperative arising from that-are the factors for making that personal beacon rise into the immovable rock of apartheid.  To escape this rock is the job of the artist" (41).  Kentridge addresses two places that are familiar-apartheid and the moral responses coming from-and to progress from the history is to reach into a less known area, and to conjoin it with the familiars.  In another paragraph, Cooke exhibits Kentridge qualifying his position, "a spot where optimism is kept in check and nihilism is kept at bay...It is in this narrow gap that I see myself working" (41).  Indeed it is a gap, although it is described as a narrow gap, I assume the narrow gap is also infinite, since its margins are also indirect (unconfirmed).  Finally, Kentridge's mode is described to be swinging in between two, impermanent (unconfirmed) points.

Also familiar with Kentridge's draw-erase (inherently-impermanent) animated video work, I found certain passages in Cooke's text that encouraged my interpretation of Kentridge and so forth, the struggle of art-making today, which states, "Coupled with the use of reference as 'a manifestation of content,' this innovative mode of expression-this formal encoding of the temporality of historical narrative-guarantees a crucial dislocation between content and form...Kentridge pace Krauss's argument, avoids both the specularization of memory endemic to much art that deals with political issues and, equally, the sentimentality that bedevils most excercises in redemption"(41).  Focusing on the language of the text, I found correlations between the reality of Kentridge's video work, the flickering condition of his working place, the arguments of art and politics more or less abandonned temporarily, to proceed to the next level of all of this.  Kentridge uses references to discover the reference-free.

Involving Jarry as a reference or a comparative in the text, I find it interesting how Cooke's language changes from "dislocation" and "temporality" to "crystallize" and "imbue"(46).  In describing the produce of Kentridge's work in comparison to Jarry's, Cooke writes, "Jarry's play offers what is essentially an abstract caricature of the traditional metaphysical hierarchy crowned by divine moral judgement, Kentridge crystallizes it, imbuing it an indubitably contemporary caste"(46).  Kentridge moves Jarry's project onward or at the least, to a different position, where it takes on another form along its former.  It seems that with each displacement is a moment which it can be described as an original, and then references converge, original becomes "established" and therefore, a reference.  So what keeps moving?

When Do Puppets Become Digital?

"As the physical distance between the performer and the object widens, the amount of technology needed to bridge the gap increases.  Moving the puppet's center of gravity outside the body of the puppeteer requires more and more sophisticated linking systems"(Kaplin 12).  The idea is interesting, in that creative concepts emerge from physical truths.  As a bare and simple example, we can observe the relationship between human control with an object as the connection changes from direct hand contact with the object to the beginning of leverage structures to assist human control.  Why does distance (and leverage as well) decrease control?  Kaplin's analysis of "linking systems" may also be interpreted as the beginning of materiality, in which the object becomes its own center of gravity from the material center(performer), occupying its own place in time, therefore, as anything becomes outside of the performer's body, time and place, it also becomes material and requires its individual interaction; learning. Humans begin to follow the rules of the material.  Distance requires extended human functions, but also, the object develops towards its own unique "life", finally rendering the material center (performer, included) as an extension.  

More to come! Contemporary artists, non-western mentalities about materialism and control, material-distance-analog-digital relationship.