Virtual bodies

Reading this article, a few things crossed my mind.  Not particularly in regards to the article, but they came to my mind anyway.

I cannot help at first to think of sci-fi stuff on TV, particularly Star Trek the Next Generation, where there was a character named "Data", who was an android crewmember of the Enterprise.  His ongoing story was trying to figure out the idiosyncrasies of humans and how to become "more human" himself.  I guess Data would a a literal example of a computer or cyberbrain being an actual body in reality, actually embodying a human form, maybe the reverse of virtual reality, where physical things enter a cyber realm.  And maybe another connection in keeping with the theme of Trek is that you constantly have the Federation preaching the Starfleet gospel, that humanity has arisen from possession, greed, money, want, etc.  Yet ironically they depend on having large spaceships, using technology for everything like moving around the ship, replicating meals, healing people, scanning for life forms, etc.  They even have a "holodeck" which puts them in a virtual reality for various purposes like combat training, or relaxation, or even living out Sherlock Holmes novels.  So what exactly have they evolved to?

Anyway, enough of my nerdiness.  Seeing the overall theme of the article coming to the conclusion that we shouldn't battle with tech, but just coexist with it, we can relate that to today's world, with everyone having a laptop or ipad or bluetooth, blackberry, iphone, droid, etc.  It is really amazing to see my generation (kids born in the 80's-90's) grow with all these advances of personal tech as the years go by, and how kids of the new millennium are growing up not knowing a life without vast amounts of tech available at their fingertips.  It is interesting to think that when my generation reaches maturity, how will the then 20-30 somethings be relating to the technologies of their time?  Will we by then be able to tap into the human consciousness even further, creating these symbiotic human-machine relationships?

Another scary thing, well to me anyway, is that we are losing touch with the physical world, that is, we turn now to Kindles, Nooks, ipads for the news, tv, and, most dramatic, reading books.  Proud parents post photos of their young kids daily online in blogs or on Facebook instead of printing out the pictures and putting them in a scrapbook or photo album.  Hayles says that information that exists on the cyberspace reached a sort of immortality, but what happens when the tech fails?  When the tech is erased or becomes outdated?  Sure, you could lose photos to a house fire, or you could forget the book after putting in your garage for 20 years.  But we are physical beings, existing in a physical world.  Our minds you could argue overlap between physical and metaphysical, but they are still not reduced to dots in a computer matrix.  We shouldn't shun books just to "save paper and paper waste", or photo albums because they take too much time to make.  Are we getting lazy, letting the tech do it for us?  Letting the tech embody what was once physical?

Virtual Reality

Katherine Hayles' article raises some very interesting issues about what it means to be human in the age of information. Material objects, such as money, become less important, and Hayles makes a good point about information and "durable goods" - "If I give you information, you have it, and I do too." (As a teacher, this speaks to my heart.) In the world of information, the separation between the haves and the have nots is not possession but access. I think this is true, but of course, possession of a computer and the education that enables one to use it effectively put one more squarely on the side of the haves. Even in the era of Occupy, there are those in the 99% who are much closer to the 1% than others.


I found several things in Hayles article that were disturbing; most disturbing were the photos of the female model and her robot simulacrum. Why a female, first of all? And secondly, why does she appear naked and so sexualized? Why in high heels and in a contraption that looks like a gynecologist's chair? Why is the image of the robot even more disturbing? Is it because it looks like cyber porn? Why has Hayles provided such highly charged images rather than more "neutral" ones? These are questions that are not answered, but speak to the Judith Butler article - the woman here is performing her gender, for the gaze of male, in a stereotypically sexualized way. The image of the robot was included on a video laser disk entitled "Computer Dreams". Whose dreams?


Hayles discusses how human identity as differentiated from other animals, shifted from man the tool-user to man the tool-maker when it was discovered that some non-human animals also use tools. Now that barrier between human and non-human has fallen, along with many others, with the recent observations of tool-making chimps. Hayles notes that tool-making is gendered and largely defines "man", and wonders why empathy, which she sees as a female trait, is not used to define human-ness. Frans De Waal argues that empathy is necessary for the survival of ALL social species that rely on cooperation, so again, that barrier between human and non-human has fallen. De Waal cites the famous mirror neurons discovered in macaques in Parma as proof that animals experience empathy.
De Waal also postulates that females of all species might have higher levels of empathy because it makes them more sensitive to the needs of their offspring.


Finally, I was disturbed and angered, as I always am, by the relentlessly anthropocentric idea of cyberspace as an alternate to a degraded natural world. I feel strongly that it is immoral not to stay embodied in the physical world and fight for all of life; life that we as humans did not and can not create. It was with deep relief that I read the final sentences in which Hayles comes to the same conclusion - "Embodiment can be destroyed but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back. This observation is as true of the planet as is is of an individual life-form. As we rush to explore the new vistas the cyberspace has made available for colonization, let us also remember the fragility of the material world that cannot be replaced." I love being connected to vast worlds of information via my lap-top, but I love being outside and feeling connected to the natural world through my physical body and its senses even more.

Societies of Control In Literature and Cinema

After reading Gilles Deleuze's intriguing article "Postscript on the Societies of Control" I couldn't help thinking of the literature and cinema embodiments of this idea. Even the former society of Discipline is enacted in books like "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. The masses of workers that are oppressed and surveyed by the one boss, trying to get as much efficiency out of the workers as possible within an enclosed space of, for example, a factory. He describes the machinery of "the recent disciplinary societies, equipped themselves with machines involving energy, with the passive danger of entropy and the active danger of sabotage." In terms of wages and production, disciplinary societies tries to get the highest production out of their workers while keeping their wages at the lowest possible point. In contrast, the societies of control have introduced the "corporation" where the employees are set against each other in a money hungry battle over who can produce the most, therefore earning the coveted bonus. The individuals are turned against one another instead of being amassed as one body of workers. In societies of control there are no longer individuals or masses, but passwords, codes, banks, samples, data etc. Marketing has become "the center or the "soul" of the corporation. We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world." These ideas expanded are embodied in movies like "Metropolis", "Gattaca", "iRobot", "Boiler Room", even the Disney flick "Wall-E". Though the comparisons may seem, juvenile and fictitious in their nature compared to the article, the comparison points to the fact that his claim, and the foreshadowing of institutions being over come by controlling societies, does have some truth to it, or at least is feared by society. In George Orwell's "1984", he takes this haunting idea and materializes it into the government seizing control of the entire society, including the "truths" people could believe. I know there are many more examples, like the "Hunger Games" series of books and Margaret Attwood's "The Handmaiden's Tale", which again deal with complete government control over society as opposed to the corporate or institutional "evil" Deleuze mainly refers too. I found this article fascinating, especially the comparison between past societies and today's from his perspective. I may have taken it all to literally or warped his ideas in my comparisons, however I still found this article extremely interesting.

Performative Acts of Gender and Cindy Sherman

In the beginning of Judith Butler's article “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" she outlines her intentions for the remainder of the work. The introduction, before Part 1, constitutes many ideas that are embodied in Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills series and her later works . Butler begins by discussing the involvement of theatrical acts within philosophy, while there are none directly, she says, she points out the discourse of "acts that maintains associative semantic meanings with theories of performance and acting." She uses the branch of phenomenological philosophy to explain the more specific type of "acts" she is interested in and how they can reflect social and gender realities. Marleau-Ponty, among others theorized the act "seeks to explain the mundane way in which social agents constitute social reality, through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign." Sherman uses gesture and symbolic social signs within her works that create a gender specific image of a very feminized woman in the stills. Sherman's use of make up, costume, setting and composition, create an identifiable image of a woman. Instead of just an ordinary woman, in an ordinary world, she attempts to re-create the familiar and sought after "actress" image from Hollywood black and white films. I believe this is an attempt to embody a certain "type" of woman that was the ultimate female but forever unattainable. This "type" of woman had been evolved through social tastes and popularity, creating a gender specific fantasy through certain behaviors and dress on screen. Butler thesis, essentially captures the process in which Sherman creates her works: "I will draw from theatrical, anthropological, and philosophical discourses, but mainly phenomenology, to show that what is called gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo."

Performing Gender

Reading Judith Butler's article, I was reminded of the photo of Wolfflin in his study, contemplating a photo, with a classical statuette on his table. This picture is featured in the Juliette Koss article, "On the Limits of Empathy", and of it Koss says "Wolfflin likewise had allowed for a very particular viewer: a cultivated and sensitive individual whose soul might be transported by an exalted experience of art. While never explicitly described, the empathetic viewer was implicitly a man of property whose identity was destabilized within the confines of a relatively private realm, carefully circumscribed by the laws of decorum and propriety." In other words, an educated, elite, white, male, and furthermore, a male who has set the cultural agenda. It is a relief to finally have another perspective, and Butler's article is a fascinating look at the idea that gender is a cultural construct, a role that we play within a society.

Butler describes gender as different from biological sex, or in other words, female as different from woman. I understand that society dictates how men and women should perform their roles, but to a certain extent, biology IS destiny. The act of bearing and raising a child has a huge impact on a woman's identity, and the choices she has to make (or can't make). While I agree with much of what Butler says, I don't think it is possible to completely separate the biological body we are born with from the roles we play in society. Butler says that the body is a mode of embodying possibilities, but I think that the possibilities are in fact limited by that very body; skin color, genetic defects or perfections of health and beauty, and of course the aging process, all dictate what is possible for us. Not every body can do every thing, and what the individual body can do changes over time. We make choices about how to "perform" based on the body we have, like it or not. Butler specifically addresses the role of women, but of course men have to perform roles as well, and as she says "those who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished." I would add that we are lucky to be living in a fairly liberal time and place, with a greater tolerance for variation than many past and indeed current cultures.

The suggestion that "the body is known through its gendered appearance" I don't think is literally true; in our society, I am allowed to dress exactly like a man, in jeans, T-shirt, and hiking boots, say, and still be perceived as a woman, partly because I clearly have a female body under the clothing. In my case, clothing does not make the man.

In the section on binary genders and "the heterosexual contract", I do have some disagreement with Butler. Across most species, heterosexual sex IS necessary for reproduction, and humans share a powerful sex drive with all other living beings - like breathing and eating, it is necessary for the continuation of life. Butler contends that the incest taboo promotes a heterosexual agenda, but I think the incest taboo is really more about preserving a healthy gene pool. An article in the SF Chronicle this morning was about how more and more elephant seals are displaying genetically caused deformities because they went through a genetic bottleneck. (They were hunted to the brink of extinction, fewer than 20 were left by the end of the 19th century, and all 150,000 of todays elephant seals are descended from those 20 ancestors.) I do agree of course, that many, if not most, societies have looked unkindly on homosexuality, for whatever reason, and that it is just as "natural" as heterosexuality.

Performing ones gender wrong exacts subtle and not so subtle punishments from society, and as a woman with an aging body, I find it is becoming harder to perform "femininity",
and that in some ways I have become invisible. I am often happiest when I am off the stage, alone outside, with no human gaze upon me, truly invisible.

So - I agree that gender is an ongoing performance, but I don't think it can be extricated from biological, cultural, familial, or any number of other roles that we are cast in by accident of birth.

Foucault's Las Meninas

While I'm partial to Foucault as a philosopher, I like this Las Meninas chapter.  Right from the get-go when he uses the word "gaze" 3 times in the first paragraph, so already I felt as if I had a concrete example of what the heck Lacan was talking about last week.

The whole chapter is an elaborate discussion and dissection of Velasquez's Las Meninas painting.  It is almost fun how Foucault delves into artwork like a scientist or an archaeologist, looking for clues as a detective at a crime scene.  He breaks down, and in rather common and understandable language, what is going on in Las Meninas in terms of composition, space, and intent.  I was already in the know of the mirror and it's contents, but it was interesting to see how it revolved in a greater role inside and outside the painting than when I first heard about it.

A phrase that I thought was interesting and pique my thoughts about this chapter was this one:
"It is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say."  According to Foucault our language can never fully describe the beauty, horror, wonder, etc of what we see, that language is a poor describer of what we see.  I can relate that to some of the other things we've read, that artist's trying to imitate nature are unable to because nature exists outside the artwork on its own, thus an imitative piece of work fails in its own doing.  Anyway I thought the sentence was nice to ponder over.

What's funny to me is that this opening chapter to The Order of Things, I cannot fully relate to the rest of the book, which really questioned human history and the perspective of how it is written/remembered.

Sculpture in the Expanded Field

Rosalind Krauss was originally a formalist follower of Clement Greenberg, who was a champion of Modernism and Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock. As Modernism waned, Krauss became interested in newer movements that she felt "required a different theoretical approach which focused less on the aesthetic purity of an art form (prevalent in Greenberg's criticism), and more on aesthetics that captured a theme or historical and/or cultural issues." www.theartstory.org/critic-krauss-rosalind.htm In her article "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", published in the journal OCTOBER in 1979, Krauss gives us a history lesson, describing how rapidly sculpture has changed, that the category of sculpture can be made to be "infinitely malleable", and that post-war art can include just about anything. She describes the historicizing critics as attempting to make the new sculpture seem familiar, as if it had evolved in a linear progression from the past; Minimalist sculpture of the 60s was seen by critics as having evolved from the early 20th century Constructivists. The "rage to historicize" would have seen Donald Judd's work as similar to the Constructivists, although he was much more concerned with materials. As sculpture became even more involved with materials in the 70s, historians looked even further back to find comparisons, to ancient sites like Stonehenge, but Krauss maintains that those sites were most emphatically not sculpture - the people who created them certainly did not see them that way. Historians also referred to "primitivist" sculpture such as Brancusi's work, to "mediate between past and present". Krauss then asks - what IS sculpture? and goes on to say that traditionally it has been a commemorative representation, such as the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Michelangelo's Campidoglio, which was used by the Renaissance popes as a link to Imperial Rome. Sculptures like this were figurative and vertical, their pedestals an important part of the structure. The logic of the traditional monument started to change in the 19th century with Rodin, and that then sculpture became Modern, not linked to specific sites, it becomes self-referential. The pedestal becomes part of the sculpture, and does not connect it to place. By the 1950s, Modernism had become exhausted, and sculpture had become defined by what it was not; Barnett Newman said "Sculpture is what you bump into when you back up to see a painting." Krauss used Robert Morris' work as an example - in the room but not of the room, visually linked to the landscape but not of the landscape. Her definition of sculpture at this point is that it is "not-landscape and not-sculpture". In the 1960s, artists explored the limits, and sculpture becomes an "expanded field" - it can now be both architecture and landscape, which Krauss call the "complex". Sculpture is now only one "term on the periphery of a field in which there are other differently structured possibilities." The expanded field opens up to 3 other forms - "marked sited", "site-construction", and "axiomatic structures". In the late 60s, artists like Smithson, Heizer, and Morris, no longer Modernist, explored these new forms. The expanded field characterizes Postmodernism, and involves two factors - 1) the individual practice of the artist expanding the boundaries of sculpture - modernist critics call this eclectic. Modernism demands "purity and separateness of various mediums. 2) However, in Postmodernism, ideas about culture are more important, and any medium or combination of mediums can be used to express those ideas. Postmodernist practice may not be organized around medium, but Krauss argues that the strongest work still reflects logical space. Krauss concludes by saying that Postmodernism is an historical event within the art history continuum, that it is important to try to map it, but that the historicist's "constructions of elaborate genealogical trees" may not be the best way, because they insist on similarities to past work. She describes postmodernist sculpture as a rupture from Modernism, a reaction to events of the present, and not necessarily part of a linear progression. New ways of looking are necessary to view the new sculpture.

Merleau-Ponty, Cezanne’s Doubt

The author’s study of Cezanne is perhaps the best study of an artist in the series of articles we have read to date. Instead of vague references to artists creating work in order to construct or deconstruct some abstract relationship, Merleau-Ponty actually uses historical references to gain insight into Cezanne’s style and motivation. Quotes from Cezanne, such as “But aren’t nature and art different? I want to make them the same.” This is a clear opportunity for us to gain insight into Cezanne’s style, from his perspective to his use of colors, to his motivation itself.

Later in the article, the author uses Cezanne to define some interesting yet difficult relationship between artists, their life and their works. Here we enter again onto shaky ground, creating assumptions based on some form of logic. The example I have in mind comes from this passage...”The work to come is to be hinted at, but it would be wrong to take these hints for causes, although they do make a single adventure of his (Cezanne’s) life and work. Here we are beyond causes and effects; both come together in the simultaneity of an eternal Cezanne who is at the same time the formula of what he wanted to be and what he wanted to do.” These types of abstract suppositions literally call out to be questioned and my question is, how can you be sure of this? 

The article continues with many more examples of assumptive logic, so that the article then joins in the legion of the impeachable bodies of work that continue to roll over with the passage of time. 

Foster...Obscene, Abject and Traumatic...

With this article, it seems the art philosophers and art historians have finally made an attempt to catch up with the postmodern era. This class started out focused on defining the mystical qualities of aesthetic, with each author redefining aesthetic as the styles of the times changed. Then comes the middle of the 20th century and suddenly art itself takes on a new purpose, and aesthetic is no longer necessarily the goal. As Ben mentioned in his blog, the question of whether the art comes first or the language becomes very relevant. The authors are evidently continuing to try to get into the heads of the artists in order to explain the phenomenon of radical change. Foster’s dissection of the Lacan gaze and the image screen seems to be an attempt to place the art or perhaps even the artist in some position relative to the viewer. While I am sure that the artist may be aware of the viewer’s perspective as they create art, the analysis seems to border on the absurd. Isn’t it enough that some artists simply create with their own unique ideation of the perspectives of the viewers? 

Foster uses the Cindy Sherman example, progressing from her early work to her later abjective style, and places the 3 distinct styles of Cindy’s work into a construct of viewer, gaze, screen and then explains that “In this scheme of things the impulse to erode the subject and to tear at the screen has driven Sherman from her early work....” etc. I really don’t know about this kind of assumption. Is that what Cindy was thinking when she made her work? Really? These kinds of assumptions tend to populate the writings of many of the historians/philosophers we have sampled from and it immediately makes their work invalid. Rather than trying to get into the heads of the artists, wouldn’t the time be better spent enjoying the art? 

Foster

Reading the Foster article gave me the sense that he is trying to recreate and define terms that appropriately describe the work of postmodernism.  This seems to generally happen whenever a new vein or genre of art bursts forth into the art world and cannot be put into its predecessor's labels and definitions. Using Lacan as a guide, he helps to mold the new vernacular, using Sherman, Kelly, and Miller's works as examples of how this new vocabulary is to be used.

When reading stuff like this, I stop and wonder sometimes- what comes first, the art or the vocabulary/phycology to describe the art?  In this case of Foster, seems he, Lacan, Foucault, etc. are inventing these new ideas from the art that is developing.  But haven't the points of all these authors we've read been that these words and ideas describing current art are already innate in the artist's being? (or Being? ugh Heidigger...)  Yet at the same time, while these things are innate in the artist, the authors must write and describe them back to artists, art historians, critics, etc.  And when exactly does one set of vocabulary trump a previous set?  Do they overlap at all?  Or, as it seems with most postmoderns, do the current sets strive to demolish the old, to shake off the dust and shock the world with a fresh, and often brash, perspective?

Who knows...it seems that art changes as people change, society changes, and environments change, and as such folks will always need to try an explain things.  Personally I think trying to explain art is like trying to catch a butterfly on a windy day.  Art isn't math.