June 6th, 2010 - First drafts and some notions on communication
Through these first sketches and visual set-ups, I am already coming across with the question of format and presentation. Options of quantity and layout in space have not yet been decided and even if the project were to be presented on a digital platform, the number of screens and simultaneity of the images would have to be resolved. Wordpress at the moment allows for movie-clips but not interactive files, so visit
http://eleanalouka.co.uk/bust.html
for ‘clickable’ images or follow the link below for a time-based version. Further down, I bring up Luhmann’s text in regard to communication and interactivity in art, as well as some of his ideas on the relation (distinction) between form and medium
Luhmann belongs to the German sociological tradition, which closely relates to the Medium Theory by examining how the medium –and in our case, the art medium and the digital- affect the psychic and social systems in their processing of meaning. Art is of particular significance to Luhmann because it is believed to be rooted in perception. He places perception to the centre of psychic experience and communication as the key function of social systems. His theory is developed as an al-round analysis of society as a system, comprised of subsystems, one of which is the art-system itself. Other systems include economic, political, legal, scientific, religious and educational structures that retain their complexity and particularity in all their formations. They are seen as distinct and closed in their functions and operations, thus autopoietic, which means autonomous in their production of meaning and indifferent to their environment. Nevertheless, sociology departs from the point that they must be jointly compared as similar structures and thus analyzed from a common perspective. In similar manner, each medium consists of an entity and a discipline, but the precisely the interdisciplinary research and experiment on the comparisons of all media is what can really afford an insight and understanding on their specific function and affect to the production and formation of meaning. One must remember that the Art and artwork are not singularly definable and there is no irreducible element to them. Rather they are utterly relative to the operations of the social art system, within which they are located.
In the age of information the key medium is the internet: It has provided the first decided interactive platform, empowered the user with the offering of a source of knowledge and signaled the free spread of information and communication. Some people attribute it with the claim of having provided us with the first black US President. The internet’s potential towards communication is of primary interest to Luhmann, who has elaborated his theory on the distinction between medium and form, with the intention of posing the question ‘Can Art be possible as communication?’ He then registers the artwork, not as a distinct object which is ‘about something and embodies something’ but simply as that, which has been intentionally created to establish observational relationships. ‘Once someone recognizes, from the manner of presentation, an arrangement that is produced for an observer, a social medium has come into existence. (…) The unity of art resides in that it creates for the sake of observation and observes for the sake of being observed’. Thus Art is only differentiated when observed as such and artwork is that, which is recognized by an observer, as long as it has been created especially for him. This reading of the artwork clearly empowers the viewer. The Artwork can no longer be conceived in reference to the artist, his genius, his decisions or authority. Rather the observer seems the more appropriate basic figure as the site of realization of the work. He is the part, which is absolutely necessary for the realization of the work. Once the artist gives way to the observer, the concept of the object is no longer needed. The observer can be a social system and observation can be communication. The Artwork can be the tool or the machine, and the Viewer can use it to realize a process. This is the political meaning of interactivity in art. It allows the shift of power from the author to the receptor.
