In anticipation for the Jackson Pollock lecture presented by VSRI yesterday (which was sort of disappointing and all kinds of problematic...), I decided to take up some readings about the development of formalism, Clement Greenberg, and all those important yet antiquated ideas in the scholarship of art history. One of the articles I read was by Victor Burgin, who was a central figure in the development of Conceptual Art in England.
Needless to say, I wasn't expecting to come across ideas that would be directly relevant for this class in an article about situational aesthetics published in 1969. But surprisingly, to describe art and its affordances, Burgin uses vocabulary that we now almost exclusively assign to the description of technology. For example, he writes, "in its less hermetic manifestations art as message, as 'software,' consists of sets of conditions, more or less closely defined, according to which particular concepts may be demonstrated." Here he is proposing that in a period of reified formalist critique, art should be viewed in terms of psychological experience rather than within a world of commodity and objects. It's interesting how this is an argument that many scholars in digital theory make about technology today — the need to view technology (and software) not only as a neutral object, but as having psychological and situational impact.
Another interesting quote: "Attitudes towards materials in art are still informed largely by the laws of conspicuous consumption, and aesthetic commodity hardware continues to pile while utilitarian objects... spill in inconceivable profusion from the cybernated cornucopias of industry."
I just think it's always cool to learn about these overlaps between different eras in different discourses. Importantly, being aware of these early theories also allows us to acknowledge past histories and theories that provide the grounds for us to inform and rework our own academic practice.
You can read an excerpt of Burgin's work here: http://theoria.art-zoo.com/situational-aesthetics-victor-burgin/
Thanks for the article! Like you mentioned, it’s really fascinating that Burgin’s argument to “situate” art/art as message through experiences and its affective capacities align with a handful of scholars that we’ve come across already. First one that comes to mind is Guillermo Gomez-Pena.
ReplyDeleteAnd to add to that point, that’s where some of my personal frustrations with other scholars, who are more preoccupied by describing technology functionally/materially(formally)/hermetically, borrowing Burgin’s phrasing, came from. I just find it really ironic that Burgin is writing this in 1969, as you noted, and is more aware of software’s political and historical contingencies in its design than some of the scholars writing about software decades later. I’d assume that Burgin’s use of software is more of a rhetorical strategy rather than the specific “object” he’s interested in, but I think that the distinction between his analogies of software and hardware in this essay alone illustrate that overlap that you’re talking about.
For example, Burgin’s analogy between art/art as message and software is really similar to our list of definitions for algorithms—a non-neutral set of instructions and conditions with generative power. On the other hand, as you noted, Burgin uses hardware to describe the formalist/materialist preoccupation towards art and not necessarily art as message. I guess our analogy in digital theory would be functionalism?
I might be totally misreading the essay, but I feel that the stakes of Burgin’s argument lies in this analogy: aesthetics operates as a really sophisticated system of both meaning-making and perception comprised of historicized and politicized notions of space and time. Aesthetics, then, can be understood as an algorithm through which we can situate the art/object in different eras and discourses (stealing from your words). And this conceptualization of any kind of object, a situated approach, personally appeals to my own academic approaches and practices across another field of study with its own textual materials.
Perhaps, it is through attending to this “continuum” of perception and practice in designing softwares, algorithms, and other digital technologies that offers a more (positively?) productive approach, and resulting in something critical and generative? I wish I had the money of Google, Facebook, and other companies to invest in those kinds of projects though…