Camouflage

The Language of Nothing

Just going back to the beginning today, looking where I came from in thinking of Nothing, I looked at the definition again on the net:

and it struck me what a huge, complex Something ‘Nothing’ is defined as…Nine meanings and nineteen subsections…

Definition 3 struck me the most:

No matter what we do we can’t escape from Nothing. All there is is what is – Something.

In trying to define it, it is automatically a paradox. There is no such thing as Nothing, so ‘it’ cannot be defined. All of the above ‘Nothings’ are not really Nothing at all, they are attempts to define ’something’ which doesn’t exist. Something none of us have ever perceived…I’m tempted to say ‘by definition’ – but that is where the problem lies – in our language – our definition is of ’something’ that doesn’t exist, we apply a label to ‘it’ in our daily lives. But there is no ‘it’. All that there is, is.

Again. Something that is…nonexistent. Something that is…not.

Nothing is not a Something.

Nothing just Is Not.

Some more Potential Art

As well as ideas of latent images – in photography, invisible ink or lemon juice – what else is ‘hidden’? Not Nothing, but not yet really Something? Stored Media as I posted yesterday – film, memory cards, cassette tape, DVD.

Why are things not seen? Camouflage, coding, masking.

Here is some camouflage:

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Does this sentence exist? It’s here but you can’t see it. So how do you know it’s here? By the context of the sentence maybe, you see a gap where you are expecting text, you see paragraphs talking along the lines of camouflage so you might intentionally go looking for it, dragging your mouse over the area to highlight the content.

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But what if you’re not expecting it? What if it is all around you? What is in camouflage or hidden in your everyday life – that you aren’t expecting so not missing?

Coding, how about coding? HTML art – what it would look like if you uploaded it.

Instructions of what to do or think, like Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit?

Yes, camouflage, coding… what goes un-noticed but has the potential to be Something if you notice it. I like this idea.

Institutions and Media

Whilst reading around other artists ideas on Nothingness – generally not so much the philosophy of Nothing but other peoples mimimalist references to it – I came across this this blog from someone in Australia. He has made parodies of different aspects of art. I mostly watched the mimimalist and postmodernist sketches, but one series he calls Blank Canvas (I, II and III) happen to be based around what I was thinking about the other day, and Ryman in particular.

His sketches are kind of funny and ironic – talking about how it takes years to gain the style, technique and skills to get idea in your head onto canvas and make a living from it – only to produce a sealed, readymade canvas and say it expresses everything he wants to say so it’s finished.

Parody or not it brought me yet again back to thinking how this is the way art is seen from the ‘outside world’, past the elite art-world ‘institution’, to what ‘the public’ think. They ‘know’ Tracey Emin’s bed or Damien Hirst’s cow ‘is art’ because they’ve been told it is by various institutions – but on the whole would they be able to tell you i) why it is categorised as art and ii) why it was made this way in the first place? What is the purpose behind it, and/or what is it trying to say? Maybe there’s both an internal and an external question there.

Institutionalist and capitalist theories aside, does etourist2’s parody-personality himself understand why Ryman decided to make his work how he did? OK so it’s a sketch, its meant to be ironic, but reading over the rest of his site (eg Nothing on a Grand Scale) he seems to be a painter with a major dislike for conceptual art.

(This brings up the categorisation again – people have departmentalised art for themselves and don’t like to give their labels away. The Stuckists don’t want to be in the same category as Damien Hirst. “It’s not Art with a capital A”. But highbrow, lowbrow, whatever label you apply to it the content is the same. The content expresses something to me.)

The paradox is he repeatedly keeps asking what the point is. But I could ask that equally about his paintings. What is the point? Are they supposed to be making a statement? Conveying some kind of message? Are they just there to look pretty on his wall or blend in with the surroundings? Are they to make him muchos $$$ off Joe Public? What is their ‘purpose’? Is he as guilty of interior design, (if that’s a crime) as he claims Ryman is?

Among the comments at the bottom of his page are:

“I often wonder how much the artist was paid for the “artwork” and think to myself, “why didn’t I do that, and make a killing?“

“Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists enough to emulate it.“

“Yes I have seen that too, but just because they do it doesn’t mean it’s worth emulating.“

“I’ve seen it time and time again where some emerging artist has produced this kind of art for reasons that are beyond me.“

Interesting – “why didn’t I do that, and make a killing?“

“As an artist I don’t understand how anyone can claim to express anything through a blank canvas“. But why not? I can see what Ryman was expressing so if someone (eg etourist2’s parody), ‘doesn’t think you can express anything through a blank canvas’, is it that they don’t understand it? If so, is that because they expect the thing in front of them alone to give them information directly, with no thought and no background info? Or is it just that the work itself isn’t successful, it’s not communicating clearly what it was intended to, it’s just not very good art? More importantly does any art really communicate whatever its is intending to in just one object in a gallery?

Its good to make people think but you need something to start with. Then again, as ever my problem is that the object at the end is pretty meaningless, its the process you go through in researching and producing it and the reasons you did what you did that matter. This tends to not be available to the end viewer unless they follow you like a stalker…

“Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists” – much art doesn’t speak to me, either for the reasons above, I haven’t understood the point in it, I just don’t ‘get’ whatever it is other people are getting. Or it can just be repetitive – for example minimalism has a point in its fundamental questions – but I don’t need eight thousand different examples of it making its point. Most conceptual art I don’t really need to even see to get the point. That isn’t to say I don’t find conceptual art fascinating – but I only really need the concept.

etourist2 says Robert Ryman has made a career out of painting surfaces white…the blank canvas as a ‘concept’ has been over done. Which is true as I said above – once you understand the concept it doesn’t need to be repeated. However does “it’s time to get back to actually painting something on the canvas” fare any better? Hasn’t that been done to death as well?

This is why I prefer philosophy – the ideas are the medium. Art is a tool I use to gain ideas, or to rearrange ideas to uncover new ideas. But my end result is always ideas, or understanding – or occasionally communicating ideas to other people, although it can be pretty narcissistic. But relating to “Apparently this kind of art does speak to some artists” – why don’t paintings speak to me? The vast, vast majority of them have no particular message, feeling or even look particularly interesting or attractive. When they do have a message it seems it could have been said more clearly, better or more ‘interestingly’ by some other method or medium. I just don’t ‘see the point in’ painting. Even painting that isn’t aiming to have any message. “Oh yes that looks nice“. Now lets move on.

Potential Art

Some quick examples of Potential Art:

And between Being Something and Not Being Something…

Potential Art

It’s been ten days since my last entry and over Easter the project has faded into my memory a bit. Faded. Changing from Something towards Nothing. Even just typing that sentence fades back into my mind what I am thinking of. It fades back into Somethingness.

Something and Nothing. Being and not being. Where is the boundary between something existing and not existing? Is it really as simple as it first appears – is/is not? How long before memories fade so far they cease to exist? From Something to Nothing?

Or in the other direction, from Not Being to Being – how far do I have to go to be able to claim ‘this is a painting’? Is it when I claim it is finished? What if I later decide I need to add a few more touches? Is it once it’s under way and I’m aiming to ‘produce a painting’? Is it as soon as the first brushstroke hits the canvas?

Is it when I have the materials at hand?

Is this a potential letter?

Robert Ryman is someone who brings up the question of ‘what’ a painting ‘is’:

“Eliminating the unnecessary confusions of colour and shape, he explores the physicality of painting as an object…“

“…ever since post-impressionism [...] painting has possessed ‘a growing visibility of the ground, the assumption of support.‘”

” The how of painting has always been the image – the end product. No longer.“

“his aim is to present, rather [than] represent.”

Although he’s looking more at different aspects of a painting, rather than any quantitative or temporal boundaries, he does approach the conceptual aspect – is it still a painting if I take the colour (and therefore any represented image) away? Is it a photo before I develop the film?

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Latency and Potential

Latent ideas
Ideas are important to me. It’s what I’m aiming for with art. As I mentioned before I want to use art as a tool to some other end, not as an end in itself.

I want to use it to help me understand the world, it is a tool in my philosophy. I’ve been thinking of Being and Not-Being regarding ideas. Back to Descartes First Meditation – ‘I only exist when I am thinking‘. Regardless of his later more questionable theories – an idea only exists when it’s being thought…I seem to be able to draw back past thoughts and ideas – but where were they when I wasn’t thinking about them? Do they exist latently or subconsciously as some physical combination of electrochemistry in my brain? Surely there is always the potential for an idea. A latent idea that can be drawn up in the right combination of circumstances. But the idea itself doesn’t exist in any way, only other circumstances that will create a similar idea when the situation arises.

Back to fading. Potentiality. The existence of something that I can’t currently see or experience. If I’m not experiencing it, how do I know it’s there?

Is a photograph a work of art before it’s developed? I’ve been thinking about using a latent image on some photographic paper as ‘potential art’ but documenting it becomes a chore. I could just present the exposed paper inside the sealed black packet but then I have no evidence it’s actually exposed. The only method to document the exposure would be be something along the lines of infra red film recording the process in the darkroom but it doesn’t seem interesting enough to take this far. Then it occurred to me that whilst a photographic latent image can only exist in the dark invisible ink is a different story. Or to be really basic, lemon juice:

I could iron this as we did when we were kids, but then it would definitely be Something, rather than a Potential Something, or a Nothing. But it’s there if you fancy trying.

Back to the potential art. Does it exist as soon as the light hits the negative (or memory card)? Does it exist even before that? The image is always there, all around us – is the moment I press the button the point at which it is categorised ‘art’? Is it the moment I see the image in my mind? Is it when I plan how to construct the image? It’s a process – but we set rules as to at what point we can categorise something as art or a photograph or as Being a Something.

Potential art.

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Searching for a piece of board to mount the lemon juice work on, I started peeling some photos from an old piece of work from about eight years ago. Interestingly, what I was left with is perhaps more relevant to Nothingness than anything I have played about with above. All that I’m left with is the marks of old artworks – blocks of dark where all around the card is faded; numbers labelling what work lay where. Evidence of the absence of art.

Pieces of Nothing

I’ve been having discussions with F regarding obtaining ‘donations’ of pieces of art that I can then destroy or turn into something else.

Originally I was considering turning Something into Nothing, or Nothing into Something. John Cage perhaps did the latter with 4′ 33″, whilst Rauschenberg did the former with his Erased de Kooning drawing:

It is interesting that Cage denies that silence exists. This is something I’ve been considering regarding Nothing. ‘Silence doesn’t exist’. ‘No-sound doesn’t exist’. ‘No-thing doesn’t exist’. It’s interesting to play around with words and think about what I’m really saying when I utter them. Existence of ‘Nothing’ aside, surely I can still make a particular thing cease to exist – by transforming it, recategorising it, destroying it – even if it doesn’t become Nothing, it is a lack of some Thing.

To turn Something into Nothing I need something worthy of the title ‘Something’. If I’m turning art into non-art I need something that is ‘worthy’ of the title ‘art’ to start with, something that is already categorised…it would be an anachronism to make something for the purpose, label it ‘art’, only to destroy it and label it ‘non-art’. Its original intention was never truly to be art. The original purpose or ‘category’ is important in whatever happens to it.

Discussing this with F, we realised that the more unwilling someone was to part with something, perhaps the more ‘worthy’ of the title or category that thing was.

F: “I also think that the fact that it has been exhibited and that I am attached to it, will give more significance to your work”; ” I think I’m hovering around the ‘what makes a thing a work of art’ question again. Thinking about which work to offer you is helping me clarify which of my own works I consider art …“

Now this is interesting, the act of considering whether an object is worthy of being altered makes us look at the categories we apply to things – is it Something enough to miss? Is it Something enough to become Nothing? I already possess things that wouldn’t mean much if I did destroy them – are they already in the category Nothing? Can I turn nothing into Nothing? Are there degrees of Somethingness?

If I go back to:

I had quantities of Nothingness – so inversely I can have quantities of Somethingness. Can I apply this to values or ‘worthiness’?

F: “ I am looking for a work that is ‘good’ enough (to be called art and thus give meaning to your work), and yet also ‘bad’ enough (to part with)…“

Degrees of categorization…
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Destruction though, what does this mean? Am I really talking about destruction? Does destruction mean to totally obliterate something from existence? Or am I destroying something in removing it from one category and placing it in another?

If I do obtain, say, a painting that is judged to be ‘art’… I am quite loathe to simply destroy it by vandalising, burning etc, it doesn’t seem very meaningful, just a rehash of the deKooning / Rauschenberg idea. What would the act-of-destruction say to me? About Nothingness or non-art? I’m more inclined to re-categorise by giving something a new purpose or function.

Perhaps I could turn something into a jigsaw, or divide it into many parts and give each part away as a gift to someone else. Or turn the canvas into an item of clothing, or several handkerchiefs. Or a solid item could be turned into a small bedside table, or several coasters.

Or I could just divide it up – One painting would become many smaller paintings (or would they be ‘paintings’ in the true sense at all, if that was not their original aim?) Would the painting still ‘exist’ if it is in many parts? How many parts would have to be lost or destroyed for it to cease to ‘be’? This reminds me of the Ship of Theseus in some respects – if part of the ship is damaged and replaced, it is still the same ship. Over time, more and more parts are damaged and replaced. What if at some point every part of the ship is replaced and not a single original piece remains? Is it the same ship? If not, at what point did it cease to be the ship? Although the pieces of the painting are not being replaced, how many pieces would have to be lost or destroyed for it to be no longer even a damaged or incomplete painting, but not a painting at all? At what point would it only be the concept of the original painting?
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Currently these are still just ideas. I don’t know if any of these will ever see the light of day as Things. But I don’t know if they count as Nothing either. As the idea, concept or purpose exists, is the art already there? Does turning it into a physical, material substance add anything to the concept? It has already developed beyond immaterial concepts in my mind to virtual copy on the internet (and in the mind of anyone who reads it) so it is archived and exists as Something in that way.

I don’t know if it matters if I don’t actually make anything and have literally Nothing physically – just ideas, thoughts about concepts of ‘Nothing’. Could I just discuss many ideas of things I could make and ultimately only have a list of art that hasn’t been made yet. Potential art.

Pieces of nothing.

Nothing Is Happening Here

So here is my space where I’ve not made any artwork for several weeks.

I had to retype that sentence just now, as I originally wrote “Here is my workspace where nothing has happened for the past few weeks” – which is precisely what I’m trying to investigate. What is this ‘nothing’ ? Every sentence I come up with contains both ‘is’ and ‘nothing’. Nothing is…

How can ‘nothing’ be? What ‘is‘ nothing?

Of course, ‘things happen’ in my space. As you can see, I’ve had coffee, eaten a sandwich, doodled, written down my thoughts, played dominoes…there is evidence of previous activities occuring there. There are also Things there, objects…there is Something existing there. But in terms of ‘art’ there is Nothing. Nothing is existing again.

Is it possible for Nothing to exist? All I can perceive are Things. Even ‘empty’ space is Stuff – molecules of gas moving around. All I can perceive is Stuff, Things. Surely by definition I can’t perceive Nothing itself, as it is Not There…but maybe I can perceive it or know of its (non?)existence via a lack of Something? Im stuck here again, the only reason I think I see a lack of something is because I see Something Else behind where one Thing ends…I know the laptop screen ends there because I start to see the curtain behind it…but I’m not seeing Nothing, I’m seeing the boundary between one Thing and a different Thing.

What about a vacuum? No Stuff, but there ‘is’ space. x is here relative to y and z… Space and time though – do they exist? Are they Things? I have fleeting memories of Kant arguing they are a form of human intuition and not properties of Things-in-themselves, but it’s not something I remember in detail. More reading needed…

On a less existential level, what about other concepts of Thing and Nothing? Whilst twiddling my thumbs in my space I concocted this:

and it struck me it had a resemblance to Braille:

This got me wondering about visual arts for the blind. Sonic arts for the deaf. Beethoven, naturally. But this must spring up elsewhere. But it in some ways could have a resemblance to Nothing – something that I can’t perceive. Bats and echo-location, birds using magnetic fields for migration, sniffer dogs…

I’m not sure if this could go anywhere but it’s worth investigating.

Types of Nothingness

Nothing as the absence of Something.

Three kinds of nothingness. ‘Nothing’ as evidence of ’something’ elsewhere. Nothing as a lack of something I expected.

No what? No material? No light? No visual input. No Thing that I can perceive. Nothing as a hole in a piece of card. Nothing as a lack of light where there is light elsewhere. Nothing as something I conceive of.

I now have something where there is nothing. I see a thing. I see ‘Things’ through ‘Nothing’.

In fact everything I see, I see through Nothing.

Nothingness comes in different shapes and sizes

And even numbers

There is a lot of nothing in here

and a very small amount in here

Here are some bits of nothing I had left over.

Things can be Something and Nothing at the same time.

Now Im back to philosophy. Recently we’ve been thinking about essence and existence – the difference between what something is and whether it is. “This is a sentence”. Its essence is that it is a sentence in that it comes within the definition of ’sentence’; but it is also a sentence in that it exists. Whereas the essence of my dinner tonight exists in my mind as an image of some succulent sausages and fluffy mash, sadly it does not yet exist.

However it does exist as some sausages in the freezer and some potatoes in the corner shop. The potential exists. Can I have the potential for art existing? The list of pieces of art I haven’t made yet? The paint and the brush sitting there waiting to become a painting.

Also, when I’ve eaten my sausage & mash and it scootles off down the loo in the morning, does it exist any more? If I destroy items that are supposedly art now, at what point do they no longer exist? Can I eat art? Does it exist if it is in many pieces all over the world? How many pieces have to be lost or destroyed to destroy the whole thing?

Does Nothing exist? If something has to Be to exist, can nothing Be? Nothing must exist. I feel a lot more reading coming on…

As I spend all my time thinking and writing maybe my work should just be an essay on my thoughts over the year… maybe that’s where I will end up.

Something out of Nothing

We have relocated as wordpress are more organised than I am, ergo I have to do less of the technical malarkey.

Old posts can be seen here, but may gradually move this way if I have time.

So, I am currently thinking about nothing. I have been stressing about what-I-am-not-doing for weeks now as Ive been too distracted by the philosophy aspect of the course. Of course, it doesnt help having an extra module to do with no give on the art department side.

Ho hum. So Ive been doing Nothing. This has been panicking me slightly, to the extent where I began to seriously wonder if I could turn Nothing into Something. Can the fact that I’m not making anything tell me anything about art or about anything itself?

Well theres the old art question, what it is, what it isnt…but I dont want to go looking for something there isn’t an answer to. But still, categories. Stuff and non-stuff. Art and not-art. Categorisation within art. By period, by medium, by purpose.

Can I make a statement by the fact that I am making nothing? Can I go into the studio every day and read, have a coffee, maybe write some of my philosophy coursework. Would this activity be seen as being a Something rather than a Nothing? Or rather would it be seen as being a performance art rather than an absence of art? Is it too much of a paradox – by doing nothing am I inevitably doing something?

People have done this before, used their daily lives as their art. I seem to remember Jonathan Ree discussing philosophy as art. Perhaps thats more where I’m at, thinking as art. Or rather, thinking via art.
Theres the problem of archiving. The college insist I have documentation of what I do. How do I document nothing? Once it’s documented it exists, it’s something. Having said that, archiving edits history. Can I leave only archives in people’s minds? Just the fact they remember me doing nothing? Or in fact, the fact they dont remember me at all…now theres an interesting idea…

Or perhaps I could sit and list pieces of art that I have not made. Or document materials that were not used. Could I exist at art college as a non-art-student? Just documenting the life of a non-artist?

Ultimately what I wanted to do with art was use it as a tool to get somewhere else, not as an end-in-itself. Not everybody at art college is aiming to be ‘an artist’. I use it as a research tool to gain information and understanding for myself. So why am I looking at outcomes? People have told me it’s process-based art but I’m not convinced. Still, all it is is a label, another category. Im Doing-Stuff to enhance my understanding of the world, if somebody else happens to look and start thinking too great. So a paradox isnt a problem. It’s the fact you might sit and wonder whether it’s a paradox at all that I’m after.

So, I shall start to do Nothing…