The
Politics Of The Machine
Afterimage, Nov, 1999
by Philip Glahn
Pulse 48
by Bill Jones and Ben Neill
Sandra Gering Gallery
July 8-September 11, 1999
Political
intervention through abstract art is commonly expressed through the artwork's
negation of political rhetoric
and
social hierarchies. By declaring its own autonomy, an abstract artwork can
serve as a model for political freedom.
Yet music
can express social content through abstracted socio-political relations, e.g.,
the domination of a musician
by the
composition or the liberation of the performance through improvisation. The
sound and light installation
"Pulse
48" created such a realm of freedom, almost a fairy tale come true of
human and machine walking hand in
hand
through a world unthreatened by a powerful culture industry.
"Pulse
48' was a collaboration between musician Ben Neill and
visual artist Bill Jones. The main space at the Sandra
Gering
Gallery displayed five groupings of plastic light sources. The pod-like
lighting structures in the largest field
were
built from joined pairs of different colored plastic sleds. The other four
fields consisted of similar smaller
arrangements made of Frisbees. Each of the fields in the main gallery featured its
own speaker. A separate project
room
hosted another Frisbee-field; this one equipped with its own amplifier and one
speaker per pod. Upon entering
the
darkened gallery, the viewer was immersed in an atmosphere of pulsing light and
electronic music. The patterns
of
light and sound climbed and descended in a series of untraceable variations and
indeterminable densities. The
ambient
sounds and corresponding flashing plastic forms were controlled by a computer
according to a simple
mathematical formula. All aspects of the installation including the pitch,
duration, rhythm, tempo, dyna mic
curves and
large-scale form were derived from a 4/6/7/8 set of numerical relationships or
rations. [1] This information
determined
and manifested a sensational experience within the sonic and visual realms.
The
installation created an environment that took its full effect on viewers
spending even a short time in the main
gallery,
a sphere that hovered between presence and absence. The different speeds and
intensities of the pulsing light
and
music produced a trance-like, hypnotic environment in which it was hard for the
spectator to remain focused,
either
physically or intellectually. This experience would periodically fragment when
the sound and light momentarily
stopped,
descending the room into familiar distances, visible light sources and tangible
objects. Only the silence was
unfamiliar.
While the walls of the gallery, the sleds, Frisbees, speakers and the cables
connecting them all were signs
of
recognition and orientation, the silence and stillness of the light constructed
an absence of spectacle and performance.
This
silence played an important part in "Pulse 48," keeping it from
becoming a tool of transcendental escape into a
realm
of spectacular distraction: "There are moments of silence. There is roo m for contemplation," said Jones. [2]
Collaboration
was central to "Pulse 48." The project was a joint effort in which
Neill acted as musical engineer and Jones
conceived
of the visual premises. As Jones pointed out, "Pulse 48" was not
necessarily intended as a critique of
authorship
or of the modernist myth of the artist as originator, although the suspension
of the producer has become an
essential
part of the structure and mechanisms of the work. This interdisciplinary
installation questioned the boundaries
of
artistic forms and disciplines-- those assumptions about artistic motives and
practices that still seem to persist even
though
they have been subject to criticism as well as extensive de- and reconstruction
over the past several decades.
Perhaps
more importantly, the computer also acted as a collaborator in the piece.
Through shuffling and chance, the
computer
created perceptual shifts and moods that were never anticipated. This, as Jones
remarks, makes the question
of the
composer interestingly problematic for not only did "Pulse 48" ad d
the computer as creator but, as with other
historical
forms of art that include an element of chance, the performance of the work was
part of its own composition.
This
installation can be read as a critique of the fixed icon-object. Beyond its
layering of disciplines "Pulse 48" created
an
environment and atmosphere that is not entirely graspable in physical or
economic terms. The sequences of light
and
dark, sound and silence, pitch and rhythm were never the same. The performance
started off simply but grew
complex
as the patterns became indeterminable. Both artists see the work as an
experiment closely related to many
historical
developments in the arts. Due to its own historical context, however, it is
also an experiment in new metaphors
and in
a new vocabulary that can be used to communicate. Jones also inscribes the
pod-fields of sleds and Frisbees
within
a heritage in which the creation of a "field situation" [3] in
sculpture allows the viewing subject to locate him- or
herself
not simply opposite the fetish-object, but in a field without qualitative
differentiation. Without the light and music,
the
objects in "Pulse 48" are only pieces of plastic. They are part of a
history of found materials, everyday objects that
bring
their function into the work and inside the gallery. They are objects of
recreation, echoing the notion of play
inherent
in the computer's compositional process and the experimental character of the
work. The practicality of the
objects
further tests the boundaries between the everyday and the art object.
"Pulse
48" is part of a tradition of a large number of collaborative art projects
that involve a fusion between art and
technology,
and a musical heritage embodied primarily by a form of musical experimentation
pioneered by John Cage.
Cage's
attempt to free the performance and musicians from the domination of the
composer, to integrate the audience
as
well as everyday sounds and objects into a work of art through the use of
chance and an "abstract negation of musical
order"
[4] aimed to integrate political action into music. This collapse of art into
life, as well as Cage's endeavor to
deaestheticize art, runs parallel to the
interests of Neill and Jones. "Pulse 48" was informed by everyday
objects and
their
functional aspect within the work; the "contemplative silences"
allowed the penetration of absence or nonmusical
sounds
into the installation. The project was based on a "fractal
composition" in which each single element reflected the
structure
of the whole. This again is reminiscent of Cage's idea of a future emancipated
from the principle of domination
--a social field of diversity and multiplicity without qualitative
differentiation.
"Pulse 48" is a model for an arrangement with
technology
in which the machine is a creator of something beautiful and unthreatening; the
idea of the machine shifts from
a tool
of anonymous manipulation and unconscionable warfare to a collaborator and
companion.
In
contrast to the projects of the group Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT),
founded in 1966 by Billy Kluver, Robert
Rauschenberg,
Fred Waldhauer and Robert Whitman in an attempt to
bring artists and engineers together, "Pulse 48"
maintains
a similar social function as much of Cage's work. Most of EAT's
projects were content-oriented and surpassed
the
utopian limitations to which "Pulse 48" and Cage's work are confined,
partly due to their musical element. Although EAT
started
off with several experiments designed to simply bridge aesthetic ideas and
technological possibilities, it soon took
on
several projects that aimed to "greatly benefit society as a whole."
[5] These projects included the distribution of
educational information in rural
geographic
and cultural locations to correspond with each other; a telex conference
between
and
attempt
to create alternative artistic and educational television broadcasts in
the reappropriation of technology, EAT created a sphere of
cultural production and communication that sought to participate
in a
public dialogue forming social values and experiences. "Pulse 48" on
the other hand remained within the boundaries of
the
experimental. Because of its interdisciplinary nature, its use of chance and
the unusual combination of light and sound,
of
music and everyday objects, and because it was a collaboration not only between
two artists but between the artists and
the
machine, "Pulse 48" constructed intra-artistic critique. It was a
formal investigation of the politics of the machine: its
accessibility, its creative and collaborative possibilities. Although it does not
assume the responsibility taken by EAT and
described
by Walter Benjamin--the artist's obligation to use technology to overcome
hegemonic cultural production [6]—
"Pulse
48" does not betray its own inherent possibilities. It creates a realm of
social and political utopia, one of gathering
and
contemplation, an arena in which the machine and the self are suspended from
the authorship of individual purposes
and
imperatives. The freedom it provides, however, is a freedom from the idea of
oppression and domination created by
constructing an idealized sphere of harmony and sensation. It liquidates the
context of domination and oppression and is
therefore
in danger of regressing into a false myth. "Pulse 48" created an
environment of freedom--but not one that
counteracts the mechanisms that threaten it.
PHILIP
GLAHN is the Coordinator of Academic Programs at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
NOTES
(1.)
"Pulse 48" is part of a series of installations based on this
numerical relationship. "Pulse," the original piece, consisted of
only four objects. Ultimately Neill and Jones plan to create "Pulse
4678" in which the original installation is reproduced four times
according to the 4/6/7/8 scheme.
(2.) All
quotations are taken from an interview with Bill Jones by the author (August
21, 1999) and from "A conversation between Ben Neill and Bill Jones about
'Pulse,'" at www.levity.com/benneill/pulse.html.
(3.)
Brandon W. Joseph, "Robert Morris and John Cage: Reconstructing a
Dialogue," in October 81 (Summer 1997), p. 66.
(4.) Theodor Adorno,
"Schwierigkeiten beim Komponieren," in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 17, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1993). Cited in
Ian Pepper, "From the 'Aesthetics of Indifference' to 'Negative
Aesthetics': John Cage and
(5.)
"Inventory of the Experiments in Art and Technology Records," at www.getty.edu/gri/htmlfindingaids/eat_m2html#ead2html-1.
(6.)
Walter Benjamin, "The Author as Producer," in Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), pp. 220-238.
COPYRIGHT
1999 Visual Studies Workshop
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group