Hi all,

I have to weigh in on this one because it is close to my practice.

It seems to me Fried's distinction between the theatricality of a 
phenomenological Judd sculpture and the filled-up/enduring-ness of a 
Rothko painting is very much rooted in a polemical argument he was 
making that was contingent on his unavoidably limited perspective at 
that particular time in history. Yes, a Judd sculpture is indeed 
theatrical and "time-based." My walking around it and moving through 
space in relationship to it causes it to perform an affective 
experience on my body. But arguably the same is true of a big Rothko 
painting (particularly a series of Rothko paintings in a 
site-specific location) -- if I choose to move through the space I 
can cause his painting to perform in a similar (if not the exact 
same) way.

Charlie quoting Fried quoting Jonathan Edwards:
"We every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen 
if we had seen him create the world at first."
Seems very much related to this installation I did called "During The 
Beginning," using generative code and video loops to revisit and try 
to remain in that instantaneous/eternal creation event (the un-time 
during which time was created):
http://www.deepyoung.org/current/genesis/

So here the dialogue could turn theological: the Christian God is 
simultaneously in time (incarnate Jesus) and outside of it (cosmic 
Christ). Which is why catholics can still pray to Jesus as 
simultaneously resurrected (victorious) and still perpetually being 
crucified (empathetic, perpetually propitiatory).

Or the dialogue could turn philosophical, following Bergson. 
Josephine, I would recommend "Matter & Memory," if you haven't 
already. Bergson is appropriated by Deleuze/Guattari for his ideas 
regarding the virtual and the actual (the virtual being a kind of 
emergence that hasn't yet emerged), but he is most useful in this 
context for the relationship he explores between matter and time. 
Bergson says that memory isn't "stored" in our minds (as if our 
brains were hardware with a certain amount of allocated RAM). Memory 
is properly understood as spiritual. We perceive matter in the world 
in "real time" (not Bergson's term), and this perception begins an 
undulating back-and-forth flow with memory. All this happens because 
our bodies are in the same space as the matter we are perceiving, and 
we might want to use our agency to act on it (move a chair, run from 
an enemy). So Bergson has a kind of proto-phenomenological 
understanding of matter which involves bodies in space over time.

To Bergson, the perception of matter itself is already a smooth 
"time-based" event, regardless of how many striated/bisected seconds 
it actually takes to perceive the object. Bergson distinguishes 
between two types of time -- a kind of Cartesian clock time ("I spent 
4 hours, 20 minutes, and 5 seconds in the Rothko Chapel"), and a kind 
of smooth, affectively experienced actual time ("That Nine Inch Nails 
concert blew me away; can it be 3 am already?")

Regarding loops, not all looped art is doing the same thing. Early 
Steve Reich pieces loop with gradual phase shifts, so they are the 
same but not the same. Deleuze/Guattari might call this 
"deterritorializing the refrain." Lamonte Young's Dream House 
deterritorializes the looped refrain in a phenomenological way -- 
when I am in that space and I tilt my head slightly, the entire mix 
radically changes. The sound is up inside my head. That piece has 
much more in common with a Judd sculpture than with a video loop 
projected in a gallery. I have been doing these pop mantra 
performances where I perform a short excerpt from a pop song for 
several hours blindfolded ( http://lab404.com/video/pop/ ). In those 
cases, duration + a mortal/fallible human body causes the variations.

So perhaps all art is properly understood as time-based (making the 
term irrelevant/redundant). Then the relevant questions become -- How 
much and what kind of variability occurs over time? How much of the 
variability occurs within the piece itself (technically), and how 
much of the variability occurs in the experience of the 
user/audience/participant/viewer (affectively)? Some of those looping 
Bruce Nauman talking head video installations ("I speak, she speaks, 
we speak") don't vary at all in the piece itself, but they  vary a 
lot in the affective/cognitive experience of the listener/viewer. And 
they are orchestrated to cause such a cognitive phase shift. The 
medium itself doesn't have to be "generative" (random seed software, 
aleatoric instructions) in order for it to create an "emergent" 
experience. A "static" object can create an emergent experience. 
Indeed, all objects (art or otherwise) are always already doing this. 
Present perception of matter invokes past memories of matter which 
creates future becomings in the world. Or, as Bergson writes in the 
last sentence of Matter & Memory,  "Spirit borrows from matter the 
perceptions on which it feeds, and restores them to matter in the 
form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom. "

++++++++++

asides:
Regarding Fried's "filled-up/eternal vs. empty/merry-go-round," 
Bersani and Dutoit argue that Rothko's paintings are affective 
precisely because they are impoverished, and not vice versa (cf: 
"Arts of Impoverishment").

Regarding actors trying to die in order to escape their time-based 
plays, Beckett is the master. Characters perpetually trying to 
deterritorialize the looping, seemingly invariable refrain of their 
scripted roles. I so agree with Charlie that Hirst's shark (and 
skull) presisely perform the preservation of life. Deleuze/Guattari 
associate music with the regime of the voice and painting with the 
regime of the face. They observe: "The voice is far ahead of the 
face, very far ahead... Maybe this is why many people prefer 
painting, or why aesthetics took painting  as its priviledged model: 
there is no question that it 'scares' people less. Even its relations 
to capitalism and social formations are not at all of the same type."

Best,
Curt


Curt Cloninger
Assistant Professor of Multimedia Arts & Sciences
University of North Carolina Asheville

+++++
Home: http://lab404.com
Garden: http://playdamage.org
Archive:  http://deepyoung.org
School: http://mmas.unca.edu


>Crumbs: This is becoming a bit of a private discussion maybe, which 
>is not my intention. Please feel free to chime in!
>
>How I interpret time based art in relation to the works you mention, 
>but also to net artworks, software art, etc, is that it is not so 
>much *limited* in time, as *rooted* in time. Hence the running time. 
>The relationship to life is one on one, which explains the 
>experience of loss after one's encounter with it, even if one can 
>run the experience in some form (not exactly the same) again. Visual 
>representations can only be stills, reviews are even more subjective 
>than they already are in art objects. Time based art can only be 
>monumental, just as a side thought, as mass experience/event.
>
>I am not sure if works that are repetitive are always time based. It 
>would depend on how strict a definition you use. If the definition 
>would be about unique experiences and events, repetitive works would 
>need a certain openness in their structure I suppose. A musical 
>score made up of repetitions would create a sense of timelessness, 
>which would be repeated every time it were performed, but it would 
>not feel like one had lost something: it could be played exactly the 
>same again.
>
>On the other hand video art and film have also been called time 
>based art. I am not sure they should always be filed there, but 
>maybe they can be in some way. In them, life is trapped. I will take 
>this opportunity to display a bit of nostalgia... :-)
>I don't see much theatre, but my favorite play actually deals with 
>the issue of film/media and life/death: Deep Sleep by John Jesurun. 
>I saw it in 1990 I believe. In a birthday issue of Mute I also used 
>an excerpt of its scenario. In it, a boy (Sparky) gets trapped in 
>the film world, after first being on stage. He tries to escape by 
>breaking through the movie screen. After he fails to return to the 
>stage he has a discussion with his friend (Whitey) who stayed on 
>stage, through the screen. Reality, life and film get completely 
>confused. Here is another excerpt:
>
>Sparky: "Don't let me run off the reel"
>
>Whitey: "I won't"
>
>Sparky: "Please don't. If I go off then you won't have anything"
>
>Whitey: "I can always put you on again"
>
>Sparky: "maybe not"
>
>Whitey:  "maybe yes"
>
>Sparky: "what was happy about it? what could I celebrate that was shining?"
>
>Whitey:  "nothing was shining"
>
>Sparky: "And I will always trust you because you will never 
>disintegrate and I will never disintegrate or grate on my nerves or 
>get on my nerves or make me nervous because I can always shut you up 
>or turn you off"


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