Hi Jon and all,

I think it is instructive how our analysis of "time-based art" 
returns to topics of artist/user control that have historically 
revolved around "interactive" art. A shift from the lens of "when" to 
the lens of "who/how."

To look at art through the filter of time is to ask "when?" To look 
at art through the filter of media is to ask "how?" To look at art 
through the filter of concept is to ask "what?" and "why?" To look at 
art through the filter of control is to implicitly ask "who?" Of 
course all these questions/lenses are related to and ineluctably 
imply each other. I too am interested in the "who?" question, 
particularly because it seems the question most pre-supposed and less 
critically analyzed, particularly when discussing "gallery/museum" 
art. It is a question of anthropology (and ethology, and systems 
theory) that quickly leads into contested areas.

Below is an attempt to perspicaciously think about art it in terms of 
"artist mode" (whatever that may mean) and "audience mode" (whatever 
that may mean). This thinking eventually leads into areas that 
arguably lie outside of "art," but which nevertheless may prove 
useful in developing a critical vocabulary with which to recognize 
and discuss certain moves in contemporary art. I come up with a 
taxonomical continuum that runs something like this:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. single human artist making art for an audience of several other humans:
Sums up most gallery art, but also a lot of network art. Duchamp 
rightly points out that all art is a collaboration between artist and 
audience, but he is still presuming and trying to expand this 
one-to-many Beaux Arts model.

2. several human artists/participants/users making art for an 
audience of several other humans:
Sums up all collectives and much "interactive" art.

3. single or multiple human artist(s) orchestrating/contextualizing 
input from natural/cultural sources for an audience of several other 
humans:
Encompasses most of the rest of "new media" art, whether visualizing 
source input from earthquake tremors or google searches or whatever. 
cf: http://www.mattburnettpaintings.com/natural01.html , 
http://www.brianderosia.com/drawingmachinespage.html

Beyond these three, it gets less orthodox:

4. single or multiple human artists making art for an audience of themselves:
Theoretically this is Kaprow's Happenings, but there were always 
onlookers, and documentation was taken of the events to show to a 
future "audience" of non-participants, thus situating Happenings more 
properly under #2 above. Some "art brut" work fits here.

5. single human artist marking art for an audience of another single human:
Theoretically, this is patron-commissioned art, but the pope wasn't 
the only one to see Michelangelo's work. Some forms of craft and 
gift-giving fit here.

6. single human artist making art for an audience of God/angels/demons:
Perhaps Henry Darger, arguably very early Howard Finster, much art 
we'll never know about.

7. single human artist making art for an audience of non-humans:
St. Francis preached to the birds. The monks of Iona preached to the 
seals. A bit more theatrically contrived but still related, St. 
Joseph preached to the hare ( 
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~stam/suomi/stam/beuys.html ) and the wolf 
( http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/beuys/room4_lg2.shtm ).

8. single human artist making art for a presumed but unknown audience 
of humans/non-humans:
On Kawara's date work seems to want to fit here [theoretically], but 
it doesn't since he has a dealer and knows it. Danny Hillis/Brian 
Eno's "Clock of the Long Now" fits here ( 
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/ ).

9. non-human "artist(s)" (the flux, systems, "nature") making art for 
an audience of several humans:
This might be called simply "the world." (cf: 
http://www.vimeo.com/4506035 . This video is obviously a critique of 
conceptual art, but the actual "work" featured seems to fit into this 
category.) Robert Smithson's writing touches on this kind of work. A 
human curator/contextualizer/intentional_observer becomes crucial to 
bring the "work" to "light."

10. non-human "artist(s)" making art for an audience of non-humans:
If-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-and-no-one-sees-it art. Heidegerrian 
zuhandenheit (ready-to-hand) art; or more properly, Graham 
Harman-esque "tool being" art (cf: 
http://lab404.livejournal.com/55271.html and 
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/itspace/ ). Latourean networks 
(weather systems, the interweb "itself"). Theoretically, but probably 
not, 
http://www.viewingspace.com/genetics_culture/pages_genetics_culture/gc_w05/cohen_h.htm

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This continuum presumes the myth of the dividuated human self. Once 
that myth breaks down, once "individual human" is understood to be 
merely a matter of scale -- individual human as a conflux of 
sub-systems (circulatory, respiratory, etc.) participating in larger 
macro-systems (economy, family, ecology, etc.) -- once we make for 
ourselves Bodies without Organs, then the above continuum becomes 
even more fluid.

I propose this cursory continuum not to codify anything, but 
hopefully to open things up. Theory is useful not because it 
canonically freezes things, but because it slows down the raw chaotic 
flux of every undifferentiated thing enough to begin to reveal 
contours that may be useful to a practice.

Tying this post back into the topic of "time," it is notable how 
difficultly long-term categories 5-10 can become. Perhaps we don't 
often recognize such work as "art" simply because it lies beyond the 
de facto durational limit/frame within which we are comfortable 
recognizing "art."

I welcome feedback -- additional categories, more nuanced categories, 
contestations of these categories, further examples of work that 
better illustrates (or ingeniously eludes) these categories.

Best,
Curt

At 11:24 AM -0400 9/13/09, Jon Ippolito wrote:
>From a curatorial perspective, I think it's less important how long 
>the thing lasts than whether you give people access to the pause and 
>fast-forward buttons.