Category Archives: Uncategorized

What the hell am I dreaming about? Some ludicrous performance/installation in which two young men crawl about across cushions or mattresses in a paint-spattered gallery space. I try to describe this to an acquaintance but he quickly loses interest. Realising … Continue reading →

I first heard the term ‘object-oriented’ used beyond the context of computer programming in relation to the rhetoric of promoting an on-line learning initiative. Structured as discrete modular bundles, the various learning activities were said to adopt an ‘object-oriented’ approach. … Continue reading →

It occurs to me, after writing the preceding post (“Objects”), that object-oriented programming (OOP) differs from object-oriented philosophy in one important respect. The objects in OOP are instances of abstract classes. They lack any sense of opaque, materially impenetrable autonomy. … Continue reading →

Loom is based on an overall graphics engine, but it is easy to forget about the engine’s more general capacities when focusing on the details of shape subdivision. At the weekend, for instance, somebody asked if there was any means … Continue reading →

[Art apparently draws light from darkness, dispels the clouds of habitual perception and wards off the prospect off a living death. In short, it enlightens. At the same time, however, rather than simply opposing or sublating the figures of darkness, … Continue reading →

How to conceive the space of operation? I am thinking of the operation of the Loom subdivision algorithms – their actual running. Can the sphere of operation be conceived in terms of Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole – with … Continue reading →

The field of operation always remains out of view. Even when apparently visible, operation withdraws. It withdraws by dutifully following and, in following, it charts a plane of performance that can be mapped but never encompassed. No matter how well … Continue reading →

I’m on the editorial panel for an upcoming conference, The Second International Conference on Transdisciplinary Imaging at the Intersections between Art, Science and Culture (22-23 June 2012, Victorian College of the Arts (http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/tiic/), which aims to explore “the theme of … Continue reading →

Social Intersections is a new subject running this session exploring notions of art as social practice. Practical creative work is informed by an examination of contemporary relational aesthetic practice and a broad survey of various traditions informing contemporary efforts to … Continue reading →

So let’s begin with a very meagerly annotated reading list. Some of the annotations, I’m afraid, will be very brief indeed. I will make no effort to distinguish between different disciplines or even between critical and literary sources. Bakhtin, Mikhail … Continue reading →

Let’s also begin by listing four key issues and points of access: questioning the autonomy of art: this relates to the tradition of avant-garde efforts to re-integrate art within life, to question its notional autonomy (as theorised, for instance, within, … Continue reading →

So what is the everyday? Leaving aside the long tradition of theoretical inquiry into the nature of the everyday, there would seem to be a need for some simple effort at definition, whilst also, of course, acknowledging the notion’s resistance … Continue reading →

The theme of human ignorance and illusion: In his cosmological account of the universe and the Greek gods, Theogony (circa 700 BC), Hesiod writes of living as a shepherd in the mountains and learning the story of the world from … Continue reading →

I have already mentioned Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics.1 Strategies depend upon a sense of macro-level perspective – they are clearly delineated plans for action. On the contrary, tactics relate to the sphere of ground and micro-level decisions – … Continue reading →

Ridiculously humid tonight. No possibility for thought, but may manage some typing. Not really very pertinent, but I recall that Truman Capote once famously said of Jack Kerouac that he was not a writer but a typist. Here really just … Continue reading →

At the center of his short ‘story’, The Madness of the Day, Maurice Blanchot describes a minor occurrence: Outdoors, I had a brief vision: a few steps away from me, just at the corner of the street I was about … Continue reading →

Art is inevitably social. If traditional art revealed its social dimension through its integration within the social life of the community, modernist art reveals a more perverse social relation. In Adorno’s terms, the more that modernist art insists upon its … Continue reading →

The European avant-garde movements can be defined as an attack on the status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the … Continue reading →

I recently spent a week walking in Southern New Zealand. I did two of the popular “Great Walks” – the Kepler and Routeburn tracks. They are fairly gentle, well-trodden tracks, involving 4 to 6 hours of walking each day and … Continue reading →

I draw a diagram of the notion of autonomous art, but not in clinical, neatly delineated manner. Instead, I depict ‘genius’ and the various enclosed spaces of canvas, frame, studio and gallery in messy, sketched terms. In this manner, I … Continue reading →

Some years ago I spent a couple of weeks driving around the South Island of New Zealand in a rented car. I was following the fictional journey of three ghosts. I won’t say anymore about the underlying concept since I … Continue reading →

I returned to go walking in the South Island recently. This time I made no effort to provide an aesthetic alibi for my actions. I was going to do the Kepler and Routeburn tracks. I bought myself a waterproof pack, … Continue reading →

And then, of course, I can’t resist taking the images into one of my old software drawing programs, Um, and seeing what happens – how pixel based abstraction mediates my already distanced meditation on the real.

Walk somewhere dull as though it were it interesting. Walk without any rules whatsoever. At the end of the walk have you discovered, despite yourself, a set of rules? Walk only uphill, or only downhill, or only on the flat. … Continue reading →

Run around a local field nine times early in the morning. Take a photo of the field from the same place at the end of each lap. The aim was to position my activity (running) as an ellipsis, as an … Continue reading →