ART 330
Exercise 1: Mining New Territories
Due 09/02
Background:
Contemporary art practices draw from a wide range of subjects and materials to influence, instigate and inform what artists do. Traditions and conventions no longer hold the same kind of sanctions on restricting the territories and boundaries of art — what art is and what it art is not, or what art's subject matters should be. In the spirit of having a wide range of choices to make, the purpose of this assignment is to instigate new territories from which you will draw ideas and use in making work.
The goal is to think broadly. Consider everything in your daily life as potential sources - how your spend your day, your routines, your thoughts or dreams, the decisions you make and how you make them, the routes you take in walking home, what you carry in your pockets, how your order the top of your desk, the weather, bus tickets, ATM receipts, any social/ economic/ political/ institutional/ religious/cultural forces you are subject to. Consider areas of scientific research such as neuroscience, biology, psychology, complexity theory, systems theory, etc. Nothing is out of bounds.
Procedure:
1. Brainstorm: think broadly/ list madly
Ideas emerge at all times. Decide on a system by which to keep these ideas together (eg. Slips of paper kept in your pocket, and collected into one paper bag at night or kept in a box; the back of a notebook; your hand and arm and then which are then xeroxed at the end of the day…Whatever!)
2. Organize your lists by some system of categories
Categories organize your growing archive of territories and give a kind of shape to relationships that may exist among them. Begin with the following categories, but feel free to alter them as your lists grow and evolve. You will find that the categories may not be mutually exclusive, and you may be able to create relationships between and among them.
• IDEAS
• QUESTIONS
• SITUATIONS/CIRCUMSTANCES (eg., waiting for a bus, a call or a letter; walking home late at night alone; paying bills; getting a busy signal on the phone or becoming entangled in automated phone systems, etc.)
• NATURAL SYSTEMS OR FORCES (eg. hurricanes, wind, reflections of light, fire, gravity, etc.)
• SOCIAL SYSTEMS (eg. Institutional systems such as education, law, health; social networks; etc.)
Pick 2 entries from your collection and make a piece of art. Analyze it; try to determine relationships (either real, theoretical or impossible). Don’t worry too much about figuring out how the system, phenomenon or situation works in any great detail. Don’t worry so much about what individual parts are doing, look at the system as a whole and think of ways you can harness it to make art. Consider making a system diagram, showing these relationships.
Your piece can be in any material (photographs, drawings, diagram, installation, ceramic…) or it can be in proposal form. We will talk more about proposals in class.
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Resources:
System Diagramming:
Artists: