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Henry Flynt and Generative Aesthetics Redefined

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Henry Flynt and Generative Aesthetics Redefined 1. In one of a series of video interviews conducted by Benjamin Piekut in 2005, Henry Flynt mentions his involvement in certain sci-fi literary scenes of the 1970s.1 Given his background in mathematics and analytic philosophy, in addition to his radical Marxist agitation as a member of 01/12 the Workers World Party in the sixties, Flynt took an interest in the more speculative aspects of sci-fi. “I was really thinking myself out of Marxism,” he says. “Trying to strip away its assumptions – [Marx’s] assumption that a utopia was possible with human beings as raw material.” Such musings would bring Flynt close to sci-fi as he considered the revision of the J.-P. Caron human and what he called “extraterrestrial politics.” He mentions a few pamphlets that he d wrote and took with him to meetings with sci-fi e On Constitutive n i writers, only to discover, shockingly, that they f e d had no interest in such topics. Instead, e R Dissociations conversations drifted quickly to the current state s c i 2 t of the book market for sci-fi writing. e h t ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI’m interested in this anecdote in the as a Means of s e contemporary context given that sci-fi writing A e v has acquired status as quasi-philosophy, as a i t World- a r medium where different worlds are fashioned, e n sometimes guided by current scientific research, e G as in so-called “hard” sci-fi. While I don’t intend Unmaking: d n a here to examine sci-fi directly, it does allude to t n y the nature of worldmaking and generative l Henry Flynt and F aesthetics – the nature of which I hope to y r n illuminate below by engaging with Flynt’s work, e H Generative : as well as that of the philosophers Nelson g n i Goodman and Peter Strawson. By doing so, I k a intend to uncover the meaning of Flynt’s critique Aesthetics m n U of the human referenced above. - d l ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊComing out of the New York downtown r n o Redefined o r avant-garde of the sixties, Flynt is often mis- W a f C o categorized as a member of Fluxus – a group he . s P n - . claims to have never have been part of, a J e Ê notwithstanding his close collaboration with M 1 2 a 0 George Maciunas. His engagements with s 2 a y s r philosophy, mathematics, economics, Marxism, n a o u i experimental music, and concept art – a term he t n a a i j coined in anticipation of the later “conceptual c o — s art” – testify to the broad scale of his thought, s 5 i 1 D 1 which could not be confined to just one artistic e # v l i milieu. His work was guided by an overarching t a u n t r i project: nothing less than the total refashioning u t o s j n of human culture and experience, as indicated by x o u C l f the title of his, until recently, only published n - e O book, Blueprint For a Higher Civilization (1975). His project brings together radical empiricism with cognitive nihilism, yielding the sensible- conceptual, interventive approach that characterizes some of his concept art of the sixties. He defines his “meta-technology” project as follows: Meta-technology addresses the juncture at 02.09.21 / 08:59:18 EST 02/12 Diagram by the author 02.09.21 / 08:59:18 EST which the knower is an experiencing British philosopher Peter Strawson, especially in subject, for example – not a detection box. his 1959 book Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive The juncture at which the knower Metaphysics. Here he offers a thought subjugates the life-stream by imposing a experiment involving a “purely auditory world”: a conceptual apparatus on it. (E.g. world without “given” objecthood, a “no-space identitarian logic and quantitative world” composed solely of sounds.5 This thought idealization.) É Proceeding to the point experiment is a way to bracket the particular way when meta-technology got its name, I 03/12 our forms of intuition are entangled; this coined the term, as I said, in 1979. It is bracketing isn’t the primary objective of defined as technology whose field of action Strawson’s thought experiment, but rather a is the determination of reality.3 means to test the persistence of certain properties of the perceptual framework. The second approach to generative aesthetics can be 2. found in American philosopher Nelson In its original formulation as proposed by the Goodman’s notion of “world-making.” The term philosopher and writer Max Bense in 1965, encapsulates the “theory ladenness” of our generative aesthetics knowledge and judgments, meaning that there’s d no such a thing as a framework-independent e n implies a combination of all operations, i world. This implies that much of how we f e rules and theorems which can be used d understand the world is the result of conceptual e R deliberately to produce aesthetic states contraptions of our own making. s c i (both distributions and configurations) t e h when applied to a set of material elements. t 3. s Hence generative aesthetics is analogous e Generative aesthetics thus pertains to a A e to generative grammar, in so far as it helps v reflection on the conditions of experience itself. i t a to formulate the principles of a r Strawson’s thought experiment invites us to e grammatical schema – realizations of an n imagine that we don’t have bodies – since having e G aesthetic structure.4 a body would entail having space – and that our d n a only means to detect worldly items is through t n Bense’s approach concerns the combining of y listening. One might ask: if we don’t have bodies, l F material that has a signifying character into a what would constitute our personal point of view, y r functional unity – into a work of art. I want to n or rather our point of listening? In Strawson’s e H propose a reconceptualization of generative : thought experiment he brackets the specific g n aesthetics that instead concerns a cluster of i means by which “we” have access to sounds and k interrelated, hypothetically transcendental a sounds alone. It is only under this condition that m n structures of subjective apprehension and U we can understand the purely auditory world as a - d comprehension. This reconceptualization l surrogate for a no-space world in the r n o o belongs more to aesthesis, as the study of r Strawsonian sense. I say “we” in quotes, because W a f C o sensibility and conceptually informed in this framework the difference between “I” and . s P n - perception, than to the more parochial field of . "my" surroundings is also put into question. a J e Ê the philosophy of art. While following Bense’s ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWithin this framework, Strawson asks: if we M 1 2 a notion of the structural character of an 0 listen to Sound A, and then to an identical Sound s 2 a y s investigation of “elements” to be specified, the r B, do we detect the same sound, or two sounds of n a o u concept of generative that I am preoccupied with i the same type? Can we make this distinction t n a a i j is upstream from that level of investigation. I am without the additional dimension of a spatial c o — instead concerned with the constitution of s coordinate in order to disambiguate between the s 5 i 1 D 1 experience without presupposing the given two possibilities? Strawson provides a good e # v l nature and character of the unities to be i example of such a disambiguation from ordinary t a u n t r combined, instead dealing with the i life. Imagine two different orchestras playing the u t o s j determination of reality out of sensibility and a n exact same piece of music in two different x o u C l choice of conceptual frameworks. This f concert halls at the exact same time. Both n - understanding of generative aesthetics aims to e O orchestras reach the same chord at the same be a kind of tinkering with the coordinates of time. Is it the same chord? In what sense? We experience. I will defend Flynt as an important might be inclined to say that they are the same figure in the history of that tinkering. type of chord, but not the same particular chord, ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn order to better understand the traditional since they are spatially segregated. The point of notion of generative aesthetics, it is helpful to asking whether Sound A and Sound B are the examine two very different approaches to the same in the no-space world is to see if it is problems of generative aesthetics as I possible to make a distinction that is not one of understand the term. The first was developed by type, but of particulars, without spatial 02.09.21 / 08:59:18 EST 04/12 Henry Flynt, Stroke Numeral,Ê1987. Paint on aluminum;Ê19 x 41 1/2 in. Courtesy of HenryÊFlynt.Ê 02.09.21 / 08:59:18 EST coordinates. categorical structure with another, in his Ways of ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo help with this disambiguation, Strawson Worldmaking, Goodman stresses the fact that we imagines that listener “has” a sound of their live in several different worlds, rather than just own, capable of being heard by “others.” In one.
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