Leonardo Reviews Quarterly 2.02 | 2012

L|R|Q

Executive Editor: Roger Malina Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt Associate Editor: Claudy Op den Kamp www.leonardo.info © ISAST L|R|Q

Leonardo Reviews Quarterly 2.02 | 2012

Science, Spectacle and Imagination

Executive Editor: Roger Malina Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt Associate Editor: Claudy Op den Kamp www.leonardo.info © ISAST Leonardo Reviews

Leonardo Reviews Reviews Panel

Leonardo Reviews is the work of an international Allan Graubard, Amy Ione, Anastasia Filip- panel of scholars and professionals invited from poupoliti, Annick Bureaud, Anna B. Creagh, a wide range of disciplines to review books, exhi- Anthony Enns, Aparna Sharma, Boris Jardine, bitions, DVDs, CDs, websites, and conferences. Brian Reffin Smith, Brigitta Zics, Catalin Brylla, Collectively they represent an intellectual commit- Chris Cobb, Chris Speed, Claudia Westermann, ment to engaging with the emergent debates and Claudy Op den Kamp, Craig Harris, Craig Hilton, manifestations that are the consequences of the Dene Grigar, David Bering-Porter, Dene Grigar, convergence of the arts, science and technology. Eduardo Miranda, Elizabeth McCardell, Ellen Pearlman, Enzo Ferrara, Eugene Thacker, Flor- Leonardo Reviews publishes all reviews received ence Martellini, Flutor Troshani, Franc Cham- from the panel monthly at www.leonardo.info. In berlain, Fred Andersson, Frieder Nake, George addition, four times a year a selection of reviews Gessert, George K. Shortess, Giovanna Cos- is printed in Leonardo and now Leonardo Reviews tantini, Hannah Drayson, Hannah Rogers, Har- Quarterly will be publishing an even larger selec- riet Hawkins, Ian Verstegen, Jac Saorsa, Jack tion as a PDF together with introductory material Ox, Jacques Mandelbrojt, Jan Baetens, Jennifer and overview essays. Ferng, John F. Barber, John Vines, Jon Bedworth, Jonathan Zilberg, Jung A Huh, Jussi Parikka, Reviewers interested in being considered for the Katharina Blassnigg, Kathleen Quillian, Kieran panel and publishers and authors interested in Lyons, Lara Schrijver, Lisa M. Graham, Luis Girao, having their print or electronic publications con- Martha Blassnigg, Martha Patricia Nino, Martyn sidered for review by the panel should contact: Woodward, Maureen A. Nappi, Michael Mosher, Michael Punt, Mike Leggett, Nameera Ahmed, Ornella Corazza, Paul Hertz, Pia Tikka, Rene Michael Punt van Peer, Richard Kade, Rob Harle, Robert A Editor-In-Chief, Leonardo Reviews Mitchell, Roger Malina, Roy Behrens, Sean Cu- University of Plymouth bitt, Simone Osthoff, Sonya Rapoport, Stefaan Portland Square, B312 van Ryssen, Stephen Petersen, Trace Reddell, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK Valérie Lamontagne, Wilfred Arnold, Yvonne mpunt(at)easynet.co.uk Spielmann, Zainub Verjee

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Editorials Michael Punt - Science and the Industrialisation of the Imaginary �� viii Martyn Woodward - An Electrical Deep Time of the Modern Imagination �� xi Martha Blassnigg - The Zigzag of Science and Consciousness in Action �� xiii Roger F. Malina - Science in the First Person Singular; New Roles for the Arts in the Theatricalisation of Science? �� xviii Review Article On Sentience by Giovanna Costantini �� 1 Six Stories from the End of Representation by James Elkins Reviewed by Jan Baetens �� 7 On the Litany of Illnesses Associated with Vincent van Gogh by Wilfred Niels Arnold �� 8 Reviewer Profile Allan Graubard ��13 Reviews Science and Conscience: the Life of James Franck by Jost Lemmerich Reviewed by Wilfred Niels Arnold ��16 Cybertext Poetics: The Critical Landscape of New Media Literary Theory by Markku Eskelinen Reviewed by Jan Baetens ��17 The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies by Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld (eds.) Reviewed by John F. Barber ��18 The Universe in Zero Words: The Story of Mathematics as Told through Equations by Dana MacKenzie Reviewed by Phil Dyke ��19 Debates in the Digital Humanities by Matthew K. Gold, Editor Reviewed by Dene Grigar ��20 Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking by Eran Ben-Joseph Reviewed by Jan Baetens �� 22 The Self-Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Modern France by Tom Conley The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science and Culture by SueEllen Campbell Reviewed by Mike Leggett �� 22

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Global Icons. Apertures to the Popular by Bishnupriya Ghosh Reviewed by Jan Baetens ��24 High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture by Mike Jay Reviewed by Jan Baetens �� 26 Under Blue Cup by Rosalind E. Krauss Reviewed by Jan Baetens ��27 Freedom in Entangled Worlds: West Papua and the Architecture of Global Power by Eben Kirksey Reviewed by C.F. Black ��29 State of Mind: New California Art circa 1970 by Constance M. Lewallen and Karen Moss Reviewed by Mike Mosher ��30 Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface by Robin Clark; forward by Hugh M. Davies Reviewed by Giovanna L. Costantini ��32 Deadline Every Second: On Assignment with 12 Associated Press Photojournalists by Ken Kobré, John Hewitt, Producers Reviewed by Amy Ione ��34 Automata and Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre History by Kara Reilly Reviewed by John F. Barber ��35 Diane Arbus’s 1960s: Auguries of Experience by Frederick Gross Reviewed by Jan Baetens ��37 Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance by Hanna Rose Shell Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith ��38 Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage by Branden W. Joseph Reviewed by Stephen Petersen ��39 I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams by Mark Dery. Foreword by Bruce Sterling Reviewed by Mike Mosher �� 41 Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook by Roy R. Behrens Reviewed by Mike Leggett ��42 The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga by Jimmy Maher Reviewed by John F. Barber ��43

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Computing: A Concise History by Paul E. Ceruzzi Reviewed by John F. Barber ��44 Imagery in the 21st Century by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas Veigl Reviewed by Amy Ione ��45 On Time in Film / DVD by Takahiko iimura Performance / Myself (or Video Identity) by Takahiko iimura Air’s Rock by Takahiko iimura Reviewed by Mike Leggett ��47 Open Access by Peter Suber Reviewed by Rob Harle ��49 Looking for Bruce Conner by Kevin Hatch Reviewed by Allan Graubard ��50 Cinema’s Alchemist: The Films of Péter Forgács by Bill Nichols and Michael Renov (eds.) Reviewed by Nico de Klerk ��51 Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories of Origin by Yuko Nakamura, Director Reviewed by Giovanna L. Costantini ��55 Radio: Essays in Bad Reception by John Mowitt Reviewed by John F. Barber ��57 The Koran: Back to the Origins of The Book by Bruno Ulmer Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg ��58 Trade of the Tricks: Inside the Magician’s Craft by Graham M. Jones Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith ��60 New Art/Science Affinities by Andrea Grover, Régine Debatty, Claire Evans, Pablo Garcia Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith ��61 Alien Phenomenology: Or, What It’s Like To Be A Thing by Ian Bogost Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith ��61 When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity by Shoshana Amielle Magnet Reviewed By Hannah Drayson ��62

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3-D Displays and Spatial Interaction, Vol. 1 From Perception to Technology by Barry G. Blundell Reviewed by George Shortess ��65 Lines of Control: Exhibition at Johnson Museum by Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell University) and Hammad Nassar (Green Cardamom), Curators January 21 — April 1, 2012 Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space by Iftikhar Dadi and Hammad Nassar (eds.) Reviewed by Aparna Sharma ��65 Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds by Louise Barrett Reviewed by Daniel J. Povinelli ��67 Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, and Gender in Renaissance Italy by Mary D. Garrard Reviewed by Amy Ione ��68 The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning by Maggie Nelson Reviewed by Allan Graubard ��70 Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design for the Multimedial Museum by Vince Dziekan Reviewed by Dene Grigar ��71 The Berkshire Glass Works by William J. Patriquin & Julie L. Sloan Reviewed by Giovanna L. Costantini ��72

vii Editorial Michael Punt Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo Reviews

Science and the in which the scientific aspects of the programme had to merge with the television schedules—in Industrialisation of the the case of Challenger II with disastrous results. Imaginary We have also seen in the last three decades The study of the history of science has been radi- the extent to which the most far reaching dis- cally changed over the last 30 years or so from semination practices merge science with radio being one of a chronology of men and discoveries and television and other popular media. For a to a more nuanced story of the struggle for ac- number of reasons including a commitment to ceptance of a new way of knowing the world. In multi-disciplinarity, and a genuine concern to The Scientific Revolution (1990) Stephen Shapin share a world view, some scientists have also argues that there was no scientific revolution. embraced art practice in literature, film, theatre “There was, rather, a diverse array of cultural and more recently in installation and intervention- practices aimed at understanding, explaining, and ist visual artworks. They do so with the security controlling the natural world, each with different that science is clearly understood as an impor- characteristics and each experiencing different tant—if not the only way—to know the world and modes of change” (Shapin, 1996, p. 3). To give that it both describes—and is—reality. some idea of the breadth of these practices see This was not the case in the late seventeenth and the recent call for ‘Scientia 2013’, a conference eighteen centuries. Science was not self evidently “for scholars working in any area of early-modern a pathway to truth about the world around and intellectual culture, with the emergence of mod- within us and each of these practices had to be ern natural science serving as a general point convincing about its claims (most of which we of reference” which is based on the premise that now regard as partial and provisional—if not “knowledge during the period of the Scientific completely wrong). From this dispersed set of Revolution was inherently interdisciplinary, in- practices that we now understand as the begin- volving complex mixtures of fields and objects ning of science there is an orthodoxy of claims that had not yet been separated into their modern which were disseminated through a cascade of ‘scientific’ hierarchies.” The list of topics that they demonstrations, first to the homes of aristocrats suggest might be useful to consider includes: and middles classes, and then to the masses in — Theological origins and implications of the public displays and museums. It is now widely new science accepted that the tactics used in this struggle for the public acceptance of science has impacted — Nature and scripture: which interprets which? on experimental practice, what science enquired — What do images contribute to our understand- into, how it was done, and what was prioritised. ing of early modern knowledge? Moreover in many cases the imperatives of public demonstration (portability, miniaturization, — Genealogies of ‘reason’, ‘utility’, and/or ‘knowl- smaller batteries, reliable experiments etc) in- edge’ spired new directions for scientific research and — Humanism and the scientific revolution achievement. The performative style of science — Neo-Platonism, alchemy: where are we now? persisted and twenty years ago in 1990 I.W Morus went so far as to claim that we had to understand — What were the relations between the new nineteenth century experiments less as a means science and magic and demonology? of discovery and more as an item of theatre. Since — Poetics and science: habits of thought? that time science as a branch of theatre has been accepted and with it an acknowledgement of — Renaissance philosophy and the development the proximity of the ontology of science and the of a ‘new’ cosmology and anthropology epistemology of its theatre and possibly pulpit. — Information and knowledge: a clear divide? Clergymen were taught how to impress a con- — Early-modern literature and the new knowl- gregation with a series of conventions that were edge: friends, or foes? themselves borrowed from a long tradition of (see http://go.warwick.ac.uk/scientiae) religious painting and sculpture. From contemporary images of science on display it is clear that The range of this network may seem to be the the scientific demonstrator’s gestures to under- fanciful musings of historians without boundaries, write the facts of science (the theatrical aspect but we might consider a recent example of sci- of public experiment) were the same as those entific enquiry such as the exploration of space used by priests to invoke the ineffable power of

viii Editorial Michael Punt Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo Reviews the sublime. The experimental apparatus also at least those artists who form the canon of the invoked another set of knowledge claims since last 400 years in the west) actually do. it was made by craftsmen who could understand However, the interdependence of the twin tracks what the scientist required for the experiment, of the epistemological and the ontological in the and could adapt and translate those needs into same theatrical aspects of science should not the routines of the finest cabinet making and allow us to be confused their quite distinct func- clockwork. The steady accretion of scientific data tions. To conflate the epistemological with the required these skilled craftsmen to guarantee ontological would suggest that a photograph, the quality of the instrument as an adjunct to the and the camera that produces, it are a single necessary precision needed for the repeatabil- apparatus rather than a dispositive; a particular ity of the phenomena in pursuit of an emerging arrangement of many discrete apparatus in a par- ontological project. However this familiarity of ticular constellation that included the perception form and quality of the craftsmanship from was of the viewer. And, in the case of photography, visible to the observer (skeptical or otherwise) this is an outcome of a quite specific moment in and also gestured to the robustness of the truth time detached from its experiential flow. Jonathan by inference of another context. In previous cen- Crary has suggested that in the early nineteenth turies science wrote its own stage-play with in- century this was a radical shift and the observer struments and actions drawn from quite distant had to be retrained in order to read the photo- walks of life to invest them with authority. Some graphic image as an index of a world outside the of this complexity is considered by Lisa Gitelman observer and not a quality of the apparatus of in Always Already New Media, History, and the which they were part; put another way the ob- Data of Culture In this study she looks at those server was trained to embrace an epistemology scientific instruments in the nineteenth century in order to condone an ontology. that displayed themselves (and their histories) such as the phonograph and cinematograph, and This required the eradication of the observer their impact the definition of the document in the who ceased to be a participant in the world and late twentieth century. Andrew Pickering seems instead was recast as a subject of a disposi- to extend this notion in The Cybernetic Brain; tive. Such amputations of the human potential Sketches of Another Future, when he remarks can have very little to do with the aspirations, that, “We must think of cybernetics as staging drivers and spirit that have driven all artistic en- for us a performative epistemology, directly en- deavours as they are understood by those who gaged with its performative ontology – a vision have thought about the roots of art. (See Aby of knowledge as part of performance rather than Warburg for example). Costatini’s feature in this as an external controller of it.” (p. 25) issue of Leonardo Reviews Quarterly offers a way for us to think about the artist quite outside this In the last half century, possibly stimulated by the minefield. Her description and critique of Sugi- increasing abstractions of their method, scien- moto’s photographic practice draws us back to tists have understood that they need to return to the engines of art as an independent aspect of this theatrical engagement and have been more human endeavour that cannot devolve history and willing to engage with a broad spectrum of arts its determining effect to the past. The recovery but in doing so the waters have been somewhat of the ‘pathosformula’ (the idea that the human muddied. The rhetoric of scientific dissemina- is not damaged by the chaotic powers of which tion (and tactics for attracting popular support he is part) is for Warburg the work of the artist for funded research) such as the use of popular in any civilization. In the context of science and media, literary style, demonstration and display spectacle set out here this means that in order to to share knowledge and enthusiasm is often do no harm the conflation of the scientific rhetoric confused or compacted with the techniques of of spectacle (an epistemology) and the scientific visual evidence and visualization (or sound and acquisition of visual data about the world (an sonification) as part of scientific method. In per- ontology)—is unraveled if those who operate at petuating the confusion between rhetoric and the interface of art and science are not to baffle technique the role of the artist appears to have and disempower their own audiences. become largely devolved to particular kinds of behaviours – (participation, collaboration, observation etc) which corresponds with a loose view of art practice beloved of amateurs and libertines but actually very little to do with what artists (or

ix Editorial Michael Punt Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo Reviews

Sources Benz, E. (1989) The Theology of Electricity: On the Encounter and Explanation of Theology and Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications. Crary, J. (1990) Techniques of The Observer. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Daston, L. & Gallison, P. (1992) ‘The Image of Objectivity’, Representations, 40 (Fall), pp. 81–128. Daston, L. & Gallison, P. (2007) Objectivity. New York: Zone. Gitelman, L. (2006) Always Already New Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Michaud, P. (2004) Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion. New York: Zone Books. Morus, I.R. (1993) ‘Currents From The Underworld, Electricity and the Technology of Display in Early Victorian England’, ISIS, (84), pp. 50–69. Pickering, A. (2011) The Cybernetic Brain; Sketches of Another Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shaffer, S. (1992) ‘Self Evidence’, Critical Enquiry, 18 (Winter), pp. 327–362. Shapin, S. (1996) The Scientific Revolution.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

x Editorial Martyn Woodward Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University

An Electrical Deep Time of gested to provide a form of “theatrical engagement” which is being re-visited by contemporary the Modern Imagination scientists and philosophers of science with a perceived need to engage more with the wider Giovanna Costantini’s article in this issue of L|R|Q spectrum of the arts and popular culture. This reveals an holistic voice for contemporary Art- theatrical engagement offered, however, has a science, through that of the Japanese artist Hi- much deeper resonance than may be accounted roshi Sugimoto, who traces the emergence of for through attempts to fuse art and science cur- human thought over hundreds and thousands of rently realised. Costantini’s “deeper” vitalism finds years, to an indistinct ‘origin’ which merges with further recognition through the importance of the time and the universe. With this in mind, Cos- often neglected notion of Deep Time, formulated tantini suggests that over time, human thought during the eighteenth century, as a fundamental has become increasingly more detached from aspect of modern thinking, (re)discovering the these indistinct origins, informed by a positivistic- depths of human thinking that lie within the very materialistic world-view, and instead points to a deep structures of the earth. more holistic account of human thought, free of positivism, in which matter and mind are inclusive, Media Archeologist Siegfried Zielinski reminds co-dependent, interconnected and reciprocal. us that during the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the notion that the earth was Knowledge, within this phenomenal and vitalist older than previously believed (as maintained view, is manifest within a world in which subject through divine accounts) became a core topic and object are not separated, knowledge is emer- within the academies (2002, pp. 3-6). For Zielin- gent from, what Costantini terms a “primordial ski, James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1778), sea of being”. Costantini points to an account of explained a history of the earth that was free of human history that is both “deep and dynamic”, a theological dogma, and was conceived not in a process of continuous engagement in which terms of a linear progression but as a dynamic thought itself is consistently reworked. Within cycle of erosion, deposition, consolidation and Costantini’s vitalist account of Sugimoto’s work, uplifting. As Zielinski describes, for Hutton, the such dualisms as nature and culture, earth and earth had a deep time, that ran much deeper than sky, past and present dissolve. The ‘origins’ that the upper crust of the earth, that of granite, and Sugimoto seeks are, for Costantini, revealed as extended into the sub-strata below which was the very essence of the creative process itself, a now seen to co-constitute the upper layer. For “vital energy born of the relationship within and Zielinski, Hutton’s concept of the earth was as a over time.” A force that Costantini maintains is cyclic self-renewing machine, without beginning a sustenance that inspires the very fusion of or end, constituted by matter and energy flows. contemporary art and science, a “deeper” vitalist energy within which both art and science have The construction of a deep time to the earth emerged, from a shared primordial sea of being. brought a further implication for the very role and notion of the human itself. Shryock and Smail The Scientia 2013 call offers a further charter to (2009) suggest in their re-thinking of modern these deeper waters, recognising that “knowledge historiography, the subsequent emergence of during the period of the Scientific Revolution was Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by inherently interdisciplinary, involving complex Means of Natural Selection (1859) brought about mixtures of fields and objects that had not yet a drastic change in the sense of the role of the been separated into their modern ‘scientific’ hi- human within the universe (pp. 26-27). The ev- erarchies.” According to Michael Punt this is an olutionary approach of Darwin, they suggest, indication of how the seventeenth and eighteenth resulted in a new sense of human history, in century became a key moment within which the which the human’s role was no longer seen as practices of scientific investigation, and that of the essential and permanent, the human itself had arts and crafts, were intimately linked through a a deep time: a deeper relation to the very envi- complex and reciprocal entanglement involving ronment in which they are situated. The human a co-constructed knowledge. These entangle- was now implicated within, and impacted upon, ments are seen by Punt as “performative”, in by distributed (and non-human) determinants. which knowledge does not ‘control’ and frame an external world, but is directly engaged with, and For this deep time to figure more fully within an performed by the actors, along with its ontology. account of human history, Smail suggests that This moment during the modern period is sug- methods and narratives were needed that could

xi Editorial Martyn Woodward Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University triangulate between agents and materials, meth- in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. ods that could not be fully supported within the These accounts provide access to the deeper models of human cognition, which stressed the determining aspects of electricity upon the dis- rational rather than relational, held at the time tributed pathosformula that the arts, crafts and (pp. 30-31). The maintenance of a materialist sciences can be said to share and emerge from account of history during the eighteenth and within, as Paolo Bertucci uncovers (2006), the nineteenth century could not fully support the emergence of electricity brought with it a differ- emergence of deep time—the immaterial, ener- ent order of the natural world, which includes the getic and relational aspects—as such, Shryock human. Costantini’s own reference of Faraday’s and Smail offer a re-assessment of deep time’s Cage as a guide for Artscience, points not only to implications for both the human and human his- the conductivity of the entwined metal bars that tory by utilising a more contemporary distributed share the electrical current but also to the condi- account of cognition and the human drawn from tions of the behaviour of electricity upon the very anthropology. What Shryock and Smail alert us construction of the cage itself. To understand the to is an under-realised aspect of eighteenth and deeply entangled and intimate relations between nineteenth century (modern) thought, that of deep art and science more fully for a contemporary time itself, that runs a lot deeper within human re-evaluation, is then not to begin from the ma- cognition, imagination and creativity than has terial (and co-operative) engagements between been accounted for within conventional materialist diverse peoples as a site of origin, but to begin accounts of history. A deep time that alludes to a by situating both scientific and artistic practice model of mind, and of the human, which is itself themselves within the distributed, and deeper, distributed amongst much wider determinants pathosformula of the period—a pathosformula than may have been accounted for. that is in part constituted by the emergence of electricity. The re-instating of the pathosformula This anthropological re-imagining of the mod- within the deep time relations of the earth provide ern period offers a re-assessment of the ac- a meshwork to further develop the more holistic tivities of artists and scientists, which begins to accounts of human thought, free of positivistic recognise the wider distributed aspects of their and materialistic world-views, a further voice for collaborations, themselves within the energies contemporary Artscience. and flows of Hutton’s account of the earth, that have determining roles to play upon the human. References Whereas Costantini and Punt recognise the wider, Bertucci, P. (2006) ‘Promethean Sparks: Electricity distributed aspects of Artscience across many and the Order of Nature in the 18th Century’, in brains, imaginations and experiences, the sug- Zielinski, S. (ed.) Variantology 1: On Deep Time gested recovery of Aby Warburg’s pathosformula Relations of Arts, Sciences and Technologies, Cologne: Walther Konig, pp. 41–59. (Punt) brings a pathosformula which is in part co- constituted within the wider deep time relations Michaud, P. (2004) Aby Warburg and the Images in Motion. New York: Zone Books. of the earth itself. Situating Warburg’s thinking Papapetros, S. (2012) On the Animation of the back within the emergence of Deep Time dur- Inorganic: Art, Architecture, and the Extension of Life. ing the modern period, as Smail and Zielinski Chicago: Chicago University Press. suggest within the work of Charles Darwin and Shryock, A. and Smail, D. (2011) Deep History: James Hutton, points not just to the nuances of The Architecture of the Past and Present. Berkeley: the collaboration between discrete practices such University of California Press. as craft and science; the engineering precision Smail, D. (2008) On Deep History and the Brain. required for scientific repeatability, but to the Berkeley: University of California Press. ‘deeper’, distributed elements of the wider pathos- Zielinski, S. (2006) Deep Time of the Media: Toward formula of the time that both craft and science an Archaeology of Hearing and fundamentally share, to the wider dimensions of Seeing by Technical Means. London: The MIT Press. reality not entirely that of the human. Such ‘deep time’ aspects of the modern era are becoming more increasingly acknowledged, such as the emergence of electricity; Morus’ Currents From the Underworld, Electricity and the Tech- nology of Display in Early Victorian England, and Benz’s The Theology of Electricity: On the En- counter and Explanation of Theology and Science

xii Editorial Martha Blassnigg Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University

The Zigzag of Science and the Dionysian and the Apollonian principle, the conflict between magical-associative (symbolic) Consciousness in Action and logical-dissociative (allegorical-semiotic) modes of representation. As he reflected in his In this issue of L|R|Q Giovanna Costantini’s re- field notes on the perception of natural forces by view essay lays bare the implied cultural values Indian peoples and Western civilisation: of human endeavour and philosophical underpin- The attempt at magical effects is thus first of nings of art-science collaborations as she traces all an attempt to appropriate a natural event them in a number of contemporary time-based in the living likeness of its form and contours: media productions. What follows is a reflective lightening is attracted through mimetic ap- response to some aspects of her discussion, by propriation, unlike in modern culture, where taking up Michael Punt’s exposition and invita- it is drawn into the ground by an inorganic in- tion in his editorial to unravel scientific rhetoric to strument and eliminated. What distinguishes indicate the distinction between the ontological such an attitude toward the environment from and epistemological implications of research ours is that the mimetic image is supposed practices. It also responds to Martyn Woodward’s to bring about a relation by force, whereas journey into an archaeological historiography that we strive for spiritual and material distance. alludes to the liberating potential of pathosfor- (Michaud 2004: 306) mulas in the artistic and scientific practices as distributed among the wider meshwork of deep In a rather polemical critical reading of Warburg’s time relations. interpretation of the serpent ritual in light of an ethnographic understanding of Pueblo culture By taking a rhetorical lead from the art-historian David Freedberg sees a hysteric response of a Aby Warburg’s symbolism of the lightning flash Western inductive reading of so-called primitive as the zigzag dynamo between the divine and culture, of a ritual that manifested rootedness the human, this exposition aims to map a journey rather than agitation, self-control and contact of creative consciousness into the interwoven with the earth, the physical and mental bond with relationships of Costantini’s materials, and in certain kinds of geometric structure: (Freedberg this way amplifying Punt’s separation between 2004: 34) an ontological and epistemological human endeavour in view of the pathosformula as enduring When the snakes are first collected at Walpi, and contingent expressive trope of conscious- and Oraibi, they are taken back down into the ness, which in Punt’s editorial culminated in a earth, into the kivas, there to remain for three vision of a matured Warburgian pathosformula days with the men who are not and will not be as the dynamic carrier and caption of an original their opponents, but their calm handlers. In impulse unhampered by the losses and changes this mutual proximity man and snake become of transference over time, location and genera- familiar with each other, and join in a spiritual tions. Warburg reflected in his famous Kreuzlin- union. Together they become one with the gen lecture in 1923: earth. There is no struggle. Here, within the earth, the demons of the earth become one The lightening imprisoned in wire—captured with those who will dance with them. But electricity—has produced a culture with no use “dance” may even be the wrong word here. for paganism. What has replaced it? Natural It will not be one that is filled with excessive forces are no longer seen in their biomorphic movement or frenzy.” (Freedberg 2004: 18). guise, but rather as infinite waves obedient to the human touch. With these waves, the culture Freedberg suggests Warburg overlooked his of the machine age destroys what the natural own observations in favour of an interpreta- sciences born of myth so arduously achieved: tion drawn from the underworld of European the space for devotion, which evolved in turn into myth and reminds us of Warburg’s notes on the the space required for reflection. [1] Kachina dance at Oraibi as “reverential, calm and unperturbed (“unermüdlichen ernsthaften Inspired by his North-America field-visits to the Feierlichkeit”), describing the dancers as “un- Pueblos with particular interest in the serpent wearied grave and ceremonious” (“rührig und ritual, in which he interpreted the zigzag lines in ungestörter Andacht seine Tanzbewegungen as symbols for the untamed energies of light- weiter vollführte”). (Freedberg 2004: 17-18) It is ening or the snake, Warburg drew an analogy certainly crucial to be aware of the 19th century to the movement between life and art, between

xiii Editorial Martha Blassnigg Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University evolutionary framework and imperialist hegemo- Bergson highlighted as the tensions between nies that still informed approaches to so-called intellect and intuition as complementary tenden- primitive cultures in cultural anthropology at the cies of the mind, the collapse of past and future time of Warburg’s travels when he communi- in the present is seductive of a masking of their cated with Franz Boas in the 1890s (and still distinctly required epistemologies. In any creative inform problematic cultural dichotomies today). act, past and future collide in the dynamic activity However, what should not be overlooked, and of the present, which only intuition knows how to which probably only finds its full expression in negotiate and find direction, whilst at the same the Mnemosyne Atlas (1924-1929), is that War- time they are cognitively separated in the self- burg reaches into the depths of the anthropol- conscious reflection that is necessary to discern, ogy of consciousness as it manifests in charged cognise and focus on intention and meaningful forms of expressions (pathosformulas) across inquiry. This is: an intuition that is not reduced to cultures and periods. His use of the language a nostalgic form of instinct, but a highly developed and framework of Greek mythology in the context form of intelligence in the human being, emerging of the classic tradition of European art-history is from the long trajectory of evolution; as well as ultimately perhaps of less importance than the an intellect that is not reduced to a mechanistic insight he brings through the exemplification of brain-functioning but the intelligent negotiation the Mnemosyne Atlas: it is the continuous strug- with directed thinking that knows to embrace the gle throughout the history of mankind between ontological simultaneously as it reflects on it with the Dionysian and Apollonian forces, between rigour and focus through a certain self-distancing. stillness and movement, creation and release These are the spaces for reflection — “Denkraum as they manifest in religious and artistic forms. der Besonnenheit” or “Andachtsraum” [2] (War- burg 1992: 267) — that Warburg was so eager The core insights of Warburg invite to be ex- to preserve and which led him to rather polemi- tended to the dynamics of consciousness, which cally critique technologies of industrialisation; but he strove so arduously to capture in his psycho- which nonetheless indicates the very threshold logical history of humankind. Such an extension which the Humanities still hold as their cradle in exceeds his own framework of inquiry and yet it the current fierce ambient of a STEM driven re- seems to point to a much larger meshwork of co- search environment. In this sense the sciences constituting forces in the evolution of the earth, in as much as the arts can be conceived as a zigzag which a constant dynamic making of material form between the epistemological and the ontological, and creative conscious evolution manifest in the sometimes taking polemic or extreme perspec- very crust of its appearances. The traces remain tives between either the so-called positivist and indicators of a thrust and energy that ceaselessly so-called esoteric, and only in the most fragile, transmutes in ever-new pathways in its creative modest and generous elegance find a relatively force. Henri Bergson provides a most powerful stable equilibrium for which outstanding figures account of this dynamic in his Creative Evolution and collaborative initiatives throughout the his- (1998 [1907], in which consciousness in its be- tory can be attributed for. coming is conceived as dynamic and contingent just as the material formation of biological life. As Costantini and Woodward allude to, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s practice stands out as exemplary in Warburg, who in three of the four theses at the this context. It was the capricious characteris- end of his dissertation treated the relations be- tic of static electricity in Sugimoto’s New York tween motion and dynamic states, remarks in his studio that made him wrestle with the ambigu- lecture on the Serpentine dance that “the circle, ous and changing conditions in the dark room the coiled serpent, is the symbol for the rhythm of during developing photographic prints. With an time...” (Warburg 1939: 281). This rhythm of time inspired, curious mindset he took this recurring and consciousness, following Warburg through falacity as constructive challenge that led him Bergson, if seen less than a polemic (as it often into a scientifically driven adventure of working manifests in the dialectics of subject-object di- directly with the electrical discharge as object chotomies) and more as a co-constituting friction of photography. Inspired by “aborted discharge” and dynamo of life in its making, may provide a experiments by Fox Talbot, he applied various key to thinking about the ontological and episte- electrical generators from a rebuilt Wimhurst mological implications of research practices as prototype to a Tesla coil ending up with a Van two distinct yet interdependent domains. Mutu- Der Graaf generator that transferred the sparks ally inclusive and co-dependent, yet in constant directly to the photosensitive paper under con- tension or at least fragile equilibrium, much as

xiv Editorial Martha Blassnigg Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University trolled conditions of the atmosphere, in particular back to the origins of photography, to the humidity and temperature, which resulted in the origins of painting, perhaps to the origins of so-called ‘Lightning Fields’ series. The catalogue consciousness, to the very earliest milestone that accompanied the exhibition entitled ‘Nature of of my being. (Panzer 2011) Light’ [3] (Sugimoto 2010) comprises 15 ‘Lightning Evocative of early scientific investigations into Fields’ photographs as well as Sugimoto’s printed electricity and lighting such as by Nikolas Tes- reinterpretations of 15 negatives by Talbot (which la (1993) and his wireless technologies, this is he had not printed into positives), referenced as evocative of the earlier mentioned analogy of Talbot’s own conception of the action of Light the zigzag as it featured significantly in Henri upon sensitive paper which he called “Photogenic Bergson’s philosophy, as a metaphor for the im- Drawing” [4]. Informed by Charles Wheatstone’s probabilities and contingencies of the mechanistic electrical experiments, Talbot experimented with cause-and-effect principle when applied to the illumination through electric sparks and a spin- dimensions of life. (Bergson 1998: 57) Because ning disk anticipating so-called instantaneous of the importance that the intellect has carried photographic techniques for stopping time” [5], through the creative evolution that led to human an interest he shared with Michael Faraday to life, the silent mastery of the immaterial domains which they referred to as “fixing transience”. [6] of underlying motion remained overshadowed The question that is rarely asked is: What for? and is commonly treated as an invisible given. What is/was the original motivation? Perhaps the This underlying motion, as Warburg so power- most salient indication is found in accounts facing fully evoked, is most tangible in the participatory a sublime or subliminal moment or epiphany; as experience of the viewer in a transference of Michael Punt reflected during an INTR meeting consciousness, an ontological and epistemologi- in Marseilles hosted by Roger Malina at IMeRA cal encounter. In a similar spirit Ariella Azoulay [7] facing Mont Sainte Victoire, more than 100 (2012) re-reads the common interpretations of years after Paul Cézanne had confronted himself the understanding of photography in Talbot’s repeatedly with the phenomenon negotiating in The Pencil of Nature, not as an automatic writing an exemplary exercise of artistic practice and machine or nature writing itself, but as an actor constant retraining of perception (Ione 2012), among actors: when he noted that the most burning and perhaps only possible question that could arise from Rather, the pencil of nature could be seen such an encounter was “What now?” (rather then as an inscribing machine, which transforms “What’s next?”) the encounter that comes into being around it, through it and by means of its mediation, Sugimoto’s work constantly draws the viewer into a special form of encounter between into the present of an encounter that straddles participants where none of them possesses most powerful energetic expression with still- a sovereign status. In this encounter, in a ness, which confirms Freedberg’s provocative structured fashion and despite the threat of question: “But can the soul be revealed through disruption, the pencil of nature for the most non-frenzied movement, whether of body, hair, part produces a visual protocol immune to or ornament? Of course it can. There can be the complete domination of any one of the emotion without motion.” Sugimoto expands the participants in the encounter and to their capacity to take hold of time, to “fix transcience”, possible claim for sovereignty. (p. 70) as inherent in the photographic technique into the perception of the beholder confronting any Whilst Azoulay focuses on human subjects, this object or formal appearance. As Panzer (2011) flat model of relational interaction can be extend- notes on his work: “the fossil, the film, the spark ed to objects as active participants in the event all become endowed with the capacity to stop and encounter, which recognises and produces time, and hold it, once animated by a powerful time in its own dominion beyond chronological imagination.” Sugimoto declares: constraints. This qualitative durational time of the present at any given moment is transposed, Now as the waves of 21st-century art seem relived, remembered, forgotten, renewed, ex- to be stilling to a breezeless lull, I find myself tended… Rather than a confrontation between aspiring to a wholly anachronistic art, travel- a subject and an object through an objective, ling back through time to once again portray the visualising event turns into a multiplicity of in photographs an inner phenomena that transpositions through consciousness(es) that painting cannot depict. Printing the precious exceed the limits of delineated subject positions negatives that Talbot bequeathed, I head

xv Editorial Martha Blassnigg Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University and indicates an approach towards an ontology In other words, once we factor in conscious- of consciousness (as ontological quest) rather ness as an ontological dimension, and, most than an exclusive epistemology (conscious “of” importantly, as vehicle to travel through diverse something). epistemological levels and layers, then the subject-object dichotomy might appear merely as a The issue that seems to be nagging to come to full by-product of a biased focus on an intellectual light in all three editorials is the peculiar dynam- perspective. Epistemology in that sense can ics of consciousness, as precarious, demanding never be separated from ontology, and yet has and contingent just as anything material manifest to be recognised and approached in specific which is so much more accessible and easier to ways correspondingly to the required level of en- measure. Perhaps by the same token in ignor- gagement. Such an indicated ‘knowing as being ing some of the complex drivers that precipitate with’ rather than ‘knowledge of something’ shifts technology, too much weight has and is been the tone from a possessive attitude of so-called given to its material form and mediated content. ‘knowledge acquisition’ to a shared collaborative Such thinking often leads, or is informed by, the enterprise, one that might be called ‘ontologically idea of consciousness as an epiphenomenonon robust’ knowledge, expanding Helga Nowotny’s of the brain. Current approaches to the history term of the ‘socially robust’, which potentially, in of science and technology and to deep history the spirit of deep history, includes dimensions spanning both human and non-human phenom- beyond the human realm. A starting point may be ena, are starting to grasp the fuller dimension- to depart from the obvious that, what it means to alities of their coming into being, and reveal a be human, carries all evolutionary realms within maturing recognition of self-consciousness as the very constitution of the body-mind complex, as crucial vehicle to both distinguish and straddle Edgar Morin reminds us (Niculescu 2008: 23-32), the sometimes conflicting domains of ontological which excludes the separation between human and epistemological inquiry. and the animal, plant and mineral realms. But the Among the ‘Lightning Field’ series, Sugimoto real work of an ontological epistemology lies in chose an image printed from one of Talbot’s the recognition and research into what differen- negatives of the Laocoön, a life-long obsession tiates the specific human capacities and values of Warburg, a deep preoccupation with the prob- within the evolutionary multiplicity, which include lem of pathos, interpreted as violent movement, aspects of self-recognition, self-consciousness affect and gesture through which he indicated and the ability of self-transcendence. In light of connections between struggles with the snake, the long (and indeed deep) history of evolution, it emotion, salvation, and healing. Perhaps a certain seems that we are only at the very beginning of a surge of humanity’s consciousness is coming to dawning recognition where the zigzag paths of the a maturity (once again) in which the relationship dynamics of the curiosity to know through being with the snake, or in other words the ancient ideas conscious might lead us in the future. From recent about the sublime with its connotations of hor- research into greater complexity and transdisci- ror, can be handled more gently, as Freedberg plinary investigations it is clear that pioneering also recalls in his account of the Pueblo serpent research into the domains of the yet unknown rituals. One in which the Damocles sword of the will need open-minded, intellectually flexible and Romanticists might find a temporary liberation generous, creative, imaginative and yet rigorous for a fearless confrontation with a long due en- collaborations, as earlier historical peaks of ex- lightenment that recognises both the ontological traordinary insight have demonstrated to provide and epistemological as inseparable yet neces- for enduring knowledge practices in order to ful- sarily distinguished counterparts in the long and fill what Sundar Sarukkai called the “ethnics of indeed deep history of creative evolution. The curiosity” in a widest ontological sense. If being Humanities may be able to bring some light into cannot be separated from knowing, it should not the ‘apparent appearances’ (no pun intended) lead to a hysteria of subjectivity, one that science of the abyss that the science-art confrontation is at odds to suppress, but as Warburg struggled reports to encounter and, as Punt urges, in an to come to terms with, perhaps the restoration of inclusive, rigorous yet imaginative and innova- a ‘calm contemplation’ that propels knowing into tive thrust of creativity which is able to recognise the depths of what Alfonso Montuori (Niculescu and respect all participating actants on their own 2008: xi) framed as ‘being, doing and relating’—an terms on the shared zigzag journey of the multi- immanent pathway towards the sublime? plicity of consciousness’ evolution.

xvi Editorial Martha Blassnigg Transtechnology Research, Plymouth University

Notes Nicolescu, B. (2008) Transdisciplinarity: Theory and Practice. New York: Hampton Press. [1] From Warburg’s Schlangenritual (Warburg 2002, 1988, 1939). Cited in Michaud (2004: 306) and in Panzer, M. (2011) ‘Demons into Angels: Hiroshi Johnson (2012: 35). Sugimoto’s miniature fireworks’, The British Journal of Photography, 27 June 2011 [Online]. Available [2] This can be translated into an intermediary at: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of- (mental/virtual) space for reflection. photography/interview/2072023/demons-angels- hiroshi-sugimotos-miniature-fireworks (Accessed 25 [3] The title resonates with Talbot’s The Pencil of October 2012). Nature, in which Talbot anticipated xerography, infrared film, and offset type, among other modern Ramalingam, C. (2008) ‘Stopping time: Henry Fox uses of photographic technology. (Panzer 2011) Talbot and the origins of freeze-frame photography’, Endeavour, 32(3), pp. 86–93. [4] Talbot’s new method of capturing visual impressions, to which he referred to as the “royal Sugimoto, H. (2010). Nature of Light. Text in English road to Drawing” was to appeal to the professional and Japanese with texts by Larry J. Schaaf, Minoru artist and amateur alike, especially to the latter Shiizu, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Mishima: Izu Photo who encountered difficulties in learning the rules Museum. of perspective or those “who moreover have the misfortune to be lazy”. (Talbot 1944) Warburg, A. (2002) Le Rituel du serpent. Paris: Macula. [5] See Chitra Ramalingam, ‘Stopping Time: Henry Fox Talbot and the Origins of Freeze-Frame Warburg, A. (1992) Ausgewählte Schriften und Photography’, Endeavour, xxxii (2008), pp. 86–93. Würdigungen. By Dieter Wuttke (ed.), Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner. [6] See Chitra Ramalingam, ‘Fixing Transience: Photography and Other Images of Time in 1830s Warburg, A. (1939) ‘A Lecture on the Serpent Ritual’, London’, in Time and Photography, ed. Jan Baetens, Journal of the Warburg Institute, II, pp. 277–292. Alexander Streitberger and Hilde Van Gelder (Leuven, 2010), pp. 3–26. Faraday was also the one Warburg, A. (1988) Schlangenritual. Ein who publically introduced Talbot’s photographic Reisebericht. With an afterword by U. Raulff. Berlin: process at one of his famous Friday lectures at the Wagenbach. Royal Institution in January 1839 shortly after the introduction of Daguerre’s technique in Paris. [7] The International Network for Transdisciplinary Research (INTR) was funded by Plymouth University, led by Michael Punt, aimed at investigating current understanding of transdisciplinarity through practice- informed research approaches. Its fourth meeting was held between 13-15 July 2012 at the Aix- Marseille Institute for Advanced Studies in Marseilles (http://www.imera.fr/index.php/en.html). For more information see http://trans-techresearch.net/intr (accessed 25 October 2012)

References Azoulay, A. (2012) ‘The ontological question’, in: Azoulay, A. Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography. London: Verso. Dillon, B. (2004) ‘Collected Works: Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas’, Frieze Magazine (80), pp. 46–47. [Online] Available at: http://www.frieze.com/issue/ article/collected_works/ (Accessed 26 October 2012). Freedberg, D. (2004) Pathos at Oraibi: What Warburg did not see. [Online] Available at: www.columbia.edu/ cu/arthistory/faculty/Freedberg/index.html (Accessed 25 October 2012). [Original: ‘Pathos a Oraibi: Ciò che Warburg non vide’, in: Cieri Via, C. and Montani, P. (eds.), Lo Sguardo di Giano, Aby Warburg fra tempo e memoria. Turin: Nino Aragno: pp. 569–611.] Ione, A. (2012) ‘Light Is the Envelope: The Innovations of Paul Cézanne’, in Blassnigg, M. (ed.) Light Image Imagination. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press [in press]. Johnson, C. (2012) Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg’s Atlas of Images. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Michaud, P. (2004) Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion. Trans. Sophie Hawkes. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

xvii Editorial Roger F. Malina Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications

Science in the First Person alisation that science in itself cannot re-design its social embedding. Living through the current Singular: New Roles for the American Presidential campaign as I write this is Arts in the Theatricalisation a depressing reminder of the resurgent ‘religious’ of Science? context within which science develops today. My second confession is that I am a positivist 1) Some preliminary contextualisation (though reformed). I certainly believe that the In this discussion for L|R|Q I would like to start human senses, augmented and extended by off from Michael Punt’s comment that: scientific instruments, can be used to obtain falsifiable knowledge of the world, a world that “For a number of reasons including a commitment exists independent of our existence; and that the to multi-disciplinarity, and a genuine concern scientific method is a reliable, the most reliable to share and world view, some scientists have available, method for obtaining such knowledge. also embraced art practice in literature, film, However I fully understand the post-modern cri- theatre and more recently in installation and tique and that factors external to science deter- interventionist visual artworks. They do so with mine not only the direction that science takes but the security that science is clearly understood as also the kinds of explanations that have currency an important—if not the only way—to know the at any given time as well as the process of so- world and that it both describes—and is—reality.” cial acceptance by peers. The scientific method I certainly count myself among these scientists. itself evolves, as does the nature of acceptable explanations. Two recent developments have Punt goes on to say: been forcing new epistemological strategies in “This was not the case in the late seventeenth the scientific method. The first is the appearance and eighteen centuries. Science was not self-ev- of elaborate computer simulations, which act as idently a pathway to truth about the world around ‘falsifiable hypotheses’ for understanding com- and within us and each of these practices had plex systems (including social ones). The second to be convincing about its claims (most of which is the impact of ‘big data’ on field after field of we now regard as partial and provisional—if not inquiry, enabling research questions that were completely wrong)” unanswerable before to be attacked and re-ori- enting the direction towards questions where big As the sole ‘scientist’ in this L|R|Q discussion it data is available; correlations and extrapolations allows me to position myself as clearly as I can become powerful methods of scientific explana- on two issues that inevitably contextualise my tion. These raise new issues in the ‘presentation’ approach to these topics. First I am an atheist. I or ‘re-presentation’ of science that I will elaborate came to this clear position only a few years ago further below. There is no doubt that the digital when confronted by my eldest son; recently im- humanities are re-confronting many of the bat- mersed in the renewed religiosity of American tles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries university students, he was just helping set up the university’s first “Atheist Club”. He asked me 2) The Social Embedding of Science whether I was agnostic or atheist; I had never Both Martyn Woodward and Michael Punt refer taken position in a clear manner. It seems to me us to Scientia 2013 [2] a conference to be held in that one of the successes of the sciences is that spring 2013. The organisers state: “The premise it has been able to elaborate credible and con- of this conference is that the Scientific Revolution vincing scenarios of how structure has emerged can be considered an interdisciplinary process in the universe, and that we are now beginning involving Biblical exegesis, art theory, and liter- to understand the mechanisms that lead to self- ary humanism, as well as natural philosophy, organisation through low level interactions in alchemy, occult practices, and trade knowledge.” the sciences of complexity and the origin and Would Scientia 2413, 800 years after Galileo’ not development of life. The sciences of complex- equally well discuss twenty-first century science ity and Darwinism need no teleological appeal, in similar terms? Globalisation would expand the nor intelligent design (see Stuart Kauffman’s issue of Biblical exegesis to those of other world “Re-Inventing the Sacred” [1] for one attempt religions that now are equally strong cultural to put the small and big pictures together). Yet contexts for science. Art theory and literary hu- this view is not universally held by my scientific manism would be expanded to the influence of colleagues and it can be argued that one of the e-culture on the cultural embedding of science. ‘failures of the enlightenment’ has been the re-

xviii Editorial Roger F. Malina Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications

Trade knowledge would be replaced by global are part of deep battles to maintain the supremacy commerce and military strategy and its influ- of the scientific methods as explanatory systems ence on the direction that science takes through of natural phenomena. funding mechanisms. And alchemy and occult The second wave of new forms of science as practices are alive and well as evidences by theater began to appear in the 1990s through the dismal statistics on global scientific literacy. what are called ‘public engagement’ rather than 3) Presentation and Re-Presentation ‘science outreach’ methodologies funded by various agencies. The concern here is not simply I would like to argue that we have entered a cri- attracting young people into STEM careers, but sis of ‘representation’ as profound as those of anchoring science in the public imagination and the Renaissance or of the nineteenth century, social and cultural practices. In April 2001 the and that this is driving a new theatricalisation of global ‘Yuri’s Night’ parties [3] began to be held, science. As described by Michael Punt, Martha celebrating the first human space flight; hundreds Blassnigg and Martyn Woodward in their essays, of thousands of people have been attracted. the arts and crafts played an important role in There have been a proliferation of such events, making tangible and sensible the discoveries of which have also been adopted by such interna- unseen worlds revealed by X-rays, by electro- tional festivals as Ars Electronica, ISEA, Future magnetism, by the discovery of microbes; and Everything, Zero One; these events are cultural often scientific experiments played in performa- events that appropriate science and technol- tive roles, in public, were key parts of the rhetoric ogy—not science education events. of science to convince not only peers but the public of the plausibility and understandability Simultaneous with the science engagement type of the new phenomena being revealed. activities, we have witnessed the emergence over the last ten years of new forms of artistic engage- We are indeed seeing a new ‘performativity’ in ment in science through art-science collaboration science today that harks back to the theatrical practices, new kinds of artists residencies (such rhetoric of nineteenth century scientists. The first as those promoted by the Wellcome Trust in the wave of this appeared in the 1970s with the reali- UK) and the development of new institutional sation that there were not enough scientists and contexts for such work (eg. Symbiotica, IMERA, engineers being trained for the growing techno- Synapse, ArtistsinLabs; see the ArtsActive net- logical industries; the STEM (Science Technology work for some other examples [4]). Other curato- Education Mathematics) programmes became rial spaces such as the Dublin Science Gallery, embedded in the scientific enterprise. The new Arts Catalyst have emerged in a growing ecology performative spaces included the re-invention of for showing art-science work to diverse publics. science museums, such as the San Francisco Though art-science collaboration is embedded Exploratorium; indeed from the beginning when in rhetoric of mutual influence, the dominant it was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, artists outputs to date have been of a performative na- were called on as mediators not only to improve ture in arts contexts. In some cases these draw exhibit design but to create art work that would explicitly on nineteenth century practices such as intrigue and inform their publics. In the U.S., Adam Brown and Robert Root Bernstein’s public agencies such as NASA began to fund in the re-staging of the 1953 Miller-Urey experiments 1990s ‘science outreach’ programs to take the on origins-of-life [5]. scientific results outside of the science ghettos into classroom and into the media. As pointed out Just in the eighteenth and nineteenth century by Michael Punt major scientific projects began this creates tensions between the motivations to be explicitly staged, often live, as with the US of the scientists and the motivations of the the- Shuttle launches and moon landings. The recent atrical producers. JPL landing of the Curiosity spacecraft on Mars Michael Punt states: “In perpetuating the con- is perhaps an exemplar, as is the way the Higgs fusion between rhetoric and technique the role Boson discoveries at CERN were revealed act by of the artist appears to have become largely act in real time to the media and to the public; it is devolved to particular kinds of behaviours—(par- perhaps no coincidence that CERN announced ticipation, collaboration, observation etc) which just a year before its official hosting of artists corresponds with a loose view of art practice residencies programs. Science indeed is now beloved of amateurs and libertines but actually often designed as public theater as it was in the very little to do with what artists (or at least those nineteenth century, and the rhetorical strategies

xix Editorial Roger F. Malina Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications artists who form the canon of the last 400 years fixed representations. Data becomes theater in the west) actually do.” And this un-ease is and it is through this theater that meaning and picked up on by Martha Blassnigg who goes on sense are created. to point out, in discussing Warburg and Berg- The second transition that is driving a crisis in son’s views, that “These were the spaces for representation is the proliferation of scientific reflection—’Denkraum der Besonnenheit’ or ‘An- domains that reveal phenomena that are in- dachtsraum’ (Warburg 1992: 267) that Warburg commensurable with the human senses and was so eager to preserve and which led him to perception. This is not new to today’s science rather polemically critique technologies of indus- and indeed in nineteenth century science such trialisation; but which nonetheless indicates the problems arose as microscopes, telescopes, very threshold which the Humanities still hold electrical probes gave access to phenomena as their cradle in the current fierce ambient of a that were not directly accessible to the human STEM driven research environment.” Indeed the senses. What is new today is the dominance of role of the arts and humanities, if reduced to an these new scientific terrains made accessible instrumentalised function, will be unable to help through a growing menagerie of new scientific re-invent science in a socially robust context as instrumentation. The science of evolution dealt argued by Helga Nowotny. with evolution of life forms that were understand- 4) Big Data is not Just More Data able if not familiar, to the layman. However the nano-sciences, molecular biology, high-energy Today’s crisis in representation is driven by two physics and quantum mechanics, brain imaging, other epistemological transitions. complex systems (such as global warming) deal First we have entered a period of data plenty, the with phenomena that we cannot perceive, even era of big data. Historian Daniel Boorstin called with augmented senses. Our intuitions, our lan- this an epistemological inversion, a transition guages, metaphors, our basic ontologies, arise from a science that was meaning rich and data from the performative manipulation, beginning at poor to one that is data rich and meaning poor. an early age, of the world around us. But in the We are only just beginning to invent the new sys- nano world we are in territory where everything tems of representation that allow one to ‘visualise’ has to be invented in terms of representation and (and sonify or more generally make ‘sensible’) again this privileges new forms of theatricality. these large volumes of data. The invention of The representation of phenomena not only invis- perspective as a system of representation did ible to the human senses but in-commensurable not happen overnight. Just as it took decades for with human experience and concepts requires the technologies of photography and cinema to new forms of representation. develop their visual languages and conventions, In a recent issue of Leonardo [6], a number of so we can expect that it will take many years writers confronted the reality of the ‘in-commen- of experimentation to develop stabilised ways surability’ of the nano world with those of our cur- that large volumes of data can be represented rent languages of representation. The concept to both scientific peers and larger publics. Big of color for instance is a meaningless concept data is not just more data: new research ques- at the nano world where atoms and interactions tions become accessible that were unthinkable occur at scales smaller than the wavelength of before. Hiding data, or data cloaking, becomes light. Objects do not have edges in the world of a crucial technique to enable representations quantum mechanics; every representation of that are manageable. Large complex data sets atoms of molecules that shows discrete objects sometimes drive 3D navigable representations; with sharp edges is fundamentally misleading. In swimming or flying through data is not merely air a typical carbon monoxide molecule moves metaphoric but performative; informed by our at 500 meters a second (yes, half a kilometer knowledge of ‘mirror neuron’ processes in cogni- a second) faster than any kind of cinema can tion, these theatricalisations help build up intuition meaningfully capture. Yet we convert data from and tacit or implicit knowledge. Live interaction field effect microscopes to colored images and with data introduces the possibility of manipu- animations as if they were macroscopic objects, lation, transformation in read time, mash ups, compounded by the fact that the act of reading of data objects or representations. Though live the electric fields perturbs them. We are at the interaction with data is not specific to big data very beginning of creating the new systems of situations, large data volumes privilege such representation for these scientific terrains. cinematic and immersive techniques over static

xx Editorial Roger F. Malina Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications

As explained by Leonardo Section editor Kathryn physics gave it a privileged seat in government. D. de Ridder-Vignone [6]: “Nanotechnology art Today while bemoaning the lack of students in exhibitions provide more than a portal through STEM programs, governments faced with budget which to enter the future world of nanotechnology. realities are de-emphasising budgets for science They also represent the state of nanotechnology and technology (the Spanish government has in society today. This paper compares three ex- announced draconian cut backs and in the US hibition forums that serve as representations of funding is flat). three of the most common genres of nanotechnol- Perhaps scientists again find themselves, as in ogy art (nano-art). These exhibition forums and the eighteenth and nineteenth century where is their creators demonstrate distinct perspectives Michael Punt’s words, “Science was not self-evi- about what counts as engagement and how best dently a pathway to truth about the world around to achieve it; they all attempt to persuade their and within us and each of these practices had publics that art can serve as a conduit for the to be convincing about its claims (most of which creation of alternative nanofutures.” So the target we now regard as partial and provisional—if not is not only the public but also scientific peers and completely wrong). From this dispersed set of the political sphere. Physicist and string theorist practices that we now understand as the begin- Lisa Randall [7] who has written a libretto for an ning of science there an orthodoxy of claims opera “Hypermusic: A Projective Opera in Seven which were disseminated through a cascade of Planes” explicitly states that her intended public demonstrations, first to the homes of aristocrats includes her scientific peers who have difficulty and middles classes, and then to the masses in understand conceptually her scientific work. public displays and museums. It is now widely As explained by Michael Punt, the arts and crafts accepted that the tactics used in this struggle for played a crucial role in nineteenth century science the public acceptance of science has impacted in bringing scientific discoveries not only to the on experimental practice, what science enquired general public but also to scientific peers. The into, how it was done, and what was prioritised.” scientific ‘performances’ at the Royal Institution Is today’s art-science movement then part of a familiarized scientists and the lay public with the number of developments that are part of a new new discoveries, and these performances played theatricalisation of science, which responds to a key role in the ‘rhetoric’ of scientific plausibil- the insecurity of the science establishment in the ity. But demonstrating magnetism is a far easier current economic and political climate? proposition than demonstrating genetic mutation in a Christmas performance. Acknowledgements One problem today of course, especially in the I want to thank the PhD and MA students in the area of big science, is one cannot put in a public ATEC Graduate Seminar on Arts, Humanities and Science at the University of Texas, Dallas for helping performance an orbiting X-ray telescope: the me test and develop some of these ideas informed earth’s atmosphere blocks all x rays reaching by their pre-occupations and passions. the earth. The CERN accelerator, MRI imagers or Field Effect Microscopes are difficult to trans- References port into public settings. The emerging ‘artists [1] Stuart Kauffman, Re-Inventing the Sacred, in residence’ programs in scientific institutions Google e-books: http://books.google.com/ books/about/Reinventing_the_Sacred. are one way to overcome these difficulties, and html?id=xpUalZ8vnVYC the emergence of ‘open data’ observatories and [2] Scientia 2013: http://go.warwick.ac.uk/scientiae the development of the citizen science movement is another. [3] Yuri’s Night: http://yurisnight.net/about/ [4] Artsactive: http://www.artsactive.net/en/ 5) Concluding Notes [5] Adam Brown and Robert Root Bernstein: The scientific enterprise since the Second World http://adamwbrown.net/projects-2/origins-of-life- War has had a societal contract is anomalous in experiment-1/ the history of science over the past four hundred [6] Leonardo Journal Issue Vol. 45, No. 5 2012: http:// years. The high technology industries that grew www.leonardo.info/isast/journal/toc455.html out of discoveries in fundamental science were a [7] Lisa Randall: http://www.physics.harvard.edu/ people/facpages/randall.html demonstration of the social utility of science that embedded science at the highest level of government. The military systems that depended on

xxi L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012

On Sentience installations in Japan and for- Japanese philosophy is predis- eign countries. Sugimoto’s pho- posed to phenomenalism, the tography spans over thirty years view that external phenomena by Giovanna Costantini with many of his photographic may be apprehended experien- costantini.giovanna.l@gmail. series worked continuously over tially through sensory stimuli as com time. These include “Dioramas,” a precondition for knowledge. “Wax Museums” (both since This approach to reality empha- Among questions posed in 1976), “Theaters” (since 1978), sizes an extension of direct ex- L|R|Q, Leonardo and other fo- “Seascapes” (since 1980), “Ar- perience beyond the perceiver rums of late, the receding scope chitecture” (since 1997), “Pine him/herself into the phenom- of historical research and the Trees” (since 2001), “Con- enal world as a primordial sea role of the sublime in ArtScience ceptual Forms” (since 2004), of being in which subject and integration have received em- “Photogenic Drawing” (since object are not yet separated. phasis. A number of time-based 2008) and “Lightning Fields” Described as “Pure Experience” media productions appearing in (since 2008). In these and oth- by Nishida Kitaro in An Inquiry recent months challenge con- er highly conceptual works of into the Good (1911), the sub- cepts of history, temporality and sculpture, installation, perform- ject-object dichotomy posited beauty in ways that may enlarge ance, writing and architecture, in Western philosophy that has this field of inquiry to include ap- Sugimoto traces the emergence come to be identified with objec- proaches to time and memory of thought “over hundreds of tive science was reconciled in as reflections of cultural con- thousands of years” to primal Nishida’s philosophy through a sciousness and value (moral, origins whose memory, like the quest for coherence or “unity of social and aesthetic), broadly contours of the architecture he thought.” This theory attempted conceived as ideas associ- has photographed over time, to compensate for the erosion ated with structural and post- grows increasingly indistinct. of integrative beliefs based in structural worldviews, human An awareness of these origins Japanese tradition and religion endeavor, and the philosophi- and a desire to merge with time wrought by Western rational- cal implications of scientific and and the universe in a manner ism. It is an approach that views artistic research (cf. Anastasios that spans human conscious- True Reality as a mental state Brenner, Raison scientifique et ness from prehistory to infinity containing oppositions, a unity valeurs humaines, 2012; Ju- inspires his most breathtaking of intelligence and emotion in lian Voss-Andreae, Leonardo imagery. At the same time, his which both subject and object 44.1.11; Chris Welsby, Leonardo artwork addresses mental proc- are submerged rather than dif- 44.2.11). esses that include the objectifi- ferentiated. Nishida and his cation of reality, self-reflexivity successors proposed a “way” A Schema of Human Mental and the subject-object dichot- or “path” of continuity situated History [1] omy that stand at the crux of “between” the more intuitive Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories of a positivist-materialistic world- Eastern thought processes Origin, a documentary produced view, which has informed the and Western logocentrism, a by the Japanese television sta- history of Western philosophy creative synthesis in which the tion WOWOW and nominated for and epistemology since its in- intellect is augmented by intui- an international Emmy award ception. While Cartesian dual- tive truths derived from percep- (see Review) considers time ism distinguishes between mind tions of the natural world rooted and memory through a decid- and matter, subject (observer) in Shinto and traditional values. edly Eastern optic. Filmed in and object (observed), Eastern In the aftermath of World War Japanese with English subti- consciousness sees reality as II, Japan’s fate reflected that of tles, the program presents a inclusive and holistic. Accord- other nations whereby it con- survey of Sugimoto’s work and ing to this worldview, opposi- fronted loss, existential nihilism, conversations with the artist tional forces transmute into each spiritual decay and emotional that include his thoughts about other. Matter and spirit for ex- emptiness. For this reason, on ancient and contemporary art. ample are not merely separate, some levels the extreme degree From his studio in New York complementary units, but co- of contradiction encountered in he demonstrates some of the dependent, interconnected and modern consciousness could be processes he employs in the reciprocal entities, with each said to have been philosophical- creation of his art while other part integrally manifest in the ly anticipated in Japan through segments show him at work on totality of the whole. mental and linguistic structures

1 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 comprised of superimposed evocations photographically ecessors known as honka-dori. signs, structural and spatial through a mechanism and a As though attempting to recover complexity, and difference, the technology designed to arrest a memory of his birth, Sugimo- hallmarks of postmodern sen- time in order to record percep- to wrote about the Photogenic sibility. Evidenced linguistical- tion objectively, juxtaposing Drawings: ly through graphic characters subjective memory with clini- “I find myself aspiring to a configured para-tactically rather cal observation, sensory per- wholly anachronistic art, trav- than sequentially, antithetical ception with clarity. In some elling back through time to once concepts such as essentialism works Sugimoto subverts both again portray in photographs and contingency are expressed chronological time and the pho- inner phenomena that paint- in spatial relationships rather tographic process itself as in the ing cannot depict. Printing the than in consecutive, temporal series “Photogenic Drawings” precious negatives that Talbot terms. produced from William Henry bequeathed, I head back to the Fox Talbot’s (1800-1877) ear- For Sugimoto, history is both origins of photography, to the liest negatives. Talbot, who is deep and dynamic, a process origins of painting, perhaps to credited with the invention of the of continuous engagement in the origins of consciousness, negative-positive photograph- which thought is consistently to the very earliest milestone ic process, experimented with reworked and subjected to of my being.” [3] photosensitized paper treated scientific verification. Data is with silver nitrate whose proper- His position affirms Nishida’s comprised of recorded and un- ties changed when exposed to construct of True Reality: “I do recorded elements that estab- light. When Sugimoto learned not observe things which I am lish frames in which the ancient that Talbot’s unprinted nega- observing in the present pre- and the modern, Eastern and tives became available to col- cisely as they are in the present,” Western consciousness may lectors, he purchased them with wrote Nishida, “but I observe be joined. Once considered the intention of “developing” and them interpreted by the force of opposites “like oil and water” printing these historic images past experience.” [4] Explaining he has written, his view of con- reputed to form part of the pre- further, he states “Even though temporary art and ancient art history of photography. As these the human heart appears in a has melded “ineffably together negatives were produced prior thousand forms and ten thou- into one, more like water and to the discovery of reliable fixing sand states and appears to be air,” the crystalline atmosphere agents, they existed solely as almost without a fixed law, when of his iconic “Seascapes.” In negatives in danger of chang- we contemplate it, it seems that these works distinctions being if exposed to light. Despite both in the past and the present, tween earth and sky, nature these risks, Sugimoto set about throughout East and West, a and culture, life and death, past to explore the capacity of the tremendous unifying force is in and present, evaporate into an negatives to produce positive control.” [5] ethos born of beauty. Sugimoto’s images never seen by the public unifying vision of the chaos of or by Talbot before. He sought to The origin that Sugimoto seeks the world is something he likens return to the origins of photog- to reveal in his artworks is the to a “scooping up shimmering raphy as an explorer in search essence of the creative process particles so as to fashion decod- of buried truths. In effect, Sugi- itself—the ki, a vital energy born ing devices that afford us a look moto aspired to further develop of true relationship within and around in the gloom.” [2] Talbot’s experiments organically over time. It is also the force of generation and sustenance that Many of his artworks convey so as to bring to fruition a wholly inspires ArtScience fusion. This ephemeral effects of light and original conception from the dust concept of vitality, the belief in a shade through techniques de- of Talbot’s unformed ideas. Tal- living “soul” or spirit that inhab- signed to render times of day, bot’s discoveries begat further its natural phenomena, is one duration of exposure (i.e. leav- discovery, resulting in delicate, that is embedded in Japanese ing the shutter open), lighting impressionistic veils of light pro- animism and Shinto religion. Yet and framing so as to allude to duced from the shadows of pho- in critical parlance, the term vi- moments that have passed be- tographic memory. At the same talism in the West has proven fore, evocations of places and time, the “Photogenic Drawings” problematic as an aesthetic distant, archetypal memories presented homage to Talbot that theory due to widely varying recalled as echoes over time. calls to mind Japan’s ancestral associations owing to contra- Paradoxically he records such tradition of emulating great pred-

2 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 dictory theoretical epistemolo- to deceive. Decades can be ritualistic elements into modern gies in both art and science. compressed to a single instant; technological culture; Uriel Or- Sugimoto frequently invokes moments can seem to endure low’s Time is a Place, one of the the term “beauty” in reference forever. Swiss pavilions of the 2011 Ven- to his work, however, and we will ice Biennale, examined over- In contrast to the humble scale examine shortly its relevance to looked sites of history and their of Sugimoto’s “Photogenic the present discussion. larger historical connections; the Drawings,” Marclay’s wide exhibition Vérité exposée held at The Clock screen extravaganza proposes the Ernst Museum in Budapest a gigantomachia of cinematic http://www.youtube.com/ in 2009 explored the theme of glitz. Buttressing Michael Punt’s watch?v=xp4EUryS6ac memory and historical memory recent observation that the disas a process subject to percep- cipline of history has become Cut to Christian Marclay’s The tual and contextual distortion; increasingly restricted to the Clock, a 24-hour video montage Artspectrum 2012 held in Seoul, recent past (L|R|Q 2.01), The hailed as “a masterpiece of our Korea at the Leeum, Samsung Clock, indicative of numerous time” (The Guardian, 4.7.11). Museum of Art showcased work contemporary artworks, limits Captivating audiences since it that revisited the distant past its field of reference to one of was first exhibited at the White through assorted technological the most recent stages of hu- Cube gallery in Mason’s Yard media; and The Tanks a video man history, the era of moving in October of 2010, its multi- and performance installation pictures, the entertainment in- ple re-screenings include an by Sung Hwan Kim of South dustry and media saturation. installation at the 2012 Lincoln Korea currently on view at the Lacking any semblance of re- Center Festival in New York Tate Modern (18 July-28 Oct, ality or chronological breadth, where it ran continuously over 2012) collages memories of his it discards all but the contem- three July weekends from Friday homes in Seoul, Amsterdam and porary in its transitory fascina- mornings through Sunday nights New York. (with waiting times for admis- tion with glamour, celebrity and sion reported to be a minimum fictive hyper-reality. Confined to Marclay’s deeper vision of hu- of three hours). Described as a the realm of fantasy, it concocts man destiny however lies con- cinematic memento mori and a pseudo-history of time that is cealed beneath its artifice. Not looped so as to run for the sem- as brief and inconsequential as for naught can it be compared blance of eternity, the work con- it seems interminable. to the haunting death mask of sists of thousands of segments actors who have long since ex- The work is a pastiche of ed- of edited film clips accumulat- pired. Conceived as a play of its and remixed sound bytes, ed from the history of cinema. post-structural mirrors, its intent compiled from the gloss of These miniscule cuts have been is far removed from Sugimoto’s Hollywood classics, collaged synchronized to local time so careful process of collection, into illogical, frequently absurd as to function as an exacting preservation and regeneration. conjunctions, banal but interest- timepiece, one that calculates Rather than engage in historio- ing, trivial but riveting. These each passing hour to the minute. graphic integration and synthe- are appropriations from which sis, Marclay aligns himself with distant memory and nature have Marclay confronts Sugimoto’s temporal rupture and abandon- been purged, a bracketing of holistic vision of time with one ment. To account for this posi- contemporaneity also seen in of fragmentation, a sprawling tion, we should examine briefly the South African artist William anti-narrative that shatters any some of the shifts in aesthetic Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time notion of unity or psychic coher- theory that have contributed to exhibited in dOCUMENTA 13 ence. For here both time and contemporary art’s plural con- in Kassel, Germany this year. consciousness are inexorably cepts of art and aesthetics. Art, Approaches to the past vary dislocated, confused, acceler- according to Benedetto Croce widely throughout the world ated and segmented, loosed (1866-1952) may be understood and themes of time, including from all meaningful contextual- as an expression of the con- its disjunctures, are appearing ity, authenticity or origin. The sciousness of the artist and of in art in increasing numbers. In Clock depicts a version of reality the human spirit in its moral and Singapore, Entang Wiharso’s interpreted through illusions of aesthetic dimension. The art- Temple of Hope: Forest of Eyes the cinema in which both time work, he maintained, externaliz- (2010-11) incorporates deep- and continuity can be spliced es an intuition or feeling inspired into milliseconds, manipulated seated cultural traditions and

3 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 by precognitive insight. [6] This the classical Apollonian-Diony- mentation, an ironic reflection canonic ideal, elaborated in sian construct, he emblematized of his self-identification with Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) the impossibility of fertile union a heritage of Swiss precision Critique of Judgment (1790), in the technological era in The timepieces. At the same time defined the artwork as purpo- Great Glass. While numerous his experimentation with turn- sive, cognitive and responsive artworks have since introduced tables, microphones, styluses to universal human feelings of alternative readings of art, in- and other equipment creates pleasure and pain (qualities he cluding functionalist, agonist astonishing original effects of identified with beauty and the and interventionist strategies, abrupt discontinuity, disequilib- sublime). By the turn of the 20th Duchamp continues to spawn rium and seamless visual tran- century this position would be polarizing tendencies towards sition. Some who have viewed challenged by competing ideas aestheticism and anti-aestheti- the work over extended peri- of art based on theories of in- cism in art. Indeed, though both ods report becoming transfixed nate spontaneity and increased Sugimoto and Marclay look to and entranced. These contrasts subjectivity, as well as on the ex- Marcel Duchamp as a progeni- point up Marclay’s keenness and ercise of artistic craft as a gen- tor, they do so for different rea- dexterity, his technical bravura erative process (the Bergsonian sons. Sugimoto confronts The and wit. Paradoxically the fre- élan vital). These challenges Great Glass as a violence to be netic pace and nervous energy prompted aesthetic and stylis- rectified; Marclay perpetrates of the jump cuts stand in stark tic expression to diverge, with the crime. opposition to the lethargy and form increasingly privileged over leisured passivity of audiences content, leaving cognizance and “What time is it?” The Clock’s sprawled on sofas as in a private sentience to be contested. Ni- characters ask each other living room. Marclay captivates etzschean existential theories ceaselessly, rhetorically, exis- and fascinates his audience with that held the function of art to be tentially as bells toll in the dis- a conjurer’s technical virtuos- an affirmation of being also en- tance and ticking clocks regis- ity and speed, distracting audi- couraged the demotion of ideals ter the urgency of time passing, ences with improbable slights of beauty and certain qualities time running out, lost time. It of hand. of sentience. is perhaps Nietzsche’s bitter Noontide “...when man stands Sentience and Process In 1917 at the close of World at the middle of his course be- The pursuit of knowledge that War I, Marcel Duchamp’s icon- tween animal and Superman inspires science and art can be oclastic Fountain attacked the and celebrates his journey to understood, according to the concept of beauty bound to evening…” (Thus Spake Zara- art historian Erwin Panofsky feeling in art straight on, in ef- hustra.xxii), the hour in which (1892-1968) as that combina- fect challenging art’s aesthetic the bird of Wisdom takes flight tory “movement which has right- foundations by proposing a at dusk (Hegel). “History is nec- ly been called the discovery...or new paradigm of the artwork, essary,” wrote Marsilio Ficino, rediscovery of both the world the purely conceptual construct “not only to make life agreeable, and man.” He distinguished that an artwork may be read as but also to endow it with moral between scientia and eruditio, a philosophical proposition if significance.” Deprived of re- that is, between knowledge and it concretizes an argument of membrance in Marclay, we may learning, whereby scientia de- meaning. It further proclaimed be unable to adequately con- notes a more practical mental the validity of an anti-aesthet- template such significance, to possession whose aim would ic position. By so delineating comprehend or transcend either be something like mastery; while the opposition of cognizance the present or the past. eruditio denotes more of a proc- and sentience in art, logic and ess pursued among humanists beauty, as a subject-object di- Marclay’s stylized visuality and whose aim is wisdom. [7] In simi- chotomy, he exacerbated one command of sonic rhythms, lar terms, the contemporary art- of the fundamental distinctions however, evidence an astound- ist Robert Irwin recounted his between science and art, thinking degree of technical mastery cross-disciplinary interaction ing versus feeling, the modern and exacting craftsmanship. with physicists as part of the Art Minerva-Venus archetype. Involving complex schemes and Technology program at the Viewed as an irreconcilable op- of digital mixing, algorithms, Los Angeles County Museum of position of objective-subjective protocols, and processing, his Art from 1968-1970. Irwin was consciousness in the tradition of method relies heavily on accu- rate measurement and instru- beginning to think about the

4 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 use of energy, light and sound mately know and to wonder en- data that in turn stimulates the in his work and was interested courages each to further specu- association, connection and in ideas of space, energy and late. New findings in the area correspondence of ideas. Fran- matter from a scientific per- of cognitive science, especially cis Hutcheson (1694-1716), who spective. The opportunity led those that involve processes of influenced Locke, in “An Inquiry him to the anechoic chamber analogy formation across com- into the Original of our Ideas of at Lockheed’s Rye Canyon re- plex trans-disciplinary systems Beauty and Virtue” (1725) noted search center that was to figure include studies that integrate features such as regularity, or- prominently in his understand- the pursuit of beauty with cog- der and harmony to be attributes ing of perception and sensory nition. Douglas Hofstadter and of beauty in mathematical the- deprivation. It also brought him Emmanuel Sander’s new book orums and geometric shapes to Cal Tech’s Nobel laureate Dr. Surfaces and Essences (2012) that he considered conducive Richard Feynman at Pasadena’s promises to elucidate more fully to a parallel moral sense of Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the fluidity of ArtScience aes- equilibrium, or judgment, that scientists were tracking the Mar- thetic consciousness. derived from independent ra- iner and preparing the Voyager tional deliberation. In Anthony But what does beauty mean, spacecrafts. Together with fel- Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of philosophers ask since time im- low artist James Turrell, each Shaftesbury’s (1671-1713) Char- memorial? As Roger Malina has man, according to Irwin, was es- acteristics of Men, Manners, pointed out in his essay “A Role sentially interested in man’s rela- Opinions, Times of 1737, the for the Sublime in ArtScience” tionship to his environment and creative power of nature, mir- (L|R|Q 2.01), semantics, con- his perception of that environ- rored in the creative power of the tradictory definitions and trans- ment. “We decided that all we human mind, constituted a vital lation inhibit our ability to ad- wanted to find out was how two principle manifest in nature and dress many areas of confluence radically separate disciplines sublimity that he identified with adequately. The term vitalism, could interact, what could be beauty. He found moral and aes- for example, has radically dif- the grounds.” [8] Irwin concluded thetic pleasure to arise from the ferent connotations in art and that both the artist and the sci- same phenomenal source and science ranging from esoteri- entist engage in a similar proc- equated boundless beauty with cism to developmental biology. ess. It starts with a basic idea the Good, which in turn imparted The subject-object dualism and or hypothesis that is continually wisdom. The Irish philosopher objective logic that informs the tested and reworked until the and statesman Edmund Burke pursuit of knowledge in science desired result is obtained. The (1729-1797), who has been most also complicates relationships difference, for Irwin, was that closely identified with the sub- between such areas as empiri- the scientist’s experimentation lime based on his A Philosophi- cism, idealism, phenomenalism, followed a precise sequence of cal Inquiry into the Origins of our essentialism and indeterminacy logical progression while the art- Ideas of the Sublime and the in aesthetics. How we perceive ist uses logic in order to interface Beautiful (1757), likened the sub- reality and the values that we with one’s intuition or feelings. lime to that which is vast, rug- assign to its constituent parts Assimilating subjective and ob- ged and a source of terror. He remain contested. In the West jective measures, the scientist considered the sublime born of the categories of Beauty and adheres to external, objective sensations of awe, magnificence the Sublime (from the Latin sub- criteria, while the artist inclines and infinity, qualities inspired by limus, a quality of greatness) towards intuition. Such intuition, divinity. Immanuel Kant’s idea of have been repeatedly subjected according to the art historian the sublime was of three kinds: to epistemological speculation. Meyer Schapiro, need not re- the noble, the splendid and the flect qualities of perfection, co- Originating with John Locke’s terrifying, also emphasizing herence or unity of form, yet it (1632-1704) essay “Of Associa- the “boundlessness” of nature, reveals a reflective correspond- tion of Ideas,” from An Essay a quality similarly applicable to ence and engagement with com- Concerning Human Understand- reason. Conceptually, the Kan- plex fields such as to convey ing (1690) subjectivism, based tian Sublime is best suited to the some meaningful relationship in sensation, was deemed to scientific, aesthetic and intellec- and connection. Furthermore, be the most fundamental unit of tual imagination of ArtScience. the process of exploration and human knowledge. In opposition During the 20th century, the sub- discovery that leads both the to Descartes’ rationalism, Locke lime in art underwent significant artist and the scientist to ulti- placed an emphasis on sensory

5 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 theoretical revision when it was mobile as a model for the subtle is also a term useful as “a path reintroduced by the artist Bar- atmospheric changes in mean- between” in characterizing a nett Newman (1905-1970) who ing that continuously rebalance state of mind and modes of per- wrote the essay “The Sublime aesthetic qualifiers. [9] ception that bridge Eastern and is Now” in 1948. Newmann con- Western patterns of thought. An emphasis on shared proc- nected the idea of sublimity with Sentience is applicable to the esses of investigation such as abstract modernist formalism critical thinking that informs Art- methods utilized in generating (consistent with the positions Science processes in general, architectural models from John of the art critic Clement Green- whether as research into spiral Cage’s musical Variations (Le- berg, 1909-1994) whereby ab- galaxies, studies of artificial jel- onardo 45.1.12) or the sculpture stract painting on a vast and tre- lyfish created from human heart of Julian Voss-Andreae that vis- mendous scale might induce cells, tests of the electrical activ- ualizes quantum physics (Le- a sense of infinity and ecstasy ity of ion channel neurology, or onardo 44.1.11) enhances ap- on the part of the viewer tanta- Agnes Denes’ isometric draw- preciation of ArtScience praxis. mount to his/her response to an ings. Sentience may best reflect The symbiotic process of inquiry act of nature. Largely identified the spirit of human aspiration involves knowledge, perceptual with the protean aspirations of that animates all human en- experience and feelings trans- the New York School and their deavor. Not limited to thought, mitted over time through collec- rejection of classical tenets of it incorporates feeling and judg- tive memory as a repository of Absolute Beauty and canonical ment in the exercise of intelli- culture. It is through memory, perfection in art, Burke’s sub- gence and in art it forms a coun- the matrix of history, that val- limity came to be reinterpreted terpart to desire. There may be ue is perpetually recalibrated. as an empowering, existential no finer recent example of the Memory also forges bonds be- mandate for self-expression and unifying power of sentience than tween the individual and the self-affirmation, hardly the call to Janet Cardiff and George Bures community through which val- reasoned judgment and moral Miller’s transcendent Forty Part ues may be held in common. equilibrium proposed by its for- Motet, a reworking of “Spem in [10] Although memory is cultur- bears. Seeking distance from Alium” by Thomas Tallis of 1573: ally conditioned, the underlying Eurocentric hegemony, rebel- principles of prior experience http://www.cardiffmiller.com/ lious modernists embraced the distributed among many brains artworks/inst/motet_video.html sublime as the emotive power expand our understanding of of unrepressed consciousness http://www.nytimes.com/2010/ human purpose in relation to and aesthetic transcendence. 11/14/arts/design/14sugimoto. complex environments. html?pagewanted=all Thus the attribution of the sublime to ArtScience, while de- Perhaps ArtScience could be scribing sensations of “wonder,” symbolized by an image of “infinity” and “awe” inspired Faraday’s Cage, the title of phenomenally by nature, also Sugimoto’s installation in a de- prompts associations with im- commissioned power station manence, the supernatural, on Cockatoo Island in Sydney grandeur, terror, egocentrism Harbour for the 2010 Sydney and even mysticism that may Biennale. A Faraday Cage is an confound understanding. Many enclosure formed of conducting other terms such as imagination, material that redistributes elec- originality, energy, discovery and trical charges within the cage sensibility lend themselves simi- in a manner that acts to shield larly to ArtScience usage, terms the interior from electromagnetic that should be also be qualified radiation. Its effectiveness de- within ArtScience’s emerging pends on the geometry of the Sentience, a vital component of vocabulary. A recent article on conductive material. As an icon intellect, is a term that may hold the Swiss architectural histo- of shared ArtScience process, promise in uniting distinctions rian Siegfried Giedion (1888- it illustrates the function of logic between mind and body, the 1968) who theorized about the as a protective grid utilized in intellect and feeling. It is, as thinking-feeling dichotomy in certain computer testing proce- beauty, the point at which mind modern art, proposed a Calder dures in which an environment and body become indivisible. It

6 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 free of electromagnetic interfer- Six Stories entific images, nor does he try ence can be created. Known to demonstrate that artists are as a screen room that on some from the End of actually scientists and that real levels may be compared to Mar- Representation. science cannot be separated clay’s viewing chambers, space Images in Painting, from an artistic impulse, as it is enclosed by one or more Photography, is often argued in recent books grounded layers of fine metal Astronomy, on the subject (on the contrary, mesh or perforated sheet metal Elkins emphasizes the inevita- so as to block extraneous charg- Microscopy, ble and necessary differences es that allow high voltage elec- Particle Physics, between art and science). What tricity to be generated. Within and Quantum the author proposes -and man- the chamber, a magnetic curve Mechanics, 1980- ages to do- is a much more revo- conceived as a line of force may 2000 lutionary gesture. be illuminated so as to magnet- On the one hand, Elkins does ize a ray of light. by James Elkins not target one specific audience Notes Stanford University Press, -either an artistic or a scientific [1] Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Surface of Stanford, CA, 2008, 320 pp. one, as happens in almost all the Third Order,” Oct 28-Dec 23, publications interested in dis- 2011, Pace Gallery, New York, NY. ISBN 978-0804741484 cussing the two cultures debate. [2] Hiroshi Sugimoto History of History (L’histoire de l’histoire), Reviewed by Jan Baetens, Instead he attempts to write a Tokyo: Japan: Rikuyosha, 2004, University of Leuven text which can be read by both p. 11. audiences without any distinc- [email protected]. [3] Ibid., p. 37. tion and thus to defend new ac.be [4] Nishida, Kitaro, An Inquiry insights into art that can be of into the Good, Trans. By V. H. interest to humanists as well as Viglielmo, Ministry of Education, Japan, 1960, p. 32. to scientists and to comment on scientific ways of image-making [5] Ibid., p. 168. in a way that proves helpful to [6] Philosophies of Art and Beauty: both categories of readers. In Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger, Ed. by order to do so, the author, whose Albert Hofstadter and Richard background is mainly in art the- Kuhns, Chicago: The University of ory and the practice of painting, Chicago Press, 1976, pp. 556ff. has taken classes on quantum [7] Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Chicago: University of mechanics and particle phys- Chicago Press, (Phoenix Edition), ics as preparation. On the other 1982, pp. 24-25. hand, Elkins has also followed [8] Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is a certain number of methodo- Forgetting the Name of the Thing logical rules to make sure that One Sees, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, pp. his ambitious goal does not 130-131. James Elkins’s last book is an become unrealistic or slippery. [9] Mona Mahall and Asti Serbest, exceptional achievement, of These rules can be enumerated “Wolf and Vampire: The Border as follows: first, the selection of Between Technology and Culture,” which I don’t know any present E-flux journal #23, March 2011. equivalent. These Six Stories a perspective that might have a chance to present common [10] Robert Irwin Papers, Getty are an attempt to establish a Research Institute, Personal new dialogue between human- features (in this case, the ques- Writings, 15.4. ists and scientists (the ‘alpha’ tion of the limits of represen- and ‘beta’ sciences, whose tation: how does the problem almost unbridgeable divide is of what lies beyond the visual well-known since the “two cul- representation of the world out- tures debate” launched by C.P. side is tackled in very different Snow in 1959), more specifically artistic and scientific media and in the field of the image, both of approaches); second, the deci- its production and of its interpre- sion to speak the language of tation. Yet, Elkins’s book does each discipline, and to avoid as not simply mix artistic and sci- much as possible metaphorical

7 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 language (such a decision im- tions on types of representa- a spectrum of backgrounds. plies of course the priority given tion that exceed the visible, with His spontaneous choice of to description, at the expense questions of the invisible (parti- subjects, use of dazzling hue of interpretation); third, the re- cle physics) and the unimagina- intensities, and management fusal to unify the field of image ble (quantum mechanics). Even of color juxtapositions elicit a making and reading (hence the if each chapter constitutes an depth of academic admiration radical juxtaposition of the six independent whole and can be and a degree of public acclaim chapters, which are not part of read as an autonomous essay, which are unmatched for few one grand story). the whole book is exceptionally other artists. In 1990, the largest homogeneous, not just thanks exhibition of his work occurred If these are grosso modo the to the particular style of Elkins, in Amsterdam (paintings) and tools which enable Elkins to who succeeds in expressing the Otterlo (drawings) in celebra- research the limits of repre- love he feels for his objects, but tion of the centenary of Vincent’s sentation, it would be a pity not thanks to three other methodo- passing. Patrons judged these to stress the strong relation- logical constraints: a) the overall displays to be grand. Popular ships between the apparently priority given to the images (the media echoed the appreciation titanic effort of Six Stories and whole book is wrapped around but couldn’t stop talking about the rest of his work. Given the images, which are also beauti- the “mad” artist. The mercantile exceptionally broad scope and fully reproduced, and the au- sector wept about never seeing nature of Elkins’s interests, it is thor always takes the reading the like again because of mount- of course not possible to dis- of these images as the kernel ing insurance costs but, as it close all the links between his of every argumentation); b) the turns out, international exhibi- previous publications and this attempt to link each group of tions at least large enough to be new book, which is as much a visual objects with a specific called van Gogh blockbusters continuation as a new start, but intellectual problem (and one now appear two or three times at least three threads can be can only express one’s grati- a year. They provide first-class underlined. In The Object Looks tude to the clever way in which entertainment as well as chau- Back. On the Nature of Seeing Elkins manages to extract new vinistic rivalries among art mu- (1997), he had already devel- problems from new and old im- seums. All have been profitable. oped an in-depth reflection, via ages); c) a specific way of read- the dialectical folding of sight There is nothing more interesting, which has everything to do and blindness, on the limits of ing for the human species to with Elkins becoming a guide in representation. A book like The contemplate than the lives of the visual labyrinth he is entering Domain of Images (1999) had men and women who have shak- with his reader (this is certainly started to explore the blurring en the world a little. Intrigued the most personal dimension of the boundaries between pic- by the van Gogh phenomenon, of the book, and perhaps also tures, writing, and notation. And patrons do their best to com- its most fascinating one, since Visual Studies. A Skeptical Intro- prehend what was “wrong” with Elkins, who avoids easy inter- duction (2003) had stressed the Vincent. Their curiosity is mostly pretations, does not refuse to necessity to foreground creative driven by the ear-cutting incident judge: he discusses the distinc- forms of writing on the image. when he was thirty-five, and his tion between good and bad pic- suicide two years later. † Mean- Six Stories has a strong compo- tures, between interesting and while, the popular media care- sitional logic. The six chapters uninteresting interpretations, lessly embrace, and doggedly are coupled by pairs, each of between dead ends and real repeat, fanciful stories which them providing two related in- challenges, and so on). fuel the titillation. On the other sights into a specific question: hand the art industry handles first Elkins discusses the limits On the Litany van Gogh’s illness as if too much of representation in an old and of Illnesses enquiry might spoil the market. a new artistic medium (painting Associated with Neither approach is conducive and photography); then he ana- Vincent van Gogh to truly understanding the man lyzes similar issues in the case and the art. of scientific images confronted by Wilfred Niels Arnold with the representation of the People and paintings extremely large (astronomy) and [email protected] Vincent van Gogh shot him- the tremendously small (micro- The art of Vincent van Gogh cap- self in the abdomen on Sun- scopy); finally, he raises ques- tivates a host of viewers across

8 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 day afternoon, July 27, 1890; delay in publishing van Gogh’s of financial necessity, but also staggered back to his rented letters, because Johanna felt with a wholesome desire to dis- room in Auvers-sur-Oise; and that “it would have been unfair tribute his work beyond France died early Tuesday morning. He to the dead artist to arouse inter- and Holland. Otherwise, the op- was buried next day in a hastily est in the person before the art.” portunity to see his art would arranged funeral. His brother In the event, her decision un- have been less robust and thus Theo returned to Paris and in the doubtedly influenced the tenor Johanna should also be credited weeks that followed took stock of the artist’s future acclaim. The with initiating the international of all the paintings and draw- eventual release of Vincent’s let- recognition that shows no sign of ings by Vincent; the canvases ters with their appealing stream- waning. After her death in 1925 by other artists, which they had of-consciousness style evoked Vincent the Engineer, who had collected together; and a pile of praise for artistic analysis and already assumed a less gener- letters. Vincent did not leave a insight, sympathy for his per- ous and more nationalistic pos- written will and testament but sonal procession of struggles, ture towards his uncle’s legacy, there was no doubt that the art- and a mixture of sadness and was reluctant to place any more work belonged to Theo. Vincent titillation for his medical com- canvases or drawings on the had often stated that his regular plaints.§ The new art and the open market. Eventually, driven stipend from Theo would be off- exotic man contributed about by taxation fears for his children, set by production of pictures — equal weight and the combina- he worked out an agreement even the note that was found at tion eventually made Vincent with the Dutch government in- the end, (letter 652) [1] repeats van Gogh a household name. volving a substantial family set- that sentiment. tlement, a new state museum for Johanna van Gogh-Bonger re- the donated works, and family Theo had already given sever- ceived very little assistance with influence in perpetuity within the al canvases to Dr. Gachet and the art collection. The color mer- newly created Van Gogh Foun- other mourners at the funeral, chant Père Tanguy continued dation. By far the largest collec- as remembrances. He then took to provide a tiny Mecca for van tions of van Gogh’s art are held the time to clear the inheritance Gogh contemplation in Mont- by the Rijksmuseum Vincent van with his mother, brother Cor, and martre, but he was not a vigor- Gogh in Amsterdam and the Ri- three sisters. Surprisingly, the ous promoter and in any case jksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Ot- rest of the family and their close died in 1894. The liquidation terlo, also in Holland. Together friends were simply not enthu- sale after Tanguy’s death real- they are a remarkable concen- siastic about having more than ized only 130 francs for two van tration of van Gogh’s paintings, one or two items of Vincent’s Gogh paintings [5]. Other Paris- drawings, original letters, and work. Hundreds of pictures re- ian dealers remained reluctant memorabilia — plus a formida- mained “under the bed.” to embrace unfashionable art- ble influence on the reception of ists. Johanna’s brother, Andries Theo’s immediate mission was scholarly studies. We note that Bonger, even advised her to get to promote Vincent’s art. He the mission statements of the rid of her van Gogh collection also contemplated publish- two museums and the founda- forthwith. Andries subsequently ing some of the letters. Illness tion do not mention research into amassed a notable collection thwarted both efforts. With his van Gogh’s underlying illness. featuring Odilon Redon and death the following year, the Émile Bernard and, perhaps A channeled view of Vincent’s responsibility for both collec- through no fault of his own, illness tions fell upon his widow, Jo- seven Van Gogh’s. This “Bonger hanna van Gogh-Bonger. She Vincent the Engineer wrote that Collection” was acquired by the set about organizing the letters the letters were the only genuine Dutch State in 1996 and given to and eventually completed the source of details on Vincent’s the Van Gogh Museum on long- translation of 526 of them into life. Even though the Engineer’s term loan. Meanwhile, Johanna English [2]. The remaining let- own analysis is punctuated with van Gogh-Bonger has yet to be ters were handled by the only euphemisms and myths it still commemorated at that museum. child of Theo and Johanna, who enjoys comfortable respect from was later differentiated from the As late as 1905, the Rijks [State] many in the organized art world. artist as “Vincent the Engineer” Museum at Amsterdam declined During my 1990 conversation ‡ [3]. Notwithstanding the mag- the loan of any van Gogh can- with Dr. Albert Lubin, professor nitude of the task, mother and vas. Johanna sold some of of psychiatry and a van Gogh son admitted [4] an intentional Vincent’s paintings partly out scholar [6], he made a special

9 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 point about Vincent the Engi- of epilepsy although the symp- definition—something without neer being very much the “ama- toms cannot be blamed purely danger of impeding Vincent’s teur psychoanalyst” to the exclu- on epilepsy.” I find theirqualifier tremendous commercial appeal. sion of other approaches. In my to be more salient than their di- Apparently they do not enter- opinion, the Engineer also en- agnosis. Alternative hypotheses tain other analyses, which ad- dorsed some of the more mysti- are not even discussed. Their dress the time-course, signs cal tales surrounding his uncle. opinion is holus-bolus accept- and symptoms beyond epilepsy. Also, Dr. Humberto Nagera [7], ance of records from Vincent’s Other art institutions apparently while a student in London with attending physicians for 1888- believe that a little bit of mad- Anna Freud, had weekly contact 1890, in Arles and St. Rémy. ness provides the best climate with the Engineer when Nagera The museum is thus part of a and thus they fall into step with taught a course in The Nether- small but influential group that the popular media. On the con- lands. He confirmed this psy- is keen to applaud the diagnos- trary I see nothing that supports chological disposition and also tic skills of Vincent’s attending a case for clinical “madness” in spoke to me about the Engineer physicians. ‘‘The old guys had Vincent. being at odds with Paul-Louis it right after all’’ is their ban- Gachet, the son of Dr. Paul-Fer- ner. In their sea of disinterest All the signs and symptoms dinand Gachet. The father was for other published data and In the last hundred years sev- Vincent’s last attending physi- analyses this position affords eral citizens have offered their cian. The son was a seventeen- them an island of safe haven own ideas. Most were opinions year-old eyewitness, and later blessed with nostalgia. Accord- rather than developed hypoth- a chronicler, of Vincent’s final ingly, some have stated that Dr. eses. For example, one vocal months in Auvers-sur-Oise, Rey (at Arles), who had yet to commentator suggested manic- whereas the Engineer had to finish his medical degree, was depressive psychosis (bipolar rely on information at best sec- brilliant and insightful. Their cir- disorder) for Vincent, with little ond-hand. Even today, the expe- cular argument goes as follows: data apart from a claim for a high riences related by the Gachets - Rey opined ‘‘epilepsy’’ without incidence of that syndrome in seem to have a lower level of evidence of a full-fledged case creative people generally (which reception in Holland compared — some modern commentators in itself is a dubious hypothesis). with the rest of the world. believe temporal lobe epilepsy In this particular story the per- (described many years later) is petrator also volunteered being an attractive possibility — there- a manic depressive, suppos- fore they say Rey was ahead edly to strengthen this opin- of his time. With respect to Dr. ion on Vincent by invoking the Peyron it is well to remember adage “to be one, is to know that at St. Rémy he was in a one.” Another enthusiast was “retirement” position, with his taken by the possibility of van past experience primarily in oph- Gogh’s “high yellow palette” be- thalmology, a not particularly ing caused by over dosage in useful specialty for Vincent’s digitalis. This medical insult will case. Tralbaut [8] felt that the cause a xanthopsia but there is physicians of the south were no evidence that van Gogh ever overly influenced by the police took the drug. The only connec- report in Arles which was based tion, a sprig of foxglove (source on the patient’s own statement The Van Gogh Museum is called of digitalis infusion) in one of the about some family member with upon by the popular media to act portraits of Dr. Gachet, is more epilepsy on his mother’s side. as “final authority” with all things reasonably interpreted as a sign If so, the circle was completed van Gogh — not only questions of the 19th century physician (as when Vincent wrote, ‘‘as far as of attribution but anything about with a stethoscope today) rather I can make out, the doctor here Vincent’s life. Their responses than a drug for the painter. Fur- [Peyron] is inclined to consider are unilateral, conservative, and thermore, van Gogh’s “high yel- what I have had as some sort short on analysis. After many low” paintings started in Paris, of epileptic attack’’ (letter 591). years of favoring “some form not during the last two months in I believe that the Van Gogh Mu- of mental illness” for Vincent, Auvers. It got worse when news- seum has always favored an they currently opt for a “form paper stories suggested digitalis “acceptable” diagnosis by their

10 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 toxicity as a candidate for van (medical insults) were identified. penoids. Absinthe exacerbated Gogh’s underlying illness. During these crises he did not van Gogh’s underlying illness paint or write letters. And then and also induced a pica for ter- It should be self-evident that the artist himself, as well as at- penes, the other documented any scientific hypothesis on van tending physicians, relatives, examples being camphor and Gogh’s underlying illness should and friends were all surprised pinene (in turpentine) [10]. address all of the information — and encouraged by the rapidity this has rarely been the case, The porphyria hypothesis of the recoveries at the end of starting with the psychoanalyti- each crisis. The time frame is In 1991 Loftus and Arnold pro- cal bias of the Engineer. And it of great importance and alone posed that van Gogh suffered is a mistake to select only those from acute intermittent porphyria symptoms that fit a pet hypoth- it dismisses a multitude of sug- (AIP) exacerbated by malnutri- esis — unfortunately, this has gested causes from the past. tion, smoking, and absinthe [11]. been the rule. Furthermore, let’s Vincent’s serious illness devel- All of the documented medical hope that the popular media may oped late in the third and played signs and symptoms in the let- soon learn to distinguish among into his fourth decade. There ters can be accommodated by an underlying disease, a sign or were frequent gastrointestinal this working hypothesis, and symptom, and an environmental complaints and at least one bout the family history provides ad- insult; instead of throwing them of clinical constipation. Hallu- ditional support [9, 11, and 12]. all down in the same sentence cinations (auditory and visual), We also made a case for AIP in with the inevitable modifier “we nightmares, and aphasia were his brother Theo. Sister Wil ex- shall never know which one.” Lit- associated with the crises. Peri- hibited aberrant behavior, which tle wonder that the average pa- ods of incapacitating depression caused her admission and long tron of the arts can make neither were severe and grave enough tenure in an asylum. Surveys heads nor tails of such disparate to provoke suicide. There was conducted since then indicate items — all presented without a a family history of mental ill- a disturbing incidence of previ- hint of relative merit. ness, which affected Vincent, his brother Theo, and sister Wil ously undetected AIP in mental For example, on the Internet, (three of the six siblings). The institutions. current lists for Vincent include debilitating illnesses of Uncles AIP is an inherited metabolic epilepsy, manic-depressive psy- Cent and Hein may also be disease that affects firstly the chosis, sunstroke, acute inter- linked to those of the younger liver. Patients with the specific mittent porphyria (AIP), lead family members. enzyme defect (porphobilino- poisoning, Ménière’s disease, gen deaminase) are at risk for syphilis, absinthe abuse, digi- Vincent’s symptoms were pal- crises, which are initiated by talis intoxication, hypergraphia, liated during institutionalization diverse insults and are associ- and religiosity. There are others. due to a better diet, abstinence ated with pronounced increases The unedited litany is passed on from alcohol, and bromide ther- in two intermediates in the bio- from one commentator to the apy. [Bromides are still used in logical pathway to heme (as in next, with every opening of a the treatment of AIP seizures, hemoglobin and cytochromes). show on van Gogh. but they are ineffective for tem- These compounds in excess are poral lobe epilepsy.] He did not Loftus and Arnold independ- neurotoxins. Crisis resolution is experience any permanent, ently read van Gogh’s letters in associated with return to normal functional disability that affected their entirety** and extracted all concentrations of the offending his painting or his writing when medical content. The combined compounds. results were later organized un- he returned to those activities. Differential diagnoses against der tables of particular signs and There were many unwitting, other proposals mentioned ear- symptoms to provide a concord- self-imposed, exacerbation fac- lier have been systematically ance by letter number [9]. Vin- tors, which precipitated attacks. addressed [9]. Because of the cent’s ailment was thus char- These included malnutrition and current popularity of epilepsy acterized by episodes (medical fasting, environmental expo- within the commercial art world, crises) of acute mental derange- sure, smoking, and ingestion of a few words from reference 9 are ment and disability, which were alcohol. Alcohol problems were worth repeating. separated by intervals of lucidity compounded by a penchant for and creativity. Episodes began absinthe, a liquor that contains suddenly and precipitant factors an additional toxic compound, thujone, and several other ter-

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Epilepsy has complemented the artwork [6] Lubin AJ. 1987. Stranger on the to make his a household name. Earth: A Psychological Biography Epilepsy is defined as a sud- of Vincent van Gogh. New York: All manner of retrospective di- Henry Holt & Co. den and recurring, transient dis- agnoses have been postulated, turbance in brain function that [7] Nagera H. 1979. Vincent van most with only a modicum of Gogh: A Psychological Study. New leads to an episodic impairment supporting data. On the other York: International Universities or loss of consciousness, ab- Press. hand the “art industry” treats normal motor phenomena, psy- [8] Tralbaut ME. 1981. Vincent van his illness with restraint, as if chic or sensory disturbances, or Gogh. New York: The Alpine Fine too much enquiry might spoil Arts Collection Ltd. perturbation of the autonomic the market. The popular media nervous system. It is derived [9] Arnold WN. 1992. Vincent van keep repeating lists of possi- Gogh: Chemicals, Crises, and from the Greek word for seizure. Creativity. pp. 332, Birkhäuser; Several diseases and conditions bilities without judging relative Boston, Basel, Berlin. merit. This essay endeavors to are complicated by seizures. [10] Arnold WN. 1988. Vincent van For example, they appear after resolve the muddle. It is also a Gogh and the thujone connection. JAMA 260: 3042-3044. withdrawal from alcohol or bar- plea to approach all working hy- biturates. Also, uremia may be potheses with organized skepti- [11] Loftus LS & Arnold WN. 1991. cism. In my opinion Vincent van Vincent van Gogh’s illness: acute tolerated for a few days and then intermittent porphyria? British cause a rapid onset of twitch- Gogh was not a ‘‘mad’’ artist, Medical Journal 303: 1589-1591. but rather an exceptional man ing, trembling, myoclonic jerks [12] Arnold WN. 2004. The illness and generalized seizures. Other who suffered from an inherited of Vincent van Gogh. Journal of disease. All of the data support the History of the Neurosciences diseases with seizures include 13: 22-43. brain tumors, hyponatremia, some type of toxic psychosis and, within that category; acute [13] Niedermeyer E. 1983. thyrotoxicosis, acute intermit- Epilepsy Guide. Diagnosis and tent porphyria, hypoglycemia, intermittent porphyria is a prime Treatment of Epileptic Seizure candidate and worthy of more Disorders. Baltimore & Munich: and intoxications with lead or Urban & Schwarzenberg. arsenic salts [9]. Niedermeyer public discussion. Vincent was wonderfully creative because † Arguments that both events [13] emphasized that epilepsy were accidents under medical is not a disease but rather an of intelligence, talent, and hard crises are given in my book (see work. He was a genius in spite reference 9), but ignored in the abnormal reaction of the brain popular media. due to numerous causes. of his illness – not because of it. This reality clears the back- ‡ Vincent van Gogh’s nephew Frank seizures were not de- had a first degree in agricultural ground nonsense and enhances engineering. scribed for Vincent. The “three wholesome admiration for van fainting fits” he mentioned (let- § The average van Gogh fan Gogh’s creations. has not gleaned any information ter W11), albeit difficult to con- directly from the published letters. strue as seizures, may have in- References and notes However, derivative sources (print, radio, television, and the internet) fluenced Drs. Rey and Peyron [1] Letter numbers follow The have played a significant role, in that direction. Primary distinc- Complete Letters of Vincent van beginning in the second half of the Gogh. 2nd ed., 1978. Boston: New 20th century. The accuracy has tions are now made among the York Graphic Society.] varied greatly. types of seizures; for example [2] Johanna van Gogh was ** It is no small undertaking petit mal seizures, grand mal assisted in the English phrasing (1,809 pages for the 1978 edition) seizures, complex partial sei- and idiom by Helen Johnson. See and one wonders how many Johnson HA. 1934. No Madman. zures, and temporal lobe epi- commentators have read the The Art Digest 8: 11. letters. Rather, they feed each lepsy, none of which fits the other selections from secondary [3] Van Gogh VW. [The Engineer] and tertiary sources. time-course for Vincent’s crises. 1978. Some additional notes to It seems that van Gogh’s physi- the memoir of Vincent van Gogh. pp LIV–LXVII. In: The Complete cians were unduly influenced by Letters of Vincent van Gogh. 2nd the patient’s claim of epilepsy in ed. Boston: New York Graphic a relative on his mother’s side. Society. [4] See preface of The Complete Summary Letters of Vincent van Gogh. 2nd ed., 1978. At van Gogh exhibitions we [5] Rewald J. 1986. The commonly overhear viewers posthumous fate of Vincent van wondering, “what was wrong Gogh, 1890-1970. pp. 244-254, in: with Vincent?” This central in- Studies in Post-Impressionism. I. Gordon & F. Weitzenhoffer (eds.). terest in the underlying illness New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc.

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Reviewer Profile - The clear expression of an (edited by Rodrigo Garcia); and idea with predictive value... three catalogs, A Voz dos Es- Allan Graubard Rational knowledge, symbolic pelhos, for major exhibitions in Editor’s Note: In this issue elegance… Portugal, in 2008 and 2009. of L|R|Q we are featuring And now and then they co-ex- As playwright, Allan’s Revolting one of our long-standing ist. And the scientist begins to Women/Woman Bomb-Sade led and regular reviewers Allan speak the language of the birds the International Solo Perform- Graubard. Allan has reviewed and the poet writes as if he were ance Festival, Theater Row, for us for as long as I have a bird.” NYC, in 2010, with previous runs been editor and is one of the at hotINK International Theater few reviewers who I have not * Festival and Gershwin Hotel met personally. It struck me Theater (2008, NYC). Folding reading a review of his most Allan Graubard’s poems, texts Space/Modette and Erotic Eu- recent book that for many of and plays appear internation- logy, collaborations with com- Leonardo Reviews regular ally in leading and small ven- poser/conductor Butch Morris, readers some of the reviewers ues. In 2011, And Tell Tulip the played in Italy and New York (Te- are also simply ‘names’ and Summer, selected poems, was atro Luciano Pavarotti, Modena, since we are essentially published (Quattro Books, To- Italy & Abrons Art Center, Henry an ensemble of reviewers I ronto) along with the two-volume Street Settlement, NYC, 2009). thought we might use L|R|Q to set Invisible Heads: Surrealists For Alejandra premiered in New put some flesh on the bones in North America—An Untold York and toured to Washington, of some of our review panel. Story. Roma Amor, a novella, DC, Dubrovnik, Croatia, and the We are grateful to Allan for was published in 2010 (Spuyten Sibiu International Theater Fes- his ongoing support for this Duyvil Press, NY). Roma Amor tival, Sibiu, Romania (where it project and are pleased that & Woman Bomb/Sade was also was published in translation he should be the first occupant published in translation in Alba- with national radio broadcast), of this corner of L|R|Q which I nia (Prince Press, Tirana, 2008) 2003-4. hope will be a regular feature. while Hippocampus appeared that year (Surrealist Editions, Allan writes literary and cultural “When I was 13 I began to Coimbra, Portugal); reprised in criticism for Leonardo: The Inter- write poetry while gazing at the Dutch in 2011 (Brumes Blondes, national Society for Art, Science stars and planets with a small Bloemendaal). Other poems are & Technology (MIT Press), Pa- telescope. The usual places: featured in Celestial Graffiti (ed- cific Rim Review of Books (Van- the moon, Saturn, Venus, An- ited by Ira Cohen), an anthology couver), Brooklyn Rail, Western dromeda, star clusters. I used on surrealism in America (Monte European Stages and Slavic and the telescope as I played piano, Ávila editions, Venezuela); the Eastern European an improvisation. And those dis- Brazilian literary journal Coyote tant, intimate lights animate in the dark... Wonder and surprise, emotional freedom, essential relations— between people, and animals, insects, birds, fish, matter. The human and terrestrial worlds in- tersect on a page, in a meeting, by chance, analogy or surprise. The scientist begins where the poet ends and works backward to understand just what it is that compels him. Eros and love, wonder, leaps of thought, symbolic opacity or transparency, the ethical value of knowing. Affective knowledge, linguistic magic…

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Performance & Film (City Uni- After Rimbaud And Tell Tulip the versity, New York). And how, through it all—the Summer Readings: October Gallery (Lon- sweaty gill-stuffed forge, the don); The Living Theater, Issue four or five leather banquets by Allan Graubard Project Room, PS 122, Bowery strewn with delicacies from eve- Quattro Books, Toronto, 106 Poets, Gershwin Hotel, Cornelia ry dream, and those low-slung pp. St. Café, Soho House, Fusion flickering paper lamp trees—can ISBN 978-1926802640 Arts, Zebulon, Roulette, Book we ever reclaim what once con- Court, Writer’s Room (NYC); vulsed us? Those crowds tossed Reviewed by Valery Oisteanu Beyond Baroque and California up at sunset against very blue [email protected] Institute of the Arts (LA); Source blood, their banners and ban- Theater, Museum of Contempo- ter impaled on feverous steel “No man understands a deep rary Art, House on “O” Street bastards, phantom red-crescent book until he has seen and lived (Washington, DC); The Super- moons with organdy polyps and at least part of its contents.” market & Poets Reading Series petals of ash… (Toronto); McGill University -Ezra Pound For a moment I almost believed (Montreal); Garden Street Books in it. Allan Graubard can be catego- (New Orleans) and Cite des Arts rized as an anti-memorialistic (Lafayette), Louisiana… Your touch, my cheap memen- to… Your warm breath in my ear. poet with a retro existential nar- Selections from And that silly perfume from gilt- rative. And Tell Tulip the Sum- beveled grotesques… mer begins dramatically in 2001 And Tell Tulip The in Sarajevo, where Graubard Summer (Quattro But when I listened I heard only returned after an initial visit Books, Toronto, silence, ancient and bold. two years earlier. ”There is a 2011) * fountain,” he writes and repeats throughout the poem, followed Tulip Book of Universes by lines such as ”masked by the moon,” ”scorched by the sun,” When tulips blossom on their The soft sweet sighs ”raced by the wind,” ”trained long green stems and sway of a young girl making love by the stars,” ”that whittles his in the wind like occult masks, hands,” etc. Of course, ”All those vanishing and reappearing with in a poem who drink from this fountain will a suddenness that belies their from China return!” (p. 11) allure, we know that spring is 1300 years ago soon to come, and that romance Graubard forges a personal is but another word for murder. and these bedroom walls quiver voice while constructing sur- That’s why we love red tulips and as if they were real metaphors and word com- pick them with abandon. They thin pressed bamboo sheaves binations such as: ”slumbering are the sign that we will begin cities,” ”cross eyed of dawn,” once more the horrible work that I listen now ”shadowy engines,” ”forgotten marks us one by one by one. for her slow panting dreams,” ”tortured fingers,” ”rot- she who has found ting handshakes,” ”tumbling in- * fants,” ”teething hairs,” ”jagged Words are not stones in pleasure mirror stain,” ”human ignition,” Stones are not words a rhythm ”singing bloated corps”—all this Yet for one moment that crosses time from the poem ”Modette.”(p. 31) This moment * His technique stimulates our They seem the same sound-sense; ”Because I Did Glimmering moon Words as stones Not Live” (p. 53) for example, ghost sun Stones as words requires reading aloud and then I hold up a handful of words A timeless rhythm creating ”exquisite corpses” by As hard, coarse and ancient as in and out proposing other ironic permu- stones of time tations of the words ”life” and ”live.” ”Bob Kaufmann” (p. 75), Then they vanish another one of the best in the And stones remain * * 14 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 collection, declaims, ”Kaufman And Tell Tulip the creative through and through, startled by a simple kindness/ in here expressed by noting the an elfin hole of empire despair;” Summer reverse,”I accept my lot, which one can sing it as a blues. And is something quite different from by Allan Graubard ”Butch Morris” (p. 69) is a po- making peace with the world! etical-musical composition ”And Quattro Books, Toronto, 106 The spirit of my anger would from the other side of silence...” pp. never allow me to collapse so ISBN 978-1926802640 thoroughly that I would perpetu- Graubard is an inspired ob- ally mistake modern life for what server who uses a reflective Review Excerpt by Jim Feast I desire.” tone, organically grown from (forthcoming in Evergreen Re- a mix of American and Euro- view) This last sentiment helps point pean surrealist literature. His out that...Graubard, while Another color is the poetic horse [seemingly] acclimatized to his literary diagnosis is compulsive, Allan Graubard rides. His work lot, is perturbed by the multiple obsessive, and metaphorically is steeped in the surrealist tra- failures, injustices and crimi- disordered, as in “our dreams dition. Despite the complex nality he sees around him. It dream us dreaming them/ And intellectual scaffolding that might seem this has led him to we dance in a dreamless dream surrounds this movement, its tell surrealist tales that might of dreaming.” (p. 70) His writ- verse tends to be narrative, not light a fuse under readers, who, ing, full of raw emotion, visions cerebral or reflective... The sur- admiring these offbeat fictions, of gargoyles, and sophisticated realists are storytellers, taking will grasp his view. But such language puns, showcases a plots from dreams rather than a supposition is too facile. Af- humoristic slant chock full of other genres, and, more often ter all, who picks up a book of erudite vocabulary. than not, focusing on love, mad surrealist poetry except some- love. Key writers in this style, ”Tulips sway like occult masks, one who is already miserable? among whom I count Graubard, I don¹t mean they are morose vanishing and reappearing...” describe a world filled with won- beings, but rather to make this The subject of vanishing and der, excitement, awe, humor, more specific, they are dispir- reappearing is one of his fa- anything but business as usual. ited and near defeated by the vorite frequent motifs. Another lackluster and shallow quality is dance: as he puts it, ”dancing Here’s how Graubard intro- of most personal relationships sparks dance with life.” ”Dance duces a character, ”You came in our menacingly evil society. of Death” (p. 25), after Strind- with fox fur stilts // with feet torn berg, is a Marquis de Sade-like by stingers.” You can imagine And Tell Tulip The Summer narrative, one of ”golden myth what his first encounter with a seeks to turn a page, not by sent back by Morse crickets woman like this will entail. He demonstrating what human approaches one with this pickup come to evacuate the uncer- connections, especially love line, ”It’s time we sat down // and tain sensibility of dead solitary affairs, would be like in a fre- swapped faces.” His images are dawn.” (p. 67) The poet’s convic- er society, one, to keep being extreme, ravishing and rushing tion that something transcend- concrete, is organized on either upon you like a spilled bucket ent is haunting him is illustrated socialist or communal anarchist of lava. But I said surrealist po- with a masterly hand: ”For we principles, but by graphically in- etry is filled with stories. One have returned/ from each an- stancing what the feeling tones of the book’s high points, the of such loves would be: ever- gle/ in this rotating wind from sequence ”Fragments from No- unexpected, ever-dangerous, nowhere.” (p. 71) mad Days,” describes a desert ever-entrancing. Throughout the book, Grau- encounter between the narrator bard as poet-critic dedicates his and a mystery vamp. Their re- * modus vivendi to neo-surrealist lationship takes various bizarre causes, not only locally, but also turns, as when he says,”I would step through her eyes, closing in Croatia, Romania, France, the each door behind me, one then U.K., Holland, Venezuela and another and another after that,” Canada (to name just a few). and includes an invocation of the Don’t fail to drink from this foun- surrealist project I noted at the tain of poems—and you shall outset, the dream of making life return!

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Science and and enduring friendship and col- commentariat to find “conflict” laboration with Max Born (theo- wherever they look. Conscience: the retical physics). Together with I suppose that “conscience” in Life of James mathematician David Hilbert, the book’s title refers mostly to Franck they were responsible for the Franck’s organized opposition to development of a community of the dropping of atomic bombs by Jost Lemmerich, English excellence at Göttingen, which on Japanese cities. He chaired translation, 2011 earned international recognition. deliberations of a committee, Franck (1925) and Born (1954) Stanford University Press, which led to the “Franck Report,” won Nobel prizes in physics. Stanford, CA, 367 pp. June 1945, which is reproduced And then there were the striking in appendix II. New readers of ISBN 978-0804763103 number of visits to-and-from top this document will find portions laboratories in England, Den- Reviewed by Wilfred Niels of the summary especially en- mark, and The Netherlands. The Arnold, Westwood Hills, gaging. For example, “[We feel list of major players in this part of Kansas that] much more favorable con- the book reads like a who’s who ditions for the eventual achieve- [email protected] of atomic physics. Niels Bohr, ment of such an agreement Albert Einstein, and Max Planck For two decades before 1939, [international control] could be are featured. An unusually large and throughout World War II, created if nuclear bombs were number of photographs (many German Universities suffered first revealed to the world by a from the archive of Franck’s from financial, political, and so- demonstration in an appropri- daughter, Lisa) are included to cial stresses. A considerable ately selected uninhabited area.” show among other things the number of their scientists—par- Franck also advocated excus- aging of key characters. ticularly those of Jewish back- ing the German public at large ground—emigrated to England The Nazi takeover with its rules for the outlandish behavior by and The United States. Not only against those of Jewish extrac- Adolf Hitler and the Nazi lead- did these displaced people take tion caused Franck and his ers. Albert Einstein, among oth- dangerous personal chances family to move to the U.S. and, ers, was opposed to any such but their actions were subse- indirectly, to the University of easing of blame. In the event, quently judged by those who Chicago. There, he participated neither the Franck report nor stayed home. And some other in the development of the atomic the doctrine of German public outstanding scientists were bomb. Meanwhile, his basic in- forgiveness was followed. chastised for not doing enough terests shifted to photochemical I enjoyed this book and recom- to protect their own departmen- reactions and the mechanisms mend it highly. Some previous tal members in Germany. The of photosynthesis, wherein he introduction to elementary atom- various experiences spawned made several advances. a special type of memoir. ic physics and the experimental The author, Jost Lemmerich, method is a prerequisite. The The present example is the first gives Franck good marks for wealth of achievement in sci- biography of James Franck (b. taking care of the scientists who ences from this era continues Hamburg, 1882; d. Göttingen, worked with him. They included to shine throughout the book 1964). His formal educational Lise Meitner whom the Nobel and was due to men and women venues included University of Committee infamously “forgot with a deep commitment to un- Heidelberg (chemistry) and Uni- about” in 1944. On the other derstanding nature. I personally versity of Berlin (physics) where hand, it is worth noting that Meit- believe that science in our time he completed a Ph.D. degree ner had to protest (successfully) will only return to a comparable in 1906. His academic career when Franck favored Ms. Hertha state of pleasure and progress was interrupted by participation Sponer (an experimentalist of when professors are allowed in World War I, from which he lesser achievement) over Meit- to pursue their own natural emerged with the Iron Cross. In ner for a local promotion. Later, and self-determined interests spite of distractions, Franck’s Sponer became James Franck’s instead of those made by com- scholarly progression was swift. second wife. Lemmerich typi- mittees on behalf of N.I.H. grants And then, with his professor- cally leaves any judgmental and the like. Finally, I have a ship in experimental physics at analysis to the reader. This comment on the secret flights University of Göttingen, Franck is indeed a pleasant contrast of Niels Bohr between Copen- enjoyed a happy, productive, with the current penchant by the hagen and the U.S. during the

16 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 development of the bomb. Ac- take, and to study the combina- conviction that the solution to cording to my colleague, the late tory principles that rule their use. the above mentioned problem Keith Laidler of Ottawa, Bohr’s is not to split the field of liter- head was too large to be fitted ary studies in two subfields: with any regulation, armed serv- print culture on the one hand ices flying-helmet. Anyone who and digital-born culture on the has heard this will never again other hand. Although this is still view a photograph of Niels Bohr the default option of most liter- in quite the same way. ary scholars, who most of the times defend the incompatibility Jost Lemmerich (b. 1929) is a between print modus and digital German physicist-turned-histo- modus, Eskelinen takes a dif- rian who studies 19th and 20th ferent, much more homogeniz- century physics. This volume ing stance. For him, both print was translated into English by and digital-born texts should Ann M. Hentschel, from the Ger- be studied with the help of the man edition (2007). same (but expanded) conceptual and analytical devices, and Cybertext Poetics: his whole book is an (convinc- The Critical ing) attempt to demonstrate the usefulness, if not the necessity Landscape of New The starting point of this re- of this overall approach. The re- Media Literary search is twofold. First there is fusal to draw a strong line be- the observation that the count- Theory tween both domains does not less media transformations of imply, however, that Eskelinen by Markku Eskelinen the last decades have given is obsessed with creating a new birth to an almost infinite number Continuum Books, London & general and all-encompassing of new works and new text types New York, 2012, 462 pp. theory. His goal, which is both that can no longer be accounted ISBN 978-1441124388 more modest and more ambi- for within the framework of tra- tious, has to do with the elabo- ditional, i.e. print-based literary Reviewed by Jan Baetens, ration of a toolkit, i.e. of a list of analysis. The case of games, University of Leuven aspects and dimensions as well which Eskelinen rightly con- as a certain number of propos- [email protected]. siders an example of such a als and hypotheses concerning ac.be new literary form, introduces their concrete use. Interpretation features that are so different A prominent representative of of specific works is something from what can be reasonably ludology, the academic study of that falls out of the scope of this conceptualized in classic terms games, Markku Eskelinen has book, which must be read as that literary theory can only ei- gathered in this impressively fat what it is: a theoretical inquiry ther ignore these new forms or book (with frequently inserted into the parameters of what we miss their qualities and interest recapitulative figures, but totally mean by a literary text today by identifying them as excep- deprived of any other illustra- (and even within this field Es- tions, anti-narrative constructs, tion) his essential thinking on the kelinen is mainly concerned with or idiosyncratic items that don’t subject. However, one should narrative literary texts). prevent the reader from the very have any place in any taxonomy, start that the scope of Eskelin- whatsoever. Issues and aspects The study of narrative is bound- en’s book is strictly formal and such as simulation (versus nar- less and the exceptional dynam- theoretical: what he intends to rative) or the multi-layeredness ics of the field makes that it has establish is a general framework of time and space (not just as become very difficult to keep a for the description and analysis parameters of fictional represen- reasonable overview of every- of all texts that can be produced tations, but as basic features of thing that is being done, undone and read today. More specifi- textual production and recep- and redone, often simultaneous- cally, his ambition is to list the tion) play here, of course, an ly. The first impression that one various dimensions that can be essential role. Second, and this takes from Eskelinen’s book is distinguished in a literary text, is no longer an observation but that the author has an extremely whatever form such a text may a theoretical claim, there is the clear view of his material. Not

17 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 only does he know very well the new textual practices such as, theorizes the aspects of fiction- basic and less basic discussions for instance, hypertext fiction or al narratives that transcend or on most key aspects of (formal) games, can bring to our defini- violate the boundaries of con- narratology, he also succeeds tion of text and narrative. ventional realism. It affirms in establishing always a lucid the distinctive nature of fiction, Next to the merger of Genette hierarchy between authors and identifies nonmimetic aspects and Aarseth, the plea for a uni- theories he considers essential of ostensibly realistic texts, and fied theoretical approach is unfor the construction of his own gravitates toward unusual and doubtedly a fine achievement model and authors and theories experimental works that reject of this publication. The imple- he discusses, mainly in order to the conventions of mimetic and mentation in textual theory of test and challenge the consist- natural narrative” (cf. Diction- many new concepts and insights ency of his proposals. Through- ary of Unnatural Narratology: made possible by experiments out the book, and given the au- (http://nordisk.au.dk/forskning/ or discoveries in digital literature thor’s strong belief that it has no forskningscentre/nrl/undiction- and games is generally stimulat- sense to develop digital-born lit- ary/). From an institutional point ing, although not always easy to erature as an autonomous field, of view, this absence is a pity, read, for Eskelinen’s concern Eskelinen relies on two major and one can only hope that the with typologies and their com- references: Gérard Genette (and publication of this book will reo- binatorics confronts the reader to a lesser extent Gerald Prince) pen this crucial debate. with an endless and sometimes as far as classic narratology is quite boring number of criteria, concerned, and Espen Aarseth aspects, parameters, dimen- The Oxford as far as cybertextuality is con- sions, levels and all their com- Handbook of cerned. The foregrounding of binatory rules. The relevance of Sound Studies Genette, a classic structural- all these lists can of course only ist whose work has often been be made “acceptable” by the by Trevor Pinch and Karin criticized as too rigid and nar- analysis of concrete and specific Bijsterveld (eds.) row by representatives of post- works, but the purely theoretical classical narratology (a less Oxford University Press, program of Cybertext Poetics Oxford, UK, 2012, 624 pp. formalist, more culturally and explicitly refrains from doing so. ISBN 978-0195388947 contextually oriented update of Moreover, Eskelinen proposes a formalist narratology), comes convincing and healthy discus- Reviewed by John F. Barber, as a big surprise. Very rapidly, sion of the misunderstandings Washington State University however, Eskelinen manages to and prejudices that surround Vancouver convince his reader that the gen- the notion of ludology, the new eral framework outlined by Gen- discipline that is often seen as [email protected] ette is actually more open and an anti-narrative or anti-literary Science, technology, and medi- flexible than that of most post- methodology and theory. What cine have long histories of reli- classic narratologists (whose Eskelinen clearly shows is that ance on visualization—charts, ideas are often discussed in this debate is a false quarrel: graphics, telescopes, micro- a polemical way), so that the narratologists do not have to scopes—as the basis for the merger with unforeseen catego- fear ludologists, and ludologists knowledge and understanding ries and realizations is easier should not see narratologists as they seek. The Oxford Hand- in his case than in the case of their institutional adversaries. book of Sound Studies ques- those post-classic narratologists Both should work towards the tions this notion by showing whose models are, according to elaboration of a broader concep- how listening has contributed Eskelinen, less inspiring when tualization of what a text is and to scientific knowledge in sig- it comes to open print-based how narrative can be thought of nificant ways. theory to newer forms of tex- in a technologically enhanced tual thinking. Eskelinen’s sec- society. What is missing in Es- Editors Trevor Pinch, Profes- ond major reference is Aarseth’s kelinen’s book, however, is a sor of Science and Technology cybertext theory on “ergodic” discussion between the posi- Studies at Cornell University, (or if one prefers: interactive) tions of ludology and those of and Karin Bijsterveld, Profes- literature, as being developed “unnatural narratology”, a re- sor of Science, Technology and since the mid-nineties, which cent subfield within post-classic Modern Culture at Maastricht remains for him the best pos- narratology that “analyzes and University, and their collection sible way to understand what

18 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 of international contributing au- of transforming or “transduc- The Universe thors, examine the central posi- ing” sound to another medium tion of sound to human experi- in Zero Words: that allows it to be more easily The Story of ence, arguing that sounds and stored and transported. With the music are embedded in human digitization of sound and novel Mathematics life, art, commerce, and politics technologies like samplers and as Told through in ways that impact our percep- Equations tion of the world, often in ways synthesizers, listening becomes that we do not notice. increasingly more technologi- by Dana MacKenzie cally mediated leading, on one Through an extraordinary se- hand to “technostalgia,” the Princeton University Press, ries of case studies—sounds Princeton, New Jersey, 2012, desire to produce and listen to of industrialization, the sounds 224 pp. of automobiles, underwater mu- sounds (especially music) using sic, and nanotechnology, for vintage electronic instruments, ISBN 978-0691152820 example—the authors explore and on the other, the creation Reviewed by Phil Dyke, new forms of listening practic- of new genres of music such as Plymouth University es and discuss public problems “remixing” and “mash-ups” (19). like noise pollution, hearing loss, [email protected] and new sound and music-re- Chapters are grouped to ex- lated technologies that seem to amine particular aspects of foreshadow the demise of the this approach: shop floors and amateur musician. test sites, the field, the lab, the In their introduction, Pinch and clinic, the design studio, the Bijsterveld position sound stud- home and beyond, and digital ies as a flourishing endeavor storage. Each chapter offers incorporating several disci- original research on the material plines and a range of methods and cultural practice of sound as including acoustic ecology, experienced in science, technol- sound design, urban studies, cultural geography, media and ogy, medicine, art, commerce, communication studies, cultural and politics. Chapters feature studies, the history and anthro- an impressive array of example pology of the senses, sociology practices, from classical antiq- of music, and literary studies. uity to current day, and outline This is a book about the His- new types of listening practices. tory of Mathematics. It’s a nice “One of the aims of our book,” title, but although each chap- they write, “is to offer readers a A companion website provides ter is headed by an equation, better understanding of this con- listening samples keyed to spe- it is really an excuse for some tested position of sonic skills . . cific chapters. historical mathematical anec- . in knowledge production” (11). dotes. That said, it is brilliantly Listening modes are proving In the end, The Oxford Hand- written, and this reviewer who more and more valuable, Pinch book of Sound Studies dis- has taught historical aspects and Bijsterveld argue, across cusses persuasively a breadth of mathematics for a number sites of knowledge production, of sounds—birdsong to under- of years enjoyed the book and and the chapters they collect learned some details that were water music to television adver- for this book provide multiple unfamiliar. The author possess- contextualized insights into how, tising—current-day digital prac- es a wonderful skill in present- when, and under what condi- tices for sound in video games, ing technical material to those tions listening has contributed movies, iPods, and computers, without the facility to understand to knowledge dynamics beyond and challenges readers (and re- the mathematics. For those in seeing. searchers) to rethink the way the mathematics business, it The chapters cover new and old they hear and understand the is always enjoyable to see this sources of sound production, world. being done skillfully. The layout capture, storage, and consump- of the book is interesting; it is tion, as well as various ways presented in four sections with

19 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 each section containing self- Just as its title suggests, De- “collaboration,” “collegiality and contained chapters, 24 in all. bates in the Digital Humanities connectedness,” “diversity,” and The first section will be acces- explores the various issues in “experimentation” (24-30). Ra- sible to everyone as it centers contention among scholars of fael C. Alvarado argues that round ancient mathematical the digital humanities (or “DH”). “digital humanists are simply material, numbers, Pythagoras’ Those of us paying attention to humanists (or interpretative so- Theorem, and simple geometry. The Chronicle of Higher Educa- cial scientists) by training who The second section goes from tion or the Modern Language have embraced digital media solving cubic equations to cal- Association’s (MLA) Job Infor- and who have a more or less culus and Euler’s application of mation List are probably aware deep conviction that digital me- number theory. There is a brave that DH has been touted as the dia can play a crucial, indeed, attempt at detailed explanation, hot new ”Thing” (ix). But as Luke transformative, role in the work but there will be a thinning out of Waltzer reminds us, “the digital of interpretation, broadly con- the readership here, like cyclists humanities is not new but rather ceived” (52). Tom Scheinfeldt breaking away from the peloton. the latest stage of inquiry at the likens DH’s “heavy reliance on Section three tackles more ad- intersection of digits and the hu- instruments, on tools” to that vanced stuff; we have some of manities that stretches back to of scientists (57) and tells us the works of Gauss, Hamilton, the 1940s” (338). that scholars involved in DH are and Galois. Strange geometries, “more concerned with method solution of algebraic equations, than...theory” (59). Others, not Fermat’s Last Theorem, and the mentioned here, weigh in with analysis of spectra are all here. many more articles and with This is full of difficult concepts, blog posts that further describes but the analogies and descrip- the field. The points I am making tions are, in my view, successful. are twofold: First, the book’s ap- Finally the author goes for broke proach to scholarship involves a and attempts to get through lived practice, with each author relativity, quantum mechanics, providing his or her own per- Cantor, and Gödel, and the in- spective that may or may not completeness of mathematics, conflict with the other authors’ chaos, and financial derivatives. take on DH––and in a way that This is understandably less suc- does not denigrate but, rather, cessful, and I think only the pre- broadens understanding. Sec- viously grabbed will get through What the digital humanities is ond, this is the same approach all of this material. In summary emerges as the first of six is- used in the five sections that a refreshing look at highlights sues under debate. For Mat- from the History of Mathemat- follow, and, so, the book makes thew Kirschenbaum, it is “schol- ics and a welcome addition to for a lively and welcoming read. arship and pedagogy” that is the literature, written in a very “public,” deeply connected to Following the first section, “De- accessible style. “infrastructure,” “collabora- fining the Digital Humanities,” tive,” “depend[ent] on networks comes Theorizing the Digital Debates in the of people” who live “online” (9). Humanities, Critiquing the Dig- Digital Humanities For Kathleen Kirkpatrick, it can ital Humanities, Practicing the be “understood as a ‘nexus of Digital Humanities, Teaching the by Matthew K. Gold, Editor fields within which scholars Digital Humanities, and Envi- University of Minneapolis use computing technologies to sioning the Digital Humanities. Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2012, investigate the kinds of ques- The repetition of the verb form 532 pp. tions that are traditional to the reflects the sentiment of pro- gressivism currently associated ISBN 978-0816677948 humanities, or, as is more true of [her] own work, ask tradition- with the field. A forward thinking Reviewed by Dene Grigar, al kinds of humanities-orient- approach underpins the way in Washington State University ed questions about computer which the book was produced Vancouver technologies” (12). Lisa Spiro (“three distinct stages of peer tells us that it is a field whose review” xii) and the various [email protected] core values include “openness,” forms in which it will finally appear (the printed book and ‘an

20 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 online, expanded, open-access from media art or film and vid- the gap between academe webtext” xiv). Though Debates eo studies where practitioners and the world beyond––and, in the Digital Humanities is well also utilize computing devices so, demonstrate to our various over 500 pages in length, there for their work, often collaborate stakeholders why studying the is no fat in it; all essays contain in teams, and struggle to explain humanities is so needed––is important information and con- how their work counts as schol- “problem-solving.” Perhaps we cepts relating to DH. Taken to- arship? Since the late 1980s the need to go beyond question- gether, the book as a whole and Computers and Writing Commu- ing and critiquing established every essay in it is a must-read nity, for example, has been ex- norms, authority, policy, theory, for anyone who claims to be a tremely active in theorizing and approaches, etc., and lead the digital humanist whether she or developing sound pedagogies way in finding answers to those he works in theory, pedagogy, for using computers for schol- questions and solutions to those and/or practice. arship and teaching––and have critical problems our communi- already worked through many As one can imagine, a book of issues, such as gaining sup- ties face. Bryan Alexander and this length, organized into six port for digital-based projects Rebecca Frost Davis hint to this sections of 29 essays and 20 for tenure and promotions, en- concept in their essay, “Should blogs posts, and penned by 43 gaging in cultural critique, and the Liberal Arts Campuses Do leading DH scholars covers a collaborating in teams, to name Digital Humanities?,” when they lot of territory; more would have a few. Two important scholars stress the need for “community made the book unwieldy. So, my of Computers and Writing, Cyn- engagement” (384). next comments speak to ideas thia Selfe and Doug Eyman, are touched on in the book but ripe Finally, many of the book’s the referenced in Elizabeth Losh’s for future development of other authors allude to computer tech- “Hacktivism and the Humani- publishable studies. nology as a tool. In an age when ties” (179-180), but there are mobile devices, are, for many of First, I want to see more infor- literally hundreds of others us, an extension of our hand and mation about tenure and pro- working at U.S. universities and motions issues. David Gree- colleges. What lessons can we extend our online lives, as Kir- tham’s essay, “The Resistance learn from them and the projects schenbaum suggests, to “24-7,” to Digital Humanities,” details they have undertaken? and computer technology is so the challenges DH scholars face ubiquitous that communicating, My final two comments add my in regards to work counting as driving, telling time, paying for own perspective to the digital scholarship and not service groceries, etc. are dependent humanities. (438-451). Also helpful would upon them, it is time to rethink be examples of tenure and pro- Lisa Spiro asserts in “This is our relationship with comput- motions guidelines that can be Why We Fight” that the DH ers. If we are makers of things adapted for use by others. needs to “produc[e] a values like a digital archive of a literary statement” in order to “provide writer like John Barber’s Brauti- The book also leaves me want- the foundation for the digital hu- gan.net project or a mobile app ing to learn more about projects manities,” listing those associ- for teaching about a historical undertaken by DH scholars, ated with the “aesthetics and especially those outside of site like Brett Oppegaard’s Fort values” of the humanities (“in- the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Vancouver Mobile project, or a quiry, critical thinking, debate, Waltzer provides information 2D animated poem like Thom pluralism, balancing innovation on several: Hypercities, UMW Swiss’s “Shy Boy,” then com- and tradition, and exploration Blogs, and “A Living Laboratory” puters are not tools that help us and critique” 19). She goes on (343). In other words, what is do what it is we do, but rather to propose new ones mentioned the breath of “experimentation” the medium in which we work. previously in this review (“open- (28-29) valued in DH? It is a fundamental shift in think- ness,” “collaboration,” “collegial- ing about our relationship with Third, I would like to know more ity and connectedness,” “diver- digital technology that can help about the relationship between sity,” and “experimentation”). It to delineate the difference be- the DH and other computer-ori- seems to me with the growing tween the humanities and the ented academic communities so lack of support for the humani- that we can tease out the unique ties in and outside of the acad- digital humanities. qualities of DH and get a sense emy, that one additional value of overlaps. How is DH different that may help scholars bridge

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Rethinking a Lot: in this study), with all its facts the past and present problems and figures on the one hand and of the parking lot to start making The Design and its still recent but already very a blueprint for new forms of mak- Culture of Parking rich history on the other hand; ing, using, and transforming it. second, to make room for in- This is, indeed, the second ma- by Eran Ben-Joseph novative thinking, for the park- jor quality of the book: not just The MIT Press, Cambridge, ing lot is there to stay, despite its belief in more pleasing and MA, 2012, 184 pp. (or perhaps due to) the grow- responsible parking lots but also ing awareness of the problems ISBN 978-0262017336 its concrete suggestions and caused by its mechanical expan- proposals, well illustrated by the Reviewed by Jan Baetens, sion and unimaginative design, discussion of some (alas still University of Leuven which has not really changed quite rare) real life examples of since the 1950s, when the rapid [email protected]. how that new future can be im- suburbanization of modern cities ac.be agined. Ben-Joseph’s thought- provoked totally new patterns of experiments go into two direc- mobility and immobility inside tions: He proposes all kind of and outside our towns. remediation of current aesthetic, The very first strength of this architectural, ecological flaws book is, of course, that it opens and, moreover, he discusses our eyes. All of sudden, it con- also alternative (for instance so- fronts us with a wealth of ma- cial and cultural) non-parking terial, ideas, and questions on uses of the parking lot. something that we always want- The enthusiasm and the drive ed to know but were too distract- that characterize this book are ed or not smart enough to ask: contagious. On a subject that what is a parking lot, where does epitomizes one of the many it come from, how is it used, who hidden negative side effects of plans and designs and manages modernization, Ben-Joseph has it, what difference does it make, written an inspiring and even how does it change our envi- A former city planner and ur- feel-good book, which will prove ronment, etc.? The answers to ban designer in Europe, Asia, very useful for a wide range of all these questions are often the Middle East, and the United readers. The interdisciplinary breathtaking, and Ben-Joseph States and currently professor approach of the author, who is a marvelous guide into the un- of Landscape Architecture and brings together urban studies, known world of the parking lot. Planning at MIT, Eran Ben- cultural studies, history, ecol- The extremely well-thought out Joseph has written an inspir- ogy, and aesthetics, is a good design of the book, not only lav- ing and thought-provoking book example of what social design ishly illustrated (yes, pictures of on what can be defined of one can and should be. parking lots can be beautiful and of the most strange places (or offer a lot of food for thought) but non-places) of modern life and also exceptionally well laid-out The Self-Made culture: the parking lot, both (it will be difficult to find another Map: Cartographic overwhelmingly present in our book in which the interaction of daily life (in certain cities parking Writing in Early text of image is so smooth and lots cover more than one-third of Modern France natural), increases the pleas- the space!) and bizarrely invis- ure one has in entering a world ible (for being so self-evident, by Tom Conley that may have been presented so ‘empty’, so deprived of any also as gruesome, depressing, University of Minnesota Press, other than merely functional oc- asphyxiating, ecologically disas- Minneapolis, MN, 2011, 392 cupations). trous, and, above all, revoltingly pp. The aim of the book is twofold: ugly. For the author, who is not ISBN 978-0816674480 first of all to describe, more blind for the many deficiencies particularly the parking lot, as of the parking lot, does not ap- The Face of the opposed to the parking garage proach his subject as a modern Earth: Natural (which is not taken into account Cassandra. He relies instead on Landscapes,

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Science and cept its greater knowledge and by both mapmakers and typog- authority as expressed in neutral raphers, to the regional almost Culture appearances. We have only to localised renditions. Writings, remember the colours applied to from itineraria way-sheets to the by SueEllen Campbell groupings of countries, and pro- sojourns of Rabelais’s charac- University of California Press, jections favouring their place- ters, concomitantly raised the Berkeley, CA, 2011, 334 pp. ment in the frame, to know this desires of the traveling classes ISBN 978-0520269262 is not true. These realisations, and their expectations of adven- a placing of oneself in the world, tures to be had abroad, in the im- Reviewed by Mike Leggett, are the maps of the mind at the agination and as experience, on Faculty of Creative Arts, centre of Tom Conley’s fascinat- the real roads and byways de- University of Wollongong, ing account. scribed in word and image. The NSW bounds of the worldview began [email protected] to spread with the continuing colonisation of the New World Politics, and (therefore) national and, “in the singularization of and personal identity are at the experience that affects carto- core of these two publications. graphic writing”, in the island The analysis of the remarkable book, or isolario, (described as period of European (and there- the beginnings of ethnography fore) world history during the by 20th Century scholar Claude early modern period of the 15th Lévi–Strauss). Andre Thevet’s and 16th Centuries in the first, La Cosmographie Universelle provides the call for the kind of took a form that layered in all topographic descriptions com- manner of fact “that refuses to piled during the early part of the concede to an atlas structure”, 21st Century in the second. Then the precursor of other written as now, proliferation of technol- forms, (from Swift, to the present He begins by providing a window ogy and political change pro- day television documentary or onto an arcane world, (not unlike vide the background to these celebrity adventure?) accounts, overtly in the first, our own though of a different occluded in the second. era), and the inexorable proc- The shift from woodcut to cop- esses through which knowledge perplate technology permitted Since the time of the cosmogra- was extended beyond the Court advances in the acuity of the pher Ptolemy 1500 years before and the Church of Rome. The reproduction of drawings but the the early modern period, cartog- focus is on the various kingdoms discipline of the atlas asserted raphy had been held, like many that were to become the French itself in the work of Borguereau, other technologies, subservient nation, though the overall project in a perspective form and view- to the principalities of warlords employed ‘European’ experts point that would be recognised and the belief systems centred of the day moving (and being by users of current internet map on the Church of Rome. The moved) to the research and pro- tools. The royal commission- technologies emerging in the duction centres. Earlier travel ing of this, like the corporate 15th Century – printing, perspec- writings complete with woodcut sponsors of today’s manifes- tive drawing, written forms of the ‘snaps’ of scenes and activities tations, had a purpose beyond vernacular, scientific method, sold as well then as they do to- the altruistic – the consolida- and other matters of the Renais- day. But these lacked uses as tion of spheres of influence and sance – began the process of tools to soldiers and traders, profit. The Iberian destruction of rolling back superstition and the camp followers and mercantile the peoples of the New World power vested through religion. pioneers – what was required motivated by plunder and reli- was greater accuracy and brev- gion was the turning point for Maps are of fascination for our ity. the emergence of the ‘interna- quotidian moments and occa- tionalist’ essay writer, the three sionally become essential for Individuals like Oronce Finé Frenchmen, Montaigne, du Voi- our survival (even) to those on are traced as they think their sin and René Descartes. The the move. A map confidently way through from the cordiform carefully analysed differences organises data gathered from ‘whole world’ map view, alerted in their cartographic writing en- the physical world and we ac- to the affordances of ‘the grid’

23 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 able Conley to arrive at a sen- jective descriptions using the Conley’s book is an engrossing tence that carefully locates the interdisciplinary languages of read because to this reader, so reader, the text and its writer. the sciences and humanities. much was new and expressed “One can move into space by A final chapter moves into the in such fulsome and scholarly surveying and arrogating it, and complexities of mankind’s rela- detail. Thus it was a ‘slow’ read one can make it virtual, seem- tionship with the physical world, as, often using unfamiliar but ingly self-made, when a carto- steadfastly maintaining its neu- resonant humanities-based ter- graphic process is adjusted to trality, planted in the domain of minology, so much background the imagination of one’s origins, the empirical. The contradic- needed consulting. At times the growth, works, memory, and liv- tions of Heidegger’s dasein, detail discussed in the illustra- ing itineraries.” ‘being-there’, and the clear need tions and maps is beyond visible comprehension on the (octavo) Michel de Montaigne observed for affirmative remedial recon- page and this reader had to track in his seminal Essais that “we struction of the human role with- down larger images on the inter- need topographers to provide in the biosphere are left for the net. (Perhaps a simultaneously specific accounts of the places reader to imagine if not desire. published website containing they have been.” This Conley Clearly the book is intended to links to images could have ben- paraphrases as aiding in “the elevate the knowledge levels of efitted both these publications?) art of writing and composing a city-bound high school students, Fortunately, as with the genre work that can extend itself in to stimulate and encourage ex- of books that have followed the mental directions that will move peditions to sparsely populated pioneering early modern writ- long enough and far enough to places, experience wilderness ers, the images available have yield a verbal geography that areas, to create space for map- proliferated. can be experienced through ping of the self to begin, for un- both intellectual and physical derstanding the forces shaping means.” Responses to the call the landscapes of history and Global Icons. over the centuries have been the contemporary world. As a Apertures to the slight, from popular windows source book for constructing Popular on the world like National Geo- agendas it is admirable, though graphic, to some twenty writ- as there is not an image to be by Bishnupriya Ghosh ers, several from Colorado seen, it will appeal mainly to the Duke University Press, State University, who provide already committed and serious Durham, NC, 2011, 383 pp. accounts in The Face of the student. ISBN 978-0822350040 Earth, not of the rural byways That student could be further of medieval France, but of the Reviewed by Jan Baetens, remote areas of today’s planet. galvanised by Conley’s para- University of Leuven A series of edited expressions phrasing of Lévi–Strauss, “...we of the culture that constructs our can only offer cosmetic reasons [email protected]. sense of ‘the natural world’ is for granting humans the right ac.be of temporary residence in the offered, as “intriguing and sug- Global Icons is a book on the nature of things. The gratuitous- gestive examples of the many power of “bio-icons”, highly vis- ways that we and our earthly ness of human presence in the ible public figures capable of surroundings are tied to each world could not have failed to raising immense affects in lo- other.” ‘We’ it must be pointed vex cartographic writers of the cal and global audiences. More out concentrates primarily on early modern age as well.” precisely, Bishnupriya Ghosh the United States, Great Britain The self-made map approach to studies three of such icons, all and Australia. writing of the 16th Century, cre- female and all South-Asian: Four chapters, each with about ated for the first time a spatial- Phoolan Devi, India’s famous a dozen sections describe the ity of narrative, a form that was bandit queen (who will surrender dramatic zones of internal fire, perfected not in the 19th Century to police and after many years in volcanoes and geysers; climate novel but through the develop- jail become a member of parlia- th ment in 1994, the voice of the and ice; wet and fluid; and desert ment of narrative in 20 Century voiceless), Mother Theresa (who places. ‘On the Spot’ accounts cinema, a subject about which had to become a media star in describe the experience of be- the author is also a recognised the late 70S before being ac- ing in such places and are in- contributor. terspersed with the more ob- cepted as a Catholic saint), and

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Arundhati Roy (the Indian writer for Ghosh the icon includes a range of materially organized who after her Booker Prize in strong verbal component: visual and determined communicative 1988 became the spokeswoman representation and storytelling acts, and this dramatic emphasis of environmental activism). The cannot be separated, and all on the image’s body as well as study, however, does apply to all her examples highlight this in- the materiality of its ceaseless global icons, South-Asian and teraction very well. Second, by interpretations and reinterpre- others (but why not confess that using the word “global”, Ghosh tations can only be welcomed it is a relief to see that star and stresses another aspect of their in a scientific context that em- celebrity studies are not con- multiplicity and ambivalence: phasizes very heavily the cog- demned to focus on Lady Gaga the fact that these images func- nitive aspects of hermeneutic Di and tutti quanti). tion locally as well as globally, processes (of course cognitive but never in similar terms (as studies are not by definition seen as well in the posthumous tempted by dematerialization, debates on the “ownership” of on the contrary, but the hyper- Mother Theresa, whose recu- materialist stance of Ghosh is an peration by the Vatican was in excellent reminder of the neces- contradiction with the claims of sity of reading images and their the local population, for whom meaning making as observable, the nun was “their” saint). An describable, historcizable arte- icon, the author argues, can only facts). The great model of the become global if its meaning book is undoubtedly the work can be reoriented toward new of Antonio Gramsci, and Global agendas and new expecta- Icons can certainly be read as tions, but in all cases the per- an exercise in hegemony stud- manent blurring of boundaries ies. However, the range of the between the local, the glocal author’s references is much and the global are paramount to broader, so that the book can Each word of title and subtitle the success of the icon. Third, also be used as an overview of matter here, and deserve a by using the term “the popular”, icon (and even iconology) stud- small comment. By using the Ghosh makes a strong state- ies: “classic” authors as Barthes, word “icon,” the author uses on ment on agency, making a dis- Panofsky, Peirce, and Bataille, purpose a multilayered concept tinction between “populism”, among many others, but also that underlines from the very which puts between brackets more recent critics such as Dyer, beginning the fact that the im- the differences in a given so- Negri, Belting, and Butler, here ages under scrutiny cannot cial context (that of the people as well among many others, are be reduced to their mere ob- surrendering to a unified whole, presented and discussed with jecthood: it is their social life often manipulated by media con- great clarity and relevance, so that matters, and that life is cerns or political leaders) and that Global Icons has everything dramatically material. Global “the popular”, which leaves room to interest both beginning and icons are not just images that for the grassroots formulation of advanced readers (this too is a exert a strong influence or that local and particular demands great quality, for it is not easy are being admired (or hated, of and which supposes a dynamics to write for a double audience, course), but also images that are of empowerment (a thesis that while managing to convince being produced, circulated, re- is not automatically accepted in each of them). ceived, and transformed in ways global media studies, in which that can only be understood if The book of Ghosh is an end- often a strong accent is put on one traces the material context less source of discoveries and the homogenizing and alienating in which these processes take provocative thinking in the field effects of the media). place (as shown for instance by of postcolonial studies and the the role played by Time maga- The major merit of Global Icons way in which she continues to zine, the BBC, Magnum pho- (but the book has many other disclose throughout the whole tographers, local newspapers, important qualities as well) is book always new dimensions of online souvenir shops etc. in the to propose a rematerialization the three examples studied is gradual canonization or debunk- of the icon. The image, here, is admirable, but beyond this disci- ing of Mother Theresa). In this once again the material object pline it offers also many innova- regard, it should be clear that and the nodal point of a wide tive insights at the crossroads of

25 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 star studies, audience studies, the present but also in the past. with the emphasis on what is and critical theory. It offers an This section helps understand persistent through all changes: extremely valuable contribution the dramatically multilayered the link between the techniques to the study of the “life” of icon. but always thoroughly cultural to heighten human conscious- value of drugs, be it plant drugs ness and the construction of High Society: (like mushrooms) or laboratory- human behaviour and social Mind-Altering based drugs (like ecstasy). Jay groups. And the examples of Drugs in History emphasizes the role of drugs in opium, cocaine, laudanum, LSD and Culture the construction of human so- and other drugs do all confirm cieties and reflects upon their the basic knowledge already put by Mike Jay role in the development of the forward by in Antique medicine: human brain, always insisting “whether a drug is medicine or Thames and Hudson, London, on the collective and socially poison is a question of dosage” 2012 [2010], 192 pp. constructed dimension of drugs (p. 107). ISBN 978-0500289105 and taking advantage of the no- Section 3, “The Drug Trade”, fo- tion of drugs to ask questions Reviewed by Jan Baetens, cuses very cleverly on “older” on the relationships between University of Leuven drugs, such as tobacco, opium, the human and the animal. By and alcohol, and makes clear [email protected]. focusing on the universal char- that the so-called “war on drugs” ac.be acter of drugs, Jay does not only is an immensely complex phe- foreground that fact that drugs High Society is both the title nomenon that cannot be re- are found everywhere, but that of an exhibition presented at duced to the dichotomy of “bad” all social groups are to a certain Wellcome Collection (London, drugs and “good” crime-fighters. extent dependent, among many 2010) and a book derived from Here again, the approach of other things of course, on drugs, the curatorial work of Mike Jay, Mike Jay discusses the many even if not all societies use or a well-known scholar special- hidden aspects of laisser-aller forbid the same kind of drugs. izing in the cultural history of and prohibitionist politics, and In spite of their wildly diverging drugs. As such, it is a wonder- the many permanently shifting forms and practices, the drug ful accomplishment of the not nuances one has to acknowl- pattern, which is a cultural pat- so frequent encounter of schol- edge between the many ways tern of linking the individual and arly and popularizing efforts that of coping with drugs. The final the social, seems to be always meet here seamlessly in a lav- part of this section is devoted the same. ishly illustrated publication that to a discussion on the ban on will be of great interest to both In “From Apothecary to Labora- tobacco in the wealthy classes scholars and the large auditory”, Jay further problematizes of the Western world, which is ence (the latter will appreciate the definition of drugs, blurring analyzed in terms of changing the fact that the very readable the boundaries between licit and cultural attitudes (and not just in text presents itself without foot- illicit, drugs and non-drugs, posi- terms of health care considera- notes, the former will find in the tive and negative. The perspec- tions and economic s of insur- final advanced reading section tive shifts here from the spatial ance systems: after all, as Jay helpful tools for further research; (as in section I, where the idea astutely observes: smokers do both groups be grateful also for is to study the drug phenomenon make a positive contribution to a sober but well-made index). all over the world) to the his- the finances of our care sys- torical, more particularly to the tems, for they die sooner and Jay’s book is divided in three ongoing experiments in Western thus help keep under control parts. In the section “A universal culture, from the Antiquity to the the exploding costs of an ag- Impulse”, he gives a very clear Renaissance, from Enlighten- ing population). overview of the presence of ment to the drugs of the future drugs in all human civilizations Mike Jay’s merits in this book are and the discussions on human as well as of the very different great. He offers a well balanced, enhancement. Here as well, the forms and meanings that the historically very rich and cultur- very well-informed study of the use of certain kind of drugs has ally very diverse presentation of ceaselessly growing assortment taken in a wide range of socie- drugs. His writing can be quoted of possible drugs and their vari- ties, Western and non-Western, as an example to all those who ous contributions to often clan- natural (or allegedly so) and want to popularize science. The destine subcultures, goes along technologically enhanced, in book is illustrated in a highly di-

26 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 dactic yet always very attractive The notion of medium is key its own specificity, i.e. to pro- way. And last but not least, one in any understanding of Mod- gressively abandon all non- may hope as well that this study ern art, whatever the meaning medium-specific aspects) and makes a positive contribution to and scope one may give to this more complex. In this regard, ongoing discussion that clearly notion. It is based on the con- Krauss’s basic reference is the does not follow the careful and viction that real art (for there work by the philosopher Stanley open approach that such a com- are also non-artistic uses of a Cavell, whose work on cinema plex phenomenon needs. medium that are called kitsch, (The World Viewed, Cambridge a term launched by Clement University Press, 1979), intro- Under Blue Cup Greenberg on which Krauss duced an approach of medium will come in detail) is a particu- as automatism, a notion that for by Rosalind E. Krauss lar way of interacting with the Cavell may replace the worn-out specific properties of a certain notion of medium, and perhaps The MIT Press, Cambridge, material support and a certain also that of genre. But what is an MA, 2011, 200 pp. number of material devices (oil automatism? Mainly the attempt ISBN 978-0262016131 on canvas, for instance). Yet (and, if successful, the achieve- Reviewed by Jan Baetens, the problem of medium, which ment) to invent a new rule for University of Leuven any serious artist has to cope the use of a certain ‘technical with, has been jeopardized by support’ (in Krauss’s terminol- [email protected]. its narrow-minded, simplistically ogy, since Cavell circumscribes ac.be materialist use by the very critic the automatism in terms of au- who has been paramount in the tomatic coupling of sign type, Although the starting point of momentary success of medium- support, and content, but the this book, the author’s efforts specific theory, namely Clem- basic idea remains of course to recover short term memory ent Greenberg, both Krauss’s the same). However, the major after the temporary brain dam- model and anti-model: her mod- revolution of the shift from me- age caused by a ruptured an- el given Greenberg’s rejection dium to automatism is not just a eurysm, may seem very highly of all non-medium-specific art terminological, but a conceptual anecdotal, Under Blue Cup is or kitsch; her anti-model given one. Contrary to Greenberg et without any doubt one of the Greenberg’s craving for a purely al., Cavell’s reinterpretation of most important publications on formalist definition of specificity medium-specificity as automa- medium theory since Krauss’s according to the material param- tism supersedes any essential- own (and very critical) study on eters of support and devices. ist or transhistorical fixation. The the ‘post medium condition’ (‘A rule(s) that define(s) an automa- Voyage on the North Sea’. Art tism are open to reinterpretation: in the Age of the Post-Medium a real artist is capable of rede- Condition, Thames and Hudson, fining the automatism, either by 1999). The therapy used to help inventing a new use of a given the author recover her washed ‘technical support’ (this is for out memory made her aware instance what happens when of the fundamental relationship painters shift from figuration to between medium, materiality, abstraction) or by using a new time and self - a relationship that one (new types of paint or can- she considers basically lost in vas can give birth to new ways of the kind of art that came after painting, for example). [1] Modernism, i.e. the art symbolized by the white cube paradigm In Krauss’s rereading of Cavell, of museal presentation and dis- it is the temporal dimension of play, focused on the materiality medium, automatism, and art of the medium-specific object. To this view of medium and that comes to the fore, more par- Postmodernism and beyond, medium-specificity, Krauss ticularly the dialectic relationship which Krauss refers to with the opposes a more complex vi- between memory and forget- help of the black cube model, sion, less teleological (con- ting. Here, the main antagonist focuses instead on the experi- trary to Greenberg, she does is McLuhan’s media theory, with ence of a dynamic subject and not believe that the goal of an its strong teleological and non- its primary form of existence is artistic medium is to discover materialist undertones, and the post medium installation art.

27 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 main innovation (and this is, in the old and the new: each art- It is therefore no longer a real my eyes, a real Copernican rev- ist must permanently reenact medium, and proves incapable olution) put forward by Krauss (i.e. confirm) and invent (i.e. of building new rules, new au- in this regard is not only the em- supersede, reject, transform) tomatisms, and new forms of art. phasis on the medium’s mate- the medium, yet not in the lin- Just as in ‘A Voyage on the North riality (which cannot be freely ear perspective that may be Sea’. Art in the Age of the Post- or seamlessly remediated by mechanically inferred from the Medium Condition, where she newer and stronger media, as terms old and new. In art, it can succeeded in proposing an anti- in McLuhan’s view), but also and be revolutionary to go back, if conceptualist i.e. anti-post medi- most importantly her radically this allows for the invention of um) reinterpretation of one of the structuralist reinterpretation of new rules, new automatisms, major figures of conceptual art, the tension between old and new medium uses. Corollarily, Marcel Broodthaers, Rosalind new. For Krauss, the temporal it can prove profoundly reaction- Krauss offers in Under Blue Cup dimension of a medium (or an ary and meaningless to leap into typically Modernist, i.e. medium- automatism, or a genre, or art the so-called new and the so- specific rereadings of works and tout court: after all, it is not the called future, if the new and the authors that critical peer pres- terminology that matters most) future forsake the fundamental sure may partially label as post cannot be reduced to the eter- tension between memory and medium artists, but whose basic nal chain of old and new, of old forgetting. attitude is, according to Krauss, becoming new, new becoming deeply committed to the me- old, etc., but should take into ac- This ‘forgetting’ is what char- dium’s materiality as well as to count that the rules at the heart acterizes for Krauss the regime the medium’s automatisms and of any medium use are always at of post-medium art, which she rules (which are not essential the crossroads of memory and had already identified in pre- or transhistorical features, but forgetting: Memory, because a vious publications as the new aspects and uses to be dis- rule must bear witness to pre- art regime produced by ‘three covered trough the hands-on vious ways of using a medium; things’: the postminimalist de- experiments of the artist). The Forgetting, because a rule can materialization of the art object, most speaking example of those fall prey to fossilization and must the conceptualist emphasis on studied by Krauss, may be Ed therefore be open to medium the verbal definition of the art Ruscha, whose work is analyzed innovation and invention, yet object, the worldwide success as the medium-specific ‘figuring always within the limits of the of Duchamp’s the readymade forth’ of a new technical support’ medium’s materiality (if not, it (the common feature of these of the... car. Ruscha’s work ex- no longer possible to set up new ‘three things’ beings the war poses what it can mean today rules). The definition of a me- against materiality in art). In to ‘drive’ and to make sense of dium in terms of memory versus Under The Blue Cup she adds being an artist who produces forgetting is a real paradigm shift to other nemeses: deconstruc- his work not just while driving, in our thinking of what a me- tion, whose critique of identity is but by driving and inventing thus dium is, and can be compared broadened into a critique of me- totally new ways of seeing totally with Krauss’s seminal article on dium-specificity, and the whole new objects. Other major ex- ‘Sculpture in the expanded field’ range of artistic practices that amples in the book are William [2], where she had managed to foreground no longer the object Kentridge and James Coleman reconceptualize the dizzying but the subject’s free-floating and, to a lesser extent, Sophie chaos of artistic practices that experience of situations (Nicolas Calle or Harun Farocki. were no longer recognizable as Bourriaud’s relational aesthet- sculpture with the help of the ics, Catherine David’s anti-white Under Blue Cup is a book basic opposition, further elabo- cube curatorship of Documenta whose importance cannot rated in the form of a semiotic X, the political moralism killing be overstated. A synthesis of square, between ‘architecture’ the pleasure of the object, and Krauss’ life-long commitment versus ‘landscape’ (sculpture, installation art in general are to medium theory, it is both a in such a perspective, is then here the main enemies). For thorough discussion with other defined as non-architecture + Krauss, postmedium art, which voices and tendencies in the non-landscape). Moreover, this forsakes the work with the ob- field and a passionate strug- relationship of memory and for- ject’s materiality and the history gle with contemporary art in getting is not simply a matter that goes along, does no longer the making (yet not from the of juxtaposition, of adding-up engage with a medium’s history. viewpoint of what is fashiona-

28 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ble today: postcolonial studies and the “Photographically enous intellect and their ability Dependent” Arts’, forthcoming in and institutional critique). Both Critical Inquiry 38:4 Summer 2012. to formulate their own theoreti- elements, theory and practice, cal tools based on the powerful are however inextricably inter- Freedom in banyan tree, a massive struc- twined: Krauss judges the art ture that gives off an amazing being made today in light of her Entangled Worlds: protective ambiance. Kirksey medium theory, while rethink- West Papua and is influenced by this new politi- ing this theory under the crea- the Architecture of cal theory and moves from the tive pressure of the best that is Global Power methodological teachings of being made today. Under Blue Deleuze and Guattari and the Cup offers a welcome break with by Eben Kirksey abstraction of the rhizome to ex- both the political rigor of most plain the entanglement of politi- Duke University Press, critical theory and the theoretical movements and supplants it Durham, NC & London, 2012, cal indifference of many cultural with the localized concept of the 328 pp. industries oriented studies of banyan tree. participatory and convergent ISBN 978-082235122 media practices. Its excep- Reviewed by C.F. Black tionally challenging stances and hypotheses must now be [email protected] confronted with parallel but not Eben Kirksey, a young anthro- necessarily similar views, such pologist, sets out to cut his teeth as for instance WJT Mitchell’s on the outer edges of the known attempts to reread McLuhan in world, believing he was entering a more medium-specific way, the world of the bow and arrow [3] or Diarmuid Costello’s reflec- shaped by a pristine mythol- tions on the ongoing dialogue ogy in equatorial West Papua between Stanly Cavell and but instead found an articulate Michael Fried. [4] What tomor- people with a fully formed vision row’s medium theory will be is for their nation’s future, as an in- of course impossible to foresee ternational player. This political in detail, but it is impossible to vision is articulated in the con- Kirksey tells us his goal is to imagine that Under Blue Cup will cept of merdeka (freedom) and show how freedom in entan- not play a key role in it. the methodological tool stems gled worlds means negotiating References from the intimate understanding complex interdependencies, [1] For a more detailed discussion of the growth of a banyan tree. rather than promoting fictions of Cavell’s ideas on automatism, about absolute independence. see my article “Le roman- Kirksey develops his argument photo : média singulier, média He provides us with a kind of by engaging the reader in the au singulier ?”, in Sociétés et dreaming of various actors in the représentation (“La croisée des magic realism of the merdeka médias”), N° 10, 2000, pp.51-59. battle over West Papua sover- the equivalent in some ways to Similar ideas are defended by eignty. All players, including the my Belgian colleague Philippe the power behind the ‘I have a multinational Freeport McMo- Marion, who has coined the notion dream’ of Martin Luther King. of medium genius (“médiagénie”), Ran, appear to have their own Into that dream comes the whose actual meaning is very dreams that construct a reality close to what Cavell signifies by quantum flux of opposition but automatism. that at differing points pits them at other times collaboration. against other realities and at oth- [2] October, Vol. 8, 1979, pp. The beauty of the book is that 30-44. er times allows for convergence Kirksey articulates the power of and compromise with these op- [3] “There Are No Visual Media”, in the merdeka to carry seemingly Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 4 no. positional dreams. The battle for vulnerable peoples on against 2, 2005, pp. 257-266. the rich resources these unfor- enormous odds and brutality by [4] ‘On the Very Idea of a tunate people find themselves the Indonesian military and the “Specific” Medium: Michael Fried living on comes at a high price and Stanley Cavell on Painting double dealing of the multina- and Photography as Arts,’ Critical and always the innocent suffer. tionals. Inquiry, 34:2, Winter 2008, pp. In the West Papua case 47 in- 274-312; see also his forthcoming article: ‘Automat, Automatic, It also brings forth the meth- fant mortalities occurred while Automatism: Rosalind Krauss and odological beauty of the Indig- Freeport McMoRan was testing Stanley Cavell on Photography

29 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 for gas under their village. Such this encounter is occurring on Saginaw Valley State statistics were ignored just as the edges of the known world, University much as the rights and interests but in fact in resource terms it [email protected] of the people. is at the center of the world of a billion dollar industry. It is an This book should probably be As Kirksey becomes more en- industry that brings this resource evaluated in two ways: as a cata- gaged in the West Papuans fight from the cloud-covered high- log of an exhibition of specific for their rights, he makes ac- lands down and out across the artifacts and imagery relating to count of their side of the story vast oceans to the door of the certain artists, and, second, as for perpetuity, but also finds he urban centers of America and a general history of conceptual is assigned a power he sees so no longer hidden and on the art in its time and place. I value as illogical. The West Papuan peripheral, but central to supply. the catalog, yet am puzzled by idea of the world of international apparent omissions in its broad politics appears to be naive and It is a supply that costs in hu- historical narrative. misinformed, but still has an ap- man lives! As Kirksey gives ac- peal and power that draws him count before the Congress of The book begins appropriately in. A dream in which overtime the murdered activists and the with John Baldessari’s iconic shape-shifts Kirksey from an- ambush of a group of teachers, map of California, where he lo- thropologist to a pseudo mes- including two Americans near cated on a popular map each of siah able to go to the United Na- the mine and also to the me- the letters spelling out the state’s tions and the US Congress and dia, we begin to realize he is name and went to those sites, tell the true story of West Papua fulfilling his messianic mission spelling out the letter in a natural and the desires for sovereignty deemed by the merdeka. His material like rocks or logs, with of the people, people who wish book also features a many pho- dye or scuffled into the sandy to share the resources of their tos, including that of the dead soil. Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt, and country with the world for free. as well as an aerial photograph Adrian Piper were artists from It is a mind-bogglingly generous of the giant tailing swamp that the East Coast who exhibited act, but one that is based on the abuts the city of Timika. Readers austere and cerebral works in ancient tradition of exchange cannot help ask themselves at California that inspired its artists as a way of forming political al- what point does the consumer to move beyond more traditional liances, and a misplaced trust of these resources also take re- painting and sculpture. that Kirksey, however, tries to sponsibility for their first world honour through his attempts to lifestyle? Eben Kirksey answers While some artwork here seeks influence Congress with the help that questioning by finishing the a zen-like moment of enlighten- of the powerful human rights lob- book with a call for an ethical ment, some of the most com- by group, The Robert Kennedy and political transformation pelling work from this time is Centre for Justice and Human through the imaging of open- political and topical. Deadpan Rights. He is able to, at least, ended possibilities, a powerful photos of parking lots, carports, get a hearing with Congress to lesson he learnt from imbuing and every building on the Sun- acknowledge their concerns. the spirit of the merdeka and set Strip, were assembled into so the spirit of the land of West books by Ed Ruscha, while Kirksey’s political awakening Papua. Howard Fried and Bas Jan and journey from the highlands Adler produced sequential pho- to the hearing before a Congres- State of Mind: New tographs seeking to shake the sional hearing is, perhaps, what miraculous out of mundane daily makes the book a most useful California Art circa life. These are contrasted with text for students of political sci- 1970 documentary photos by Fred ence, for there is this arrogance Londier of 29 arrests of smil- that somehow the elite political by Constance M. Lewallen ing young demonstrators at the world is above the machinations and Karen Moss 1972 antiwar action before the of the poor native in some re- University of California Press, Headquarters of the 11th Naval mote village on the edge of the Berkeley Art Museum and District in San Diego. Paul Mc- known world. But, in fact, the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley Carty—later creator of Grand native world, perhaps, gives us CA, 2011, 296 pp. Guignol political tableaux like a clearer view of the bending “Train, Mechanical”, George ISBN 978-0520270619 of the rules. Also it becomes W. Bush robots coupling with apparent that many would say Reviewed by Mike Mosher, pigs to express the artist’s dis-

30 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 gust at the administration’s Iraq The human body was a site of the Cockettes—Esquire mag- war—was producing peaceful action for Bruce Nauman, Lin- azine ran a multi-page photo slide shows of quotidian urban da Montano, Chris Burden and spread “CALIFORNIA DADA”, details in 1971. Martha Rosler’s Howard Fried. Suzanne Lacy, featuring what were suppos- collages brought the Vietnam inspired by New Yorker Allan edly some of the edgiest art- war home, juxtaposing its vio- Kaprow’s residence at CalArts in ists on the west coast. There lence with exemplary bourgeois Valencia, combined it with com- was mail artist Anna Banana, households, like Pat Nixon’s munity, especially communities and Irene Dogmatic, in a dog White House. Mel Henderson of women. The Cockettes were mask and leopard-print shift. installed the name ATTICA in an outrageous troupe of hirsute Sculptor Clayton Bailey, later Christmas tree lights upon a San Francisco men in glittery to produce memorable robots, Newport Beach hillside a few drag and outlandish costumes; was photographed with a Bigfoot months after the terrible massa- in the 1980s I was delighted to skeleton, measuring its “penis cre in that New York state prison. learn they’d lived in my loft build- bone” with calipers. There were Henderson along with Joe Haw- ing on Clarion Alley, for I’d read probably five more astonishing ley and Alfred Young wrote the about them at age 14, in Rolling notables featured. This article word OIL in nontoxic dye in the Stone. Julia Bryant Wilson’s es- elicited much interest in my water alongside the Standard say “To Move, to Dress, to Work, teenage art gang in Michigan, Oil docks in Richmond, alerting to Act” traces their participant as it probably did elsewhere the world to the fragility of their Hibiscus to a famous photo of around the US. I’m surprised transport process and risk of students vs. National Guard it’s not mentioned in the text, if ecologically disastrous spills. troops, where he’s a beardless only as a misleading moment in innocent inserting a flower into the popular press about untra- a guardsman’s rifle. ditional California art. Bonnie Sherk began to bring In Karen Moss’s essay “Beyond elements of agriculture and ani- the White Cell: Experimenta- mal husbandry into San Fran- tion/Education/Intervention in cisco city limits, resulting in the California Circa 1970” mention marvelous Farm at the corner of is made of San Francisco State Potrero and Army (later Cesar College (later S.F. State Uni- Chavez) Streets, which thrived versity) and the Experimental for a quarter-century. Lynn Her- College it initiated in 1965. But shman and Alan Ruppersberg there’s no mention of its Center There were art collectives, like created installations referenc- for Interdisciplinary and Experi- Sam’s Cafe (Marc Keyser, Terri ing, or located in, Los Angeles mental Arts (CEIA, later Inter- Keyser and David Shire). ASCO and San Francisco hotel rooms, Arts Center), which began in (Willie Herrón, Gronk, Pattsi Val- respectively. Tom Marioni, Paul 1954 according to its long-time dez and Harry Gamboa Jr.), who Kos and Jim Melchert all did Director Jim Davis, in a conver- are too often ghettoized to ap- works that interrogated the art- sation in 1994, when I taught pear only in histories of Latino making process itself, as well there for a year. The Center art and culture, are included in as the museum as art’s premier lasted about fifty years, until it State of Mind as vital Los An- and privileged site. My hurried was disbanded in this century, geles performance artists. Born list of these artists may read and included on its 1990s fac- around 1950, they may be the like the whirlwind tour provided ulty interactive cinema pioneer youngest artists here. Among in Constance M. Lewallen’s “A Christine Tamblyn, political the citywide Pacific Standard Larger Stage”, the historical videographer Jesse Drew and Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 essay that occupies about half radical montage-maker Craig exhibits in 2011, viewers could the book, and details what was Baldwin. But what was it doing have compared ASCO’s show evidently a rich and engaging circa 1970? We don’t find out at the Los Angeles County Mu- exhibition. here. Or is it and the Experimen- seum of Art to their Detroit-orig- tal College (was it then a part?) But how complete is this history inated contemporaries Destroy conflated in this narrative? of California conceptualism circa All Monsters at the Prism Gal- 1970, even on its own terms? By the late 1970s the San Fran- lery, co-curated by Mike Kelley, When I was still in high school— cisco Art Institute was an excit- who arrived in California in 1975. a couple years after reading of ing center of Punk rock and per-

31 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 formance, as Mark Van Proyen ary 2012. The MOCA San Di- duction, to the dematerialized affectionately documented in ego exhibition formed part of ethos of ideation, the purity of online publication Bad Subjects a broader collaboration with Zen consciousness and self- #51 (2001). And, though also the J. Paul Getty Museum and reflexivity. This was a period in slightly outside of the authors’ more than 60 other Southern which Robert Rauschenberg, time frame, mention might have California cultural institutions John Cage, and others launched been made of the Conceptual entitled “Pacific Standard Time: E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Arts program (later Conceptual Art in L.A. 1945-1980,” that cul- Technology) with Billy Klüver at and Information Arts; where I got minated in a major exhibition New York’s 69th Regiment Ar- my M.F.A.), begun nearer 1980 at the Getty from October 2011 mory in 1966, one of the spring- by Bryan Rogers and James to February 2012. Phenomenal boards from which art, music, Storey, then led for two dec- aimed to document one as- dance and other transitory per- ades by Stephen Wilson, to in- pect of the history of Modern- formances probed the bound- vestigate the intersection of art, ism in Southern California, the less, museum-less, gallery-less science, technology, and a theo- “Light and Space” movement, a mental space of creativity. La- retical analysis of culture. This loosely-affiliated group of artists bels attached to alternative foci was certainly an institutional af- working in Southern California during the 60s and 70s included firmation of the creative proc- during the 1960s and 1970s. Environmental, Ambient, and esses the artists whose work Some members of the group Phenomenal Art. In So Cal, the is profiled in State of Mind had gained recognition through ex- mix was also joined to interests initiated. Though later works like hibitions at the Ferus Gallery in fabrication processes such Carlee Fernandez’s “Bear Study in L.A. in the early 60s, later to as vacuum-form molding; new Diptych” of 2004 appear in State coalesce around a 1971 UCLA aerospace technologies; resins, of Mind, and there are helpful exhibition titled “Transparency, polymers, acrylics, fiberglass mini-biographies of each artist Reflection, Light, Space” that and plastics appropriated for at the back the book, citation of featured Peter Alexander, Lar- their reflective, refractive and conceptual art still taught at S.F. ry Bell, Robert Irwin, John Mc- translucent properties. Despite State and elsewhere would have Cracken and Craig Kauffmann. known relationships to the work helped to remind us that Cali- In five essays,Phenomenal ex- of John McLaughlin, whose con- fornia conceptual artists didn’t plores the work of these artists templative grid-based paintings all just give up making art in (or and others: Ron Cooper, Mary were inspired by Asian art, after) the 1970s and go to the Corse, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr, Phenomenal artists concerned beach. Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, themselves with effects of light, De Wain Valentine and Doug- space and energy within purely Phenomenal: las Wheeler whose art, realized contemporary sightlines without California Light, primarily through the medium recourse to metaphysics or sym- Space, Surface of light, is characterized by an bolic spirituality. Their interest interest in visual perception, in sensations of confinement, process and phenomenology release, isolation, immersion by Robin Clark; forward by and rapture was conceived Hugh M. Davies over the traditional materiality of the art object. perceptually, at once psycho- University of California Press, logically complex, immediate Berkeley, CA, 2011, 240 pp. Robin Clark’s overview identifies and exploratory. Even in work ISBN 978-0520270602 key works by these artists that not traditionally associated with contribute to an understanding figures such as Irwin, Turrell and Reviewed by Giovanna L. of the LA movement. She notes Wheeler, installations refer- Costantini the emergence of certain fig- enced Frederick Perls’ theories ures such as Robert Irwin, Doug of Gestalt psychology through costantini.giovanna.l@gmail. Wheeler and Larry Bell from manipulations of light, space com various painting trajectories and constructed elements that Phenomenal: California Light, that include Abstract Expres- could induce unexpected human Space, Surface is a catalog sionism, Hard Edge and Color responses. In Bruce Naumann’s published to accompany an Field. It was in these areas that Green Light Corridor installation exhibition by the Museum of ideas connected to Minimalism in La Jolla (1970), for example, Contemporary Art San Diego pushed abstraction (yet again) a narrow corridor illuminated by from September 2011 to Janu- to the reductive limits of art pro- green fluorescent light elicited

32 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 feelings of oppression and en- Yves Klein’s gestural Le Vide Turrell, Orr and Nordman in the trapment. (The Void), a 1959 installation phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty whose embrace of cognitive science and descriptive psychology formed the basis of a concept of the body as a membrane through which perceptions about the world are assimilated into consciousness in an ongoing process of “becoming.” Her essay does much to further an appreciation of the Light and Space movement’s roots in Mini- malism and its program of dematerialization though she bypass- es Lucy Lippard’s influentialSix Years: The Dematerialization of in Paris in which Klein painted the Art Object (1973) that traced Michael Auping’s essay, “Stealth the walls of the gallery as if they the emergence of Conceptual Architecture: The Rooms of Light were white canvases citing a art from 1966 to 1972. She and Space,” describes his own definition of painting as “radi- points up the importance of ex- reactions to installations of the ance.” Yet Asher’s interest in periments conducted between 1970’s by Michael Asher, Rob- spatial composition, as other 1968-71 at LACMA in Curator ert Irwin, Maria Nordman and artists such as Larry Bell and Maurice Tuchman’s “Art and James Turrell. He observes that Robert Irwin, also centered on Technology Program” in which many of these artworks inter- the visual language of percep- scientists and engineers were rogated relationships between tion, the nature of light and the paired with artists in tests that content and context, material science of perspective studied involved sensory deprivation, and immateriality in ways later since the Renaissance. While particularly within an anechoic set forth in Brian O’Doherty’s Minimalist artists of this period chamber, a soundproof struc- Inside the White Cube, essays resolutely sought to deny any- ture used for astronautic and concerning artistic space that thing but the recent past, reject- psychological research. Irwin, appeared in Artforum in 1976. ing European influence, most Turrell, Wheeler, Nordman and For some, the perimeters of would acknowledge that the Orr all spent time in the cham- rooms represented framing reductive drive that propelled ber, an experience to which they devices that prompted distinc- modern art throughout much of attributed an increased sensory tion and symbiotic interaction the twentieth century was sig- awareness upon their release. between ephemeral experi- nificantly accelerated by Kasimir Installations that followed em- ence and the articulated space Malevich and El Lissitzky. Their phasized the enveloping soft- of architecture. For others, it Suprematist artworks investigat- ness of darkness or a nascent was space itself, envisioned ed dimensional relationships be- encounter with light as inchoate as a focal field, that became tween geometric configurations awakening. the subject of the artwork as in and painting, architecture and Michael Asher’s 1974 installa- In Stephanie Hanor’s “The Mate- space in ways that overturned tion at the Claire Copley Gallery rial of Immateriality” the ephem- Renaissance theories of picto- in which the empty (aesthetic) eral aesthetic of LA art of the 60s rial perspective and anticipated space of the gallery constitut- and 70s is described as a so- the concerns of later conceptu- ed the exhibition. Though one phisticated conversion of physi- alists who sought to isolate the of the more fundamental aims cal products largely associated aesthetic space and its praxis of artists associated with this with post-war American industri- from history. movement was to move beyond alism into immaterial essence. the confines (and materiality) of Dawna Schuld’s essay “Practi- She considers sheet acrylics, painting to non-relational, non- cally Nothing: Light, Space, and lacquers, cast resins and metal associative references, Aup- the Pragmatics of Phenomenol- coatings adopted for their sur- ing compared Asher’s work to ogy,” grounds the work of Irwin, face properties that could be

33 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 machined to “almost perfect qualities traditionally assigned by Ken Kobré, John Hewitt, optical clarity” through flaw- to painting. Nor does it probe Producers less polishing. Larry Bell used debates surrounding Modern- 58 mins., 2011 precision finishes employed by ism and Post-Modernism un- Film website: http://www. the US Air Force to create the leashed by Clement Greenberg deadlineeverysecond.com mirrored surfaces of his highly and Michael Fried’s redefinitions reflective glass cubes; Robert of painting that triggered reac- Reviewed by Amy Ione, The Irwin utilized transparent acryl- tionary conceptions of sculp- Diatrope Institute ics banded by metallic centers ture. While the catalogue looks for Discs whose subtle ethereal forward to the work of Tara Do- [email protected] transformations from shadow novan, Olafur Eliasson, Kim- Ken Kobré’s Deadline Every to light, opacity to translucency sooja, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Second introduces the viewer approximated transcendence. and Spencer Finch as examples to 12 Associated Press (AP) of artists who have been influ- “Work and Word” by Adrian photographers on assignment enced by So Cal predecessors, Kohn ponders the inadequacy as they cover breaking news in it circumvents Lucio Fontana, of verbal language to approach eight countries. The variety of Dan Flavin, Julio Le Parc, Car- abstraction, especially in visu- images is compelling. Sequenc- los Cruz-Diez, Chryssa and the alizing phenomena that is tran- es show them recording war, Denise René Gallery in Paris sient and fugitive. It calls atten- political clashes, financial mar- where GRAV/Groupe de Re- tion to the ambiguity of artist kets, natural disasters, sports cherche Visuel conducted ex- statements that are often ob- and human-interest stories. It periments in environmental light scure and circuitous, frequently is hard to ignore the power of manipulations and performance resorting to feelings to convey the images of the battle zones during the 1960s. intrinsic qualities of the artwork. in Afghanistan, protests in Isra- Since this problem plagues Light The identification of artists in- el, terrorist attacks in Pakistan, and Space art as well as other cluded in the catalogue within a wildfires in California, the Tour works that pose a challenge to range of heterogeneous strate- de France, and the events of photography, it alerts readers gies whose precise coordinates Sept. 11 in New York City, and to the limits of transcribing cer- remain at issue (artists such as the impact that this work has on tain phenomena into theoretical Michael Asher and Maria Nord- AP’s large audience is equally discourse. man chose not to be included compelling. Over a billion people in the exhibition) points up the a day see the photographs AP The catalogue contains nu- problematic nature of critically generates, which number over merous black and white and designated movements, partic- one million images a year. The full color illustrations of works ularly ones whose emphases shots are disseminated through treated in the text along with a include geographic distinctions 15,000 news outlets throughout chronological Select Exhibition and claims of shifting epicent- the world, and I expect that, like History (both one-person and ers. This, coupled with the highly me, viewers will find many of the group shows), Select Bibliog- complex network of cross-cur- images in the film familiar. raphy, Exhibition Checklist and rents exchanged among Pop Index. It does not address the Part of the success of the film Art, New Realism, Minimalism, overlapping contextualization comes from the aesthetic di- Conceptualism, reductive ab- of Phenomenal artists in exhi- mension of the work’s overall straction and site-specificity bitions dedicated to sculpture, organization. Photojournalism during this period, should alert new materials or other areas often brings to mind On Photog- the viewer/reader to the arbitrari- tangential to evolving interests raphy by Susan Sontag, where ness of categorizations that act in “primary structures.” It does she argued that our capacity as scrims through which recep- not explore the ideological back- to respond to images of war tion can be filtered much as light ground of Conceptualism and and atrocity in our rapaciously and space themselves. Minimalism, categories to which media-driven culture was be- several of the more prominent ing dulled by the relentless dif- artists have been assigned Deadline Every fusion of vulgar and appalling through their radical involu- Second: On images. Twenty-five years lat- tions of high modernist tenets Assignment er, in her book, Regarding the of flatness, autonomy, surface, with 12 AP Pain of Others, she reversed shape, edge and pure opticality, Photojournalists her position, maintaining that

34 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 images turned us from specta- a fashion show that day and re- tragic portions of the film. Why tors of events into witnesses. I ceived a call from his editor tell- was it easier to recall these seg- found that Kobré’s fast-paced ing him to go down to the World ments rather than the time spent and collage-like presentation Trade Center, something was on sports or the photographs somehow seemed to allow for going on down there, enabling of the wax figure of President both responses to exist side-by- him to take many of the now Obama being delivered to the side. One reason for this, and iconic pictures of the buildings San Francisco’s Wax Museum? for the documentary’s success, collapsing and people jumping I think the production benefited is that Kobré not only presents out of the windows. Speaking from having someone who is images, he also introduces us about it, Drew conveys that he a photojournalist scripting the to the people behind them be- was able to “find” the incred- project. Kobré traveled three cause he was given access to ibly wrenching photographs continents to film these out- the 12 photographers while they within the chaos because of standing photographers. As a were actually shooting the sto- his internal impulse to capture “one-man-band operation” he ries presented here. As a result, the story. One image he speaks acted as lighting and sound we are able act as witnesses of about is known as “The Falling technician, director, produc- more sides than what a single Man,” one of a series of images er and cinematographer all image conveys. We glimpse of a man who jumped out of the at once. According to Kobré, them waiting for events to hap- North Tower that day. The image “When shooting a documentary pen, see the risks they take, won a 2001 World Press Photo by yourself, it’s hard to control all feel the pressures behind each award and became the subject the technical activities and ask “perfect shot,” learn how they of a 2006 documentary film. questions simultaneously. The wrestle with danger in the field, automatic focus and sound level and appreciate the challenge of Ken Kobré, who is a filmmaker, features on the camera allowed processing images in unusual award-winning photojournalist, me to shoot but still concentrate environments. author, and head of the photo- on my subjects. On automatic, journalism program at San Fran- What it means to be in the mid- the camcorder itself made excel- cisco State University, used five dle of things is reinforced as lent exposure decisions.” episodes to structure his fast- each photographer discusses moving and focused presenta- All in all, this documentary is his or her approach to the com- tion. The divisions are: (1) News, perfect for the classroom and it plex activity photojournalism is. From Routine to Extraordinary, is the type of work that should For example, while many spoke (2) Earthquakes and Wildfires, appeal to people in all walks of of how they try to focus on the (3) Bicycling and Basketball, (4) life. Going into the field with the raw events without embellish- Presidents to Pilgrims, and (5) photographers articulates that ing, several also mentioned the Combat and Clashes. The pro- photojournalism is often fast- need show sensitively to human paced and can be dangerous. I suffering while in the midst of gression reiterated to me the was quite taken in by the mixture heart-wrenching events. This degree to which images have of compassion and objectivity is mirrored by the way the more defined our reality in recent expressed by many of the pho- emotional images are artistically years. I liked the way the script tographers. In sum, I highly rec- compelling yet make powerful conveyed the complex stories ommend the movie and strongly statements. Indeed, one of the behind images. To my mind, recommend seeing it with others most effective messages of film we need to have more critical so that a conversation can un- is that it offers various vantage dialogue about how our images pack it after the viewing ends. points on humanity. We see that impact our world. This kind of the dangers the photographers production opens the door be- Automata and face when covering war and cause it operates on many lev- wildfires are not at all abstract. els. I was glad to see that the film Mimesis on the We also learn of the backstory is often shown in public venues Stage of Theatre on many images we know. with panel discussions follow- History ing the screenings. This seems For example, Richard Drew, the important because when I went by Kara Reilly photographer who produced a to write this review, a few weeks Palgrave Macmillian, UK, number of striking photographs after screening the movie, I re- 2011, 232 pp. on 9/11 talks at length of how it alized that my mind more eas- ISBN 978-0230232020 all happened. He was covering ily recalled the dangerous and

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Reviewed by John F. Barber, argues, there is a long history see no difference between ma- Washington State University behind cyberculture mimesis chines built by artisans and ob- Vancouver ranging backward in time from jects created by nature. current-day Second Life avatars [email protected] Chapter 3 looks at French au- to the mechanical spectacles of tomata created by Jacques In her new book, Automata and Ancient Greek drama. Mimesis Vaucanson and Pierre Jaquet- Mimesis on the Stage of Theatre she argues not only represents droz, who both attempted to use History, author Kara Reilly ex- reality, but shapes it as well, not mechanical philosophy to make plores the history of automata, as an aspect of social or his- sense of the natural world by automated moving figures of ani- torical construction, but as an creating mimetic mechanical mals or humans whose life-like aspect of history itself. devices that were in turn cel- movements suggest they are ebrated by eighteenth-century alive, as part of theater history, This point lends itself to a trans- aristocrats as the ideal. In an- arguing that they constitute the historical approach to the study other example of the power of historical precursors for today’s of automata and Reilly argues onto-epistemic mimesis, Reilly machine-based entertainments. for a horizontal sense of con- argues that the gigantic pow- Chapters examine the mimesis nection and patterning as part dered wigs and round rouge (the art versus nature) of autom- of a participatory continuum. marks on the cheeks of late ata across several centuries and Automata are historical objects eighteenth-century women’s areas of representation. that can be explored over time, she says, but, any focus on a fashions gave courtiers the The central argument through- particular time period must in- appearance of mechanized out is that automata are both corporate a thick description of dolls. On the other hand, this performative objects of mimesis pre-existing structures and/or mimesis formed the basis for and metaphors for the period artifacts that have led or con- criticism of the aristocracy as in which they are explored. Au- tributed to the remediation of ridiculous autocrats controlled tomata, says Reilly, are perform- the artifact at the particular time by ineffective mechanical bu- ers on the stage of intellectual of its examination. reaucrats. Reilly offers exam- history, deeply connected to ples from then-contemporary cultural history, contributing to Following this theoretical un- theatrical productions. ongoing tensions between na- derpinning, Reilly proceeds to Chapter 4 examines theatrical ture and art, and producing our examine automata across some productions featuring the allur- way of understanding and shap- of their trans-historical sweep. ing beauty of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s ing reality as performing objects Chapter 1 examines the English automaton Olympia, whom the in theatrical and technological Reformation Iconoclasm’s fear protagonist, Nathanael is unable spectacles. that the power of art (specifi- to recognize as a machine, fall- cally the representation of life ing deeply in love with her. This Reilly proceeds along three by automata) might surpass the routes to position, conduct, and trope is reimagined in several power of nature (God). Despite support this study: onto-epis- later, subsequent theatrical pro- efforts to erase images depict- temic mimesis, remediation, and ductions, which are also exam- ing biblical subjects, religious trans-historical study. By onto- ined. Reilly argues theories and icons resurfaced as moving epistemic mimesis she means perception of the uncanny, the statues in secular gardens or a mimesis “that changes a per- shocking change from perfect tropes in secular theater. Autom- son’s way of knowing [episte- fetish to mechanical monster, ata foregrounded anxieties over mology], and by extension their emanating from Olympia is rep- the persuasive power of images way of being [ontology]” (7, my resentative of women as fetish and eventually became the idols definitions inserted). objects in commodity culture. of the Iconoclasm movement. With regard to remediation, Reil- Chapter 5 provides a case Chapter 2 examines the influ- ly echoes Jay David Bolter and study of R.U.R., the drama by ence of hydraulic garden autom- Richard Grusin’s (Remediation Karel Capek who coined the now ata on René Decartes’ mechani- 2000) positioning of the proc- universal term “robot,” mean- ess of “the representation of one cal philosophy in his Tretise on ing “worker” or “slave laborer.” medium in another” as “the de- Man. Descartes, Reilly argues, Reilly argues that robots repre- fining characteristic of the new demonstrates onto-epistemic sent the growing anxiety over digital media” (9). But, as Reilly mimesis when he says, as a the increasing mechanization spectator of mimesis, he can

36 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 of human beings and techno- as the editors and guest-editors Arbus in light in the tradition of logical and scientific progress in of journals such as History of the social panorama and the so- the wake of suspicion following Photography, this problem has cial portrait gallery. A continu- the atrocities of mechanized car- much to do with the overprotec- ation of the sociological ambi- nage during World War I. Where tive attitude of the Diane Arbus tions of all those who, like Nadar, automata are entertainers, ro- estate, which infamously refuses Bradley, Sander, Evans, Frank, bots are workers, or, as the play to grant any authorization what- and many others (yet none of suggests, killers of humanity. soever to illustrate academic re- them in the same vein or in the Reilly ends her book with this search on this artist. It comes same spirit), considered photog- advent of robots. therefore not as a surprise that raphy a means to offer the visual this new book on Diane Arbus, analogon of a certain society, Throughout Automata and Mi- which proposes numerous new the work by Diane Arbus should mesis on the Stage of Theatre insights on her work, contains be read as a postmodern ver- History, Reilly positions the de- no images at all and probably sion of it. The word postmodern sire to utilize mimesis to con- refrains also from addressing here does not imply that the pho- struct realities as metaphors for too much the personal life and tographer is no longer eager at each of the historical periods biography of the photographer. giving an encyclopedic survey of she examines, crafting inter- Triggered to a large extent by the social types and roles of his esting intersections between a new exhibition, the 2004-6 or her social environment, but theater history, technology, per- Revelations show that offered refers to the fact that this repre- formativity, and mimesis sug- not only unpublished pictures sentation does no longer claim gesting that representation not but also more than a glimpse to follow preexisting or precon- only presents reality, but also into Diane Arbus’s notebooks structed “objective” or “positiv- shapes and creates reality. Im- and many of the books present ist” typologies and hierarchies. plications for present-day and in her own library. This study Arbus shares with the tradition of future mimesis include the con- by Frederick Gross is a timely the social panorama the craving tinued negotiation between the reminder of the importance of for a visual disclosure of the real, simulacrum and the real, cre- Diane Arbus as well as a won- but this disclosure is no longer ating copies or models for the derful attempt to interpret her illustrative (as in the 19th Cen- onscreen hyperreal that seem work against the grain. tury model, where photography more real than the surround- is expected to prove by showing ing world. Two major stereotypes, both what had already been told by deeply rooted in the artist’s others). Arbus’s pictures refuse biography, have blocked new Diane Arbus’s instead the social (class), biolog- developments in Arbus scholar- 1960s: Auguries of ical (race) and cultural (ability) ship since various decades: her assumptions that underlie the Experience suicide at age 48, which trans- available models of explanation, formed her into a kind of Sylvia by Frederick Gross as endlessly repeated by mid- Plath with a camera, and the dle-class publications such as University of Minnesota Press, widely accepted thesis that she Life and Cold War events such Minneapolis, MN, 2012, 248 somewhat exploitatively focused as Steichen’s Family of Man. pp. on one single subject, that of the Frederick Gross has the great modern freak (nudists, retard- ISBN 978-0816670116 elegance, which is also a sign ed, dwarfs, transvestites, etc.). of great intelligence, to avoid Reviewed by Jan Baetens, In this book, Frederick Gross any political overinterpreta- University of Leuven aims at dismantling this crip- tion of Arbus’s stances, but his pling typecasting, not by fron- [email protected]. comparative close readings of tally rejecting it but by proposing ac.be the famous MOMA “New Docu- a totally different framework in- ments” show, which revealed That there is a serious problem tended to supersede most exist- Arbus to the greater public, and with Diane Arbus scholarship ing understandings and misun- the photo-journalism of the pre- (to put it more bluntly: that it derstandings of the work. vious decade clearly demon- tends to be slightly repetitive, strates the critical attitude of Di- and stuck into a small number The major and dramatic innova- ane Arbus’s pictures (which the of well-marketed clichés) is not a tion of Gross’s approach is the contemporary viewers did not secret. Neither is it a secret that, proposal, well-documented, and interpret as freakish in the very despite the efforts of many, such clearly argued, to study Diane

37 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 first place). A key issue in Gross’ book, The Mechanical Bride, a influenced by Diane Arbus), this reading is the notion of pastiche, pioneering essay against the book offers an exciting reread- which he uses in the James- deleterious effects of mass me- ing of the relationships between onian meaning of the term to dia consumption and advertise- Arbus and the 1960’s Zeitgeist, point to a more intertextual way ment (McLuhan was not afraid mainly at the level of the new vi- of photographing that takes into of using the term of “media fall sions of the body and the bodily account the multilayeredness of out”). Yet the presence of Ar- involvement of the artist in her the real and the intertwining of bus’s pictures in glossies is not work. It should be repeated here subject and image. Each subject only to be read in terms of clash that Gross does not enter very does already exist as image, as and opposition, for Gross does much into biographical detail but representation, and it is only the also provide much evidence of discusses these issues from a critical dialogue with these exist- positive interaction with other wider cultural point of view. In ing ways of seeing and show- material, such as the literature this regard, his main focus is ing that make possible the re- that the short story sections of on two evolutions or phenom- alization of Arbus’s fundamental these magazines were publish- ena: first the emergence of the project: the disclosure of the gap ing and whose influence on Ar- between intention (of the art- bus’s work become now blatant happening, which is only rarely ist) and effect (on the reader or (a good example is the ongoing associated with the world of viewer) as well as the endeavor dialogue with some short stories photography but which ena- of laying bare the gap between by Jorge Luis Borges, whose bles him to describe Arbus’s the role or the type on the one metafictional universe seems to method in terms of contact and hand and the individual on the have had a real influence on Ar- experience (but definitely not of other hand. The individual can- bus’s way of thinking). Besides confrontation or clash); second not be seized without the global the strictly literary intertext of the spread of conceptual art, framing of the social panorama, Arbus’s images, which Gross whose link with photography is for no individual exists outside reads in much detail, there is well known but whose impact such a frame, but the implicit however also a strong photo- on Arbus’s work had never been or explicit categorization of this graphical environment, and here analyzed in such a subtle way structure has to be deconstruct- as well the close-readings by (an important aspect here is the ed by the artist whose work is Gross offer much food for a fresh preference given to subject at to show the impossibility to map interpretation of Arbus. Particu- the expense of form and what the individual on his or her role larly illuminating in this regard all this entails for the specifics of or type. is the collaboration with Richard picture-making in the case of Ar- Avedon, an artist whose work is A second great achievement bus). Here as well, Gross proves too rarely associated with that of Gross’s book is to stress the to be a very clever close-read- of Arbus. Thanks to Frederick importance of the intertextual er and his whole book demon- Gross, the explicit linking of Ar- dimension of Arbus. The study strates that even an artist such bus and Avedon does not only pays great attention to the mag- as Diane Arbus, whose work and shed new light on Arbus, it can azine culture that has nourished, life are so well categorized that also help reframe Avedon’s work yet always in a very critical way there seems to be no need for in the larger context of the social and one suppose with a lot of panorama. further research, can be opened editorial tensions, the work by again for new readings. Arbus. The clash between her Last but not least, the intertex- unusual photo work and the tual reconsideration of Arbus’s Hide and Seek: shameless consumer culture photographs takes also a more that promoted in the other pages cultural form. Instead of empha- Camouflage, of the magazines in which she sizing the strangeness or the Photography, was invited or allowed to pub- freakishness of these pictures and the Media of lish her reportages is absolutely which at first sight seem so dif- Reconnaissance amazing, and Gross is the first ferent from other material of that critic to underline the effects of era (yet not of the next one, and by Hanna Rose Shell this often unforeseen montage Frederick Gross includes also effects. He is also absolutely a very detailed overview of all Zone Books, Brooklyn, NY, right to remind of the importance those who, like Les Krims or Cin- 2012, 240 pp. of Marshall McLuhan’s first dy Sherman, have been deeply ISBN 978-1935408222

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Reviewed by Brian Reffin For this reviewer there were two Monty Python’s ‘How not to be Smith main thoughts that arose. First: seen’, about the sniper as a ve- are we not all would-be masters hicle for deep perceptual studies [email protected] and mistresses of disguise? Do and finally about camouflage as we not risk becoming the sum to- anything but green and brown tal of the bits of stuff that we stick painted material. And like all the to ourselves hoping to become most interesting books at the what we look like, until all that is moment, it blurs the distinction left is the outer shell of photos between true and false, between and PR material sticky-taped to our old certainties of something wire and papier-maché, with no and nothing, of yes and no. one actually home? Second: do we not want to fit Beyond the Dream in everywhere, like a colour- Syndicate: Tony or shape-shifter? (The author Conrad and the makes much of the ‘chamele- Arts after Cage on impulse’.) There is much in this book about the history and by Branden W. Joseph practice of camouflage, but it is This review must start with a Zone books, New York, 2011, really all leading up to the idea complaint about the book’s de- 480 pp. sign. It isn’t good enough to have that we ourselves practice a kind ISBN 978-1890951863 a book on camouflage, neces- of camouflage consciousness. sarily a visual subject, whose In passing, there is a rich mine Reviewed by Stephen illustrations are poorly printed of ideas to explore and leads to Petersen on not very good paper, as if the follow. What would it be like if publishers had no access to im- stephen_petersen@corcoran. things had no shadows? (There edu age editing software. There is a is shadow-removal theory and series of slightly better colour re- technology at work already: en- “By the time we arrive at La productions at the end, but these tering “shadow removal” into a Monte Young, Robert Morris, have a tacked-on air. I am aware well-known search engine gives etc., the boundaries between the that the majority of photographs over 70 000 hits, mostly not mediums become unimportant. were low-contrast monochrome about cosmetics.) If we really There was a milieu which may in the originals, but it might have ‘fit in’, don’t we just disappear? have consisted only of Young, been better to forego the col- But camouflage out of context Morris, myself, and one or two our at the end and spend a bit is hyper-visible! I am reminded others, and which was never more on the black and white. of seeing Warhol’s 37 foot long chronicled in art history. This Or did someone decide that if camouflage painting in Berlin, milieu regarded the mystique the photos were too clear, then which stood out in the Neue Na- of the separate arts--painting, the camouflage wouldn’t work? tionalgalerie like a sore thumb. sculpture, music, poetry, drama, That said, it’s an interesting ballet, opera--as “uptown,” as So often, what is to be con- read. There is a lot to be said corny. Methods (e.g. minimal- cealed by camouflage is not a for ‘the gaze’ and its studies be- ism) were freely transferred from thing in itself, but some aspect ing directed to what is not to be one medium to another.”-- Hen- or secondary effect of a thing. By seen rather than what is and yet ry Flynt, “The Crystallization of attending to why and under what more for a study arguing that Concept Art in 1961” (1994) camouflage is primarily directed circumstances that may be cam- to the photographic emulsion ouflaged, we paradoxically draw Looking back more than three rather than the eye. Whether attention to this aspect itself. decades after his 1961 invention this be true or not, it disrupts our We start a dialogue between of the mathematical-musical- idea of what camouflage may be the (of course connected and linguistic-artistic hybrid that he and broadens any inquiry into fluid) ‘opposites’ of Lao Tzu / called “Concept Art,” Henry Fly- areas of media art and cogni- Laozi: “…it is on the space where nt placed it within the activities tive psychology and questions there is nothing that the useful- of a small group of downtown of what is and is not to be seen. ness…depends.” This is a book, New York composers and art- also, about hide and seek, about ists, a milieu that he noted was

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“never chronicled in art history.” outside the dominant discours- the anarchic Cagean project). The reasons for this oversight, es, and shifty with respect to Joseph then turns to the philo- he suggested, have much to do linear narratives and object- sophical “concept art” of Henry with the fierce defense of me- based histories. And, echoing Flynt (a classmate of Conrad’s) dium specificity within historical Flynt’s dismissal of the “uptown,” but also to Flynt’s quasi-political studies of the avant-garde. A it remains “fringe” or low with ideology of “creepism”--cultural conservative discipline, art his- respect to official culture. deviance (in multiple senses of tory has failed to deal adequate- The book’s subtitle points to the term)--and his embrace of ly with work that falls between the critical importance of John “acognitive culture,” namely the media and methods that “were Cage, whose compositional realm of wholly unofficial or “un- freely transferred from one me- and performance strategies codified” actions. This leads into dium to another.” were based on a withdrawal a discussion of the short-lived, This previously uninhabited from cultural authority and au- proto-alternative rock group The (art) historical space is pre- thorship and a new relation of Primitives (featuring Conrad cisely the territory covered by work to audience in real time and along with John Cale, Lou Reed, Branden Joseph’s illuminating space, what the critic Michael and Walter de Maria) and the study of the composer and film- Fried would famously call “the- sexually transgressive under- maker Tony Conrad, originally atricality.” The “arts after Cage” ground film Flaming Creatures published in 2008 and now re- are characterized by heteroge- (1962-63) by Conrad’s friend issued in paperback. Joseph’s neity and hybridity of means, and collaborator Jack Smith. approach is decidedly non-mon- an emphasis on materiality and The book’s final chapter con- ographic; he spends as much or direct experience, and an im- siders Conrad’s abstract strobo- more time on figures such as plicit (sometimes explicit) anti- scopic filmThe Flicker (1965-66) Flynt whose work intersects in authoritarian politics. in relation to his “investigation into techniques of perceptual different ways with Conrad as The five main chapters of the and neurological stimulation” with Conrad himself. Nor yet is book cover little more than a (p. 301) and alongside Brion it a contextual study that would half-decade, charting Conrad’s Gysin’s “dream machine” as a seek to recreate the ambiance trajectory from Harvard math- of a time and place (although it ematics major and violin player work that acted directly upon does so to a considerable de- to “structural” filmmaker through its viewer’s nervous system. gree). Borrowing a term from the a series of collaborations and By trying ultimately to shift the late artist Mike Kelley, Joseph friendships, what Joseph calls viewer’s mode of attention and calls his project a “minor history,” a “network of intersecting posi- thereby to afford “new types of minor in the sense that the word tions” (p. 74). In 1959 Conrad thinking” (p. 349), Conrad’s work has been used by Gilles Deleuze met experimental composer exemplifies and develops the and Félix Guattari to designate La Monte Young in Berkeley radical legacy of Cage. a heterogeneous cultural field, and soon thereafter immersed Beyond the fascinating and irreducibly different from--yet in himself in musical composition, heretofore untold story recount- Kelley’s formulation “parasiti- influenced by Stockhausen and ed here, this book is important cal” to--the “major,” understood Cage. Although drawing differ- for the way its method mirrors as sovereign and hierarchical. ent lessons from Cage, Con- his subject. Joseph moves If “minimalism” is a stable (i.e. rad and Young would closely across and between discipli- major) category in the histories collaborate in the ambient per- nary genres of scholarship, and of art, dance, music, and film, a formances of the avant-garde thereby challenges the reader’s “constant against which, wheth- enterprise known as the Theater er explicitly or implicitly, other of Eternal Music or what Con- capacity to think outside familiar phenomena are measured,” rad would come to redefine as categories. This study sits at Joseph looks rather at those the “Dream Syndicate.” Where the fringes of several academic “minor” figures, Conrad fore- they differed was on the ideo- disciplines and, to its credit, fits most among them, who elude logical import of their sonic ex- squarely within none. To para- categorizing and whose place periments (Young tending to- phrase Conrad, by shifting our in the narrative of minimalism ward mysticism and idealism mode of attention it prompts us has been largely overlooked. and, along with sculptor Robert both to renew and to alter our “Minor” as used here does not Morris, toward restoring a sense thinking. mean less significant but rather of control, power, and form to

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I Must Not Think each essay as engaging a the lens of Debord’s Society of dog-faced boy. The very con- the Spectacle. In “Shoah Biz”, he Bad Thoughts: ceit behind “(Face)Book of the tackles the issue of Holocaust Drive-By Essays Dead” recalled Norman Mailer’s commemoration, a dangerous on American portentous declaration (made third rail of a topic that nearly Dread, American at the time Mailer and Rip Torn destroyed the editorial group of Dreams were filming Mailer’s odd movie the long-running online publica- “Maidstone”) that the similarity tion Bad Subjects seven years by Mark Dery. Foreword by between film and death was wor- ago. In this essay I was taken a Bruce Sterling thy of further exploration. Dery is bit aback when one Auschwitz University of Minnesota, often evocative of Mailer’s best visitor was described as “hawk- Minneapolis MN, 2012, 304 essays, shaking and chewing on nosed”; is this a Streicher-era pp. a topic like a dog while succulent stereotype, or an appropriate ISBN 978-0816677733 fatty insights dribble out. evocation of a proud raptor? Reviewed by Mike Mosher, Like Mailer, the author (and A visit to the Vatican reminds him Saginaw Valley State reader) has much fun kicking of the church’s influence upon University around issues of masculinity, a vital strain of goth novelists, whether the dubious sexuality from DeSade to Anne Rice. He [email protected] of the Super Bowl, of George compares martyred Saint Lucy and Saint Agnes, their eyes and I’ve been a fan of Mark Dery W. Bush, eccentric specialized breasts held up, respectively, for 20 or so years, ever since porn sites, Madonna’s toe in a before the faithful on plates, to he quoted something I said on sexy Versace advertisement, or truckstop waitresses serving the the WELL’s forum on teledildon- the disembodied robot voices of day’s special. His rich imagery ics (computer-mediated sex) in the spaceship’s computer Hal in puts him in the company of the his book Escape Velocity. Dery “2001: A Space Odyssey” or car “splenetic contrarian” Camille cordially requested permission in “Knight Rider”. As if dressing Paglia, who also regrets the to do so—back when civility was for the disco—don we now our Church’s modernization, while expected, or certainly valued, in gay apparel—Dery puts on his also condemning the Church’s all online discourse—and then, most purple prose for these top- strictures on birth control for its after publication, invited all his ics, for good effect. cost in human misery, including correspondents in the region to There’s much of the grand old the spread of AIDS. One of his gather and drink together when tradition of Tom Wolfe’s shim- choicest political pieces recog- he hit San Francisco on his en- mering surface of asides, cul- nizes zombies as a metaphor for suing book tour. tural citations, winks and facial organized labor in our time. He’s This essential, but sweetly old- expressions coming through the also not afraid to confront race, fashioned, gentlemanly cour- page. A piece on Lady Gaga (a calling out American insults to tesy in an age of disembodied personage in several of my stu- its black and brown populace; electronic communication oc- dents’ paintings this past Spring I’d like to see Dery on a panel cupied Mark Dery. He had ear- semester) is like a prolegom- with Ishmael Reed or bell hooks lier edited an anthology Flame ena for one that soon follows, some day. Wars, which contained Julian on David Bowie as the repre- As we, in our instantaneous Dibbell’s provocative “A Rape sentative of the 1970s. Dery age, are faced with the inevi- in Cyberspace” report on sig- re-iterated this appreciation of table problem of book produc- nificant abuse in a role-playing Bowie as herald of his decade tion, some of these pieces feel game. After Escape Velocity, in a radio interview with leftist a bit dated. The oldest is from Dery went on to assemble an economist Doug Henwood. 16 years ago, and several are entertaining collection The Pyro- He offers nothing really new on from before 2000. Perhaps technic Insanitarium, a title first guns, but cites Sontag’s “Fas- Dery should be collected be- given to Coney Island amuse- cinating Fascism” (the original tween covers three times each ment parks, freshly bedecked version that discussed a book decade. What he writes hasn’t with electric lights, at the begin- of Nazi regalia as well as Leni really been superseded by sub- ning of the 20th century. Riefenstahl), soon jumping from sequent events and new info, And he’s given us another fine the Kiss Army to Stephen Sond- but I somehow fear that after the and thoughtful dime museum, heim, to finally glimpse through financial crash ongoing since

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2008, and the “global weird- ISBN 978-0971324473 ours of a sea-going vessel; anar- ing” tipping point of unnatural Reviewed by Mike Leggett, chic presentations fly in the face weather everywhere, that eve- Faculty of Creative Arts, of all that we know of the Mer- rything has changed so much University of Wollongong, chant Marine and its highly con- that 2000-ish perspectives of NSW trolled and ordered existence. any kind are suspect. Maybe The impact that these images my awareness of tempus fugit [email protected] have today is, of course, unre- is further colored by reliving the lated to the affect the painted Ship shape by style and Ship enjoyment I felt reading Dery in designs were intended to have Shape by name, this is the lat- the 1990s. at the time on the enemy. The est book launched by Roy Be- US Navy’s approach concen- The book’s last few essays are hrens in his seemingly endless trated efforts on experimenting thematically grouped around quest for the last word on mat- with colour and varying degrees medical concerns and mortal- ters of concealment. Where the of visibility. A team at the Kodak ity, with light belle-lettristic travel previous title, Camoupedia – a Labs in Rochester came closest writing on eccentric nihilists, the compendium of research on art, to science-based methods in skeletally-decorated Crypt of architecture and camouflage, the scaling of their observations the Capuchins in Rome, finely (reviewed Leonardo Reviews using the so–named and risible, crafted Italian medical models Quarterly 1.01, June 2010) pro- ‘visibility meter’. It was, however, with beautiful faces, and multi- vided a prodigious number of part of measuring the process of ple meditations upon the Mutter leads into the field, the crisp new denaturing visual memory and Museum’s replica of a Chinese contribution expands one of the confounding tacit knowledge of criminal’s severed head. I too topics adumbrated therein – the the natural world. For the most am a fan of medical libraries, matter of protecting as far as part at first, as we are reminded since a college bout of research possible, the merchant ships of by several of the contributors, it long ago, a purely intellectual World War One from the U-boat was all a matter of trial and error. interest in the topic of, uh, so- menace. cial diseases, found me also Experiments with submersibles discovering huge, hand-color- had been conducted by naval ed nineteenth-century photo- powers for a couple of centuries, graphic atlases of skin diseases. but it was not until the late 19th The book wraps up musing upon Century technologies of high identity and the mind, Dery’s capacity batteries and Diesel’s thoughts about his intellectual- engines that enabled German ly-encouraged upbringing dec- submarines to be brought into ades ago blossoming sunnily service; their effectiveness as like azaleas during an afternoon weapons of war can be meas- spent with his mother, deep in ured by the extent of the loss her own isolating Alzheimer’s during the conflict of some disease. I hope he didn’t slip 5,000 Allied ships. The key to the relic beneath his sport coat prevention was to accentuate while departing the Capuchins’ both poor visibility at sea and Crypt, but I closed the book sus- also the unstable viewpoint af- ‘Dazzle’ was the term used by pecting Mark Dery is, beneath forded by the periscope, and to the British to describe their ap- the effervescence and urbane confound the visual perception proach to painting their ships, disposition, the kind of medieval of its user, known as the gunner. a practice which at one point thinker-commentator who keeps From the perspective of a metre the Americans referred to as a skull upon his desk. or so above a rolling sea, there ‘jazz painting’. On seeing pho- were but brief seconds to gauge tographs of these ships a mo- course and speed of a target Ship Shape: A ment of shock occurs; the violent vessel. Designs were planned Dazzle Camouflage sweep of shapes and clash of to make vital dimensions of the angles assault our visual per- Sourcebook ship difficult to fix, thus leaving ceptions. There is a contradic- direction or distance open to es- by Roy R. Behrens tion between the images and timation; with a torpedo taking what we know of the normally Bobolink Books, Dysart, Iowa, several minutes to travel the disordered lines and integrated col- 2012, 376 pp.

42 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 tance, errors were bound thank- of success determined by com- ries, The Future Was Here: The fully, to have occurred. manders was the situated ac- Commodore Amiga by Jimmy tions of helmsmen in causing Maher, achieves both these We get a sense from the pho- collisions and other accidents goals with distinction. Maher de- tographs of the shock and awe attributable to dazzle painted scribes the cultural and histori- value of the designs applied to ships. Undoubtedly some ships cal context in which the Amiga ships, combining the ideas of were successful in confusing computer was developed, in- two leading exponents, the Brit- the torpedo gunner, escaping troduced, and eventually faded ish naval man Wilkinson with destruction and thus justifying to obscurity; the features that his attempts to deceive, and the the effort expended. The use made this particular computer American Thayer’s intention to of different kinds of dazzle in unique; and explains why this conceal, using his theories of the Second World War shifted is important with technical rigor, countershading and colour. For from the merchant marine to the and the grace, elegance, and me the chapter that most suc- warships; aerial surveillance style often associated with the cessfully describes the issues and the greater use of capital Amiga itself. was written, (like most of these ships in coastal bombardment essays, immediately after the required fresh approaches to the War), by Everett L. Warner for pioneering work so fulsomely the suitably titled Transactions covered in this volume. Perhaps of the Illuminating Engineering the next volume in the series will Society Volume14 No 5. examine the way in which dazzle Behrens, again acting as edi- aesthetics developed between tor of the words of observers the Wars? and participants in the conflict, Ship Shape it is, but I feel it assembles images to illustrate will be less of a leading source what is imparted, providing use- book than the previous publi- ful captions and footnotes to the cation, except to the special- array. The downside of this ap- ist, but comes complete with a proach is unfortunately made bibliography of some 1200 titles, very evident; because the field some 40 from Behrens himself. has been narrowed down to this Maher’s central claim is that fascinating but highly special- the Commodore Amiga 1000 ised area, the full-length articles The Future was the world’s first multime- and papers reproduced, for this Was Here: The dia personal computer. With its reader, became unproductively Commodore Amiga palette of 4,096 colors, capacity repetitive. I found myself turning to store and manipulate color pages after a while to get to the by Jimmy Maher photographs, unprecedented real delights of the book, the il- The MIT Press, Cambridge, animation capabilities, access to lustrations. Even at octavo size, MA, 2012, 344 pp. professional tools for video ma- they leapt off the page in shriek- ISBN 978-0262017206 nipulation, four-channel stereo ing strides of nonconformity. and the ability to utilize record- Reviewed by John F. Barber, This, like the previous volume, ings of real world sounds, and Washington State University is no coffee table book and, the capacity to run multiple ap- Vancouver therefore, a great loss to col- plications simultaneously, the lectors that these clearly pristine [email protected] Amiga was not only the first photographs cannot be seen at computer to provide a bridge greater size. (However, a sig- The Platform Series from The between the bifurcated world of nificant number, well referenced MIT Press, edited by Nick Mont- business and game computers, here can be seen and ordered fort and Ian Bogost, seeks to but the harbinger of present day online at the U.S. Naval His- investigate computing systems digital media like digital cam- torical Center Photographic and how they enable, constrain, eras, Photoshop, MP3 players, collection.) Following adverse shape, and support creative YouTube, Flickr, and the blogo- comments from many quarters work as well as to explore the sphere. as to dazzle painting’s effective- cultural and social contexts in Maher backs these bold claims ness, one of the real measures which these platforms exist. The most recent release in this se- with individual chapters detail-

43 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ing how the Amiga community software for Amiga computers um, Smithsonian Institution, has of practice brought features and declares itself the world’s larg- written extensively on compu- developments from evolving in- est collection of freely distrib- ter history. See, for example, stitutional computers to person- uted software for any computer A History of Modern Comput- al computers. For example, the system. The Amiga remains a ing (2003, second edition) and chapter “Deluxe Paint” provides favorite platform for the Internet Internet Alley: High Technology a deep and rich background dis- retrogaming community. in Tyson’s Corner, 1945-2005 cussion of the development of (2011), both published by The The success of Maher’s narra- features and affordances for the MIT Press. His most recent pub- tive is not necessarily to provide creation and manipulation of dig- lication, Computing: A Concise a study of the technology and/ ital images now taken for grant- History, rather than a specialist or sociology associated with the ed when using programs such text, provides a concise over- Commodore Amiga computer as Photoshop or GIMP. “SSG view for a knowledgeable au- platform, although he does so and Sculpt-Animate” discusses dience. quite compellingly. The origi- vector drawing and animation. nal technology of the Amiga is “New Tex” focuses on the suc- no longer viable, and the com- cessful efforts to bring desk- munity of developers, artists, top video manipulation to the hackers, and gamers has moved Amiga. “Cinemaware and Psyg- on. While nostalgia might be an nosis” details how the Amiga’s easy mark for such a book, Ma- power, resolution, animation and her’s study aims higher, situating stereo sound capabilities, and the original vision of the Com- custom chip processing all con- modore Amiga as a computer tributed to the development of to make multimedia and multi- realistic, immersive gameplay tasking possible. The success environments and experiences. of The Way the Future Was is to Along the way, Maher is careful, reveal how the Amiga compu- and successful, to realize an- ter contributed so significantly other goal: to credit and properly to the development of today’s document the work of the vision- digital multimedia-rich personal To many, the history of com- ary engineers, developers, and computers. puting may seem the story of designers who played roles in hardware and software develop- At once challenging, rewarding, the success of the Amiga, and ments from mainframe to social emotional, and insightful The therefore influenced our current- media involving big companies Way the Future Was is a compel- day technological world. Addi- with household name recogni- ling read for those interested in tionally, Maher provides insights tion. Ceruzzi, however, offers a the Amiga platform, as well as into the technical, cultural, and more compelling narrative, one those interested to learn more economic factors that influenced that is broader and more useful. about the culture of computing. the Amiga’s development and He identifies four threads run- lifecycle. ning throughout the develop- Computing: A ment of all computer technol- In the end, the future of the Ami- Concise History ogy: digitization, convergence, ga was hampered by its lack of solid-state electronics, and the support from Commodore man- by Paul E. Ceruzzi human-machine interface. agement, as well as its closed, and limited, hardware configu- The MIT Press, Cambridge, By digitization, Ceruzzi refers ration and operating system. MA, 2012, 175 pp. to the notion of coding informa- Both prevented the revolution- ISBN 978-0262517676 tion, computation, and control ary computer from competing in binary form, using 1s and Reviewed by John F. Barber, successfully in a technological 0s. Although traceable back to Washington State University environment turned to modu- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibinz (1646- Vancouver larization and adaptation. But 1716), Ceruzzi notes that the so- the beloved underdog computer [email protected] called “digital” method of control, still attracts a loyal following. storage, and calculation was not The Aminet online repository of Paul Ceruzzi, a curator at the widely used until the 1930s, and public domain and open source National Air and Space Muse- then concurrent with “analogue,”

44 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 from which it was not so different computer from a room-sized ma- some of the broad spectrum of until changing electrical states chine to minicomputer to desk- electronic options (think Flickr, (on or off) were used for commu- top computer to pocket-sized Facebook, YouTube, thousands nication, a capability not offered smart phone, each driven by of television channels, digital by earlier computers. silicon chips, ever decreasing games, and virtual worlds) can- in size while dramatically in- not escape this new world. Post- The convergence thread speaks creasing the machine’s ability ers and window displays offer to many different techniques and to control, store, calculate, and smartcodes that invite us to con- technologies, each coming from communicate data. nect with the Internet and learn its separate historical develop- more about whatever the sign ment background, merging into For those interested in the fun- is promoting. Always on, com- devices capable of performing damentals of computer history, plete with sound, are television many different tasks. The re- Computing: A Concise History screens in airports, restaurants sult, combined with digitization, navigates a complex world with and the array of imaging devices is something far more than the in-depth, authoritative coverage that bring us news, sports, en- sum of individual parts, which, in terms accessible to the non- tertainment, whatever. Given once it surpasses a technical expert. the state of the “image” today, threshold can quickly over- critical examination of channels take existent technologies and Imagery in the 21st of media and communication render them obsolete. Century are needed. Imagery in the 21st Solid-state electronics allowed Century, edited by Oliver Grau computer technology to con- by Oliver Grau, Editor; with with Thomas Veigl, presents a stantly increase in speed and Thomas Veigl number of perspectives on this storage capacity, while decreas- The MIT Press, Cambridge, theme, highlighting the inroads of media into art and science. ing in size, according to Ceruzzi. MA, 2011, 424 pp. It is a valuable contribution to This begs the question of tech- ISBN 978-0262015721 the topic. nological determinism, that technological advances drive his- Reviewed by Amy Ione, The tory, versus social and political Diatrope Institute forces driving innovations, thus [email protected] shaping society, and Ceruzzi argues that both are valid by pro- As I began this review I began viding interesting and relevant to think that the refrain “we are examples. surrounded by images today” has lost its impact (despite my The human-machine interface, being among the guilty users of according the Ceruzzi, goes it). On the one hand, it seems to the philosophical roots of that many of us notice the im- computing by asking whether, agery. Yet, on the other hand, when constructing computer as we increasingly engage machines, we are trying to cre- with our visual culture certain ate mechanical replacements norms for our critical investi- for humanity, or a tool that works gations are also developing. Overall, the book offers sys- with us in symbiosis. How does I’m not sure where this leaves tematic and interdisciplinary one design a machine that takes us. To be sure, the nature and reflections on expanding and advantage of humankind’s mo- complexity of our image-abun- novel forms of images and visu- tor skills, our ability to sense dant culture is extraordinary. alization. Drawing on a number patterns, all while providing in- Images are no longer sparse of experts, the twenty chapters formation we are not good at and highly treasured. Rather, highlight new efforts to visualize retaining? we have visual social media, complex ideas, structures, and These four threads, taken to- scientific imaging tools, and systems. In today’s information gether, provide the weft and even static objects like paint- explosion the question of where weave of Cerruzi’s concise ings populate the ever-chang- what digital images represent history of the digital informa- ing screens of our mobile and and where they fit in the scheme tion age. His account follows the desktop devices. Even those of things becomes quite prismat- among us who have resisted

45 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ic. As a whole, the chapters are Era of Fascination with Visibility diaArtHistories. His collaborator, quite strong; they do not suffer and Imagery” by Dolores Stein- Thomas Veigl, is on the scientific from the unevenness so com- man and David Steinman falls staff of the Department for Im- mon in collections of conference into this category. Well written age Science at the Danube-- papers, which this book is. Of and comprehensive, these au- University Krems. Their opening particular value is the breadth of thors set the stage by pointing chapter, Introduction: Imagery the essays. Researchers from out that medical images (draw- in the 21st Century, sets the the natural sciences and the hu- ings, woodcuts, engravings) stage well and is available at manities explore the wealth of have always played a key role http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ diverse functionality that images in educating practitioners and chapters/0262015722chap1.pdf. have evolved to offer to our lives, knowledge development. They Grau’s concluding section on that includes lab applications, then follow with case studies “Media Art’s Challenge in Our social commentary, humanistic that illustrate their efforts to rep- Societies” offers an overview questions, and experimental art resent blood flow in the context of image studies today. Parts projects. The spectrum of top- of the living body and conclude of the chapter are useful but, ics include: database economy with some commentary on medi- because some sections in it (Sean Cubitt), telepresent im- cal imagery as art and in popular are so focused on his profes- ages (Martin Schulz), ethical culture. sional efforts to meet today’s challenges rather than the chal- boundaries (Eduardo Kac), the James Elkins’ chapter, “Visual emergence of a future web- lenges overall, the text read like Practices across the University: an infomercial at times. based video aesthetic (Thomas A Report,” also stood out. Elkins Veigl), brain research (Olaf Brei- presents a brief summary of a Throughout the book it is clear dbach), medical illustration (Do- book called Visual Practices that there are the endless op- lores and David Steinman), inter- across the University that was tions for image manipulation and disciplinary practices (James published in German in 2007 that while new media presents Elkins), the role of source code and is little known outside of the us with both interactive opportu- (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), the German-speaking world. The nities it also raises challenging interface (Christa Sommerer essay summarizes an exhibi- questions (about human auton- and Laurent Mignonneau), the tion project that was initiated omy, entertainment, interaction, museum (Peter Weibel), cel- by sending email to faculty in etc.). The editors note: lular automata (Tim Otto Roth the sixty-odd departments at “Images increasingly define our and Andreas Deutsch ), cul- University College, Cork ask- world and our everyday life: in tural analytics (Lev Manovich ing for exhibition proposals advertising, entertainment, poli- and Jeremy Douglass) and a from anyone who uses images tics, and even in science, im- digital version of the Warburg in their work. What stood out in ages are pushing themselves Image Atlas (Martin Warnke). his commentary is how differ- in front of language. The mass Even this abbreviated list offers ently scientists, humanists and media, in particular, engulf our a glimpse into the diversity of artists think about images and senses on a daily basis. It would efforts to expand visual compe- imagery. In this case, he found appear that images have won tence through providing cross- that while most visual work in the contest with words: Will the disciplinary exchanges among the university is done outside of image have the last word?” (p. 6) the arts, humanities, and natu- the humanities, most of this work ral sciences. While this range is invisible because the routine Perhaps images will have the th makes the volume a valuable image making and image inter- last word. On March 12 of tool for examining this subject pretation is not considered as this year (2012) the Encyclo- across disciplines, the title, Im- important to the goals as what paedia Britannica announced agery in the 21st Century, is like- the images represent and the “it will cease publication of the ly to seem a rash overstatement science that they make possible. 32-volume printed edition of in a few decades, given that the its flagship encyclopedia, con- century has hardly begun. Oliver Grau, the editor, is a tinuing with the digital versions Professor for Image Science that have become popular with Chapters focusing on applica- and Dean of the Department knowledge seekers in recent tions and innovations offer the for Cultural Studies at Danube decades.” The press release most of substantive value, in my University, the author of Virtual also noted that “[The Encyclo- view. “Toward New Conventions Art: From Illusion to Immersion pedia Britannica] was originally for Visualizing blood Flow in the (2003) [1] and the editor of Me-

46 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 published in Edinburgh, Scot- tion methods, the distribution 2008, B&W, sound. land in 1768 and has been in of images, and how imagery ISBN 978-4901181389 print continuously ever since [2]. benefits our lives; it seems for- When I grew up, like many of eign to have evolved to the point Air’s Rock my generation, this book was that I think so much about the like browsing the web. I used to visual noise. Even in this book I by Takahiko iimura love to turn the pages, looking found that some of the projects DVD, 1985-2008, 29 mins., at the images and reading the seemed strikingly cacophonic, 2008 articles that related to images and thought that the theoreti- Col., sound. $US60.00 that caught my fancy. cal assumptions of the authors (personal); $US250.00 overall are more biased toward Of course, the Grau book itself (institutions) euphonic reactions to our visual raises another side of the ques- ISBN 978-4901181396 culture than the harshness and tion about whether images will discordant qualities that are con- Distributor: Takahiko iimura have the last word. At this point gruent with our visual culture? Media Arts Laboratory, http:// in time it is not available elec- www.takaiimura.com/ tronically although sections of Perhaps the next step is mak- the text (without the images!) ing sure we address that the Reviewed by Mike Leggett, are on Google Books; moreo- cacophonic side is actively in- University of Wollongong, ver Google Books does not of- cluded in our critical analyses NSW fer active links to all the many, or imagery. Grau does stress [email protected] many websites the Grau book that using an historical lens is references. Amazon’s page for an aid in understanding our im- Takahiro iimura is a senior figure the book does not link to a Kin- agery today. This perspective among contemporary Japanese dle version. Instead, Amazon opens the door for a balanced and international artists and has has a link asking visitors to tell analysis of the visual and textual been working with film, sound the publisher to offer a Kindle and I support him in this effort. and video since the 1960s. He version. Therefore, while the book is only was one of several Japanese a slice of the imagery picture who, coming from a 20th Cen- So, will images have the last today, I think readers will gain tury tradition of avant-garde in- word? Perhaps. Or perhaps we much from spending time with tervention, contributed to the need to ask: Is it a good thing for Imagery in the 21st Century. Fluxus group in the 1960s. The images to have the last word? References delicate nature of the analogue I did not think that the depth of mediums of film and video re- this kind of question was fully [1] See my Leonardo Review at http://leonardo.info/reviews/ quires that art works are now addressed in the book since its feb2003/GRAU_ione.html presented in digital format; over focus was on the importance of [2] “Encyclopaedia Britannica To the last decade iimura has grad- understanding images as vital End Print Edition, Go Completely ually been archiving his signifi- and dynamic parts of our world Digital,” http://www.corporate. cant output to DVD and other eb.com/?p=508. today. Thus, my primary con- mediums more durable than cern about this volume, which I acetate and vinyl. recommend overall, is that the On Time in Film / reflections and analytical ap- DVD Previous reviews in Leonardo proaches offered did not seem have been of work originating on by Takahiko iimura to balance the euphony and videotape: Observer/Observed cacophony of our experience DVD, 1972-2007, 32 mins., reviewed in Leonardo 35.1; and today. While I’m not exactly sure 2007 the documentary projects, John how this relates to whether im- B&W and col., sound. Cage Performs James Joyce ages will have the last word, I (1985) and Fluxus Replayed ISBN 4-901181365 do know that at times all of the (1991) reviewed in LDR Febru- changing images surrounding ary 2007. One of the DVDs in me feel very cacophonic. As a Performance / this review originate from 16mm participant in the movement is Myself (or Video film that brought to the fore the to reverse the dominance of tex- Identity) ontological project he has con- tual sources in our approaches sistently pursued, described by Takahiko iimura to knowledge, as we celebrate by Malcolm Legrice in his 1977 our visual abundance, visualiza- DVD, 1972-1995, 29 mins., book, Abstract Film and Beyond

47 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 as being a “…detailed examina- Rock In The Light (1985-2008), prise is added; by not follow- tion of our perceptual and con- takes the footage gathered by ing a perceptible system, the ceptual mechanisms...” iimura’s the camera seen in the earlier change from light to dark, or dark work with film-making was rec- video and using images of Uluru to light, or from black and white ognised at the 1963 Brussels electronically superimposed in- to colour curiously comes as a International Experimental Film side the same image, but shot shock, sometimes synchronis- Festival; by the end of the 1960s at a different time and combined ing with a percussive sound. The he had begun to produce work with a series of slow dissolves, extended periods of lightness with video and for the next dec- which again subsumes the fa- have the added drama of dirt ade moved easily between both mous image, placing it instead and hairs registering the 24th of mediums until the 1980s and into the reflexive space of the a second basis of the filmic phe- 1990s when only one film but 32 viewer. With a soundtrack made nomena, as these random ele- videos were completed; two of by Haruyuki Suzuki, electronic ments flick uncontrolled through these appear on the DVD Air’s sounds penetrate the space and the telecine gate, as the image is Rock. follow the changes made in the converted to bits of data. visual element, as both accom- Moments at the Rock was made These films, in being transferred paniment and commentary. in 1985 during a visit to Uluru, to the digital domain, reminds us the monolith in Central Austral- Sound and visual time signa- that whilst the conceptual gen- ia*. The video reveals the natural tures are encountered in the esis may be medium specific – rock feature emerging from the much earlier works On Time in the physical manipulation and darkness, whilst a pulsing sound Film, but these use no potent im- preparation of the filmic material measures time and changes in age like Uluru as counterpoint; being sculptural in action, and the image, a camera and a small the screened experience is just its rendering through a projec- screen becoming visible in the light and darkness. These works tor being unique in visual and foreground. As the day becomes had a considerable influence audio detail on every screen- lighter and the camera operator when I first saw them during a ing occasion – the conceptual moves in and out of the view, festival in London during 1973, a comprehension of the experi- we become accustomed to the version of them now on the DVD. ence, given reasonably similar edifice and a series of incidents, A medium sized darkened room projection circumstances, can either human, the ambience of with film projector at one end remain in close proximity to the the location or induced by the and screen at the other and long originals across the years that apparatus and system deliver- loops of opaque 16mm film with have intervened. ing the experience. The liner clear frames cut into them. The In the Performance / Myself notes inform us that the sys- title of 24 Frames Per Second DVD, the digital version shows tem is based around a cheap (1975) describes not only the us what audiences encountered domestic camera; picture break rate at which 16mm film passes when the seven pieces were first up, colour distortions, a jagged through the projector but also delivered with analogue video, rendition of the pristine scene the schema for the progression with little sacrifice made to me- before it render an abstraction of the film, understood during dium specificity; but the rigour of time and space, and possi- viewing as fractionally extend- is no less than with the films. bly mirror the mythologies that ing the durations between light When artists first starting work- surround Uluru and the spiritual and darkness before reverting ing with video in the mid to late significance it has for indigenous to the durations between dark- 1960s, the most popular object people. But given the name and ness and light. to point the camera at was, of nationality of the artist, the sig- This is a perceptually engaging course, the artist, him- or her- nificance of space and time, process, experienced again in self. These pieces, though we ma, in Japanese culture also Timed 1, 2, 3 (1972) when by see iimura in them, are not per- becomes a resonance within the counting durations, changes can sonalised expressions about the system of meaning. (Another be predicted by the viewer, be- psycho or physical state of the of iimura’s works, Ma Space / coming a kind of participatory artist in private performance; Time in the Garden of Ryoan- game between filmmaker and they concentrate rather on the ji, explores links between film viewer. Developing the theme in system of representation con- time and the famous five hun- a later work, One Frame Dura- veying the sounds and images dred year old garden in Japan). tion (1977) the element of sur- and the spaces between artist, The longer piece on this DVD, A system and audience.

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In the earliest work, Self Identity public realm between 1982 and the location, a place of wide open (1972), only one minute long, 1995. This is a Camera which spaces. the basis of the investigation is Shoots This is enacted in a gal- setup, with his off screen voice lery space using a similar CCTV Open Access alternately confirming his name configuration seen in the ear- that he has just stated to the lier works. We see the artist but by Peter Suber camera. He returns to this some not until the end, as essentially The MIT Press, Cambridge, years later in Double Identity it is the closed-circuit system MA, 2012, 230 pp. (1979) as he again confirms being explored as a series of ISBN 978-0262517638 or denies his presence in the vignettes. In As I See You You earlier piece, on the monitor by See Me develops the theme in Reviewed by Rob Harle which he sits. In Double Portrait the same space with an audi- [email protected] (1973) he processes, in sound ence present and visible; now and vision, similar confirmation the procedures draws iimura into This is a very important book, and denials of identity, (in con- sharing the space within elec- which, I suggest, is a must read junction with his partner Akiko), tronic space as well as physical for all scholars and researchers whilst being seen from differ- space whilst edits, mixes and who publish their own work or ent quadrants through which superimpositions become part consult the peer-reviewed pub- the performers turn. I Love You of the performance between lished work of others––in other (1973) employs similar systemic cameras, monitor screens, art- words, virtually all academics. strategies, likewise using cap- ist (and off-screen assistant?). As Suber notes, catching the tioned subtitles to confirm or attention of overworked, un- These are complex works to counter the heard assertions. derpaid academics is a difficult describe in a short review, par- task. Understanding the basics In these early days, video post- ticularly as they rely so cen- of Open Access (OA) publish- shooting editing was unsatisfac- trally on duration and the nu- ing is not really a career option tory compared to the cleanness ance of systems of visual and of film editing and accounts for aural representation. Their mi- anymore but a core requirement. many tapes being unedited in gration to the domestic format The time taken to read this well the making of completed art DVD introduces an element of written rather slim volume will re- pieces or editing done on-the-fly viewer control, not available in pay the reader many times over. using some form of video switch- previous renditions of the work; Open Access is not to be con- ing or mixing box through which the fast forward and reverse op- fused with Open-Source soft- two or more close-circuit camer- tions provide the audience with ware or open educational re- as (CCTV) could be recorded to a measure of interactivity with sources. If you do not know the tape. iimura’s tapes essentially the work, thus providing further difference between green OA problematise the time intervals opportunity for reflection on the and gold OA, or the difference between what it is we see and elements present. The sets of hear; in other words it is not im- DVDs provide a vivid insight between gratis OA and libre OA mediately evident whether a cut within the oeuvre of one of Ja- then it will definitely reward you has been made after shooting or pan’s most influential artists and to find out, this book explains during shooting. The implication practice-based philosophers. these modes of OA publishing is significant in the exposition on The editions will of course when in clear detail. time / space, viewed / viewing the time comes, need to be mi- Peter Suber is a Faculty Fellow and place / location being pre- grated by collecting institutions at Harvard; Senior Researcher sented. I Am A Viewer, You Are to next generation technologies. at the Scholarly Publishing and A Viewer (1981) returns to sys- The hope is that this is under- Academic Resources Coalition; tematically exploring the state taken with as much care and and Research Professor of Phi- of viewing the works on video commitment as exhibited in the – but also by implication the act DVD collections prepared by the losophy at Earlham College. He of viewing film – as an audience artist himself, Takahiro iimura. is known as the de facto leader of the worldwide OA movement. ‘performing’ the reflexive act, Notes ending, “...you view yourself”. The book is divided into 10 sec- * Formerly known as Ayer’s Rock, tions covering all aspects of OA The following year the perform- the title of the DVD, Air’s Rock, ance develops and becomes a is a misspelling of the colonial including; copyright, economics, series of presentations in the name but a possible reference to future scenarios, policies, funding agencies and so on.

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One does not need a crystal ball a win-win situation when ana- that suffers. So called, devel- to see that the current laissez- lysed carefully and without be- oping nations, have appallingly faire capitalist economic model ing motivated by the agenda of limited access to academic jour- is no longer globally sustainable. greed driving publishing com- nals (and the Internet). A paper I Recent global financial disasters panies. This greed is holding recently peer-reviewed showed and difficulties indicate that a back knowledge, reducing ac- they have just as important and new sustainable model is ur- cess by the smaller institutions urgent cultural concerns as we gently required. OA and OS are to research findings and reduc- do, in this case the destruction part of that new model and the ing journal subscription rates of their traditional buildings. rapid expansion and accept- dramatically. Even Harvard and By insisting on (at minimum) ance of these movements and other top universities have had green OA for your research pa- associated practical outcomes to clip their library budgets in pers and other published work is an encouraging sign. Very few recent years. With the Internet the OA movement will gain more would expect a company not to and electronic access one would momentum and result in a better make a profit but it is the size of expect the reverse to be true. and more equitable world. the profit that is the contentious The quote below was included issue. It is difficult to justify the in an email I recently received outrageous cost of commercial Looking for Bruce from the International Journal of Office Software Suites when OS Conner Medicine and Medical Sciences applications, such as Open Of- for a CFP. It illustrates Suber’s fice, are totally free, equally as by Kevin Hatch thesis perfectly and indicates good and completely compat- that the “writing is on the wall” so The MIT Press, Cambridge, ible! to speak for academic publish- MA, 2012, 418 pp. If you doubt the relevance of ers who refuse to accommodate ISBN 978-0262016810 this obscene profit making to OA in their business plans. Reviewed by Allan Graubard academic publishing, Suber “IJMMS is an Open Access presents the sobering fact that [email protected] Journal. One key request of re- the largest journal publisher searchers across the world is earned higher profits than the It may perhaps be true that unrestricted access to research world’s largest oil company, “In Bruce Conner’s contributions publications. Open access gives 2010, Elsevier’s journal division to the art of the last half of the a worldwide audience larger had a profit margin of 35.7 per- twentieth century, and up to his than that of any subscription- cent while ExxonMobil had only death in 2008, are now secure. based journal and thus in- 28.1 percent.” (p. 32) Still, as the first book that ex- creases the visibility and im- amines his oeuvres over the If this extreme profiteering is not pact of published works. It also full course of his life, surely it distasteful enough and dam- enhances indexing, retrieval will help in keeping him present aging for libraries and public power and eliminates the need for us – as he should be. For not knowledge, it is even more so for permissions to reproduce only are Bruce Conner’s works because all authors provide their and distribute content. IJMMS unique. They evidence an art- research papers at no charge is fully committed to the Open ist who eluded categorization, to the publisher and generally Access Initiative and will pro- recreating himself several times, relinquish copyright as well! My vide free access to all articles and whose verve inspires. You partner is constantly lamenting as soon as they are published” can find it in his assemblages, the fact that I get no payment for drawings, films, paintings, and It is interesting to consider that my peer-review editorial work conceptual works. You can also virtually everyone in society is nor for my own published aca- find it in his history, including the hurt by unnecessary fiscal re- demic papers. As Suber notes humoresque of his run for San striction to research papers and this is the way of the academy Francisco Supervisor in 1967 data. Advances in medicine may and has been so for close on with his cute baby photo on his be held back because of lack of 350 years. Academics write for election poster. Perhaps the access, this affects those wait- impact and the advancement of 5000 plus citizens who voted for ing for a cure for a disease as public knowledge, not money. him knew something we don’t? well as frustrating the research- Open Access as Suber explains ers trying to find the cure. It is not A Wichita, Kansas native, Con- throughout this book is really only urgent high level research ner emerges elsewhere in that

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“City by the Bay” during an inti- There is the terrible beauty of University of Minnesota Press, mate period of counter-cultural “Crossroads,” an orchestration Minneapolis & London, 2012, renaissance as the 50s turn to of a U.S. Navy sub-surface hy- pp. 271 the 60s. His circle is diverse drogen bomb explosion, which ISBN 978-0816648757 and prominent: poets Michael fascinates each time I view it. McClure and Philip Lamantia, Should I mention his collabora- Reviewed by Nico de Klerk artists Jay DeFeo and George tion with David Byrne and Brian [email protected] Herms, filmmaker Stan Bra- Eno, “America Is Waiting,” an khage, to name a few. idiosyncratic forerunner of music videos, and there are more.

With Conner, however, “more” is not simply quantitative but entails variety and space; a sufficient space in which to live on a page or canvas, for one. Throughout his years he com- poses inkblot and intricately detailed drawings, exhaustive efforts, the best of which have a rare and disturbing delicacy. Lat- er he embraces collage, which evolve from a surrealist axis to For a couple of generations a more personal and probing worldwide, home movies and Known initially for his assem- composite that refines external other films for private use were blages, built up precisely from influence. often people’s first experi- found materials --stockings, ence with moving images. This feathers, cardboard, bicycle Kevin Hatch, who authored the was—and perhaps still is—a wheels, wax, a distressed study, concludes it by comment- distinct experience and quite couch, what have you (prompt- ing on Conner’s search for origi- particular practice, since each ed by his fascination with San nality, his refusal to dance to the of these movies were by and Francisco junk dealers) -- their critical measure of his time, what large made and watched by the effect is savage and magnetic. that meant, and how he did it. same people, usually recruited After a time, ill content to keep from a small, intimate family cir- running in place, he side steps Independence, intimacy, and cle. Rather than having makers the critical attention he has revelation are values that Con- and spectators, home movies gained by turning to film, when ner lived by and that infuse his are as a consequence better the underground movement is works, ever vibrant, funny, erot- characterised as having “par- first finding its feet. ic, caustic, and elegant. If this ticipants”, to use the term pro- study facilitates our engagement posed by Roger Odin and Eric His influence, again, is imme- with them and their creator, then de Kuyper about these films. [1] diate. Commonly but not al- they will abide within and be- For decades, moreover, this ex- ways using found footage, his tween us just that much more, perience was enriched by the re- first, discretely titled “A Movie,” a measure of our rapport with duction prints, often in abridged reveals an amateur with the the world we face and the world eye of a master, and a cutting versions, of commercially re- we desire; a borderland that we technique to match. Subver- leased films of all genres that cannot entirely possess. sive visual rhythms pitched to were for sale on the home en- near hysteria infuse “Breaka- tertainment market; and in this way,” shot, as we are told, “in Cinema’s context, such prints could also one long exhausting session” Alchemist: The be used as ‘stand-ins’ for places sans found footage. The ever- Films of Péter or events a family had visited or poignant “Report” captivates Forgács witnessed. So, whether ‘home- the Kennedy assassination. made’ or purchased, the home movie, as practice and as expe- “Marilyn Times Five” portrays by Bill Nichols and Michael rience, constitutes a significant erotic obsession, his and ours. Renov (eds.)

51 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 fact of film history. This in itself a widely felt obstacle to the re- he, too, deploys them within the should be reason enough for use and appropriation of this framework of wider historical a film archive to include home type of film. De Kuyper writes events: the social, political, mili- movies in its collections as one that as home movies age they tary, cultural, and moral turmoils particular instance of cinema’s become historical or anthro- of Hungary and, in later works, many manifestations in terms of pological documents of ”other of various European countries technology, use, purpose, venue times, other customs, other during the mid-twentieth cen- or audience. lives”, adding that this is a re- tury. Although his focus on cent shift, effected by the rise home movies was partly deter- Yet with home movies a poten- in audio-visual culture, particu- mined by limitations on access tial problem emerges. Because larly the “insatiable appetite” and mobility, as we learn from it is fair to expect (certainly in of television for images of the Scott MacDonald’s interview the case of publicly funded ar- past. [2] As a result, more often in the book [5], Forgács must chives) that, once accepted as than not the home movie images have realised that the very con- an asset to the collections, the preyed upon by filmmakers or creteness of film images makes effort and money invested in the their researchers for historical them fundamentally unsuited to preservation or restoration of these films must somehow be programmes are subsequently show “wider historical events”. accounted for in public access pressed into service as mere (Mainstream compilation prac- and activities, including open lively illustrations for phenom- tice, therefore, usually resorts to screenings. But here, the rou- ena of much wider scope than the rhetorical figure of metony- tine, unproblematic asynchro- most private footage ever laid my, making singular instances, nism that recording equipment claim to. Thus, in order to be- with the help of narration, stand introduces may suddenly leap come historically or anthropo- for complex and/or long-term centre stage and cause a feeling logically representative images, processes and events.) The of discomfort, as it now allows home movies must effectively first two episodes of his Private unratified spectators to inspect cease to be records of private Hungary series, THE BARTOS demeanours and interactions life. To tell its big tales, the main- FAMILY and DUSI AND JENÖ which they were not meant to stream practice of ‘devouring (both 1988), were largely ed- witness (let alone participate documentaries’ obfuscates the ited out of private materials in in). This is not, of course, about nature of private film, if not the his collection, accompanied looking at recorded improper be- variety of cinematic practices by his sparse narration identi- haviours (although home mov- tout court (the anecdotal char- fiying people, occasions, and ies may contain those as well). acter of much newsreel footage locations, and aided by a few Rather, this is about the clash or the propagandistic aspects of invasive measures (freezing, between, on the one hand, the many other ‘factual’ genres are slow motion, etc.). But besides typical carefree-ness of home often suppressed, too; in many these measures Forgács, over movies, the result of their spe- cases, elision of the soundtrack the course of his filmmaking ca- cific participatory character and suffices). For home movies, reer, has with increasing sophis- participants’ willingness to play then, to be re-used while retain- tication and certitude combined along, confident that the screening their identity without caus- other (audio-) visual materials ing of the recorded antics will be ing discomfort, Odin has argued with the home movie materials. restricted to their inner circle, that a reframing, a shift in per- As a result, he doesn’t so much and, on the other hand, about spective has to take place. [3] show historical events as evoke the impropriety of another cat- them by setting up relationships Cinema’s alchemist: the films egory of viewers watching the (of contrast, repetition, etc.) be- of Péter Forgács is the first films instead of them. This is tween the two types of materials. English-language collection of what makes the access and ex- In other words, it is the combi- essays devoted to the oeuvre hibition of home movies both nation of private films and other of an artist who has built his interesting and tricky for any materials through which history filmmaking career on the re- archive that decides to keep is made, if not visible, then cer- use of home movies. [4] In his them (and, in the absence of tainly palpable. In that sense, capacity as collector-archivist any policy, silent neglect is often ‘alchemy’ is a very apt term for and found footage-filmmaker the default solution). what Forgács has been doing. of these materials Forgács has Admittedly, this problem, this evidently thought deeply about The success of his reframing discomfort does not seem to be the problem of reframing, since is to a certain extent reflected

52 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 in the lack of reporting on feel- Actually, while the measures of the atrocities committed dur- ings of discomfort throughout Forgács has taken in his films ing the German occupation of the book. But it is not the same are aimed to dissipate our dis- Athens.) sort of absence of concern. For comfort, they also preserve the Although the papers in the book one thing, Cinema’s alchemist homeyness of the home mov- are of quite uneven quality, the largely consists of academic pa- ies, as their connections to the most interesting contributions, pers, written up after repeated wider world, if any, are mostly along with Scott MacDonald’s viewings (albeit not always ac- incidental and untroubled. The thoughtful interview and intro- curately reported) of Forgács’s first casualty of these measures duction to it [9], are about identi- films—uneasiness, after all, is are our own (received) opinions. fying and formulating the ways in something one can overcome. A good example comes from his which Forgács has gone about More importantly, the interven- film BOURGEOIS DICTIONARY reframing his materials—their tions Forgács performs in his (1992), in which Forgács has juxtaposition with voice-overs, films on the materials he has col- subtitled a scene on the basis more official audio-visual mate- lected circumvent, or preempt, of lip-reading. What we learn is rials, and/or titles, etc.—in order that uneasiness. That may be being said doesn’t reveal any- to balance home and history, the the reason why Odin, in his es- thing significant beyond the triv- private and the public, the par- say a propos THE BARTOS ial. But at the same time he has ticular and the general. A rough FAMILY, can blithely write: “[I] preempted our own stereotyp- division can be made between, n home movies, the characters ing—our ‘world knowledge’— on the one hand, the essays by look toward the camera, which and potentially easy dismissal Michael Roth, Michael Renov, is to say, toward us. Some of of the people in the images as, and Malin Wahlberg, who all them address us directly.” No, say, self-satisfied bourgeois. He tend to emphasise the nature they don’t; that’s a delusion. We cleans the slate and presents of the reframing, the stuff the are looking at them, but they them as everyday individuals. “rim of the frame” (Goffman) merely look (or rather: looked) And then, when he links the films is made of: for Roth this is the toward the cameraman, toward to the wider world, Forgács is notion of ordinariness and how a co-participant. If it were oth- able—in the words of Michael it relates to the limits of the erwise, he would have had no S. Roth, in one the most mov- representation of trauma, the need to write at the end of the ing contributions to the book— Holocaust in particular; Renov paragraph, “[E]ach shot ends “to preserve the ordinariness of situates it at the intersection of with a direct intervention by his subjects even as he frames the historiography of the Holo- the enunciator: a freeze-frame. them in extraordinary times.” caust and the history of docu- Thus Forgács intends to signify [8] History is not permitted to mentary, crediting Forgács with to us that these social actors overshadow the materials he elaborating “the analytic and look at us (i.e. they concern us).” has collected, excerpted, and expressive functions of docu- [6] Even then I doubt they do; I recombined for his own films. mentary [that] have remained prefer to think that such interrup- (It should be said at this point, largely underdeveloped.” [10]; tions of the flow of the subjects’ though, that this statement re- while Wahlberg’s essay is rooted activities allow us, today, to in- flects the tenor of the book, in in the notion of indexicality and spect their fleeting expressions which private films that were describes the arc of the trace and gestures for a longer time, made purposely for posterity as an ontological sign, of things so we can form an opinion about are not considered. I think this “that-have-been” (Barthes), to and become engaged with them does a disservice to Forgács’s one that, in an archival context, and with the films they now form oeuvre, as it limits the range of makes one aware of its fragmen- part of. As a matter of fact, they materials he has worked with tary, essentially incomplete na- don’t even have to literally ‘look and misses the opportunity to ture. [11] Kaja Silverman, Tyrus at us’ to concern us. [7] deal with, notably, ANGELOS’ FILM [1999], a work that con- Miller, and Whitney Davis, on Odin’s slipping on the freeze tains the most remarkable and the other hand, tend to focus frame nevertheless points up heroic instances of such film- more on specific measures to the considerable work done, making by Greek patrician An- realise these reframings. And unlike the selection of ‘signifi- gelos Papanastassiou, scenes it is, I think, no coincidence cant’ moments for your aver- that were shot—and later, at the that the latter authors’ essays age historical TV compilation, 1947 Nuremburg trials, indeed are largely or wholly devoted to keep the materials in focus. used—as evidentiary material to two of Forgács’s works—the

53 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 abovementioned BOURGEOIS themselves are about, one rea- tive” (emphasis in the original), DICTIONARY and WITTGEN- son being that we often have no as “most of the people who ap- STEIN TRACTATUS (1992)—in way of telling what the subjects’ pear in Forgács’s source ma- which the process of reframing own opinions were about what terial have died twice—once is taken to another level. That is the world was doing or what they physically and once mnemoni- to say that whereas most of his were doing. The trace they left cally. The first of these deaths films are the result of rework- is truly incomplete to the point is irrevocable, but the second ing a series of home movies of illegibility; any attempt at at- is not.” [13] And it is the moral made by one individual or fam- tribution is futile. And that, sec- responsibility of our and later ily, these two are based on a ondly, makes the excerpts im- generations to do the remem- selective, reasoned ‘catch’ of his personal. Forgács does not elicit bering; another ‘Lest we forget’. entire collection of home mov- our emotions and sympathies, Of course, that phrase is used ies. Here, the excerpts remain at least not beyond the normal in commemorations of a variety anonymous in order to better transcultural effect of identifi- of traumatic events, from slavery function as the building blocks cation. Emotions (discomfort, to the First World War to 9/11. for a more reflective and reflex- for instance) would stand in the As Silverman’s essay is part ive approach to the materials. way of engagement. Because, in of the section ‘The Holocaust While both are camouflaged order for his ‘alchemy’ to work, films’, it should go without saying as categorical documentaries, Forgács invites us to think. that the systematic persecution BOURGEOIS DICTIONARY ob- One trace, though, is pretty and murder of Europe’s Jew- liquely traces the gradual but clear. Like in most of his oth- ish population certainly makes inexorable disappearance, in er films, even in these reflec- the films’ re-use imperative; fact and in historiography, of tive, reflexive compilations the and of course it contributes to Hungary’s Jewish population most unimaginable event of the Forgács’s films’ impact. But as between the early 1930s and European mid-twentieth cen- dictatorship, war or genocide late 1940s, while WITTGEN- tury—the systematic eradica- go on, the sense of unimagina- STEIN TRACTATUS is, one tion of the Jewish population, in ble doom need not be unique to the one hand, the pictorial half Hungary and elsewhere on the the films Forgács has collected of a diptych with Wittgenstein’s continent—is always present, or, for that matter, to other pri- Tractatus logico-philosophicus, however inarticulate (while vate films from that time. This and, on the other, a meditation WITTGENSTEIN TRACTATUS type of film’s very innocence on the signification of moving im- is primarily a philosophically- of wider concerns makes one ages—most cogently summed based, cinematic treatise, the realise that any home movie- up in a Wittgenstein quote from person Ludwig Wittgenstein, maker today may not know ei- Forgács‘s narration: ‘How hard in Miller’s words, “is a singular ther what threats might be in it is to see what is right in front instance of the Central Euro- store for him: everything always of my eyes.’ pean Jewish bourgeoisie that seems to happen someplace What is it, indeed? One may ar- constitutes Forgács’s primary else. (Although, alternatively, gue that the anonymity of the focus in his documentary ex- nowadays there may be a sim- excerpts here takes us as far plorations.” [12]). Indeed, the ple division of labour between away from the sense of watching absence of Hungary’s history, technologies: a home movie- home movies as those that are particularly of its Jewish popu- maker today, in Iran, Mexico or compiled in standard TV docu- lation, in the Hungarian public Greece, may well reserve, say, mentaries. However, in these debate—as well as, of course, in his cell phone for recording and two films their very anonymity moving images, being the most disseminating the things that has two seemingly contradic- unsuited event of all—was an he does know threaten his well- tory effects that serve one and incentive to the making of these being or life.) the same purpose. First of all, it films. That, incidentally, makes From an archival point of view, contributes to their individuality, Kaja Silverman´s argument to Silverman’s exhortation, com- because the excerpts are not overcome archival hesitation pelling as it is, still would involve made to ‘agree’ with whatever and—wisely—re-use these po- ways of making spectators want context they are inserted in. In- tentially unsettling home mov- to watch—and remember (and stead they resist, not only easy ies so compelling. Their re-use, in her essay she describes two historical interpretations, but she writes, is not just “ethically such ways). Paul Ricœur, quot- also explanations of what they justifiable”, but “ethicallyimpera - ed in the book, wrote: “The docu-

54 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ment sleeping in the archives is [8] Michael S. Roth, ‘Ordinary film: Like his photographs of sculp- not just silent, it is an orphan. THE MAELSTROM, p. 77. tural renderings of trigonometric The testimonies it contains are [9] Scott MacDonald, op. cit., pp. functions in the series “Concep- 3-38. The editors failed to inform detached from the authors who the reader that this interview tual Forms” (since 2004), Sugi- ‘gave birth’ to them. They are was already published in 2005, moto’s interest in pure, elegant in MacDonald’s Critical cinema handed over to the care of those 4: interviews with independent lines, starkly controlled con- who are competent to question filmmakers, at another press. trasts, integrated design and them and hence to defend them, [10] Michael Renov, ‘Historical stable form reflects his desire by giving them aid and assist- discourses of the unimaginable: to create aesthetic models of ance.” [14] Forgács’s extremely THE MAELSTROM’, p. 92. reality, to concretize thought, competent aid and assistance— [11] Malin Wahlberg, ‘The trace: and to render visible “invisible creating emotional distance in framing the presence of the past in FREE FALL, pp. 119-134. facts” as he calls them, internal order to engage today’s spec- to the artist. “His work expresses [12] Tyrus Miller, ‘Reenvisioning tator, combined with a thor- the documentary fact: on saying unseen objects, the world with- ough historical knowledge—is and showing in WITTGENSTEIN in the heart,” observes Tadeo a model for archives (and TV TRACTATUS and BOURGEOIS DICTIONARY’, p.179. Ando, architect of the Château programme makers) to emulate La Coste Art Center. and come to terms with a type of [13] Kaja Silverman, ‘Waiting, hoping, among the ruins of all the For over 200 days filmmakers film material, if nottypes of film rest’, p. 102. material, whose (film) histori- followed Sugimoto across the [14] Quoted in: Malin Wahlberg, globe, from the shores of his cal significance still suffers from op. cit., p. 124. unfamiliarity and uneasiness. native Japan where he first began to photograph the renowned Notes Hiroshi Sugimoto: “Seascape Series,” to his studio [1] Eric de Kuyper, ‘Aux origines Memories of Origin in Chelsea, New York where he du cinéma: le film de famille’, p. 16; Roger Odin, ‘Le film de famille is shown at work with his assist- dans l’institution familiale’, pp. by Yuko Nakamura, Director ants. Positioned between two 35-37. Both essays are published in: Roger Odin (réd.), Le film de WOWOW, Inc., Japan, 2012 worlds, one deeply inspired by famille: usage privé, usage public tradition, the other oriented to- (Paris: Méridiens-Klincksieck, DVD, 85 mins., in English and 1995). Japanese wards the future, the film conveys the pristine beauty of Ja- [2] Eric de Kuyper, op. cit., p. 13. Reviewed by Giovanna L. pan’s natural landscape with its [3] Roger Odin, ‘Reflections on the Costantini rocky bluffs and mist-shrouded family home movie as document: mountains, as well as the soar- a semio-pragmatic approach’, costantini.giovanna.l@gmail. in: Karen L. Ishizuka, Patricia ing skyline of the modern me- R. Zimmermann (eds.), Mining com the home movie: excavations in tropolis, the built environments histories and memories (Berkeley- Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories of New York and Paris driven by Los Angeles-London: University of Origin, a documentary pro- ambition, progress, and com- of California Press, 2008), pp. 261-264. duced by Japanese television merce. It is an intimate glimpse WOWOW, opens with the artist into the life of the artist, one in [4] A Dutch-language collection of essays was published on the immersed in a reflecting pool which Sugimoto speaks openly occasion of awarding Forgács the behind a large format camera as about his work and contempo- prestigious Erasmus Prize. See: Max Sparreboom (ed.), De kunst he photographs “Infinity” (2006), rary art. Interspersed with selec- van Péter Forgács. Erasmusprijs an abstract aluminum sculpture tions from his major photograph- 2007 * (Amsterdam: Balans, 2007). commissioned for the Art Center ic series, it recreates something at Château la Coste, France. of the artist’s inner journey to- *The art of Péter Forgács. The 2007 Erasmus Prize From a spherical base in the wa- wards enlightenment, imbued ter, it rises in perfect arcs to the with the past, inquiring of the [5] Scott MacDonald, ‘Péter Forgács: an interview’, pp. 8-12. sky where it dematerializes into present. “Thousands of years space. Part of a body of work of human history are within me,” [6] Roger Odin, ‘How to make history perceptible: THE BARTOS titled “Mathematical Models,” it Sugimoto reflects as he climbs FAMILY and the Private Hungary represents a transformation of a ladder to a promontory where series’, p. 139. mathematic and geometric prin- he stands overlooking the sea [7] I commented on this type ciples into computer-generated and the horizon. of intervention in my essay ‘No more holy innocents’, in: Cultural solids produced from Japan’s memory (Amsterdam: Praemium most advanced machining tools. In the studio Sugimoto prepares Erasmianum, 2008), pp. 8-15. films for his 2009 series “Light-

55 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ning Fields,” a dramatic body appear to be alive, each frozen, comprised of three main parts, a of monochromatic photographs taxidermied, confined within the Worship Hall, a Main Sanctuary whose effects recall the stun- static displays of New York’s and a Rock Chamber reminis- ning calligraphic brushwork of Natural History Museum. The cent of a tumulus, he dug out the Song Dynasty (960-1279) ink series questions relationships underground chamber by hand paintings. After years of pains- between natural and artificial so as not to disturb the ancient taking trial and error with dif- environments, the real and the spirits. Into the chamber he then ferent metals and apparatuses imaginary, through graphic con- laid rough-hewn optical-glass under varying atmospheric contrasts that heighten tension be- steps to create a “stairway of ditions, he employs a 400,000 tween a sense of lifelessness light.” Illuminated by the sunlight Volt Van de Graaf generator to and ferocity. the glass stairs shine as crys- charge a metal ball with static tal. They join the celestial and His later work focuses increas- terrestrial worlds in a stream of electricity. Polarized by metal ingly on the recovery of Japan’s luminosity. plates onto which he positions collective memory. In an antique large sheets of photographic market in Japan he holds a small In 2011 Sugimoto served as film, he etches electrical cur- handwritten text and ponders its producer, composer, and art rents emitted from an electrode scale. “If you read books, you director of a revival of “Sone- directly onto a transparency. only acquire knowledge,” he zaki Shinju” (The Love Suicides The sparks create intricate says turning its fragile pages. at Sonezaki) a play based on abstractions that give the ap- “But you can feel directly from an original manuscript by the pearance of meteoric showers, the objects. Obtaining the old famous Japanese dramatist treelike branches, silken tendrils books can give you so many Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653- and the delicate vascular tis- things. Just knowing about them 1725). It was staged as a lost sue of living organisms. Lumi- and actually feeling them are type of Bunraku performance, nous, the images seem to exert totally different. You experience an ancient form of puppet the- a strange magnetic power over the proportion of the objects, atre that originated during the observers who draw to them as and it starts to sink in.” Edo era (1603-1868), a period in moths to a flame. In other stud- which neo-Confucianism, ethi- “It’s like human wisdom,” reflects ies, he discharges the electrical humanism, and rationalism Tadeo Ando. “He is uncovering cal current into Himalayan salt flourished in Japan. It was also human wisdom from 30 or 40 water to produce diaphanous, during this era that art rose to a centuries ago and it is his intel- ethereal effects of watercolor. high level of refinement through lectual world. I think people are As an experimental composer, such styles as ukiyo (the floating strongly inspired by his intellec- he creates other impressions by world) of Hokusai (1760-1849). tual world. He can see what we chance, through tests with insu- Bunraku combined chanters, cannot see.” lated instruments that include Shamisen players and large a fine mesh grill used to roast Self-taught in architecture, he puppets whose complex, ex- gingko nuts, a needle inserted attempts to revive Japan’s lost pressive heads and hands were through the end of a wooden architectural concepts through carved from wood and repainted stick, and kitchen implements the reconstruction of an ancient before each presentation. Pup- such as wire whisks, egg beat- Shinto shrine. Asked to rebuild peteers operate in full view of ers, measuring cups and slotted the deteriorated Go-Oh shrine, the audience, garbed in black spoons. “Ordinarily it would be whose origins date back to the robes, some with black hoods a failure, but it is interesting,” he Muromachi Period (1338-1573), over their heads. observes pointing to an effect he sought to recreate an “im- One of the most compelling seg- of winter static in the corner of aginary architecture” in keeping ments examines the artist’s in- one of the works that appears with ancient Shinto worship. “An- stallation at the ruined Power to form a constellation. imist worship,” wrote Sugimoto, House, on Cockatoo Island for “was thought to have focused on In some works Sugimoto con- the 17th Sydney, Australia Bien- sites in nature where some spe- founds perception as in his nale. The site’s haunting atmos- cial quality or force was felt.” In celebrated Diorama series. In phere of deterioration, corrosion “Appropriate Proportion” (2002) these picture-box scenarios, and abandonment fascinated he attributed the shrine’s inef- Sugimoto for it was a vast indus- reiterations of representational fable source of power to a gi- trial complex that had once been imagery in art, dead animals are ant rock. Since the shrine was juxtaposed with specimens that filled with mighty generators,

56 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 steam engines, smokestacks, a repertory of traditional plays “We see what must be seen and switches and electrical controls. identified with Buddhist themes. disappear in the sea.” Now the plant and its machinery The tempo of a Noh perform- lay buried under layers of dust as ance continually fluctuates in Radio: Essays in thick as volcanic ash. The sur- keeping with the Buddhist view Bad Reception roundings provided an evocative that the world is in a state of setting for Sugimoto’s sacred continual flux. Comprised of by John Mowitt and profane appositions, his in- choreographed elements and University of California Press, versions of energy and inertia as stylized costumes, the main Berkeley, CA, 2011, 248 pp. positive and negative electrical character wears a mask imbued charges. Against the shadows with magic power. Expressing ISBN: 978-0520270497 a powerful, all-encompassing of engine rooms filled with steel Reviewed by John F. Barber, emotion that builds to a climax equipment, Sugimoto’s “Light- Washington State University at the close of the play, the mask ning Fields” flank a quasi-cere- Vancouver monial stairway constructed in a is meant to conceal individuality. series of stages with intervening It elevates the play’s main action [email protected] platforms. The negative images beyond a presence in this world of the “Lightning Fields” have to an otherworldly dimension. been reversed to positives, illu- As an historical personage in minated by glowing light boxes. Noh theatre who returns to the At the pinnacle of the stairway, world to find spiritual release th a 13 century sculpture of the after death, Sugimoto returns deity Raijin, God of Thunder, to a cliff overlooking the ocean presides atop a high wooden that holds deep significance for column. He is fearsome, potent, him. It is a site of memory where animated by the same hidden he remembers a train ride he forces that surge in Sugimoto’s experienced as a child in which artworks as “sparks floating in he emerged from a tunnel to water.” On close inspection one glimpse the sea: sees incandescent, microbial images that the artist compares “When I trace back that memo- to sperm—recollections of be- ry,” he recalled, “I realized that it was my very first memory of ginning that Sugimoto finds very Studies of radio, a technology my life. At that moment I thought, beautiful. for the broadcast distribution of ‘Oh, I do exist.’ Consciousness voice and other aural content From a place on the coast over- of being alive emerged. Until wirelessly across distance, have looking the sea, Sugimoto in- then, everything was vague; I historically focused on the me- spects the site where he plans had no consciousness of my ex- dium, or the history of that me- to build a Noh theatre. He wants istence. So the vivid memory of dium. Radio: Essays in Bad Re- to leave this theatre for the next the ocean had a certain impact ception, by John Mowitt, breaks generation so that persons may that I still remember. The con- this tradition and looks at radio see and feel what he has ex- sciousness of being alive is the as the effect dissemination of perienced during his lifetime. birth of awareness, of my being voice and other sounds across Noh is a highly symbolic dance as an entity. But when we see it radio networks has had on mod- drama performed on an outdoor on a long clock, this awareness ern conceptions of community stage beneath a temple-like roof is the same as the evolution of and the transnational, historical supported by pillars at the four human beings, evolving from dimensions of broadcast culture. corners. It is the oldest surviving apes to people. I came to the This new approach moves radio form of Japanese theatre, origi- realization that I was alive. It also beyond a mass medium of se- nating in the fourteenth century made me realize that I would die duction and manipulation, com- when it was presented by male some day. So I thought, ‘Is there mon themes in current media priest-performers attached to anything worth doing in my life?’ studies programs, and broadens Buddhist temples. Derived from The last phrase in the medieval its examination into areas such a term meaning “talent” or “skill,” epic Heike Monogatari (The Tale as cultural studies, communica- Noh survives today in much the of the Heike) was great, when tion, and history of technology. same form as in the past with they fall in battle at ‘Dan no ura.’”

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As a founding technology for philosophy as seen through the Throughout, Mowitt does not the twentieth century, radio has confrontation between George attempt to replace the earlier drawn the attention of theoreti- Lukács and Jean-Paul Sartre thinking, theories, or intellec- cal and philosophical writers and the collaboration between tual practices about radio with such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Wal- Bertolt Brecht and Walter Ben- later, more current conceptions. ter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, jamin. Instead, he seeks nuances of Frantz Fanon, Martin Heidegger, language and definition that al- Chapter 3, “Stations of Excep- Theodor Adorno, and Raymond low the continual examination of tion,” uses Frantz Fanon’s es- Williams. All have used radio as how the earlier remains active the focus for their ideas and/or say, “Here Is the Voice of Alge- in the later. The various rhetori- reflections regarding how and ria,” to examine the role radio cal and expository shifts in his why radio has come to matter, has played in decolonization writing as he switches fields of particularly politically, to phe- movements in Africa and else- discourse, audience, and regis- nomenology, existentialism, He- where. Here Mowitt argues that ter are intentionally mimetic of gelian Marxism, anticolonialism, we must think about the status tuning a radio, seeking better psychoanalysis, and cultural of voice in political confronta- reception beyond the noise of studies. Mowitt examines this tions, especially when discuss- feedback and static. This “bad central role of radio in the history ing communications. reception” says Mowitt, results of critical theory through the lens Chapter 4, “Phoning in Analy- from being either too much in- of the relationship between phi- sis,” examines three sites of en- side, studying radio as an ob- losophy and radio, the first such counter between radio and psy- ject, or too much outside, study- endeavor, seeking to position choanalysis: Erich Fromm’s role ing radio as a technology. The radio as a cultural technology in the Princeton Radio Research proper placement, he argues, is and an apparatus with a social Project, two radio lectures by in the middle where it is apparent and political history. In short, Jacques Lacan, and statements that radio is calling out for more. he sets out to study scholarly made by Féliz Guattair regard- But what? Mowitt’s text is a re- interest in “the object of radio ing free popular radio stations, sponse, “trimmed to the shape studies” (3). particularly the Bologna-based of the letter(s) of that call” (21). Each of the book’s six chapters Radio Alice. The result is “a are essays or “thought experi- twisted set of queries about the The Koran: The ments” in which Mowitt attempts conditions, the channels, of psy- Origins of the “to trace how the problem that choanalysis and psychoanalytic Book is radio arises within and be- teaching” (17). tween various philosophical and Chapter 5, “Birmingham Call- by Bruno Ulmer theoretical projects” and exam- ing,” examines, again, Marxism Icarus Films, Brooklyn, NY, ines how thinking about radio and philosophy as part of the 2010, 52 mins., col. “produces effects that not only role radio played in the founding Distributor’s website: http:// scramble intellectual alliances of the Centre for Contemporary www.icarusfilms.com/ but also the sociohistorically Cultural Studies at Birmingham new2010/koran.html. given contours of intellectual (England). Again, the power of life” (16). radio is questioned with regard Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg, Plymouth University Chapter 1, “Facing the Radio,” to its abilities to transform or- articulates an array of contacts, ganizational structures of hu- [email protected] both in agreement and not, in manistic knowledge. the areas of philosophy, politics, Essential viewing for anyone The final chapter, Chapter 6, interested in the history of Is- phenomenology, physiognomy, “We Are the Word,” examines and psychoanalysis. lam, the purpose of this film is to the Modern Language Associa- make public the study of the ear- Chapter 2, “On the Air,” exam- tion’s foray into radio, “What’s liest period of the canonization ines the interplay between using the Word?,” prompted by attacks of the Koran and specifically to radio as a means of philosophi- on the organization by culture document a collaborative manu- cal / political communication and wars conservatives. Mowitt script preservation and research as a provocation to philosophi- tracks the relation of radio to ed- project underway in Germany cal / political thought. Specifi- ucation by the philosophical and at the Corpus Coranicum un- cally, Mowitt examines the prob- political problems discussed in der the direction of Angelika lem posed by radio for Marxist previous chapters.

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Neuwith in collaboration with not explored, nor the nature and ceeds admirably in conveying Francois Deroche and Immam content of the many suras that a sense of the intense religious Ferid Heider. [1] This fascinating were not included in the stand- devotion Muslims have for the story begins in 1972, after an ard Koran but some of which Koran. earthquake in Yemen in which survived nonetheless, these are To end on the subject of art, the ancient mosque of Sana’a the kind of extraordinary details science and religion, the film was partially destroyed. Hid- revealed here. They will tantalize provides tantalizing glimpses den behind a wall, revealed in the scholarly viewer, particularly into the ecumenical history of the debris, was a collection of those with historical and herme- Islamic civilization in terms of the pages and fragments of Korans neutic interests. The film will be decorative arts and architecture. dating back to the first century of sure to inspire considerable de- [3] For instance, in some of the Islam. The radical significance bate on the historical diversity illuminated pages of the Koranic of these fragments is that they within Islam and can be exceed- manuscripts found at Sana’a, predated the standard version of ingly useful in any introduction to the border elements clearly ref- the Koran known today and that the history of texts and doctrinal erence architectural details of they were different. As the Ko- conflicts in world religions. the Great Mosque of Damascus ran is understood to be the un- Two fundamental problems, particularly the ornate hanging changed original written record however, bedevil the film. First, lamps. We also learn here that in of the revelations received and the notion that there is a differ- the Umaayad period when Abdul communicated by the Prophet ence between Western scientific Malik designed iconic Islamic Mohammad, the film treads as study and Islamic scholarship buildings such as the Ummay- gently and respectfully as pos- repeats itself throughout the ad Mosque, Byzantine Christian sible on such dangerous hal- film almost as a matter of prin- craftsmen were employed in the lowed ground. ciple. While non-Muslim West- construction and decoration of ern scholars are represented mosques. The consequence as rational scientists capable of was that the Christian mosaic “scientific analysis”, that is value tradition extending back to an- free analysis, Muslim scholars cient Greece entered into Is- are, to put it bluntly, portrayed, lamic architectural history. One even by themselves, as incapa- would naturally want to explore ble of rational, scientific study of the history of other design and these new documents recording material traditions such as that the earliest history and diversity of stained glass and whether of the Koran. Second, at no point they are part of this particular in the film is there any recogni- decorative arts fusion. Lastly, tion of the issue of interpreta- there is an even more powerful tion. Not only are these serious example of the shared history issues for academics interested between Islam and Christian- in Orientalism, colonialism and ity in which we are able to see The Prophet’s continuous rev- hermeneutics but also the lat- how the tomb of Jahya (John the elations began in Mecca in 609 ter is an arena of major conten- Baptist), the Church of St John and continued for the next 23 tion in the Muslim world. As no the Baptist, has been incorpo- years until his death in 632 CE. Muslim scholar is on record in rated into the center of the Um- The Sana’a fragments that are this film commenting upon this mayad Mosque and venerated at the heart of this film’s genesis evolution or on matters of in- by Muslims ever since. In all this date back to 680 CE––that is, terpretation, one gains the im- the film has enormous potential within the first half century of pression that in the Muslim mind for inter-faith discussions above Islam. They show not only how (an extraordinary idea in itself and beyond its value for teach- the sequences of revelations, of a unitary and essentialized ing about the history of Islamic the paragraphs known as suras, Other) it appears unimaginable religion and civilization, art and differed but also how the origi- that one could question the ca- architecture, and bookmaking. nal texts were in places edited nonical version of the Koran or One of the greatest values of by covering over and changing disagree about the nature and this film then is how it takes both words. While the latter potential- structure of the content. These Muslims and non-Muslims, the- ly theologically seismic detail is criticisms aside, the film suc- ists and atheists, into deeply

59 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 sacred spaces that one would question and deconstruct our this is excellent, because surely never have otherwise been able normal ways of looking at the we are, in ‘reality’, in so many to enter, the pace serene, the im- world, at least if we are to have areas of our lives, research and ages as beautiful as the music a hope of working out how he art, bouncing back and forth be- and recitation, the echo of the or she does it. But we almost tween the how and the what, revelation gently reverberating never succeed. Even if we know the theory and the practice, al- across time and into the future. for sure - we suppose - what… ways knowing we need both, Notes that at this moment, he is really always able to focus only on doing that in the other hand, we the one or the other, grooving [1] See Tom Holland. “Where Mystery Meets History.” History still cannot see how it is done. round the circle or, better, spiral Today, May 12, 2012, Volume of deduction and induction, the And so, despite our cunning, 62, Issue 5, pp. 19-24. For old separation. The magician… exceptional elaboration, see the despite many magicians even multiple articles in “Aux Origines ah! The magician knows this! playing with this, giving us meta- de Coran”, Religions & Histoire, The magician can multi-task! Janvier-Fevrier 2008, No. 18, level or false distractions and pp. 12-65 and Pascal Buresi, She has realised the alchemists’ signs, clues that are not clues Histoire de l’Islam, Juillet-Aout dream, and reunited opposites 2007, Dossier no. 8058. Also but then again might be, even in a sparkling flash of gold, or see the Encyclopaedia of the telling us not to be distracted… Qur’an Online, 2007, Brill Online at least iron pyrites, fool’s gold. despite all this, we end up where Resources. The inner becomes the outer, and what we were before, lost [2] See Dangerous Knowledge: the male and female are (re-) Orientalism and Its Discontents. and suckers. Robert Irwin. 2006. Woodstock: united, heaven and earth are no The Overlook Press. Only once have I been able - I longer rent asunder, that which [3] See Islamic Art. 2001. supposed - to work out in real was concealed is made visible Florence: SKALA and “From time what was going on. It was whilst that which was in sight the Prophet to postmodernism? New world orders and the end of on a TED video of a magician, disappears and the rabbit was Islamic art”, Finbarr Barry Flood who moved his hands over a in the hat all along, except, no, it in Making Art History: A Changing couldn’t have been. Or, to return Discipline and its Institutions, ed. person who couldn’t see the Elizabeth Mansfield, pp. 31-53. movements, and the person to a recurrent theme of these Routledge: New York. told us what the magician had reviews, perhaps not a rabbit done. I saw the performer rub his in a hat but a cat in a box, you Trade of the hands on his jacket just before, know which one I mean. and assumed that there must be Tricks: Inside the The Trade of the Tricks, subtitled static electricity involved, mak- Magician’s Craft ‘Inside the Magician’s craft’, in- ing the participant’s skin tingle or volved its author living with the hairs on her arms stand on end. by Graham M. Jones tribe, as some anthropologists Then - the so-and-so - the magi- insist one should. He appren- University of California Press, cian did it in a way that showed ticed himself, met many magi- Berkeley, CA, 2011, 308 pp. it could not possibly have been cians, did shows, and became ISBN 978-0520270466 done like that, and I was curi- a member of the Fédération ously relieved. Reviewed by Brian Reffin Française des Artistes Presti- Smith There are several books, and digitateurs, for almost the en- numerous articles in the scien- tire story is set in France, one [email protected] tific and popular press, on how of the main centres of old and We are fooled no longer by cognitive psychologists, not to ‘new’ magic, with sometimes magic, we suppose. We know mention the intelligence serv- firm support from the Ministère that it is applied psychology. Un- ices, are learning from and col- de la Culture. less we are extremely innocent, laborating with magicians, who The book is full of delights of we look left when the magician have insights into our ways of the tricks, in many senses, of would have us look right. We making sense of the world that the magic artists. They cun- keep our eye on the ball even conventional investigators might ningly steal, dissemble, hide, when apparently far more in- not. This book does not address and flaunt their mysteries (how teresting action is happening in that issue directly, but rather re- unlike other artists, not to men- the hat. We know that we must, turns to the craft, illuminated by tion scientists). They endlessly as quickly as we can during this a psychological and, especially, discuss magic, to the point of performance, suspend, reverse, anthropological approach. And entirely ignoring performances

60 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 to sit at the back manipulating which makes me want to run draconian time constraints and coins or cards. home and do work, perhaps un- the absorbing and provocative related directly to the exhibition’s (rather US-centred, though try- One of the ‘new’ magicians contents. ‘New Art/Science Af- ing not to be) timeline, it isn’t the (though with a long working finities’ is a book that made me end of the world in this case. history) he discusses is Abdul want to do new, and revisit old, Alafrez, whom I had the privilege What’s more, if you don’t buy things. of inviting a couple of times to the book (available from Lulu the art school in which I taught New Art/Science Affinities’ is but at 45.75$ !), you can down- in France where he stayed for jointly published by The Miller load the PDF file for free (quite hours helping the students in Gallery at Carnegie Mellon legally - they make it available a makeshift but astoundingly University and the STUDIO for in this form): just look for the title effective magic workshop to Creative Inquiry. It is a ‘sprint in a well-known search engine. partially disappear. He also book’, written and designed in uses computer programs, ad- one intensive week by Régine Alien vanced technology of all kinds, Debatty, Claire L. Evans, Pa- Phenomenology: and has worked with musicians, blo Garcia and Andrea Glover, theatres, opera, scientists and with designers Luke Bulman and Or, What It’s Like artists: this book not only fas- Jessica Young of Thumb. To Be A Thing cinatingly lays bare the craft, No space here to list the sixty- mores, sociology, anthropology by Ian Bogost odd artists and collaborations and tendencies of magic; it also University Of Minnesota covered, some well known, reminds us how magic, in nu- Press, Minnesota, MN, 2012, some not, and anyway that’s not merous ways, can inform the 168 pp. really the point, which is that whole gamut of fields in which from postnatural history to Mak- ISBN 978-0816678976 Leonardo readers might be iner works, from politically infused terested. It’s also quite funny. Reviewed by Brian Reffin digital art to rendering incinera- Smith tor pollution visible by lasers, New Art/Science from tissue culture as art to real [email protected] Affinities snails carrying real snail-mail, from hacking and subverting by Andrea Grover, Régine newsfeeds to Arse Elektronika Debatty, Claire Evans, Pablo (sic and LOL), the book is quite Garcia, Thumb subversive, very stimulating, Miller Gallery at Carnegie and perhaps slightly too skewed Mellon University + CMU towards the natural sciences: STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, one might have wished a bit Pittsburgh, PA, 2011, 190 pp. more from collaborations with ISBN 0977205347 physics, mathematics, materials science or research qua Reviewed by Brian Reffin research. As a ‘snapshot’ cre- Smith ated on the run over seven days, it necessarily portrays a quite [email protected] particular moment and choice. Still: an excellent read. Most of us have too many ideas Well, the things they say! Do we and not enough time. We per- The design really is excellent - a attend enough to things? Or to haps tend to shy away from most interesting and useful (and change the emphasis, do we pay books that are surveys or col- deeply subjective!) timeline of enough attention to THINGS? lections of art or technique in art and science intersections is No, it still doesn’t really work. our field, fearing distraction or printed on warm, yellowish pa- So used are we to dealing, in disappointment. This would be per that lends everything an air normal discourse, with things a mistake were the book to help of retro and up-to-dated-ness at as just stuff, that the title of Al- us see our own ideas from a dif- the same time, and I guess that’s ien Phenomenology or What It’s ferent perspective, able to be about right. One does, as so of- Like To Be A Thing comes as realised in new ways. My defini- ten, miss an index; but given the an almost transgressive shock. tion of a good art show is one

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It goes skipping over living (Nagel’s ‘What is it like to be a ment - roasted chilies lose their graveyards, shorn of the dead, bat?’) are “both ordinary and skins and are like the wounds bats on past the philosopher’s weird, but so is everything else: of Christ, gypsum dunes re- Fledermäusen and past post- toilet seats, absinthe louches, sembling a white shoreline in humanism. seagulls, trampolines.” Espe- a Žižek daydream never reach cially when you read this book. the sea - is the Baroque elabora- Connected to the pleasingly Just as the word ‘hetereological’ tion making up for the absence named OOO or Object Orient- (words that cannot refer to them- of a tune? - but if you want to ed Ontology, Ian Bogost’s book selves: is heterological hetero- see what the OOO Zeitgeist makes us re-examine our philo- logical?) looks more and more is about, and be jolted out of sophical relationship to that part alien the more you consider it as human-centred complacency, of the universe that is not the a thing in itself, this text alien- this might well be the book to minuscule ‘us’. For those who ates every thing, in a good way. read. The pilot of a crashing air- thought it was a bit of a stretch craft is encouraged by air traffic to include (just some?) animals, He also wants us to do and make control to “Say your souls, say systems and artificial intelligenc- things, to become practicing phi- your souls” (i.e. how many on es, it may seem absurd - or in losophers in the sense that a board?). Well, the things they this reviewer’s case delightful doctor would be no good if she say! Perhaps we should say our - to happen again and again just read textbooks. I am dust- things. in this text upon lists of things ing off my old Meccano (Erec- that demand, Bogost argues, tor Set) collections and seeking There are useful notes, a bibli- to be seen as perceiving and exploded diagrams of anything, ography and, for once, a good interacting, even if he has to use or any thing, not to understand index. metaphor to do so. But as Gre- how a submarine or iPad works, * They are called ‘it-narratives’: gory Bateson used to argue, we but to marvel at the thingness. The Memoirs and Interesting need to see computers as meta- But does part A27 love, or do Adventures of an Embroidered phor machines, able to handle harm to, or appreciate part C7? Waistcoat (1751), A Month’s syllogisms such as ‘Men die, Is it ethical to screw in a screw? Adventures of a Base Shilling grass dies, so men are grass’. Anyway, ethics is itself a ‘hyper- ([c.1820]), The Life and Adven- He told me he wanted a ‘comput- object’, ‘exploded to infinity’. tures of a Scotch Guinea Note ing Greek, not Latin’, the latter There is no panpsychism here, (1826) - it was almost always being perhaps too pornographi- for it all comes down to nothing/ ‘adventures’. cally meticulous. As professor everything, unless you want to of digital media at Georgia In- postulate the Higgs boson as stitute of Technology, and as a a unit of consciousness, and When Biometrics video game designer, Bogost let’s not. Fail: Gender, may naturally want his ideas to Of course, we are not really in- Race, and the be seen in virtual worlds. But it sulated from the idea that things Technology of goes beyond that, beyond ‘mind have things to say and do - eight- and nature’ so to say, back into Identity eenth and nineteenth century - I was going to say ‘our world’ stories told by household ob- by Shoshana Amielle Magnet - the world of things. And that jects*, ‘I am a camera’ etc. - but ‘back into’ is just me being hu- Duke University Press, these are really saying things man about it, because of course Durham and London, 2011, are ‘like’ other things. This book logically there would be no such 224 pp. is different, for it asserts that distinction, though some things ISBN 978-0822351351 everything, perhaps even that are more equal than others. which does not exist, and cer- Reviewed By Hannah If we read just a few of his ran- tainly including us, is alien and Drayson, Plymouth University, domly or carefully chosen names metaphorical. As he proposes, Transtechnology Research of things, we are forced, again it’s not turtles but metaphors all rather joyfully I find, to consid- the way down. hannah.drayson@plymouth. er plumbers, cotton, bonobos, ac.uk You might like or loath Bog- DVD players and sandstone, or ost’s possibly over-heated but Biometric technologies used for the unicorn, combine harvester, apparently necessary use of the confirmation of individual the colour red, methyl alcohol, metaphor and simile in his argu- human identity, are a persist- quarks, corrugated iron; bats ent example of a technological

62 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 vapourware, probably more fa- which stem from the premises in the way in which biometrics miliar to most of us from science on which individual difference are applied, Magnet identifies a fiction than from their slow in- is defined. Magnet explores the range of cultural problems that crease in use in personal travel implications of these limitations stem from the acceptance of the documents, such as passports with reference to the range of technology as a cure-all. She and fingerprint locks on cars and sites in which biometric tech- is also not slow in pointing out laptops. However, particularly in nology has been implemented, that the research in this area is the post 9/11 United States, the exploring the social problems painfully unaware of how out of biometrics industry is currently that it is posited to be able to date its approach is; the con- expanding, landing multi-billion solve and showing that in many cepts that she draws upon to dollar contracts in border con- cases its effect is only to hide, or question it are now basic to the trol, adding to its existing foot- exacerbate, these problems. As canon of gender and technology holds in law-enforcement, wel- Magnet argues, biometrics fail studies. In addition to this, the fare, and prison management. because they are discriminatory models of objectivity that these Focusing on five main themes both in the methodology used technologies invoke in order to surrounding the technology, to identify individuals and also state their authority are long dis- When Biometrics Fail provides in the social implications of the credited and highly simplistic in an historical overview of the manner and sites in which it is scientific terms. growth of the industry since the implemented (prisons, welfare, The opening chapter analyses 1970s. Using evidence from a border control). Further, there what can be seen as broadly dis- range of contemporary sources, is a wider and deeper problem criminatory aspects of how bio- journalism, media and recent throughout that cannot be sepa- metric recognition is achieved. research published on biometric rated from the bias of the users One example, retinal scanning, technologies, Magnet demon- of the technology. This is that is only effective on light coloured strates rather compellingly how the basis of the whole enter- eyes because of light reflections these technologies fail to live up prise is on the false premise, in darker corneas that interfere to Daston and Galison’s (2007) the idea that the biological body with the camera’s view of the concept of ‘mechanical objec- can be fixed upon as an endur- veins in the retina, making the tivity,’ the idea that machines ing, digitisable, and recoverable technology as it has been devel- are capable of making unbiased document, an idea that has been oped in Western laboratories, judgements owing to the privi- challenged in the scholarship biased in favour of a particular leged link to the physical world of thinkers like Donna Haraway population. Magnet very effec- (and lack of subjectivity) with and Judith Butler and invoking tively places a number of these which they are associated by the critical concept of ‘corporeal problems that seem to constitute marketers, computer scientists, fetishism’. It is this model of bio- in-built biases in the technolo- politicians, and the media. logical identity as an essential gies, in contrast with the argu- and fixed quality that is both out ments of industry professionals of date in so far as the humani- and law enforcement officers ties have understood the body automated biometric systems for considerable time (notions are superior to humans because such as gender are no longer they are unable to discriminate. considered only biological rather Technical limitations that are than performed) but also posi- easily brushed under the carpet tions the body as a commodity. in a scientific lab or paper, take In four short chapters Magnet on a life of their own when the makes clear the practical im- technologies are implemented, pact of these assumptions and and the assumptions that under- faulty models of biological iden- lie them are played out in the tity, both dated and troublingly real world. In an analysis of the linked to discredited scientific techniques of biometric identi- ideas of biological race and fication, the apparent naïveté of To this end, When Biometrics practices of profiling and read- current research and biometric Fail offers a damning analysis of ing the body such as physi- identification techniques shows the technical problems that dog ognomy. By discussing these the extent to which cultural as- biometric identification, many of assumptions as they manifest sumptions and essentialist para-

63 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 digms underlie the methods by peared successful. Enrolment in identification is a failure of the which researchers identify and the benefit system has dropped. technology, an anti essential- train systems to make identifica- However, as Magnet points out, ist position would question the tions. For example, the use of this change has been argued to legitimacy of any technological ‘soft’ biometric differentiators, be a result of the discrimination system of categorisation that i.e. sex and race, invoke what against immigrant populations makes a claim to truth. In the appear to be extremely limited who are unwilling to submit for case of biometrics, identification ideas about which detectable fingerprinting because of fears technologies offer a trade-off characteristics might offer evi- that this will interfere with their between what is affordable, pos- dence of male or femaleness, applications for permanent US sible, and pragmatic, which can such as hair length, and signi- residency (p.88). Therefore, the be enriched or limited by ideas fiers related to dress and other apparently unintended side ef- of what can be mapped onto or markers of gender (such as an fects of implementing these discovered as manifest in the individual’s décolletage and the technologies appear to have body. In particular, the concepts amount of skin showing or wear- a far less ‘objective’ and non- of power and institutional con- ing a tie). discriminatory consequences trol that themselves impact on than their supporters argue. the way in which these systems Magnet also discusses the in- are understood, interacted with, As Magnet describes it mechan- dustries’ exploitation of U.S. or resisted by their users that ical objectivity is “a visual trick prisons as a testing site for the seem central to this discussion to hide subjectivity from view” implementation of technologies are not invoked as often as they – a subjectivity that is associ- like hand geometry scanning. In might be. a chapter titled “Acres of Skin” ated with discriminatory bias (after Allan Hornblum’s 1999 text (a bias which she points out The synthesis offered by How appears with the introduction on the exploitation of American Biometrics Fail suggests a of new anti-terrorism laws post prisoners as medical research further reappraisal on philo- 9/11 to have become more and subjects from the 1940s to 70s) sophical terms of what these more clearly detectable in the she discusses how this method technologies actually are, how attitudes and behaviour of both of counting prisoners (an activity they factor into human action UK and U.S. police). The ideal of undoubtedly carried out for their and experience as well as be- a machine system that can iden- own safety as well as keeping ing themselves expressions of tify both individuals and specific track of their whereabouts) in- a particular way of seeing. The traits without the involvement terferes with prisoner’s rights book, therefore, offers further of a potentially biased human to refuse to give biometric data compelling evidence of the en- observer is one that, as Das- but also results in prison spaces tanglement between the social, ton and Galison (2007) tell us, where the watcher is no longer ideological and imaginary func- a notion was historically short tions of technical systems and human and no longer able to lived in much of the sciences; infer that prisoners are protest- their purported use, but apart she does not note, although it from its discussion of the trans- ing, hunger striking, depressed, is an observation often made by or sick, or even (as familiar from formation of the concept of the those studying a range of imag- international border, generally science fiction, and as Magnet ing technologies focused on the it does not offer an alternative tells us, in recent crimes) still body (Dumit, 2002; Saunders, understanding of biometrics, attached to the body part be- 2008; Joyce, 2009), and that this taking them only at face value, ing scanned. Another case ideal of objective machines is as technical devices, and not study shows how the industry regularly invoked by developers, repositioning them as the man- has targeted another state ap- users and salespeople. ifestations of particular set of paratus to which another large ideas or desires on the part of population is subject, the U.S. Some aspects of this critique their makers and users. welfare system, with the imple- could be explored further, and mentation of mandatory finger- the text offers much evidence Magnet argues in her final pages print scanning in a number of that would support further meta- that biometric technology does states. Superficially the goal analysis, particularly in terms of not need to be perfected, be- of this has been to reduce the how the technological functions cause it cannot ever achieve number of individuals making of biometrics are understood. what it claims, to map a range of multiple claims for assistance While we might accept that sub- cultural ideas onto a biological, and have on the surface ap- jectivity invading the process of but ever changing, body. This

64 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 is where the thrust of the book, This is the first volume of a theatrical device in the 1860s. and its intervention lies, not in monumental work that crosses It involved using a large glass discussing the technical failures a number of disciplines as it plate onto which ghostlike im- of biometrics, but in identifying provides the basis for under- ages were projected such that some of the key and catastroph- standing 3D displays. My per- they appeared from the audi- ic problems caused by a partially spective for this review is as a ence perspective to be on stage. fictional technology that claims vision researcher who has done Since they were images and not to do the impossible. The result research on binocular systems solid forms, they could be made is a useful synthesis of the ac- and a visual artist who has been to appear to pass through solid tivities contemporary biometric working with computer systems objects. More recent adaptation industry, providing a compelling for many years. have used the same optical prin- dissection of how the idea of a ciples but with digital projection The overall organization and ap- science of biometrics fails, and and with plastic film replacing proach to the material is excel- a timely critique of an industry the large breakable glass. This lent. After presenting a general and its claims which exploit a historical approach emphasizes overview of the topics to be cov- misconception about the human the principle that science and ered, the author discusses the body and use technological fet- technology are incremental and basic physics and physiology of ishism to posit the solution as a that to understand and to ap- the visual system. In a very help- high tech – and therefore ethi- preciate current technology we ful style that is carried through- cally unproblematic -solution to need to know its history. This out the book, he presents the a range of problems that have also allows the book to remain essential information and then serious political and humanitar- a valuable resource, even as provides references for those ian consequences. the field naturally moves ahead readers interested in pursuing rapidly. References particular topics further. For ex- Daston, L., and Galison, P., (2007) ample in Chapter 2, on visual Anyone interested in gaining Objectivity. New York: Zone. perception, the author covers a a firm understanding of the Dumit, J., (2004) Picturing great deal of background mate- current practice of 3D display Personhood; Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity, Princeton rial, emphasizing those aspects technology would find the book and Oxford: Princeton University that will be most relevant to his a great beginning. I highly rec- Press. later discussion of 3D displays, ommend it. Hornblum, A.M., 1999. Acres while giving references for the of Skin: Human Experiments at reader who is interested in other Holmesburg Prison. Routledge. Lines of Control: aspects of perception or who Exhibition at Joyce, K.A., (2009) Magnetic may not have the necessary Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Johnson Museum Transparency, New York: Cornell background. University Press. The level of presentation, while by Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell Saunders, B., (2008) CT Suite: The Work of Diagnosis in the Age giving some detailed and techni- University) and Hammad of Noninvasive Cutting, Durham & cal accounts, does not get lost Nassar (Green Cardamom), London: Duke University Press. in jargon. It is written in an intel- Curators ligent and engaging style. 3-D Displays and January 21 — April 1, 2012 Spatial Interaction, I also appreciate very much Exhibit website: http:// the author’s use of history. He museum.cornell.edu/ Vol. 1 From points out and gives credit to exhibitions/lines-of-control. Perception to early workers who, while they html Technology did not have the technology of Accompanying Catalogue today, understood and made by Barry G. Blundell use of the principles to create Lines of Control: Walker & Wood Ltd., image-making devices that Partition as a Auckland, NZ, 2011, 391 pp. are the forerunners of some of today’s more advanced tech- Productive Space ISBN 978-0473177010 nological systems. A good ex- Reviewed by George Shortess ample is in Chapter 7 when he by Iftikhar Dadi and Hammad discusses Pepper’s Ghost that Nassar (eds.) [email protected] made its first appearance as a Green Cardamom, London

65 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 and Herbert F. Johnson demic parlance is increasingly this land — a strategy reso- Museum of Art, Cornell punctuated with the prefix ‘post’ nant with other native artists, University, Ithaca, NY, 2012, (-colonial, -modern, -industrial, too. Through this, the viewer is 238 pp. -national, -digital, -human)? The situated in a tense zone where ISBN 978-1934260227 exhibition provocatively raised modern nationhood is thrown these questions. into sharp contest with native Reviewed by Aparna Sharma, nationhood. As we stand before UCLA New York-based Seher Shah’s this work that interrogates US large-scale, impressive collages [email protected] political supremacy, we cannot foreground a key problematic in but conjure links with other ter- thinking about colonialism and It has been often observed that ritories, outside mainland USA, the borders it continues to en- the Partition of India and Pa- where the US intervenes politi- gender. Shah overlays images kistan in 1947 did not get fully cally and militarily. And so Fight of Islamic, Baroque and colo- commemorated in public imagi- for the Line opens up what Rick- nial architectures, and historic nation, say, through a museum, ard terms an ‘ethical schism’: photographs researched from a ritual or some kind of dialogue ‘The US claims to be a beacon sources such as the Royal Geo- that would acknowledge and of justice globally, yet has not graphical Society, creating very memorialize the experiences fully reconciled its ongoing colo- nuanced — delicate, measured of the people who were unset- nial settler status in relationship and rich images that expose us tled by this act that left nearly 3 to indigenous peoples in North to multiple civilizational and cul- million dead and 15 million dis- America’ (202). placed. “Lines of Control,” curat- tural perspectives. Shah’s col- ed by Iftikhar Dadi and Hammad lages resonate with a critical If Lines of Control critically rais- Nassar at Cornell University’s distance particular to her posi- es the links between borders Herbert F. Johnson Museum of tion as a second-generation art- and colonialism, it also calls into Art, was a recent exhibition that ist from the subcontinent. This question the relations between gathered over 40 works in varied critical distance is necessary to contemporary arts and technol- media that dwell on the theme relativise, through juxtaposition, ogies. Many of the borders and of borders, particularly the lines colonial discourse with its ties to control lines in this exhibition that got drawn as colonial em- linear perspective. This serves have been mediated through pires physically receded in the to reveal how colonialism con- some or the other form of tech- last century. As suggested by stitutes a particular worldview nology, and one could almost its title, the India-Pakistan Par- contrasting from and competing plot a history of border technolo- tition was the provocateur for with cultural imaginaries such gies navigating this exhibition. this show, but the exhibition cast as, say, those within Islam. This But very judiciously and subtly a wider span, gathering artists visual rendition of competing Lines of Control resists a techno- from Africa, the Americas, Asia, perspectives, quite resonant logical-progressivist discourse and Europe. Navigating the gal- with the strategies of early Con- with the result that we are con- leries of the Johnson Museum, structivism, is a much-desired fronted, in the same space, with one was overwhelmed by how move through which to decenter works spanning advanced digit- divisiveness has been normal- colonialism and advance criti- al image technologies, wood-cut ized as a geographical and po- cal thought beyond linear and prints, video installations, and litical fact of our times. But one causal understandings of colo- traditional zari (metal-wrapped was more struck by the exhibited nial encounters and hierarchies, thread) embroideries, to name artists’ persistence in embrac- which can prove quite limiting. a few. This rich conglomeration ing the complexities inherent The theme of perspectivalism of technologies is only to the in border experiences — com- is advanced in Jolene Rickard’s advantage of the exhibition’s plexities that cannot be erased Fight for the Line – a work that theme underlining its urgency or simply wished away by the asserts Onkwehonwe peoples’ and constituting a necessary drawing of neat lines marking claim upon their homeland from counterpoint to the celebratory national territories. What are the which they have been displaced discourse of new media arts epistemological consequences by American settler colonialism, from the subcontinent that have of the act of drawing borders the very land on which the John- been the fare of much European and lines of control? And where son Museum stands. The work and North American curatorial do human experiences of bor- deploys projected images and interests within the last decade. ders sit in a world that in aca- signage as a gesture to reclaim Pakistani artist Rashid Rana’s

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All Eyes Skyward During the An- awork, sound recording, edit- thought on borders and modern nual Parade (2004) seductively ing and her very performance nations from varied locations draws the viewer into a compos- before cameras. and contexts. Salah M. Hasan’s ite life-size photographic image Sudan: The Tumultuous Road to While the media works at Lines of a Pakistani crowd seeing a Partition and Jolene Rickard’s of Control reflect the multi-lay- spectacle in the sky during a Minds in Control are two particu- ered and complexly negotiated national parade. Sensing fuzzi- larly perceptive pieces that com- re-presentations of border-ex- ness in this image one is drawn plicate neat histories of colonial- periences and figures, works closer to it and only then is it re- ism, raising the arbitrary nature in other media at the exhibition vealed that the image has been of post-colonial states. Sitting usher us into a more critically digitally composed through a in a complementary relation to daring zone — the realm of in- colour-sensitive assemblage the exhibition this catalogue will timate personal memories, de- of stills from blockbuster Hindi serve as a useful resource for sires, and interpretations per- films such as Sholay and Um- scholars and practitioners of the taining to displacement and the rao Jaan, among others. Here, arts and sciences alike. imaginations its fosters. One digital image technology serves of the most impactful bodies to unravel a political-cultural di- of work was New York-based Beyond the Brain: chotomy — the people looking Zarina Hashmi’s prints that con- How Body and up to a military spectacle par- template upon exile, dwelling take in the state’s discourse Environment spaces, borders, maps, and that constructs India as an ‘en- Shape Animal and language, here Urdu. Hashmi’s emy’; and yet the minute film Human Minds prints reflect a disciplined en- stills through which this image gagement through which per- is composed gesture to popular by Louise Barrett sonal experience is historicized culture and the people’s fanta- and historical fact personalized. Princeton University Press, sies fostered by Indian cinema, Aamir Mufti’s eloquent essay Princeton, NJ, 2011, 304 pp. itself often accessed through Zarina Hashmi and the Arts of ISBN 978-0691126449 smuggled VHS tapes. A more Dispossession in the exhibition’s acutely reflexive move occurs Reviewed by Daniel J. catalogue — Lines of Control: in Duncan Campbell’s installa- Povinelli, University of Partition as a Productive Space, tion Bernadette (2008) that is Louisiana elaborates on this. Mufti Hash- an assembled footage portrait mi’s work is decisively exilic pro- of Northern Irish activist and [email protected] viding a ‘critical perspective on politician, Bernadette Devlin, nation-states as the universal known more famously for be- political form of our times, the ing the youngest member of social crises and conflicts they the British Parliament. Drawing seem to repeatedly generate, footage from various sources in and their marginalization and England, Ireland, and America, victimization of those social Campbell constructs a portrait groups that are deemed to be whose reflexive vocabulary de- non-national peoples’ (91). constructs its subject. I am here referencing political-modernist Lines of Control has been an film theory’s take on deconstruc- ambitious undertaking that tion wherein the moving image has effectively expanded dis- apparatus reveals its own work- cussions of partitions, borders, ings thus unsettling dominant and lines of control beyond sin- ideology. But Campbell’s piece gular geographical locations. pushes beyond reflecting the This is a crucial move that inau- When a chimpanzee stockpiles apparatus at work in a technical gurates new questions and lines rocks as weapons or when a frog sense and imbues the decon- of thought in the study of cul- sends out mating calls, we might structive move with an explicit tural, technological, and political easily assume these animals political agenda — the revela- phenomena and experiences in know their own motivations--that tion of how media constructed our times. The exhibition’s cata- they use the same psychologi- Bernadette Devlin as image logue is a vital text that weaves cal mechanisms that we do. But through techniques of camer- together scholarly and artistic as Beyond the Brain indicates,

67 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 this is a dangerous assumption Berkeley, CA, 2010, 448 pp. “There are many ironies . . . [One because animals have differ- ISBN 978-0520261525 is] that the stranglehold and taint ent evolutionary trajectories, of feminized style, perpetuated ecological niches, and physi- Reviewed by Amy Ione, The in Florence long after Caravag- cal attributes. How do these Diatrope Institute gio’s virile style had transformed differences influence animal art elsewhere, was finally bro- [email protected] thinking and behavior? Remov- ken by a female artist, Artemisia ing our human-centered spec- Brunelleschi’s Egg: Nature, Art, Gentileschi, who brought both tacles, Louise Barrett investi- and Gender in Renaissance Italy Caravaggism and a new gender gates the mind and brain and is a study of the Italian Renais- dynamic to the Medici court of offers an alternative approach sance that argues the visual arts Francesco I’s nephew, Cosimo for understanding animal and both anticipated and mediated II” (p. 312). human cognition. Drawing on the profound shift in the con- Clearly, large and complex do- examples from animal behavior, cept of nature from the organic mains are engaged in this study. comparative psychology, robot- worldview to the scientific per- Frequently the analyses chal- ics, artificial life, developmental spective that took root at that lenge assumptions so woven psychology, and cognitive sci- time. According to Garrard, the into both art and cultural his- ence, Barrett provides remark- gendered status of nature, the tory that we do not see them to able new insights into how ani- perspective of feminized na- raise questions. Others (e.g., mals and humans depend on ture’s history, and the biases Carolyn Merchant and Evelyn their bodies and environment-- of masculinist art history shaped Fox Keller) have argued that not just their brains--to behave her counternarrative. In particu- the Western concept of nature intelligently. lar, she argues that around the changed significantly during the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- Barrett begins with an overview Renaissance. Garrard builds on ries we can identify a demotion of human cognitive adaptations their work. Like these writers she of the female role from the el- and how these color our views notes that it was during this pe- evated images of the Virgin to of other species, brains, and riod that philosophies of nature the more mundane role of the minds. Considering when it is moved from a view of the natural female as the facilitator of patri- worth having a big brain--or in- world as an organism imbued archal reproduction. Moreover, deed having a brain at all--she with mind, or “soul,” on an earth during the High Renaissance, investigates exactly what brains that was itself understood as we see a neo-patriarchialistic are good at. Showing that the alive and intelligent, to the early art; the nuclear family was cul- brain’s evolutionary function modern “scientific” conception turally celebrated in imagery that guides action in the world, she of the world as a machine that now conceives it as husband- looks at how physical structure lacks both intelligence and the wife-children, rather than the contributes to cognitive proc- capacity to move itself, creat- mother-child, further putting esses, and she demonstrates ed and maintained by a divine the Nature and the feminine how these processes employ outside being. What Garrard in its place. By the end of the materials and resources in spe- adds to this earlier research is sixteenth century, the time we cific environments. a revolutionary perspective that associate with Caravaggio and considers how and where art fits Arguing that thinking and be- the Carracci brothers, “the de- within this evolution. havior constitute a property of sire to return to aesthetic clarity the whole organism, not just the and logic, the growing interest The book opens with a philo- brain, Beyond the Brain illus- in practical applications of new sophical overview, reviewing the trates how the body, brain, and technologies, and the rise of the gendering of nature from pre- cognition are tied to the wider new scientific objectivity are re- history through the Middle Ages. world. lated to each other through their With this foundation in place, opposition to a feminized Other” Garrard forwards the focus to Brunelleschi’s (p. 310). Overall, as Garrard ar- case studies of major Renais- Egg: Nature, Art, gues her case, going through sance figures such as Brunel- and Gender in evolving art and styles, she fre- leschi, Masaccio, Botticelli, Le- Renaissance Italy quently points out exceptions onardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, to her generalizations, none of Pontormo, Giorgione, and Titian by Mary D. Garrard which deter her from her vision. and some discussion of various University of California Press, Indeed, she writes: schools. This robust approach

68 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 allows her to create the well- a flat surface should receive was consonant with a familiar researched and sophisticated the commission. Each master humanist claim that the differ- study. Detailed analyses present failed to make the egg stand on ence between nature and art her view on how art was an in- its end. When it was his turn, was mind (her italics, p. 50); and gredient in a downward revision Brunelleschi lightly broke the the completion of the dome and that moved the feminine Nature end of the egg on the marble, related projects gave Florence from a divine and generative leaving it to stand on its shards. a symbol that transformed “the power into the lowly physical na- Garrard sees this story as a key nurturing and protective powers ture of rocks, trees, and clouds. component in a contest between of the Virgin into a bright new vi- Given how refined the research art and nature. The “egg” is a sion of security and progress as is, I think the all readers are like- natural form and, as others have promised by technology” (p. 53). ly to take away different things argued as well, the rebirth of It is an interesting thesis, partic- from the book, based on how the arts in the Quattrocento was ularly since I’m more acquainted much knowledge they bring to stimulated in part by an effort with the view that Brunelleschi’s the topic, their own backgrounds to reassert human control over insight was not a complete and predispositions, and wheth- nature’s chaos, an idea inter- epiphany so much as it was iner (or not) her unusual approach woven with the outbreak of the spired by re-publication of Vit- resonates with their own schol- plague of the previous century. ruvius’ De Architectura, which arship. Such a breadth of re- Her conclusion is that: describes Roman machines actions seems appropriate for “Having discovered one of Na- used in the first century AD to this kind of hefty (it weighs over ture’s secrets in the structural build large structures such as 5 pounds) volume because its strength of the egg, Brunelleschi the Pantheon and the Baths of heft also translates into a well makes the egg perform for him, Diocletian, structures he would researched, philosophically rich, putting it to larger use by imitat- see for himself as papal archi- stimulating, thought provoking, ing Nature’s mysterious designs tect. It is also important to note and quite contrarian volume. on a grand scale. The conceal- that she does not place this idea I was drawn to the book by its ment of his sources, both in the within a vacuum. Because the enticing title. It seems Garrard apparently cryptic egg demon- egg as a symbol is so impor- chose how and where she takes stration and in the hiding of the tant to her story, she presents issue with scholarship that ex- dome’s true structure behind Vasari’s account, compares sev- tends out from the design and ribs that tectonized its breast- eral other scholarly positions on construction of Brunelleschi’s or egglike form, may bespeak an the account and competition, dome for the Duomo of Flor- unacknowledged competition, analyzes the pros and cons of ence, Santa Maria del Fiore, between the creative powers of the egg story, and reminds us of which was carried out between Nature and those of the artist. other art historical “eggs” (e.g., 1420 and 1436. More specifi- At this stage, art’s special pow- Piero della Francesco’s Brera cally, Garrard sees this feat as ers are not articulated directly, Madonna (Madonna and Child a symbol of the triumph of tech- and Nature is still credited as the with Saints and Federico da nology over nature. What this source . . . Yet, as the dome’s Montefeltro), c. 1472-74). “triumph” means in terms of the actual construction showed, Na- Her views on Masaccio also art of that time is the theme of ture’s living structures could be show how she places her ideas the book. improved upon, if they were set within the traditional canon. Ar- in larger and permanent form . The standard canon tells us that, guing that Masaccio wanted to . . art could create entirely new according to Vasari, the decisive work like a designer, like God, kinds of order, marked by math- moment in Brunelleschi’s win- she points to the self-portrait ematical rationality rather than ning of the dome competition he painted in his St. Peter En- organic design” (p. 45). for this project came about when throned and states that all of the the many aspiring contenders In her view, the “core meaning in enthusiasm about his work with gathered to present their models the Quattrocento [is] the strug- perspective has clouded the way for crowning the cathedral. Un- gle of the male hero, whether he re-positioned women. For like the others, Brunelleschi pro- Hercules, Daedalus, or the art- example, Eve apart, not a single duced no model or plan; instead, ist, to escape the domination of female appears on the entire left he brought forth a simple egg, female Nature” (p. 51); “Brunel- wall of the Brancacci Chapel, proposing that whoever could leschi’s transcendent solution, and only a handful or women are make the egg stand upright on a triumph of mind over matter, seen on the other walls, solely

69 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 in passive or caretaking roles In fairness I should note that something about it that I had (p. 75). Here, too, the ideas are Garrard looks at Botticelli’s de- not thought of or encountered presented within the context of velopment toward an abstrac- before, whether in real time or his art’s development. tion of his own invention as an virtual performance or as im- extremely important component aged, sounded or written. Of “The almost obsessive focus of his competitive challenge to course, cruelty abides with and of scholars upon the innovative Nature. I should also note that between us. We can’t escape perspective construction of this some of the case studies, for it. We provoke it, support it, fresco [Masaccio’s Trinity] has example the discussions of condemn it or shy away from distracted us from another origi- Leonardo do a good job of bal- it as we can. It resonates or it nal feature: its assertive rejec- ancing the artist’s art with the does not, it leaves us shaken or tion of matrifocal holy kinships, philosophy. Regardless of what numb, or passes through us as a genre the artist obviously the text is emphasizing in any simply another incident among knew well. Masaccio replaced part, the many, well-produced all too many we have managed these with a patrilineal image images make it easy to engage to endure. Being a victimizer or . . . The exceptional “trinity” of with the words. victim, of course, is something St. Anne, the Virgin and Christ else, and there the term “art” Child [found in the Masolino/ Mary D. Garrard, a well-known loses meaning. When directly in- Masaccio Sant’Anna Meterza] feminist scholar and art histo- flicting pain or having it inflicted is supplanted by the canoni- rian, spent years developing this on you, what space is left for cal masculine Trinity. God the penetrating study. As noted, she you to find significance within Father and His Son command incorporates some scholarship it: little to none. And for those the central axis, while Christ’s from the field of feminist stud- others who may watch, are they earthly mother stands to the ies, but the thrust of the argu- anything more than voyeurs? side, displaced” (p. 70). ment is presented through the Commanding agents to do your language of art history. Follow- A tome as large as this survey dirty work can open the door to ing the long-standing academic covers so many topics that eve- a kind of artistry, however hor- tendency to elevate philosophi- ry reader will inevitably come rifying it might be. But even here cal perspectives over contextual across ideas to savor and details the terms bifurcate and ethical history, the words often seemed with which to find fault. This was considerations come to the fore, densely abstract. Because of the case for me as I read. What as they should. this, I kept wondering why she was most pronounced was that, didn’t draw upon writers such as So this book offers perspective as a woman, I really wanted to Gerda Lerner, who documented on what makes the representa- applaud the feminist scholarship the twelve-hundred-year strug- tion of cruel acts, and cruelty, but, as an artist, I found much of gle of women to free their minds artistic, and what does not. That the gender-specific arguments from patriarchal thought. Still, is to say, what gives to such acts seemed too much like special- even with its fault’s, the book is the values we attribute to art and ized art-speak. I found the sec- masterful and no doubt a study the values we attribute to bad tions that resonated the most that will engage Renaissance faith or simple disgust: from per- were those where she talked scholars for years to come. sonal revelation, the clarity in about the art rather than the embracing something you did philosophical counter-narrative not before in just this way, or a she was promoting. For exam- The Art of Cruelty: revalued ambivalence, for ex- ple, when speaking of Botticelli’s A Reckoning ample, about the work and how Birth of Venus, she points to “an it plays or culminates or some- abstract pattern [that] is devel- by Maggie Nelson thing of both, to an exorcism oped [and] sets him apart from W.W. Norton & Company, New of, or service to, neurotic, agit many of his contemporaries” (p. York, NY, 2012, 304 pp. prop or other compulsions which 114). This discussion of some ISBN 978-0393072150 might shock but rarely inspire. abstract elements in his work seemed more tangible to me Reviewed by Allan Graubard In each case for Nelson, atten- in terms of art and less amor- tiveness couples with nuance [email protected] phous as well. It stayed with me before the work, and that re- to a greater degree than many I was initially attracted to this lationship is primary. That she of the verbal abstractions used book by way of its title. Discuss- does not practice what she to make her case. ing the art of cruelty may reveal preaches methodically, lend-

70 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 ing to her discourse an alea- luminate and beguile. What else This is one reason why her tory character, doesn’t prevent have we less played out here book is important enough. At her from making use of it well but a kind of compassion that times it breathes and allows enough – an aspect, I am sure, we rarely acknowledge or use, us to breathe with it. At other that contributes to the notice her including the deep possibility times its breath dissimulates book has received. She plays of humor and irony by way of it, the communion it seeks. The intellectually, her subjects ar- and other riches still largely in contradiction is intriguing. I only tistically. Shall I mention just a the wings? wish, given her expansive read- few? There is Sade, Nietzsche, ing and discretion about art, she Artaud, Dix, Kafka, Brecht and Most striking for me about this would use both more intensively. more currently Abramovic, book, though, is its temporality. Her concluding chapter, “Rarer Fassbinder, Mendieta, Antin, By that I mean two things: its and Better Things” points to this the Yes Men, Holzer, and oth- currency, in terms of the artists, although I’m not quite sure what ers, a compendium of creators writers and film-makers Nelson she means. So, too, her book we have encountered in one or explores, with one composer, subtitle, “A Reckoning,” which, another ways, balanced on both Cage, and their value over time. for me at least, she has yet to ends by Bacon and Plath with a While explaining why a work make with cruelty and the art tether to Buddhist perspectives interests her and may interest that represents it and us, or that sometimes left me curious, us, I also came away with a pe- some vital part of us that makes not so much as to why but why culiar sense of evaporation, of us what we are and least or best not; it’s about time. entering an alternate or parallel desire to be. scheme whose values slip away. The book is broken into 16 chap- This is not to say that Nelson ters. I will mention a few of their forgoes her aim. She doesn’t. titles to indicate what Nelson But, and perhaps this is a sign of deals with, not without personal- the times, it diffuses into a shift- ity, and what you may gain from: ing landscape where insights Styles of Imprisonment; Captiv- emerge and vanish, and whose ity, Catharsis; Nobody Said No; overall significance diminishes A Situation of Meat; Precarious- as a result. If I bring into this con- ness; Face… sideration the ever-present tides of real politick, whose cruelties The art of cruelty remains with are immediate or insidious, and us, a mirror to who we are, a the deluge of virtualities that or- looking glass to what we might bit about them, this act of inter- become, given the desire to pretation enervates as much as transform the images that compel us, and the actions that Nor does she avoid question- it enlightens. sometimes define us. ing the rote tradition that “avant To her credit, Nelson also knows gardes” do violence to what pre- that boredom can change or ceded them, the better to gain Virtuality and the challenge a reader’s percep- advantages precise to their Art of Exhibition: tion, as it has my own, and that momentum. Complicating this, art, if it seeks something more Curatorial Design of course, is the need, as ex- for the Multimedial pressed by those she admires, than a shallow intensity, needs with few exceptions, to do just boredom, or the space or lack of Museum that -- to strip away, excoriate, space it invokes as counterpoint. by Vince Dziekan cleanse, subvert and otherwise Like Nelson, I too look for that defenestrate given values and intercession or suspension that Intellect Books, Bristol, UK, styles; as if such aggression any work can foil by virtue of its 2012, 176 pp. best enabled them. Certainly, medium or mechanism too rigor- ISBN 978-1841504766 it is a phenomenon worth dis- ously projected. Failure here is cussing despite the oft-echoed thus a kind of triumph. Because, Reviewed by Dene Grigar, death of the avant garde. Some- like her, I seek in art the human- Washington State University how, ghost or not, it stalks us. ity we have all too much lost to Vancouver And somehow its predicates il- acts of cruelty that, on their own, [email protected] asphyxiate.

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There have been several ex- rator sets in motion with his or The book is well written and cellent books published about her design. thought out and, so, is highly curating media art in the last recommended. four years, including Christiane The book is divided into two Paul’s New Media in the White main sections. In the first, “Ex- The Berkshire Cube and Beyond (2008) and positions,” Dziekan addresses Glass Works Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook’s theory in relation to virtuality, the art of exhibition, spatial prac- Rethinking Curating: Art after by William J. Patriquin & Julie tice, digital mediation, the multi- New Media (2010). Joining them, L. Sloan now, is Vince Dziekan’s Virtu- medial museum, and curatorial The History Press, Charleston ality and the Art of Exhibition: design. In the second, “Exhibi- and London, 2011, 128 pp. Curatorial Design for the Multi- tions,” he provides concrete ex- ISBN 978-1609492823 medial Museum. While Dziekan, amples of theory into practice as understandably, covers some it pertains to the curatorial phi- Reviewed by Giovanna L. of the same topics as the other losophy, applied curatorial de- Costantini books (e.g. materiality, space), sign, and artwork of exhibits (to costantini.giovanna.l@gmail. he covers new ground in that name a few areas he addresses) com his book focuses on the quality in which he has himself curated. of virtuality and what it means The fresh reminder that online for curatorial design in context objects are not necessarily al- of the museum. ways virtual ones, coupled with Specifically, he suggests that well-argued theory and its ap- virtual objects “compel [muse- plication to his practice, makes ums] to address the importance the book insightful and useful. of multimedia, defined both a Those coming from a practice in- content delivery and technology volving multimedia sound instal- infrastructure, towards its ex- lations will notice a focus on the pository techniques.” Citing the visual and seeing. But Dziekan, work of Mieke Bal, he claims that who is digital media curator of that building upon the “‘multime- the Leonardo Electronic Alma- dial’ aspect of the museum” may nac, brings his deep experience have “far-reaching implications to bear in this book and presents about ‘what could happen if the us with a very excellent material Referred to as lithos chyte or mixed media nature of museums to consider. ‘cast stone’ by the Greeks, glass were to become a paradigm of was from the first made in imita- cultural practice’” (63). Because each chapter begins with a synopsis and is kept at tion of precious stones. Known Anyone who has ever mounted a brief length, the book seems to date from at least the Third Millennium BCE when it was an exhibit of virtual objects that aimed at the classroom. And, visitors to the space can easily produced in Egypt and Baby- indeed, I am using it this se- access themselves with their lon as tiny pieces of jewel-like mester in the curating course own computer or mobile de- inlay found in ceremonial beak- I am teaching to advanced un- vice, knows instinctively what ers, pectorals, Ushabti figures, dergraduates who seem to have museums (and I would include scepters and crowns, glass in little difficulty grasping the con- galleries, as well) offer is an ex- antiquity was associated with perience, which Dziekan sug- cepts Dziekan presents. But it royalty, sacred functions, and gests is one with a narrative that is ideal for graduate students in burials. Paraded as booty in tri- ultimately pulls works together digital media programs interest- umphal processions and collect- in a way that compels visitors ed in curatorial design. Using it ed among the Romans, glass to think more deeply or differ- for teaching makes me hope that was more prized than precious ently about the work, the ideas future editions of the book will metals, worked in techniques put forth, and their own views include an Index, for the book that ranged from gilding and and perspectives. Virtual ob- does not currently offer one. faceting to engraving and bevel- jects provoke participation from Also useful for students new to ing. It was valued extraordinarily visitors, who become part of the curatorial design for multimedia high, in part due to its delicacy narrative experience that the cu- art would be a glossary of terms. and fragility. One legend has it

72 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 that when a glassmaker offered the turn of the century, colored ing precision and measurement, the Emperor Nero an object of glass came also to be used by including the composition of unbreakable glass, Nero, who followers of William Morris and compounds, firing temperatures, considered the loss of glass’ the Arts and Crafts Movement, thicknesses of glass, shipping fragility a threat to the value of first in Britain, then in America weights, costs to produce, wag- silver and gold, had the crafts- among such figures as John La es, income, discounts, curren- man exiled and his workshop Farge and Louis Comfort Tif- cies and sales figures. One of destroyed. fany. the more absorbing sections examines life in Berkshire Village William Patriquin and Julie In its broadest contours, the among groups of workers and Sloan’s book, The Berkshire Patriquin-Sloan book presents their families, immigrants, jour- Glass Works, presents a history the history of a significant Ameri- neymen and farmers based on of one of the dozens of Massa- can glassworks establishment information culled from census chusett glasshouses that sprang integral to the production of reports. This includes the racial up during the course of the nine- stained glass in nineteenth composition of the glassworks’ teenth century in America, the century America and the for- community in a state that was Berkshire Glass Works factory midable attributes of character, home to abolitionism and the located in Lanesborough, MA, a ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and social life, religious practices, small town just north of Pittsfield craftsmanship that contributed and education of workers em- in a section of the Housatonic to its rise. Part I opens with a ployed in the factory. In certain valley that affords a prospect geological survey of the unique respects it is a history that traces on the Berkshire hills. During natural resources of the area, the growth and expansion of a the 1870’s this factory was the the white sand beds of Northern company and its constituent so- first to produce colored cathe- Berkshire County formed along ciety from elemental foundations dral glass and one of the earli- the shores of the Iapetus Ocean to a material and social fabric est in America to blow antique during the Cambrian Age whose in an arching movement from glass to be used in the creation sands were of such incompara- industrial fundaments to post-in- of stained glass windows. Re- ble purity that manufactories as dustrialization. If the story ended flecting a renewed appreciation far as Liverpool and Le Havre here, the Berkshire Glass Works of window glass that originated considered its “dazzling white- would be a tale of progress and in France and England earlier in ness” the finest ever used in the eventual downturn character- the century where windows were production of glass. The first half istic of many industries. But it deemed to be an integral part of the book describes the stages does not. Through admixtures of architecture, stained glass and operations of antique glass of ambition and competition, was appreciated for its radiance production that included the personality, and public values, and spiritual significance. This melting of mineral batch to mol- Part I chronicles a modern saga led to Gothic revivals of medi- ten glass (referred to as metal) in of hardship, struggle, flux, eco- eval prototypes, pictorial sub- furnaces within clay pots before nomic shifts, periodic renewal, jects and painterly styles found being gathered into cylinders, and vigor sustained through a among Romantic artists such blown, capped, and flattened, legacy of aesthetic value. as members of the Nazarene then rolled into panes of plate Movement. During the Gilded glass. It chronicles the passage Part II is devoted to reflections Age, at the height of American of ownership from the compa- on the exquisite quality and va- industrial expansion, numerous ny’s co-founders through the riety of art glass produced at the studios and workshops sprang partnerships of Page & Robbins BGW, with summaries of notable up throughout New England (1858-1863) and Page & Hard- artists, their careers and stu- where larger establishments ing (1863-1883) with detailed, dios, and brief histories of many employed as many as three hun- often fascinating biographies of America’s most treasured dred glass workers at a time, of its principals and affiliates. landmarks and artifacts. This each specializing in a particular Drawing on transcripts, minutes, section categorizes and defines process. Art glass production advertisements, reports, news- each type of antique blown and as a decorative art peaked in paper articles, ledger extracts, cathedral (rolled) glass made the Aesthetic Movement during journals, and many other critical by the company with illustra- the 1870’s and 1880’s follow- sources, the evolution of tech- tions and explanations of each ing trends that had originated nologies applied, modified and specimen that permit matching in Europe a decade earlier. By invented is described with exact- and identification by collectors

73 L|R|Q 2.02 | 2012 and conservators. Assortments Conservation of Stained Glass include blown, rolled, enameled, in America among many other flashed, streaked, textured and publications on stained glass crackled glass in colors rang- and its restoration. ing from celadon green to “beef- As a technical and historical steak” red, cobalt blue, opal- resource, this meticulously re- escent “milky” white, brilliant searched, straightforward text turquoise and canary yellow. serves as a handbook of tech- Mazarine blue, a color distinct niques and processes involved to the BGW, was held to have in the production of stained or curative properties so that inva- colored glass, an illustrated lids were recommended to take catalogue, a bibliographic ref- an air bath in rooms having sun- erence and a sourcebook for light coming through this blue windows made with Berkshire glass. Created through the in- Glass, the buildings that contain troduction of pot metals shades them, Berkshire Village demo- such as these received awards graphics from 1850 to 1900, and in international exhibitions that the structures, appliances and led to a skyrocketing demand operations that may be indica- for windows in residential build- tive of other glasswork factories ings throughout the Boston area of this period. Closely focused during the 1870’s and 1880’s. on a single glass works manu- Surviving windows made with factory, it would benefit from Berkshire glass during this pe- further contextual background riod include such works as Char- on the revival of colored glass ity and Devotion, paired lancet and its commerce in America windows in S. Anne’s Episco- and Europe during the course pal Church in Lowell, Massa- of the nineteenth century that chusetts designed by Donald might include a chronological MacDonald (1841-1916); resi- table. Yet crafted as carefully dential windows in the Walter as the lancet windows that it de- Hunnewell house in Wellesley, scribes, with original full color MA based on Japanese Manga illustrations, many period photo- models; stained glass panels graphs, a purposeful index and made by the Tiffany Studios for abundant references, this small S. Stephen Episcopal Church in yet artful publication contributes Lynn, MA and Christ Episcopal significantly to our appreciation Church in Pomfret, Connecticut; of a timeless craft and cherished and Frederic Crowninshield’s aspect of American architectural Pericles & Leonardo in the Har- heritage. It provides a luminous vard University Memorial Hall. testimony to the enduring beauty The authors William J. Patriquin of American colored glass. █ and Julie L. Sloan are experts in the field of stained glass and lifelong residents of Berkshire County. William Patriquin, a former biomedical technician, navy diver, and chief petty of- ficer has worked as a professional stained glass restorer since 1997. Julie L. Sloan is a Conservator and stained glass consultant with an MS in Histor- ic Preservation from Columbia University. She is the author of