Cartoon and the Cult of Reduction

Forced Perspectives: Cartoon and The Cult Of Reduction

MARTINE LISA COROMPT

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

(by creative work and dissertation)

August 2016

School of Art Faculty Of The Victorian College Of The Arts

The University of Melbourne

FIG 1 Corompt, Martine Torrent – the endless storm 2015 still from the digital animation

ABSTRACT

Summary Commencing with caricature and reductive imaging techniques, this research explores parallel tendencies evident within broader culture. The thesis argues this reductive predisposition became broader and more prominent during Modernism, the digital revolution of the 1990s, and is strongly manifest within various aspects of contemporary art and culture. Theorized as the ‘Cult of Reduction’ this tendency is both a cultural condition, and a studio methodology employed to create two dimensional projected animation and digital prints.

Abstract Beginning with pictorial caricature as a historical predecessor to animation, the research attempted to find in caricature a meaningful methodology to provide a framework for two-dimensional animation. Incorporating digital processes with drawing and installation, reduction was understood and examined pictorially, temporally and materially. The thesis project considered caricature as a means of exploring pictorial representation as reduction, but soon recognized reduction had more broad implications, and parallel examples were discovered in areas such as economics, ecology lifestyle ideologies, as well as Fine art and design.

While pictorial reduction was most obvious within Modernism, it also was resonant in less obvious ways within the digital art revolution of the 1990’s. It has been prevalent again in contemporary art as a ‘reductivist practice’ recognized by Mike Kelley’s essay ‘Foul Perfection: Thoughts on Caricature’ (1989). Kelley’s essay provided an alternative framework for considering caricature and a recognition of the continuing practice of reduction in contemporary art. More broadly, reduction may also be recognized in areas as diverse as industrial processes, economic theories, personal 5

development, and many others. I have theorized this broader tendency as ‘The Cult of Reduction.’

The main focus of the visual research was realized through animated projections, sometimes situated in gallery spaces but also, more commonly in public spaces. There is also a collaborative relationship with many of the works with the addition of sound. Broadly speaking, this research attempted to highlight the missing contribution that the role of animation plays in the history of modernist contemporary art. I agree that this genre of moving image practice, has for pragmatic and cultural reasons, remained sidelined in serious critical regard by more dominant practices such as film or video. As a result, the research for this thesis is dependent on the contributions of both popular culture (animation and the cartoon) and fine art. The thesis recognizes the parallel circumstances of both mainstream and experimental animation, though traditionally ideologically opposed, are both important in shaping contemporary animation practice. While the research project is practice-based, a significant component of the research includes the historical analysis of particular technologies and forms of entertainment that sit outside the framework of fine art discourse. The Cult of Reduction positions itself between several discourses, and identifies a linking thread between them.

DECLARATION

This is to certify that

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface,

(ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,

(iii) the thesis 44,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices

Martine Lisa Corompt

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank; Dr. Stephen Haley, Associate Professor Barbara Bolt, Lou Hubbard, Vikki McInnes, Scott Miles, Dr. David Sequeira, Camilla Hannan, Philip Brophy, Dr. Darren Tofts, Dr. Greg Creek, Professor Julian Goddard, Karra Rees and staff from the Contemporary Centre for Photography.

Thanks to all my family and friends for enduring my absence over the last 6 years, my partner Dr. Ian Haig (who completed his PhD ahead of time) and especially my dearest Violet who was three when I began this seemingly endless journey.

Funding support: Faculty Small Grant Scheme, City of Yarra, RMIT Staff Development, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Festival.

CONTENTS

Abstract ...... 5

Summary ...... 5 Abstract ...... 5

Declaration ...... 7

Acknowledgements ...... 8

Contents ...... 9

Table of Figures ...... 11

Introduction ...... 16

Chapter 1: From caricature to reduction ...... 22

It began with caricature ...... 22 Cartoon or caricature – finding a definition ...... 28

On wit and humour ...... 34

Gloves and Tachistoscopes – a quick detour ...... 35

Exploring Reduction ...... 41

Modernism, reduction, essence and Fine Art ...... 45

Modernism, industrial reduction and mainstream animation ...... 49

Digital Reduction ...... 57

Reduction as a general social condition ...... 59

The Cult of reduction as a methodology ...... 61

Chapter 2: Dimensional reduction ...... 64

On being flat ...... 65 Subject 1 – Weeding ...... 69

Ad Reinhardt – an encounter with flatness ...... 72

The cult of projection and dimensional reduction ...... 77

Subject 2 - water, wasting and saving ...... 81

Chroma-deficiency, Black White and Yellow ...... 88

Colouring in ...... 99 Cartoons – figurative flatness ...... 102

Subject 3 - Reduced to Rubble ...... 107

Chapter 3- Temporal Reduction ...... 114

Everything takes too long ...... 115 Animation looping – a method of efficiency ...... 118

The Loop as a modular building block: ...... 118

Looping in the gallery ...... 123

Kipple Institute – the efficiency of didactic animation ...... 127

Reduction and the Tachistoscopic Flash: ...... 131

Roundabout projections – reduced viewing ...... 142

Chapter 4: Material Reduction ...... 145

Digital size - does size really matter? (or is size really matter?) ...... 146 The Cubicle project - portability, and play ...... 150

Toys, play and the reduction of adulthood ...... 159

The Jevons Paradox, and the dilemma of efficiency ...... 161

Chapter 5: The cult of reduction, ideology and rhetoric ...... 168

Torrent – cleaning out the gallery ...... 169 It ends with caricature ...... 176

Bibliography ...... 180

Appendices ...... 186

Appendix 1: List of exhibitions during candidature ...... 187 Appendix 2: List of publications during candidature ...... 188

Appendix 3: List of works in final exhibition ...... 189

Appendix 4: Torrent catalogue ...... 190

Appendix 5: Links to video documentation ...... 194

TABLE OF FIGURES

FIG 1 Corompt, Martine Torrent – the endless storm 2015 still from the digital animation ...... 3

FIG 2. Honoré Daumier, Les Poires — La Caricature, 1831 lithography after Charles Philipon, collection Ségolène Le Men. Sourced from http://books.openedition.org/pupo/2240 ...... 24

FIG. 3 Jean-François Moriceau and Petra Mrzyk, excerpt from 1000 Dessins,, Air des Paris, sourced from http://1000dessins.com ...... 25

FIG.4 Charles Philipon La Métamorphose du roi Louis-Philippe en poire (The Metamorphosis of King Louis-Philippe into a Pear) Pen and ink drawing, probably 1831 sourced from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France ...... 27

FIG.5 Original illustration from the Ryan and Schwartz study showing a. photograph, b. shaded drawing, c. contour outline, d. ‘caricature’. Possibly illustrated by Julian Hochberg ...... 36

FIG. 6 Martine Corompt, authors recreation of Julian Hochbergs’ illustration: a. photograph, b. shaded drawing, c. contour outline, d. ‘caricature’...... 36

FIG.7 Martine Corompt, 2013 hand studies with charcoal studio sketches ...... 39

FIG.8 Kara Walker, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven 1995 Cut paper on wall. 15 x 35 ft. (4.6 x 10.7 m). Collection Jeffrey Deitch, New York...... 42

FIG. 9 Paul Morrison, Glebe, 1998 screenprint, edition of 75 ...... 42

FIG.10 Paul Harrison and John Wood 2013 100 Falls, HDV, 33:40 min Carroll/Fletcher Gallery London ...... 45

FIG. 11 Table showing development of graphics style in relation to technology...... 50

FIG.12 Screen stills from the animation Felix in the swim 1922, Pat Sullivan studios, sourced from Archive.org ...... 53

FIG.13 Gerald Mc Boing Boing short film released in 1950 UPA studios, sourced from the book Cartoon Modern ...... 54

FIG.14 Henri Matisse Red Studio, 1911, MOMA New York ...... 55

FIG.15 Image stills from television animation series World of super adventures 1966 -70 Hanna Barbera studios ...... 57

FIG.16 Martine Corompt Crowd Pleasers, 2006 metallic lambda print, collection of artist ...... 58

FIG. 17 Broersen and Lukacs Mastering-Bambi 2010 (left) and Daniel McKewen Zarathustra's Cave 2013-14 (right) ...... 63

FIG.18 The sphere with his section at full size. 2. The sphere rising; 3.The Sphere on the point of vanishing. An example of the third dimension intersecting with the two- dimensional. From the novel Flatland: A Romance in Multiple Dimensions, sourced from Gutenberg.org ...... 66

FIG. 19 Martine Corompt, Proposed weed design for Sunshine railway overpass ... 70

FIG. 20 Final design including native plants completed Sunshine Railway overpass 2014. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 70

FIG.21 Ad Reinhardt, Painting 1954-1958 oil on canvas 198.4 (h) x 198.4 (w) cm photographed in the viewing basement of the Australian National Gallery © Ad Reinhardt/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017...... 72

FIG.22 detail of Painting 1954-1958 showing the handprint on the surface of the canvas. © Ad Reinhardt/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017...... 73

FIG.24 Author’s diagram showing projection using lens based representation where space continues beyond the wall (top) and non-lens based representation (bottom) 79

FIG.25 Martine Corompt, installation view of Tide, 2012 Westspace gallery Melbourne. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 82

FIG.26 Martine Corompt Installation view of Fall, 2013 the Windsor Hotel Melbourne. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 84

FIG.27 Martine Corompt, installation view of Frankston Current, 2014 ...... 86 projection for Cube 37 Frankston Art Centre. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 86

FIG.27b Martine Corompt, installation view of Frankston Current, 2016 ...... 87 projection for Margaret Lawrence gallery VCA. Image credit Christian Capurro ..... 87

FIG. 28 Joseph Kosuth, One and Three chairs 1965, sourced from MoMA’s Online Collection ...... 90

FIG. 29 The Minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus looking earnest and minimal...... 91

FIG.30 An example of No Frills packaging typical of home brand supermarket product lines...... 92

FIG.31 Martine Corompt, page from the Colouring-out project 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 93

FIG.32 IKEA instructions using simple black and white graphics, sourced from IKEA’s online instructions...... 93

FIG.33 A black field made up of CMYK ...... 94

FIG.34 A skeumorphic example of white as void or absence ...... 96

FIG.35 Safety yellow #EED202 ...... 98

FIG.36 Martine Corompt, completed book from the Colouring-out project, 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 100

FIG.37 Martine Corompt, pages from the Colouring –out project 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 101

FIG.38 Ad Reinhardt, How To Look Pm Series How To Look At A Cubist Painting January 27, 1946. Sourced from the Reinhardt Foundation archives ...... 103

FIG. 40 Ernie Bushmiller, Jan 1949 – Malevich, Reinhardt and Lichtenstien? .... 106

FIG.41 Example of the use of Ernie Bushmillers’ three rocks (left) and the authors use of the dandelion (right) ...... 107

FIG.42 Martine Corompt, schematic design for Melbourne Festival Art tram Look both ways 2015 ...... 107

FIG.43 Screen stills from ‘Bad Luck Blackie’ (MGM 1949) ...... 109

FIG.44 Martine Corompt, Look Both Ways, at Waterfront City September 2015 ... 111

Image credit: Ian Green ...... 111

FIG.45 YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES The Art of Silence. 2006, ...... 117

FIG.46 Martine Corompt, screen still of M1 - Homeward animation with car-window masking. Image credit: Martine Corompt ...... 120

FIG.47 Martine Corompt, background graphic for M1 Homeward showing the repeating landscape motifs...... 121

FIG.48 Corey Archangel, Mario clouds, sourced form the Artist’s webpage ...... 126 www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/2002-001-super-mario-clouds ...... 126

FIG.49 Martine Corompt Torrent – the endless storm, Night Projection Window Centre for Contemporary Photography 2015, image credit Martine Corompt ...... 126

FIG.50 Martine Corompt, screen stills in sequence from the Kipple project – Kipple and The Cult of Reduction ...... 128

FIG.51 Martine Corompt, screen stills in sequence from the Kipple project – Kipple and The Cult of Reduction ...... 129

FIG.52 Martine Corompt, an example of using a simple flash-frame process to depict lightning over a sea-storm ...... 137

FIG.53 Tony Conrad, screen stills from The Flicker 1965, sourced from http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/collections/reference-library/stills/493 ...... 140

FIG. 54 Martin Arnold, screen stills from Haunted House, 2011 sourced from Martin Arnolds website ...... 140

FIG.55 Martine Corompt, installation view of Flash Training, single channel digital video, 1 min. 2016. Image credit: Martine Corompt ...... 141

FIG.56 Martine Corompt, graphic template for Reduced to Rubble ...... 149

FIG. 57 Martine Corompt, top: vinyl wall mural in situ, bottom: compressed vinyl mural from Reduced to Rubble. Image credits Martine Corompt ...... 149

FIG.58 Martine Corompt, Cubicles, presented in its compressed form. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 150

FIG.59 Martine Corompt, Cubicles, opened. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 150

FIG.60 Martine Corompt screen stills from Storm kit animation ...... 153

FIG.61 Martine Corompt, detail from gallery installation Demolition kit 2016. Image credit Martine Corompt ...... 153

FIG.62 Thomas Wilfred, Home Clavilux model built in 1930...... 157

FIG.63 William Stanley Jevons Supposed future consumption of coal at same rate of progress showing the impossibility of that progress (From The Coal Question - An

Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines by William Stanley Jevons 1865) ...... 162

FIG.64 The Jevons Paradox and the Hybrid Car, ...... 163

FIG. 65 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox minimalism – less is more digital diagram ...... 163

FIG.66 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox representation – less is more digital diagram ...... 164

FIG.67 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox data compression – less is more digital diagram ...... 164

FIG.68 Joshua Milburn, Pack like the minimalists, digital screen still sourced from www.theminimalists.com/pack/ ...... 166

FIG.69 Martine Corompt, Installation view Torrent, CCP Melbourne Festival 2015. Image credit: Martine Corompt ...... 172

FIG.70 Martine Corompt The Cult of Reduction final exhibition. Image credit Christian Capurro ...... 177

INTRODUCTION

The research began as an exploration of caricature in an attempt to broaden its assumed definition. The assumption was that caricature was an accurate term for describing my own work and many other examples of contemporary art typified by a reductive representation that verged on abstraction. This path quickly became troublesome as the endless possibilities of artistic reference multiplied. It also became apparent that caricature was an important aspect of the research journey, but seeking a definition for it was not central. Instead an idea, The Cult of Reduction was eventually revealed to be central to the project. Within the research project the place of caricature shifted from a process of representation to a theoretical and methodological process. This will be clarified in the discussion of the key phrase The Cult of Reduction. While the argument consistently seeks out reduction through example and methodology, the meta-narrative reveals that reduction is not a goal, but a process that seeks to offset/alleviate various states of excess.

The dissertation begins with a brief and broad overview of this argument. It first traces the evolution of The Cult of Reduction from its origins within caricature to the later, broader definition that evolved in conjunction with the creative works. It concludes by demonstrating the unreliability of reduction through the Jevons Paradox,

a model used in economics but which has also become useful to the project as a creative model to demonstrate the dynamic relationship between reduction and excess.

The five chapters in the dissertation are structured systematically to compartmentalize and describe the various processes as they have presented themselves throughout the research. The chapters Dimensional Reduction, Temporal Reduction, Material Reduction consider formal categories describing both physical properties as well as allegorical subjects pertaining to the reduction of surface, time and space. The final chapter The Cult of Reduction concludes the argument by indicating the implications they have for considering and illuminating a wider social condition. The artworks are not necessarily presented chronologically, but grouped thematically within the chapters according to their place in the overall argument.

The exhibition held in the Margaret Lawrence gallery VCA represented a selection of key works developed over the period of the candidature that had been exhibited also previously. I included several new works that had been formulated in the studio but had not yet been publicly exhibited. One of the challenges regarding the exhibition was that many of the works were developed as site-based projects for various public spaces and not necessarily for the institutional gallery environment. Their inclusion in the exhibition necessitated some slight modification both structurally (to fit a new space) and contextually to respond to a new environment. Works such as Torrent needed to be moderated in accordance to its proximity with other works and existence in a shared space. This process tested the potential modularity of the works, and the extent to which they were required to be re-fitted and grouped to create an extended discussion of The Cult of Reduction. Some works such as The Melbourne Festival Commission Art Tram commission Look Both Ways obviously could not be included amongst the exhibited works, however the themes and methodologies of this work were revisited and apparent within other works in the final exhibition.

Chapter 1 This chapter charts the narrative of the initial research journey and how the title Cartoon and The Cult of Reduction was identified and defined. Initially the writings

of Twentieth Century art historians Ernst Kris and Ernst Gombrich were examined. Their collaborative 1940 book Caricature1 was pivotal in beginning the bibliographic research. From here the search for a more contemporary definition surrounding the terms of reduction and caricature opened out to include (among others) the ideas of the late contemporary American artist Mike Kelley and Russian/American author Lev Manovich. These integrated a Post Modern and digital perspective into the argument. In particular Kelley’s 1989 essay ‘Foul perfections: thoughts on caricature’2 provided a compelling view on the distinction between the incorporation of caricature as aesthetic or caricature as intent, and how caricature might be reconsidered as another ‘reductivist paradigm’ of historical referencing.

Through continued bibliographic research, other reductivist paradigms that exist beyond the art world became apparent. The lifestyle movement established by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus known as The Minimalists3 promotes an ideology of ‘living a meaningful life with less stuff’. This movement has gained popularity (over four million online readers) as an alternative to a life of endless material consumption, accumulation, emotional attachment to things and giving material things unnecessary meaning. Following this, the chapter describes a history of modernist studio animation as a critical influence on the artistic work as a model for both efficiency and reductive expression.

Chapter 2 This chapter begins the sequence of chapters that divides the discussion of reduction into three physical characteristics. Chapter Two outlines the reductive properties of two-dimensionality and pictorial flatness in relation to The Cult of Reduction as a working methodology, establishing the three allegorical motifs of

1 Ernst Hans Gombrich and Ernst Kris, Caricature (Penguin, 1940).

2 Mike Kelley and John C. Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).

3 American authors, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus and known as The Minimalists. Since 2010 they have been living a minimalist lifestyle and promoting there values to others in the form of public speaking, books and their website: www.theminimalists.com 18

weeding, water and demolition. The chapter explores cultural and historical readings of flatness and dimensional reduction and key works that have developed from this thinking. The Cult of Reduction is established as an aesthetic necessitated equally by both ideological and industrial influences. It recognizes that my animation practice is driven by the necessity of saving time as much as other considerations. The notion of weeding, an idea that began as a methodology (reducing and clearing the image) was then recognized as potential subject matter for further work. Similarly, the theme of water became apparent as another subject allegorically associated with reduction and evident in such works as Tide 2012. The chapter continues with a description of a private viewing of Twentieth Century American artist Ad Reinhardt’s Black Painting 1954-58 at the National Gallery of Australia. The chapter also considers abstraction through surface flatness, surface threshold and the conditions of spectatorship. It then continues by arguing for a correlation between the surface flatness of painting and projection. The nature and popularity of public projections are also discussed.

The importance of flatness is discussed via the recent fad and process involved in adult colouring-books, as part of an ongoing studio experiment. The problem of colour, or Chromophobia, as described by contemporary artist and writer David Batchelor4 and my own self-imposed colour system of black, white and yellow is also considered here. A brief discussion on the cartoon, returns the focus to Ad Reinhardt’s newspaper art cartoons as a parallel discourse regarding representational flatness. The conclusion is a description of my public art project Look both ways, binding dimensional reduction as representation with the more literal motif of demolition as a form of flattening.

Chapter 3 explores notions of temporal reduction, charting both the time required to experience an artwork, as well as the time taken to produce it. The chapter begins by discussing timesaving techniques in the production of animation. It considers the aesthetic tropes that have developed from industrial animation practices and contemporary digital software. The animation work M1 homeward is presented as an example here. The discussion of temporal reduction continues to consider the

4 David Batchelor, Chromophobia, Focus on Contemporary Issues (London: Reaktion, 2000). 19

conditions of the sequenced animation loop as a modular building block, and as a reduction of narrative variation. The use of the loop in GIF animations is outlined as an example and provides the format for the 2015 web-based work Kipple and the Cult of Reduction a collaborative section of The Kipple Institute, with Dr Ian Haig and Dr. Darren Tofts for the online journal ControlZ5. The last section of the chapter describes reductive qualities of the Flash-frame6 as an historical teaching tool as well its mythological status as a form of mind infiltration. This theme became a conference paper delivered by the artist at The International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA) in 20137 and also led to the artwork ‘Flash Training’.

Chapter 4 This chapter explores ideas of material reduction or a reduction of size. Scale, mass or volume is discussed in relation to the need for portability, convenience and storage. A reduced scale is also both an index of technological advancement and childishness. This chapter begins with the discussion of the ‘size-less-ness’ of digital data. It considers our understanding of digital size as it is generated, stored and transferred, and the absence of any authentic or defining size in data form in contrast to its material outcome. In this chapter the reduction thesis introduces the focus on the apparatus (the projector and playback mechanism) as a structural, material and aesthetic part of the artwork, that is readily available in miniaturized, or portable form. The portable or personal apparatus identifies progenitor works such as Marcel Duchamps’ Rotoreliefs 1935, Thomas Wilfred’s Clavilux Junior 1934, and George Maciunas’ Flux boxes 1962 – 1978 as influential historical models for the development of the project called cubicles. Here all the components necessary for an audio-visual installation can be packed into a small customized box. The last section of Chapter 4 introduces a paradox inherent in reductive endeavor - The Jevons Paradox, to re- introduce the counterbalance between reduction and excess.

5 Ian Haig Martine Corompt, Darren Tofts, "The Kipple Institute," Ctrl-Z: New Media Philosophy 5 (2015). http://kipple.ctrl-z.net.au/KippleMartine/cult.html

6 The Flash-frame refers to the use of an isolated frame placed within an unrelated narrative sequence or simply viewed within a blank time frame.

7 Martine Corompt, "Reduction and the Tachistoscopic Flash - a Marginalised Technology," (2013). 20

Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation, discussing The Cult of Reduction more specifically in relation to the various cultural examples of reduction outlined throughout the previous chapters and in context with the work presented in the exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery. This chapter finally discusses the use of the term cult in reference to The Cult of Reduction as a form of worship and unobtainable ideology. It also concludes the idea of reduction as a possible conceit revealing what Mike Kelley referred to as the ‘secret caricature’.8 The concluding chapter focuses on the work Torrent, where the motif of animated water becomes one of cleansing, clearing, and disappearance. The reduction thesis also extends to the gallery space, describing the gallery reduced to a type of waiting room. In describing the summation of the works in the exhibition, Chapter 5 acknowledges that they attempt to be visually reductive but are not minimalist in spirit. Clutter, noise and overstatement are recurring qualities of The Cult of Reduction. The Cult of Reduction is not an aesthetic of minimalism, but a process that tries to achieve it. The ultimate failure it produces places the work in an interesting state of contradiction.

8 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism; ibid. 21

Chapter 1: FROM CARICATURE TO REDUCTION

It began with caricature The overused aphorism ‘less is more’9 attributed to twentieth century architect Mies van der Rohe resonates through many paradigms of Fine art, design and high-cultural aesthetics. Here the assumption is that restraint (less) is an indication of good taste and excess (more), is in bad taste.10 The traditions of caricature also champion this ethos of using less to suggest more, but with the difference that the reduction, with an implied sense of moral virtue, restraint or taste, is a method of subversion. Within this research

9 In a talk to architecture students in1960, Van der Rohe admits that he was not the originator of the phrase “Less is more” but liked the phrase and used it frequently. Van der Rohe heard the term first from the German architect Peter Behrens.

Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies Van Der Rohe : A Critical Biography, New and rev. ed. (Chicago ; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012). Pg 205

10 Briony Fer makes a good case for this, describing ‘a change in taste’ evident from the 1920’s that was ascribed across both fine art and popular culture, to the writings of Le Corbusier, Aldof Loos, the Bauhaus design. It is most succinctly summed up by Corbusier “the luxury object is well made, neat and clean, pure and healthy, and its bareness reveals the quality of its manufacturer.”

Briony Fer, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism : Art between the Wars, Modern Art--Practices and Debates (New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993). Pg 140 - 142

project the problem that became apparent, was the distinction between the two (the virtuous and subversive) was not as clear as it might seem.

This research began with an exploration of caricature, as it initially appeared to be a defining principal in my art practice. However, the principal as commonly defined seemed overly limited, failing to encompass the variety of possibilities of other practices. As we traditionally understand it, caricature (portrait, parody and distortion) includes the accumulation of cartoon/graphic/animation representation evident throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century associated with popular or low culture. While there has been much written about the relationship between caricature and fine art, ranging from Mike Kelley’s Foul Perfection -Thoughts on Caricature11, High & low : modern art, popular culture 199012 Takashi Murakami’s Superflat manifesto13, and Roxana Marcoci Comic abstraction : image breaking, image making14, it was necessary to find an alternative analysis and interpretation of caricature for the research project that wasn’t exclusively tied to the incorporation of popular culture, bad taste, kitsch or the hi/lo dichotomy. Instead the goal was to explore the parameters of representation and theories of resemblance without being bound to its subject, or appropriated style – effectively a formalist approach to the cartoon.

By studying the formal and perceptual nature of caricature, and through mapping function and process within the studio through to its consequent evolutionary relationship and exchange between the gallery and popular visual culture, the assumption was that caricature was an accurate term for describing my own work as well as other contemporary art that uses reductive representation. Through the initial stages of the research project the attempt to demonstrate this was attenuated however,

11 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism.

12 Kirk Varnedoe, Adam Gopnik, and Museum of Modern Art (New York N.Y.), High & Low : Modern Art [and] Popular Culture (New York: Museum of Modern Art : Distributed by Abrams, 1990).

13 Takashi Murakami, Super Flat (Tokyo: Madora Shuppan, 2000).

14 Roxana Marcoci and Museum of Modern Art (New York N.Y.), Comic Abstraction : Image Breaking, Image Making (New York, N.Y. London: Museum of Modern Art ; Thames & Hudson, distributor, 2007). 23

at the conclusion of the probationary stage, it became apparent that although caricature was an important aspect of the research journey, it wasn’t suitable as a central definition of the project. At that point, it became apparent that reduction or, as it is now referred to, The Cult of reduction was actually central to the project. Rather than the subject, caricature shifted to became a framework for the research and writing, surrounding the methodology and subject of reduction.

Before discussing the term The Cult of Reduction it is necessary to describe the journey that began with caricature.

FIG 2. Honoré Daumier, Les Poires — La Caricature, 1831 lithography after Charles Philipon, collection Ségolène

Le Men. Sourced from http://books.openedition.org/pupo/2240

FIG. 3 Jean-François Moriceau and Petra Mrzyk, excerpt from 1000 Dessins,, Air des Paris, sourced from http://1000dessins.com

As previously stated the initial interest in caricature stemmed from a prevailing interest in the cartoon, and the particular aesthetics that cartoon images share with caricature and animation - largely shaped by their shared industrial processes of reproduction. There was a perceived simplicity and energy embodied within reductive pictorial representation commonly found in comics and animation. This may also be observed in contemporary and historical drawing and painting, particularly if the representation was deliberately intended to be misleading or visually incongruous in some way. This is evident in the pleasure gained from looking at a work such as Honoré Daumiers’ Les Poires, (FIG.2) or any of the ‘1000 Dessins’ of Petra Mrzyk & Jean-François Moriceau15 (FIG.3). Here a reduced amount of pictorial information provides a greater amount of visual satisfaction. This is an idea that had long been described by historians and academics such as Ernst Gombrich, Ernst Kris, and Julian Hochberg in relation to both Fine Art and popular visual culture. These aspects are

15 "Mrzyk & Moriceau." Mrzyk & Moriceau. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://1000dessins.com/. 25

discussed in more detail later in this chapter. This initial interest went beyond the simple admiration of draftsmanship, expression or whimsical juxtapositions, but recognised something more fundamental regarding pictorial representation. The relationship between pictorial illusion and abstraction produces a material surface that fluctuates between space and form and teeters on the boundary between objectivity and empathy. This simultaneously acknowledges the artifice, while at the same time participating in its pathos. Images that use conventions of cartoon and caricature give the outward impression of an exaggerated gesture or a forced perspective16, but this simplified style also gives room for ambiguity, both perceptually and conceptually. Negative space becomes full of possibility and representation has the potential to be reduced to a permutational essence, an essence that shifts and adjusts according to the perspective of the viewer. While the intention began as an exploration of caricature from its 19thC traditions, leading up to the familiar and well-documented position of Pop Art and Post-Pop appropriation, this track has been well charted elsewhere and somewhat exhausted within my own practice. The research trajectory shifted and then began to consider ideas of caricature more broadly through the lens of Modernism, taking into account the perceptual aspects of reductive representation and the related drive for simplicity and reduction that was inherent in that movement.

Traditionally caricature is considered the ‘bad twin’ of fine art - or fine arts’ ‘Other’. Late American artist and writer Mike Kelley, argues that caricature shares with fine art the same reductivist aspirations – of revealing the ideal (finding the essence)17. Caricature does this with an aggressive tendency rather than the idealisation of fine art. The effectiveness of caricature historically made it (and still makes) it dangerous – worthy of sanctioning by governments and authorities. Throughout the nineteenth-

16 The phrase ‘forced perspective’ traditionally refers to the deliberate distortion of scale to create an illusionary sense of perspective. This technique is commonly used in architecture, theatre, dioramas and film, but has also become a humourous photographic trick used by tourists visiting public monuments. Within this thesis, the term is used more broadly to describe the way visual simplification of cartoon and caricature can be used to exaggerate, or force a particular point of view by omitting conflicting details.

17 Mike Kelley 1954 - 2012 26

century caricature occupied a role that was integral to fine art but marginalised from fine arts’ accepted position of high culture.

Caricature as discussed in this chapter, describes the form of pictorial satire commonly associated with the great French and English satirists of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, such as James Gillray, J.J. Grandville, and Honoré Daumier). Though caricature was established well before this time, it was this period that saw an era of caricature as mass consumption through reproduction and publication that is most relevant to this research. The location of caricature in 19thC England and France was not in the galleries and institutions, but in the streets. Methods of distributions such as cheap handbills, broadsides, magazines as well as regular displays in print shop windows, enabled everyone to see caricatures and participate in this particular language of representation and mass communication. Pictorial literacy was more effective and widespread than text based literacy, as demonstrated by Charles Philipon’s famous courtroom caricature of the French king Louise Philippe, (FIG.2) where efficiency of reproduction was expressed both through mechanical reproduction (printing) as well as manual reproduction in the form of graffiti.

The extraordinary image began as a courtroom demonstration, where Philipon was attempting to explain the inefficiency of likeness regarding an earlier caricature of the French King (for which he was now being charged). Philipon demonstrated that any image could be made to look like a King, (but was not the king) by drawing a sequential transformation of the King Louise Philippe’s likeness to a pear (FIG.4). This sketch was then redrawn and published by Daumier and became so successful that between the years of 1832 – 183518 the walls and buildings of France were plagued by representations of pears as a form of protest against the Kings’ reign. The simple drawing of a pear as an act of sedition was an outcome of the efficient and very potent caricature drawn by Philipon.

Cartoon or caricature – finding a definition Caricature by definition is very broad and exists beyond the realm of the two- dimensional, incorporating, performance, literature, and gesture. It was becoming increasingly hard to hold onto the definition of caricature as a working model for the studio process. While it was immensely absorbing researching definitions and examples of caricature through art history and perceptual psychology, the studio work could not be defined as true caricature and the conception was ultimately inappropriate and limiting for the work that had evolved. The particular properties of caricature that were being responded to in the work were that of simplification, and to an extent distortion. This was not distortion for the sake of satire, deformation, lampooning or grotesque effects, but distortion in the form of stylisation. A more suitable definition for the project could be found within the term ‘cartoon’, particularly if considered in the historical sense as referring to a preliminary outline drawing for a painting or fresco. In this sense, the preliminary nature of the cartoon (an outlined drawing for a more resolved work) could still find relevance. The final resolved image occurs in the mind of the viewer when considering the work rather than as a finished material manifestation. The ‘unfinished’ or preliminary nature of

18 In the year of 1835 strict laws were passed regarding the regulation of art and press, “linking provocative political illustrations with political violence”. For further reading see: Barbara Ann Day-Hickman, Napoleonic Art: Nationalism and the Spirit of Rebellion in France (1815-1848) (University of Delaware Press, 1999). Pg 133 28

cartoon representation suggests more open possibilities than a specific ‘complete’ (fully rendered and detailed) work and thus allows a fluctuating plasticity of form absent in a fully rendered state. This idea has been described by American cartoonist and theorist Scott McCloud consistently throughout his book Understanding Comics19 where he describes the appeal of the cartoon image residing in the requirement for them to be conceptually completed and filled in by the reader. This undefined vagueness in contrast to specific mimesis also allows the viewer to identify with the character.

The cartoon is a vacuum into which our identity and awareness are pulled…an empty shell

that we inhabit….we don’t just observe the cartoon we become it!20

The Oxford Dictionary definition demonstrates the similarities between cartoon and caricature.

Cartoon 1a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, especially a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine: (also cartoon strip) a narrative sequence of humorous drawings in a comic, magazine, or newspaper, usually with captions: a simplified or exaggerated version or interpretation of something: 2a film using animation techniques to photograph a sequence of drawings rather than real people or objects: 3a full-size drawing made by an artist as a preliminary design for a painting or other work of art

Caricature a picture, description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect: the art or style of such exaggerated representation

a ludicrous or grotesque version of someone or something21

19 Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art (Northampton, MA: Tundra Pub., 1993).

20 Ibid. p. 36

21 "Oxford Dictionaries - Dictionary, Thesaurus, & Grammar," Oxford Dictionaries | English, accessed December 20, 2014, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/. 29

In some circumstances, particularly academic texts, caricature and cartoon are used interchangeably as they are both words that have evolved from their original meanings during the process of twentieth century industrialization. Cartoon, which originally meant ‘preliminary design for a painting or other work of art’, now may also mean animation, due to its historical evolution from the printed newspaper cartoon to the short film. A caricature that also uses graphic brevity, can sometimes be exchanged for a cartoon character. While trying to locate a working definition of caricature, it didn’t help that the terms had become blurred.

The collaborative texts of Gombrich and Kris were early examples that combined psychology and the science of perception within the critique of art. They co-wrote two pivotal texts: The principals of caricature,22 and then Caricature.23 These two texts comprise of a combination of historical survey and psychoanalytic examination of how caricature has evolved over a period of five-hundred years. Ernst Kris was both an Art Historian and practicing Psychoanalyst. His explorations into caricature continued his interest in the psychology of the artist and interpretation of art in the vein of a patient/analyst approach. Later Kris wrote the Psychology of caricature,24 and Gombrich also continued to write on the subject of caricature with The experiment of caricature from the book Art and Illusion,25 and The Cartoonists Armoury from the book Meditations on a Hobby Horse.26 As well Kris produced many other texts regarding visual art and the nature of perception. Within this research, a work of caricature from artists such as

22 Ernst H Gombrich and Ernst Kris, "The Principles of Caricature," British Journal of Medical Psychology 17, no. 38 (1938); E. H. Gombrich and Ernst Kris, Caricature, King Penguin Books (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1940).

23 Gombrich and Kris, Caricature; ibid.

24 Ernst Kris, "Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art," International Universities Press (1952); "The Psychology of Caricature," The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 17 (1936).

25 Ernst Hans Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Phaidon, 1966).

26 Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, "Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art," (1985). 30

Charles Philipon and Lorenzo Bernini,27 highlighted the formula and pictorial nature of caricature without the complication of being familiar with the subject represented. It wasn’t the ‘somebody’ that was of interest, but more the methods of representation. These texts provided a method of thinking about caricature in relation to the research project away from the distractions of surrounding contemporary popular culture.

Julian Hochberg, a perceptual psychologist and illustrator, wrote a variety of texts on caricature. One of the most useful texts published in 1972 was The representation of things and people28 that discusses caricature in relation to the object rather than the portrait. This text is significant because it considered the possibility of caricature as a working methodology and a way of seeing, clearly defining the reductive qualities of caricature. It was also the only reference to caricature that didn’t focus on distortion or the grotesque - perhaps taking some liberties with the definition, but instead focused on simplification.

While the term ‘cartoon’ may have been more fitting as a terminology, it would appear that the rich history of caricature and its already established place within psychology and psychoanalysis was far more useful than the term ‘cartoon’. Hochberg uses the example of an experimental study of caricature (to which he produced the illustrations) by Ryan and Schwartz in 195629 that set out to test the perceptual efficiency of photographs, drawings and cartoons. This experiment became quite influential in this research and instigated a series of studio experiments, as well as a paper presentation titled ‘Three Fingers and White Gloves’30 the details of which are described later in this chapter. Hochberg makes the suggestion that the idea of ‘capturing the essence’ in caricature can be compared to canonical form – ‘shapes that

27 Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Charles Philipon’s caricatures are discussed by Gombrich in Art and Illusion. Key examples are Phillipon’s Les Poires 1831 and Bernini’s Caricatura Cardinale Borgese 1630’s.

28 Ernst Hans Gombrich, Julian Hochberg, and Max Black, Art, Perception, and Reality, vol. 1970 (JHU Press, 1973).

29 Thomas A Ryan and Carol B Schwartz, "Speed of Perception as a Function of Mode of Representation," The American journal of psychology 69, no. 1 (1956).

30 M Corompt, "Three Fingers and White Gloves-Conventions and Representation of Cartoon Morphology" (paper presented at the Drawing Out 2012, 2012). 31

are close to the way in which those objects are encoded in our minds eye’31 and so caricature, like canonical forms, also aspire to capturing the essential. Hochberg proposes there is an ideal form that our mind prefers and stores rather than a realistic one - an extension of Plato’s theory of forms in which nature is only an imperfect copy of the ideal. The idea that caricature is somehow akin to the way our mind stores information about form, has been a rich source of research for perceptual psychologists, particularly around the theme of face recognition. More recently these ideas have been further explored within the field of neuroscience and lead to a breakdown between distinction of mind and brain. The neuroscientist might explain the ‘mind’s eye’ as pattern recognizing neurons, a physiological impulse rather than psychological one.32

Defining Caricature The following are some of the more pertinent definitions and descriptions of caricature the research had uncovered so far:

Julian Hochberg: Caricatures make possible a more compact visual vocabulary. That is, caricatures use a

relatively small number of features by which to represent a much larger set of faces.33

Scott McCloud … the universality of cartoon imagery. The more cartoony a face is for instance, the more people it could be said to describe.

… a form of amplification though simplification. When we abstract an image through cartooning we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By

31 Ernst Hans Hochberg Gombrich, Julian Black, Max, Art, Perception, and Reality (Baltimore, London: JHU Press, 1973). p. 77

32 In the collaborative essay, The Science of Art, W. Hirstein, and V.S. Ramachandran describe the eight neurological principals of artistic experience. The ‘peak shift principal’ and the ‘isolating a single cue’ principal discuss in more general terms the effectiveness of outline drawings on the brain. Vilayanur S Ramachandran and William Hirstein, "The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience," Journal of consciousness Studies 6, no. 6-7 (1999).

33 Julian Hochberg, "In the Mind's Eye," Contemporary theory and research in visual perception (1968). 32

stripping down an image to its essential meaning an artist can amplify that meaning in a way

that realistic art can’t.34

Kirk Varnedoe, Adam Gopnik:

The artist overcharges his portrait so that the viewer doesn’t have to overcharge his mind’35

Ernst Kris (on Sigmund Freud) The source of pleasure gained from caricature is associated with a saving of mental energy -

the pleasure of comparison, reality compared to a distorted reproduction of it.’36

Ernst H. Gombrich A demonstration of equivalence, the proof that the images of art can be convincing without

being objectively realistic.37

William Hirstein and Vilayanur S Ramachandran

All art is caricature38

This final comment while seemingly audacious, refers to the ‘peak shift’ principal - a term used in the study of neurology in animals. An example given describes how a rat may be taught, through reward, to distinguish between a square and a 3:2 rectangle. The rat then also responds to rectangles that are more elongated, learning a preference for rectangularity. In describing art, it refers to the process of amplification for the purpose of aesthetic preference. An artist selectively amplifies (distorts) certain aesthetic qualities over others, which are reduced or eliminated – for the authors, this qualifies as a definition of caricature. Perhaps all art is caricature, whether through process (amplification and editing) or simply by context, where an attempt to borrow

34 McCloud, Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art.

35 Varnedoe, Gopnik, and Museum of Modern Art (New York N.Y.), High & Low : Modern Art [and] Popular Culture.

36 Kris, "Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art."

37 Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation; Gombrich, Art, Perception, and Reality.

38 Ramachandran and Hirstein, "The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience." 33

and recontextualise from previous historical models becomes a form of dethroning or destabilizing established codes.

These descriptions represent a selected spectrum of fields that collectively discuss caricature, ranging from science, psychology, comics and art. While the motivations for discussing caricature are disparate, their conclusions share some commonalities. They refer to notions such as; universals, essence, amplification, simplification, deformity, overcharging, a saving of mental energy. On the one hand we have many descriptions relating to ‘reducing and saving’, but we also have a description of ‘overcharging’ or in other words adding too much. Here was a paradox. Where there is a saving and simplicity there is also an overcharging –as exaggeration and excess.

On wit and humour In regards to the role of wit and humour in caricature, the use of the words cartoon, comic, and caricature are also often used interchangeably. ‘Comic’ can be thought of as a noun (the comic book) rather than an adjective (something funny), which reveals its lineage as developing from humorous printed cartoons. Wit persists in cartoon and caricature even when the subject matter is not humorous and we are just left with the reductive form where the conditions of illusion are stretched to absurdity. Ernst Kris, as a supporter and colleague of Freud, wrote about wit and humour and their role as a source of pleasure gain in caricature. ‘We already know what to expect; a part of the pleasure derives from a saving of mental energy,’39

Kris further commented on Freud’s idea;

Besides a saving of mental energy, Freud regards a closer relation to infantile life as a distinguishing mark of all forms of the comic. The expression in words, which includes wit, revives modes of expression employed by the child when speech was developing: for example, the play on words restores to its ancient rights the clang association of their sounds as opposed to the things they represent.40

39 Kris, "Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art."

40 Ibid. 34

The visual equivalent of the ‘aural clang’ are pictorial unrelated representations that can be made to have shape associations, such as a fat-headed king and a pear demonstrated by Daumiere’s Les Poires (see fig 2). Though in this example ‘the things they represent’ becomes paramount rather than arbitrary. The clang becomes meaningful through association. This notion of humour presented itself as a problem for the studio work. Was it possible to continue with the definition of caricature? Where was the humour or ‘clang’ in the imagery generated during the initial stages of the research project? Where was the caricature? It also asks the question, is there such a thing as a kinetic caricature? So far all the bibliographic discussion on caricature had centred on the ‘arrested image’ of capturing an image in time and motion, and freezing it as a single pictorial representation. This process is important to the effectiveness of caricature as it provides the spectator with the scopophillic satisfaction of extended visual scrutiny. In the situation of the pear-king, each stage of the implied transformation has been paused and graphically presented so one may be compared to the other. The moving image is not scrutinized in the same way. The question of how caricature may be an effective definition was still yet to be resolved.

Gloves and Tachistoscopes – a quick detour One of the early texts examined in the bibliographic research revealed a fascinating moment. In the footnotes of the book Art Perception and Reality41 was mention of the article written in 1956 by Ryan and Schwartz ‘Speed of perception as a function of mode of representation’42 It was interesting and funny for its use of scientific rigor to validate cartoon representation as well as what it revealed about the prevailing image culture of its time and assumptions of representation.

Ryan and Schwartz’s study set out to test and measure which type of pictorial representation, between the photographic, the shaded line drawing, contour outline

41 Gombrich, Art, Perception, and Reality.

42 Op. cit. Ryan and Schwartz, "Speed of Perception as a Function of Mode of Representation."

drawing and the cartoon could be perceived in the shortest amount of time. Monitored by the Illinois Air Force Training Research centre it sought to test the most effective means of pictorial representation to be employed in training manuals. The images represented were valves, switches and hands, and the testing method consisted of the use of the newly developed Tachistoscope which was capable of flashing single images at very fast speeds. Time thresholds for perceiving particular characteristics of the objects depicted were then measured.

FIG.5 Original illustration from the Ryan and Schwartz study showing a. photograph, b. shaded drawing, c. contour outline, d. ‘caricature’. Possibly illustrated by Julian Hochberg

FIG. 6 Martine Corompt, authors recreation of Julian Hochbergs’ illustration: a. photograph, b. shaded drawing, c. contour outline, d. ‘caricature’. 36

It was not sufficient for the subjects to just identify the objects, but more importantly also the position of the object, such as on/off, open/closed or in the case of hands, the hand position and/or gesture. The conclusions were intriguing. The cartoon representations were perceived in the shortest amount of time (an average of .2 seconds or 5 frames in animation) and the detailed line drawings needed the longest amount of time (average of .54 or 14 frames in animation) - a perfect study proving the efficiency and superiority of cartoon-styled images in communicating functional information.

What was also interesting were the images themselves, particularly the hand drawings, as these most clearly embodied the process of reduction/abstraction often defined as caricature. Even the authors working definition of the ‘cartoon’ seems interchangeable with caricature as it includes both distortion and the essential.

Using the ‘animation’ technique, we distorted the figure to emphasize the essential spatial relationships involved. We also aimed at producing these distortions without modifying the total silhouette of the figure, because we did not wish the discrimination to be based on the

silhouette.43

In this description Hochberg uses the term ‘distortion’ to describe the process of simplification. Here, the simplified representation of the hand is distorted and exaggerated from its detailed photographic original and so, for the author, is also a caricature. The use of caricature here however is only mildly intended as a parody or lampoon (if at all), where a version of a real hand now humorously appears gloved when there was no glove on the original. This subtle visual transformation would have been very familiar to the subjects of the 1956 experiment as by this time the three fingered gloved had become the classic cartoon hand of twentieth century cartoons and Hollywood animation. The ‘animation’ technique which Hochberg refers to is

43 Ibid. Schwartz, T. A. a. Ryan, C. B. (1956). 37

most likely a general term for the stylistic transformation, but also may refer to the use of animation model sheets like the ones developed by Disney studios in order to standardize representation. These model sheets can contain very specific information regarding size, line thickness and how to solve problems of complex representation in motion from different angles intended for animators to follow. It has been explained by animation veterans such as Grim Natwick44 that the convention of gloves and three fingers was implemented as a method of simplification. It was simply easier and faster to draw. Similar to the Pear-king caricature, the anatomically incorrect representation was more effective than the accurate representation.

The Ryan and Schwartz text became a springboard for researching the history of the gloved cartoon hand up to its current contemporary appearance as a ubiquitous computer icon and for thinking about the way this icon functions as both familiar and anonymous. We don’t want to see a specific cursor hand on our computer, we want to see a vacant hand that we can mentally occupy.

The results of this particular thread of research lead to a paper presented at the Drawing Out 2012 conference at the London School of Art, exploring the morphology of the cartoon hand and why it might have proved so effective in the 1956 experiment. The paper traced the history of the two distinct features (the glove and the three fingers) back to their 19thC source recreating as faithfully as possible the tachistoscopic experiment on the audience.45 What was also interesting was the use of the tachistoscope, an educational device that has now become redundant given the capacity of computer monitors. The technique of images flashing on the screen for miniscule amounts of time suggests and predated the Structuralist filmakers of the 1960’s with works such as N.O.T.H.I.N.G. by Paul Sharits 1968, Flicker by Tony

44 For further reference see the complete interview: "Exhibit: Grim Natwick On Animation Design - AnimationResources.org - Serving the Online Animation Community." AnimationResourcesorg Serving the Online Animation Community. 2015. Accessed February 04, 2016. Sourced from - http://animationresources.org/history-grim-natwick-on-animation-design

45 Corompt, M. op. cit. 38

Conrad 1965 and Arnulf Rainer by Peter Kubelka 1960. The ‘tachistoscopic flash’ was understood as a way of exploring temporal reduction as an alternative to the time- consuming techniques of conventional animation. This is discussed in more detail in chapter three Temporal Reduction. The studio exploration that followed centred around experiments of ‘hand drawings’ (drawings of hands, by hand) and ranged from observational drawings of real hands in ‘messy’ mediums like charcoal, to the industrialized, clean-lined, cartoon hand of animation. I wanted to see how many steps it took to get from a veridical source to a cartoon by retracing the methodology of Hochberg’s illustrations, then back again to a tonal rendering. The experiment tested the limits of reduction and absurd representation.

FIG.7 Martine Corompt, 2013 hand studies with charcoal studio sketches

By this stage of the research investigations into perceptual psychology and caricature had become something of a labyrinth, as it didn’t really interface with contemporary art practice, or my own practice and so it seemed timely to revisit Mike Kelley’s Foul Perfection: Thoughts on Caricature.46 In his essay written in 1989 and republished in 2003, Kelley discusses caricature in relation to the artwork of his contemporaries. He

46 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. 39

discusses caricature in relation to the still prevailing use of minimalism and reduction in ‘high art’ with styles such as Neo Geo or Post Minimalism.47 He points out that there is a tendency for some works to actually become caricature through the process of trying to incorporate reduction into an artwork.

…the low-art/high-art distinction has become cloudy in some of this work, for the incorporation of caricature is no longer the leading strategy as the work actually becomes caricature. The historical referencing of reductivist paradigm here is only a legitimizing façade, concealing what is in fact a secret caricature – an image of low intent masquerading in

heroic garb.48

This idea reinforces interesting misunderstandings whereby ‘caricature’ and reduction can become confused and clouded in contemporary art of that time. In fact Kelley argues that caricature was not necessarily occurring within the picture plane of painting practice (of the late 1980’s), but instead was occurring through context and intent. The use of ‘reductivist paradigms’ (minimalist tropes or figurative reduction) doesn’t continue the dialogue of minimalism, but instead re-instates the language of caricature. Where original caricature sought to bring down figures of authority (high culture figures dragged down into low culture) here we have the inverse; of low cultural motifs being transformed for high culture. It also importantly makes the distinction of caricature as a process of reduction, and caricature as expressive. One is deadpan the other is humourous but - which is which?

On the one hand there are examples of figurative painters who draw on the methods of caricature, incorporating caricature as a system of expressive abstraction, of a destabilizing ‘softening’ of the patriarchal order. Kelley uses the example of artists such as Bill Komoski, Lari Pittman and Caroll Dunham but explains that in these examples, ultimately the work is taking low-art gestures into the realm of high-art. The incorporation of caricature becomes tamed, digested and transformed. In the second description Kelley cites the work of feminist artists such as Liz Larner and

47 John A Walker, "Glossary of Art, Architecture and Design since 1945," (1973); ibid.

48 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. 40

Aimee Rankin as examples of a form of caricature in which Minimalism as a symbol of (male) authority is dethroned and contaminated by inscribing traces of the body as a gesture of the feminine.

- recent dialogues with the minimalist paradigm also relate to the tradition of caricature. Reductive ‘essentially’ heroic primal forms lend themselves easily to the role of authority

figure. Thus it is only right that we should want to defame them49

The minimalist primal forms are defaced - here is the secret caricature, an undermining of an established order in a way not immediately apparent. The work of Australian artist Kathy Temin might also be included in this category whereby her soft sculptures such as White Cube: Fur Garden, 2007 or My Monument: Black Cube, 2009 use fake fur to re-inscribe minimalist sculpture as feminine (soft and hand made) and also inauthentic, as the use of fake fur suggests the mimicry of the original rather than the thing itself.

Caricature by Kelley’s definition relates to distortion, deformation and the grotesque (over ornamentation) as well as the destabilizing of an authority. Reduction on the other hand is a shared condition of both Modernism and caricature - but not the singular characteristic of caricature that was the initial focus. The more workable notion of reduction had begun take precedence over caricature and the secret caricature, or rather the use of caricature as a means of exposing reduction as a notion of perfection began to germinate.

Exploring Reduction Extending from Kelleys’ example, reduction was then considered in a contemporary sense. In addition to pictorial representation, the reductive structural and methodological framework of some artistic practice also became apparent. Two (albeit simplistic) variations of the term reduction became evident. One could be described

49 Ibid. 41

as a form of pictorial reduction (sparking the original interest in caricature) and the other could be described as a methodological reduction or ‘reductivist paradigm’. These two definitions are by no means mutually exclusive, but for the sake of example, they can be demonstrated in the following way:

Pictorial reduction: Artists who work with some form of pictorial representation in a reductive, stylised and arguably ‘cartoony’ way include Kara Walker (FIG8), Mrcyk & Moriceau (FIG3), and Paul Morrison (FIG9).

FIG.8 Kara Walker, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven 1995 Cut paper on wall. 15 x 35 ft. (4.6 x 10.7 m). Collection Jeffrey Deitch, New York.

FIG. 9 Paul Morrison, Glebe, 1998 screenprint, edition of 75

Pictorial representation employing reduction often borrow from styles of the past such as nineteenth-century silhouette portraits (Walker), comics and childrens’ book illustrations, (Morrison) or ‘graphic designs prevalent (in France) during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s’50 (Mrcyk & Moriceau). All three exploit the capacity to collapse representational space into a single field or, at least a fluctuating field where space and form becomes unclear. When spatial planes are flattened, relationships between forms become more direct and in doing so often humorously absurd. In Morrison’s screen-print Glebe (Fig 10) the framing device of a fence railing becomes an abstract decoration. Similarly in the example of Mrcyk & Moriceau the linear flatness of the figures allows for hybrid or monstrous forms as lines are much easier to meld together. The ‘penmanship’ of Mrzyk & Moriceau also recalls high-school doodles, where paint was confined to the art-room, and the biro became the tool of creative expression and a form of escape into an internal world. Mrcyk & Moriceau’s approach to animation is comparable to the early silent animation era, described by American writer Norman Klien as ‘Typographic’51. It also suggests the preoccupation of proto-cinema, where animated zoetropes, peep shows of looping sequences depicted graphic tricks revealing the saucy or the surreal. Their work also plays superficially into tropes of Minimalism, and Op art, where illusionistic representation begins to abstract into pattern, expanding out from the field of the picture plane into the space of the gallery. These gestures however read like gags, subtle jokes that draw on frameworks of Modernism, but whose subject matter like doodles and graffiti, is base and puerile - a caricature of Modernism.

Methodological reduction: Artists of this category don’t necessarily work pictorially, but use reduction as an overarching strategy, either as gesture, structural parameter or a minimalist trope. An example of artists in this category are the Korean

50 Noellie Roussel, "Mrzyk & Moriceau and Felicien Rops—You Only Live 25 Times," in Contemporary Projects, ed. LACMA (Los Angeles: LACMA, 2006).

51 Norman Klein uses the term Typographic to refer to animation from the silent era which relied on visual ideograms for sound effects. This term is described in more detail on page 53

Norman M. Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon (London ; New York: Verso, 1993). 43

artists Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, who work exclusively with text-based Flash sequences,52 and who steadfastly refuse to relinquish any sense of artistic process, claiming all decisions are an outcome of laziness and/or not knowing any better. For example in an online interview for the Philadelphia art festival they explain their use font style:

We like the Monaco font—the way some may have liked the Mao jacket—a uniform that you put on every day without thinking, without having to worry about fashion or dress code. 53

Since they began in 1999, YHCHI have strategically not faltered from their predetermined style guide of black Monaco text against a white background with an accompanying jazz soundtrack to accompany and punctuate the visuals. Other examples are British artists Paul Harrison and John Wood, with their use of performance, minimal materials and video.54 For Harrison and Wood, the reductive strategy in their work takes the form of a self-limiting repertoire of environments and materials focusing primarily on the artists’ bodies within the studio. Though this formality has its obvious roots in the white cube/artist studio of modernism it also refers to the production studio of film and television as a site of slapstick entertainment.

Both pictorial reduction and methodological reduction were pivotal to the research if considered as modes of caricature. It became evident that caricature was more than simply a pictorial language but also conceptual logic.

52 Chang, Young Hae, and Marc Voge. "DAKOTA." DAKOTA. Accessed February 02, 2015. http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html.

53 Roca, Jose. "Interview:Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries." http://www.philagrafika2010.org/node/208.

54 John Wood and Paul Harrison." Carroll / Fletcher. Accessed February 02, 2013. http://www.carrollfletcher.com/artists/29-John-Wood-and-Paul-Harrison/overview/.

FIG.10 Paul Harrison and John Wood 2013 100 Falls, HDV, 33:40 min Carroll/Fletcher Gallery London

Modernism, reduction, essence and Fine Art Many definitions of both reduction and caricature include reference to the idea of ‘essence’. With pictorial caricature, via a process of reduction and distortion, it is possible to capture the essence of a thing or person in order to create an easily identifiable or amplified visual likeness. Mike Kelley points out:

As the Caracci themselves realized from the very beginning, caricature is at root based on the idea of an essence or inner truth. With this aim in mind, caricature has a kind of ‘good’ twin in

less discordant attempts to essentialize the human form55

In caricature this ‘essence’ is not exclusively concerned with pictorial representation of seeing the likeness, but also has close associations to physiognomy where we read an internal essence of character manifest within the exaggerated physiognomic features. Conflicting features, information and detail are omitted and the visual shorthand in the form of ciphers and gestures becomes loaded with much more than the sum of their parts. The essential character is seemingly captured, but with reduction comes inevitable ambiguity. By the time we get to the fourth version of Philipon’s pear-king much of the information is assumed, and relies on previous panels. To anyone outside

55 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism.pg 21 45

of the zeitgeist of France in the mid 1800’s it would not be expected that they could recognize anything more than a sulky anthropomorphic pear, rather than a fruit-faced king. With reduction, the blank space becomes open to possibility and this is where the quest for ‘essence’ unravels and the more interesting possibilities of ambiguity may arise.

Another example of reductive form that also focuses on essence is abstraction, specifically that of fine-art painting of the early twentieth century. This pursuit of essence (visual and structural) was a key aspect of Modernism not only as a formal goal of pictorial representation, but also as a progressive methodology striving towards the essential ideal. Mark Cheetham explains that for artists such as Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky, the quest for the essential was connected to reforming society, a path to a better world through the creation of a universal language as ‘the sense of being the absolute truth and in the sense of being completely intelligible’.56

But as Mary Staniszewski concluded a few years later, the quest for a universal modern visual language succeded in a way not originally intended by the arists.

- this material language while resorting to Euclidian geometry as a universal, was by no means ‘completely intelligible’ to a broader public, and instead perpetuated a culture of exclusivity. Paradoxically what had become universal was the language of popular culture.57

Gombrich was also dubious regarding the claims of the purity of abstraction as a language and was sensitive to issues of exclusivity. He sardonically points out in his first book on caricature that caricature’s lowly position in culture (as opposed to the elitism of abstract painting) was a problem attributed not just to its use of humour, but also on caricature’s reliance on the pictorial and the narrative:

56 Mark Arthur Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting (Cambridge University Press Cambridge, 1991).

57 Mary Anne Staniszewski, Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (Penguin Group USA, 1995). 46

…a picture which tells a story is thought to be inferior to one which embodies the true artist’s

‘pure vision’58

The ‘pure vision’ which Gombrich refers to here had been discussed in the book by Roger Fry, ‘Vision and Design’59, where Fry described the difference between the vision of the ‘ordinary person’ seeing the familiar, what is already known and that of the painter who can see with clarity – ‘The artistic attitude of pure vision abstracted from necessity’60. In this sense any pictorial or narrative qualities are indicative of popular vision, while artistic vision needs to serve no purpose other than its own pursuit. Gombrich in the book Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art devoted an entire chapter to the subject of abstraction entitled ‘The Vogue of abstract art’61 where he suggests that;

putting an abstract in your room (and) you have proclaimed your allegiance to the right kind of thing, to the future, whatever that may mean.62

It is generally acknowledged by various art historians (see James Elkins, Christopher Wood,)63, that Gombrich was uncomfortable talking about modern art, particularly abstraction, and this quote reflects the established notions of what was considered progressive art of the time, a historical moment where figuration was considered rearguard and abstraction as avant-garde. While Gombrich thoroughly and eloquently explored examples of caricature throughout art history, and made comparisons with the contemporary popular culture of his time (1940’s -1950’s) contemporary art of the period was absent from his writing. This absence seems a

58 Gombrich and Kris, Caricature; ibid.

59 Roger Fry and J. B. Bullen, Vision and Design, Oxford Paperbacks (London ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

60 Ibid. Pg 29

61 Gombrich, "Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art."

62 Ibid. Pg.146

63 References to this critisism may be found in the following texts: Ten Reasons Why E. H. Gombrich Is Not Connected to Art History, and E.H. Gombrich’s ‘Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation’, 1960 by Christopher S. Wood 47

resentful acknowledgement that ‘abstraction had vanquished figuration once and for all’.’64

For Gombrich the idea of essence or the essential rather than a spiritual quest or formal separation from the past, was critical. His typification of essence was specifically concerned with describing the relationship between the nature of representation and the characteristics of the thing itself.

While the earlier abstract painters sought a universal essence, for the second generation of American abstract painters, the idea of essence shifts from a universal language of painting to the essential and existential act of making then removing any other purpose. In an interview with Bruce Glaser for Art International 1966, American abstract painter artist Ad Reinhardt remarked that;

The process and problem of painting is reduced to something that has only to do with essence.

Doing anything else would be beside the point or would be done for some other reason.65

Or Barbara Rose in her introductory notes in Art as Art;

This essence was not about self expression or artistic freedom, but a capacity to dislocate the

self from the everyday world and engage only in the act of painting.66

Reinhardt’s idea of essence was centered on the physicalities of painting - painting at its most fundamental - without contamination from any other processes or methodologies. Once established, Reinhardt was able to reproduce this essential formula over and over, generating the same black monochrome painting during a period of fourteen years until his untimely death in 1967.67

64 Christopher S Wood, "Eh Gombrich's' Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation', 1960," The Burlington Magazine 151, no. 1281 (2009). p.837

65 Ad Reinhardt and Barbara Rose, Art-as-Art : The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

66 Ibid.

67 Discussion surrounding the work of Ad Reinhardt will be revisited in subsequent chapters as his work increasingly become integral to the research. 48

This idea of the essential translates to other processes and art practices such as the work of Structuralist filmmaker Tony Conrad, where the essential shifts from the picture plane, to the structure of film projection itself. Conrad exploited the fundamentals of filmmaking by just employing the use of flickering light. By stripping away the illusionistic properties of film such as pictorial representation, continuous movement, and even removing the projector lens; the film became ‘its own reality’68 rather than the conventional illusionistic reality of narrative film. This form of reductive essence can be compared to Op Art where the experience of the work effects the viewer’s physiology, on a retinal level, rather than presenting a narrative form. In works such as Conrad’s The Flicker 1966, the immersive nature of the projection as well as the extreme physical stroboscopic flickering provided a forceful experience of pure abstraction. Unlike a painting, in which you may look away at any time, these projected artworks in their darkened rooms would more thoroughly prevent any external distraction from the experience of the essential.

In all these examples, the artist keeps reducing until left with only the essential - essence is the prize and reduction is the task.

Modernism, industrial reduction and mainstream animation The quest for a slightly different version of the essential may also be considered in industrial image production, where budget restraints and the pursuit of profits force production models into a process of reduction. This required a re-thinking, to establish the bare necessities of representation and production essentials without completely destabilizing the existing narrative and formal structure.

In addition to the influences already discussed, mainstream animation has a parallel history to fine art, and has been a formative influence on my work even before this research project. Animation (like the development of printing) is a reprographic

68 Robert Russett and Cecile Starr, Experimental Animation : Origins of a New Art, Rev. ed., A Da Capo Paperback (New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press, 1988). 49

medium that melds together artistic endeavor with industrialization. As a result its visual language is indicative of the need for reduction, philosophically, artistically and mechanically, and the legacy of many of these aesthetic parameters are present in mainstream visual culture today. When we think about reduction in popular pictorial representation there are a range of technological and economic considerations that have contributed to the form over the last one hundred years since industrialization. These are summarized in the table below.

FIG. 11 Table showing development of graphics style in relation to technology.

Within mainstream graphic culture, the limitations of evolving image technology are a constant challenge that shapes the representation of each era and is then re-visited with each subsequent change in technology. For example, the limits in tonal subtleties of film stock of the early 1900’s prompted the use of the familiar earlier style of pen and ink drawings of comic strips. Early television reception lacked colour, clarity and contrast, so the thick black outlines of 1950’s and 1960’s animated graphics revisited the simple black and white style of film animation of the 1920’s. Flash animation in its early days of web banners was limited by speed and bandwidth restricting the amount of tone, perspectival shading and detail, so many graphics were a revision of the limited animation style of 1960’s television.69 Australian academic Anna Munster

69 Limited animation describes a style and technique developed within the studio system as a way of saving time and money. This style though pioneered by UPA became later typified in the 1960’s 50

recognizes this geneology of contemporary animation aesthetics from sources other than information graphics where:

- we should not dismiss the equally important visual relation that Flash draws with the flatlands of offline animation developed for television, experimental video and short film through the late twentieth century.….its genealogy is caught up with a visual culture that

initially grew out of what we might now refer to as older media forms….... 70

The ‘older media’ forms of a previous era find a new purpose and life with a new generation of artists who perceive new-media as an aesthetic wasteland. Looking back instead of forwards is a point of difference from the mainstream zeal for a utopian future, as evidenced in the contemporary use of animation in advertising and special effects cinema. The ‘older media forms’ are less concerned with mimeses and hyper- reality, and more concerned with visual economy and design.

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami also recognized the appeal of an ‘eccentric composition’ in TV animation. In particular the effect Yoshinori Kanada’s series ‘Galaxy Express 999’ (1977 – 1981) has had on subsequent animation and graphic styles:

Ironically the success of the principal of limited animation, created out of the reality of insufficient budgets, brought its strange movements and timing into areas with no such

shortages.71

The ‘areas of no such shortages’ refer to examples of mainstream cinema, music video and electronic music. ‘Strange movements and timing’ were recognized by Murakami as a quality typical of Japanese television animation. This along with an extreme sense

by studios such as Hanna Barbera, and Filmation, where an increased emphasis on dialogue and background music, offset the lack of animated movment.

70 Anna Munster, "Compression and the Intensification of Visual Information in Flash Aesthetics," animation 2, no. 9385 (2003).

71 Murakami, Super Flat. 51

of image planarity allowing ‘the viewer to assemble an image in their minds from fragments …72’ is considered by Murakami as a key concept in his theory of super flat.

The contemporary author Norman Klein, in his invaluable book Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon73 discusses the three phases in animation history that were noticeable for their use of reduction and outline. Even before the development of the animation studio system, Klein attributes Walter Crane’s book Line and Form74 to be an influential precursor to the language of the reductive line. Line and Form is a handbook for drawing and design in an era where while there were accepted limitations in printing and reproduction, there was also an explosion in the decorative arts as a result of the Arts and Crafts movement. Crane’s description of the ornamental purpose75 in drawing is a precursor to the future use of stylised model sheets in studio animation.

Klein’s three phases of animation are particularly important to this research project, as they have become the quarry from which many of the animation sequences have been mined. In addition to simplistic forms of representation, it is also where references for movement have been sourced, identifying and reworking the loop cycles used for backgrounds and incidental special effects. For this reason it seems appropriate to describe these three phases as discussed by Klein in some detail.

The first phase that Klein describes occurred during the pre-sound era of animation with two-dimensional pictorial representation and was an extension of the printed page, or more directly, newspaper cartoons. He describes the era of silent animation as Typographical, referring to Russian typography of the 1920’s whereby cartoon characters like Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat may re-purpose pictorial ideograms such as

72 Ibid. Pg14

73 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon; ibid.

74 Walter Crane, Line & Form (George Bell & Sons, 1900).

75 Crane’s use of the word ‘ornamental’ refers to stylization and reduction: ‘pure outline, and feeling for silhouette’ as opposed to the ‘graphic purpose’ which attempts realism and detail. Ibid pg 197 52

question or exclamation marks for dimensional narrative tasks. Klein argues that with the absence of sound the animated picture plane was comparatively free from the constraints of the physical world such as gravity and perspective, and so the play between deep-space and planar space was fluid - not quite breaking the so called fourth wall76 but certainly making us aware of it. ‘Felix is inventive purely within the constraints (or freedom) of the flat screen. Every object he transforms is flat ink.’77

FIG.12 Screen stills from the animation Felix in the swim 1922, Pat Sullivan studios, sourced from Archive.org

The! second phase occurred ! post World War II, and! was a tendency that was previously smoldering in popular animation but specifically ignited as a result of a breakaway from a hegemonic aesthetic. After a prolonged strike at the Disney studios in 1941 regarding pay-rates and working conditions, several of the employees resigned and started their own new studio called UPA – United Productions of America. This studio self-consciously rejected the Disney style of classical full animation in favour of a new style focusing on abstraction (comparatively speaking) and reduction. This style evolved from the wartime instructional film, which by their very nature needed to be concise and somewhat deadpan, using a combination of diagrams, text, photographic collage and movement. Coincidently, they produced an animated version of the pamphlet ‘The races of mankind78’ (1935) illustrated by the painter Ad Reinhardt. The didacticism of the later UPA animation such as Gerald Mc Boing Boing79 was a

76 The Oxford dictionary definition of the Fourth wall is ‘the space which separates a performer or performance from an audience’.

77 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon; ibid.

79 America, United Productions of. Gerald Mcboing Boing. Burbank, Calif.: Columbia Pictures, 1950. Film, 7 mins. 53

contrast to the camp bawdy humour of Warner Brothers and the romantic nostalgia of Disney. This was indicative of a post war climate of unification and acceptance, rather than war-time slapstick. The intention of this new style was to distance itself from the more philistine caricature-like style of other animation studios, and incorporate a new sense of space, responding to the belief ‘that a modern space was hygienic and optimistic’80. Gerald Mc Boing Boing incorporated flat fields of background colour and unfilled line much the same as Henri Matisse used in his paintings such as Red Studio, 1911. The influence of modernist painting is evident in these examples and may be partly attributed to the contributions of background artist and colourist Jules Engel, who was also an abstract painter when not working at UPA.

FIG.13 Gerald Mc Boing Boing short film released in 1950 UPA studios, sourced from the book Cartoon Modern

80 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. Pg 231 54

FIG.14 Henri Matisse Red Studio, 1911, MOMA New York

The third phase occurred as a result of the advent of television and the economic constraints forced upon production in the 1960’s. The champions of this phase were Hanna Barbera studios who, after being faced with sudden closure, figured out a way to produce volume on a shoestring budget. This style of animation was later referred to as ‘limited’ animation and is typified by excessive use of repeats, cycling backgrounds and reduced movement. Interestingly up until the last few years, the term ‘limited animation’ was considered a criticism, but more recently this style is appreciated for its innovation.81 It is interesting in this phase that the subtle influence of Op Art and Minimalist painting aesthetics are noticeable additions to the previous abstraction of the UPA style. It is important to note that this era also marked the shift from adult or family entertainment situated in the shared environment of the cinema, to content targeted specifically for children and produced for television in a comparatively unsupervised, hermetic world. As with the evolution of the comic strip from newspaper and adult readership to comic book with a readership aimed primarily for children, this finally cemented the popular association of cartoon graphics and the juvenile - simple graphics for young, uncomplicated minds.

81 The book Cartoon modern is a good source referencing the history and aesthetics of limited animation. Amid Amidi, Cartoon Modern : Style and Design in Fifties Animation, 1st. ed. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006). 55

With the exception of the UPA style, two other styles were developed to accommodate quite tangible restrictions and limits. The UPA style was a reaction against established mainstream styles, voluntarily developing a reductive style in the newly created environment of autonomy and creative freedom - a self-imposed reduction as an alternative to the mainstream. Klein argues that although the aesthetic of UPA animation is seemingly progressive and aesthetically avant-garde, it is also a stylistic outcome of Cold War paranoia, a self-imposed censorship of politeness. UPA were conscious of not using slapstick, funny animals (which were veiled racial stereotypes) or violence, but instead aspired to an aesthetic where ‘Abstract surface became linked with good political animation’.82 ‘Good’ politics in this sense refers to a politic nationally unified by a common cause such as fighting a war, or fighting disease. Again we are reminded of Kelley’s description of the hot and cool caricature, ‘where the cooler aesthetic dominates - and is more critically sanctioned’.83 Here ‘hotness’ refers to an animation style indulging in caricature, and ‘coolness’ refers to those who are ostensibly critiquing it.

Hanna Barbera on the other hand had no high-art aspirations, yet it is easy to recognize elements of Op art and Post-Painterly Abstraction, whether this is merely coincidental or a simple case of hierarchical cross-pollination. The result of these reductive, industrial representational processes is that it makes for perfect reference material for the visual aspects of the research project. Sequences are easily copied and re-purposed and the saving of energy becomes physical, aesthetic and intellectual.

82 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. Pg 234

83 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. Pg 21 56

FIG.15 Image stills from television animation series World of super adventures 1966 -70 Hanna Barbera studios

Digital Reduction Within digital culture particularly graphics generated with the computer software Adobe Flash84, the relationship between latent modernist aesthetics, simplicity and reductive representation has been recognized and described by Lev Manovich as ‘Soft Modernism’85. In his 2002 essay ‘Generation Flash’, he defines this as a graphic style present in a range of computer software packages that emulates previous historical styles of abstraction in software programming and data visualization. Manovich makes the comparison between works such as Utopia86 by Amy Franceschini and Sascha Merg 2001 with avant-guard filmmakers such as John Whitney and James Whitney and Oscar Fischinger, whereby Flash programming is used to generate and control abstraction offering an alternative to the noisy bombardment of commercial media:

Flash generation invites us to undergo a visual cleansing – this is why we see a monochrome palette, white and light gray. It uses neo-minimalism as a pill to cure us from post-modernism. In Flash, the rationality of modernism is combined with the rationality of programming and the affect of computer games to create the new aesthetics of lightness, curiosity and

intelligence.87

84 Adobe Flash is a vector based animation and multimedia software package formally known as Macromedia Flash or Shockwave Flash. It was first released in 1996 primarily for graphics and animation, later developing for web and game platforms.

85 Lev Manovich, "Generation Flash," (2002), http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/generation- flash.

86 UTOPIA was a Shockwave project by Futurefarmers: Amy Franceschini and Sascha Merg for the Tirana Biennale 01 Internet section

87 Manovich, "Generation Flash". 57

The phrase ‘lightness, curiosity and intelligence’ reinforces the assumption that reduction (visual cleansing and stripping away of mainstream media) is rational and intelligent - an evolved state from the noise and mindless bombardment of its other. This essay also describes the prevailing digital revolution that had begun to shape my own practice, where vector software packages such as Adobe Flash and Illustrator enabled a clean, precise, resolution-independent aesthetic which was unobtainable with previous bitmap animation software. Although I wasn’t working with data visualization, the use of Flash and Illustrator allowed clean lines and precision. In this, the programs emulated previous styles of non-photographic representation such as poster art, illustration, and animated logos that were also shaped by limitations of prevailing technologies of earlier era’s. The images in Crowd Pleasers88 for example, simulates caricature-type drawing/illustration shaped by early printing processes, such as those found in woodcuts, and later cheap comics books. Both of these necessitated a lack of tone and colour as well a bold linear shape that could withstand the inaccuracies of reproduction.

FIG.16 Martine Corompt Crowd Pleasers, 2006 metallic lambda print, collection of artist

As indicated by Manovich, this period of reductive, digital, vector art also runs a counter condition. In mainstream western image production (in particular animation) the impulse to ‘make real’ representation has consistently driven the evolution of image technology away from the graphic and towards the mimetic. Here the Computer-aided design of special effects and character animation were championed

88 This project was developed in 2006 and was based on edited sequences from Australia’s Funniest Home Videos as an investigation of slapstick humour. Crowd Pleasers Martine Corompt 2006 Spacement gallery Melbourne, Australia 58

for their perceived realism. Manovich recognises this representational dichotomy between digital art and the digital mainstream as a need for the artist (the New-Media artist) to position themselves in contrast to the ‘Baroque assault of commercial media’. Flash generation serves us the modernist aesthetic and rationality of software.’89 This contrasting position stood against both the use of figuration and the mimetic drive for realism of three-dimensional programs such as the popular, but very expensive, computer system Silicon Graphics.90 Within the culture of digital art, the high-end super-realism of Silicon Graphics software such as Softimage91 was comparatively out of reach for an average artist unless assisted by an institution or government grant. Flash software on the other hand was much more accessible. Since the use of Flash has dwindled in recent years, it may be argued that this Soft Modernism continues with the work of Post-Internet artists such as Raphael Rozenthal and Corey Archangle,92 where the reduction aesthetic is demonstrated through programming for the web or for game consoles.

Reduction as a general social condition One of the surprising benefits of researching in the internet-age, are the tangential connections made between two otherwise unrelated subjects. In a 2012 Google search on ‘minimalism’ the first page of links that appeared was not a reference to the art movement, but instead for lifestyle websites, a growing movement based on reducing possessions and ‘living with less’, sounding somewhere between a House and Garden magazine and a Mondrian manifesto. ‘Minimalism is a lifestyle choice…. Minimalism is a tool to eliminate life’s excess, focus on the essentials, and find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.’93 Here was another example of what might seem like an

89 Manovich, "Generation Flash". ibid

90 Silicon Graphics Computer Systems founded in 1982 by Charles Kuta, James H. Clark

91 Pronounced with the French enunciation,

92 This contemporary analysis of the argument is described in more detail in Chapter three, Temporal reduction.

93 "The Minimalists." The Minimalists. Accessed February 02, 2016. http://www.theminimalists.com/. 59

example of Kelley’s ‘historical referencing of reductivist paradigms as a ‘legitimizing façade’. The movement promoted by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus known as The Minimalists promotes a dogma uncannily like that of Ad Reinhardt though not referring to the process of art but instead a complete lifestyle ideology of ‘living a meaningful life with less stuff’.94 This movement has gained popularity (over four million online readers) as an alternative to a life of increasing material consumption, accumulation and emotional attachment to things, of giving material things unnecessary meaning. The references to historical Minimalism (or rather Modernist reduction) are apparent in the name, but also run throughout their marketing as a referencing aesthetic. They range from the simple black and white- only graphics of their website, their wardrobe (jeans, black t-shirt or white shirt) even the use of black and white stock images to illustrate website entries which are all from the 1930’s and 1940’s, placing the ideology within depression era Americana. It seems as though The Minimalists are a byproduct of modernist reduction, but without the intent of art-making, rather the purpose of personal development and a life of freedom.

Unlike the artist, the only thing they claim to want to add to the world (apart from their many printed books) is a philosophy. Their legacy is an ideology, but one with a carefully crafted marketing formula in which they have become celebrities. Celebrities not for what they have made, built, collected or developed, but for what they have learnt to live without and adapt to. In an online text-based walk-through of Joshua Fields Millburn’s minimalist apartment he explains the benefits of his bare walls.

Above this stand hangs a leather coat on the wall, a piece of clothing that’s also (accidentally) a piece of artwork when I’m not wearing it.95

The notion of the leather coat performing the function of both a serviceable object (providing bodily warmth and protection) and an object of contemplation, is not only

94 This phrase is the byline from the website.

95 Millburn , Joshua F. “TOUR MY MINIMALIST APARTMENT.” The Minimalists. www.theminimalists.com/apartment/. 60

maximizing the value of the object, but also speaks of the journey of Modernist art; the jacket as representation, the jacket as readymade or even the jacket as artifact from the celebrity artist/performer. But this seems to be the extent of how art may factor into the life of Joshua Milburn who has chosen for his own creative self- expression the written word, which in a digital age takes up no discernable space and is then for him the ideal medium of a reductive lifestyle.

It’s easy to pick holes in the Minimalist doctrines and find reasons why it is ideologically flawed, both for its anti-materialism and anti-art stance and for its reliance on digital storage as a remedy to the problems of material storage. Given the resources the digital world actually consumes, it also seems naïve and untenable as a long-term solution. However it is not the aim of this research to prove or disprove the movement of lifestyle minimalism, but only to refer to it as one example of a larger condition. What has been immensely useful is not this ‘philosophy’ or even the act of reducing as a personal ethical position, but the formal structure of what a process-of- reduction looks like. This is an example of an aesthetic representative of a more general cultural condition.

The Cult of reduction as a methodology Kelley’s idea of the historical referencing of reductivist paradigms as a legitimizing façade led to the consideration of this statement as part of a possible methodological framework. That is, to place this proposition between the context of fine art and other examples of fields such as economics, the environment, technology design, interior design, health, and lifestyle ideology. In this sense, the reductive paradigm is not a trope of fine-art specifically, but a moral code. It operates as a cultural virtue where the impulse to reduce or appear reductive is in some ways beneficial as a practice of austerity. In this way, reduction as ‘cult’ is manifested in its dictionary definition as a ‘misplaced or excessive admiration for a practical thing’.96

96 ‘Oxford Dictionaries - Dictionary, Thesaurus, & Grammar,’ Oxford Dictionaries | English, accessed December 20, 2014, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cult 61

The introduction noted that caricature was the initial subject for the research, but then shifted to the methodology and subject of reduction. Although the intent of reduction in fine-art is usually one of valour, reduction now becomes exposed for its flaws – that is, a legitimizing façade for an impossible endeavor. While reduction became the subject and methodology, caricature became the framework of the research.

The Cult of Reduction has slowly developed into a working framework for this thesis. This has enabled a process of participation in this cultural tendency and a strategy for managing its counterpoint - excess. While an attempt at a Modernist universal visual language may have failed with abstraction, it was more successful with the cartoon and popular culture as argued by Mary Anne Staniszewski.97 The tachistoscope experiments of Ryan and Schwartz demonstrated how easily the cartoon hands could be recognised opposed to their mimetic or artistically expressive counterparts. The remainder of this dissertation continues to engage with the question of the reductive drive, and to find ways in which this drive may manifest as artworks.

As the research unfolded it seemed appropriate to steer away from the figure and begin by exploring reductive ideas via landscape. This removal of the figure from the picture plane of cartoons and animation also becomes a gesture of reduction. Within the traditions of animation this might be understood as a background/foreground division, where the foreground is usually the space of the figure/character, and the background is the environment they inhabit. The compositional reduction allows for the two to visually coexist in harmony. For this research project the background becomes forefront. In a cultural sense, the reductive landscape might suggest shrinking or disappearing. As an artwork, the spectator becomes the absent figure, contemplating a diminished world. An example of the removal of the figure/subject from cultural audio-visual artifact, can be demonstrated in two examples in FIG 17.

97 Staniszewski, Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art. 62

The first example Broersen and Lukacs’ Mastering-Bambi 2010, where the forest scene from the opening sequence of Bambi has been re-created to remove all subjects (forest animals) leaving only the forest. Similarly, Daniel McKewen in Zarathustra's Cave 2013- 14 re-edits a tiny fragment from the American television show Seinfeld, where the subject/figure (Jerry and his friends) are absent from the familiar apartment set. In both examples the removal of the figure as a reductive gesture allows the spectator to replace the absent figure.

FIG. 17 Broersen and Lukacs Mastering-Bambi 2010 (left) and Daniel McKewen Zarathustra's Cave 2013-14 (right)

The research project to this point had been convoluted, beginning with an intuitive hunch about caricature and concluding with a broader tendency of reduction. Ideas emerged from a combination of historical references, word associations and material processes, which thread and coalesce into a discourse related to the ‘cartoon and The Cult of Reduction. The intention is not to summarize and re-present the use of pictorial reductive representation as an end in itself, but to draw on it as a method for describing a more general, cultural reductive tendency both pictorially and methodologically.

Chapter 2 Dimensional Reduction, discusses the reductive properties of two- dimensionality and pictorial flatness in relation to The Cult of Reduction as a working methodology. This chapter explores cultural and historical readings of flatness and dimensional reduction as well as key works in the project that have developed from this thinking.

Chapter 2: DIMENSIONAL REDUCTION

You are living on a Plane. What you style Flatland is the vast level surface of what I may call a fluid, on, or in, the top of which you and your countrymen move about, without rising above it

or falling below it.98

This chapter focuses on dimensional flatness as a formal aspect of reducing representational space. In particular, the ways this has been tested throughout the research project and how it is manifest in other forms of representation. Within the overall thesis argument, the chapter explores examples of dimensional reduction and dimensional flatness both as a deliberate strategy of flattening space as well as a byproduct of something that should be, or was, more dimensionally expansive. While the overall thesis alludes to reduction in both fine art and the broader culture as aspirational and progressive, dimensional reduction in both these realms is considered also as a deficiency. The three main subject motifs for subsequent works presented in the various studio methodologies of weeding, water and demolition, are introduced.

98 Edwin Abbott, "Flatland: A Romance in Multiple Dimensions," New York: New American Library (1884). 64

There are various ways of thinking through the idea of Dimensional Reduction and in this Chapter the main points of reference are the cartoon, abstraction, projection surface and the mixed cultural readings of black and white.

On being flat A definitive exploration of dimensional flattening as a didactic, anthropomorphic fantasy, is demonstrated in the nineteenth century novella Flatland: A Romance in Multiple Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott.99 In this story, dimension and shape serve as a lesson in geometry as the conceptualization of physical space and also an allegory for the Victorian class system. As a reader, we are introduced to Flatland and we are also a spectator looking onto a two-dimensional plane from our own three-dimensional world. Our hero (a square) one day finds his known universe to be mysteriously penetrated by a circular god-like presence (a sphere) who then attempts to educate our square on the principals of the third dimension:

I. Space, my Lord, is height and breadth indefinitely prolonged. Stranger. Exactly: you see you do not even know what Space is. You think it is of Two Dimensions only; but I have come to announce to you a Third - height, breadth, and length. I. Your Lordship is pleased to be merry. We also speak of length and height, or breadth and thickness, thus denoting Two Dimensions by four names. Stranger. But I mean not only three names, but Three Dimensions.

I. Would your Lordship indicate or explain to me in what direction is the Third Dimension, unknown to me? Stranger. I came from it. It is up above and down below. I. My Lord means seemingly that it is Northward and Southward. Stranger. I mean nothing of the kind. I mean a direction in which you cannot look, because you have no eye in your side.

99 Ibid. 65

FIG.18 The sphere with his section at full size. 2. The sphere rising; 3.The Sphere on the point of vanishing. An example of the third dimension intersecting with the two-dimensional. From the novel Flatland: A Romance in Multiple Dimensions, sourced from Gutenberg.org

The sphere demonstrates his other-worldly powers of seemingly being able to shrink and expand, disappear and reappear, which is only of course the process of the sphere intersecting with the two-dimensional plane of the square’s universe. The sphere has the privileged perspective of a deity, of being able to view the whole of Flatland externally from above. Once the Square finally comprehends this principal, he himself becomes a spectator of other dimensions, visiting one-dimensional Line-land, and then no-dimensional Point-land. The dimensional reduction of the Flatlanders is made apparent both in their morphology (flat geometry) as well as their intellect, where they are clearly lacking in expansive thinking. In the Victorian era of elaborate surface decoration and Neo-Gothic clutter, reductive representation was not yet an aspiration.

Two-dimensional flatness is a physical impossibility as everything has depth - it is a conceptual abstraction. Flatland is not really a two-dimensional world but rather a very flat three-dimensional world whose inhabitants are ignorant of this fact. This allegorical story reinforces the perception of flatness in its dimensionally reductive state as inferior and lacking in sophistication compared to our more enlightened three- dimensional existence. It also demonstrates how it is impossible to apprehend a dimension outside our own. Within the narrative, two-dimensionality was clearly a crude and naïve existence. For the author whose intention was to encourage expanded thinking, considering dimensions beyond the ones we already know, the story also served to expose the classist, limited thinking of the Victorians in anticipation of the new pictorial space of Modernism. Artist and writer David Batchelor adopted the title

for his 2014 exhibition Flatland100 in which he explored aspects of two dimensional abstraction and flatness in contrast to his well-known sculptural practice. For Batchelor the reference to the novel Flatland makes the association to the way an artist may work within dimensional paradigms of two-dimensions and three-dimensions - ‘a place where forms and shapes and things don’t have to obey the laws of gravity.’101 The example of the dimensional worlds colliding in Fig.18 might also be considered as a humorous parable of the relationship of the spectator and the two-dimensional artwork, as well as the tabooed moment of touching and intersecting with the artworks planar surface. When a hand is on a painting, or a hand moves through a projected surface, two worlds collide, one adulterates the other – an idea that will be discussed later in this chapter.

Dimensional flatness as an outcome of pictorial reduction carries a variety of associations, most of them associated with an idea of lack. This may be an overall lack of value, an impoverished representation, or conversely a lack of the frivolous or extraneous - an austerity for some higher purpose. In a pictorial sense, dimensional flatness is a simple case of lacking depth. In removing detail in varying degrees, perspectival cues such as shadow, colour perspective and linear scale allow all pictorial planes to be equal to its substrate surface – removing the hierarchy of the picture plane. The idea of dimensional flatness also carries associations of some type of deficiency, of being incomplete and not having yet realized its full potential. If someone feels flat, they are lacking in the usual spectrum of emotions, if something sounds flat it is lacking in pitch (a semitone). Pictorial flatness is usually associated with the diagrammatic, or the template, a colouring book to be completed, an architectural plan to be built, a provisional existence yet to be made whole.

As previously touched on in the introductory chapter, the particular graphic aesthetic of my art practice has evolved over many years due to several influencing factors.

100 David Batchelor et al., David Batchelor : Flatlands (Edinburgh, Bristol: Fruitmarket Gallery; Spike Island, 2013).

101 Batchelor, Chromophobia. 67

Initially it was a fundamental and intuitive interest in cartoon representation and animation, but in addition were also more practical considerations surrounding economy. Black and white printing was and still is much cheaper. In the early days of digital media, chromatically reduced files took up much less data space and their playback was faster. Convenience and self-regulation gradually streamlined my visual work into a mantra of graphic reduction, itself an enjoyable challenge. As an artist in the contemporary digital age however, there really is no imperative anymore to be frugal with file-size and bandwidth. Reduction is a form of self-censorship, a self- imposed austerity. The results of this development have established several self- imposed rules. These include no tone whatsoever, little or no colour (with the exception of yellow (to be discussed later), and an economy-of-line102 championed by artists, illustrators, cartoonists and designers throughout the twentieth century as described throughout Chapter One.

Within the research project dimensional reduction refers to a lack of detail but also a distorted heightened detail - a simplified, streamlined representation free from noise which rejects the qualities of illusionary deep space such as linear perspective, tone, apparent light-source and use of colour. While dimensional representation generated via both the camera lens and the computer have marched towards fidelity and apparent realism in the world of screen entertainment, the world of graphics and information has continued Modernism’s quest for simplicity. This is most clearly demonstrated by Microsoft’s and Apple’s move to ‘flat graphics’ from the previous rich graphics, or skeumorphic three-dimensional graphics of interface design. Here buttons and tabs lost their beveled sides and drop shadows in favour of simple solid colour blocks. Flat design is described as having originated from the Swiss Style or International Style103 of graphic design, a mid-century development from earlier

102 It is difficult to find a definitive reference to support the widespread existence of the ‘economy of line’, However the Ryan and Schwartz experiment of 1956 is sufficient to persuasively argue the economy-of-line as a successful method of communication where techniques of simplification and distortion ‘emphasize the essential spatial relationships involved’ Pg 61 Ryan and Schwartz, "Speed of Perception as a Function of Mode of Representation."

103 This movement originated in Switzerland in the 1950’s featuring sans-serif fonts and flat colour. The pursuit of beauty was to be found in simplicity rather than ornamentation. For a detailed description of the attributes and history of Flat design in relation to the International style, see Diogo Terro 2009 article in Smashing magazine: 68

avant-garde movements such as Russian Constructivism, Dutch De Stijl and German Bauhaus philosophies where ‘form follows function’. Flat graphics are arguably truer to their form where they are not trying to emulate anything other than what they are.

Subject 1 – Weeding Digital graphic representation is another familiar type of flatness, where a lack of materiality and authenticity easily lends itself to a clean, neat surface. This is a software aesthetic – free from the contamination of mistakes and accidents, as these can so easily be rectified. Touching up is a familiar process where mistakes and flaws of the actual world can be corrected within the digital environment.

It is uncertain exactly when I commenced the process of drawing weeds, but the logic made itself apparent one day when working on an image in Adobe Illustrator. Going through the usual process of converting a scanned drawing, cleaning up lines, removing noise, re-emphasizing negative space, I realised that this in itself was a process of weeding - weeding out the obstructions to reveal the ideal form. This then led to a series of investigations into drawing weeds as an experiment in reductive cartoon. The first weed selected is known as a Common Sowthistle or Milkweed and is listed as one of the most prevalent and invasive weeds in Australia, so in many ways its notoriety made it an apt subject to be considered in the context of reduction. In this way the weed became subject, metaphor and methodology for the process of graphic reduction. But paradoxically although weeding was the methodology, the weeds themselves were not eradicated to reveal the ideal (the perfect landscape or composition) but had become the subject. As with Kelley’s description of the use of caricature in fine-art, as well as being the by-product of an otherwise reductive process, they also became tamed, digested and transformed from their lowly status to a higher one. Kelley was more critical of this process as it is fundamentally an ‘anti-

www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/lessons-from-swiss-style-graphic- design/www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/

caricature’.104 However, it still seemed necessary to follow with this process to see where it went.

FIG. 19 Martine Corompt, Proposed weed design for Sunshine railway overpass

FIG. 20 Final design including native plants completed Sunshine Railway overpass 2014. Image credit Martine Corompt

The allegorical potential of weeds is fairly self evident - invasive, prolific, uninvited and always in a state of migration - the desire for their reduction is measured against their capacity for ubiquity and excess. With these themes in mind I developed the idea in response for a public art commission for Sunshine Railway overpass that would

104 for further reference see: Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. Pg 21 70

draw on common weeds as an allegory for the changing demographic of Australia. The commissioning body Regional Rail liked the idea, yet were fearful of the general public’s response to the theme of weeds in such a prominent location - not to mention with the use of public money to realize the project. The suggestion was to exchange the weeds for local indigenous plants, in particular the rare Sunshine orchid (Diuris fragrantissima) that was only preserved due to the neglected tracts of wild areas of land along the railways owned by Regional Rail. The exchange of weeds for native flora was amusing for several reasons. First because it makes apparent the distinction between wild as native and valued (authentic) as opposed to wild as foreign invader (inauthentic) but also because it explicitly reflects the methodology of weeding, that is removing the undervalued in preference for the valued. The weed would become a continuing motif in subsequent works and studies, signifying spatial neglect or the urban void. In this way the presence of weeds implies a type of spatial reduction, a space of reduced of value as well as dimensional flatness.

In a compositional sense, dimensional flatness in its anti-illusionary or reduced form has the capacity to promote its own materiality. It inadvertently creates spatial expansion, not within the picture plane but instead in front of it, thus incorporating the space of the spectator. In this sense, the spectator is no longer lost in the pictorial window of dimensional space, but instead becomes aware of their presence in real space. This idea is familiar within the discussion of Abstract Painting, and may be explained further in relation to a discussion on a particular work at the National Gallery of Australia. As a forerunner of Minimalism105, an ambassador of Abstraction, a champion of reduction, and prolific cartoonist, Ad Reinhardt’s work was becoming increasingly relevant to the research project. His dual practice of cartooning and painting both address flatness and reductive representation through the seemingly oppositional practice of humourous figuration and serious abstraction. While it was easy to view his cartoons as reproductions, it was necessary to see one of his enigmatic black paintings directly. Fortunately the Australian National Gallery had

105 Reinhardt is considered the forerunner of Minimalism, his black monochromes of the 1950’s predate later Minimalist monochrome painting of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

one in their collection, though not on display at the time, so a private viewing was arranged in the ANG Collection Study Room.

Ad Reinhardt – an encounter with flatness There is something seemingly cultish about travelling hundreds of kilometers to view a black square. The visit becomes a pilgrimage to witness an object of authenticity that can’t be experienced from a feeble jpeg image on the internet. It’s also a strange and humbling thing to see a revered painting outside of a public exhibition context. Sitting alone in the viewing room basement of the NGA, propped up on the wooden bench Ad Reinhardt’s black ‘Painting 1954 – 1958’ appeared both monumental and neglected.

FIG.21 Ad Reinhardt, Painting 1954-1958 oil on canvas 198.4 (h) x 198.4 (w) cm photographed in the viewing basement of the Australian National Gallery © Ad Reinhardt/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017.

What was initially startling is the simple but profound contrast between a public viewing and the private viewing. So many of the clichés surrounding the aura of painting suddenly become irresistibly intense. At first glance the painting seems flat

and completely monochrome, then within less than a minute the layered cruciform reappears, first the greenish grey horizontal and then the purplish blue vertical.

FIG.22 detail of Painting 1954-1958 showing the handprint on the surface of the canvas. © Ad Reinhardt/ARS. Licensed by Viscopy, 2017.

What was also equally spectacular about the painting and one of the reasons for it not being on display, were the two small greasy handprints in the bottom third of the canvas. I imagine the day that this happened. The intense drama as an unruly child was tumbling with outstretched hands toward the canvas, sucked towards the wonderfully velvet black void, wondering what it would feel like, whether it is even solid or instead some kind of looking-glass space delivering them back into the primordial blackness of their own conception. Perhaps this child was touched by the painting in a way that Reinhardt intended, a state of viewing that is beyond language, time, and place ‘emptied and purified of all its meanings except one.’106 But suddenly this ‘imageless’ human-less, time-less painting has a narrative – not simply an obscene blemish on a pristine surface, but a vivid statement of an expressionist gesture, the direct hand of the child onto the surface of the canvas. On a work that rejects all the gesture and expression of Abstract Expressionism, as well as the juxtaposed narratives of Surrealism, the defacement of this work seems particularly cruel but also slightly

106 Reinhardt and Rose, Art-as-Art : The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt. Pg 54 73

thrilling. Like a Petri-dish the reductive flat surface absorbs and is affected by the ‘culture’ in which it comes into contact. The presence of the hand-print on the black square is reminiscent of the grimy marks on the domestic television screen. When unpowered the screen becomes a mundane surface and the handprint evidence of that surface. In a refusal of pictorial depth, flatness is now directly reinforced because of the presence (blemish) of the hand.

Reinhardt claimed that his paintings were only truly pure/authentic while they are in the studio, the moment they left they became something else:

The painting leaves the studio as a purist, abstract, non-objective object of art, returns as a record of the everyday (surrealist, expressionist) experience (“chance” spots, defacements, hand markings, accident “happenings,” scratches), and is repainted, restored into a new

painting painted in the same old way (negating the negation of art) again and again….. 107

So once the work is out of the studio and it becomes something else, what is it? It becomes many things that are perhaps outside of the scope of Reinhardts’ intentions. For instance, this act of defacement, of touching the untouchable, in addition to a gesture of caricature (dethroning an authority figure) may also be thought of as a gesture of ‘breaking the fourth wall’108 - a rupture of the flattened dimensionality of the picture plane and the separation of subject and spectator. The Z-axis movement of the hand from the space of the spectator towards the space of the painting connects the work into a multi-dimensional existence, of both space and time. This idea corresponds to the developing Modernist idea of installation, where the boundaries of spectator and exhibition space begin to collide. Ten years later in 1967 Michael Fried in his essay ‘Art and Objecthood’ also recognized this ‘special complicity that the work extorts from the beholder’ as a ‘theatrical effect or quality - a kind of stage presence.’109

107 Ibid.

108 Breaking the fourth wall’ is a theatre term, referring to the breaking down of the conventional space of the Proscenium arch.

109 Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood : Essays and Reviews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Pg 4 74

Reinhardt was completely aware of the two-way relationship between the painting and spectator and made reference to this in both his early cartoons and his writing. The dimensional flatness of modernist painting was not so much a deficiency as an abstinence, particularly in relation to what existed before. Painting’s refusal to present illusionary space beyond the wall on which it is hanging opened up dimensional space in other ways. Once the illusionary window of painting was boarded up and pictorial space flattened, the relationship between spectator and artwork became more profound. For some people this was disorientating as they questioned what they were seeing. The elimination of ‘picture space’ or illusionary space was for Reinhardt a life- long crusade.

FIG.23 Ad Reinhardt, detail from How To Look Pm Series How to Look at Space PM, April 28, 1946 sourced from the Ad Reinhardt foundation

In one of his recurring cartoon panels from the ‘How to Look’ series of the mid 1940’s, Reinhardt demonstrates the spatial structure of non-representational painting

and the integration of the expanded space of the spectator in a cartoon also using flattened space. ‘YOU SIR ARE A SPACE, TOO’110 while humourously depicting the abstract painting’s ability to fight back, also obliquely forecasts the expansion of the painting field into the expanded space of installation. The threshold between surface and subject is activated by dimensional reduction. The hand of the child, the sphere penetrating Flatland or the spectator taunting the abstract painting.

Reinhardt’s manifestos or dogma are established through the negative. Instead of stating what they are, they are stated in terms of what they are not. An example of this are his twelve technical rules written in 1953 as rejection of the current values upheld by the New York school.

Twelve technical rules: 1. No texture. 2. No brushwork or calligraphy. 3. No sketching or drawing. 4. No forms. 5. No design. 6. No colors. 7. No light. 8. No space. 9. No time. 10. No size or scale. 11. No movement.

12. No object, no subject, no matter. No symbols. images, or signs.111

These rules suggest a process of eliminating and reducing until we get to what is left. For Reinhardt, what is left is the black square described as being without texture, form or space, even though these works do generate a feeling of spatial ambiguity, of deep- space when viewed over a period of time. This defiance of flatness, or of the reduced state, is a reoccurring contradiction in The Cult of Reduction where the process of

110 PM newspaper – find proper reference

111 Reinhardt and Rose, Art-as-Art : The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt. 76

reduction makes way for something more. In this example, Reinhardt’s long list of ‘no’s’ have allowed for an ambiguous surface, rich and mystical – but the anti-illusion inadvertently creates its own unique illusionary surface which was then further complicated by the public’s defacement:

In painting, for me no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the-wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint caricaturing………..no confusing painting with everything that is not painting112

This significance of the encounter with the Black Painting and the discovery of its defacement was a useful point of reference for the relationship between the artwork and the spectator, an idea that may also be extended and compared to the spectator/artwork relationship of projection. Within the discussion of dimensional reduction, surface threshold and the ambiguous surface becomes equally relevant to the discussion of the projection surface.

The cult of projection and dimensional reduction Projection, in its contemporary form, is by nature concerned with illusion, as its dependency on a substrate surface to catch the image must ultimately also be concealed by the projected image. Projection is another example whereby the spectator is tempted to touch the surface, to confirm or break this visual deception, ultimately rendering the image flat.

Another personal anecdote involves a memory from early childhood regarding surface ambiguity would be relevant here. At a visit to the cinema I was wondering about the chimerical screen surface and asked what would happen if I touched it? The reply was that the movie image would then be on my hand. This was interpreted not as something ephemeral but instead as something indelible like a burn or tattoo, an image fragment permanently attached to my skin - needless to say a slightly alarming

112 ibid. 77

idea. In this situation, the desire to touch the surface remained elusive and I remained fixed in my seat.

In contrast to the cinematic tradition, public projections and gallery projection invite mobility. The viewer may walk around, sit, stand and intercept the projected image, even allowing the image to directly touch them, sometimes casting their own shadow onto the work. Needless to say there are many obvious contrasts between the literalness of Reinhardt’s painting and the projected moving image. In fact they are almost antithetical to each other. The projector is always presenting an illusionary representation of something else, a simulation, whereas a painting such as Reinhardt’s is the thing itself, produced and displayed on the same surface. Even if a projected image has not originated from a camera and is digitally generated, the representation is still many steps away from its making and conception. Illusion in digital animation not only describes the illusionary picture plane, but also the illusion of the electronic/digital process itself that allows data to look like something else rather than what it is, bits and bytes emulating surface shape and form. What they have in common is a sense of ambiguous surface. The Black Painting is both surface and void, the image removed like an inert television screen. The projection, while chimerical, is also provisional whereby any interruption of the light source (such as a person, or the end of the sequence) reinstates the picture plane as surface.

Digital camera-less animation created using Adobe Flash does not aspire to mimetic representation.113 The non-mimetic projected surface, instead of being situated beyond the wall, is perceived on the surface of the wall - the same space as the spectator. Traditional representation assumes the position of the spectator is removed from the representational space of the picture plane. Projected animation does not continue this tradition, but instead brings attention to itself as an illusionary surface. The assumption of a fixed point of view necessary for the illusionary window-frame of easel painting or lens-based reproductions, is not so necessary. In this way the

113 Video editing software such as Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects are more suited for this purpose.

animated projection expands the space, allowing the spectator to move about freely, but the surface itself is flattened.

FIG.24 Author’s diagram showing projection using lens based representation where space continues beyond the wall (top) and non-lens based representation (bottom)

The compulsion to touch an ambiguous surface such as a black painting, a projection, or even the water wall of the National Gallery of Victoria, is driven by a need to establish what can’t be confirmed through vision alone. With projection, touch immediately renders the image flat and the viewer is able to perceive the illusion and recognise the mundanity of the wall surface. Sometimes this gesture may be dispiriting but is usually enjoyable, a moment of being able to comprehend both paradigms at the one time. As with Reinhardt’s painting, touching the surface both confirms its materiality and renders it flat.

While works such as Tide and Fall are projected from the inside – like interior surface decoration - popular urban projection festivals such as White Night and Gertrude Street Projection project externally. Usually bright and highly saturated, the projected architectural skin of each building creates an illusionary surface compressing the 79

existing architecture into nineteenth century scenery flats. Even with sophisticated projection mapping, the result appears flattened and requires a limited point of view, much like the proscenium-arch of nineteenth century theatre. An explicit example of this flattening was Craig Walsh’s projection Monument for White Night 2014 which used trees as a projection surface rather than buildings. To view this work the public was required to walk along the banks of the Yarra river from the Swanston Street bridge to the trees on the opposite side at Birrarung Mar where the projection was situated. On approaching the work it slowly became possible to make out fragments of faces in the trees. They appeared like phantoms, gathering form then disappearing and reappearing. The closer the spectator came to the projection, the more complete became the representation, until finally at the destination, the image was complete, but lacking in mystery and completely flat.

The use of projection in contemporary art as well as mainstream festival culture has been experiencing something of a boom owing to ongoing developments in projection technology and the comparative reduction in cost. This makes it accessible to artists, and in doing so, rivaling the previous hegemonic institution of cinema, while also providing a contrast to the simultaneous ubiquity of the portable screen.114. It is also another example of the growth of culture industries and the blurring of commercial technologies with those of traditional fine art, where the tools of artists are no longer relegated to the art supply store. Artist and writer Philip Brophy describes the spectacle of pubic architectural projections such as White Night (Melbourne), or Vivid (Sydney) as ‘forced performers’ or ‘buildings in drag’115. He compares new millennial public projection to a fireworks display. Brophy also points out that the drive for these types of council funded events are really driven by advertising, but presented as artworks. We are reminded here of the high/low art distinction described by Kelley as

114 Public Screens And The Transformation Of Public Space – Scott Mcquire, Nikos Papastergiadis & Sean Cubitt

115 Brophy. Philip, "Illuminated Edifices & Audiovisual Effigies," Realtime Aug-Sep 2014, no. 122 (2014).

‘cloudy’, whereby instead of incorporation (from low to high) the giant projections becomes a caricature (high to low).

For some time now we have seen the shift of the role of the projector from the conventional theatre context, where the projected image filled a purpose-made void, to something that covers, camouflages and transforms spatial surfaces with a temporary, illusionary wallpaper of light and colour. The shift from the deep space window-frame of cinema to the more spatially self-conscious space of contemporary moving-image installation, traces the change in our role as a spectator as one that began and ended at the same place. In cinema’s infancy, the spectator was able to come and go, to browse, and converse with their companions. As the more classic conventions of cinema established itself, the spectator became inert, seated in the dark, unable to activate the space around them. With the advent of moving image in the gallery and more recently in the public space, the audience has once again reclaimed this ‘freedom’ of movement. Representational flatness expands the space, releasing the audience from their commitment of projecting into the picture plane.

Subject 2 - water, wasting and saving Where weeds represent a methodological metaphor of reduction, water was recognized as both allegorically reductive (a disappearing resource) and graphically reductive or flat, where it sits on the surface. Water finds its own level, always seeking a state of flatness.

Projection as both flatness and illusion was highlighted in the work Tide where water functioned as an illusionary surface that cycles on and off. In addition to weeding, the motif of water established itself as another metaphorical theme relating to The Cult of Reduction. Water as surface, water as an economical resource, and water as waterscape or scenic spectacle. Works that flowed from this theme are Tide 2012, Fall 2013, and Current 2015, as well as the concluding water-themed work Torrent described in detail in Chapter 5.

The next section discusses the motif of water in relation to its qualities as a projected surface and an example of dimensional reduction as flattened representation. Tide was the first work to develop this idea. It was exhibited at Westspace gallery, and was also presented for the confirmation assessment.

FIG.25 Martine Corompt, installation view of Tide, 2012 Westspace gallery Melbourne. Image credit Martine Corompt

The installation comprised of a large format digital print attached to the wall that draped down onto the floor. The vertical section of the paper contained a simple, incomplete graphic drawing of the horizon and sky-scape, while the horizontal part of the paper was left blank to enable projection onto the surface and to complete the composition. Sea level may be thought of as a form of water flatness. Though ostensibly a giant curve, we think of the horizon line as flat. The furthest threshold of visibility, referred to by nineteenth century sailors as ‘the offing’, provides a clear line between the earth’s surface and the sky. It is also the threshold between floor and wall, traditionally the space of the subject and the space of the spectator. The animated projection and the drawing combined to create a seamless pictorial space, one part moving, the other static, gradually becoming abstracted the further it moved away from the wall. The sound of static was employed to aurally suggest the sound of 82

crashing waves via the four portable transistor radios mounted on the wall. White noise (or static) may be regarded as an extremely reductive and abstract sound, yet may suggestively stand in for the more evocative sound of crashing waves particularly when reinforced with the image of the ocean.

Tide took its name from the projected animated sequence that depicts the process of water ebbing and flowing, withdrawing and redrawing along the length of the paper. While not the same duration of a tidal cycle in actuality, the animation attempts to suggest the gradual tidal movement along the length of the paper. Each time the projected water receded, the animated water patterns and bubbles ‘evaporate’ leaving a blank pictorial surface. This made the spectator aware of the material nature of the paper as a flat surface rather than the illusionistic space it had been a few moments prior. In this way Freud’s ‘oceanic feeling’ (the potential for complete submission of losing oneself)116 is contrasted against the impoverished representation of graphic reduction. Scott McCloud also characterized this in a well known phrase the ‘masking effect’, where within the stylised cartoon we have more chance of losing ourselves in simple graphics rather than complex detailed graphics. He explains that it ‘allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world’117 The stylised character thus becomes an avatar for the viewer, allowing the landscape to be complex, realistic or unfamiliar without the viewer feeling alienated. With Tide, the ‘masking’ is inverted. Rather than identifying and losing ourselves within a figure as a surrogate, we are self-conscious of our own body/figure confronted with the landscape, but not necessarily immersed within it. We remain outside of the flatness, apart from it.

116 Freud somewhat reluctantly identifies the ‘oceanic feeling’ in response to a letter from his friend Romain Rolland who described a sensation of eternity, a feeling of something limitless, unbounded, something ““oceanic.““ Freud himself felt it was difficult to classify something that could not be described through the language of psycho-analysis but interprets the idea as ‘a feeling of indissoluble connection, of belonging inseparably to the external world as a whole’ Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and Its Discontents (J. Riviere, Trans.)," London: Hogarth (1930).

117 McCloud, Understanding Comics : The Invisible Art. 83

FIG.26 Martine Corompt Installation view of Fall, 2013 the Windsor Hotel Melbourne. Image credit Martine Corompt

Continuing on from the work Tide, Fall 2013 also used animated projection as a means of exploring surface flatness both vertically and horizontally, as well as continuing the theme of water as an allegorical motif and cultural signifier for reduction.

Fall was developed for the 2013 Windsor prize Luminescence, situated in a busy five-star heritage hotel. This presented various challenges regarding the development and installation of the work for this very particular environment. In a setting that projects nineteenth century luxury and grandeur from Melbourne’s past, conspicuous with excessive ornamentation and decorative detail, the idea was to use projection as an illusionary surface of continuous trickling water down the Grand Staircase. Intended to undermine and caricature this luxury, the projection suggested an extravagant waste of a natural resource for the sake of spectacle, as well as a possible malfunction of the plumbing system. Of course both possibilities are provisional as the graphics are 84

not intended to be realistic, and the idea of symbolically wasting water becomes one of saving water as the representation replaces what is represented. However ‘saving’ becomes a conceit as there has merely been an exchange of one precious resource, (water) for another (electricity). Unlike Tide, which was projected vertically onto the blank section of a digital mural print, Fall didn’t require a specific projection surface but instead used the existing material surfaces of the walls and patterned stair carpet. This allowed the projected water to appear as an illusionary surface rather than an illusionary space, encouraging the viewer to consider the interior hotel surfaces as part of the work. The spectator walked through the projection as they moved through the staircase. The projection becomes just another decorative surface within the many competing surfaces of the nineteenth century décor and hotel paraphernalia. Both of these works continued the emphasis of projected animation as flat illusionary surface rather than illusionary deep-space.

Cube 37 Frankston The collaborative artwork118 Frankston Current for Cube 37 Frankston Art Centre, was another example that made use of a public projection site, but this time as a much larger scale. This unique architectural space consists of a large-format continuous screen on two sides of the glass walls, and unlike many public projections, is projected from the inside rather than the outside. The building glows from within instead of an exterior projected surface. This is interesting as the giant architectural cube rather than seemingly being ‘skinned’ by projection, in fact becomes more like a three- dimensional lightbox illuminated from the inside. What was also interesting was the way the animation could play between surface and space and also how the use of the semi-abstracted landscape speaks of the urban landscape as dystopian. The surrounding modernist civic landscape of Frankston Art Centre is reminiscent of the abstract utopian space of the UPA cartoon, where flat planes and abstract space reflect a ‘belief that a modern space was hygienic and optimistic.’119 Designed in 1995

118 Frankston Current was a collaborative work with sound artist Camilla Hannan

119 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon; ibid. Pg 231 85

by architect Darryl Jackson, Cube 37 is itself a byproduct of abstraction, combining Modernist restraint and simple geometry with nautical gestures such as portholes and railings. It is highly visible, partly due to its scale (it can be seen from a great distance) but also because of its proximity to both passing pedestrian and vehicle traffic along a busy road. In comparison to projection festivals, it occupies a somewhat bleak urban site, a comparative dystopian landscape compared to the usual CBD festival utopia. The cube-like structure, combined with the busy nearby arterial road, is a landscape that brings to mind dystopian science fiction landscapes such as the novels of J.G Ballard’s Crash120 and High Rise.121

FIG.27 Martine Corompt, installation view of Frankston Current, 2014 projection for Cube 37 Frankston Art Centre. Image credit Martine Corompt

The work itself responded to disparate aspects of Frankston’s urban surrounds, as a stylised cartoon landscape, with elements of water in the forms of waves and rain, abstracted fields that ended with a dystopian scene of rubble, weeds and a shopping

120 J. G. Ballard, Crash (London: Cape, 1973).

121 J. G. Ballard High-Rise (London: J. Cape, 1975). 86

trolley. Modernist reduction becomes alienation - a bleakness. The work was accompanied by a sound design by Camilla Hannan that combined location field recording with recordings of prepared instruments. This work evolved from a previous collaborative performance called Dark Night.122 For the exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence gallery the animation was spread across two free-standing walls. The dissection became unified from a particular position in the room, but in most situations was viewed as separate fragmented surfaces. Of all the animated works, Frankston Current most evidently allows the representation to flow between abstraction and representation, with no particular narrative logic. Slowly oscillating horizontal lines become waves that could be ocean waves or sound waves. This is followed by vertical lines (falling water) that concluded with the appearance of a dystopian landscape where any sense of deep space was quickly ruptured by the appearance of animated bugs on what appears to be the background surface. This mimicking of threshold and shifting spatial planes, is further emphasized in the second version at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery where the picture-plane was physically fragmented.

FIG.27b Martine Corompt, installation view of Frankston Current, 2016 projection for Margaret Lawrence gallery VCA. Image credit Christian Capurro

122 Dark Night Bright Light was a collaborative performance with artists Van Sowerwine and Camilla Hannan. Animation was projected onto walls and live sound was performed to accompany the image in the space. Performed at the San Francisco Center for New Music and Oxygen Arts Centre, Nelson CA in July 2014 87

Unlike the works described previously, Frankston Current introduced a single colour. To explain why it is first necessary to outline in the next section the broader relationship of colour and reduction.

Chroma-deficiency, Black White and Yellow A contributing factor to dimensional flatness along with the absence of tone is a lack of chroma. The next section will discuss the use of colour – or lack of it. In pictorial representation (such as cartoons and two-dimensional animation) the presence of colour plays a vital role in separating spatial planes. They are used to indicate distance and to group shapes that may otherwise be seen as fragments. The absence of such compositional cues enables a situation where lines become like wire structures that are unable to hold a solid form, and so may simultaneously be read as space or shape. This can be quite a pleasant experience letting the eye lazily sea-saw backwards and forwards between structural planes and uncertain spaces, or it can be disorientating. This is an effect also found in the conditions of camouflage where foreground edges become confused with the background shape. In the Western pictorial tradition there has been a central tendency to understand pictorial representation as a skeleton of black line on white to be completed with colour. This extends from the historical use of the ‘cartoon’ as a preparatory design for a mural fresco - where the line drawing was an incomplete step in a greater colourful whole, to the contemporary use of three- dimensional CAD, where an image begins as a linear scaffold (wireframe) to be skinned over with texture and colour. The line drawing is often thought of as being in a state of provisional existence, unfilled and unfinished.

The established long held debate of design verses colour, or rather disegno vs colore123 (where drawing is line, shape and intellect and colour is form, light and naturalism) was typified in the sixteenth century via two schools of thought – the Florentine disegno and the Venetian colore. John Gage describes the origins of disegno vs colore as having

123 John Gage, Colour and Culture : Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993). Pg 117 88

originated in Roman times where bright pigments were attacked for their association with luxury and ‘colour was seen to be inferior to design.’124 This example gives a practical explanation for the moral devaluing of colour whereby it was an expense, and so frivolous, vain and ultimately an unnecessary addition to an intellectual ideal. When in 1748 German historian J.J. Winkleman rediscovered artworks from antiquity, he mistook the whiteness of Greek marble sculptures as an intention of purity. He then devoted his life to writing about the veneration of the ancient world, where whiteness came to represent beauty, restraint, simplicity and reason. Line is primary and colour is secondary, or in the words of Russian painter Aleksandr Rodchenko, ‘line conquered everything and destroyed the last citadels of painting – colour, tone, facture and plane.’125

David Batchelor in his 2000 book Chromaphobia126 discusses the absence of colour as a cultural prejudice, a regression, an element to be purged and devalued:

Colour is made out to be the property of some ‘foreign body’ – usually the feminine, the oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the queer or the pathological.127

In this reading, the notion of colour as regression and the absence of colour or rather ‘whiteness’ stems from the writings of Charles Blanc (where the role of colour is secondary to drawing) and Adolf Loos who believed that progressive cultured society must aspire to a higher ideal through the presence of blankness and lack of ornament. Both might be considered an extension of Winkleman’s foundational classical ideals.

124 Ibid.Pg 117

125 Aleksandr Mikhai lovich Noever Rodchenko, Stepanova, Varvara Fedorovna, The Future Is Our Only Goal (Munich New York, NY, USA: Prestel ; Distributed in the USA and Canada by te Neues Pub. Co., 1991).

126 Batchelor, Chromophobia.

127 Ibid pg 22 - 23 89

Four examples of chromatic reduction The use of black and white in representation is akin to the use of text in the printed book. By association it seems to occupy a space somewhere between the internal intellectual abstract world of writing and the ‘natural’ outer world of colour and form. Joseph Kusuth’s One and Three chairs128 of 1965 may be used to demonstrate this idea. Here we have an actual three-dimensional chair present with all its form and colour, a representational chair in tonal black and white and the simple black and white descriptive text of the dictionary definition. The further we remove ourselves from the material world towards the conceptual, the less colour and tone there is. Culturally, reason and intellect seem to be free from colour.

FIG. 28 Joseph Kosuth, One and Three chairs 1965, sourced from MoMA’s Online Collection

128 Kusuth, Joseph. "MoMA Learning." MoMA. Accessed February 11, 2016. http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/joseph-kosuth-one-and-three-chairs-1965

The following section outlines and describes the four categories of chromatic reduction:

The black and white image as past The black and white image as cheap The black and white image as incomplete The black and white image as didactic

The image as past The idea of a ‘colourless world’ is also of course one that is elegiac, another example of a dimensional removal from the here and now. This may occur as an original example of a technological limitation, or a deliberate gesture to infer the past. The use of black and white suggests strong associations of a temporal shift into the past where the chromatic information has been lost, faded or simply uninvented as in early photography. A gesture of the nostalgic, anachronistic, unprogressive, antiquated, behind the times – or just an artistic affectation. Here colour deficiency is due to a loss, an inability to recall, or an inability to accurately capture.

FIG. 29 The Minimalists Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus looking earnest and minimal. Photo by Adam Dressler, sourced from the Minimalists website

The cheap image This example of the use of chromatic reduction is as a symbol of frugality or of cost saving. While digital data displayed on the screen is not hampered by the use of full colour, in most cases black and white printing is still a less expensive option. An example of the semiotics of cheapness is eloquently expressed in the various ‘no frills’ packaging of generic supermarket bands, such as Franklins and IGA. The logic of this design is that the unnecessary costs of elaborate colour printing are passed down to the consumer as a cost saving. Minimal two or one colour printing becomes associated with both cut price and a type of brand honesty. In this way colour packaging becomes a distraction, or even a deceit and the no-name packaging is presented as bare bones and basic, but also truthful and upfront. Colour is luxury, or worse – fantasy.

FIG.30 An example of No Frills packaging typical of home brand supermarket product lines.

The provisional image Like the cartoon fresco, the provisional image is to be completed and coloured in. This provisional existence may be seen in examples such as colouring books and schematic diagrams.

FIG.31 Martine Corompt, page from the Colouring-out project 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt

The didactic image Instructional, diagrammatic, and informative. As demonstrated in the Ryan and Schwartz experiment, clarity is paramount and unnecessary details are distracting, simple cartoon type images are most common. IKEA instructions use their own version of a universal pictographic language that ostensibly can be understood by any nationality without the need for language in order to reassemble furniture.

FIG.32 IKEA instructions using simple black and white graphics, sourced from IKEA’s online instructions.

It is the latter three categories that I am concerned with in this research project as these examples embody the qualities of dimensional reduction as lacking in some way, alluded to in the introduction.

The following section will discuss in more detail the three ‘colours’ (black, white and yellow) used throughout the research project. While the discussion may deviate slightly from the specific context of colour and dimensional reduction, given their importance, it is necessary to unpack the significance of these colours.

Black

FIG.33 A black field made up of CMYK

The use of black within The Cult of Reduction is fundamental as a form of mark making. In a material sense black is not reductive but in many ways additive – added to the paper surface or wall surface. In the 1300’s black clothing was a sign of sophisticated luxury and was the most expensive ‘colour’ as it required successive dye baths of various hues. Again in this sense black is not a reduction, but an addition, a process of extravagance in the same way that ‘rich black’ in graphic design is the overprinting of all colours (yellow magenta, cyan) plus black. Later the use of black came to represent virtue and austerity and was favoured by those who served in a position of responsibility, such as religious orders, clerics, lawyers and professors. Eventually black clothing became implicated in the sumptuary laws beginning in the 1300’s.

According to Michel Pastoureau in his book Black: The History of Color129 these sumptuary laws which applied to only to clothing but to all day to day accessories and objects, and may be understood as having three motivating factors; economic necessity – limiting expensive clothing; ethical concerns of maintaining a Christian tradition of temperance and virtue; and to establish and maintain a system of class segregation.

And so for those who could afford it, black became a way of circumnavigating these laws by encouraging the dyers to create a more luxurious version of black, something that compared to expensive fabrics worn by nobility such as furs. Eventually during the Reformation, black became the choice of Protestant abstinence.

If we return to Reinhardt’s views on colour, or rather negation of colour, we find that it is more a discussion about black, as line and shape have no part in his discussions on painting. To compound this further, Reinhardt’s paintings are not actually black, as Robert Storr explains in his floor talk: ‘- but a full spectrum of painting in the lowest possible tonal register.’130 We might also think of Reinhardt’s black not only as a pictorial reduction (as he states) but as another process of addition, a cover up. Reinhardt’s painting process is indeed a process of layering, beginning with ‘coloured blacks’ and then slowly painting out the colour (red, green, blue) with customized black paint, in which he would first add turpentine to thin the oil paint, let the mixture sit for several weeks and then pour off the clear liquid extracting the binders and turpentine leaving only the matt pigment.131

The idea of black and darkness as a cover-up is never more apparent than in the ‘black box’ of cinema and theatre. Here blackness is carefully controlled to hide any

129 Michel Pastoureau and Jody Gladding, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton University Press, 2009).

130 Robert Storr and David Zwirner (Gallery), How to Look : Ad Reinhardt : Art Comics, First edition. ed.

131 https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/MoMA/moma-abstract-expressionism/v/moma- painting-technique-reinhardt

perception of the technological apparatus or even the building and the audience. Anything beyond the frame, whether it is the screen or the proscenium arch, is ostensibly invisible. Black is not flat but instead represents the reductive void. With projection, black is simply surface without content (light).

White

FIG.34 A skeumorphic example of white as void or absence This figure uses the Microsoft word drop shadow function to indicate form and space where none exists

In painting, drawing and printing, we commonly think of white as the background, the untouched void yet to be marked and occupied. But white can also be a highlight, layered over a dark ground to indicate a source of illumination within the picture plane. White paper indicates blankness, a negative space untouched by ink. Yet in the situation of projection, white is the additional layer, the pure light illuminating an otherwise shadowy surface. Within the research project white behaves in two ways as both additive (mark making) and subtractive (void). Projections such as Fall, Portal and Torrent, use white as a form of drawing – drawing with light. In other works such as Reduced to Rubble, white is the void, the background waiting to be overlaid with black line.

A coat of Ripolin,132 according to twentieth century architect Le Corbusier, promoted an ‘inner cleanness’133. This refers not only to the interior hygiene of the home, but also of the self. In 1925 when Le Corbusier wrote his Law of Ripolin, white-washed walls become a form of moral and design discipline, where colour is pollution, and white as hygiene. The ‘Law of Ripolin’ urges the inhabitant to be a ‘master of

132 French whitewash house paint

133 David Batchelor, Colour (MIT Press, 2008). Pg 82 96

yourself,’ to clear away what is no longer useful, rejecting accumulation. Interestingly whitewash made of lime actually does have antibacterial properties and has been used historically as a preventative measure against bacteria. In David Batchelor’s chapter titled ‘Whitescapes’134 he describes a particular architecturally designed white interior of a northern European home, where the purging became tyrannical:

There is a kind of white that repels everything that is inferior to it, and that is almost everything. This was that kind of white. There is a kind of white that is not created by bleach but that itself is bleach. This was that kind of white. This white was aggressively white.135

Reinhardt’s opinion on white is not so evangelistic. For Reinhardt, the idealism of Corbusier’s white interiors are of no use in painting:

No white. “White is a color, and all colors.” White is “antiseptic and not artistic, appropriate and pleasing for kitchen fixtures, and hardly the medium for expressing truth and beauty.” White on white is “a transition from pigment to light” and “a screen for the projection of light” and “moving” pictures.136

In this passage Reinhardt links the use of white to that of the screen. In his writings, Reinhardt declares that any association to a subject outside of painting should be avoided. In particular he states his disapproval of the integration of moving picture art-forms into a painting practice as ‘the movies are incomparably greater than all previous picture-arts thrown together.’137 The two paradigms of pictures and painting should remain separate. However the notion of white as unsuitable for painting and suggestive of the screen is remarkably prophetic leading up to Structuralist film works of the 1960’s where the white screen becomes subject.

134 Chromophobia.

135 Ibid. Pg 10

136 Reinhardt and Rose, Art-as-Art : The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt. Pg 206

137 Ibid.Pg 49 97

It’s strange that white is now associated with Minimalism, as historical minimalist sculpture of the 1960’s and 1970’s was quite colorful. Even the minimalist architecture of architects such as Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe were not predominantly white in the way that Neo Classical architecture was, but incorporated a variety of material tones and hues. Like ancient Greek sculpture, history has rubbed out the colour from memory, suggesting a state of sensible sophistication.

Yellow

FIG.35 Safety yellow #EED202

Allocating yellow as the only permissible colour for the research project was primarily a decision based on practicalities. It was sometimes necessary to introduce a simple colour field in order to make sense of the picture plane when working only with black and white line. This was in preference to using tone, which is what you would expect to see in a black and white medium such as a charcoal drawing. Yellow is the perfect intensity to act as both a spatial and solid area, depending on the task and so is a suitably versatile colour.

Golden yellow has associations of both the utilitarian and the opulent as the closest chromatic comparison to gold. Though it is the former association of yellow and safety that has featured more meaningfully in The Cult of Reduction. The purpose of yellow in occupational safety is to warn against spatial dangers. Described in the regulation standards of the US occupational safety website:

Yellow shall be the basic color for designating caution and for marking physical hazards such

as: Striking against, stumbling, falling, tripping, and ‘caught in between’.138

Conveniently this description could easily also be describing the compositional hazards of my work, where within the reductive line-work the eye may stumble and trip and become caught in between ambiguous spatial planes. The introduction of yellow consolidates these visual conflicts. ‘The fall from grace’ described by David Bachelor regarding the excessive use of colour139 is now prevented through the use of one single colour.

The strict limited use of colour (black, white and yellow) as a self imposed sumptuary restriction both simplifies the composition and unifies the component artworks within the research project. This simplicity and deficiency becomes efficiency as well as a kind of branding. Efficient production (less decisions and possibilities in the making process) and efficient viewing (easy to recognize).

Colouring in Colouring-book images, like other types of outline drawings are a deficient image – something to be completed. Historically developed as a democratization of art education for Victorian era children of all class backgrounds, coloring books according to historian Bruce R. Smith, continue the contested disegno verses colore, debate whereby:

Black lines are presented as rules of discipline, as lesson plans, as limits to imaginative play, while the spaces within those lines – and outside those lines – are open to the scandal of

color.140

138 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9793

139 Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. Focus on Contemporary Issues. London: Reaktion, 2000.

140 Bruce R. Smith, The Key of Green : Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture (Chicago, Ill. ; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 99

It is interesting in this example that the flattening of representation has the dual purpose of providing limits, and also a flattening (equalising) of the class system where children from all backgrounds have equal access to the same lesson. All images begin flat ‘classless’, until completed and then they may expand chromatically and dimensionally according to the capacity and the culture of each individual. In addition, this may also be considered a form of recruiting all classes into a process of industrialization, whereby the child may now feel proud as a participant in the manufacturing process. The colouring book confuses the definition of what constitutes an original, whereby the reproducible now becomes once again original and material when hand coloured by the participant, but no longer an original copy compared to its untouched state.

FIG.36 Martine Corompt, completed book from the Colouring-out project, 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt

The Colouring-out project began as a way of collating the many sketches and drawings that had accumulated over the course of the research project and a way of testing the use of black, white and yellow. These sketches are eclectic and somewhat random but, unlike the animations, are predominantly all drawn from real-world objects as a way of testing and reinforcing the stylisation of black line. Many of the drawings are

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unidentifiable as the subjects range from various found detritus such as twigs, small rocks, or broken toys. As a serviceable colouring book, the drawings give no consideration to the user in terms of pictorial logic for colouring in. Many of the shapes are left open, or don’t even contain empty space, but instead solid areas of black. In some cases, adding colour to the pages might seem more like defacement rather than enhancement and certainly within the logic of chromatic reduction, this might be the case. However a single yellow crayon is supplied with the work for the purpose of ‘colouring’. As this work has been passed around to friends (children and adults) any control or anxieties regarding the way each participant fulfills this task have been relinqished. In some cases this was done within the spirit of colouring-in. Some enhanced (keeping between the lines) and in other cases graffiti-like gestures disregarded the conventions and marked new territory. Yet the paper used in the colouring book is low-grade newsprint, and eventually the paper will turn yellow. The added colour will become invisible, retuning the book back to a form of monochrome. The colour as effect becomes impotent and the act of colouring futile.

FIG.37 Martine Corompt, pages from the Colouring –out project 2015. Image credit Martine Corompt

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Boutique colouring books have always been a popular merchandising spin-off for museum exhibitions (Damien Hirst, Patricia Piccinnini)141, but have since become a mainstream craze. Contemporary colouring books are promoted as having therapeutic benefits for a generation whose working day is dominated by screens.142 Colouring then becomes a form of meditation whereby anyone who has engaged in colouring-in understands that the addiction and satisfaction arises from the transformation and organization of space and form, by grouping and adding colour, allowing background and foreground to become more discernible. But unlike many colouring books, particularly colouring books for adults, in Colouring-out there are no aspirations to the decorative or beautiful. If anything, the drawings in Colouring-out are crass and unforgiving using cheap, newsprint paper, containing printing smudges, awkward compositions and incoherent images. They have more in common with cheap badly drawn children’s colouring books, than the current craze of the adult colouring book.

Cartoons – figurative flatness The Cartoon or comic strip, as a descendent of the printing press, is an exemplar of working within the limits of black and white printing. Chapter One discussed the use of cartoon graphics as a method of communicating clearly and quickly. This was proven as extremely effective as demonstrated in the experiment of Ryan and Schwartz.143 In this way, in addition to a form of entertainment, cartoon images may also serve as a reductive form of education, to teach and inform in a humourous way, thereby operating somewhere between medieval stained glass window and a contemporary Power-Point demonstration. As the cartoon aesthetic is such an obvious

141 These two well-known artists have published colouring books containing simple outline drawing of familiar works aimed at children.

Damien Hirst, Damien Hirst: Colouring Book (Other Criteria, 2016).

Patricia Piccinini, Patricia Piccinini Colouring Book (South Australia Art Gallery of South Australia 2011).

142 Jeremy Story Carter, "The Science Behind Adult Colouring Books," ABC Radio National Books and Art, no. 4 September (2015).

143 Ryan and Schwartz, "Speed of Perception as a Function of Mode of Representation." 102

and crucial influence on this research project, it seems appropriate to include a short section that draws on some specific examples that have an historical relationship to fine art. The following also explains how the cartoon in its dimensionally reduced pictorial form, is often used to demonstrate self-reflexivity, being conscious of its status as a representation and the act of looking. Rather than discussing a survey of every comic/cartoon that has ever been of personal interest, I will focus on just two, Ad Reinhardt and Ernie Bushmiller.

FIG.38 Ad Reinhardt, How To Look Pm Series How To Look At A Cubist Painting January 27, 1946. Sourced from the Reinhardt Foundation archives

Although Ad Reinhardt was famous for his systematic five by five foot black cruciform paintings, he was also well known for his earlier illustration and cartoons. More recently he has been celebrated for his extensive slide collection of architecture all of which have been featured in a recent retrospective exhibition curated by Robert Storr

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at David Zwirner 2013144. As mentioned previously, Reinhardt’s ‘How to Look’ cartoons were published in the New York-based daily newspaper called PM145 as a humourous instructional series to educate the public on abstract painting. These illustrations combined simple pen and ink text and graphics with collage as a method of reducing and ultimately eliminating the process of drawing (which he saw as a problem). Visually the cartoons were in contrast to his paintings, but they shared some of the same methodological ideals regarding flattening. These cartoons may be considered as a progenitor to the RSA animate146 where complex academic ideas are condensed into simple pictorial metaphors and visual gags, combining Power-point clarity with nineteenth-century lightning-sketch wit as a real-time accompaniment to an academic lecture.

Fig 38 from the How to Look series breaks down the conditions of spectatorship as a four panel strip, with the final panel as the reoccurring punch-line which is used repeatedly throughout subsequent strips. Without being condescending or overly high-brow, Reinhardt explains abstraction to his readers by condensing and simplifying ideas that might otherwise take volumes of art-theory books. Using a combination of simple line drawings with collage, he draws on one flattened system of representation to explain another. Reinhardt’s cartoons are not cynical about Modern art, but instead cynical of the mainstream understanding of art, and so were intended as a means to educate human perception.

144 Ad Reinhardt November 7 - December 18, 2013 Presented by David Zwirner in collaboration with the Ad Reinhardt Foundation. Curated by Robert Storr.

519, 525 & 533 West 19th Street New York, NY 10011

145 PM newspaper was a left wing New York publication from 1940 - 1948

146 RSA animate (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) is an online moving image resource who illustrates their own public events program using real-time drawing. The drawings are ‘performed’ and animated by Andrew Park at Cognitive Media. www.thersa.org/about-us

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This is the conceptual opposite to the Modernist cartoons of Nancy, written and illustrated by Ernie Bushmiller.147 A reoccurring theme within Nancy cartoons is that children can effortlessly reproduce abstract art. The intent here of course was not to elevate abstraction to mainstream readers as a means of enlightenment, but to compare abstract painting to the mindless doodlings of a child. The meta-joke however is that Nancy is almost an abstraction herself, and that the abstract compositions that appear in Nancy’s paintings are little more than rearranged parts of her own cartoon world scaffold. As Mark Newgarden explains in his chapter ‘How to read Nancy’148, abstraction is an implicit quality in Bushmiller’s cartoons. Nancy would understand abstraction as she is abstraction. While the ideological intent of Bushmiller and Reinhardt is not shared, it is interesting to look at their work from a historical perspective as being part of the same conversation. Bushmiller, while poking fun at High-Art, is also experimenting and breaking down the accepted formal conventions of representational space. Seasoned readers of Nancy comics would find that Bushmiller is not teaching us about Abstract painting, but is instructing us on the formalism and the plasticity of the picture plane. In this way the ‘Nancy’ cartoons and ‘How to Look’ cartoons are not so different. Both lessons seek to demystify abstraction, but one uses parody (dethroning) and the other through enlightenment.

147 Ernie Bushmiller was a contemporary of Reinhardt and also a New Yorker working on both daily and weekly strips. His cartoons were distributed by United Feature Syndicate which meant they were published in numerous newspapers throughout the United States.

148 E. Bushmiller and B. Walker, The Best of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy (Comicana Books, 1988). 105

FIG. 40 Ernie Bushmiller, Jan 1949 – Malevich, Reinhardt and Lichtenstien?

The cartoon strip in Fig 40 is another example of Bushmiller’s use of time saving strategies, which also function as a gag relating to the often self-reflexive nature of the cartoon/reader relationship. While it may not be likely that Bushmiller was directly parodying Malevich, Reinhardt or Lichtenstein, this cartoon still addresses similar concerns of representation within the picture plane. Though the text suggests figuration, the reader understands that the representation is nothing more than printed ink, which is what makes it funny.

Figurative flatness prevails throughout both Bushmiller and Reinhardt cartoons. Both Reinhardt and Bushmillers cartoons are aware of and benefit from their flatness. In differing ways they are both concerned with an efficiency of representation that reflects each artist’s interest in the formal aesthetic language of their craft, as well as the restrictions of publication.

There are many reasons why Bushmiller’s cartoons have been influential both prior to and during the research project, but one worth mentioning is the use of the repeated motif. In a serialized cartoon, repetition is an expected necessity to maintain consistency (as well as time-saving) but in addition to the repetition of characters, there are also background details that become standardized and repeated, such as the use of the three rocks – a well recognized reoccurring motif in Bushmiller’s Nancy strips.

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FIG.41 Example of the use of Ernie Bushmillers’ three rocks (left) and the authors use of the dandelion (right)

The use of reusable, formulaic images becomes even more immediate with digital technology. Here they can be simply copied and pasted from one file to the next. In the research project this is noticeable throughout with the use of the dandelion as a motif.

Subject 3 - Reduced to Rubble Perhaps the most literal way of thinking about dimensional reduction is the demolition site where the vertical third dimension has been flattened to the ground – ground zero. A clean slate, the blank canvas, are familiar real-estate terms both tantalising for their potential and suggested freedom, and frightening for their ruthless rejection of what was before. The demolition of a building is a form of abstraction, flattening the picture plane, fragmenting the whole into abstract rubble.

FIG.42 Martine Corompt, schematic design for Melbourne Festival Art tram Look both ways 2015

While the demolition site is often an emotional site of nostalgic loss and trauma, there is also the other more utopian aspect of demolition, that of renewal. The ‘cultural

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value of the void’ has been identified by Herbert Muschamp149 in relation to the rebuilding of the 9/11 memorial site. In the book Rubble150, author Jeff Byles discusses the life and work of the well-known demolition man Jack Loizeaux,151 considering Loizeaux’s chosen occupation and how it became a metaphor for his strong Protestant faith (Plymouth Brethren). The use of god-given gravity as a force of flattening, of demolition as a process of cleansing and clearing, of removing the civic rot before it sets in, all feature as central themes:

Suddenly, weed-choked lots, half wrecked buildings, and picturesquely ruined plazas were

brimming with opportunity.152

The artistic work Look both ways made use of the motif of demolition as another form of caricature, both literal and metaphorical. The idea of demolition enabled dimensional reduction as both subject matter and methodology. The work itself was consistent both graphically and chromatically with my previous works - simple cartoon-like images rendered only in black, white and yellow. The motif of destruction in cartoons and animation is comical for its regularity and simplicity. Endless explosions, topplings, and collisions are indicative of the language of what Norman Klein declares as a ‘very orderly state of anarchy, because it is completely ruthless. It cleans house, wipes the slate clean’.153 The dynamic shapes and patterns used in 1940’s and 1950’s animation slapstick chase scenes to represent gestures of demolition are not based on the poignant images of post-war bomb-sites, but more closely resemble the stylised compositions of the avant-garde picture plane. Examples of this can be seen in the 1949 animated carton Bad Luck Blackie Fig 43.

149 MUSCHAMP, Herbert. "THE NEW GROUND ZERO A Dubious Idea of 'Freedom'" The New York Times, August 31, 2003. Accessed October 15, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/arts/design/31MUSC.html.

150 Jeff Byles, Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition (Broadway Books, 2005).

151 Jack Loizeaux was the founder of Controlled Demolition Incorporated, a company specialising in explosives and the first to develop a method of the ‘implosion’’ of a building rather than to explode.

152 Byles, Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition. 263

153 Klein, Seven Minutes : The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon. Pg 164 108

FIG.43 Screen stills from ‘Bad Luck Blackie’ (MGM 1949)

While Modernist painting was going through a slow but sure process of fragmentation, abstraction and reduction, mainstream animation was deconstructing and reducing the picture plane through explosions and demolition. The ideograms of smoke and irregular blocks of stone and rubble create a syntax that is not representational in a specific or personal way, but rather a general way, what Gombrich might refer to as a ‘schema’, which is the ‘first approximate, loose category’154 on which all representations are based. Ernie Bushmillers ‘three rocks’ (Fig 41) is an example of a cartoon rock schema.

The Agitprop message of destruction and change as Look Both Ways travels throughout Melbourne along route 70 may look equally relevant (or irrelevant) in Wattle Park as it does in the Docklands.155 Its site-specificity is not anchored to a particular site, but to any site along route 70 where demolition and reconstruction is in the mind of the public. The safety colour scheme of black, white and yellow ensure the works visibility as both an artwork that must be looked at/sought out, and a moving projectile that must be seen but avoided.

The process of ‘wrapping’ the tram with the printed vinyl artwork in some ways can be thought of like a projection - a temporary skin on the surface of the tram,

154 Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Pg 74

155 The route 70 tram runs from Wattle Park Burwood to the Docklands waterfront. 109

completely flat, covering the material surface beneath. Compositional considerations must be made according to the shape and details of the particular tram, badges, insignia and signage must be left intact, and several windows must also be left with complete visibility. It was also necessary to leave some sections free of artwork for safety reasons (such as the lower section of the doors). In Look both Ways however, the exposed section was the same safety yellow used in the artwork, and so the whole artwork becomes a precautionary warning for falling, colliding, and becoming flattened. When art leaves the gallery and becomes temporarily fixed onto the surface of some civic space it loses so many of the conventional signifiers of being an artwork. With no gallery, or no permanent substrate, inevitably the work will only remain as documentation - a very flattened existence. However this dimensional flattening is compensated by the complexities of its temporary existence. Not only could the spectator obviously now touch the work, but they could also enter it. In boarding the tram they cross the threshold of two-dimensionality and occupy the space beyond, finally actualizing the threshold of the hand on the black painting or the spherical visitor to Flatlands. Obviously this sounds way more miraculous than it actually is but it is another example of the conditions of the two-dimensional surface in a three- dimensional existence and the spectator’s experience when moving between the two. Though this work formed a significant contribution to the research project, for obvious reasons it was not possible to install it for the final exhibition. Instead the mural was reconfigured to become a panoramic extension of the two-channel projection in the front gallery of the final exhibition discussed earlier in this chapter.

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FIG.44 Martine Corompt, Look Both Ways, at Waterfront City September 2015 Image credit: Ian Green

This chapter has outlined the conditions of dimensionally reduced representation and the allegorical associations of that state. It established the three motifs of weeding, water and demolition as methods of thinking through pictorial reduction. The Cult of Reduction has been revealed through dimensional reduction, elucidating various contemporary conditions of flattening. These included flattening experienced through the encounter of abstraction and projection, through the absence of colour and then via the language of comics. Finally the allegorical notion of flattening with the theme of demolition was concluded in Look both ways. The Cult of Reduction begins to be defined as a dimensional state, allowing both literal and allegorical expressions of that state to shape the definition.

The next chapter considers another state of reduction - the reduction of time. Chapter Three considers temporal reduction as a form of shortening, speeding up or eliminating change, as found in the conditions of the looped video. The chapter also acknowledges the imperative of time-saving in both the production (labour) and consumption of art practice.

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Chapter 3- TEMPORAL REDUCTION

Someone finds a trick to simplify a task. This person finishes the task faster and has more time to relax. Once everyone starts using the same trick, there is no time to relax any more. You

have to use the trick. What used to be normal is now slow.156

This chapter explores temporal reduction, considering the time required to produce a work, the time taken to experience a work and how time passes within a work. The chapter begins by describing techniques of time-saving in animation as both a necessity and an aesthetic trope, discussing processes such as looping animation cycles and flash frames. The ‘flash’ is acknowledged as time-saving as experience and time- saving as a method, as well as its subsequent effect of breaking down the framework of film.

156 Rafaël Rozendaal, "The Irony of Efficiency," www.newrafael.com/the-irony-of-efficiency. 114

Everything takes too long In comparison to camera-based live action recording, animation is an excessively time consuming process and traditionally has been more commonly associated with short films, interstitials and advertising rather than durational feature length movies. Artworks that use animation must employ strategies for managing this dilemma, such as outsourcing the manual labour (paying a third party and so assigning the artist the role of a director), or making use of standardized software processes which automate certain tasks (such as tweening and movement), or just simplifying the complexity of the final rendering to purge excessive detail. For some artists where software is inappropriate and a third party could not match the aesthetic qualities and methodologies of the artist, there is simply no other option but to make their work by themselves, laboriously by hand and ultimately reducing their output.

Value and labour in art are not always directly relative. A very labour intensive artwork does not necessarily require a lengthy engagement to be highly valued as a work. An expeditiously produced work (such as a Duchampian readymade) may in fact require an extended period of viewing from its audience. A predicament for the professional artist and a bewildering lesson for the undergraduate students is finding a balance between labour and return.

The production of the animated artwork presents a problem. Animation as a representational medium emulating both form and movement takes time - significantly more time to generate than to experience - unlike the recording of real- time video or film. In 1936 Walter Benjamin described this in relation to the new medium of film, where ‘the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech.’157 Suddenly the notion of movement in real-time stood in contrast to earlier models of hand made movement.

Artists who work with animation generally understand that the many hours of production will not be acknowledged by the spectator. After all, the illusionary nature

157 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). 115

of animation sets out to disguise the structural fragmentation and not reveal its construction. The labour of animation is what defines so much of its aesthetic, structural and cultural tropes. As described in Chapter One, this is clearly recognizable in mainstream commercial animation where production and quality are contingent on time and cost. In the example of non-commercial animation however, where craftsmanship belongs to a different economy and may use less efficient production processes, the ‘hand-made’ may be appreciated and valorized.158 This becomes a point of difference from its commercial counterpart, not only because it is made by hand, but also because it is made by one hand - or at least one metaphorical hand where the vision and direction is of an individual rather than a studio.

Digital software packages have continued the standardization of the animation process and streamlined labour saving techniques. Time saving and efficiency runs throughout the marketing of commercial animation software such as Adobe Flash. Flash promotes qualities such as ease of use, efficiency and speed, regarding both the production and the delivery speed of sending and receiving animated graphics via a network.159 The name itself encapsulates clichés of speed and efficiency - the flash of inspiration, made in a flash, or flashy, are all the snappy descriptions that may be associated with commercial and corporate creativity, of making animated graphics easily and quickly. As we shall see however, the notion of the ‘flash’ is also a structural methodology of temporal reduction.

Adobe Flash is a convenient two-dimensional animation tool commonly used by both the commercial and independent artist. Furthermore it is also convenient to make use of the semi-automated functions, which then become a shared visual trope of advertising and digital art. Time saving through software allows an artist to retain autonomy over their work, by not requiring a production crew, but in doing so risks a generic aesthetic, difficult to differentiate from the aesthetics of advertising and media

158 Artist William Kentridge [born 1955 Johannesburg South Africa] is a good example of hand made animation, using a unique process whereby a single drawing is erased and modified frame by frame, rather than the conventional method of separate drawing for each frame. Kentridge’s unique process would not work in a collaborative studio environment.

159 Adobe, "Adobe Flash Professional Cs5 What’s New," news release, 2010. 116

communication. In some situations this genericism is a deliberate tactic to place the work in direct dialogue with the same industry for which the tools were intended (information technology, advertising and communication), as with the work of Young- Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Created using only Adobe Flash, the strict style-guide is reminiscent of early Apple Macintosh marketing, and the newly developed computer interface dialogue windows that speak directly to the user. The Monaco font preferred by YHCHI, designed by Susan Kare,160 is a font optimized specifically for use on a screen. Interestingly Kare also designed the very first Apple cursors, graphics which require the ability to be recognized on the screen at a tiny scale.

FIG.45 YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES The Art of Silence. 2006, screen still sourced from TATE Intermedia art website.

The animation generated throughout this research project to some extent also reflects the aesthetic style of an industry, but not specifically the industry of software, information technology or advertising, but also the industry of cinema shorts and television animation. While the animation studio model (for television and cinema) adopts a production system that necessitates collaboration, animation on the personal computer encourages the solo user. As an artist working primarily as an individual it is practical to adopt aesthetics and processes from both models.

160 Susan Kare is a graphic designer and was the original graphics and font designer for the first Apple computer interface. 117

Animation looping – a method of efficiency Within the research project the modularized nature of looping sequences refers to their origins in twentieth century studio animation processes of animated repeat cycles. In addition to the use of looping backgrounds described previously, foreground repeat cycles such as walking, running, hair movement were combined, cycled, and re-cycled to save and streamline the animation process. American character animator Preston Blair published a series of how-to books on animation, giving examples of useful movement cycles such as hair, tails, fabric, or fire that were used by studio animators. Though published in the early 1980’s these loop cycles were from an even earlier era, yet they now still inevitably end up on blogs and YouTube channels reconstructed into looping Quicktime movies or GIF animations. The modularized loop is part of the animation industrial process, where a self-contained looping sequence may be reused and cycled in different situations. This process is also very familiar in two-dimensional eight-bit game graphics, where the need for economy was not only driven by a need to save labour, but also as an economy of processing power for the graphic playback capacity of the game engine. The use of animation cycles and reusable sprites reduces the overall data size of the program, as well as maximizing playback speed in real time. Digital animation software such as Flash enables the use of the loop both in its working methodology, but also for its delivery. Continuous looping is ideal for web banner advertising, interactive media and games, where change or progress, is activated only by clicking (or equivalent) interrupting its otherwise perpetually animated holding state.

The Loop as a modular building block: The project M1 - homeward is indicative of a general methodology in which the loop has been used as a modular structure. For animated works generated within the research project, looping is not just the repetition of a digital video sequence (by pressing repeat on the media playback function) but more specifically, constructs a truly seamless repetition with no apparent beginning or end, without editing or camera movement. In this way the continuous sequences may be used in conjunction with additional looping animation sequences or other non-temporal elements such as

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static images, assembled objects or other material elements to become an integrated installation. This idea is demonstrated in Cubicles discussed later in Chapter Four.

Temporal reduction will now be discussed introducing two works that are presented as time-less, looping perpetually, highlighting repetition and lack of variation. This notion of reduction is not measured via duration, but instead is experienced as a flattening of time, where nothing happens. Time doesn’t pass but is fixed in an oscillating present. The purpose of this structure is that it adopts a different state of viewing, in contrast to the distracted view of editing temporal montage. Walter Benjamin might describe this as a state of contemplation – ‘where the viewer can abandon himself to his associations’161 or what British artist and musican Brian Eno later described as ‘ambient’.162

The following two works titled M1- homeward and Torrent - the endless storm, take the form of a perpetual loop, with no edits or montage. M1- homeward is an animated stylised recreation of an Australian roadside landscape as viewed by a passenger of a moving vehicle. It evokes the comparison of an animated landscape seen though television screen animation, with the mediated landscape of actual car travel. Both should be considered spectatorial points of view rather than first hand embodied experience, since the immobilised specator is in a position of sitting and watching and waiting. They are also both temporally abstracted experiences, where the mechanical

161 In this quote Benjamin is actually referring to the state of viewing in regard to painting. For Benjamin, the moving image, or rather film, could not ever achieve this state of contemplation. In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he says: “Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested”. As M1-Homeward contains no changes of scene, and is a constant repeating scene, it can be argued as being ‘contemplative’. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

162 Brian Eno also refers to painting as an alternative to the distraction of music-video of the 1980’s rather than film. Eno’s ambient video works, or as he referred to them, ‘video paintings’ were a development from his well-known ambient music compositions such as Music for Airports released by Polydor Records in 1978. This is explained in the following quote: "I call them 'video paintings' because if you say to people 'I make videos', they think of Sting's new rock video or some really boring, grimy 'Video Art'. It's just a way of saying, 'I make videos that don't move very fast'. Brian Eno, interview by Joe Ewart, 1985, http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/.

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synthesis of animated time can be compared to the mechanical distortion (speed) of car travel. The exterior ‘natural’ landscape - the time of weather cycles, of tectonic shifts and of planetary movement is continuous and temporally unedited. The interior space occupied from the other side of the screen (the windscreen) occupies ‘real time’ but with the fragmentation of converstations, radio listening and an occasional nap. The window-screen presentation of freeway and highway travel remains constant thoughout the montage of activites within.

FIG.46 Martine Corompt, screen still of M1 - Homeward animation with car-window masking. Image credit: Martine Corompt

M1 - Homeward re-inscribes the language and conventions of limited animation’s use of repeating panning backgrounds. Originally developed in response to economic restraints and largely attributed to Hanna Barbera studios, the intention was to suggest movement through an expanded distance without the need for extensive drawings. The process is simple and familiar; a panoramic background seemlessly loops on itself to give the impression of continuous movment on the X axis. As a result, we notice a repeating pattern of images, the same three trees, or the endless repetition of passing side tables and flower vases of Fred Flintstone’s house as he runs on the spot. Rather than perceiving this trope merely as a visual cheat, this recurrent process quickly became familiar to its audiences and so also functioned as one of the many gags running through the animations. A gag because it candidly reveals the mechanical process to the spectator - a kind of behind the scenes view, but also because of the absurd nature of the spatial parameters of the animated world itself.

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The spatial representation is both infinite in its capacity to loop endessly, but also contracted in terms of how much visual information is actually represented: an impossible world of eternal sameness and repetition.

FIG.47 Martine Corompt, background graphic for M1 Homeward showing the repeating landscape motifs.

By applying this representational system onto an Australian landscape – specifically the rural countryside of the long drive along sections of the M1 freeway in Victoria the repeated panning background abbreviates the landscape into a form of language. It becomes an alphabet of repeating symbols whose meaning is familiar and comprehensible but spatially and temporally absurd. The idea of the mediated landscape and the representation of place, or rather the non-place of the freeway landscape, is a field of enquiry which has been described by French author Marc Augé in the text ‘From Places to Non Places’:163

soliture is experienced as an overburdening or emptying of individuality, in which only the movement of the fleeting images enables the observer to hypothesize the existence of the past

and glimpse the possibility of a future.164

The ‘emptying of individuality’ speaks of the ubiquity of freeway travel and a sense that the fleeting images of past and future take on the repeated motif of the animated loop. While Augé’s interest is focused on the philosophical nature of spaces of transit, it is also interesting to consider these spaces in relation to their visual spectacle, or rather non-spectacle. For a passenger, both freeway and train travel presents a unique type of geometric two-dimensional movment only on the Y coordinate (left/right

163 Marc Auge, Non-Places : Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London ; New York: Verso, 1995).

164 Ibid. pg 87 121

movment), the movement is unvarying in speed and so idealises the actuality making an interesting comparison to the mechanised animated pan.

In addition to the process of the continuous pan, M1 - Homeward also makes use of the process of multi-plane movement, an artificial recreation of depth perspective where multiple moving planes of animation create a more realistic form of spatial movement. The process follows the basic laws of depth perspective whereby moving planes in the foreground (which are bigger) appear to move much faster than the planes in the distance (which are smaller) and each plane loops independently from the other giving the illusion of deep space. Of course this technique is not only a simplistic construct, but represents a limited spectrum of dimensional movement that is more akin to a moving pop-up book, where all sections are flat rather than in three-dimensional form. However, flattened representational space easily becomes confusing if all planes are combined - much like camouflage where foreground and background become conflated. Separated movement however can offset the subterfuge, flatness unflattens when in motion, as competing and conflating intersections begin to make sense and foreground and background become apparent. While this separation of ambiguous planes may seem at odds with the logic of dimensional reduction presented in Chapter One, in this example the conditions of flattening are still apparent, but it is the notion of space and time that is flattened.

M1- Homeward was included in exURBAN screens which was a nocturnal program of contemporary media artworks situated across Cube 37 Gallery, Frankston Arts Centre and other public spaces in Frankston City Centre. The event took place in June and July 2013 and involved walking tours through the Frankston CBD. M1 was also included in the launch of ‘Drawing Film’ 2013 curated by Suzie Attiwill at the RMIT Design Institute. In both these exhibition sites the work was presented on screens rather than projected. While this was somewhat arbitry and subject to the decisions of the curators, it was also sympathetic to the television origins of the work making the parallel between the framing of the work through the monitor screen with that of the window screen, and where the source of illumination comes from within the pictorial space rather than thrown (projected) from another space.

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Looping in the gallery The language of looping – of being suspended in a perpetual present - has been commonly discussed within the context of the Black Box/White Cube dichotomy,165 where the once linear experience of cinematic moving image has since migrated and undergone a restructuring to suit the timelessness of the gallery space. The migration of the Black box to the White cube has been written about by many authors, but two will suffice to explain the situation. In a 2007 article Adrian Martin discussed cinema in the gallery emphasizing the mining of cinema and its availability to be appropriated, as a form of ‘stunted art-making’.166 Several years later in 2013 Erika Balsom, discussed the white cube as memorialising cinema - saving it from extinction, but at the expense of a more disciplined state of watching. Balsom is also cynical of the clichés surrounding the ‘passive’ spectator of the movie theatre and the more ‘active’ spectator of the gallery where the casual browsing of images in the gallery ‘mimics strolling through the arcades and gazing at merchandise’.167 Both of these perspectives lament the transfer of cinema to the gallery as a form of reduction, of cinema compromised and the spectators’ commitment diminished.

However there is an assumption here that all moving image art stems from cinema and that the way we discuss time-based art is through its transformation from cinema’s more established existence. Animation is not cinema however, and is more accurately understood as a model that has been sidelined by cinema. Its subordinate position to a larger, more serious institution is evident in the relationship as a short- film to support a feature, a title sequence introducing a feature, and its later relegation to Saturday morning children’s television as a substandard surrogate of the cinema feature. In all these examples, animation demonstrates a reduction in status.

165 The Black Box refers to the traditional cinema space, where space is darkened and the emphasis is on the illusion of the screen. White Cube refers to the modernist gallery with an emphasis revealing illusion, breaking it down and making it known.

166 Adrian Martin, "Black Box/White Cube: Cinema in the Gallery," Artlink, 27, no. 3 (2007).

167 Erika Balsom, Exhibiting Cinema in Contemporary Art, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,, 2013). Pg 54 123

Nevertheless it is important to recognise to what extent the loop and cinema are actually indebted to animation, as acknowledged is this passage by Manovich:

all nineteenth century pre-cinematic visual devices also relied on loops. Throughout the nineteenth century, these loops kept getting longer and longer - eventually turning into a feature narrative…Today, we witness the opposite movement – artists sampling short segments of feature films or TV shows, arranging them as loops, and exhibiting these loops as

video installations.168

The continuous viewing of the moving image in the gallery has only become so prevailent with the advent of digital media. Beginning with Laser-disk players to Digital Versatile Disc (DVD’s) (which both have a repeat function) and now the variety of media players widely available. Prior to this technology, art-works were limited by the length of cassette tape and were required to be rewound regularly, interrupting the work, giving it parenthesis - of having a distinct beginning and an end. Much like a never-ending freeway, digital playback enables seamless looping and endless presentation.

Within the temporal logic of the loop there are two possibilities:

The loop as edit, the event is repeated through editing - we watch the same moment in time over and over. The loop as a repeated gesture - repeated within continuous time.

While this distinction is obvious with camera-based mediums (video and film) it is largely irrelevant in animation, particularly digital animation, where there is sometimes no material referent distinguishing the first and last frame (the beginning or end) to identify the loop. Animation presumes that the looping is eternal, not mechanical, or in Boris Groys’ words ‘a new immortality: the eternal return of the same’.169

168 Manovich, "Generation Flash".

169 Groys, Boris, Elena Sorokina, and Emily Speers Mears. "The Immortal Bodies." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 53/54 (2008): 345-49. 124

An effective example of the use of the animated loop in contemporary art that speaks of cinema, but does not come from cinema, is Cory Archangel’s Super Mario Clouds of 2002 in which the artist modified or ‘hacked’ the graphics of a Nintendo Super Mario cartridge in order to only represent the moving clouds.170 This work along with F1 racer were later bundled together as a new work titled Super Landscape #1, which demonstrates how older style game graphics also used continuous looping bitmapped graphics as panning backgrounds on both the X (left and right) and the Z axis (forwards and backwards). With Archangel’s Super Landscape #1 we are made aware of the work as a reduction of something more compositionally descriptive. Most of us are familiar or can at least imagine the sequences in their original game form, with the maniacal character sprites jittering on the screens as well as the incessant 8-bit MOD171 music repeating over and over. This work perfectly embodies the affect of reduction in contemporary art, where what was once excessive, garish and common, may be stripped back to become contemplative, poetic and elegant. The aura and authenticity as described by Benjamin172 returns to the digital, via the nostalgia of the game in its original (remembered) form as a well as the individual modification of a mass-produced object. Interestingly, Archangel’s website makes available the coding and instructions for anyone to do this themselves, further challenging and conflating the conventions of authenticity. Looping in these two works isolates the repeated animation cycle of the game graphics (played algorithmically rather than as separate frames) as an endless loop, kinetically in motion, but ultimately unchanging.

170 Cory Arcangel, "Super Mario Clouds," http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/2002-001- super-mario-clouds.

171 A MOD file is a computer file format primarily used for music. Their economic file size made them ideal for computer games, which required music to play over extended periods of time.

172 Walter Benjamin’s description of aura is stated as follows: “One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced”. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.Pg 4

In this comparison to Archangel’s work, there was never an original unique existence – though considered ‘original’ before being modified, the Nintendo game was always in a state of ‘plurality of copies’. Archangel, by modifying a reproduced object transforms it to a new ‘unique existence’.

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FIG.48 Corey Archangel, Mario clouds, sourced form the Artist’s webpage www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/2002-001-super-mario-clouds

FIG.49 Martine Corompt Torrent – the endless storm, Night Projection Window Centre for Contemporary Photography 2015, image credit Martine Corompt

Torrent – the endless storm is another work that relies on looping and repetition to re- inscribe the landscape as continuous but also unchanging. Instead of the viewpoint being from a moving body (car or train) the point of view here is presented as fixed. The perception of panning is generated by a moving body of water, the rolling waves and clouds. This work was made for the night Projection window at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in 2015 to accompany the larger projection work Torrent. Though hosted by a gallery, this work was not screened within the gallery but instead 126

projected onto an external window, visible from outside only during the hours when gallery was closed. This status of counterpoint (inside/outside open/closed) enables the work to be placed outside of both the cinematic and white cube discussions. Torrent – the endless storm becomes reduced to a moving sign. A sign in the sense of a signboard, projected advertising for the gallery and a sign in the sense of an omen, of the apocalyptic endless storm that is yet to come.

Looping is a reduction of narrative variation, where repetition smoothes and flattens the potential for possibility or suspense. Looping becomes a symptom of increasing dependency, of the fear of missing out, of being cut-off, or going without, of failing to notice.

Kipple Institute – the efficiency of didactic animation As with the cartoon image, animation’s alternate history is the history of information and didacticism, using graphics in motion to explain, educate and enlighten as simply and as quickly as possible. During the Second World War animation studios such as Disney and Warner Brothers produced short war films on themes ranging from how to clean a rifle to the slapstick antics of Private Snafu.173 As described in the introduction, it was quickly realized how much more effective graphic information was compared to photographic. Seventy years later we have Microsoft PowerPoint as the universal tool of information presentation in the guise of simplified and efficient learning. The success of PowerPoint is attributed to its comparatively limited functionality, making it very easy to use with a ‘flat learning curve’,174 but also as an audience, we have become accustomed to the page-sized chunks of information that are delivered in bullet-point form, perfectly matching our attention span and capacity for absorbing information. With this in mind it was decided to try to distill many of the ideas that have been feeding this research project into a graphic PowerPoint-esque

173 Private Snafu was a fictional character used in instructional short films for World-War II. SNAFU, is a military acronym for “situation normal all fucked up”.

174 Obendorf, Hartmut. Minimalism : Designing Simplicity. Dordrecht ; London: Springer, 2009. Pg 209 127

presentation. The project titled Kipple and the The Cult of Reduction175 became part of a larger collaborative work with Dr. Darren Tofts and Dr. Ian Haig under the title The Kipple Institute and has since been published in the academic journal Ctrl-Z.176

FIG.50 Martine Corompt, screen stills in sequence from the Kipple project – Kipple and The Cult of Reduction

175 http://kipple.ctrl-z.net.au/KippleMartine/cult.html 176 http://www.ctrl-z.net.au/

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FIG.51 Martine Corompt, screen stills in sequence from the Kipple project – Kipple and The Cult of Reduction

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Our idea was to respond to the idea of kipple coined by author Philip K. Dick in his novel Do androids dream of electric sheep177 where kipple is described as a type of rubbish that seemingly self-generates and is impossible to eradicate. The idea was to form our own ‘institution’ or more specifically a failed institution that has become a kind of repository for unwanted or failed research projects. The idea of kipple for me was particularly interesting as it is seemingly at odds with the notion of reduction, the opposite in fact. When you consider reduction, it is usually in response to accumulation, of trying to remedy the excess, after all reduction can really only be a process, not an end, there is no end. A step-through PowerPoint type presentation felt like the perfect container for this idea. PowerPoint has an apparent aura of sincerity combined with straightforward clarity, even though many PowerPoint presentations that I have endured in my professional life are an agonizing locked-groove of rhetorical information and SMART178 criteria. The result in the Kipple project is part info-graphics, part PowerPoint and part advertising campaign, stringing together the ideas and philosophies of a Modernist Painter, a nineteenth century economist, and two contemporary self-help/life-coach gurus. This project was somewhat of a test for the entire research project, to see if these various ideas could be combined and interchanged and still make sense in a simplified format, a kind of condensed caricature of the research topic in the form of didactic pictorial information. This returns back to Gombrich and Kris’s description of caricature discussed in Chapter One, as the pleasure derived from a saving of mental energy, of partly knowing what to expect. The idea of wit by association is also involved whereby in conventional caricature two visually related, but conceptually disparate images are brought together (such as a pear and a fat-headed king). With Kipple and The Cult of Reduction, three examples of reduction are brought together without regard (except for the hyperlinks) for their specific original intent or context. The model of didactic information as clear, streamlined, quick to comprehend, saving time and energy becomes a caricature - absurd and full of rhetoric, but somehow plausible. The use of text draws on models from advertising, bumper stickers, workplace affirmations and artist manifestos, all of

177 Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? London: Rapp & Whiting, 1969.

178 SMART is an acronym used in workplace management goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely 130

which are grammatically structured in the imperative. As the work was required to be presented as an online journal, the use of Power-point needed to be repurposed for a web browser. The format of the animated GIF was used to present the graphic loops. GIF animation may be considered the closest the moving image gets to a caricature. The movement repeated in a locked grove is another type of frozen moment, just a slightly longer moment, where motion is not just arrested, but mechanized.

Reduction and the Tachistoscopic Flash: The next section describes an example of Temporal reduction which in its early historical stages was strongly associated with the efficient transfer of information, the thresholds of temporal reduction, and where the didactic becomes indoctrination (the forced perspective)

The most reductive of all temporally reduced representation is the Flash-frame179. The Flash-Frame image itself is not strictly time-based (as it is technically a single image) but exists within a temporal framework of a moving image sequence or timed slideshow presentation as a reduced moment. Within the framework of animation (where every frame is synthetic) the flash-frame may be understood as yet another strategy that either tampers (disrupts) or emphasizes the process of persistence of vision. When the animated sequence is smooth and consistent we don’t experience the twenty-five flashes of frames per second. When the sequence is not incrementally consistent and the illusion of movement is disrupted with jumps or single frames, we become conscious of the artifice. Within the framework of camera-based video, where sequential movement is indexical to a place and time, the Flash-Frame becomes a contaminant, or a fugitive single-frame time traveler, invading either through accident (because of an editing slip) or intention. The flash-frame may also be used in isolation - a single image appearing in a void of blackness.

179 In this section on the discussion of the tachistoscope, the use of the term Flash-frame refers to a single frame of an image sequence placed out of context. This has nothing to do with AdobeFlash software. 131

The flash-frame or subliminal flash has had a long and colourful history in perceptual psychology. From its origins in use by WWII military and law enforcement training, to a tool for market research, to Structuralist filmmakers of the 1960’s and the more dubious associations of mind control for sinister multi-national companies, the flash frame has featured broadly throughout the twentieth century. Tachistoscope training, or as it is also known ‘Flash Recognition Training’ (FRT) has become an integral tool for research in marketing.180 FRT may be used to accurately test the power of branding as it can measure preference and recognition at fractions of seconds. In more recent times the subliminal flash has been used in broadcast television advertising as a gimmick - though the practice is still officially banned in Australia.

The purposes of the Flash frame in the examples previously described may be categorized as the following:

To increase the speed of perception To increase the speed of drawing and other types of learning To increase the speed of effective advertising To be sneaky

In the first three examples, an ‘increase of speed’ amounts to a reduction of time, of being able to do the same thing in more quickly. The fourth example of the flash frame as an infiltrator, sneaking into sequences where it shouldn’t be, occurred later in the 1960’s. Traditionally, the flash-frame was delivered by a projection apparatus known as the Tachistocope. The Tachistocope device is basically a slide projector, but one that has been modified to reveal the images in controlled temporal fragments, in most cases milliseconds. There is really no one definitive Tachistoscope, many versions have been adapted or developed from scratch according to the needs of the

180 Flash recognition training was first developed by US Air Force pre-flight training schools in 1942 under the instruction of Samuel Renshaw. Renshaw’s training techniques enabled air pilots in WWII to accurately and quickly distinguish between enemy and allied aircraft within milliseconds. Flash recognition training (FRT) was believed to be effective as it prevented the viewer from saccadic sampling of an image. In other words, there was no time to glance at sections of the image but instead the image must be perceived as a total form – a gestalt. 132

researcher. The first one was developed as early as 1859 and the Bubley TS1 Projector Tachistoscope is still sold online today.181 The Tachistocopic flash-frame has a mixture of historical associations ranging from training and testing for Perceptual psychology, B-grade cinema special effects, curative therapy, marketing, market research, conspiratorial hoaxes, anti-narrative materialist cinema, advertising gimmick and cheap animated special effects. The flash-frame is a fascinating technology and a phenomenon that has been thoroughly chronicled by Charles Acland in his book Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence182. A tiny amount of time and space the single frame may occupy, compared to the conventional moving image, may be considered an energy efficient compact moving image solution in contrast to excessive temporal visual consumption, in a culture where the maximum restrictions of individual video uploads to YouTube has increased to 128 gigabytes.183 Enabling an unfathomable 18,000 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every hour,184 the Flash-Frame becomes the antithesis of contemporary image consumption.

As described in Chapter One, a particularly influential example of research using the Tachistoscope was the 1956 experiment by Ryan and Schwartz, in the Speed of perception as a function of mode of representation.185 This was typical of many such studies throughout the 1940’s and 50’s that used the Tachistocope for vision training or vision testing for the purposes of visual proficiency. American Air Force pre-flight training schools had already been using Tachistocopic flash training since 1942 under the instruction of Samuel Renshaw. His training techniques enabled air pilots in World War II to accurately and quickly distinguish between enemy and allied aircraft within milliseconds. FRT was believed to be effective as it prevented the viewer from

181 Bubley, Clive. "BUBLEY TS1 Projector Tachistoscopes in Packaging Research." BUBLEY TS1. 2004. Accessed March 06, 2016. www.bubley.com/t-scopes/research.html.

182 Charles R. Acland, Swift Viewing : The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence, (North Carolina: Duke University Press,, 2011).

183 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673?hl=en

184 http://tubularinsights.com/300-hours-video-youtube-advertisers/

185 Ryan and Schwartz, "Speed of Perception as a Function of Mode of Representation." 133

saccadic sampling of an image. In other words, there was no time to glance around sections of the image but instead the image must be perceived as a total form – a Gestalt. There was no doubt in Renshaw’s mind regarding the benefits of flash training as he describes in the following two sentences:

The trained perceiver sees more accurately in short than in long exposures. For the untrained, increasing the exposure time not only does not help but frequently hinders accurate

perception.186

Sculptors, painters and architects know that the longer the look the less you see. Tests of a number of officer groups at 1/50 and at 1 second exposures gave practically unanimous

reports that the shapes were easier to see and more certain at the shorter exposure time.187

Another example of tachistoscopic training in the late 1940’s comes from the area of perception and drawing and occurred at Hoyt Sherman’s Flash lab at Ohio State University. Hoyt Sherman was a Professor in the department of Fine Art and like Renshaw had been involved in the training of Naval and Air-force Fighter pilots in World War II. The Flash-lab was a course designed to teach students to draw more efficiently (faster and more accurately). Sherman also shared Renshaw's view about ‘perceiving the whole’ – he also went further in describing the lack of dimensional depth in flash frame perception and how the silhouette or outline of the shape becomes more apparent than the internal details, which may assist in the translation of three-dimensional form into two dimensions. With Flash-lab training the students are actually drawing from the retinal after-image rather than from any direct spatial reference. Interestingly Sherman is well known for his contribution to modern art rather than his war contribution, as Roy Lichtenstein was his most famous student. Regarding the benefits of the flash frame as a learning tool, David Deitcher in his chapter ‘Unsentimental education’,188 describes Lichtenstein’s Flash-lab experience as

186 Samuel Renshaw, "The Visual Perception and Reproduction of Forms by Tachistoscopic Methods," The Journal of Psychology 20, no. 2 (1945).

187 Ibid.

188 David Deitcher, "Unsentimental Education: The Professionalization of the American Artist," Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition 62 (1992). 134

indicative of the first generation of post-war professionalized art school training. Michael Lobel more specifically draws the connection between Lichtenstein’s art school education in the flash lab and his flattened comic book style paintings as a motif of ‘monocularity’, ‘condensing the relation between machine and embodied vision.’189 Many themes of Lichtensteins’ paintings from the early 1960’s focused on vision via some type of ocular apparatus, such as a keyhole, a camera, or the use of gun-sights, all of which require one eye (flattened monocular vision). It is interesting that for Lichtenstein the outcome of his tachistoscope training was not necessarily focused on speed or methodological efficiency (faster drawing), but instead focused on flatness, an efficiency of viewing. Temporal reduction is apparent in the capacity to initially identify and recognize the image in a fraction of a second and recreate it. So too Lichtenstein’s paintings are very efficient in their transmission of representation. Though of course this doesn’t make them simple, as the works also sustain an extended viewing through the subsequent revealing of more complex ideas surrounding perception.

Subliminal - Mind Control, and image infiltration In addition to visual training, the flash-frame is perhaps most notoriously associated with the perceived threat/possibilities of mind control and subliminal messages. The question of the tachistoscope as a benevolent or malevolent apparatus is contingent upon whether the images are surreptitious or consensual. As a learning tool it offers the promise of efficiency and fast-tracking the cognitive process. As an image infiltrator however it threatens the spectator with image ‘force-feeding’, or worse, the penetration of the subconscious. James Vicary’s infamous stunt (or prank) staged in 1957, where he exposed an unwitting audience to subliminal frames within a regular movie theater in Fort Lee, New Jersey with claims to increase sales of popcorn have been well documented.190 Vicary’s rise to fame eclipsed any rational analysis of whether the technique actually worked. Despite Vicary’s numerous refusals to

189 Michael Lobel, "Technology Envisioned: Lichtenstein's Monocularity," Oxford Art Journal (2001).

190 Acland, Swift Viewing : The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence. 135

recreate the experiment, as well as a later confession of the results being fabricated, the idea of subliminal persuasion became well and truly cemented in the popular and academic imagination.191 The success of the belief in the persuasive powers of the flash-frame bears comparison to the laws passed in nineteenth century France prohibiting the image of a pear - the mere appearance of certain images were considered powerful enough to influence the spectator.

At the time this paper was published in Australia we still had laws in place to prevent the use of subliminal images, presumably implying its effectiveness. This law directly referred to the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice July 2013:192

1.9 A licensee may not broadcast a program, program promotion, station identification or community service announcement which is likely, in all the circumstances, to:

. 1.9.2 depict the actual process of putting a subject into a hypnotic state;

. 1.9.3 be designed to induce a hypnotic state in viewers;

. 1.9.4 use or involve any technique which attempts to convey information to the viewer by transmitting messages below or near the threshold of normal awareness;

Flashing (glimpsing the forbidden) While the idea of the subliminal message as an effective means of persuasion began to lose credibility, the idea of the flash frame as a method of entertainment or marketing used within the moving image had much more traction.

In this way the Flash-frame may also be understood as a form of ‘Flashing’. Flashing the forbidden, such as the single frame of the penis in the opening sequence of Ingmar Bergmans’ Persona 1966, the end section of David Fincher’s Fight Club 1999, where like the trench-coat flasher, a flash appears out of nowhere and we are left stupified and incredulous as to what we just saw. Flashing the prohibited may also be viewed within

191 See texts by Charles Acland, ; Michael Lobel, "Technology Envisioned: Lichtenstein's Monocularity."; and David Deitcher, "Unsentimental Education: The Professionalization of the American Artist."

192http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Broadcasting%20Investigations/Regulation/pdf/Commercial%2 0Television%20Industry%20Code%20of%20Practice%202010.pdf 136

the familiar horror trope of Hollywood film conventions where the lightning flash reveals the monsters’ transformation, the killer in the window, or the dead body in the dirt. This type of flash frame is also suggestive of the phantasmagorical. In this way lightning may be considered the original progenitor of the tachistoscopic flash frame, the electrical life-giving spark of the cinematic apparatus. Here all the qualities of the flash frame come together, the surprise, the extreme contrast of light and dark and the after image which both psychologically and physiologically leaves its silhouetted remains on the retina. With the monster movie it’s the indelible image of the horrific, in Bergman’s Persona, it’s the explicit, both attached to a desire to see what can’t normally be seen.

FIG.52 Martine Corompt, an example of using a simple flash-frame process to depict lightning over a sea-storm

The flash as a source of super-power is a familiar trope within the genre of super-hero animation both in the West and the East. There is no better example of the potential of the flash frame than in the 1997 the episode of Pokemon (Dennou Senshi Porygon), or ‘Computer Soldier Porygon’. The superhero power-flash193 is the offspring of the phantasmagorical lightning flash combined with the electronic saturated RGB colour cycling194 of 8-bit computer games. This episode contained a particular combination of frenetic flashing coloured frames which sent hundreds of children across Japan into

193 The term power-flash refers to the power-up sequence found commonly in superhero animation which usually announces some kind of transformative process leading to a superpower. Flashes of light, sparks, sparkles cycling colours, are all special effects that accompany this animated ritual.

194 RGB colour-cycling refers to a time-saving animation process only possible in an 8-bit indexed colour environment. Instead of creating separate frames to represent change, the same frame is reused with a different palette in each frame. The limited indexed palette is ‘cycled’ through a colour spectrum, giving the illusion of movement.

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spontaneous seizures.195 This example now well known as the ‘Pokemon shock’, while inadvertent, is probably the closest any moving image sequence has got to what might be considered mind control. The effect is also a byproduct of production time-saving where colour-cycling is a commonly used process to create maximum impact with minimum effort, but in this case inadvertently creating cerebral meltdown for those who have a sensitivity to strobing colour.

The Flash frame aesthetic – barrage bombardment and deconstructed cinema One of the functions of the flash frame within the moving image sequence is to disrupt illusion, that is illusionary space (where the flash frame contains a different pictorial and narrative space from the host sequence) and the disruption of the illusion of voyeuristic separation, where we are no longer merely a spectator of the illusionary world and are now being looked back at and addressed directly - in much the same way that the desktop computer may address us directly with constant reminders and warnings.

The historical use of the tachistoscope as an art school vision training tool and a psychological and marketing tool, coalesced with the development of Structuralist cinema of the 1960’s, typified by artists such as Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits and Stan Brackage. Here the breakdown of illusionistic space and the acknowledgement of the spectator was a new motivating idea. Acland identifies the point of difference regarding the tachistocope and the medium of film as being similar but also the inverse of each other:

In its pre-digital form, film is an arranged series of still images that move at a constant rate, separated by imperceptible black fields. The tachistoscope is an

195 www.nytimes.com/1997/12/18/world/tv-cartoon-s-flashes-send-700-japanese-into- seizures.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2&_r=0

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arrangement of a still black field interrupted by nearly imperceptible images exposed at a variable rate.196

The moving image in the hands of Structuralist filmmakers rejected many aspects of cinema illusion, such as continuous movement, pictorial space and narrative in favour of the emphasis of intervals, of the negative black space normally imperceptible. Even the presence of the projector/apparatus occupying the same space as the audience, while an obvious necessity for laboratory and training purposes, was a critical shift and point of difference from cinema where the projector is separated from the audience.

This self-awareness and physicality of the technical mechanism is now a familiar structure within contemporary installation. Works such as Fist Fight by Robert Breer (1964), N.O.T.H.I.N.G. by Paul Sharits (1968) and Flicker by Tony Conrad (1965), are key examples of this alternative style of filmmaking which emphasized the mechanical and structural nature of film, by disrupting the sequential flow of images as illusionary movement. For artists Robert Breer and Paul Sharits, this was an extension of a painting practice, whereby the rejection of the illusionary picture-plane (combining flat colour fields and collage) extended into filmmaking by also rejecting and disrupting the illusion of movement. For Breer, the film-strip was simply a sequence of drawings, collages and paintings, played at 24 frames per second, a very compact and intense temporal collection of a mediated haptic practice. Conversely, for Tony Conrad who didn’t come from a painting background but from a computer programming, mathematics and music background, the de-structuring of the illusionary film process was more extreme, reducing the properties of projection to its most fundamental, combining the rhythmic properties of music, with the binary on/off properties of computer programming. The result was a hand-made film sequence splicing together single frames of black and white (clear) leader to create a rhythmic sequence of flashing light. Strictly speaking, this particular example is not temporally reductive as the work runs for thirty minutes in duration and it was

196 Acland, Swift Viewing : The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence.Pg 74 139

laboriously hand crafted. The reduction may be considered not as a continuous durational whole, but as a reduction of the edit to its smallest fragment.

FIG.53 Tony Conrad, screen stills from The Flicker 1965, sourced from http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/collections/reference-library/stills/493

More recently the work of Austrian artist Martin Arnold, also uses the fragment to deconstruct cinematic illusion, though in this case it is the deconstruction of animated cinema. Using footage from an American animated short film from the 1940’s, Arnold digitally fragments (through erasure) elements of the picture plane back to their separate compositional layers as well as fragmenting the frames through time. The result is a looping sequence that appears to be twitching, blinking and flickering, as the loop slowly shifts its beginning and end points. In these works, persistence of vision does nothing to visually reassemble the sequences, but instead emphasizes the separate parts as they were originally constructed.

FIG. 54 Martin Arnold, screen stills from Haunted House, 2011 sourced from Martin Arnolds website

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The flash-frame in the hands of educationalists, instructors, psychologists and advertisers, exploits the reductive nature of the single frame to enable efficiency (training, testing or persuasion). Here the reduction thesis holds true. Brevity and efficiency in the hands of artists such as the Structuralist filmmakers described previously, the flash-frame becomes durational. The initial gesture of temporal reduction becomes repeated, shaped and crafted no longer obliged to be useful or answerable. Reduction allows for temporal expansion.

FIG.55 Martine Corompt, installation view of Flash Training, single channel digital video, 1 min. 2016. Image credit: Martine Corompt

In addition to the conference paper delivered at ISEA 2013, the flash-frame research also led to the conception of the work ‘Flash Training’ for the final exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery. This work demonstrates one of the few experiments in the use of text, which like Kipple and The Cult of Reduction, deliberately jumbled together quotes from various sources, such as Ad Reinhardt, the Minimalists and an

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Interior design website197. The intention was that the quotes would be almost interchangeable and the overall effect is one of didactism, or indoctrination. Generally these quotes were difficult if not impossible to catch by just a casual glance, it was necessary to be seated and fully focus on the screen. The reduction of the appearance of the messages generated a more disciplined and longer attention. The projection screen of the work Flash Training unlike cinema or large scale gallery projections, was not immersive, prohibiting the shared experience of an audience, but instead required an intense one-on-one focus.

Roundabout projections – reduced viewing Since the migration of the moving-image from the Black box to the White cube, we have now seen a more recent migration from the White cube into the Public space. For the moving image this new occupation of exterior environments brings with it another modification of viewing habits. What could be described as a reductive temporal transformation from the cinema to the gallery, we now see an even more reductive reconfiguration of the conventions of moving image spectatorship - the shift from the gallery to public spaces in the form of public projections. While there is also a new sense of liberty and do-it-yourself freedom from governing institutions, there are of course also many practical limitations of outdoor projection that further limit the presentation of the moving image sequence. Access to power, security, protection from the weather and a lack of sound, are just a few of the issues to be considered for a public projection.

During 2013 and 2014 I initiated and curated a nightly projection space in an office window in a neighbourhood shop. The space was called Roundabout Projections referring to its direct proximity to the roundabout where Miller street becomes Gilbert Road where the 112 Tram route (now the 11) would slow down as it approached the nearby stop. Roundabout Projections played from sunset to 2am and featured local, national and

197 All links and sources may be accessed via the hyperlinks within the artwork 142

international artists.198 There were very basic parameters for the selection of the works, one was that they must be able to be reconfigured into the shape of a circle, and secondly that they preferably only be around one or two minutes duration. This second criteria (though not always complied with) was an attempt to compliment and exploit the conditions of a public projection in a situation that wasn’t previously inscribed as an art-space. Unlike the outdoor projections of festivals and Bieniales, where the public are primed for spectatorship, any potential audience for Roundabout Projections were always on their way to something else. Such an artwork in a small neighbourhood business zone is at best a distraction, or may even seem like an intrusion. I was interested in how much time a spectator in that situation was willing to commit (but presumed it was minimal) and how the properties of the loop may function in what could be considered the optimal environment of browsing and multi- tasking where the spectator is not necessarily a willing participant. It may be argued that time-based artworks by definition commit the spectator to a defined amount of time, however with the migration of moving image to the public space, the moving image has lost any defined sense of time. In the public space it becomes just another civic surface, kinetic, but not strictly time-based.

Temporal reduction has a strong relationship to digital image culture. How much time, what we do with our time and how we save time, are preoccupations that resonate beyond the workplace into our leisure and social place. Saving time has been a reoccurring motif throughout this chapter as it has presented itself throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and has been discussed in regard to software, the animated loop and the spectatorship of time-based art. The loop has been discussed as a production method, a viewing method, as an animated GIF, while the flash-frame has been examined as both an instructional and creative tool for artists.

198 For a full list see: http://roundaboutprojections.weebly.com www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/new-street-projection-space-for-preston-thornbury-artists/story-fnglenug- 1226896135225

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Chapter Four is the final chapter focusing on the physical aspects of reduction, whereby material size is often a problem that needs to be remedied either to alleviate excess, for convenience or simply for fun.

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Chapter 4: MATERIAL REDUCTION

Mini-art is best because it reminds one of miniskirts and long- legged girls. It must refer to very small works of art. This is a very good idea. Perhaps ‘mini-art’ shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes. Or maybe the mini-artist is a very small person, say under five feet

tall.199

This chapter explores the idea of a reduction in scale, mass or volume. This is often seen as a desirable outcome in the quest for portability, convenience and storage as well as a signal of technological advancement. Physical and material reduction also reverberates throughout lifestyle ideologies of ‘living with less’ and embracing a new frugality of reduced consumption. Scale is discussed as a diminutive and sometimes inert version of a larger prototype - as in the example of the toy. Finally, the paradox of reduction and efficiency is introduced in the form of The Jevons Paradox, that re- introduces the conflict between reduction and excess first raised in the introduction.

199 Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," Artforum 5, no. 10 (1967).

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The key ideas of material reduction discussed in this chapter are described as follows:

Reduction as compressed, condensed – may expand to be bigger Reduction as mini, shrunken, scaled down – once was bigger Reduction depicted and modeled as immature – is yet to be bigger, to grow up Reduction as removal – downsizing editing pruning

Digital size - does size really matter? (or is size really matter?) One of the appealing and practical qualities of digital media is the flexibility of its material outcome. The size and scale of the workspace (the screen) has no bearing on the size of output. The process may begin from a camera, a scanned source, or an image drawn directly into a graphics program where the work can then be prepared for output in an infinite variety of ways. These may include archival paper prints, adhesive vinyl graphics, a projection, playback on a flat-screen TV, a web-based QuickTime video, or or all of the above. Even for the same artwork, size can be constantly variable, contingent on the size of the screen or projection.

The digital image is generally categorized as bitmapped or vector based. Bitmapped images, which are composed of pixels, have a relative size where output dimensions are relative to quality. Resolution (the amount of pixels contained in the file) is fixed and so the size of the image is dependent on to what extent the illusion of quality is to be maintained. Vector graphics are comparatively size-less, contingent only on the display or output system, its perceived quality is never interrupted by the presence of the jaggy edges of pixels. Vector graphics in particular are ready for anything, capable of endless adaptation to any visual circumstance, but at the same time denying any one form from becoming the defining identity of the work. There is no inherent state of being, it can be any or many. Throughout the research project, this data versatility of size-shifting has enabled many pictorial motifs in vector form to be re-purposed. Instead of redrawing a particular image for each subsequent iteration, the image may be simply reused and resized, in the same way a logo might be inserted into various

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pictorial situations. An example of this is the use of the dandelion weed, which has appeared in various situations thematically suggesting spatial neglect, or space left to lie fallow. The ‘original’ dandelion was generated during the early stages of the studio research as part of the weed studies and was then used for Frankston Current and Look Both Ways. The size of the first version (a small drawing) has no bearing on later mural-sized outcomes due to its replication as a vector image. The dandelion as a motif refers to something that should be removed, weeded out, but at the same time occupies space. Yet its new existence in vector form enables an expansion in size when called upon both within and beyond the screen space of the workstation, but still efficiently compact in data size.

The other practical quality of digital media in addition to its size flexibility, is portability. That is, the capacity to store files on networks and very small devices and move them from place to place. In this way the materialized size of the digital file is contrasted against the tiny storage size. In comparison to the bitmapped image, the vector graphic is much more efficient for movement and travel, both within the workspace (moving images around the picture plane or from one image file to another) and within real-space (transporting files from one physical location to another). The clean geometry of vector graphics based on lines, polygons and Bézier curves, appears to make the image devoid of substance, lacking the ‘grain’ of pixels, but its lightness allows it to compress and travel unencumbered by references of detailed materiality. Bitmapped images become embedded into their pixel world and to remove them requires careful extraction, like an archeological dig, often picking up pixel sediment from its surrounding environment. A single vector graphic may be easily lifted from its digital surroundings as all shapes are self-contained, a closed system, they are ready to move when called upon. The cleaner the image (the less tiny vector points contained in the shape) the ‘lighter’ the file when saved. In the studio it becomes a strange personal quest to make the images with as few points as possible, even though this effort would go largely undetected by the spectator. But the satisfaction of a tiny file size (around 300kb) is a motivating force, enabling it to travel throughout wireless networks quickly and efficiently.

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Unfortunately this data ‘lightness’ of vector graphics has a limited advantage compared with the delivery of the moving image. Though the SWF200 (Shockwave Flash) file is a vector-based moving image delivery format for video and animation, ultimately sequences for playback in an exhibition space must be in a pixel format, and so the use of compression becomes as important as the usual storage and transport issues of traditional artworks. Even with the millions of pixels required for the playback of a high definition video sequence, however, the use of compression miraculously enables all this visual information to be stored in a very small space. A feature-length video work may be carried around on a USB stick or stored in a networked database rather than the 10,000 feet of film (or five film reels) of celluloid film that was the ninety-minute standard until recently. The USB stick has replaced metal film cans, bulky cassettes and magnetic tape and software has replaced the edit suite, where an entire editing and post-production facility can be situated on a laptop or a desktop computer.

When asked to list the dimensions of my artwork, the response is usually dimensions variable, as it is impossible and often irrelevant to confirm what physical space it takes up. Their external material space is always changeable, but so too the material space of the data storage device (memory chip and the bits and bytes of the code). The conception of data-size is subject to its container or carrier. While digital data is unquestionably more compact than other forms of data storage (chemical film or paper) the ability to perceive digital size is elusive and constantly in flux. It is even more difficult to conceive data stored using Cloud storage where servers are often dispersed across multiple locations. Data size compared to physical size increasingly becomes meaningless, but it is always preferable to take up less, for the purpose of being able to fit more.

200 The SWF file short for Shockwave Flash, is a delivery format designed for the internet. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf.html

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FIG.56 Martine Corompt, graphic template for Reduced to Rubble

A material example of this digital size-less-ness may be found in the mural work created for the Margaret Lawrence Gallery titled Reduced to Rubble. This graphic mural which began as a combination of original drawings and cartoon stock images (of rocks and rubble) was then reworked and converted to a vector file type. This was subsequently composed arranged and printed as an adhesive vinyl mural (Fig 56). Reduced to Rubble amounted to 139 kilobytes. Dimensionally it measured approximately 9 x 1.2 meters, and in its compressed form as a ball of tangled sticky vinyl when removed from the wall, it amounted to not much more in size and weight than a dinner roll. These various compressions - from digital file to small sticky lump - demonstrate the super-efficiency of the vector file format.

FIG. 57 Martine Corompt, top: vinyl wall mural in situ, bottom: compressed vinyl mural from Reduced to Rubble. Image credits Martine Corompt

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The Cubicle project - portability, and play

FIG.58 Martine Corompt, Cubicles, presented in its compressed form. Image credit Martine Corompt

FIG.59 Martine Corompt, Cubicles, opened. Image credit Martine Corompt

Cubicles were initially motivated in response to the difficulties and challenges associated with organizing audio-visual artworks and enabled by the availability of portable technology. Both installing and de-installing large-scale works such as Torrent is physically and mentally exhausting, and often financially draining. This is not only due to the nature of using expensive equipment, but also because it is usually

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necessary to employ a technician to assist with the specialized installation of projection and surround-sound. In these circumstances, the possibility of touring large-scale works nationally and internationally is contingent on funds. A remedy was to test the possibility of creating an installation that could be packaged into a box that would approximate the size of overhead aircraft cabin baggage and could be assembled by anyone. It was decided to create a suite of modular miniature installations in which the entire requirements of each work could be packed into a medium sized wooden box approximately twenty-seven centimeters cubed - a form of material compression. In addition to these practical and technological considerations was also a recognition of the aesthetic appeal of small artworks, particularly ones that are required to be handled and assembled. In this regard it was recognized that the historical legacy of portable or kit-based artworks, such as Marcel Duchamp’s’ Boîte-en-valise201 and

George Maciunas’ Fluxus editions of 1962 – 1978, were a point of reference.

The actualization of this project was only possible because of the increased availability and popularity of portable audiovisual gadgets. Mini cameras, data-storage, playback systems, projectors and audio speakers, are all available within the consumer market, rather than the specialized and exclusive mini-technology of surveillance and espionage. Spy technology and wartime surveillance equipment of the past inevitably result in consumer electronics, as the expensive research and development has already been achieved allowing mass manufacture.202

With this as a model in mind, sourcing and integrating various portable audio-visual devices such as projectors and speakers, combined with small modularized material components such as stackable blocks, found objects, fold-out prints and customized fabric became the task. The variability of digital vector graphics produced throughout the research project then found a useful outcome as graphics for the multiple modular components in Cubicles, allowing any of these motifs to become a label, a book, a print,

201 http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/muse/artist_pages/duchamp_boite.html

202 Peter Nowak, Sex, Bombs and Burgers : How War, Porn and Fast Food Created Technology as We Know It (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010). 151

a map or an animation. The simple looping soundscapes for each of the three works were played through a JBL GO™ wireless speaker, packaged in custom-made black paper covers. The purpose of the custom cover was to unify the technology with the other artwork components (hiding branding, labels, controls etc.) while also suggesting the idea of a travel case as a form of protection. By utilizing portable technology Cubicles demonstrates spatial reduction as an expression of the broader reduction thesis. In thinking through reduction as spatial compression, the cubicle may be considered as either compressed (packaged) or uncompressed (unpacked), and like the data file, somewhat dormant and un-activated in its compressed form.

Cubicles are grouped as three themed ‘kits’ following the logic of the following thematic threads generated during the research project.

Storm Kit Repair Kit Travel Kit

Each relates to reduction in various ways. Storm kit, though it sounds like it should contain emergency supplies for an impending storm (such as non-perishable food, drinking water, light etc.) is instead a collection of visual motifs to stage a miniature- storm. Central to the work is the short looping sequence of animated waves, along with elemental references such as clouds, rain and whirlpools presented as printed media. Storm kit borrows various motifs from larger works (such as Tide and Torrent) modified to fit a reduced format. The giant whirlpool seen in Torrent is recreated upon small circular graphic disks, evoking another of Marcel Duchamp’s portable works - Rotoreliefs of 1935203. Storm kit also includes objects such as a customized infant wobble toy, a metal cylinder used to store the rolled up print and several printed blocks.

203 www.guggenheim.org/blogs/findings/marcel-duchamps-rotoreliefs 152

FIG.60 Martine Corompt screen stills from Storm kit animation

Repair kit presents works relating to demolition, renewal, repair and cleaning. This kit contains a set of customized building blocks and graphic panels that can be used as platforms and support structures for other objects, or may be arranged to recreate the fragmented graphics on various sides of the blocks. Of all the Cubicles, Repair kit most explicitly makes reference to both construction (assembling) and destruction (packing away) through the theme of demolition. The animated fire is integrated with the structural components in a variety of ways. The looping fire sequence (originally used in the Windsor prize 2014204) visually evokes a state of perpetual destruction, but one where nothing really changes.

FIG.61 Martine Corompt, detail from gallery installation Demolition kit 2016. Image credit Martine Corompt

204 Portal, as part of Marvel: The 2014 Windsor Prize, Hotel Windsor, Melbourne 2014 153

Travel Kit is made up of motifs relating to travel and movement where the association of portability and travel are forefront, consisting of maps, games, circular ‘portals’, a fold-out paper sculpture and a mirror. The animated sequence of moving clouds revisited the theme of travel as described in Chapter Three - Temporal Reduction, where the panoramic movement of the recurring background is compared to the movement of passenger travel by car or train. In addition, other motifs refer to travel in more fantastic ways such as a portal enabling travel to an alternate realm, or a snakes-and- ladders fold out map/game suggesting ladders and snakes as temporal and spatial shortcuts. In the Margaret Lawrence Gallery a mirror was used to fragment the projection, whereby one section of the projection appeared to move forward and the other reflected fragment appeared to be moving backwards. This may be considered as an allegory of time-travel both backwards and forwards, or as a more everyday example of seeing from the perspective of a rear-view mirror in a car that enables the same scene viewed simultaneously as approaching and receding. The fragmentation also served to spatially break up the image into smaller components.

The modular nature of all three kits allows the possibility of both integration and fragmentation of the parts, particularly with regard to the projections. As there are no instructions included in the kits, as they are designed to be assembled on a bench or table-top, there is really no prioritized or obvious destination for the projections in the form of designated walls or substrate panels. In this way, the objects or even the cubicle boxes themselves are all potential projection surfaces. This allowed the projected image to become fragmented across separate surfaces, layering and combining its own illusionary surface over the top of the existing printed ones. Portability lends itself to multi-functioning either through design or imaginative repurposing. As previously suggested, within the argument of the research project, Cubicles as a combined work may be considered as a sculptural version of data compression and a packaged (compressed) artwork that is uncompressed when unpacked. Like scalable vector graphics, the sum components of the cubicles are fixed, but may be expanded and stretched out to occupy more space or less space as needed. Each object has been made or modified to fit snugly into the kit - a form of standardization that enabled maximum contents and possibilities within a minimum of packaged space.

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Cubicles may also be considered as a reduced model for the white cube gallery space. The white cube box which houses the modularized artworks, is object, container and exhibition space. In order to effectively utilize the Cubicles, the parts can be arranged both internally and externally to the box, maximizing external space and spreading out if required, while also using the storage compartments as a form of display. ‘Breaking out of the box’ is a familiar cliché that becomes actualized in Cubicles. When assembled and installed within a gallery, the cube within a cube takes on the sequential modularity of standard stackable packaging of Russian dolls. Irish artist and art critic Brian O’Doherty discussed the containing qualities of the white-cube gallery, referring to it as a system of isolation, which ‘subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is ‘art’205. O’Doherty used the phrases ‘closed–system’ ‘framing’ and ‘parenthesis’, to describe a containment that is both physical and institutional, intended to keep out interference from the external world. Cubicles are a protective container but equally an object/artwork, optimized for travel and distribution. Cubicles refer to the white cube as a convention, while also deconstructing it as a model, where the containment is no longer attached to a specific site, but is mobile.

One of the notable factors of Cubicles is the shift in the role and position of the apparatus. They make visible those aspects that in a conventional exhibition space are usually relegated to ‘behind the scenes’ such as crates, packaging, cabling and technology. The fundamental state of traditional black-box cinema is the separation of the audience and apparatus (screen and projector). The white-cube gallery, in contrast, to varying extents makes visible and demystifies the cinematic illusion by bringing the projector into the same space as the spectator. In Cubicles, all items in the kit are part of the display, including leads, connections, and electronics. Their physically reduced form has allowed them to become objects worthy of observation and consideration. The miniature projector and portable speakers are toy-like in their capacity to be handled and moved around. Size reduction allows for the apparatuses

205 Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube : The Ideology of the Gallery Space, 1st bk. ed. (Santa Monica, CA: Lapis Press, 1986). pg.14 155

to be seen and touched as a whole - portability and handling have become inextricably linked.

An important factor in assembling this work is that it may be performed by anyone and doesn’t require the expertise of a technician, a curator or even an artist - the technology used in Cubicles is ‘plug and play’. The Cubicle is a type of kit, and setting up the installation actually becomes part of the experience of the work for the assembler. It is a form of play or problem solving. In this sense the phrase ‘plug and play’ alludes to two senses of play: an automatic technology activated at the touch of a button and also the verb play, the active engagement for the purposes of enjoyment. The imaginary enclosed zone of all the combined components establishes what is referred to as ‘the magic circle’,206 a self-contained space in which certain conditions and rules apply only within that zone. While there are no rules associated with Cubicles, the individual components make little sense as objects by themselves outside of the ‘magic circle’ embodied in the kits. As with O’Doherty’s description of the white-cube as a closed system, the Cubicle creates its own small hermetic space and play to establish the parameters of that space.

It was originally imagined that Cubicles might be posted to a gallery with instructions demonstrating its assemblage, much like an IKEA instruction diagram, but this level of detail seemed pointless and over-determined. Unlike a piece of IKEA furniture, while the various included components have been pre-determined it is not necessary for the components of the cubicle kit to be assembled in any particular way. Rather more like an IKEA showroom, they may be combined and arranged in a myriad of ways. This ostensibly reflects the individuality of the owner but ultimately it actually reinforces the autonomy of the author. The varied particular outcomes and many possible combination of parts doesn’t ever redefine the artwork. Compact modularity,

206 The term was first introduced by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens : A Study of the Play Element in Culture

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens : A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London: Temple Smith, 1970).

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and a sense of autonomy and personalization is what defines the work. In this same way, portable smart devices often give this impression of personalization despite their sameness.

As previously mentioned, the lineage of the domesticized portable artwork/appliance may be found in historical examples such as Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, Thomas Wilfred’s Home Clavilux, or George Maciunas’s Flux Year Boxes whereby these artworks were designed with the domestic space in mind, and importantly, to be manually activated, rather than only displayed. Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs were designed for the phonograph turntable, an appliance found in most homes, and activated by the owner. Similarly, Wilfred’s Home Clavilux, was a domestic device designed before the popular availability of television, but was intended as a fully contained version of the larger Clavilux.207 Comprised of abstract light patterns projected onto a cabinet screen, this device could be controlled and ‘played’ using a remote control and could be operated and enjoyed by anyone within the intimacy of the home.

FIG.62 Thomas Wilfred, Home Clavilux model built in 1930. Sourced from Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University

207 The Clavilux, developed by Thomas Wilfred [Danish-American; 1889 – 1968] was a colour organ which played projected coloured light instead of sound. First completed in 1921, Wilfred continued his Clavilux performances until the mid 1950’s. 157

Flux editions, curated and designed by George Maciunas, contained a collection of art works in the form of games, toys, instructions and artifacts. The boxes tended to be a size that was convenient for distribution, either via a Flux shop or the mail service.

These historical works demonstrate a sense of scale determined by consideration of movement and portability - the simple ergonomics of transporting, picking up and placing. In these examples the scale is adaptive rather than self-determined, while a reduced scale of a larger version may be considered a compromise it allows for an expansion of accessibility. As a gesture of dislocation from the gallery (both from its accommodation and validation) portability becomes a form of independence from a larger hegemony of display. Maciunas’ Flux Boxes emphasized the process of packaging as an alternative to an artwork installed or fixed into a space. The boxes and packaging of the Flux Boxes, while alluding to institutional conventions of labeling, categorizing and instructing, also reflect the conventions of commodity packaging whereby the contents may not live up to the promise of the exterior. Maciuna’s distinctive unifying graphics and packaging of the Flux publications were often humorously contrasted against the esoteric contents that might only be a set of instructions, some raw materials, a simple phrase, a provocation, or nothing at all. The Flux editions were initially intended as an expanded form of publication, but they also came to function as mini-museums, affordable, distributable, and compressed artworks.

As with Cubicles, the modeling of these artworks for a domestic environment demands a particular scale - the scale of furniture and the objects and appliances that need to fit around or onto the furniture. This particular scale is not the grand scale of landscape or architecture, nor is it the wondrous scale of the miniature. It is the scale of everyday human size. Susan Stewart in her discussion of the miniature and the gigantic, reflects on the problem of aesthetic size, referring to a quote from Aristotle’s poetics, where he states, ‘There is a proper size for bodies and pictures – a size that can be kept in view’208 . In this quote, the ‘proper size’ relates to the aesthetics of beauty as much as

208 Susan Stewart, The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).Pg.160 158

it does to the practicalities of viewing the miniature or the gigantic. The size that is ‘just right’ is a size that we can possess, both visually and as a form of property.

Toys, play and the reduction of adulthood As previously mentioned, the notions of toys and play are significant in the consideration of Cubicles. The toy may be considered a scaled-down object and when played with, becomes a device of multi-purposing and repurposing, the single object serving several functions. The child as mini-human is offered mini-things in accordance with their diminutive scale. We think of the child as a being that is incomplete or unformed209 and so the functions of these mini-things are also reduced and incomplete. An obvious example of this reduced scale and function is a toy phone. A toy phone is a slightly smaller imitation of a real phone. A toy car however is much smaller in size to a real car. This dramatic miniaturization transforms rather than imitates the object. The car as toy is an imaginative expression of driving but not an imitation of the act. In Cubicles, these two examples of scale are manifest in the toy- like components of the contents. The primal forms of Modernism are reduced to playful components in the form of cubes, cylinders and discs. Many of the other objects (such as the projector and speakers) are smaller, but still function much the same as their larger counterparts - miniature offspring of a larger prototype. While the two approaches sit happily together within the Cubicles, the assembling of the kit brings to mind the miniature provisional space of the dolls’ house where spatial cues from the everyday world threaten to collide and interrupt the logic of the miniature world – an idea Susan Stewart describes as a form of abstraction.210 Considering this, the contained universe of Cubicles is abstracted both visually (a continuation of the reductive motif), and also abstracted from a bigger whole (the exhibition).

209 Phil Jones, Rethinking Childhood : Attitudes in Contemporary Society, 1st ed., New Childhoods (London ; New York: Continuum, 2009).

210 Susan Stewart, On Longing : Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, 1st paperback ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993). Pg 63 159

While the miniature simply replicates the scale of the adult human world in all its details, the transformation of everyday objects into those deemed suitable for the young child incorporate the aesthetics of cuteness, or biologically speaking, Neoteny211. Due to the significant influence of this phenomenon on my previous practice and persistence in the research project, it is worth explaining in some detail. Toy versions of adult objects such as telephones, cookware, tools, computers, even cars and houses share a similar process of transformation in size and details but with the addition of features such as a surface façade of soft rounded edges and simplified functions. The purpose of the toy imitation is to allow children to role-play and to act out their potential place in the world on their own terms. The neotenization of toy objects serves two purposes. One is for the purpose of safety, reducing any surface hazards such as sharpness (scratching, cutting) or removable parts (choking, poisoning).212 The other is to reduce the impression of threat, to make the overall appearance friendly. Sometimes this reduction of form and surface detail can make an object appear half-formed or unfinished, as though it were birthed too early. This is precisely how the principal of Neoteny operates in a biological sense, where a species functions as adult, but has retained the appearance of juvenescence. A common outcome of this aesthetic usually associated with the anthropomorphic figure is extreme simplification combined with a reduction in size. To apply such aesthetics to a large object would appear grotesque rather than cute as the simplicity becomes abstracted and unfamiliar if not visualized as a whole. Works such as Cubicles become implicated in the realm of toys and cuteness as they share many of the same qualities, both in their functionality, the way they are used and their aesthetic. To describe the cubicles as cute may seem disparaging, but in a morphological sense it is relatively

211 Neoteny is a biological evolutionary process first identified by Francis Bolk who noticed that some animals were able to mature sexually (become adult) while still retaining their juvenile traits. German scientist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) later recognized specific behavioral and morphological traits in animals and humans that he identified as Neotenic. Traits such as large low lying eyes, bigger head/body ratio, relative hairlessness and smaller facial features were present in the young of all species (mammals) but also in the adult of certain species, as well as being the traits of many man-made examples such as toys, toys and cartoon characters.

212 Australian Competition Consumer Commission, "Toys for Children up to and Including 36 Months of Age," in Mandatory Standards, ed. Product Safety Australia (https://www.productsafety.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/974860/fromItemId/974764: ACCC, 2003).

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accurate. The Cubicles are a neotenic version of a full-sized installation. They also become caricature. The process of neoteny, disempowers an authority (the primal forms of the white cube) through infantilization.

The Jevons Paradox, and the dilemma of efficiency Material reduction has been discussed as a process of compressing, shrinking and infantilizing. It is now timely to discuss material reduction as a process of editing or self-regulation as a corrective to excessive consumption.

The co-dependency and dilemma of excess and reduction has been recognized for over one hundred years as an effect known as the Jevons Paradox. In the world of economic theory, it was recognized that an increase in efficiency generates an increase in demand, and thus reduction as efficiency paradoxically leads to a state of excess. This paradox is most evident in consumer behavior, which as an adaptive economic system, quickly responds to changes in costs, - ‘efficiency increases make a resource less expensive, thus allowing more of the resource to be consumed with the same budget constraint’.213 Consumer behavior seems to prefer more for the same cost, rather than the same for less cost.

213 John M. Polimeni and Raluca Iorgulescu Polimeni, "Jevons’ Paradox and the Myth of Technological Liberation," Ecological Complexity 3, no. 4 (2006). Pg 345 161

FIG.63 William Stanley Jevons Supposed future consumption of coal at same rate of progress showing the impossibility of that progress (From The Coal Question - An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines by William Stanley Jevons 1865)

British economist William Stanley Jevons recognized that with increased energy efficiency of coal burning factories, instead of leading to a reduction of the use of coal, lead to an increase, noting that ‘Every such improvement of the engine, when affected, does but accelerate anew the consumption of coal.’214 While the cost of coal remained the same, the use of coal was more efficient and therefore more profitable, creating a greater demand for the resource.

Jevons’ findings were published in 1865 under the title The Coal Question; An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines.215 It was a warning that as a non-renewable energy, English coal supplies could run out if the current rate of productivity continued into the future. The Jevons Paradox finds many examples in a contemporary economy, and is often discussed on environmental websites216 commonly using the example of the Hybrid car.

214 William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question : An Enquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines (London: Macmillan, 1865).

215 Ibid.

216 See websites such as www.treehuggers.com www.greeniacs.com www.mesym.com www.didacticdiscourse.wordpress.com as examples of just a few 4 162

FIG.64 The Jevons Paradox and the Hybrid Car, sourced from www.didacticdiscourse.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/jevons-paradox-finding-a-solution/

Fig 1 demonstrates that increased fuel efficiency (better mileage for same amount of fuel) instead of leading to less fuel consumption, paradoxically leads to the same or even greater fuel consumption, as the overall cost is the same for more miles, encouraging a new increased driving habit.

As a conceptual framework, this may be applied to other paradigms in which reduction and excess are in conflict. If the logic is simplified and applied to a situation such as matter versus space , it might look like this:

FIG. 65 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox minimalism – less is more digital diagram

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FIG.66 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox representation – less is more digital diagram

FIG.67 Martine Corompt, The Jevons Paradox data compression – less is more digital diagram

The example in Fig 66 (which is deliberately reductive), may be applied to Cubicles where given a fixed storage capacity, the more efficiently compact each internal item is, the more items can be squeezed into each box. The more portable devices become space saving, the more devices may be included – ending with no space saving. Similarly, with data storage devices, increased in their data capacity, rather than creating less demand on storage, this has lead to more data production. The

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concurrent success of data compression (making moving image data smaller) has led to an exorbitant glut of moving images available online, necessitating vast data storage farms that are now spread across the globe required to store all the efficiently compressed data. The more efficient the compression in relation to quality and speed verses compressed size, the more room there is for more. Efficiency in size (greater storage on a smaller chip) increases the amount we store. There are no savings, but we can have more for less. Thanks to data storage farms across the globe, Minimalist Joshua Milburn on his ten-month, eight-country, one-hundred city tour, is able to keep travel requirements to a minimum - compressing some denim clothing and a laptop into a small bag. The Minimalists’ daily duties of writing, presenting, blogging and film-making are possible on the road because their storage ideology of ‘living with less’ has generated a culture of remote storage on a grand scale.

In addition to compression, the Minimalists also achieve their goal of reduction through a constant process of editing. Packing for a road trip requires that all ‘just-in- case’ items are edited out. Also in their permanent accommodation (house or apartment) editing and pruning are constant necessities to maintain and ‘clear the road—not of everything, but of that which is blocking the way.’217

217 This quote is obviously talking about a metaphorical road (the life journey) rather than actual road-works. However the literal interpretation of this quote would be equally interesting. For a full reference see: www.theminimalists.com/maintenance/

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FIG.68 Joshua Milburn, Pack like the minimalists, digital screen still sourced from www.theminimalists.com/pack/

While the Jevons paradox demonstrates a dilemma regarding sustainability due to our increased consumption of anything that becomes easily accessible, it also illustrates a failure in The Cult of Reduction as it demonstrates an inability of the reductive process to truly obtain a state of less. This is a flaw that while diabolical also becomes much more interesting than the process of reduction itself. Material reduction allows for more material. In Cubicles, the miniaturised technology and the modular components, compressed packaged size of the artwork, suggest a consumer model of mass production and distribution and the potential to make many more. The reductive graphics, size and function of the Cubicles, express The Cult of Reduction as reductive both in its material scale and also its seriousness, where the reduced gallery installation becomes a play-thing of amusement.

Cubicles engaged with reduction as compression, editing, scale and parody. Compression was expressed as the compaction of matter - objects compressed into a box and then expanded as they were unpacked and assembled. Editing, as with the Minimalists, occurred through object selection. Some items were carefully selected for each box - others were rejected if they were the wrong size or simply superfluous. Reductive scale reflected the object’s connection to amusement and portability. Parody occurred with reference to the objects as playthings – smaller toy-like versions 166

of larger artworks. This last characteristic is echoed the introductory quote by Sol Lewitt.218 Lewitt’s recommendation of mini-art or mini artists as the new misplaced term for Conceptual Art, humorously though facetiously associates ‘mini’ with being small and childish. Art reduced in size and substance, but increased in popularity – becomes the reduction of Conceptual Art literalized.

The next and final chapter will describe in more detail The Cult of Reduction as a methodology and its relationship to the Jevons Paradox. It will also conclude The Cult by discussing one of the final works of the thesis project, the multi-channel projection work Torrent.

218 Written in 1967 in response to the use of the term minimal art and the inappropriateness of the terms employed by art-critics to describe what Lewitt considers simply as conceptual art. Labels such as minimal, mini-art, primary art, convey associations of childishness and the inane, a perception of reduced importance. 167

Chapter 5: THE CULT OF REDUCTION, IDEOLOGY AND RHETORIC

The previous chapters have discussed The Cult of Reduction in terms of physical properties - flatness, time and size. This chapter identifies and summarizes the contemporary rhetoric of reduction and ways in which the Modernist reduction impulse has shifted from reduction as progressive, to reduction as an attempt to conserve. This last chapter evaluates the final exhibition at Margaret Lawrence Gallery, outlining in what ways The Cult of Reduction is embodied in the work. It also concludes the idea of reduction as a conceit and reviews the notion of Kelley’s secret caricature introduced in Chapter One.

The research began with caricature, a framework which embodies both reduction and excess, but it was found that the systems and formulas of caricature were too restrictive and inadequate as a guiding principal for the research. These restrictions ranged from an initial difficulty in defining the term, the emphasis on pictorial deformity and distortion, and the intent that caricature often embodies to lampoon an authority figure - were not ultimately relevant to the research project.

As a result of further research, it was identified that Mike Kelley’s typification of caricature in fine-art as a methodological gesture rather than the more familiar 168

characterization as appropriated representation, was a more useful definition and understanding of caricature. Importantly, it was also Kelley’s recognition of reduction as a motivating precept for the practices of both Fine Art and caricature that helped formulate The Cult of Reduction as a guiding principal.

A further consideration and examination of this phenomenon, primarily through the visual work but also through other cultural examples, led to the gathering of broader models of reductive principals. To summarize the main ones:

The visual efficiency of Phillipon’s Pear-king - which allowed for an excess of reproductions

The operations of Ad Reinhardt’s work as both a cartoonist and proto- Minimalist painter

The Jevons’ paradox as an economics model of consumption

The Minimalists – a cultural and social attempt to correct and aestheticize the conditions of excess

Before a more detailed explanation however, it would be useful to first discuss the final work from the project Torrent as the apotheosis and conclusion of the water themed works that was reinstalled for the final exhibition at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery.

Torrent – cleaning out the gallery While touching on the allegorical potential of water, the discussion so far has predominantly focused on the idea of water as surface flatness. Tide and Fall emphasized graphic reduction to push the limits of reductive representation and to acknowledge interior surfaces of the wall and floor. These previous two works incorporated both vertical and horizontal surfaces within the exhibition space,

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enabling the spectator to intersect the projected animation and to disrupt the flatness to varying extents. Similarly, Torrent also incorporates both the vertical and horizontal gallery surfaces but on a comparatively larger scale. The key image of a projected waterfall poured down two, (sometimes three,) walls of the gallery and pooled on the floor forming a large vortex. This built up, then finally drained away into a ‘sinkhole’ in the floor. Unlike many of the previous projection works, Torrent provided its own source of light, and was not illuminated by room lighting, so when the sequence concluded, the space became a dark void.

The sound-design in this work played a more significant role than in previous works and dimensionally expanded the space by incorporating a 5.1 surround-sound composition by Melbourne artist Philip Brophy. This gave the work a sense of magnitude, as the audio composition encompassed a vast dynamic range in both volume and texture. It began with subtle, sparse textures and then built up to a much louder, imposing, cacophony. The sound gave the projected animation substance and agency, averting the possibility of it becoming ambient or kinetic wallpaper. The composition for Torrent was exclusively made up of harp recordings - a single instrument for a single motif. The textural range of the harp and the virtuosity of the harpist however enabled a diverse spectrum of sounds, ranging from the melodic to the textured and discordant.

The animation process began as a single graphic drip - distorted, duplicated and repeated by the software to take on the appearance of a flow and an abundance. The visual flatness and deliberate reduction, harnessed very simple visual stylisations of animated motion that referred to avant-garde film makers such as Walter Rutman and Oskar Fischinger and also the animated title sequences designed by Saul Bass in the 1950s and 60s219 establishing the ‘soft modernism’ of Manovich’s Flash generation. In addition, Torrent also sourced animation cycles from various short mainstream animations; a drip cycle from a Bugs Bunny cartoon220, a waterfall splash

219 Saul Bass’s title sequences for Alfred Hitchcocks’ films Vertigo 1958 and Psycho 1960 have long been a source of interest and influence.

220 Jones, Charles M. "Water Water Every Hare." In Looney Tunes. USA: Warner Brothers, 1952. 170

from Fantasia221, a surging wave from Bosko222. What could not be referenced from found footage was improvised and constructed manually, with a small section outsourced to a French freelance animator223 who specialized in game animation. The motif of the download became metaphorical and actualized as various film sources were downloaded for reference. The space saved from physical storage (DVD, or VHS) was thus expressed as a surging torrent of downloading.

In the catalogue essay for Torrent, I discussed the gallery as a form of waiting room. In this way, the harp recordings integrated into Brophy’s sound-design became the waiting-room Muzak.224 The sound of harp-based Muzak is often used as a motif for tranquility in situations of waiting, in hotel foyers, day spas, or elevators. Likewise a title sequence, a short film, a screen saver, or even a BitTorrent225 download graphic, are all examples of comparatively reduced animation sequences and may also be considered as distractions to alleviate various states of waiting. This fascinating contradiction of reduction and excess - where the reduced image sequence (waiting- room graphics as distraction) expands into an excessive version of itself - came to be integral to The Cult of Reduction. It revealed a failure of reduction and also a counter- effect of reduction as was first recognized within the principals of caricature. That is, the condition whereby reduction leads to excess or a form of overcharging or amplification through simplification.

221 Disney, Walt. "Fantasia." 125 min. California USA, 1940.

222 Hugh Harman, "Bosko Shipwrecked," in Looney Tunes (USA1931).

223 Nicolas Leger is a freelance illustrator and animator living and working in France

224 Muzak is the brand name of an American music distribution company founded in 1954. The word is also synonymous with their particular style of music, also referred to as Easy listening or Elevator Music. This music was designed to be unobtrusive, creating a type of ‘flattening’, whereby through orchestration and production, dynamics changes in melody, volume or rhythm were minimized. An extensive study of Muzak can be found in Joseph Lanza’s book Elevator Music. Joseph Lanza, Elevator Music : A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong (New York: Picador USA, 1995).

225 BitTorrent is a protocol for downloading large files across a network. It is much faster than conventional downloading protocols as long as enough users are sharing the file. 171

Torrent captured this contradiction in the form of dynamics. The dynamics of lightness and darkness; softness and loudness; and even as a range of noise from a tiny trickle to a surging maelstrom.

FIG.69 Martine Corompt, Installation view Torrent, CCP Melbourne Festival 2015. Image credit: Martine Corompt

The use of the loop in Torrent had a purpose beyond simply repeating the narrative, but became a perpetual cycle or re-cycle - the same every time. Water ran down into the ‘plughole’ and then reappeared dripping from the ceiling a few moment later. The end of the loop does not signify just the end of the sequence, but ‘wipes the slate clean’ when the entire work ostensibly gets sucked into a small circular void, the bombardment is reduced to nothing and for a brief moment the emptiness and silence of the gallery becomes apparent. In this regard, the motif of water may also be considered in terms of cleaning, to use the phrase from Brian O’Doherty, where ‘high- art (has) vacuumed the picture plane’226 returning the gallery to a ‘limbo-like status’.227 As with the motif of demolition, water becomes an agent for malevolent

226 Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube : The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Expanded ed. (Berkeley, Calif. ; London: University of California Press, 1999).pg 36

227 Ibid.pg 15 172

destruction or restorative cleaning, being vacuumed, sucked and flushed down the plughole. Cleaning, another form of reduction, promises to rid the gallery of historical content, returning the room for a brief moment to a dimensional version of Reinhardt’s ‘last’ painting - black and timeless. Of Reinhardt’s twelve technical rules, number eleven and twelve are the most pertinent reminders here:

11. No movement.Everything is on the move. Art should be still.

12. No object, no subject, no matter. No symbols, images or signs. Neither pleasure nor pain.

No mindless working or mindless non-working. No chessplaying.228

Of course this stillness and ultimate abstraction is only momentary. As with Reinhardt’s black painting, where the void was interrupted by the presence of a human touch, the black void of Torrent was also a provisional existence. The absolute reduction fails as the void is interrupted once again by the returning illusionary projection.

Torrent, more than other works included in the final exhibition, demonstrates the central proposition of The Cult of Reduction – where reduction does not result in simplicity but a new mode of complexity. The complexity occurs twofold: one is through the simple process of efficiency, where things that are physically smaller, faster, quieter, flatter, allow for more of these things to occur and build up. The other is where with a simplicity and reduction, the space saving occurs cognitively and the ‘saving of mental energy’ creates a rich ground from which emerge other associations. A greater psychological engagement and imagination of the viewer in the artistic realm.

This of course is the commonly perceived crux of minimalist painting too, where overt subject matter is emptied from the picture plane thus allowing an emphasis on contemplative associations. In contemporary parlance, ‘Minimalism’ has found a

228 Reinhardt and Rose, Art-as-Art : The Selected Writings of Ad Reinhardt. Pg 207 173

more general and widespread meaning than from its origins in the 1960’s. More than just an art movement, Minimalism has come to embody the enlightened state of the reductive quest. In the hierarchy of Modernist reduction, Minimalism seems to have occupied a place of eminence, an authority and exemplar of aspirational aesthetics. However the art that we think of as historical Minimalism (Donald Judd and Richard Serra for example) has become obscured from its original intentions, often now employed as an easy aesthetic trope in many areas. As previously outlined in the late 1980’s Mike Kelley noticed how ‘much contemporary artwork is made and interpreted with reference to the issues - and history - of reductivist practice, especially minimalism.’229 Art critic Mathew Collings in the documentary This is Modern Art, facetiously stated the new job of Minimalism in the late 1990’s ‘is to be absolutely spectacular but at the same time rather light and easy, a little bit mysterious but not remotely hard on the brain.’230 These two quotes of Collings and Kelley indicate reductivist practices being used to aspire to the authority of Minimalism, but without the austerity of the original doctrines. Minimalism began as ‘literalism’ – the concrete outcome of colour and form but in the popular vernacular became a term for something much more esoteric. It has become a code of conduct for a lifestyle of a higher moral ground – ‘something you arrive at, a development of the sensitivity of the brain.’231

The previously mentioned lifestyle gurus the Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, have perfectly embodied this ‘sensitivity’ of Minimalism. Their ideologies are so inspiring they have acquired what might be described as cult status.232 Their presentation in South Melbourne in November 2014 was literally a

229 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. p.17

230 Matthew Collings et al., Nothing Matters, This is modern art (2000), videorecording, 2 videodiscs (DVD) (150 min. each) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.

231 Batchelor, Chromophobia. Pg 11

232 Oxford Dictionary definition of the word cult:

A person or thing that is popular or fashionable among a particular group or section of society:

A misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular thing: 174

blockbuster – where the audience queued around the block and an additional session was run to accommodate those who missed the first one. Though the values they were endorsing were strangely corporate, it was astonishing witnessing to what extent this movement had tapped into the popular consciousness.

…every object must serve a purpose, bring joy or add value – everything else should be weeded out …you can replace anything you need for under $20 within 20 minutes from wherever you are (20/20 rule). …arrange your friends so you share similar values233

None of these suggestions were particularly motivating or useful to the idea of minimalist art or minimalist living, and if anything seemed contradictory. Weeding out objects that serve no ‘purpose, bring joy or add value’ is ruthless and indulgent when considered alongside the 20/20 rule. One promotes an eradication of the superfluous, and the other endorses the reliance on cheap accessible commodities as endlessly replaceable - another example of the relationship of reduction to excess. The Minimalists embody the fantasy of material reduction solved through digitization. The practice of converting books, music, photos into data, stored somewhere else as a method of space saving is just deferring the problem, participating in the illusion of reduction.

The third quote is the most germane to The Cult of Reduction. ‘arranging your friends’ suggests a process of editing and weeding no different from the purposeless objects. This is a reductive process that extends into social connections but borders on the cult-ish. In the situation of the cult, participation in the group ensures that the sharing of those rules and ideologies (even if ultimately unobtainable) is controlled, and not at risk from contamination by outside influences. The Cult of Reduction is a cult (obsession,

233 These phrases were captured as accurately as possible from the audience of the 2014 presentation ‘The Minimalists Everything That Remains Tour’ 175

faith, or craze) of trying to aspire to what can’t ever be achieved, deliberately participating in the illusion that it is being achieved.

While several of the ideas and influences regarding The Cult of Reduction have come from contemporary issues surrounding economics, sustainability and well-being, these concerns are not the essence of the argument. It is beyond the scope of this research project to use creative artworks for the purpose of civic or ethical edification, but what has been within the scope of the research, is to recognize the language and behavior surrounding these concerns as an on-going discussion of reduction as it exists in the contemporary moment. The Cult of Reduction may be considered the catechism of our age where these global imperatives motivate a constant rhetoric of reduction and like a nagging Jiminy Cricket,234 is part of our popular consciousness that strives to steer us away from the temptation of excess and towards self-restraint.235 While the motif of reduction throughout Modernism was motivated by efficiency and progress and symbolic of an improved future, the contemporary reduction motif does not present itself as utopic, but rather is a sign of loss - and if not loss exactly, then an aestheticized penance for excess.

It ends with caricature The final exhibition as a whole seemed somewhat artificial as a concretization of the research. Up to this point none of the works had been exhibited together in one space and so a certain amount of tempering was needed in order for them to coexist together. Any notion of the works as visually or aurally reductive in their original exhibition display were then counteracted by the number of artworks seen together in

234 Jiminy Cricket is a fictitious character from the 1940 animated feature film Pinocchio, Walt Disney Productions. The character functioned as a surrogate conscious for Pinocchio, who was yet to learn right from wrong.

235 An example of how to inspire effective self-restraint may be found in the lectures of behavioral scientist Alex Laskey. Laskey describes the dilemma of household energy consumption where we are only motivated to use less, if we think are neighbours are using less than us. The introduction of neighbourhood energy use on individual bills was proven to be a dramatic incentive. We need to see reduction to be inspired by it. TED, "Alex Laskey: How Behavioral Science Can Lower Your Energy Bill," (2013).

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one space. This was not necessarily to be considered a failure of the intention, but an inevitable outcome of The Cult of Reduction, where reduction allows for excess. While there were various practical considerations regarding the autonomy of each work (such as balancing audio volumes, managing proximity and space, zoning lighting) the tri-tone palette unified the works across the space of the gallery. The chromatic reduction enabled efficiency and consistency both throughout the production phase of the research project, and in the final presentation of the work at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery.

FIG.70 Martine Corompt The Cult of Reduction final exhibition. Image credit Christian Capurro

Some works such as Cubicles, Flash Training and M1-Homeward were more apparent than others in embodying reduction-as-caricature (making fun of reduction, exposing and dethroning). But with Torrent the references to reduction-as-caricature were more complex. The representation of Torrent is graphically reductive and plays with surface flatness (walls and floor) but is excessive in its scale and intensity. The projection feigns dimensionality by using the walls and floor as continuous space, but is also self- consciously flat. The caricature in Torrent operates both as a gesture of reduction and expansion. Torrent begins in a reduced form, but then multiplies – like the failure inherent in The Cult of Reduction seen via the grand expansion of a series of simple animated cycles, and the reduction of the gallery as a waiting-room (dethroning the authority of the gallery). When the work shared the ‘waiting-room’ with many other 177

separate artwork narratives, the intermittent void rather than self-contained, was then punctuated by other works allowing the spectator to move on to something else. Alternatively the ability to browse a variety of works – each one engaging with reduction in its own way, reduces the perceived profundity, but overall, reinforces the same gesture over and over leading to an excess in the transmission of meaning. Demonstrated as illusory and ironic - reduction leads to further and differing complexities as expressed in each of the works in the exhibition.

Kelley’s secret caricature refers to the dethroning of high modernism (primal forms serving the role of the authority figure) through fouling and distorting. This secret caricature is ‘a caricature of the very notion of perfection’.236 The secret caricature dethrones, or caricatures Fine Art, whereby the reductivist practice rather than referring to art history to legitimize, is simply making fun of it – ‘an image of low intent (to bring down an authority) masquerading in heroic garb’ (pretending it’s not).

Making fun of reductive paradigms is a form of caricature, though it is recursive, as is the gesture of dethroning. It becomes once again sanctified and tamed through its position in Fine Art and certainly its position as academic research – a self perpetuating loop.

Within the research project, the drive for reduction evolved from the problem of labour, of animation taking too much time. The processes of production time-saving, then became aesthetized and recognized for their parallel tendencies in both art and the broader culture. These aesthetics and cultural tendencies were explored through the three main allegorical motifs of weeding, water and demolition. The drive for reduction was recognized as a conceit where reduction is impossible. Nothing is really flat, Minimalism just makes way for other forms of excess, and saving is often just a façade. Within the imaginative spaces enabled by reduction and abstraction, came the potential for creative, speculative, and unpredictable modes of thought that probe and question dominant narratives and representational techniques.

236 Kelley and Welchman, Foul Perfection : Essays and Criticism. Pg 34 178

The Cult of Reduction, as with caricature, is not exclusively concerned with reduction, but rather the relationship and tension between reduction and excess. The reductive reconciles the excessive, and excess is made possible because of the space made available from the process of reduction. As reduction and excess hang in a perpetual balance, this dichotomy presented itself as the unresolved lure of caricature and the driving force of The Cult of Reduction. When reduction fails, this becomes a relief, a favourable outcome indicating that The Cult of Reduction is functioning as it should.

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1: List of exhibitions during candidature Appendix 2: List of publications during candidature Appendix 3: List of works in final exhibition Appendix 4: Torrent catalogue Appendix 5: Link to video documentation Appendix 6: Link to Kipple Institute

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Appendix 1: List of exhibitions during candidature

2012 Tide – Westspace, Melbourne

2013 Fall, Luminescence: The 2013 Windsor Prize, Hotel Windsor, Melbourne M1 - Homeward, Urban Screens, Frankston Art Centre, Frankston, Australia M1 – Homeward, Drawing Out, Design Research Institute RMIT curated by Suzie Attiwill

2014 Western Wilderness – Regional Rail Public Art commission for Sunshine Railway station. Current, Cube 37 Art after dark, Frankston Arts Centre audio by Camilla Hannan Porous: White night Melbourne RMIT campus Portal, Marvel: The 2014 Windsor Prize, Hotel Windsor, Melbourne Jewell Portal: Curated by Camilla Hannan, as part of re::set Trainspotters INC, MoreArts Festival Dark Night Bright Light - A collaboration with Camilla Hannan and Van Sowerwine. Performed at the San Francisco Center for New Music and Oxygen Arts Centre, Nelson CA in July 2014

2015 Torrent, CAST gallery Hobart for MOFO, and Melbourne Festival CCP, audio composed by Philip Brophy Look both ways, Melbourne Art Tram, Melbourne Festival, Melbourne, Australia

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Appendix 2: List of publications during candidature

2010 The language of animated line', Studies in Material Thinking, vol. 4, pp. 1-9. http://www.materialthinking.org/papers/16

The moving line', Drawing Out, vol. 1, RMIT University Press, Melbourne, Australia. ISSN 978-0-646-53254-7'

2012 Three Fingers and White Gloves', Drawing Out Conference 2012 University of Art London. http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/three-fingers-and-white-gloves-–-conventions- and-representation-cartoon-morphology

2013 Reduction and the tachistoscopic flash - a marginalised technology, in Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium of Electronic Art, ISEA2013, Kathy Cleland, Laura Fisher and Ross Harley (ed.), ISEA International, the Australian Network for Art & Technology and the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-3 (19th International Symposium of Electronic Art, ISEA2013) https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/9652

The morphological riddle of a cartoon hand, in Peer Reviewed Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference Popular Culture Association (PopCAANZ), Mountfort, P (ed.), Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand, Australia, pp. 1-10 (PopCAANZ 2013) http://popcaanz.com/conferenceproceedings_2013/Animation_Corompt_MorphologicalRi ddle.pdf

2015 The Kipple Institute and The Cult of Reduction http://kipple.ctrl-z.net.au/KippleMartine/cult.html

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Appendix 3: List of works in final exhibition

Frankston Current Two-channel digital video. Audio by Camilla Hannan 1:07

Reduced to rubble Vinyl wall mural and acrylic paint 380cm x 1100

Cubicles Plywood boxes, mini projectors, and mixed items Dimensions variable

M1 Homeward Two channel digital video 1:47

Flash Training Single Channel digital video – silent and chair 1:00

Torrent – the endless storm Single Channel digital video - silent 4:22

Torrent Three Channel digital video and surround sound by Philip Brophy 7:00

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Appendix 4: Torrent catalogue

FOREWORD

Derived from ancient Greek, the word photography can them in the very substance they are often implored to be translated as ‘drawing with light’. Thinking about this conserve. Outside the building, when one looks from the in a contemporary context, Martine Corompt does exactly street to view Torrent—the endless storm on the CCP’s that—using a lens, she creates representations with light. exterior Night Projection Window, Corompt casts the CCP as a Unlike the still image—made with light and fixed onto paper ship, and locates her spectator inside the vessel—looking out. with chemicals—this light cannot be harnessed. Continually The viewer peers through a porthole, out to sea at a storm moving, the projected beams draw on the surfaces of the unrepentantly repeating. building, animating windows, spilling down walls and dancing across the floor before disappearing through a hole. It’s an uneasy sight for a curator—water seeping in through the ceiling and cascading down walls, then spiraling across In stark black and white, and with a nod to both the stylised the floor. However, for most, the sight and sounds of moving black and white films of yesteryear and the most up to date water has a calming effect, and is often employed to make method of file sharing, Torrent surges through the Centre people more relaxed and patient with wait times. In an for Contemporary Photography, engulfing its audience and exhibition space, one is expectant—waiting: to absorb, to offering a space to wait and weather the storm. Water drips learn, to feel, to be moved, impressed, challenged, besotted… slowly down the wall, building to a trickle, a flow, and finally In CCP’s Gallery Three, Corompt and Brophy subvert ‘the a downpour—abundant and unceasing, water is depicted wait’, it becomes an experience, an opportunity, a calm that as as a force to be reckoned with. Coupled with the idyllic grows into a provocation. Here ‘the wait’ holds more weight sounds of the harp, played by Mary Doumany and scored by than the climax. Philip Brophy, this outpour lulls the listener into a false calm that gradually dissipates as the music increases in intensity CCP is pleased to have partnered with Melbourne Festival and abstraction. It is an experience that shifts between annually over many years to present a diverse and dynamic indulgence and discomfort. range of national and international exhibitions. We thank the Melbourne Festival for their continued engagement with CCP. Corompt turns the CCP building inside out, exposing viewers We extend our thanks to Lovell Chen and the City of Yarra for to the elements. As they stand in Gallery Three, she drenches their significant contributions to this exhibition. 2

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We are grateful to other supporters of Torrent: RMIT, Victorian College of the Arts and Contemporary Art Tasmania who have been swept up with the tide, enabling Torrent in a number of ways. Our thanks also to Rowan Cochran of Prodigious Concepts—the lighthouse keeper, as it were, guiding our way through Torrent and many a storm at CCP; and I acknowledge the CCP team: Naomi Cass, Missy Saleeba, Joseph Johnson, Pippa Milne, Michelle Mountain, Pip Brumby and Lily Wang. And most of all for whetting our senses with their audiovisual deluge I thank the artists Martine Corompt and Philip Brophy.

Karra Rees, Managing Curator, Centre for Contemporary Photography

Torrent installation view Contemporary Art Tasmania 2015 photo: Martine Corompt 3

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S OME THOUGHTS ON WAITING, WAT ER & WINDOWS

Waiting ambience and rousing spectacle. Water running amok, and I sometimes imagine the gallery as a type of waiting room. water gentle and sublime. Engulfing Gallery Three at CCP, A waiting room that is constantly being redecorated with new Torrent converts the white cube into a giant shower cubical, artworks, a clean well-lighted place1 an antechamber to be an otherwise pristine archival space now leaking and dripping occupied only until I get to the main event—whatever that from every wall, pooling and swirling on the floor and then is. A therapist might advise me that this is very common, draining into a hole, where for a moment once again, there is that we all feel like we are waiting for something to happen, nothing but the dark quiet waiting room. waiting for our real life to start. Siegfried Kracauer says those who wait2 are in a state of suspension, of intellectual and There is also another very familiar type of waiting, waiting for spiritual homelessness. the download—the torrent file. On Friday family movie night, it is usually quicker to download a movie that But life is a constant series of moments of waiting: waiting we already own, than look for it on the DVD shelf, providing for the doctor, waiting in traffic, or waiting for the tram; the title is popular. With a torrent file, popularity and high waiting to fall asleep, for the rain to stop, or just for the demand leads to speed efficiency, better flow and less end. If we think of the gallery, specifically this gallery at waiting. Obscurity on the other hand equals a data trickle, or CCP as a very stylish architecturally designed waiting room, nothing—a movie wellspring yet to be tapped. then Torrent becomes the distraction, the kinetic waterfall painting, the tinkling water feature in the corner, or the Water desktop screen saver at reception. Torrent taps into the Water as a spectacle of disaster is a familiar movie motif, cultural allegorical associations of water as both palliative. where forces of nature gone awry act as a narrative test for the human spirit and capacity for endurance. But we 1 Ernest Hemmingway’s well known short story A clean all know that the real meta narrative of the blockbuster well-lighted place written in 1933, was also the title for disaster movie is not really about the human spirit or even Dave Hickey’s Austin-based gallery established in 1967. climate change, it is about the challenge of depicting the 2 Kracauer, Siegfried, and Thomas Y. Levin. The Mass elements as an animated CGI special effect—a movie length Ornament : Weimar Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. software showcase. However the visual representation of 4

water in Torrent, is a very different kind of animation more akin to the flattened screen space of the title sequence than the deep pictorial space of cinema. The innovative title sequences designed by Saul Bass in the 1950s and 60s, with their stark black and white graphics, channeled earlier avant-garde short filmmakers such as Hans Richter, Walter Rutman and Oskar Fischinger, in which pure form and the dynamics of movement were the focus rather than detailed representation. The black and white animation of Torrent continues this tradition of flatness and deliberate reduction, but harnesses very simple visual stylisations of water borrowed not exclusively from the avant-garde, but more so from early animation shorts of mainstream cinema before processes became overly sophisticated and realistic. In the era of hand-drawn cell animation in the 1930s and 40s, it was a challenge and a quest to accurately represent water, and often a popular theme used to showcase an animation studio’s expertise. During this time Disney was the leader in animated special effects, with studio animators such as Ugo D’Orsi meticulously analysing and reinterpreting visual experiments, reference material and field footage into sequential drawings, trying to strike a balance between realism and the capacities of frame by frame animation. Disney represented animated water in a way that was overly luxurious and detailed, almost baroque compared to the stylised simplicity of other studios. My preference is for the

Torrent installation view Contemporary Art Tasmania 2015 photo: Dr. Darren Tofts 5

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graphic style created in studios where the tighter budgets Philip Brophy’s accompanying soundscape of prepared and timelines generated a more streamlined representation, harp recordings, draws on the popular motif of the harp much easier on the eye and of course easier to draw. To be as a conventional metaphor for heaven, utopia or paradise, able to animate water is to control it, like the wizard of The fortifying the depiction of water as something divine or Sorcerers Apprentice,3 conjuring it into the spectacular, miraculous, appearing out of nowhere. However, this utopian thrilling, but always compliant. association is soon dispelled as the water builds up and the harp sounds gradually take on a more malefic presence It is interesting that so many allegorical expressions of of excess. finance are related to water, with expressions such as: money down the drain, bail-out, cash flow, liquidate, liquid asset, Windows fluid economy, and economic downpour, as if money has After the gallery has closed for the day, Torrent extends physical properties that drive its transfer and mobility, always into the night occupying the CCP Night Projection Window in a state of flux and making it impossible to hold on to. But with the work Torrent—the endless storm. This part of the increasingly the allegorical plays against the real thing, and exhibition frames Torrent from the outside, like an inside-out more than ever water has value. Not so long ago water was version of the Playschool windows, the round window of considered to be something infinite, like air, emanating from Torrent is viewed from the outside looking in—the endless the sky, free for all to use as they pleased. Now water has a exterior tempest feeding the interior maelstrom. This is a price, ($2.62 per kilolitre according to my last bill), not really silent storm, and so the familiar motif of the magical harp high enough to deter us from wasting or using it decadently, shimmer heralding the dimensional shift between inside and but an indicator of our consumption and something that outside of the Playschool studio, may only be found inside plays on our conscience. In Australia, the threat of running the gallery, exploded and reworked as Mary Doumany’s out of water, compounded by the desire to have constant prepared harp improvisational passages are woven into access to it in abundance, is an uneasy counterbalance. Philip’s 5.1 surround sound composition. In Philip’s Torrent invites the spectator to walk into the water, to revel composition the harp has become the central identity, in it and become immersed in the kinetic excess of the playing upon the historical iconography of the harp and its reductive animated substitute, despite it being a minimal associations with swirling water and dimensional shifts, while imitation of the real thing. also allowing it to break out of this archetype to produce rich textural sounds, oscillating between representation and 3 Disney, Walt. Fantasia. 126 mins. United States: Walt Disney Productions RKO Radio Pictures, 1940. abstraction, combining melodic muzak-like gestures with the 6

more concrete sounds of the experimental avant-garde.

The complete sequence of Torrent is exactly seven minutes in duration starting from the first trickle down the two walls to the final puddle of water that drains away down the hole in the floor. Unlike the cinema window, Torrent was not made to be watched, but instead should be inhabited, allowing the sound and image to wash over the participant so that they are drenched in its spectacle of light and sound.

I hope you enjoy the wait. Martine Corompt 2015

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Appendix 5: Links to video documentation

Tide documentation https://vimeo.com/48054221

Torrent documentation https://vimeo.com/117869216

Windsor Fall documentation https://vimeo.com/73975772

Windsor Portal documentation https://vimeo.com/106086739

M1 – Homeward https://vimeo.com/73663379

Frankston Current documentation https://vimeo.com/103081149

Frankston Current https://vimeo.com/196525395

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Torrent- the endless storm https://vimeo.com/153996920

Flash Training https://vimeo.com/196524640

Cubicles Storm kit animation https://vimeo.com/196521033

Cubicles Travel kit animation https://vimeo.com/196525608

Cubicles Demolition kit animation https://vimeo.com/196525825

Roundabout Projections www.roundaboutprojections.weebly.com

Final exhibition documentation at the Margaret Lawrence gallery www.martinecorompt.com/2016/12/21/the-cult-of-reduction/#1

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Corompt, Martine

Title: Forced perspectives: cartoon and The Cult of Reduction

Date: 2016

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/166230

File Description: Forced perspectives: cartoon and The Cult of Reduction

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