Towards A More Ambient Art
Curt Cloninger
I'm always thinking about craft vis concept, design vis idea,
implementation vis plan. If the creative process was 100% idea,
designers would be out of a job. What a designer does is develop
and implement an idea craftily and skillfully, so that the way in
which the initial idea is encoded
enhances/embodies/enlivens/substantiates the idea.
The Guardian did an experiment where they placed contemporary
artworks by Young British Artists in the homes of "normal" people.
They left the artworks there for a while, and then they interviewed
the homeowners to get their reactions.
(cf: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/0,8542,981741,00.html )
To me, the experiment itself is much more interesting and successful
than any of the individual pieces of art used in the experiment. Not
surprisingly, most of the homeowners were none too impressed with the
artworks. It's easy to dismiss the homeowners as philistine, but I
think that's too convenient.
Most people expect there to be some implementation/craft/design
involved in art. Indeed, that is the "art" of art. It's not that
people necessarily want a physical object, although perhaps that's
how most people often express their disappointment in extreme
concept-centric art ("there's NO THING to it").
I was watching Pulp Fiction the other night, and it occured to me
that, as with Monty Python and the Holy Grail (or Hamlet for that
matter), much of the "art" of Pulp Fiction is in the dialogue that
occurs "in between" the "plot" of the film. The plot is just a
vehicle for some quirky dialogue and interesting acting. Indeed, all
of Shakespeare's plots were merely recycled from well-known stories
of his day. Shakespeare's invention was not in the plots, but in the
art/craft of playwriting implementation. Just as Hitchcock's genius
was not in plot construction or even script writing (neither of which
he did), but in the craft of film directing.
So the Cliff's Notes to Merchant of Venice are by no means Merchant of Venice itself. Because the art of that play is not merely in a
summary of it, but in the implementation of it. Yet with so much
object-incidental, concept-centric art, all we get are the Cliff's
Notes. Cage's "4'33''" or Sherry Levine's "After Walker Evans" -- those
are Cliff's Notes pieces. I don't need to experience those pieces to
"get them" entirely. The Cliff's Notes explanation of the pieces
will wholly suffice.
Note that I am NOT dissing pieces like "Printer Tree" ( http://www.endnode.net/install.html ) or "Listening Post" ( http://www.earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html ). Both of
those pieces, although obviously conceptual, are not "merely"
conceptual. I can read about those project and see photographs and
quicktime videos of those installation spaces, but until I experience
the installations in person, I am not getting the full effect of the
art. There is "art" in the implementation of those concepts.
I don't want to impose rules on what is right and what is wrong
concerning the concept <-----> implementation continuum. But I will
say that I find art on the extreme "concept" side of the spectrum
particularly flat, pedantic, didactic, and boring. Like reading
Cliff's Notes.
Another disadvantage of Cliff's Notes-type art (and this becomes
evident in the forementioned Guardian experiment) is that it doesn't
wear very well. I'm not going to re-read the Cliff's Notes to
Merchant of Venice for pleasure. Once I get it, I get it. Which is
why highly conceptual "Cliff's Notes art" works better in a gallery
(or in the footnotes of an academic essay) than in one's living
environment. In a gallery, you can cruise around, get the punch
line, feel enlightened, and leave. But in your home, you have to sit
and stare at a half-sheep in formaldahyde, or an unmade bed, or the
lights switching on and off, or whatever it is.
When thinking of art, I always fall back on audio production
analogies, since that is the art I learned first. Cliff's Notes art
is like bubblegum pop music. It's like the Backstreet Boys. Chew it
up and spit it out. There's no depth to the production. There's no
craft in the production. It's enough to get the voices up front and
out there, and then a tried and true production formula will carry
the rest. And this approach works well in the highly structured,
insular, commercial environment of pop radio. Just as Cliff's Notes
art works well in the highly structured, insular, commercial
environment of the contemporary gallery or the festival installation
space. But such bubblegum/Cliff's Notes products don't wear too well
"in real life." "Stranded-on-a-desert-island-with-only-three-things"
items they ain't.
Not that everything has to be Tolstoy. But when so few things even
attempt to be Tolstoy and so many things are content to be Bazooka
Joe Bubble Gum Cartoons, it gets kind of boring for ye olde art
patron. The Cliff's Notes artist would say, "I'm just echoing the
meaninglessness and frivolity of our post-modern culture." Well why
on earth would you want to do that? If I'm already drowning in
banality, why do I need more of it?
These days I observe two extremes -- either the art is stupid and
frivolous and craftless and pissing into the void, or it's overboard
political and tactical. The former is a silly punch line; the latter
is a moral object lesson. Neither are currently doing much for me.
Here are some marginally applicable quotations:
"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening
attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as
ignorable as it is interesting."
- Brian Eno, 1978
"A lot of people listen to music and they're really just listening to
a voice with music in the background. I've never really listened to
that. I've just listened to everything - the guitars and the whole
lot."
- Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, 1992
"I think you're rationalizing this whole thing into something you did
on purpose. I think we're stuck with a very stupid and a very dismal
looking album. This is depressing. This is something you wear around
your arm, you don't put this on your f***ing turntable."
- David St. Hubbins in Spinal Tap re: the album cover to Smell the
Glove