Random Imagery, Intentional Thoughtlessness

Peter Phillips, Random Illusion No. 4 - use of randomly chosen imagery

Harold Cohen's AARON - use of artificial intelligence to create art

Manfred Mohr, Random Walk - use of algorithms to create images

Jackson Mac Low, Drawing-Asymmetry #5 - influence of aleatoric music (music with elements left up to chance)

To find: art that is intentionally thoughtless / randomly created with "Emperor's New Clothes" themes/intentions.

Trash And Sentimentality

I was going to make a set of drawings of hoarded / not discarded useless objects, and they were going to be framed and "serious" and sentimental and nostalgic. This would have aimed to comment on the contrast between the practical use and monetary value of the objects (very little) and the amount of value that hoarding these objects and allowing them to use up limited space seems to place on them.

However, someone in the same room as me was watching short films by Pixar (complete with director's commentary) and my brain has been permanently distorted. In a world where dogs speak and you can fish for stars, surely the reason people hoard is not just that objects tell stories of the past and/or potentially still have a use; it's that all objects have PERSONALITIES AND SOULS (and therefore faces) (and so I have approached this task instead by personifying the useless objects).

Things Done Today

- I was told to look up The Dirty Art Department and I have done so but I'm not sure why.
- I have briefly reminded myself of the need to produce publications for both the off-site exhibitions I took part in.
- I have looked through a To Do list and noticed a whole bunch of old ideas and am unsure whether or not to still bother with them.

"I Have Nothing To Say And I Am Saying It" - John Cage

It is possible that:
- art is not politics; it does not have to have a strong stance
- art does not have to say something specific or do something specific
- art can be about nothingness

Richard Tuttle - less is more, Minimalism

John Baldessari - self-awareness, acknowledgement of the fact that art can be a bit futile and pretentious

Sean Landers - turning futility/problems into artwork/an end product

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repetition of nothingness - I am going to put these everywhere and it will not be a comment on propaganda or property / whose right it is to alter the appearance of our surroundings, and it will not make a point

"Blurry Photo Of A Human Eating Spaghetti Instead Of Doing An Art Thing They Were Just Writing About Potentially Doing"

RIP, Volumes I and II - Other Notes On Our Recent Exhibitions

We made a last minute decision to include images in the shrine, namely stock photos of women laughing alone with salads. I was interested in the idea that "artists" can probably sometimes get away with slapping together completely random imagery as long as it fuels the audience's interpretation and analysis enough that they do not bother asking any further questions (or if questions are asked I'll bet you could fool some people with, "The idea behind my decisions is beyond words; I communicate through my art"). While you could not get away with that in most art schools, you could probably trick some other people into thinking you are not pretentious or phony, and those people would call the art school people pretentious for claiming not to see any substance behind your art work.

Another easy thing to do is pick a few motifs or materials that look like they are in some way significant and just use them over and over. "His constant use of empty bottles speaks of time gone past, moments experienced, and memories of that which is gone." "Her use of tampons illustrates our society's need to stifle women and hide what is natural, and blah blah feminism because she cares about the issues wow wow wow."

I think I'll write about these exhibitions later because right now I'm just thinking about how paying for the gallery space and printing and materials and travel and blah blah blah cost what I'd make in 10.0117188 hours at my stupid fucking retail job, which may not seem like a lot to people who have to make giant ugly paintings, but no one asks them to, but then again no one asked me to do an art degree either so in conclusion FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Dissertation About Rituals - Brainstorming (It Is Easier To Make Notes Here Than In A Tiny Sketchbook)

- rituals: repetitive actions aiming to prevent problems, but with no practical/logical reason to think that these actions will actually prevent the problems
- the real function of these repetitive actions is to remove negative feeling (e.g. fear)
- this effect is temporary since the actions do not really have an effect on the problems
- religious rituals (e.g. praying) are an example of this
- maybe I should use "voodoo" as an example rather than "praying," so that I am not specifically talking from an atheist's point of view
- buying can be a ritual
- buying out of want and not need can be seen as feeding irrational and primitive impulses
- buying only temporarily quiets these irrational and primitive impulses, and does not actually fix any problems or make any permanent changes, so it can be seen as a repetitive ritual
- rituals are illogical actions fueled by emotions
- anxiety can lead to performing rituals like obsessive checking for the prevention of mistakes
- emotional eating can be seen as a ritual - it distracts from the problem and comforts people, but does not fix anything permanently, so can become a habit/ritual
- drugs can be like a ritual - the aim is happiness, but it is only provided temporarily
- rituals can be logical/useful - meditation can be seen as a ritual, but it is performed with the understanding that the aim is to remove stress and not to directly impact external problems - a calmer state of mind can make it easier to avoid or deal with problems, but there is no false belief that the act of meditation itself will remove external causes of stress

RIP, Volume I

An art exhibition featuring collaborations between Chelsea BA Fine Art students

Yejin Eom
María Luisa Sanín Peña
Colette Shaw
Bruna Pereira De Souza
Zhiruo Gao

Private view with free drinks: Saturday March 15th, 5 - 9 pm
Exhibition open Friday 14th - Sunday 16th, 10 am - 6 pm

The artists involved will respond to an open narrative on the murder of a fictional character. The vagueness of the event seeks to inspire loose threads, which the artists may then interpret and shape to their will.

The pieces, some made individually and some collaboratively, will span across a range of media including performance, installation, and sculpture. The focus will be varied; some may look at motive, others at narrative. The construction of the character may take ambiguous, and even contradictory turns as the artists struggle to negotiate the identity of this person, and the speculative nature of their story.

Gallery website with directions: http://www.brentfordgallery.co.uk/

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Guests will arrive and find themselves in the middle of a funeral service and they won't necessarily be sure why. We (the "artists") are not necessarily sure why. Often the interpretation of the viewer is so integral to the success of the art work that one could question whether the artist themselves even needs to have their own intentions.

Forceful Indifference

Lots of money and work is putting into communicating certain messages. Some are useful, for example the NHS's instructions for when someone is having a stroke. Some are less essential, for example half of what TFL puts around tube stations and in tubes. What these messages have in common is that someone behind them thinks that they are very, very important and that we must pay attention to this advice, understand it and follow it. I plan to create a contrast to this and distribute my diagram of the ideal squatting position for urinating on the ground, placing it where people can see it. The idea is that they MUST see it, but they DON'T HAVE TO pay attention, because it's NOT VERY IMPORTANT. The message is indifference, and I'm also fairly indifferent about whether or not I need to communicate this indifference.

"RIP" Exhibition That I Am Taking Part In - Notes

- The group's idea is that we stage a murder.
- I like the idea of surrendering control and putting effort, creativity and thought into an idea that I don't completely understand. I witnessed the inception of this idea; it went something like this:

"Ugh, I hate that guy so much. I want to kill him."

"We should. We could do it as our exhibition. It would be performance art."

"Yes, let's do that."

"We should actually do that. We should have an exhibition where we stage a murder. We could even get him in on it."

"We should! Or it doesn't even have to be him. We'll just have an exhibition that's a staged murder."

I feel that to work in a group as one brain would involve maximising communication and understanding. There would be conflicting ideas, but they would form a dialogue that would lead to a compromise. This is already what people's brains do without the involvement of the brains of others. I don't feel that that would be the more interesting aim for this exhibition. To work with other people and not ask them to attempt to fully explain their thought processes would be to relinquish more control and introduce an element that would have a similar effect to chance. This links to ideas I was having about decisions being made by either other people or chance. I still have some ideas in progress that relate to giving up control, collaboration with "non-artists" (having "artistic" decisions made by them - "fine art" is getting so broad that I feel you can question the line between "interesting artist" and "generally intelligent/insightful/interesting person"), and taking orders.

- We are calling it "RIP" because we like the ambiguity (it could stand for "rest in peace," or it could just be the verb "rip" in capitals).

- We are first having an installation in a space in Brentford. Part of this space is shown below.

- We are then going to have an exhibition in a project space at Chelsea ("RIP, Volume II"), showing documentation of this work. This feels interesting as it leads to the question of whether the documentation is art work in itself, and also whether the original exhibition was actually performance art that has been recorded, as opposed to the pieces in the original exhibition being the work.

- We could document the exhibition of documentation, and exhibit this documentation, which would lead to the question of whether the documentation of documentation was the work, or whether the work was the act of documenting the documentation. The work could also instead be the act of questioning this.

Stuff To Do With "The Emperor's New Clothes" Again: Projecting Meaning

You can project meaning onto anything, attaching your own interpretations to the most arbitrarily chosen of objects.* This is especially true as work gets visually simpler or more abstract or both, and the amount of background information provided decreases. Sometimes the idea that a work is in any way interesting or meaningful seems to be a leap of faith based on one's opinion of the maker of the work (e.g. the time I spent an afternoon drawing on my shoes and making finger paintings of cats and someone decided that I must be a genius). If little is known about the maker of the work, it could be mainly up to chance whether or not an "expert" projects some idea of intelligence/thought/intention onto it and then convinces others of his interpretation.

How about if I learn to take proper photos?

*I think I will create a series of objects or images where all the decisions are made by chance (which links back to other research from the beginning of the year). I might create two series: one series of objects whose aesthetic qualities are decided by chance, and which do not aim to be anything other than their physical qualities (actually, phrasing it like that makes it sound exactly like Frank Stella's idea of "art as object," which is a relief; if it's that derivative, it means I don't have to actually bother doing it), and another that includes randomly chosen imagery that creates the potential for very specific interpretations that happen entirely by accident and are entirely created in the viewer's mind and are unconnected to the thoughts present during the creation of the work (one could sever someone's penis and stick it on a plinth because one is a bitch, and it would be viewed as a feminist act).

Martin Creed: "Work No. 78 (as many 2.5 cm squares as are necessary cut from 2.5 cm Elastoplast tape and piled up, adhesive sides down, to form a 2.5 cm cubic stack)," 1993 - A work which only acknowledges its physical qualities.

Robert Rauschenberg: "This is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So," 1961 - A work which acknowledges the impact of interpretation - in this case, the artist's.

Michael Craig-Martin: "An Oak Tree," 1974 - As above.