I am writing this early because I have a family event to attend. So I will be adding more once everyone posts and I can read them.
The biggest things I want to focus on in the upcoming weeks are the historical presence of technology and art. The concept of image was another item that we have come across that puzzles me. Many of the issue raised this week were about art and image, which go hand in hand with technology and technological development.
I have read Anne’s (your) responses to my posts and I need to also rethink some of my constructs when it comes to approaching art. I find it funny that I understand how an engine works but how the artistic community functions is still a mystery. Which make me think about how we learn and view the world. I have a very logic based way of thinking. The mechanical world is easy for me to understand. Yet, rather than pursue a job in the engineering field I came over to the English Dept….. Sometimes I wonder WTF was I thinking. I can never find a solid answer for anything and it drives me nuts. Yet, this is part of the artistic process for me…the design process. This made remember something about art and the construction of it.
I have fabricated and created parts for engines and other mechanical devices; yet, I would have never considered them works of art until this week. I had to fabricate a temporary flex coupling for an exhausts system one time. I shredded heat resistant fiber glass; I think it was fiber glass. I then cut a piece of wood to the shape I need and wrapped it in shrink wrap. After that I paper mached the fiber glass around the wood. Once it hardened I burnt the wood out.
Was it a work of art….maybe…..was the process artistic? Maybe….But I did create something that some may not be able to. So I will have to re-think my views on that note.
Richard--
ReplyDeleteFascinating! You are the second person that brought up being intrigued by the historical considerations of media. I also haven't been exposed or considered them before.
I'm interested in the machining of parts that you talked about in your blog. If it wasn't art, what was it? And what do you think about the intersection of industry, materials, consumer needs and creativity?
Yee-hah!
ReplyDeleteRichard, you can SO use your knowledge of machines to help you here and in coming weeks, for sure. I, who am not allowed around engines, will sound silly in what follows, but here goes.
I am pretty sure that, the more you work on engines, the more aware you become of how the functioning or health of one engine part cannot be separated from any of the other parts. When you see some part that is not functioning well, you know that its poor functioning is probably having effects on the other parts connected to it. The more sensitive you become to how the different parts function together, the more you are able to predict how something happening in one part will play out in the other parts.
The logic Benjamin (and Adorno and Horkheimer) seek is similar: what their writings have contributed, historically, to our understandings of media is some sense of the connections between parts. Benjamin is arguing (as few did before him) that art and culture cannot be separated in their functionings from politics and the economy -- and even from human sensibilities.
The logics we are trying to uncover here involve these questions: What ARE the parts of the engine we consider to be the whole environment of our lives together? How are those parts connected? Given how they are connected, what results when changes happen in any one part? [Part of the issue that causes us all trouble, though, is that there are way more parts -- and way more connections among the parts -- in the environment we consider than in any engine!]
In this class, we are focusing on the media part, which -- for a long time -- were considered not to really have any functional capacity in the workings of politics or the economy.
So you are doing just fine, Richard, in the theory direction.
And what you know about process from machining the part you did is very important in terms of what Benjamin discusses, in terms of your willingness to pay attention closely to something and to be able to carry out and "own" a full process.
I hope all went well at the family event.