Photo by Bob Lake
I have arrived back in San Francisco. I decided to kick off my year here by going on a Motorcycle course (above). It was outrageously fun. I plan to purchase a motorbike to get around the city. I'm still waiting for all the paperwork to come in so it will probably be another month before I have a bike. Can't wait.
This semester I am teaching a class at CCA called "Body and Cognition" - the syllabus is below. I have also enrolled as a distance scholar in the MPHIL ART program at Goldsmiths - I will be dividing my time between the two.
“Body and Cognition is a tour of topics in cognitive science - from vision and language to memory, learning and consciousness. The course has a special focus on the relationship between mind and body. Students will learn some of the core underlying concepts of cognitive science, and also practice data collection and analysis.”
Week 1 (9 September) Introduction. Decartes and the Mind/Body problem. Dualism, materialism. Doubt as a methodology.
Week 2 (16 September) Language 1: Phonology and Morphology. The Devanagari writing system.Low level language processing.
Week 3 (23 September) Language 2. Higher level language processing. Grammars. Mental lexicons. Syntax and semantics. Mentalese.
Week 4 (30 September) Psychology 1: Experiment design. Between-subject versus within-subject. Central tendency. Spread. Collecting data.
Week 5 (7 October) Psychology 2: P-scores and the null hypothesis. Central limit theorem. Analyzing results.
Week 6 (14 October) Machines 1. Software. Algorithms. Incompleteness, uncertainty and the Enlightenment. The Turing Machine. The halting problem. Sort and search algorithms.
Week 7 (21 October) Machines 2. AI: The Turing Test. Machine Intelligence. Eliza. Searle’s Chinese Room. Logic and knowledge representation.
Week 8 (28 October) The Brain. Neurons, ganglions, axons, brain structure. Connectionism.
Week 9 (4 November) Vision 1. The eye and the visual cortex. Illusions. Marr’s Three Levels.
Week 10 (11 November) Vision 2. Face recognition. Change blindness. Visual memory. Vision and art. Non-photorealistic rendering and HDR.
Week 11 (18 November) Information and Memory. What is information? Information theory. Redundancy. Memory. The hippocampus. Long and short term memory.
Week 12 (25 November) Thanksgiving break.
Week 13 (2 December) Emotions. Feelings. Affect. Emotional models. The limbic system and the Amygdala.
Week 14 (9 December) Consciousness. Philosophical approaches to consciousness. Bandwidth. Attention.
Week 15 (16 December) Final class: Special topic (tbd).
Rachel Schreiber kindly invited me to be on a panel talking about research for the Humanities & Sciences divisional faculty meeting at the start of term at Califorinia College of the arts. A copy of my statement is below.
Thank you Rachel for inviting me to speak. Its a pleasure to be back in San Francisco after a summer break. I spent much my summer in England, while there I had the opportunity to watch my niece learn to use the slide for the first time. It was pretty cool...
Rachel asked me to respond to four questions: (1) what methods of research are used within fine arts? (2) What is the current state of the discussion around studio practice as research? (3) What would you like CCA students to learn about conducting research that will help them become better artists? and (4) Can you articulate connections between research in fine arts and research for science.
Pondering these questions, I quickly hit a stumbling block. It is this:
I don't believe in "research". Or rather, for me the concept of "research" is a myth: specifically it is the myth that rational processes and rational methodologies will lead to positive outcomes. It is a positivistic vision, and, as James Elkins has pointed out in his books, it is invading the shores of creative practice. When Goldsmiths College, a well respected art school, renames their woodshed the "woodwork research laboratory", we know what's in store. Art is in the process of being territorialized by research. The panel we are having today is evidence of this, as is the fact that I was able to enroll in a PhD program in research based art practice - something that didn't exist ten years ago. The myth of research is spreading.
What do I mean when I say research is a myth? My friend Andre Fenton, a neuroscientist at NYU, recently related to me how, when he is teaching science to his students, he has them read two papers from the 70s. One paper follows stringent methodologies. It is well articulated and clearly presented. It provides extremely accurate data. It is beautiful research. Meanwhile, the second paper, by some competing scientists on the same topic, is scrappier, it has some holes, patchy methodology, weaker writing.
It just happens that the conclusions of the first paper are wrong - or not wrong, but the authors were so focused on the details that they missed the big picture. Meanwhile, this second paper, which was initially dismissed as bad research, had some ideas in it that changed how people conceived the problem. It led to breakthroughs. The second paper is now a seminal landmark in the field. The learning lesson for Andre's students is that there is no a-priori criteria for evaluating good or bad research. Without criteria, the entire category of research is unstable. Most of what we can say about research is rhetoric.
And yet countless books continue to written on the subject and the story these books tell is almost inevitably the story of the first paper, because this is the story we know how to tell, and this is the myth of research: follow the process, get your results, communicate well, and you produce value. We know how to discuss this. We know how to discuss "how do we follow a process?" We know how to discuss "how do we communicate results?" How do we… how do we? Any amount of elaboration of the "how do we" line of thinking can only get us to that first paper.
Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith and Matt Lebo
My visual aid today is an image of two artists asking the question: how do we perform puppet dissection? (Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith and Matt Lebo). It strikes me that in this image we have a clue to a response to the "how do we?" problem. Taking a line from Donna Harrayway, when faced with a myth, our best course of action is to create a new myth to replace it. Rather than allowing art to be territorialized by research as is, we must do the opposite, we must articulate a new vision of research, one that overthrows the idea of research as primarily a rational engine of epistemology, and reinserts what art has always laid claim to: processes of ontology - the making of worlds; and phenomenology - the experience of those worlds; the non-rational; the nonsensical; the compelling but utterly useless.
There is something paradoxical to what I am saying. I'm arguing that we must embrace the insertion of research into art, along with research's logic, precision, and intellectual authority, not to make creative practice more rational or more predictable, but precisely the opposite: Research through art, research through creative practice, is, in my opinion, a political project that aims to undermine the authority of research and remind us of those woolly, soft, and very human qualities of expressivity, emotion, affect, hunch, guesswork, intuition, doubt, or blind leaping... ironically, all qualities that have been downsized by academic art in its play for legitimacy in academia. Research based art is a way to return us to unresearch concepts, or 'pata-research. It might mean simply trying something, whether it is puppet research or neurobiology research, or research on using a slide for the first time … to see what happens. Because, as Andre Fenton would agree, this is at the core of good science, at the core of good art. It is probably at the core of everything.
Our challenge as teachers, then, in an art school is to not be overly seduced by terms like "design research," or "design thinking." Yes, teach rigorous research practices. Yes, teach the latest tools and processes, Yes, teach exquisite communication skills. But this is not our quest. Our quest is to demand, assert, struggle, and cry over something that no amount of rationalism can explain: the awesome reign of the imagination.
Some of my recent works will be included in both parts of the group show The Business of Aura, showing at Broadway Gallery and Elga Wimmer Gallery this August in New York. Details below.
The Business of Aura is a single exhibition hosted in two locations, Elga Wimmer Gallery and Broadway Gallery, curated by Kelsey Harrington. It includes painting, drawing, photography, sculptural prototypes, and installation. The show examines the potential of studio processes to produce aura. In particular it considers sensual, conceptual, and psychological interpretations of aura and highlights the role aura plays in the buying and selling of art.
Elga Wimmer Gallery
526 West 26th St. NYC #310
August 12 - September 18, 2010
Opening reception Thursday August 12 6:00-8:00pm
Summer hours - Tuesday - Friday 12-6pm
Hours after Labor Day Tuesday - Saturday 12-6pm
Artists & architecturally trained designers at Elga Wimmer Gallery include - Helen Brough, Elizabeth Cooper, Cmmnwlth (Zoe Coombes & David Boira)-in collaboration with Timothy Saccenti, Kelsey Harrington, Jon Meyer, Steve Orlando, Devin Powers, Snarkitecture (Daniel Arsham & Alex Mustonen), SOFTlab (Michael Szivos and Jose Luis Conzalez), Studio Mode (Gil Akos & Ronnie Parsons), and yo_cy (Christine Yogiaman & Ken Tracy).
Broadway Gallery
473 Broadway 7th Floor, NYC
August 19 - September 10, 2010
Opening reception August 19 6:00-8:00pm
Hours - Monday - Saturday 10-6pm
Artists at Broadway Gallery include - Jaqueline Cedar, Laura Greengold, Kelsey Harrington, Jeff Hutchison, Jeanne Jo, Amanda Lechner, Lauren Luoff, Jon Meyer, Jan Mollet, Ryan Russo, Matthew Schreiber, Rebecca Sherman, Emet Sosna, and Christopher Ulivo
Press Release (pdf)
I have joined Goldsmith's MPhil/PhD in Art programme as a part-time student. I will be studying towards my MPhil (leading to my PhD) part-time while completing my second year as a visiting artist at CCA in California.
I have been invited to present at Harvestworks on June 7, 2010, 7 - 10pm in New York.
The title of my talk is Digital materialism and its ramifications in arts practice. I will cover both theory and practice. I plan to show artworks, discuss process, give a demonstration of coding, and then talk about theoretical issues for digital artists.
Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center
596 Broadway #602
New York, NY
About 150-200 people came to the exhibition Bureaucracy Now! at my live/work space.
More photos are posted here.
Bureaucracy Now! Parlour No. 15, is the first Parlour exhibition to take place outside of New York City. The show is guest curated by Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization and hosted by artist Jon Meyer in his San Francisco live-work space. It features the works of Amy Balkin, Anthony Discenza, Daniel Eatock, Josh Greene, Jonn Herschend, InCUBATE, Packard Jennings, Leo Marz, Jon Meyer, Kristin Neidlinger, Nancy Nowacek, and Royal NoneSuch Gallery.
Titled after the exhibition Utopia Now! at the CCA Wattis in 2001, Bureaucracy Now! references this drive for a better society by:
My classroom
I have just completed my first year as a visiting artist at the California College of the Arts. I created and taught two undergraduate science classes: Body and Cognition, a survey of cognitive science, and The Human as Information Processor, which covered data visualization. I participated in undergraduate curriculum meetings and was on the faculty search committee for the school's first tenure track science faculty. At the graduate level, I advised twelve MFA fine art students, and I created and taught a graduate theory/practice class called Thinking Objects. All told, I taught 60 students, including art, design, curating, fashion, and writing students. In addition to my classes, I gave an invited lecture on String Theory to MFA Textile students, and another on Code to MFA Architecture students. I organized a symposium called the Research Research Symposium, which had fifty attendees. Several of my students told me I had a reputation for being "intense," which I guess means that, after a year on the West coast, I remain a New Yorker.
CCA Graduate Thesis Exhibition [click to enlarge]
I attended the Graduate Thesis Exhibition at the California College of the Arts today.
My graduating MFA Fine Arts students included:
My graduating MFA Design students included:
You can see the exhibition websites: MFA in Fine Arts and MFA in Design.
Friday, April 9, 2010, 5-7pm
Schedule of Events
5.00-5.40| Opening Remarks
5.40-6 | Short Break
6-6.03 | Keynote Address
6.03-6.04 | Clapping
6.04-6.50 | Open Discussion
6.50-7.00 | Coffee & Olives
On Friday, April 9th, the Research Research Symposium convened at the Graduate Center at the California College of the Arts. Fifty artists, students and teachers met to discuss the art school of the future.
The symposium was formulated around two conditions—the possibility of learning without a teacher, and the experience of being alone together—both relevant to arts research and central to the philosophy of Jacques Rancière, thought out in his books The Emancipated Spectator and Aesthetics and its Discontents.
The first condition—learning without a teacher—is championed by Jacques Rancière's writing on Joseph Jacotot. Jacotot claims that ignorant students can teach each other and through this become emancipated. This idea was tested in the symposium by having non-experts give lectures on subjects they did not know, and additionally by adopting pedagogical forms but intentionally withholding their pedagogical outcomes. In other words, not only was the figure of the teacher removed, but the forms of teaching were reformulated. If Jacotot and Rancière are correct, conventional pedagogical forms favor certain possibilities and inhibit others. Modifying standard pedagogical forms should, accordingly, lead to new learning opportunities, as attendees/teachers self-define the learning activity that is taking place.
The second condition—being alone together—is also discussed by Rancière , who quotes Mallarmé, writing “Séparés, on est ensemble” [Apart, we are together]. This condition was invoked in the symposium through private and one-on-one exchanges that were organized to take place within the symposium. Rancière observes that in art we frequently encounter siutations that produce a sense of separation even as we stand together. This highlights a paradox faced by arts schools: how can arts institutions foster independence, given that this independence is itself anti-institutional. Rancière points to a possible way out of this paradox. He notes that artists anticipate being together as a community in order to create works as individuals that stand apart, so as to bring a new community into being. Creating communities of the future requires that we stand apart from today.
Each art school of the future must therefore be anti-hierarchical and self-negating, ensuring the continuing succession of art schools in the future. Schools must promote learning through individual dissensus, replacing top-down knowledge transfer from skilled “experts” with private meaning formations. How can this be achieved?
Arrangement for a symposium
The Research Research symposium followed a sequence of events:
First, the room was organized in a schizophrenic layout, with the audience facing two opposite directions, dismantling any possibility of a hierarchical podium arrangement.
The event began with a low-stakes writing exercise: everyone wrote his or her definition of “research” on a piece of paper. Rather than reading the sentences out loud for group discussion, each person passed their sentence to their neighbor in a private exchange.
Attendees were informed that the symposium presenters had failed to turn up, though A/V materials had arrived, so presentations would be given by members of the audience.
For the first presentation, Rob Marks and Saul Rosenfield read out proposals from A Potential Art School by Liam Gillick.
Paul Wood and Elysa Lozano reenacted an early design research exercise by Moholy-Nagy, where a design student organizes a set of materials by tactile ‘tones’ which are then tested by a blind person.
Angie Stalker invited Emily Eifler to go on a private dérive during the conference, but without leaving the conference room.
Nancy Nowacek improvised a presentation for a PowerPoint slide deck in which all the slides were the same image, and only the transitions between slides varied.
Rashin Fatemi and Samin Soheili gave a presentation on ergonomics titled Ethnographic Ergonomics. They spoke only in Persian during their talk.
Two test subjects, Liesa Lietzke and Allison Rowe, were shown a sequence of images. For each image, they were asked to hold up an appropriate card. There were three cards, each with a label: “Art”, “Design” and [blank].
The keynote speaker, Richard Feynman, gave a three minute speech on science as a positivity.
Clapping after the keynote lasted one minute.
There was a Q&A session in which only the Q part was held - the A part scheduled for a future event.
Angie Stalker, dérive map
In addition to the public program, there were three programmed but unannounced events during the symposium. One attendee was given written instructions at the start of the symposium to start an argument with his neighbor during one of the talks. Another was asked to start a Skype video ycall. Finally, David Kasprzak instructed Cody Frost to attend the symposium in his absence, and give his presentation for him, on the topic of absence.
In fact, all three unannounced events failed to take place. Cody Frost did not introduce himself to the organizer, so his talk on absence was not given. The person asked to start an argument declined, saying that his neighbor was his thesis advisor. And the Sykpe video conference call could not connect.
Furthermore, several decisions had not been pre-planned and had to be improvised on the spot. These improvisations and non-happenings contributed to the atmosphere of uncertainty during the symposium, which had a dynamic and lurching quality.
For me as the conference organizer, it was these unconsidered moments that gave me the most pause for reflection afterwards.
For example, I hadn’t considered introductions. Should I introduce speakers, asking them to mention their name and program, or should I treat the speakers as actors, or even make up names for them? My confusion was heightened when it came to introducing the keynote speaker, Richard Feynman, as channeled by Brenda Laurel. How should s/he be introduced? As physician or as the chair of graduate design? I realized in hindsight that my ambivalence about these introductions reflected the way that the symposium was both a parody, and therefore a fiction, and at the same time an academic symposium, and hence a non-fiction.
This tipping between reality and fiction reached a crescendo at the end of the conference. When the formal program ended, I had a strong desire to lead a group discussion, in order to explain the symposium, unpack the event, and share experiences. In other words, I wanted exactly the kind of top-down outcome-driven pedagogical knowledge transfer that the symposium set out to remove. If the symposium was fiction, then a post-hoc discussion of the symposium would have made sense. If the symposium was real, then the logic of the form of the symposium would impose itself - in which case there could be no post-symposium diagnosis, and any outcomes would instead be dissembled through private discussions. Finally, in the last moments of the conference, I recognized that Research Research was more reality than fiction, and closed the proceedings with no public explication.
The conference concluded with olives and coffee.
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