perceiving art part three

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

You See Art, I See Art, We All See Art

My Dad was a big fan of Hee Haw.

For those not blessed to ever have caught an episode, it was a TV comedy revue show at its height in the 1970s with a strict country western bent. Some people would emphasize the word bent in that sentence.

As he had it on every Saturday, I did manage to see probably more episodes of the show than were probably good for me myself. Fans will tell you it was harmless, and really, they’re right. All done in good fun, in a certain style you could always count on. Oddly enough, they never had Marcel Duchamp as a guest. Though the people they did have on were odd enough.

I bring the matter up as a matter of Taste, which is my theme this week. My father’s taste ran to Hee Haw. In fact, he was once visibly moved by hearing Roy Clark’s rendition of “Somewhere My Love” on the guitar, during one of the show’s rare serious moments. It was presented very quietly, as they were consciously doing “art”.

All right. Well, I never hear the guitar feedback solo in the Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call My Name” without a little shudder. And I don’t mean of horror.

Extending the concept through one more generation, my son Dylan is a passionate aficionado of Grindcore metal music. How do you think his father and grandfather might find that?

Will we all simply disparage each other over our different preferences, or will we accept that what anyone likes might just always come down to a matter of Taste? I think that’s a fair assessment.

But where does a person’s sense of aesthetic Taste come from?

I’ve argued over the last two weeks for a process of visual art appreciation that when I last left it, was up to Five Levels, allowing for modern art and the very idea of Marcel Duchamp appearing on Hee Haw. The fundamental process remains as:

Level One:     experiencing the art object physically

Level Two:     assigning isomorphic meaning to the object

Level Three:     assigning value judgement to the object based upon the isomorphic interpretation assigned

Obviously Level Two is where you develop your personal sense of Taste, and Level Three is where you apply it to the world. And I think the whole matter has to be broken down yet again further to the old brain/mind schism.

The brain may perceive an object physically, but it is the unique realm of the mind to proclaim the object as art or not. Although an interesting argument might be made for something like the Golden Mean, there is no specific physically perceived quality in the world that automatically registers objectively on the brain as art. Aesthetics are an applied concept to the world, not a derived one.

Hence I may say there are only three levels involved in art appreciation, but in fact there are uncountable numbers, once you get the mind actively involved. The brain perceives the object, but the mind interprets it as art. What might that interpretation be based upon? What influences go into creating the mind? Enabling it to form its impressions, opinions, and passions?

Any number of things! Your social history, the culture you exist within, the traumas or delights you’ve experienced in your particular lifetime, how healthy you feel that day, what you associate with any given object regarding past positive or negative encounters, how you’re getting along with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or the world in general, sometimes maybe even just what you had, or didn’t have, for lunch … Any number of inputs any given moment. A whole mess, not necessarily functioning logically or reasonably, culminating in your personal Taste. Which may be more socially or culturally dictated depending on who you are, or more subjective, or flip flopping between the two. Your aesthetic Taste builds over time into another vital component of the ongoing process of “this makes me me, and you’re not.”

Any given piece of art, modern or otherwise, may strike a note with an individual the piece’s creator may never have been able to anticipate, or be able to interfere with or direct in any way. Once you put the piece out there, baby, whether it’s a painting, a sculpture, an installation, a poem, or a love song, it’s fair game. Or a urinal, don’t think you’re getting away with anything, Marcel.

Again, we’re talking about a process so fundamental to the development of our personalities, it can be very easy to overplay the value of Taste. Somebody’s Taste? Rendering them judgemental? The classical music lovers calling the country western fans stupid, and the country western fans calling the classical music lovers pretentious? If the final arbiter of Taste is always the individual, then there are no objective standards. So value judgement can only be applied to the medium, not the experience.

Aesthetic fulfillment, even if you’re not actually calling it that, is just as legitimate for those who watch Hee Haw as it is for those who go to art galleries instead. Acting judgemental about it unfortunately seems to be a natural part of the ongoing human need to shore up one’s self esteem at the expense of others. The need to be seen as being better than …

I say if it makes you happy, fine, it’s art then. Maybe not for me, and I’ll point that out, but that doesn’t invalidate the experience for you.

Besides, you’re probably still shaking your head about me and the Velvet Underground anyway.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

The action continues in the Jungle Adventure, “The Third Eye of the Many Legged Python”. Lost civilizations, odd ancient idols coming to life, beautiful lost jungle queens, your classic, always cool big game hunter hero no matter how sweltering the heat, the danger, or the lost jungle queen … All that, plus the Iron Clown.

Continuing Friday at: http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY-FOUR:     PULP FICTION

“The Red Moon of Pango Pango”

EPISODE TWENTY-THREE:     STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Imp of the Reverse

EPISODE TWENTY-TWO:     FAIRY TALE

Princess NoName

EPISODE TWENTY-ONE:     THE WEDDING

Dearly, Beloved

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

perceiving art part two

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

You See Art Too

Last week, we took a look at the oftentimes disturbing world of Marcel Duchamp. However, I managed to work out that he was intentionally trying to disturb us, and our way of looking at the world. So that’s all right, then.

Isn’t it?

To review, using an example directly lifted from Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach, I suggested people approach visual art using this fundamental three level process:

Level One:     People see only the physical object presented. In this case, hyphens and letters.

     -  -  ex  -  -  eq  -  -  -  -

     -  -  ex  -  -  eq  -  -  -

Level Two:     They draw upon past experience and memory to create an isomorphic interpretation of what they’re seeing.

     2 X 2 = 4

     2 X 2 = 3

Level Three:     They draw value judgements concerning the original presentations based upon their isomorphic interpretations.

     2 X 2 = 4; that’s right!

     2 X 2 = 3; that’s wrong!

However, there’s no reason to limit the experience of either creating the art to be evaluated or evaluating the art created to only these three basic levels. When people start adding their assumptions concerning the nature of aesthetics to the isomorphic and value judgement levels, any number of extra levels of interpretation may come into play. A subject to be explored more fully next week.

What I want to talk about this week is the artist who intentionally adds a Fourth Level to the experience while creating his work. A Level meant to interfere with or short circuit the usual, accepted process. Such as Marcel Duchamp presenting an art show with a men’s urinal and declaring it art, merely by introducing the object into the art appreciation process by where he has physically placed it — in the gallery, not the men’s room.

I asked a question regarding these controversial pieces: how can you tell if the artist has managed to achieve taking the process one level higher, or has merely failed to communicate any message at all?

And I suggested the answer was, you know it’s art because the artist tells you it’s art. Such as Marcel’s urinal still being art because it’s found in the Tate Gallery in London.

So the question this week logically becomes, what the hell kind of an answer is that?!

The issue arises from the paradox central to viewing an art object meant to interfere with the normal process of viewing an art object. Specifically, the point in the three level function I illustrated above being rendered ineffectual is Level Two: drawing an isomorphic meaning from the physical representation that allows the viewer to assign similarities in form and relations to ideas already in mind.

The process in Marcel’s case introduces the concept of who could possibly think a urinal is art? The isomorphic interpretation that comes to the viewer’s mind is not that usually associated with trying to assign aesthetic quality to an object. Of course a urinal’s not art, the guy didn’t even design or make it himself, it has a completely different vulgar function we don’t even like to think about let alone associate with art, and all the so-called “artist” did to make it art was crowbar it out of the men’s room and stick it out in front of everybody’s faces in the middle of the gallery, where it’s not supposed to be!

How then, does Marcel’s urinal finally end up with the label not only of “art”, but as “one of the most important pieces of art produced in the entire 20th Century”?

Because Marcel didn’t relocate it to just another men’s room, where it wouldn’t have stood out as isomorphically incorrect. Instead he introduced various copies to art galleries and museums the world over! No one can argue that by doing that, he hasn’t successfully circumvented the first three steps of the process as I’ve defined it. However, since the whole idea was to short circuit the process that recognizes an object as art, something other than the viewer supplying his or her own isomorphic interpretation of the object creating an aesthetic sense of the installation needs to be provided before the viewer knows that what they are seeing is art, if the work is successful and not just a plumbing accident.

You can see why this aggravates the hell out of so many people.

In short, in so much of modern art, the isomorphic connection for the viewer to recognize the work as art has to be made by the art purveyor. Because, theoretically, if the artist has done his or her job properly, the viewer should not be able to make the connection on his or her own. Until he or she is sufficiently educated about modern art, of course. Then the viewer can confidently enter the gallery again and go “I don’t get that, and I don’t get that, and I certainly don’t get that. Therefore, those must be good.”

Let’s face it. When the artist moves to the supposed Fourth Level I have proposed, short circuiting the earlier steps of the process, meaning is no longer included as part of the gallery admission fee. Has the artist successfully achieved the Fourth Level? Or has the artist failed to successfully achieve anything? There’s no meaning in either case, so the result is the same either way. Therefore to requalify as art, a Fifth Level has to be added, circumventing the process yet again. Meaning has to be reintroduced by the “educated” gallery owners and experts. Art becomes art not because you recognize some inherent quality within it as art. Art become art because you are told it is art. One of the ways you are told that it is art is to see it displayed in an art gallery.

The isomorphic aspect of much of today’s art is rendered utterly absent or completely subjective to the artist. For you to understand a work as art, you have to be told what to look for, rather than making the connections on your own. The expression of the art as art therefore happens elsewhere than in the art object itself. With luck, you might be able to apply what you are told sometimes enough to recognize something in the work. Or maybe all you see is that yes indeed, the artist failed to communicate any message at all. I wonder if he did it on purpose?

The creators still create, but it has fallen more and more upon the gallery personnel and the experts to define anything as art. Therefore establishing them as a central — possibly the central agent — in the creation of the art experience for any given object’s viewers. So following on Marcel’s lead, you have creators, and then you have art purveyors, and they are not necessarily the same people. People who are making what they intentionally do not want us to recognize as art, associated with people who have to reestablish it as art for us in some sense so we’ll give it the time of day at all.

Thus the fundamental process expands to:

Level One:     physical art object

Level Two:     viewer attempting to assign an isomorphic interpretation to the object to establish aesthetic quality

Level Three:    viewer’s value judgement on whether the object is successful or not

Level Four:     creator intentionally trying to produce an object that the viewer cannot relate to isomorphically, interfering with Levels Two and Three

Level Five:     purveyors, either artists or associated art industry personnel, reestablishing a status as art for works created on Level Four, so somebody can still make some cash in the escalating confusion.

But of course, it’s not that simple. As I said, back on Level Two, when the viewer is trying to establish for him or herself the aesthetic value of the object in question, any number of other intermediary Levels can come into play. Meaning some people will recognize certain somethings as art more readily than others.

Ultimately, the whole process may still come down strictly to a matter of Taste.

A subject definitely worth a detailed discussion of its own. Next week.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Beginning this week! The he-man action adventure doesn’t let up, as original John H. Baillie character John T. Longhorn leads us into darkest Africa for the Jungle Adventure Episode. And no more mixing up Edgar Rice with William Burroughs costume-wise, this time.

Continuing Friday at:  http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY-FOUR:     PULP FICTION

“The Red Moon of Pango Pango”

EPISODE TWENTY-THREE:     STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Imp of the Reverse

EPISODE TWENTY-TWO:     FAIRY TALE

Princess NoName

EPISODE TWENTY-ONE:     THE WEDDING

Dearly, Beloved

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

interpreting art part one

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

You See Art

Is it Art, or did the plumber get lost in the gallery on his way to the Men’s Room?

A madman provocateur after my own heart, Frenchman Marcel Duchamp offered the above “artistic work” for display in 1917 to the Society of Independent Artists Exhibit, which was supposed to accept and show any piece submitted by any artist so long as they paid the exhibit fee. They rejected Marcel’s work, and did not display it. Even though he paid the fee. Said it wasn’t art.

Marcel called it "The Fountain".

Alfred Stieglitz photographed and displayed the original piece in his studio, and a picture was published in The Blind Man. Today, Marcel’s urinal is considered a major landmark in 20th Century art, and replicas commissioned from Duchamp in the 60s are on display in any number of different museums and galleries, including the Tate in London. The original, alas, has been lost.

Needless to say this entire event has confused and angered the hell out of people for almost a century now …

Let’s try and figure it out one more time, shall we?

This early part of my argument is not original. I lift heavily from Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, a very good book when you’re trying to discuss the very thought of thinking. The example has a mathematical basis, but that doesn’t mean we can’t extend it to wherever we want. Consider the central issue and the “artwork” representing it we’re exploring here.

Let’s play with hyphens and letters. Take a look at this possibly random pattern.

     -  -  ex  -  -  eq  -  -  -  -

Does that say anything to you at all? Some people would look at it and go: Oh! Two times two equals four. Right on.

But what about:

     -  -  ex  -  -  eq  -  -  -

People will be going that’s not right! Two times two doesn’t equal three!

In fact, there’s no reason to assign meaning to either line of symbols. I didn’t say anything about numbers. I just said let’s play with hyphens and letters.

However human brains have a tendency to assign isomorphic meaning to images they look at. That means looking for similarities in form and relations to ideas already in their minds. So when you see something that numbers two with something that feels like a multiplication sign with something else that numbers two and then something that starts the same as “equals” culminating in something that numbers four, it’s not hard to think you’re seeing 2 X 2 = 4. Even though the actual mathematical equation doesn’t look anything like what you’re literally seeing. Similarly, with the first idea in mind you can’t look at the second example without thinking 2 X 2 = 3. Which, quite frankly, is upsetting. That first representation was obviously right, and now I’m throwing something wrong at you.

Well, there you have visual art and our interpretation and reaction to it in a nutshell. Trust me, you can include poetry in that experience as well.

Hofstadter’s book is all about the combination of interpretations happening on different levels of perception. I’m giving you a quick look at three levels happening here with the hyphens and letters.

Level One:     just plain hyphens and letters.

     -  -  ex  -  -  eq  -  -  -  -

Level Two:     isomorphic interpretation

     2 X 2 = 4

Level Three:     value judgement

     2 X 2 = 4; that’s right!     2 X 2 = 3; that’s wrong!

So when we look at a piece of abstract visual art for the first time, we duplicate that same thought process. Let’s try it with another one of Marcel’s famous pieces, a painting this time, “Nude Descending a Staircase”.

Even though at first glance the painting may objectively look more like a frenetic haystack, isomorphically you can catch the sense of downward movement and the impression of legs and arms, which, thanks to the colour, you can assign the idea of “nude” to, and integrate the concept in your mind into something you can accept giving you the impression of an actual naked woman walking down a staircase.

So you might work through your levels of perception something like this:

Level One:     frenetic haystack

Level Two:     No, wait a sec … I’m getting movement here. Diagonally downwards. Arms and legs. Skin, maybe.

Level Three:     Okay, I’m getting it. Nude walking down a staircase. Right. The title makes sense.

Level Four:     I figured it out. Good for me. This is a good painting, because I can make sense out of what the artist is trying to do.

Level Five:     Now that I’ve stroked my ego with being so clever, I can look at it and decide whether I find the image in itself pleasing. Invoke the strictly aesthetic.

Personally, I like to look at that painting just for the way it looks, so it works for me aesthetically. Though I do find it nice to have the rest fall into place as well. But it’s even more exciting for me when X.J. Kennedy shoots it up another level and makes a poem out of it.

Nude Descending a Staircase

Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,

A gold of lemon, root and rind,

She sifts in sunlight down the stairs

With nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

A constant thresh of thigh on thigh—

Her lips imprint the swinging air

That parts to let her parts go by.

One woman waterfall, she wears

Her slow descent like a long cape

And pausing, on the final stair,

Collects her motions into shape.

X.J. Kennedy

I’m sold! So modern art can work in a very satisfying manner.

But what about that urinal?

Back to the process. On its most fundamental level, the observer takes in a physical object that may or may not directly represent something literal; isomorphically composes what he or she can make out in the image into some interpretation of meaning; then assigns value to that self-composition as either good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, likeable or unlikeable.

Three levels, at its most basic application. But you can add any number of levels to that.

So what do you do with an artist who decides, I’m gonna add a fourth level. And I’m gonna mess with ya!

How do you value an artist who decides the fundamental approach of his creation is to interfere with or completely break down the process you’ve been using to make sense of things? The whole point of what you’re doing is to look at something through a common human process of observation and decide whether the artist has created something beautiful or not? Well, here’s a urinal! Whaddaya think of that?

The ultimate point being since the object has been introduced into the process usually attributed to appreciating art, whatever is thrust into that particular mode of seeing therefore takes on artistic status in its presentation. Obviously you relate to a urinal perceptually differently depending upon whether you’re viewing it at the Tate Gallery or rushing into a Men’s Room.

Personally, I think doing it once and making you think about what’s being done, works as art. Doing it multiple times is just taking the door off the bathroom.

This approach while clever in one sense has obvious evaluative problems in another. Okay, I accept artists taking the process one level further and trying to short circuit the whole conception of aesthetic perception, which does expand one’s consciousness of how one looks and what one is looking at.

On the other hand, how do you tell when an artist has managed to achieve taking the process one level higher? Or has just failed to communicate any message at all?

Fortunately, these days, either the artist him or herself or someone from an art gallery is there to tell you, “This is art.”

But that’s an issue for next week.

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

Enmeshed in the cliffhanger wondrousness of Episode Twenty-Four, Pulp Fiction, our remaining Contestants fall victim to the Intruders’ Reality Reallocating Master Plan! Or do they? Illustrated with a plethora of covers from the original Weird Tales magazine, stop for an Odd Moments magazine production: “The Jeweled Shadow” by Bela Jhihloin.

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY-THREE:     STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Imp of the Reverse

EPISODE TWENTY-TWO:     FAIRY TALE

Princess NoName

EPISODE TWENTY-ONE:     THE WEDDING

Dearly, Beloved

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!

art installation

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

poem six ways: an art installation

Medium: Internet, alphabet, two poets, Art Gallery, dice

the poem

faces poet to poet

bergman scanning

roses stitched

laboured body

doubling hospital landscape

bleeding white drawing

rats gnawing every privacy

sickly violet grape juice blood

contrasting

absolute beauty of

every perfect rose

snipped and slaughtered

black catgut criminality

reflecting

we are not violent men

yet still

silently witness

reflection

face to poet

woman to man

what have you done

the meaning of the poem

The first two lines establish Ron’s and my position, duplicating the scene with the two women from Ingmar Bergman’s Face to Face. Instead of literally using the phrase “like face to face poets from a Bergman movie” I invert the terms for a more original effect. “bergman scanning” means Ron and I are looking beyond ourselves in that particular posture.

“roses stitched” — Ron is viewing the flowers representing the genital mutilation, while the next five lines describe the video I am watching by the Egyptian woman, wherein she lies with the upper part of her body and head across the screen, eyes shut, drawing on herself the floor plan of a military hospital. Later crudely drawn grotesque rats and other creatures appear, gnawing on her body causing a sickly purple coloured liquid to overflow the scene as if the screen is bleeding.

The crudely animated hospital video starkly contrasts the startling beauty of the large blossoms Ron is looking at, marked by the horrible black stitches and what they imply of the violation committed upon the girls’ bodies the flowers represent.

The next line, the single word “reflecting”, has a double meaning. Ron and I are reflecting upon the artworks we are viewing, and the experience portrayed in the pieces reflects back on us. Neither Ron nor I are men who commit violent atrocities against women, yet except in pieces like this we silently witness the atrocities that are committed throughout the world, brought to our attention by displays such as Off the Beaten Path.

This connects to the next three lines, “reflection / face to poet / woman to man” where “reflection” has a triple meaning. Ron and I are prompted to think of the issues, reflection; in the Bergmanesque sense we become witnesses with a single personality reflecting each other; and as we are men being delivered an aesthetic message created by women, one gender is reflected upon the other in Ron’s and my reflection/thinking. 

The women visual artists, the male poets, the entire human race we supposedly speak for are united in the final question that we have to ask of our supposed visually/poetically unified zeitgeist in the face of such atrocities: what have you done.

the letters of the poem, in alphabetical order

a a a a a  a a a a a  a a a a a  a a a a a  a a a a a  a

b b b b b  b b b b

c c c c c  c c c c c  c c c c c

d d d d d  d d d d d  d d

e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e e e e e  e

f f f f f  f

g g g g g  g g g g g  g g

h h h h h  h

i i i i i  i i i i i  i i i i i  i i i i i  i i i

j

k k

l l l l l  l l l l l  l l l l l  l l l l

m m m m m

n n n n n  n n n n n  n n n n n  n n n n n  n n n n n

o o o o o  o o o o o  o o o o o  o o o o o  o o o o

p p p p p  p p p p p

r r r r r  r r r r r  r r r r r  r r

s s s s s  s s s s s  s s s s s  s s s

t t t t t  t t t t t  t t t t t  t t t t t  t t t t t  t t t t t

u u u u u  u u u

v v v v v  v

w w w w w  w w

y y y y y  y y y y y

the story behind the poem

Ron Romanowski invited me to go to the Winnipeg Art Gallery with him, to see a new exhibit, Off the Beaten Path: Women, Violence and Art. He’d already seen the show, and had opinions regarding the most powerful pieces. I was struck by the impact of many of the works, and by the range of expressive techniques employed. Especially by the contrast between pieces that were startlingly graphic balanced against works that were ephemeral practically to the point of invisibility.

At one point, I found Ron and myself looking across each other at two different works hung on the same wall. We had unconsciously assumed the famous Bibi Andersson / Liv Ullman pose from Ingmar Bergman’s film, Face to Face, one face in profile to the other face full on. I was looking at a video by an Egyptian artist. Ron was looking at three large representations of single blossoms from beautiful flowers against black backgrounds, marred by heavy stitches running down the front of each flower, representing female genital mutilation.

Keystone moment: here’s a poem, I thought.

the idea!

Later at the Gallery Ron and I attended a screening of Ragnar Kjartansson’s The End—Rocky Mountains, an experimental five projection video showing Ragnar and cocreator David Thor Jonsson filmed playing a half hour long song in integrated videos broadcast simultaneously on five different screens, each scene shot against a different outdoor landscape in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Early on I thought I’d enjoy the experience more without the two guys in it, as I thought they were only doing something interesting in one of the videos. The one with the piano in the middle of the frozen lake and Ragnar disappearing as he walks towards the treeline beneath the distant mountains, which I thought I had mistakenly linked with Supertramp’s Even in the Quietest Moments album cover, although it turned out I was right, so I’m pleased to discover I didn’t sound like a know-it-all idiot getting his facts wrong after all as I had made the observation out loud overheard by people I didn’t know.

As I sat there in the semi-darkness increasingly thinking how pointless the two guys  in the videos were acting, I thought I should do something artistic with my poem. It obviously isn’t difficult. I’d have to write the poem first, of course. That was the least of my worries. Thinking more, I began reflecting on recently reading Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, and thought I might like to do something operating on both meta and deconstructed levels of meaning. I would present six levels, in a random order based on the roll of a game die. I worked out the details before the presentation was much older. Then I could call it art, and that would make it art. And I could joke about calling it art within the actual presentation writing (like here), making the piece self-referential and thereby even more profound/lame. It’s about feeling, not meaning. The awareness of the words themselves telling you outright what you draw from the pattern of the artistic components in an isomorphic manner by reading a component itself.

Creating a thoughtful forum for the reader on the most fundamental level of word and meaning, letters per se, qua letters and words, so the reader too can occupy this space and may ask “what may I create?” Or it’s all bloody self evident, I dunno, whatever.

This is art, because I say it’s art, and you comprehend it’s art because you’re reading words that say it is.

The videos ended, with the two guys walking away from the piano last. Then the videos  started again with the two guys walking towards the piano beginning first. I left. Ron was already waiting in the car.

the words of the poem, in alphabetical order

absolute  and  are

beauty  bergman  black  bleeding  blood  body

catgut  contrasting  criminality

done  doubling  drawing

every  every

face  faces

gnawing  grape

have  hospital

juice

laboured  landscape

man  men

not

of

perfect  poet  poet  poet  privacy

rats  reflecting  reflection  rose  roses

scanning  sickly  silently  slaughtered  snipped  still  stitched

to  to  to

violent  violet

we  what  white  witness  woman

yet  you

*******

REALITY FICTION UPDATE!

And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?

Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.

But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...

What’s happening now? 

The Top Ten Contestants of Reality Fiction Too have been announced! And the Intruders are plotting more intently than ever to eradicate that number completely. In honour of the Author’s birthday week, there’ll be a host of extra pictures as Episode Twenty-Four: Pulp Fiction is gloriously illustrated with a gallery of legendary covers from the legendary Weird Tales magazine. Definitely worth a look.

Continuing Friday at:  realficone.blogspot.ca

REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE

EPISODE TWENTY-THREE:     STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Imp of the Reverse

EPISODE TWENTY-TWO:     FAIRY TALE

Princess NoName

EPISODE TWENTY-ONE:     THE WEDDING

Dearly, Beloved

EPISODE TWENTY:     EXISTENTIALISM

Face the Hangman

EPISODE NINETEEN:     ABDUCTION

Abduction/Apperception

EPISODE EIGHTEEN:     MELODRAMA

“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”

EPISODE SEVENTEEN:     POETRY

“landescapes”

EPISODE SIXTEEN:     SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)

“Diet Ray of the Stars!”

EPISODE FIFTEEN:     EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE     

“The Shadow of Her Passion”

EPISODE FOURTEEN:     FLYING:

“Sky Calling”

EPISODE THIRTEEN:     SLAPSTICK:

“The Phantom of the Werewolf”

EPISODE TWELVE:     DAIRY FARMING:

“Early One Morning”

EPISODE ELEVEN:     BURROUGHS:

“Chapter Nine”

EPISODE TEN:     WEREWOLVES:

“The Silver Solution”

EPISODE NINE:     WRESTLING:

“Suckerslam XIV”

EPISODE EIGHT:     JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:

“The Proud and the Senseless”

EPISODE SEVEN:     THE JAZZ AGE:

“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”

EPISODE SIX:     SUBMISSION:

“Re-Org”

EPISODE FIVE:     MASQUERADE:

“The Eyes Behind the Mask”

EPISODE FOUR:     SELF HELP:

“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:

Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”

EPISODE THREE:     NUDIST:

“If You Have To Ask ...”

EPISODE TWO:     FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:

“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”

EPISODE ONE:     STEAMPUNK:

“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”

A J.H.B. Original!