[-empyre-] Process as paradigm : material, paradigm, media

[Antoine Schmitt]

Hi,

on the issue of 'material', I want to argue that indeed a process can  
be seen as an artistic material. I mean material not in the sense of  
hardware, but in the sense of what is manipulated by the artist while  
creating the artwork. I mean that I meant material in the english  
sense, not in the french sense.. ;) For example, in painting, the  
material is paint. In literature, the material is letters. In music,  
the material is notes, or directly an instrument (in the broad sense  
of something that creates sound = vibration of air). In dance, the  
material is movement of a human body. In these three latter examples,  
like with processes or programs, the boundaries between the idea in  
the mind of the author, the storage of the artwork (musical score,  
book, source code file), the performance of the artwork (by a  
computer, a piano interpret, a reader reading a book), the physical  
existence of the artwork (the muscles of the dancer moving, the air  
vibrating, the pixels moving, the servomotors turning, the networks  
electricity flowing), the reception of the artwork by the audience  
(the ears vibrating, the eyes being struck by light), the effect on  
the audience (the thoughts being triggered by the poetry, the music,  
the process, the idea, the context, etc....), these boundaries are  
rather fuzzy, and I think that the notion of physicality is not the  
most relevant nor the most problematic to discuss.

What I wanted to point out is that process is not only a paradigm, an  
analysis tool for the mind, but that it is also something that can be  
created, manipulated, fine tuned, using programs. A material for  
creation.

Another discussion (can of worms) would be to discus whether it is a  
media or not.

Personnaly, and in short, I think not...



Le 20 mai 10 à 22:18, baruch gottlieb a écrit :

> One more point I would like to raise, and it is more of a personal  
> one.  I don't think it is fair to describe processes as a material  
> for art. Materials are, for me, always something physical, so  
> processes themselves must become physical first for them to be a  
> material. In French they have the wonderful convergence in the word  
> 'materiel' which means both 'material' and 'hardware'
>
> Now I don't think anyone would argue that hardware is a material for  
> art, but the question is really whether (keeping to the  
> informational/instruction/programming paradigm) software is a  
> material for art.   My opinion is that software cannot be a  
> material.  It can generate a material but it is not, itself a  
> material, unless it is printed out or on a screen as code. I may be  
> completely off base here, but I think that software is like an idea  
> and ideas are not materials, until they actually appear in a  
> material form, at which point they can be appropriated for any  
> purpose.  So I would say rather than 'process is a material for  
> art', 'processes generate material art'.   Here we might get into  
> the old debate about whether code is literature or engineering or  
> something else..
>

++ as