Is not it, simply,- anything sensed by humans is communicated information.
Boris Shoshensky
---------- Original Message ----------
From: "Mike Mallory" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Cc: "William Conger" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: "There9s more alienation and separation of peoplein a
commodified
landscape ...
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:51:23 -0800
My response to the message below is embedded.
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Conger" <[email protected]>
As an artist I would never be interested in evoking a bundle
of associations
"communicated" by the artwork. First, I have no control of
what associations
one may have -- not even my own from moment to moment -- in
making or viewing my
artwork.
Mike: When I say that "artwork communicates an experience", I am using
"communicate" in a broad sense to indicate that the artist produces the
particular artifact with the anticipated experience of the viewer in mind:
shaping the artifact in ways that will shape the anticipated experience.
"Experience" may be ideational, affective or any in the range of human
experience. I cannot speak to your personal intentions, but it seems to
me
that artists generally have the anticipated experience of the viewer in
mind
when producing art.
To aim for or intend a certain bundle of
associations means that some
other associations are wrong because the
intention is to exclude some and
include others. Why? Despite misgivings
with E. Gombrich's linear art history
based on illusionism, I agree fully
with his statement that there are no wrong
reasons to like artworks.
Mike: I do not disagree with this. No communicator has "control" over
the
experience of the communicatee. At best, and because it is the best, I
believe that any analysis is of the communicatee's experience is
probabilistic. Whatever is communicated will only act as a stimulus to
trigger associative responses (which can include organizing principles).
Because the meaning of a communication is assembled from the associations
of
the communicatee: the meaning is outside the control of the communicator,
informed by, but not determined by the communication and is always unique.
Art is a way to bring a viewer's experience into focus around a particular
artifact. Everyone brings a different experience, so there is no correct
meaning to a work of art. I would argue that there is no ultimate meaning
to
any communication.
Also,
it strikes me as absurd that an inanimate
object, like an artwork,
communicates if we understand that communication is an
ongoing human act
involving more than one person (or an imaginary other or
surrogate person).
Mike: This is a perennial issue on the list-serve. All I can say is that
by
"artwork communicates an experience" I am referring to art as part of the
intersubjective transaction between an artist and viewer. An artifact may
be
inanimate, but so are the soundwaves forming phonemes. In both instances
they
constitute a mode, means or perhaps strategy of communication.
Of course, sunsets also trigger a host of associations and sunsets are not
communications. So, even in the case of your artwork where no
communication
is intended, people will still have an "experience" of it.
You have a traditional view
of communication theory that is fully and
analytically rejected by my new
hero, Roy Harris. Harris promotes a view that is
entirely consistent with the
way artists tend to think about artmaking and
content.
wc
Just call me "old fashioned!" I tend a bit towards the post-modern and
don't
get that moniker very often.
BTW, I looked up Harris' book on Amazon. I don't have plans to read it
(yet),
but the description doesn't sound totally ground-breaking.
Mike Mallory
Product Description
http://www.amazon.com/Signs-Language-Communication-Roy-Harris/dp/0415100895/r
ef=ntt_at_ep_dpt_6
Roy Harris proposes a new theory of communication. He begins with the
premise that the mental life of an individual should be conceived of as a
continuous attempt to integrate the present with the past and future. He
concludes by arguing that communication should be viewed as both a product
and a resource of this constant act of integration.
