gh comments below: On Jan 4, 2010, at 9:01 AM, John Haber wrote:
> Want a moral or two to make sense of this? One is that in the past it > was plausible to set a strategy to avoid complicity. You could set > yourself apart from commerce, or you could embrace it as a storyline My collaborative group Artists Meeting has a piece called Artists Meeting Art Machine. It's an automatic art machine that's made for art fairs. You purchase a token, put it in a slot and the machine randomly selects an art work either a drawing or a small object. The piece is actually a transactional art work that deals with the public and is specifically made to critic the market within the marketplace. We recently exhibited this at the Pulse Art Fair in Miami and hope to travel it to other places. Here's the url if anyone is curious. -- http://artistsmeeting.org This work does function just as John says. It also has some other "implicit" meanings. The aesthetics of choice are taken away from the purchaser. It's amazing how people have been geared to walk into a gallery and snap into an aesthetic choice mode. They equate the art experience with shopping. You know, do I like this? does this appeal to me? Does this reinforce my viewpoint of the world and my social position etc.. The Artists Meeting group mans the booth and explains to people who ask what the machine is that it's a DIY hack. They also explain that although choice is taken away the element of surprise is given to the purchaser. It's an attempt to give the creative surprise and discovery that an artists finds naturally when making an artwork. The piece is actually not about the objects it dispenses but about the whole situation. _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
