https://vimeo.com/562285661
Driving alone on the modern conveyance of a highway might be considered the epitome of Smooth. It is a liminal, in-between state where, moving at a higher velocity than is possible without assistance, one is changing from one situation to another. Arriving at a new destination, one often hopes to achieve something not possible from whence they came. New possibilities, new encounters become possible. Yet for all the freedom of the road, it is actually a very controlled and regulated environment. The directional whims of the mythic traveler have been “dimensionalized” and put in order for use in largely uniform ways – that is, to maintain the vectorial character of these highways and byways. These lines of movement can be thought of as the opposite of abstraction, they are concrete delineations that define in space and over time the movement and character of societies and the people who live in and around them. In “A Thousand Plateaus”, Deleuze and Guattari say: “Striated space, on the contrary, is defined by the requirements of long-distance vision: constancy of orientation, invariance of distance through an interchange of inertial points of reference, interlinkage by immersion in an ambient milieu, constitution of a central perspective.” “A Smooth Striation” is not actually a pathway of any sort. It is a loop, or in topological terms, a knot – the simplest of non-trivial knots, a trefoil. And like the legend of Alexander’s solution to the Gordian knot, the trefoil might be used here as a symbol. “A Smooth Striation” is actually an alternate version of “Monument to the End of the Road” in which the artist lamented not only his onset of old age, but a lifetime of watching the slow collapse of the environment. Correspondingly, the trefoil iconography is often used in warning signs. Prospective perspectives make for better understanding and possible future oversight. As a holographic understanding belies the details, reckoning the boundaries we perceive allow us to at least appreciate the universe on our own terms. And so, with sculpture, a dromoscopic perspective is essential. As we move around an object/scene, we gain perspective, see more clearly what is before us. The two-point perspective of holography implying a third becomes all the more detailed as those points are expanded with the multiplicity of perception found in motion. Again, D&G: “ … a line that delimits nothing, that describes no contour, that no longer goes from one point to another but instead passes between points, that is always declining from the horizontal and the vertical and deviating from the diagonal, that is constantly changing direction, a mutant line of this kind that is without outside or inside, form or background, beginning or end and that is as alive as a continuous variation – such a line is truly an abstract line, and describes a smooth space.” -- - *Anthony Stephenson* *http://anthonystephenson.org/ <http://anthonystephenson.org/>*
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