Talking with Andrew about his robot that translates his junk mail into semaphore made me think of the rich history of artists projects that deal with robots and autonomous agents. Jean Tinguely with his drawing machines ("Meta-Matics") is certainly one of my favorites. His self-destructing sculptural homage to New York might read a little differently today but his creative impulses and objects are definitely worth being reminded of. This impulse to create a machine that take care of the art for you has other advocates and practitioners such as Harold Cohen's AARON which he initially programed to mirror his drawing methods – then it changed his drawing style. Institute for Applied Autonomy has a different idea of drawing. David Bowen gets flies to make his drawings. Norman White is also a critical person in the artistic use of robots —with his Telephonic Arm Wrestling and the Helpless Robot he humorously engages many of the social implications of extending ourselves though technological means.

Dieter Roth came up is discussion with Bryson. His work is certainly far ranging enough to be of interest amongst others in the group. A favorite, for me, is his book 246 little cloud which is a little booklet that shows all the mark-up notations and even the tape for the camera-ready layout. He insists that the ruff production shows all it's messy makings. We have 246 little clouds in the AAA Library in Eugene, it is not for check out as it is in with the artists books.

MoMa show Roth Time has a nice website – though is fairly slickly designed very un-roth.

computational modernism

In class on monday Nina showed some of her computational work that visualizes data but also another body of work that was an attempt to mimic how rust grows. It is remarkable how some of this work is reminiscent of field painting – I am thinking Mark Rothco or Helen Frankenthaler. Perhaps it is simply the of the formal concerns modernism mirrored in the procedural nature of programing based visualization mixed with the emphasis on process – that in the case of code is manifest explicitly in it being time-based. 

In terms of the meaningful mapping of data by artists some of the best is not computer based – I would recommend looking at Nicolas Rule's horse genealogy or any of Mark Lombardi's drawings for example.

first post

o.k. i have never particularly wanted to blog – frankly i have to look at computers screens enough. but after class this monday it occurred to me that it would be useful to use a blog as a way to follow up on ideas from class such as artists mentioned or issues that warrant more information. It seems a useful way for fleeting mentions to but of greater use to students and for the whole class to be able follow other student's leads. of course that all bfa students are required to keep a blog there is some sense in my doing so as well. so this blog might not be of interest beyond the group of bfa students that I am working with this year.