Touching Vision 2.023 E-Book

Hiltrud Schinzel

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 433

Beschreibung

The book's aim is to show how art can enrich a person's life. 22 essays starting from the themes of restoration and fine arts are arranged chronologically, with the focus slowly shifting towards generality, from disciplinary demarcation to inter- and transdisciplinary openness, as dictated by the spirit of the times. The visual updating of the author's cover design from 2004 points to "updates" both unintentional and intentional, but always inevitable, firmly rooted in the human desire to outwit the transience of time. Thus, the content of an essay may be critical, some essays creep into the poetic, some into the caricatural, nothing has the claim to permanence of an abstract truth, and everything serves to deepen the pleasure of art.

Leseprobe

Touching Vision cover design 2003

Touching Vision cover design 2.023

Table of Contents

Introduction

Contemporary art and conservation theory 2004-6

Illumination by the screen IIAS 2005

Quality and Quantity – Concepts in the Visual Arts IIAS 2006

Contemporary Art, its Conservation and Neo-Liberal Structures IIAS 2007

Geriatric problems of western culture IIAS 2007

Lived Experience or Second-hand Culture? IIAS 2008

Tacit Knowing – Tacit Communicating IIAS 2010

,Info-Virus’ art and restoration: Some reflections 2012

Does the riddle exist? Drawings by S. Dan Paich IIAS 2012

Contemporary Art’s Influence on Concepts of Originality and Authenticity in Restoration-conservation 2013

The Boundaries of Ethics – Art without Boundaries 2013

The narrow escape of phantasy IIAS 2013

How conservation helps art being understood Tutu 2014

Too much is not enough IIAS 2014

Ways of Aesthetically Integrating Conservation Theory 2015

On conservation science’s topical issue to help art...2015

King Kong is too small IIAS 2015

Respect and Care - Wishes that don’t want to die IIAS 2016

Look back in Joy IIAS 2019

Why Paradise Has to Be Art 2020

Heroes 2020/2021 2021

Creativity versus Build, Destruct, Re-build IIAS 2022

Notes

Introduction:

In 2003, the compendium of essays Touching Vision, essays on restoration theory and the perception of art, VUB Press 2004, was composed. The booklet was aimed at conservators, artists, museum and exhibition staff, scientists, collectors, and anyone who appreciates art. Conservation issues as well as perceptual phenomena were described, with an emphasis on how art can enrich a person's life.

Now, two decades later, several essays have again accumulated, jostling to appear. The focus has moved somewhat in the direction of common usage, that is, from discipline-specific to opening to the inter- and transdisciplinary, just as the zeitgeist dictates. A main aim is to improve relationship between disciplines in the arts and the sciences.

Art and science, who in their beginnings were neither separated nor competitors, from the 16th century onwards shifted into different directions, which from an intentional and sometimes also ethical point of view nowadays seem to be antagonistic:

Even the greatest moral objections could not stop the desire of the scientist to proceed with scientific research. Nothing can check to examine the world and turn what is found out into practical use, which is documented today in highly developed technology.

On the other hand, art could never be prevented from registering, commenting, and criticizing culturally given facts. This includes reactions to cultural follies, aberrations, and paradoxes. The voice of art could never be stopped, not even by violence, to repeat human concerns and values in an endless "ceterum censeo".

The essays show structures and problems deriving out of these givens, hoping that they may show science its own counterfeit in art’s mirror and give contemporary science to think about some of its "dangerous” tasks.

The final essays, written since 2020 under “pandemic rules”, provide conclusions regarding human qualities and are thus both transdisciplinary and transcultural. They are intended to provide food for thought as well as hope for a human society that must change its attitudes in the face of climate change and other unpredictable developments.

This unfolding of content consequently is evident in the writing style: Some content is critically shaped, some essays creep into the poetic, some of them worm their way out into the caricatural, nothing has the claim to permanence of an abstract truth, and everything is meant to deepen the joy of art.

Again, this book is dedicated to all helpers. Here I am glad to mention IIAS colleagues too numerous to line up, who since 1998 by transdisciplinary exchange stimulated trans-professional thinking. All artists and institutions that generously gave printing permission are thanked here heartily. I also must underline thank to my translators Lance Anderson and Aisha Prigann as well as those readers of Touching Vision 2004, who are my grandchild generation. Their comments on the essays were not only very illuminating, but they also gave me energy and courage. All these interchanges were and are an unexpected joy, unforeseeable happy experiences. Equal pleasure provided the helpers that made me stumble and reflect, disguised as music, image, dance, word and book, separate as well as in the topical all-in-one format of multimedia. Thus, despite all problems and multifold challenges, this book may show that contemporary art (of living) stays an exciting gift of nature.

Hiltrud Schinzel 2023

To show what can be expected and facilitate choice, abstracts and keywords are functioning as introduction at the beginning of most of the essays. The same quotes can be found in different contexts. They were associated differently, related to the particular time frame when they had influence on me. The ring binder format was chosen in the hope of offering the reader a few recipes for both work and life, as with a cookbook. Whether after that is cooked or could be cooked, is another chapter.

Some texts published only in German are not included in this volume. Translators are named at the end of the respective essay.

Contemporary art and conservation theory 2004-6

Abstract

I The present situation

Examples:

1. Mass-media-art and reproducibility: Mass-media technology makes the updating of ever-changing techniques necessary. Generally, content and meaning of mass-media-artworks last longer than their material. Restorers should preserve both historical material and content, therefore the restorer’s and mass-media-artist’s concept of authenticity differ.

2. Ephemeral art: performances etc. have to be archived. Critical analyses of different documentation methods necessary for general use must be given.

II Status of conservation today

III Updating conservation theory

Examples:

1. Reflecting concepts of time: The relation of material and content, which both partly stay permanent, partly undergo changes on their way through history, becomes topical during conservation treatments. Due to self-critical reflections in the humanities and by artists many scientists have lost the belief that historical facts can be grasped objectively.

2. Updating the dual system aesthetics – history

3. The digital dilemma: Virtually designed images might be an aid if differences of sensual perception between virtual images and factual works are respected.

4. Reviewing vocabulary: Contrasting ,materialized realities’ to ,virtual realities’ will provide a critical view in how far the traditional meaning of terms can be applied to contemporary art.

IV Conclusion

I. The present situation

Conservation’s technical and theoretical problems with contemporary art demonstrate that we lack an up-to-date conservation theory covering theoretical problems and answering practical questions. These problems are complex, as contemporary art trends are very diverse and the contents of some seem to contradict those of others or even themselves.

The complexity of contemporary art can be shown by the fact that:

1. anything can be art (unlimited expansion of art material started with ready-mades like bottle dryer (201 3) and fountain by Duchamp, first exhibited in New York in 1917)

2. different arts like music, literature and the visual arts mix (starting with the Fluxus-movement in the 60ties and having been amply spread up till now – recent example the work of Laurie Anderson)

3. deconstructive self-reflection is taking place in the visual arts, i.e. art and philosophy, sociology etc. mix (critics of institutions like the museum – e.g. Marcel Broodthaers and the gallery – e.g. Michael Asher; critics of society – e.g. Josef Beuys etc.)

4. new media adapt compositional and other characteristics typical for traditional art (staged photography – e.g. Cindy Sherman, conceptual photography – e.g. Gilbert & George, etc.)

5. traditional media adapt compositional and other elements invented and/or made possible by new media (f.i. the influences of all new media on painting).

6. Quotations from different artists in different media mix (e.g. student’s works at ,Rundgang’ 2004, Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts). Copying, a long-standing habit, is spreading in all media, the ,reviews’ usually showing less skill than the works being imitated.

Apart from the material problems which are the consequence of these constellations, this complex mixing, mangling and consequently dissolving of categories makes is impossible to distinguish high quality art from epigones and kitsch.

We have to admit that contemporary art gives an up to date, sometimes not very flattering, view of reality including restoration. The ever-growing complexity of our world does not spare this profession and therefore the analysis of contemporary art will probably help us to illuminate the sources of those problems and contribute to their solving.

Examples:

1. Massmedia-art and reproducibility

A. The given factsA lot of contemporary artists want to address a mass public. This is done by using mass media instrumentation, like for instance the technologies of advertisement and information and communication media. Most of those relatively new media are attached to photography like its moving picture 'relatives’ film, TV or video. In all mass media art traditional craftsman’s skill is not present, it is substituted, respectively replaced by the medium’s technology. All have problems of short material duration due to material or technological instability (an example is video) and/or speedy development (an example is digital technology). This is generally linked with easy reproducibility. All have in common an ever-growing technical complexity.

An example is photography, photography is a technical ,gesture’ to produce aesthetic phenomena, based on science. It is true, insofar as it is science, good inasmuch as the camera functions well and beautiful, insofar media that distribute photos, permit the photos to model the experiences of the spectators.’1

After its invention photography was regarded as a documentary medium, able to free art from replicating tasks. Portraiture for instance was and still is for the most part taken over by photography. Yet soon photography was also used as a medium by artists and even now there are still arguments against their products being ,real art’2. Today photography has been split up according to certain criteria in e.g. documentary, political and artistic photography.

In the last decades photographic technique has speedily developed. Photos now can be digitalized. The consequence of this fact is that not only photos of real objects can easily be worked on after having been taken, but also photos of non-existent things can be constructed by assembling different, even contrasting, elements. As regards the question whether photography is art or not, in this technology creative experimenting is easier than on analogous photographs. The constructed photo is not based on one photographic negative depicting factual reality; therefore the documentary value of a traditional photo does not exist. Under these aspects the digital medium has more affinity with traditional artistic media and concepts. The conservation problem is easy reproducibility and manipulation, e.g., by using the web, which makes it difficult to define any digitally designed image as authentic.

In contrast to this, ,documentary photography’ bears the character of a document and, in this sense, is used as an artistic medium too. Well-known examples are the photos of industrial monuments by Bernd and Hilla Becher. They consist of series of black and white photos of equal size. All objects photographed resemble one another and are taken from a nearly identical point of view and under similar conditions of light3. The concept of this art seems to be that of an archivist, the photos are presented in a methodically sorted out way, which means they are hung according to form, function and the time the monuments were built. Yet the installation environment is that of an artwork. This kind of art-photography cannot easily be distinguished from photographic material with a solely documentary aim and function. According to Martina Dobbe4 the Bechers started to approach with their photographic concept domains like industrial archaeology, history of architecture and sociology, but had more success in the context of art exhibition.

These two kinds of artistic photography are paradigms of the wide range of artistic intentions concerning new media. In video art, film etc. we notice the same complexity. Generally, one may remark that, the more a technical medium invites to manipulate, the easier it can be understood as an artistic medium in the traditional sense, yet at the same time it also is just right for advertising.

In the case of technical media beauty, according to Flusser, has not the same meaning as for traditional art. It has to be evaluated according to the medium’s concept and in how far it wants to influence the spectator5. It has to be examined whether this general statement on technical media is (equally or just partly) correct for their artistic use, respectively if and how far their artistic use differs from that of traditional art. Interesting in this context is a statement of the Italian video-artist Fabrizio Plessi, who combines natural materials like wood and stone with video: ,The medium is one thing, the message another6’. In my opinion this is true. The artistic use of new media is not different from that of traditional ones. For the artist the medium was and is a vehicle for expression, notwithstanding that new technical media tempt us to overestimate their importance, because of their overwhelming presence and different use in advertisement and communication.

B Consequences for conservation

Often the aim of an artist is to profit from new technologies as much as possible. Some also may intend to apostrophize the short liveness of our time. Consequently, in both cases artists do not care that their works will be short-lived. Because of their continuous updating, contemporary technologies are in temporary limited supply. Therefore, even substituting the whole work is often not regarded as problematic by artists.

Still from an historical, that means a conservation point of view, these technically produced artworks are of the same cultural importance as works with traditional, more stable technologies. Furthermore, the artistic contents and meanings of such works usually are far less short living than their media, materials, and technology7.

Consequently, art museums collecting and exhibiting such artworks have to face new problems. From an exhibitory point of view technique must be updated very often, from an historical, collecting and storing point of view ideally neither material nor technique should be changed8.

Installation of such artworks for exhibition according to the artist’s concept is more dependent on thorough documentation than traditional art. But the storage of the ,authentic thought’ behind medium, material and technology needs a lot of documentary support as well. The problems reproducibility contains always lead back to the question, how originality and authenticity9, last but not least the artist’s copyright, can be defined and their (usually first) temporal context can be preserved.

2. So-called Ephemeral Art

A. The given facts

Many art products like installations or performances have no material permanence. The short-term process, event or exhibition is the one and only issue. Here too the aim in most cases is communication, addressing an audience as large as possible, including people not used to conventional art surroundings. Therefore, such art often takes place in other locations than the traditional museum and/or gallery. On the one hand short-term art is antagonistic to traditional conservation/restoration aims, on the other hand problems connected with such artistic intentions cannot be solved with traditional conservation methods.

An important movement in this context is ,Fluxus’ – the term was introduced in 1961 – insofar, as it on the one hand refers to modern avantgarde movements like futurism and the readymade, and on the other ,intermedia’ are integrated like visual poetry, poetic images, musical actions and happenings. Prominent representatives are Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Robert Fillou, Ben Vautier etc. Pointing the way for subsequent art movements was their borderline existence not only between music, literature and the visual arts but also between art, science and philosophy. Yet not all Fluxus works were already intended to be ephemeral.

Important as stimulus for reflection in conservation/restoration are performances – so-called participation art – where the viewer’s acting is necessary for the development of the artwork, respectively the artistic idea. They are in a way close to restoration which (re)animates an artwork too. Here again Duchamp is a forerunner by inventing his ,ready-made malheureux’, where the blowing wind is an active participant, ,censuring’ a book. There are numerous followers, yet the counterpart in most times is the viewer of an exhibition or the passer-by in the street. Often the artistic aim is critique of society (Hans Haacke and others), much criticism is apostrophizing the urban context (e.g., Andreas Siekmanns Park Fictions, a project in which artists, inhabitants and institutions of St. Pauli in Hamburg worked together for a couple of years). This kind of art may raise the conservator’s consciousness of him/herself being a contemporary co-operator of artistic endeavours. His/her activity influences not only the artwork itself, but also its perception and, in consequence, the meaning of art in today’s society.

One topical kind of ephemeral art may be seen in so-called ,net-art’. To ,research the computer from inwards and reflect the web’ (Dirk Paesmans, net.art artist)10 is one aim, another is interaction with other web users and intercultural communication. Continuous integrating and adapting web material of various participants contradicts any ,conservative’ thought of authenticity and permanence.

Still this kind of use of new media directed at peaceful understanding fits perfectly, even paradigmatically into artistic aims, in fact not only those of the visual arts. Their creative anonymity goes well together with the fact, that materially ,provable’ sensation is missing in the digital media. Because of this lack they are more distanced.

It might well be that such constellations with an alternative mind-matter concept will become characteristic more and more in a future development of civilization, made conscious by the arts11. Therefore, restorers have to take notice of and reflect on such borderline cases with a view to conservation’s theoretical basics.

B Consequences for conservation

The conservation treatment of this kind of art does not include the problem of reproducibility, but even ,worse’, that of the mere existence of the work. It may be questioned whether these works fall under the conservator’s responsibility at all, because here much traditional responsibility of art museums and conservators is neither existent nor asked for.

On the other hand, documentation is getting much more important and often from a historical point of view has to replace the matter of the original. The documentary substitutes’ of the artwork, the historical archival material, needs care for its survival too. Here information is lacking whether and how far conservation is responsible for such fragmentary, that means only documentary, relicts of artworks. Commonly accepted methods, how to treat them from an historical as well as an ethical point of view, have yet to be developed. Critical analyses of different documentation media are lacking too.

Yet art too has been attracted by archival work already for a long time. Consequently, in contemporary terminology this kind of art is called ,Archive’ and has to be conserved. Prominent examples are André Breton’s ,mur de l’atelier’, 1922 – 1966, the collection of the artist containing 200 objects (e.g., artworks, natural objects, found pieces and objects of ethnic and magic art mounted on the wall behind the desk of the artist); Duchamps Boîte-en-valise (1935-41), a miniature museum in the form of a suitcase; Marcel Broodthaers Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, Section XIXe Siècle (1972); the ,Spurensicherung’ work of Christian Boltanski and recently also works by artists using the net like George LeGrady etc.

As can be easily seen from these examples, numerous different kinds of analysis and (self)reflection in the arts may lead to confusion concerning the term art and what it implies. Flusser again, paradigmatical for many others, asks, ,whether everything has to be regarded as digital appearance... We are no longer subjects of an objective given world, but projections of alternative worlds. We have grown up. We know that we dream.... We no longer make a difference between truth and appearance, between science and art’12.

These statements have to be viewed critically from a restoration perspective, that emphasizes the materiality of the item, a point of view which in the opinion of Flusser is outdated, because both virtual and material realities can be reduced to smallest entities. The consequence of it all is documented in his statement ,art is better than truth’13, which of course is a tempting thought, but - is it true? And are these terms comparable at all? Perhaps documentation of our culture seems to be so urgent for many because they assume the loss of its factual background. Another cause is the data-hunting of contemporary information society.

II. Status of conservation today

As traditional methods often cannot be used and terms linked to conservation/restoration no longer bear their original meaning, uneasiness concerning ethical conservation treatment of contemporary art is spreading and spilling over into traditional conservation concerns. For international communication and collaboration apt technique is available, yet data exchange has but limited practical consequences due to the fact that we lack exact definitions of decisive terms and their adaptation to up to date conditions and problems. Facing the digital subject-object confusion already mentioned, this is no wonder.

Today a lot of historical research is done in conservation in order to collect data of the development of its topics like materials, technologies, scientific research and also historical data of time-bound ideals of conservation14. This corresponds to the importance given to documentation by artists as well as to the amount of documentation necessary and visible in conservation treatment of contemporary art.

Such data are the basis of an academic subject. Their collection is typical for such a subject in an early state of scientific self-awareness and self-consciousness. It is not chance but coincidence, due to the ruling Zeitgeist, that art itself is very occupied too with scientific topics today. Still the approaches of art to various scientific topics or technologies are selective, subjective and adapt scientific methods not properly or not at all, whereas conservation must try to act as distanced as possible and has to use various scientific methods very accurately at least in research.

In my opinion conservation today has reached a development, ready to mutate into and be appreciated as a very complex synthetic science, which is dependent on research and results of numerous other sciences. It is leaving its historical cocoon in which the restorer was regarded as craftsman and/or artist, notwithstanding that technical skill and empathy for art and culture are preconditions for conservation practice. An optimal outcome of these changes is vital for the profession’s future, last but not least in view of the globalization of education. Necessary for an academic professional basis will be research on up-to-date professional theory.

III. Updating conservation theory

Apart from the texts of Cesare Brandi, not yet available in all languages, who do not touch on the problems of contemporary art and whose theories cannot be adapted to them as far as I know, we lack a systematic collection of data related to basic reflections15 and an international exchange as well as cooperation on such conservation concerns.

The problems with contemporary art as described above could build a framework insofar as they directly lead to and even caricature problems, which cannot be solved without general theoretical, ethical and philosophical considerations preceding conservation practice.

Examples:

1. Reflecting concepts of time in conservation

This topic concerns the relation of material and content in an artwork, i.e. the mind and matter problem. Both partly keep stable, partly undergo changes in time. The constant as well as the changing material and textual components of the artwork come to the fore and are made conscious by artwork’s adaption to the contemporary viewer during conservation treatments. Conservation resembles the actual summing up of the artwork’s material state as well as of its contents at the moment of restoration implementation. In this context the conserved artwork may be defined as a collage of materialized historical time16.

While ,summarizing’ the restorer is forced to select, which remnants of time he/she chooses to conserve and to what degree this should be done. For this selection he/she needs the help of the scientist and the historian. This selection and its skillful carrying out is still or again regarded as an artist’s job by some restorers, because it may seem – and also be – very subjective. This assumption may be the result of the fact that there is a trend in contemporary art to tackle scientific problems too. Yet in conservation an unbalanced selection is not artistic but just arbitrary. Better than to return to an historically outdated arbitrariness would be to keep to some commonly acceptable guidelines.

2. Updating the dual system aesthetics – history

Since Cesare Brandi’s research started dominating conservation theory, an historical or aesthetic view of the object is apostrophized dialectically and the question, which one has priority17 has remained a subject for discussion. Still such controversies could be balanced, and guidelines updated by reflecting how traditional conservation rules could be adapted to problems of contemporary art. On the one hand Brandi’s concept of aesthetics18 is difficult to apply to many modern works, like performances, concept art and works like Ready-mades, where material authenticity is no longer given due to the fact, that they are manufactured by others. On the other hand, even science has lost the belief that historical facts and concepts can be grasped objectively, due to self-critical reflections in the humanities and by artists. ,ln science the concept of truth is in a crisis19’. Especially artworks which self-critically reflect terms like ,aesthetics’ and ,history’ could widen our consciousness for basics for a topical restoration theory.

Institutions accompanying art, which are the principal working place and/or customer of the restorer, are critically reflected by artists from the 80ties of the 20th century on in a sociological and historical manner20. Beginnings are works criticizing the museum. Here the criticism is an analysis of the place’s function and has its roots in works of modernist’s avantgarde like the ready-mades and other Dada productions etc. Studying this criticism could help to understand new conservation tasks concerning contemporary art.

Brandis theories and methods are based on literature and its research. This is documented by the fact that his vocabulary stems from philology21. The best-known and most quoted example is his comparison of an artwork with the fragmentary ,text’ of a document, whose ,legibility’ should be regained by restoration. Insofar missing parts are regarded primarily formally, namely as an interruption of the meaning of an interpretable design22. Consequently, art which is not narrative, like abstract art, its concrete followers etc. is excluded from his contemplations.

Interesting in this context is, that retouching concepts following Brandi’s theories in my opinion are not only influenced from impressionist but also abstract painting. ,Astrazione chromatica’s23 abstract form giving for instance in my opinion resembles the abstract work of the contemporary Italian painter Piero Dorazio24, a fact, which shows, that even if the restorer very stringently follows a theory, he/she cannot escape the influences of current art.

Brandis methodical and scientific reference to another category of art, namely art expressed in words and writings, has already been criticised. It is a problem of art historical research, that the necessary usage of language tempts the humanities to underestimate and consequently neglect those factors of the artwork, that cannot or only with difficulty be explored and defined by language. Cooperation with scientists in the last decades have led to broader research on materials and technology and a rising consciousness of their importance for the artwork. Yet the network of interaction between technology, content and perception of an artwork still lacks that fundamental consideration and treatment, which is necessary for the development of restoration theory, - methods and - practice adequate for our time. Furthermore, contemporary culture is more guided by and oriented on pictures than was the case in the middle of the 20th century25. This trend towards picture and image has not reached its climax yet, last but not least, because digitalization is still spreading its grip on the world.

3. The digital dilemma

A: Change of place. The second-hand enjoyment of art

The concept of time in conservation, defining the treated artwork as a collage of materialized historical time, can be useful as long as reproducibility is not such a big problem as it seems to be now. A vital fact in this context is that digital technologies seem to make materialization in a traditional sense superfluous. The artwork has not to be visited in a museum or in some other real location. It can be called on the screen at home at will. The image is travelling to the viewer and not vice versa.

Traditional art reproduction has a long history. Early examples are replicas of Greek masterpieces. Printing techniques made the problem of reproduction of art conscious. It could be solved by authorizing printers and numbering copies. This kind of procedure was transferred to other artistic media – an example for objects is for instance the multiple. This method also is used with modern photographic media. In these cases, we can distinguish between more or less authentic replicas and reproduced copies.

Digital techniques – just like photography – can provide both replicas and reproductions. Furthermore, with digital techniques an artwork’s image can be transported to any wished-for place if apt technology is at hand. Materialization like a print is no longer necessary from an information point of view. From a sensual and consequently emotional point of view digital techniques provide a – in my view – very special appearance, because of the fact that the images are constructed by pixels. To simplify the complex matter in the following I shall speak of the illuminated computer screen only, although a large variety of ,hardware’ exists.

B: Perception of screen images

The computer screen can have the same qualities as the television screen, e.g., when moving pictures, not moving pictures, and all varieties of combinations of texts and images are provided,26. The factual as well as illusionistic space produced by the applied techniques, building up the images, sets them apart from pictorial space and from all other more or less ,flat’ surfaces of traditional artworks. A screen in a way is more apt to produce illusions than other media, because its surface lacks tactile elements. On the surface of a traditional artwork the eye can linger on its relief and explore the landscape of the surface. This variety is not provided by the screen’s homogenous and lighted surface.

Because the screen hides electronic vibration of smallest pixels, for sensual perception the computer screen is similar to works of Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein and a retouching technique applying dots. One might say that the concept of reproducing printing techniques, covering a surface with dots, entered the producing medium, the computer itself. Because of the hidden electronic movement there exist links to film and video as well. This movement is accompanied and supported by the lighting of the screen.

Space on the computer screen is dependent on the resolution of the image by pixels, but also on the illuminated screen, which roughly spoken may be related to a very regularly and thickly sprayed matt varnish on a flat painting, the homogenous transparent layer and the glass of the screen being the comparable characteristics. The surface of the screen contains no ductile element like the brushstroke on a painting and no surface structure like the paper of a print. Furthermore, the computer screen is lighted and insofar resembles a television or any other screen, which consists of a flat, in all parts equally thick, glass lighted from inside its hardware box.

Lighting is an important commonly aesthetic as well as specifically illusionistic element in an artwork’s appearance. It usually is directed from outside on an art-object. Exceptions are for instance slides, neon- and fluorescent lights and tubes, film and video. In these cases, the surroundings usually are dark or darkened to accentuate the inner lightening. In digital computer hardware light comes from behind the screen and from outside altogether. By this kind of inner and outer lighting the screen’s surface contours are not perceivable, they are hidden. The distance between the screen, its images and the viewer seem no longer to be measurable visually, even if the screen is not far away from a person e.g., working with a laptop. Real distance somehow dissolves in the double light.

The lighting effect of the screen is linked with another aesthetic quality, differing from that of traditional artworks, namely its tactility27. The touching is not intended to explore tactile qualities of the screen’s surface, it includes no perception of sculptural space. One can presume behind it hidden, abstruse realities in a miniature world of chips, bits and bytes. Of course, such hidden treasures awake the artist’s gold-digger curiosity.

Added to such qualities of a screen is its potential to adapt and integrate any other kind of the historically developed illusionism of other media e.g., all kinds of perspective developed in painting. All reduce the possibility of a realistic and stable visual and perceptual relationship between screened image and viewer28.

C Use in conservation

Digital images’s help in conservation is generally still limited to documentation. Any medium of documentation should be as neutral as possible. Already from this point of view digital help in storage of data and in-between states of conservation work in progress seem to be problematic. It lacks some traditional qualities of documents like tangibility, while new ones, typical for the medium, are still unstable due to technical progress.

Nevertheless, it will become common usage more and more, as such quickly developing technologies in many ways are useful and also fascinating for artists. Consequently, digital techniques will spread and probably soon guide the visual perception of our time due to the fact that most people spend some time each day in front of a screen either at work and/or for entertainment. Therefore, it may not be excluded from our thoughts. On the contrary it has to be critically reflected and analysed from phenomenological and conservation points of view.

The aesthetic, i.e., sensual and emotional perception of the artwork is an important element for our notion of originality. To regain a work’s most authentic aesthetic experience, has to be kept in mind in conservation. Apart from documentation, digital technology already begins to be used to simulate imagined past states of a work. Furthermore, it can simulate different possible models of e.g. integration for virtual comparison, and insofar help restoration practice to decide which one would be the best for factual (including zero) treatment of the art-object29. Here one has to be critical of and detached from this aid too, as far as concerns the ability of such images to correspond to the perception of the material as such from a sensual and from an aesthetic point of view. Such differences are usually recognized and respected by artists as documented in their choice of media. Conservators have to recognize and respect such differences in their facilitating measures and equipment to document and treat artworks too.

4. Reviewing vocabulary

It certainly will be illuminating to further contrast 'materialized realities’ from a conservation point of view to ,virtual’ and other realities, which can be provided by modern technologies. In this context it has to be considered critically in how far the traditional meanings of terms like originality and authenticity can be applied to contemporary art. Analysis of the differences between the term ,original’30 and its ,relatives’ like replica, copy, multiple, serial art, fake31, forgery, pastiche, substitute, fragment, ruin etc. will be necessary to clear up matters.

It is not possible to go deeper into such complex terminological problems here. The above reflections are meant to be examples to initiate analyses, which can be based on well-known scientific experience, related to the conservation profession.

IV. Conclusion

The problems popping up in conservation of temporary art are linked to the development of artistic technologies. They reiterate problems in the general development of technique and its sociological consequences. Technique is helpful and dangerous at the same time, due to its ambivalent characteristics – as a useful tool it may simultaneously pose unexpected problems. These problems as a rule are not recognized and/or do not come to the fore immediately. This is relevant for the arts as well: severe problems in painting techniques are already apparent in works of the followers of van Dyck due to their experimenting. This fact is analogous already to technological experiments and the speedy development of technologies at the beginning of the industrial revolution. This speed has reached an unfortunate climax in the last decades due to the fact that technology advances faster than the human brain and mind: it outstripped man.

On the one side the result is a complexity in all areas that led to specialisation in any field of life and/or profession, which can no longer be overlooked. On the other new technical tools make work easier, seemingly so easy that the layman is tempted to do much that in former times was left to the specialist. Examples are the job of the secretary and the photographer, as well as self-advertising by printing or designing one’s website with the help of computer technology, etc. Of course, this concerns the artist’s profession too. Digital media enforce the impression that any subject can be approached by anyone and no teaching and/or expertise is needed. On the screen a lot of virtualities are possible that cannot be materialized. Yet this fact does not come to the fore as long as a concept does not have to be proved by realization. Still such proof often is not deemed necessary.

This discrepancy between a tremendous complexity and the trend to simplify makes it difficult to judge human competence too. For instance, without testing, it is impossible to judge whether a person is an expert in reality or in the virtuality of appearance. Then he/she may be just a dilettante or even a charlatan and/or a swindler. Of course, such facts lead to much mess and muddle. We tend to confuse material with its reproduction, mix up images with their appearance, mistake the virtual for reality. This goes for objects as well as for human beings. An example of the latter may be the somewhat new profession of management. Seemingly everything has to be guided by external counsellors today, yet one never can know in advance whether such advise leads to success or failure. The simple fact of being given responsibility (often just based on individual contacts and lobbyism) seems to raise a person’s prestige and payment, i.e., his advertised virtual appearance, irrespective of his/her factual capacity and expertise for the job.

The fact that in many professions one can no longer always distinguish the expert from the charlatan seems to be present in contemporary art too. These difficulties started with the invention of the ready-made, the baptism of industrial utensils as art by signing it, i.e., the neglect of manual skill as decisive characteristic of artistic quality. The more an artwork is dependent on technique – ranging from ready-made to digital technology – the less artistic quality is transparent or can be analysed. A person can be regarded as artist today just by claiming to be one. A paradigmatic, involuntary humorous, example of the resulting confusion can be found in some utterings of the glamorous Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury, who exhibits ready-mades of contemporary glossy equipment like designer shopping bags and their content. Fleury admitted in an interview in German Vogue 10/2003 ,Anything can be styled in order to become an art-object. My constant question is: where is the borderline? For, sometimes, I have to take a toothbrush into my hand to do nothing else than to brush my teeth with.’

First published in shortened versions: as poster at Sustaining European Cultural Heritage: From Research to Policy, University College London 2004 and ICOM Committee for Conservation Working Group “Theory and History of Conservation-Restoration” Newsletter 12, 2006

Illumination by the screen 2005Some Aesthetic Qualities of a Medium

Abstract:

The author analyses the computer screen from an aesthetic point of view. To facilitate this task, the screen is compared to a traditional painting and analogous aesthetic items, comparable ones and incompatibilities are named. Four new qualities belonging exclusively to the new medium are described and new artforms, coming into being by the artistic use of it are named. The facilities and possibilities the computer provides for developing understanding between science and art are indicated. The new artform Net art is described as a paradigmatic example for friendly aims shared by both, science, and the arts, namely communication and mutual information.

Keywords: aesthetics, painting, screen, computer, multimedia, communication

In the following I will bring into focus an object which is useful for the arts as well as the sciences. It is the computer. For the sciences it is a tool. In the visual arts it functions as a medium. Yet technology as a whole and digital ones especially advance so fast and spread so widely in all areas of life, that technical devices have reached the point of developing their own autonomy and gain influence as such.

The computer is not only used by the sciences and the arts, but one can say by almost everyone. It is a means of communication that in a very short time has graduated indispensability in contemporary communication and information society. Therefore, it might be of some interest to look at it from a point of view that differs from our usual utilitarian relationship with it. In the following I shall regard the computer screen from an exclusively aesthetic point of view, leaving out any technical considerations.

For analysis, description and defining characteristics it is always useful to compare something relatively new and insofar vague or mysterious to something well-known and as such more comprehensible. Therefore, similarities as well as dissimilarities of the two entities painting and screen will be sketched out. In this context screen means any flat image including projections. In the following I shall describe analogous items, comparable and incomparable ones.

The screen, analogue or digital, in a way is related to a painting insofar as it is flat and rectangular. One of the first writers of painting’s history, Gian Battista Alberti stated in his book De pittura in 1435: ,Painting is a window to the world’. This implies the visual world as well as a hidden world of semantics of iconography and iconology, or one might say something spiritual, that can be extracted from the visible forms and colours.

A painting can be a window to a world of truth, a world of fiction and to a world of illusions. This, in my view, is usually true for the screen as well. Both painting and computer screen are intended to be means of communication and information and may be a source of aesthetic delight. Significant and plainly visible relations between painting and screen are:

1) the rectangular shape

2) the flatness of the surface

3) the formal structurability, respectively, filling of the picture or the screen plane

Evident differences from an aesthetic i.e., phenomenological point of view are the following ones:

1) Making a painting presupposes not only phantasy but also a certain skill of its creator namely handicraft and visual competence. A planimetric surface has to be structured in order to express visually a content, which may be narrative, abstract or concrete and mystic respectively surreal. The painter has to have the capability to negotiate between a medium’s technology, e.g., the picture support, the underpaint, the tools of application like brushes, palette knives, the paint surfaces and glosses and the content(s) he/she chooses, whose visualization as an image is dependent on this technology. Only if an aesthetic equilibrium between self-determined artistic content and the chosen technique is reached, can we speak of high-quality art, of an aesthetic solution to an artistic problem.

The computer screen has been structured by technicians and is often built by machines. It is a technical medium, implying no traditional handicraft. The screen’s contents are partly bought, rarely engineered, with its hardware and software, partly installed and filled by its user according to his/her requirements. Aesthetic qualities for structuring the information on the screen may be attractive for the person using the screen as well as the person to be informed, but they are not a categorically implicit necessity and always dependent on fitting software.

2) The painting’s appearance is designed according to the wishes of its creator, still the intention to communicate and inform by means of aesthetics, i.e. a dialogue with the spectator, is always present in any work of art. One might say that the painting is a medium to create, make visible and transport individual and subjective data. The viewer has to approach the painting in order to get the information.

The computer on the other hand transports information to its user, a dialogue is not necessarily intended. The main aims are storing and transporting data (maybe even knowledge in some time to come) and communicating its users very quickly with whom or whatever information he/she wishes.

There is more freedom for exhibiting aesthetic individuality in painting and more chances for quantitative information and literal exchange with a computer.

3) In a painting the main task is and was to express time and space by means of a visual representation on a flat surface. An impression of time can be given by scattering different single pictures on the picture plane and following with the eye as was usual in early painting like Giotto’s Arena Chapel narratives. In this manner the importance of one scene in relation to others can be accentuated, e.g. by differing dimensions. The concept of time may be linear or scattered.

The computer screen can provide the same, but also the virtual perception of space in time similar to that encountered in a film or in passing through a landscape in nature or architecture. The aspects of time provided here are more complex: they may be linear, continuous, scattered and/or a mixture of all.

4) As regards space in a painting it must be expressed within the flat rectangular surface of the painting’s support. Many kinds of different perspectives have been developed by painters during the medium’s history.

The computer’s software can integrate visually all kinds of perspectives developed in painting, photography, and other media. In this way it provides a variety which is far wider than that of painting.

Technical media, compared with media based on handicraft, possess a relatively greater complexity. Therefore, we now must note some qualities of the screen image, which cannot be compared or linked to painting. They transgress this medium’s capacities.

1. The computer can integrate a large scale of characteristics and functions of scientific and artistic media. Examples for artistic media apart from painting are photography, print, language, music, design, architecture etc. What it cannot integrate is the tactile perception and real size of any tangible object except of course its own hardware.

A screen in a way is more apt to produce illusions than other media because its surface lacks tactile elements. These are not only lacking because it is homogenously flat, but because it should not be touched. The surface of a traditional artwork as a rule should not be touched either, but the eye can linger on its relief and explore the landscape of the surface. This variety is not provided by the screen’s homogenous and lighted glass.

Other art media, e.g. analogue photography’s material consists of flat layers too. Still, because of its visual appearance hiding electronic vibration of smallest pixels, for sensual perception the computer screen is, emphatically said, rather similar to op-art than to analogue photography. One might say that the concept of reproducing printing techniques entered the producing medium, the computer, itself by replace dots by pixels.

The surface of the screen has no variety of tactile components. Touching the screen is not intended to explore tactile qualities of its surface, it includes no perception of sculptural space. If there exists a touchscreen, the touching is meant and necessary to produce further images including information and/or functions like providing money with a bancomat.

The screen has connotations to the mirror in Alice in Wonderland: one can presume behind it hidden, abstruse realities in a miniature world of chips, bits, and bytes. Of course, such hidden treasures awake the artist’s gold-digger curiosity. A fetishist of reality on the other hand can imagine an aggressive queen of hearts behind the screen, crying furiously ,off with the heads’ at the view of anything touchable and real.

The screen can transport, integrate, and store all kinds of findings and methods of other media into its own visual virtuality, it is a medium of much complexity. From this point of view, it corresponds better to the complexity of our world than traditional art media being dependent on handicraft. An enormous quantity of combinations of characteristics and methods of traditional media can be connected to the medium’s own qualities, of which I can just give some examples:

The artist Nam June Paik used to combine natural material, traditional objects etc. with his moving images. Today the video tapes usually are digitalized because their lifespan is limited, a fact which is generally known in the use of consumer video recording. This fact poses technical problems, less such of perception 32. The technically contrasting visualisation of organic objects, artefacts, and virtual presentation, which is present here, may have consequences for our feeling and perception of their phenomenal qualities and the concept of real and simulated time. This is opposed to the relative permanence of a painting.

Very interesting are some video sculptures of Franziska Megert 33 called Playing with Fire. By combining the space of 3-dimensional hardware with that of virtual human bodies the artist introduces a new kind of feeling for and perception of sculptural as well as corporeal space.

2. Yet artists can also develop new art forms out of combinations with the aid of the computer.

Digital photography being dependent on digital technology presents a new concept of reality like Keith Cottingham’s, 1992 series Fictitious Portraits34. According to Vilém Flusser, well known philosopher of media and science, this new concept consists of bytes whose density defines their amount of realness. Identity dissolves 35 . In this technology creative experimenting is easier than in analogous photography. The constructed photo is not based on one photographic negative, depicting factual reality, therefore the documentary value of a traditional photo does not exist. Under these aspects the digital medium has more affinity with traditional artistic media and concepts. A problem of this kind of art is that it cannot be adapted to traditional concepts of originality. Easy reproducibility and easy manipulability provided by digital media, e.g. by using the web, makes it difficult to define any digitally designed image as authentic.

3. The medium on the other hand can have a very important function to save art, insofar as it can store and archive the documentation of ephemeral art products like performances and happenings.

Examples are documentation of an interactive performance by Valy Export, called Tapp- und Tastkino, (Tap and Touch-Cinema) from 196836.

Recently artists using the net37 are also occupied with archival themes. In this context the question is raised by archive artists themselves, whether the storage of an object is still necessary if it can be reproduced at will’38. This statement from an economical point of view may be very tempting, from a phenomenological one it seems to be paradoxical. The possibility to reproduce does not have the consequence of throwing away the real archive material! After all it seems to be ridiculous to put into archives, even digital ones, something that does not exist, respectively never existed.