Art410-sp13: Assignment #1: Indeterminency (Chance)

SP 2013 – San Francisco State University, Art Department

Art 410 Conceptual Strategies

Day/Time: Tuesday (Creative Arts Computer Lab, Creative arts Building, Rm 265)

Thursday (Fine Arts Room 538)

9:10-11:50 am)

Units/Hrs: 3 units/3 hours per week

Instructor: Paula Levine

Office/Phone: Fine Arts Rm. 537/ 415-337-0753

Email: plevine@sfsu.edu

Office hours: T/Th 12:15-1:45, and by appointment

Assignment 1: Chance Operation Project Due: Feb. 21

Indeterminate, Not fixed in extent, character, etc…not limited to fixed values

"As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency." --John Cage

Collaborative Project working with a partner who is determined by chance

Homework: Due Feb. 7

- Post to your blogs 3 chance operation project ideas between you and your partner for Tuesday . The ideas can be your own individual ones, or thought of and developed in collaboration.

Background:

Art schools encourage people to develop their own personal aesthetics, skills, working processes and visual vocabularies. Often these goals are achieved by making step by step choices, such as one color over another, or one shape over another, in order to slowly build a set of skills and language that become familiar and "natural." This assignment explores another kind of approach to working -- that of indeterminacy.

One strong advocate of this system was John Cage who used the I Ching[1] to make decisions in his working process. Cage’s goal was to separate his working process from his own personal set of aesthetics using this system that was independent from his own personal aesthetic decisions.

Numbers inspired Cage. Numbers were the essence of chance composition, to which he devoted himself for four decades, from the early 1950's through the final number pieces. With endless inventiveness, Cage discovered repeatedly new ways to assign compositional parameters to numbers and then use the I Ching to generate the numbers, first by tireless coin tosses to determine hexagrams, later through a computer program that simulates the coin toss.

From Cage and Counting: The Number Pieces by Mark Swed

Although this system seems opposite to conventions of art making, it proves to be a useful exercise to increase awareness as to the extent to which our decisions rely on some invisible personal set of aesthetics or other forces that shape our ideas.

Task:

Make a piece of art that comes about as the result of a chance system you design. This could be as simple as tossing a coin, picking numbers or other written text or images out of a hat. You can work in any medium you wish - drawing, painting, watercolor, photography, performance, digital or analog.

The challenge is to design a system that leads to the creation of a piece of art without any input of your own personal choices that shape or influence your usual process of making decisions.

Suggestions:

a. Decide on what is fixed. For example, the number of colors, the size of a paper, the number of movements, the direction to walk, a time limit. You can make the system as simple or complex as you wish, however once you set up your system, don’t deviate from it.

Here's a few examples:

A. Paint by chance

->You decide you will make a painting on a 8x10 inch paper. Each side of the paper is named -- north, east, south or west. You will paint for 10 minutes.

- You chose four colors (red, blue, yellow, green).

- You determine you’ll work with two shapes (circle and a square)

B. Call a predetermine (choice or by chance) number of your friends and without really telling them what you are doing, ask then which they prefer:

--a circle or a square

- north, east, south or west

- red,blue,yellow,green.

Now, sit back, pour a cup of tea. The hard work of the Chance Artist is done.

Next, you can can sign it, post it to Ebay, Etsy or Craig's List with a price, and wait for the sale.

Another example:

B. Photography by chance (determine what is fixed and variable)

-> You decide you are going to photograph using an alarm system. You set an alarm (on your cell phone/pager or some other device) that goes off periodically through the day. Each time it goes off, you reset it without looking at when it will go off again. Each time the alarm goes off you take a picture of whatever is in front of you. -------------------->>>>>>>Art by chance (sign, post and wait for the cash to roll in)

For the assignment:

PART I – DESIGN AND CARRY OUT A CHANCE OPERATION

If your project is a collaboration:

§ Determine the idea and decide what is fixed and what is variable.

§ Write the structure and rules by which your chance operation should be carried out, in detail like a recipe.

§ Post it to your blogs

§ Each of you carry out your chance operation

§ Document your results separately, on each of your blogs, with images, video, sound (whatever suits it well)

§ Post the documentation to your sites.

If your projects are done individually:

• Complete your own chance operation, blog and post documentation as described above.

• Then exchange your chance operation for that of your partners.

• Now carry out your partner’s chance operation.

• Blog and post the documentation of the piece as well.

Extra credit for partners who swap chance projects.

PART III-PRESENT BOTH RESULTS IN CLASS

• Partners will present their projects together.

• If your project involved materials, like drawings or paintings, bring those in for viewing.

• Use your blogs to present both chance operations and documentation of the work generated.

For class discussion:

- Think about how this working process compares to the way you usually work?

- What was your experience of letting decisions be made by chance? What was it like to make art using someone else's instructions of what to do and how?

- Prepare to critique the work you've made? Does it have "aesthetic appeal"?

- Does it suggest other ideas or ways to work?

- Talk about your collaboration—strengths and challenges.

- What do you think about the works you both ended up with?

- What makes it ‘art’ or ‘non-art?’

LINKS:

Past works:

Anthology of chance operations

http://ubu.com/historical/young/index.html

includes pdf download

Fluxus links:

Background & history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus