What If Nothing Was Ever New

Roland Barthes: neither of us is in control of what we've written.

Today, I am gripped by the joy that nothing is new. Ecstatic waves of relief slam against my body as I sink into the sea of realization: Barthes et al. were right. Prior to reading mounds of critical theory with differing levels of interest, I had wandered in the naive way of an unscholarly "maker of things". I had some notion that I was creating artworks, writing ideas, and living my life in a fairly original way. What a terrifying burden that was to carry. I realize that so very many of the things I make or do have innumerable outside influences directing their creation. It is as if some unseen cultural puppet master guides any generative process with which I engage. It is impossible to avoid being a product of the various cultures and experiences that I have encountered throughout my life - all my art is a testament to this truth.

Perhaps every idea is, to some extent, a recycled idea.

I wish I was being sarcastic, in a romantic and modernist way, but I'm not. It is actually a great relief to realize that the zealous efforts I could briefly sustain to stay on what I thought was the surface of the ocean of ideas was in fact only bringing me to a pool of stagnant air in some cave. There is no "surface" so to speak. I don't have to be angry that I don't have some fantastic oeuvre to show for my brief bursts of energy. It may be more likely that there is some great gift to society in the non-making. I am not contributing to material consumption in this space. I am not adding to your ever-growing collection of tchotchkies. Perhaps, though, I am adding to your idea of ideas. Of course, the beauty in this is I am by no means a trailblazer on this path. There is a mountain of digital musings about the loss of/lack of ever having been original ideas. It's really quite liberating, once you start swimming in it.

Hiroshi Sugimoto knows where I swim.

Marcel Duchamp and Invented Pseudo Algebra

I have been perplexed with the limitations I still encounter with preparing a document of research that can wholly represent my research and learning that I have encountered in my current degree. I have changed my thesis topic at least once each semester. The topics are all related, but they all have their own beauty and difficulties. I am continually fascinated with the interplay of words. I want to change how they are interpreted by placing them in opposition to each other. In equations, even.
I think about Marcel Duchamp frequently while I get frustrated with my lack of progress. He was often criticized for his lack of visible products. Despite this criticism, it has been said by many that Marcel Duchamp was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He was born in France in 1887 and became an American citizen in 1955. He lived a rich 81 years. Marcel Duchamp described himself as,"an artist, chess player, cheese dealer, breather, fenêtrier."

Numerous books and articles attempt to interpret Duchamp's artwork and philosophy, but in interviews and his writing, Duchamp only added to the mystery. The interpretations interested him as creations of their own, and as reflections of the interpreter.
A playful man, Duchamp prodded thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much with words, but with actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks as he quickly moved through the avant-garde rhythms of his time.

John Cage said of Marcel Duchamp,"The check. The string he dropped. The Mona Lisa. The musical notes taken out of a hat. The glass. The toy shotgun painting. The things he found. Therefore, everything seen–every object, that is, plus the process of looking at it–is a Duchamp.

He simply found that object, gave it his name. What then did he do? He found that object, gave it his name. Identification. What then shall we do? Shall we call it by his name or by its name? It's not a question of names.

One way to write music: study Duchamp.

Say it's not a Duchamp. Turn it over and it is.

—from ‘Statements Re Duchamp,' see Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, ed. Joseph Masheck, 1975, pp.67-68

Duchamp, whose art career had been built on painting, painted very little after 1912. During this decade Duchamp began working as a librarian in the Bibliotèque Sainte-Geneviève where he earned a living wage and withdrew from painting circles into scholarly realms. He studied math and physics – areas where exciting new discoveries were taking place. The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality," Poincaré wrote in 1902.

Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), one at a time from a height of 1 meter, he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto a prepared canvases. They landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. Then he cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece resembles concepts described in Poincaré's School of the Thread, a book on classical mechanics.

The power to name, to tag yourself. Call it what you want to call it.
I was also recently enamored with reading an aesthetics textbook that created analogies in a somewhat algebraic fashion to illustrate several aesthetic philosophies. I was so intrigued by the analogies that I wanted to create diagrams. Here are a few.