Friday, May 04, 2007

not rauschenberg's

not robert rauschenberg's erasers

I've always found Rauschenberg's idea appealing. In an attempt to combine ideas from the last several posts (copycatting not-something-new red circles) here's a 10x enlargement of the upper left corner of the One Million Red Circles with number 1002 erased until the paper started to fail.

'(partially) erased ptomaine red circle number 1002'

2 comments:

allen bukoff said...

This is my new favorite post on Fluxlist blog. Here's why: It "sews" or weaves a number of elements together. The elements themselves are all interesting and worthy of attention, but how jn has sewn them together gives a larger pattern to the "quilt." The visual elements are
1. "not robert rauschenberg's erasers" box (which I covet),
2. '(partially) erased ptomaine red circle number 1002'
and the other elements or pieces are the posts that proceeded this one
3. mIEKAL aND's "Fight Fluxus Copycats" post,
4. ptomaine's "This is not something new," and
5. ptomaines's " One Million Red Circles, Twenty-five Orange Teepees & One Big Insight."
and the organizing themes or principles are
6. Rauschenberg's
"Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953),"
and
7. the "copycat" theme--directly or indirectly present in the three previous Fluxlist posts (#'s 3, 4 & 5, above) and in j newton's object and performance (#1 & 2, above).

There is an impressive amount of playing, "sewing" and fun going on here. I think there is an art to how these pieces are sewn together into a larger pattern. Using the analogy of a quilt: the various square of cloth that j newton has picked can be arranged in a variety of different ways/orders/patterns. It seems to me that he has rotated and and arranged these particular pieces of cloth so that some of the lines and elements in one piece of cloth line up and carry through in some of the lines and patterns in another piece of cloth...and the whole quilt creates a new, larger pleasing pattern, anew image that is not present in any of the pieces alone. In this case, the final quilt patch exists as a cognitive schema or map. And, at least for me, I like this sewing stuff and I think j-newton's example is a very cool example of it (a cynic might say that I like it because it uses some of my own work). I also like that it creates or gives more "meaning" to the individual elements. This is more than just "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." It's more like the whole increases the meaning of each of the parts.

I think the sewing of previous blog-post elements together in a new post and stirring in other elements goes on quite naturally (both intentionally and unintentionally) on a visually-oriented blog like this. I am thinking that this sort of format or practice deserves special care and recognition. It might benefit from calling it something ("sewing," "quilting," "_________"?)and by giving it some analysis, attention, and support. The danger with giving something like this a lot of "left brained" attention, however, is that it takes the fun, creative energy and bounce out of it (at least temporarily).

jn said...

t h a n k s