artcodex reblog

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The post on the Rhizome 2007-2008 commissions as XYZ Art (reblogged here, thanks cpb) elicited the following response:

Don’t see how XYZ relates solely to these types of new media projects. Painting, sculpture, photography, many mediums use a trial-error process similar to science. For instance one commonly develops a style or signature process (the algorithm), often paying big gradschool dollars for it, then alters X strokes or colors, looks at the Z surface, changes X some, then goes for the super awesome Z for the finish.
- ssr

And my reply:

That’s funny, but we’re not talking about a trial-error process. It’s more like one application: a single transformation of something into something that “helps others.”

The art world equivalent would be a conceptual art work, something like Meg Cranston’s Who’s Who by Size, University of California Sample, 1994, where different fabric-covered sculptural stacks (Z) represent the number of inches of shelf space (X) that a subject (Edgar Allen Poe, Elvis Presley, etc) has in a college library. The algorithm or (Y) is assigning a fabric to the subject (Anna Pavlova in ballet slipper satin, etc) and making the stacks. The work has a point, and one point only, to show intuitively that “size matters” in assessing one’s historical reputation. (I got this example and some of the description from the book Deep Storage, ed. by Ingrid Schaffner and Matthias Winzen.)

Grad schools turning out cookie cutter painting is rather a different issue.

Originally by tom moody from Tom Moody on June 18, 2007, 2:59am