Art / Not Art

<p>I've been thinking about this for a while and would be interested in how other people think about it.</p>

<p>Imagine a whirlwind -- a small one like a dust-devil that's often seen spinning around in deserts. How do you photograph that whirlwind? Two approaches: one like Harold Edgerton with strobes and stop-action shutter speeds gets every single grain of sand in perfect clarity. The other does long-exposure motion-streaks to show the overall form and track of the whirling wind. The first method risks showing us lots of sand and no wind (missing the whirlwind altogether). The second risks showing bodiless motion; lots of "how" and no "what."</p>

<p>It's my feeling (just an opinion) that "getting" the whirlwind is key to artistic photography. Scenes are "lumpy" whirlwinds. An artist's body of work, in totality, is a whirlwind (of which the work is the sand). Lives are very, very slow whirlwinds, etc. You don't need to agree with me ...</p>

<p>Finally, to the art / not art question: if you look at Harold Edgerton's iconic images, a gallery of which can be found <a href="http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/iconic"><strong>HERE</strong></a>, which do you feel might be art and which not? They are all amazing, but some, to me, are strongly scientific and not particularly artistic, while others are quite artistic -- and (because of that?) less scientific. For example:</p>

<p><a href="http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/museum/hee-nc-64003?nowrap"><strong>Bullet through a playing card</strong></a> strikes me as being an absolutely amazing, fascinating photo, but not art.<br>

<a href="http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/museum/hee-nc-64001?nowrap"><strong>Bullet through a banana</strong></a> is definitely not art (it's kind of wonderfully gross).<br>

<a href="http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/museum/hee-nc-73002?nowrap"><strong>Bullet through flame</strong></a>, however, is, to me, very artistic. It's ... mesmerizing. But does it lose scientific value in proportion?<br>

<a href="http://edgerton-digital-collections.org/galleries/museum/hee-nc-73006?nowrap"><strong>Bullet through a bubble filled with helium</strong></a> is, to me, also artistic. What do you think?</p>

<p>Does art / not art have to do with presence or absence of "story" or narrative -- usually/often via metaphor? Of being from somewhere and/or going somewhere? What's making the difference in the above referenced pictures?</p>

 

<p>I think a lot of good photos could be made by NOT photographing the whirlwind, either at a slow or a fast shutter speed. They would be made by being inspired by it, feeling something of it, and putting that into something else that was more of an analogy to the whirlwind. The artist might go home and, just as an example, photograph a dancer in a manner resembling a whirlwind, or something else completely. She or he might create a metaphor (as you suggest) for the whirlwind. Might even stand there right in the desert and NOT photograph it. Maybe photograph its effects. Or wait for the moment of calm after the storm. Not think literally about it and not show the "it" of it. Make it his or her Muse.</p>

<p>Of course, someone else might photograph it directly and unabashedly with either a fast or slow shutter speed and make that work, making it work in ways we can't yet know or predict.</p>

<p>Art/Not Art has to do with how we classify and categorize things. Such classification has an irony in that the distinction, especially a strict one, may be much more suited to the Philosopher, Curator, Historian, and Purchaser than to the Artist.</p>

<p>The banana is definitely the most surprising one :-) All 4 photos you linked to, strike me as being more scientific than art though. Which, ouch, raises a question whether I see art and science as being at odds. Which frankly fits quite well into the actual question but no answers....<br>

But I'm not going to burn my fingers at taken a stab at what makes art art and what not. Each time I try, I already find the examples with which you can invalidate whatever I was about to write. I'll spare myself the disgrace and you the annoyance.</p>

<p>Out of the series, the apple-meets-bullet remains to me the most famous and iconic one. I think it was my first encounter with ultra-high speed images, and it is still a visual feast to me. It is also still a photo of a bullet through an apple. It doesn't become more, and I such I do not feel it to be a great candidate to be labelled art. But I could be extremely wrong about it.</p>

<p>Now, opening the link of a the whole series suddenly made something else happen... Each individual image may seem mostly a scientific registration of "what happens when...", but the whole series together starts to tell me something else... all those split second moments, all those events we never actually register ourselves consciously, these outerworldly shapes and forms.... don't know. It's telling me something more. The oddities of time. The infinite amount of split seconds and images, tiny events that fit within larger events, shape them, change them. The whole series could be art. If presented right, as series.<br>

But given I really never ever managed to find something of a clue to what makes art art and what not, I could very well be completely wrong again.</p>

<p>Wouter wrote: "The whole series could be art." As a 'body of work' it can be art. I totally agree. Very good point.</p>

<p>You see, you're wrong when you say that I always say you're wrong. : - )</p>

<p>Right... wrong... huh? :-))</p>

<p>I think that Edgerton was primarily an engineer who was interested in showing the capabilities of his invention. The iconic photos of his that we see in books and art galleries both suggest the sort of scientific research in which the strobe could be used, and they inspire artists, but I usually don't see his popular work being either strongly scientific or artistic. Some of his photos of atomic bomb blasts, to my eye, have both a strong scientific purpose and a strong element of art. Certainly, the strobe has allowed us to see the normally unseeable, and like Muybridge and others before him, Edgerton has had some influence on artists and particularly photographers.</p>

<p>In telling the story about shooting apples with rifle bullets, I heard Edgerton say that with the strobe it was possible to make a photo of a bullet frozen in its flight, but it wouldn't really look different than if the bullet had been suspended by a string and photographed conventionally. He needed something to show that the bullet was moving quickly when it was photographed, and so he introduced things like fruit, light bulbs, and playing cards. This goes back to Julie's imagining how Edgerton would have photographed a dust devil. Yes, he may have used a strobe, but after seeing the sand suspended motionless, he may have decided to include something to show that the sand was in motion, something to show the effects of the wind.</p>

<p>Sometimes I think he sent bullets through things not so much for Science, but for fun. It was for producing an interesting, amazing image that average people would like. Making applesauce with a rifle bullet has some connection with Letterman tossing watermelons off a five-story building.</p>

<p>I have a book called <em>Moments of Vision</em> by Edgerton and Killian (1979) that has a section called "Strobe Photography and Art" (p. 10-13). It gives a bit of insight into Edgerton's motives, and it suggests that he preferred not to discuss the artistic values of his photos. I think it was in a PBS NOVA broadcast from 1985 that he was asked about making art, and he said, with somewhat of a shrug, that he wasn't after art, but sometimes art happens.</p>

<p>I'm not sure that the distinction of art vs. not art has to do with the presence or absence of a story or narrative. Lots of photos taken solely for scientific reasons have plenty of narrative, i.e., they have something to tell us about how the world works. And a lot of "art", as I see it, so totally lacks a story that it leaves me cold.</p>

 

<p>Mark, thank you for a very meaty and thought-provoking response (and, of course, thank you also to Wouter-who-is-always-wrong-even-when-he's right. In all seriousness, I often find that I learn more from the thought processes provoked by disagreement than otherwise. I hope this works for you, too.)</p>

<p>Current situation of my thoughts, as provoked by Mark and Wouter, stated in what I hope will maximize productive irritation in readers of this thread. Starting with the whirlwind:</p>

<p>1) We (with our eyes) never see the sand. We see "whirlwind."<br>

2) The camera never sees (records) the whirlwind. It sees (only) the sand.</p>

<p>Which one is "right" or "true"? Neither. Both. Whichever, depending on whether its for a scientific use (only that which can be measured is scientific) or social/cultural/historical (that which is "of" or participates in our on-going "us-ness").</p>

<p>Garry Winogrand was not (just) being cute when he said he photographed to see what things look like in a photograph. What's in the picture is never visible otherwise.</p>

<p>When you watch a whirlwind, what do you see? Words like "scary," "threatening," or "inviting," "mysterious," "wild," "aggressive," "temperamental," "nutty," ... these are "doing" words. These are engaged-with-me-or-you words. These are tentacles, tendrils, hooks, rootings, entanglements; they're continuous with me/you, they are in shared air. Seeing the whirlwind is an event, not a thing or record.</p>

<p>The scientific image/record ignores "you." It is not for or about or addressed to "you." Its gears don't "need" you (though, really, they do for interpretation, but we won't go there ... ).</p>

<p>Getting the whirlwind that we see (in the ways described above) requires 1) knowing what the camera won't record "on its own," and then knowing where/how/why its "vision" and ours intersect or can be made to intersect. Or, conversely, doing a Winogrand and finding something other than the whirlwind in what the camera gives us. But note that we get into regress here, because what we see in the photograph won't be what the photograph was "of" just as what the camera saw of the whirlwind wasn't what we saw ...</p>

<p>When Mark writes that Edgerton "needed something to show that the bullet was moving quickly when it was photographed," I think that betrays a (natural) inclination to the artistic. If he's uncomfortable with the cultural connotations of the "artistic" label, I can understand that (though I regret it).</p>

<p>I also don't see any conflict between art and fun. I wish photographers had a better or at least a more relaxed sense of themselves that would leave room for humor. Photography, as a young art, is sort of prickly about its self-image. "We are SERIOUS artists, dammit!" It gets old.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Julie,<br>

You have chosen a fascinating topic. Your statement "We (with our eyes) never see the sand. We see 'whirlwind'" has some truth, but I would take it further. I would say that each of us, with our senses and our experiences, "sees" a somewhat different whirlwind. Images that my brain conjures up have origins in not only the input from my eyes, but also from my ears and nose and my senses of touch and taste, and then my brain stirs and flavors it all with my past experiences. My whirlwind may be unique; everybody's whirlwind may be unique.</p>

<p>"The camera never sees (records) the whirlwind. It sees "only" the sand." I assume you mean that the camera's record never matches anyone's personal whirlwind, and I agree with that. It provides a starting point that needs to be tweaked and manipulated, through framing and perspective, exposure, development, printing, toning, etc. until it intersects, more or less, with the image in our brain. (And then I show someone my photograph of my whirlwind, and the interpretation starts all over again.)</p>

<p>There is such a flood of information flowing to our senses that it's impossible to process all of it. We end up picking and choosing, distilling, and abstracting in order not to go insane. It's all the permutations in the end products that make everyone's way of seeing a bit different (and it also makes me mistrust somewhat my senses), and the collection of photographs that could result, so endlessly entrancing.</p>

 

<p>Mark, you make many good points, but I think there are pre-conceptual (literal, if that's possible) factors that are even more basic than those you've described. I really did mean that "The camera never sees (records) the whirlwind. It sees "only" the sand." A still whirlwind is an oxymoron. A whirlwind *is* spin/whirl. Further, to me, visually, a whirlwind is its desire to spin, not just that it is spinning or has been spinning. A whirlwind is its powerful internal impulse/force.</p>

<p>Those underlying dynamics are what I think we naturally intuit not only in whirlwinds, but in crowds, or in individual faces, in gesture, etc. They're what we see first, before, if we make the effort, we may force ourselves to see the "sand" that is its material embodiment.</p>

<p>If you hear music, you hear it as a whole, as a body, not as a string of notes; it is something that "wants" to go, to do, to affect ... It is willful. A "snapshot" that extracts a random blip of sound out of music doesn't "get" the music.</p>

<p>So maybe art is a picture or thing that "wants"; something that has a will to spin, to twist, to cry, to laugh, to sulk, to attack ... (all via the ingenious machinations, via composition, of its makers; Dr. Frankensteins all).</p>

<p>I have a book, <em>Beyond Vision</em> by Jon Darius that shows one hundred historic scientific photographs. Shock waves, falling cats, electrons, waves, particles, the living heart, discovery of Pluto, viruses, DNA, the far side of the moon, invisible rainbows, genes at work, cloud chamber tracks, the discovery of charm, tons of cosmic awesomeness, etc. etc. And they are ... BORING. With the text, they are fantastic, but with a few exceptions, the pictures are dull as dirt.</p>

<p>One of those exceptions is one of the first thermographs which is of the head of a man who has an ominous red blob hovering over his left eye -- indicative of arterial blockage and risk of stroke (the man died not long after). It's a weird blotchy picture sort of halfway between a really bad snapshot and an x-ray, but the black smears on half of his face, what look like streams of red from his nose to chin, the red "blow" of danger over his eye, and an expression that looks like total despair make this picture work on me. All of which is baloney, from the camera's (and science's) point of view because the "red" is a false color, and all the affective blotching and facial expression are accidental products of the technology.</p>

<p>I have to mention that there's an awesome x-ray series of a chicken laying an egg. Scientists after my own heart wanted to know why the egg comes out fat-side-first. Does the egg canal squash the egg to be pointed at the trailing end (like, um, when one "pinches a loaf")? No! The egg actually forms pointy-side-in-front and then, not long before it is laid, it rotates in the canal to be blunt-end-leading. (And good lord that is one big item to be passing out of one's backside, never mind <em>flipping</em> it in the canal!)</p>

<p>Julie, slowly I am starting to understand what you are saying. There may be 'pre-conceptual' factors at work, and maybe your 'pre-conceptual' or 'underlying dynamics' are what I mean when I say 'experiences'. Or possibly you mean something very basic, something instinctual that doesn't depend on learning or experience.</p>

<p>We don't view a picture or hear music in a vacuum; we always bring our past with us. If it were possible to strip away all our experiences, would the resulting elemental human see or hear in the same way? Going further, is there something innate in all of us that, minus experiences, would cause us to see and hear in the same basic 'human' way?</p>

<p>Your analogy to music made me think that CDs are similar to cameras. The camera doesn't see the whirlwind; the CD doesn't hear the guitar riff. In music, as in photographs, people bring not only their ears and eyes, but also their preconceived notions that have been shaped by experiences.</p>

<p>The book <em>Beyond Vision</em> sounds interesting, and I'll look it up at our library. Of course, you and I would look at the photos in the book with different eyes (meaning through our different past experiences). You said that <em>with the text</em> the photos are fantastic. The text gave you the background or the context in which to see the prints, and it transformed them from dull as dirt to fantastic. A person who already has that context may immediately see the prints as fantastic. I know I don't "get" a lot of photos or art in general until they are explained to me - and then a transformation often occurs.</p>

<p>Years ago, I set out to see a quasar with my telescope. I read about them, obtained a list of quasars that would be visible in my scope, selected one, got a star chart for the surrounding area, and waited for a good night. It took me maybe half an hour to find it and confirm that it was indeed what I was looking for. It appeared as a very faint star, in a very sparse field of other very faint stars. If I had shown the view to anyone who did not know what it was, the verdict most likely would have been 'that's boring'. But from my perspective, this was oh-so-cool, because my brain understood what this object <em>was</em>. Two billion year old light was entering my eyeball. It's hard to describe the feelings that came with that.</p>

<p>I maintain that more than any kind of natural human instinct, it is each person's experiences that color their perception of things. I don't think we're born with much ability to appreciate art, rather it's an acquired thing.</p>

<p><strong>1) We (with our eyes) never see the sand. We see "whirlwind."</strong><br /><strong>2) The camera never sees (records) the whirlwind. It sees (only) the sand.</strong><strong> </strong><br>

<strong><br /></strong>Julie, whether one tries to analyze these two statements as a whole or on an individual basis, they are fascinating and powerful. As you are aware, there is a lot of philosophy that's been written about the nature of perception and, more broadly, the nature of consciousness. </p>

<p>One particular topic that bears on your first statement is the distinction between seeing and seeing as. Seeing a whirlwind rather than seeing a collection of moving grains of sand is not simply a perceptual exercise. It involves human consciousness interpreting the raw data provided through perception. And, for the sake of this discussion, the most significant difference between human consciousness and the camera is that the camera lacks intentionality; it is simply a tool.</p>

<p>By the way, what criteria are you bringing to bear in your OP when you describe certain photographs, but not others, as artistic? Do you consider the distinction between art and non-art as one of degree or of kind? And, when trying to conduct a thoughtful view of a photograph, does it really matter whether one considers it artistic?</p>

<p>Mark, I'm mulling over what you've written (though I totally get what you're saying about seeing a quasar. It must have been amazing!!)</p>

<p>Michael, I'm also thinking about what you've written (thanks!) but can say already, for me it's 'kind' and not 'degree.' It's like a mental phase change, going from looking at the same picture as scientifically informative and then switching to seeing/feeling it as a work of art. This from Roland Barthes's <em>A Lover's Discourse</em> may illustrate:</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Sometimes an idea occurs to me: I catch myself carefully scrutinizing the loved body ... . <em>To scrutinize</em> means to search: I am searching the other's body, as if I wanted to see what was inside it, as if the mechanical cause of my desire were in the adverse body (I am like those children who take a clock apart in order to find out what time is). This operation is conducted in a cold and astonished fashion; I am calm, attentive, as if I were confronted by a strange insect of which I am suddenly <em>no longer afraid</em>.</p>

<p>"Certain parts of the body are particularly appropriate to this <em>observation</em>: eyelashes, nails, roots of the hair, the incomplete objects. It is obvious that I am then in the process of fetishizing a corpse. As is proved by the fact that if the body I am scrutinizing happens to emerge from its inertia, if it begins <em>doing something</em>, my desire changes; if for instance I see the other thinking, my desire ceases to be perverse, it again becomes imaginary, I return to an Image, to a Whole: once again, I love."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>Do you see the phase change from looking at a corpse, to seeing/feeling the person?</p>

<p>Julie, I suspect I get what Barthe is saying and how that illustrates your point. Will need to think more, though. </p>

<p>Michael, for me it's a matter of degree . . . and I'd add that it's also a matter of the perspective we adopt, which is more like the overlapping part of a Venn diagram than a form of clearer distinction. I think things are often art and non-art simultaneously and things are simultaneously looked at as both. Perhaps Duchamp helped show that art is not an on-off switch. Sure, when the urinal is in a museum, we might think of it as art, and when it's not, we think of it in a more utilitarian way. But what I take away from Duchamp and others like him is always to carry my artistic appreciation with me and not to separate the world into art/not art. So, even when I'm using a urinal for its suggested purpose at the local movie theater, for example, I can also appreciate it as Duchamp did or as Weston eyed his <em>Excusado</em>. Now, this is what <em>I</em> take away. I imagine others will have learned other lessons. It's kind of like asking whether I turn off my photographic eye when I don't have my camera or even if I can separate my photographic eye from my more pedestrian eye. I can't. It is often right through the pedestrian that significance is found and my photos are seen and made. The little picture is part of the bigger picture, and <em>vice versa</em>. It's a matter, to me, of levels of balance and imbalance, not clear-cut distinctions. Which is not to say we can't make distinctions for the sake of discussion and understanding. By all means, we can and do. But, for me, in practical application, art and non-art are simply in a process of ebb and flow.</p>

Julie. Is this art or science? Is awe from science or art? Do you walk in the woods to see it's trees or feel it's spirit?

Are the heavens from Hubble or from God?

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr2010013a/

<p>Julie, I think this is the problem/question of what is art. Some people see whirlwinds everywhere, some never see them. Like Fred says, sometimes it goes back and forth for some people, like me (and Fred apparently). But why? Perhaps because the human brain is so complex, and has not only built in templates for certain things related to survival, but it has memories, thoughts, dreams, fantasies, etc. That's why we can see whirlwinds and not just sand. Edgerton's photos do have a theme, and conceptual theme, which in modern art terms seems to be a requirement. So its art. Like it or not!</p>

<p>Steve wrote: "Some people see whirlwinds everywhere, some never see them."</p>

<p>I think that everybody sees whirlwinds everywhere all the time. What they rarely see is the sand. But their camera *only* sees the sand. If they think the camera "sees what they see," this presents an obvious problem ...</p>

<p>Mark, I'm somewhere between "something innate in all of us" and "not only their ears and eyes, but also their preconceived notions." There is a kinesthetic capacity to grasp the <em>whole</em> song, the <em>whole</em> whirlwind, the <em>whole</em> crowd, the <em>whole</em> living person/body before you (or the landscape or crash of thunder). To feel its continuity with yourself.</p>

<p>Michael, I've tried to sort out "what criteria" makes something art, for me. The best I can do is the word "near." Art, in an object, print, or image, is somehow "near" to me. It's in my space; it changes my space. It's like if you're sitting alone in your home and suddenly there's a knocking at your door. That sudden feeling that somebody is near, that some presence is right there transforms the place, the air ... everything. Or, if you're expecting somebody and there is *not* a knocking at the door. That tension of space where somebody is *not* (think of Sugimoto's flat seas and empty movie screens); of, finally when somebody is expected and you hear their knock -- the least astonishing but the most welcome change in the fullness/coloration of space.</p>

<p>Alan, easy question! Both! All of the above, all at once! : )</p>

<p>Think of that Neanderthal man making the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Doln%C3%AD_V%C4%9Bstonice">Venus of Dolni Vestonice</a> (29,000 - 25,000 BCE). <em>Scritch, scritch, scritch</em> ... look at it. WOMAN? No! (makes breasts bigger, ass wider, head smaller ... )WOMAN? No! (makes breasts bigger, ass wider, head smaller ... ) ...</p>

<p>Edgerton had something "in mind" when he made his pictures else why or how did he know which were "right"? Which "felt" right? What makes him say, "No, that's not it ... " and try again. For what?</p>

<p>[Putting on my Devil's advocate hat] <em>Question for Julie: if art is an image with a "will," a picture that "wants" that has an attitude, then commercial photography must be the ultimate art! After all, what "wants" more than an ad for a new car? </em></p>

<p>[Dodging and evading] Some commercial photography probably would be (is) art if it could be seen (maybe in future generations) as not selling a product. Or, how about the old philosophical dodge: will/want/attitude in an image is necessary but not sufficient to be art?</p>

<p>Or, (oh, I like this one!): commercial art is the pheromone; art is the lady moth. <em>Does that mean that art is a hot MacDonald's burger or a brand new Lexus (since that's what the pheromone is leading to ... )?</em> No! Good heavens, the car/burger ad pheromones point to the mysteries of a perfect life and chariots of the gods. It's only when you find yourself chewing a wad of ground up cow meat or driving away in a Ford Taurus that you suspect that you've been slightly mislead ...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Julie: I've reread and reflected upon the quote from Barthes. I don't see a difference in kind in his transition from experiencing an adverse body to experiencing a loved body. I see this as a process, with the key element being an act of consciousness, i.e., experience. Without the experience, it would make no sense to refer to a loved body or an adverse one; the reference would be simply to a body.</p>

<p>Now, how this applies to your distinction between art and non-art, I haven't the foggiest. I am fascinated, though, by your treatment of art in terms of nearness. This enables us to consider art in terms of its impact on human experience, regardless of how we may pigeonhole that experience. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Julie:</p>

<p>One more point . . . Barthes speaks of returning to an image. This concerns objects in the world as experienced by human consciousness, i.e., process.</p>

<p>Michael, I'm sorry you don't understand the correspondence between Barthes's "scrutiny" and his "love." The idea that there might be degrees of difference between a corpse and a living person is not plausible to me, but I wonder if this is a gender difference, (given that the vast majority of pornography is for a male audience; can you also think of your children or your mother in degrees from corpse to person?). Nevertheless, it would be impossible to prove whether or not anybody is capable of seeing a body as 50% corpse and 50% living person <em>at once</em> rather than duck/rabbit (one <em>or</em> the other; phase change) which is how I see such things. In any case, I do accept that your perception is apparently not in common with mine.</p>

<p>Michael wrote: "Barthes speaks of returning to an image. This concerns objects in the world as experienced by human consciousness, i.e., process." You're volunteering to explain process philosophy to the readers of this forum? Because this is not a private conversation (I do know what Image can mean in philosophy).</p>

 

<hr />

<p>Back to Art / Not Art:</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"I perceive suddenly a speck of corruption. This speck is a tiny one: a gesture, a word, an object, a garment, something unexpected which appears (which dawns) from a region I had never even suspected, and suddenly attaches the loved object to a <em>commonplace</em> world. Could the other be vulgar, whose elegance and originality I had so religiously hymned? Here is a gesture by which is revealed a being of another race. I am <em>flabbergasted</em>: I hear a counter-rhythm: something like a syncope in the lovely phrase of the loved being, the noise of a rip in the smooth envelope of the Image." — Roland Barthes, <em>A Lover's Discourse</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>LOL. Poor Roland. That "rip" is my "knocking at the door" as described in a previous post. What's terrible for Barthes, complacent and content in his infatuation, is when art happens. That sudden astonished realization that I'm experiencing not a rearrangement of what I already knew, but something new, more, something additional-to, that is nevertheless viscerally "right."</p>

<p>The difference, for me, in a deliciously illustrative scientific image which gives me a light-bulb moment, and an artistic one is that the former, the scientific one, is 'anywhere' -- it's neither far nor near to my tactile experience. Art, on the other hand, breaths. For me.</p>

<p>Actually, all I see is sand, not whirlwinds or Hubble or god. In the right hands, the camera sees, art sees, what I don't see in my humdrum day to day existence. Oh! The agony! ;)</p>

<p>Julie:</p>

<p>I see no real indication of my alleged misunderstanding. "it again <strong>becomes</strong> imaginary, I return to an Image, to a Whole: once again, I love." Moreover, I claim no expertise whatsoever in process philosophy; I simply referred to human experience as <strong>a process</strong>.<br>

<br>

Degrees of difference: Obviously, there is a difference in kind between a corpse and a living person. I don't see how you could interpret my comments as stating otherwise. I was saying or at least alluding that there is a difference in degree between how Barthes experienced an "adverse" body and his experience of a "loved" body. "Adverse" and "loved" are experiential terms. They are not purely referential.</p>

<p>Michael, an alternative to Barthe's distinction regarding the corpse.</p>

<p>I had the painful but also awe-inspiring experience of being in the room with my mom, father, and brother when my mom died. Long before she got sick, I noticed her aging. (Should I say I noticed her body aging? I wouldn't think to say that.) I noticed changes in personality as she aged as well. Then she got sick. Big change. Then she lost her grip on life, slowly but surely, losing much of the personality I had come to know, losing her ability to eat, to focus, and then not very conscious for the last 24 hours, though there were one or two moments of connection.</p>

<p>I'm not into souls, but I certainly knew my mother through her personality and via our emotional connection, not to mention our obvious biological bond. I'm also a visual person, so part of my mother was her smile, and when she lost her ability to smile, she was there in the shape of her mouth. I knew her by her splitting nails, which she had trouble with all her life, by her fourth finger which wore her wedding band every day of her life. I knew her by the color of her hair she worked so hard to get out of a bottle.</p>

<p>So the body, and the physical, are important to me. I followed her, MY MOM, even as the funeral guys carried her out of the hospice she'd been in. I was still caring for her.</p>

<p>Who was lying in Mom's bed after the moment of death? Mom. I'm not sure I ever felt more love for her than in those few moments of being with her in peace after a tough illness. Of course that was still her. If it were just a rotting carcass, I might have tossed it to the dogs. Few people would have that sort of instinct. And that's precisely because, though the last breath certainly makes a difference, in some respects it does not. She actually seemed more herself in death than she did the last few tortured days of her life.</p>

<p>Back to the issue of IS vs. IS NOT. There is good reason to see life and death as a difference in kind, especially if you're a doctor charged with pronouncing deaths . . . or preventing them. There are also perspectives from which that distinction makes little sense and just doesn't work the same way. It would be nice if the world could be divided up into black and white, art and non-art, things you're supposed to love one way because they're alive and a different way because they're dead. But there's too much gray area for the IS / IS NOT distinction to be of any real value in a lot of situations.</p>

<p>Way, way back before Barthes was a gleam in his mother's eye, Hume wrote about ships. A ship known as the same ship through the course of its life may undergo quite some alterations. What if all the planks, over the years, have been changed because of rot? What if the sails ripped and all had to be replaced? Every part of that ship might not be original and yet we say it was that ship which fought the famous battle in the infamous war. SAME / DIFFERENT. Word play?</p>

<p><em>"On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow."</em></p>

<p>Did Heraclitus mean the river changes because different waters are always flowing through its banks? Is he saying we cannot encounter the same river twice, as has often been assumed? What if he's saying the nature of some things is to change, that some things stay the same only by changing? If the waters of a river were not flowing and changing, it would not be a river.</p>

<p>I'm inclined to use Heraclitus's and Hume's thinking as a means of approaching what's going on with art. For Heraclitus, the question of the nature and sameness of the river turns itself on its head. I think questions about art require similar gymnastics. It's not as simple as THUMBS UP / THUMBS DOWN.</p>

<p>"Could the other be vulgar, whose elegance and originality I had so religiously hymned?" Bartles</p>

<p>To Roland: Can the vulgar be anything else? Every "thing" is of the commonplace: there is nothing else around us, nothing else to work with. Roland describes an experience of one particular arrangement of common sand that had attached to it something evaporatively numinous [Roland reports that he had "religiously hymned" some 'thing' as being of "elegance and originality". He therefore puts value of a high order upon elegance and originality. Elegance and originality inspire something in him akin to religiosity.] Evaporativeness is a property of numinosity, whether the numinous is attracted to an individual or attractive enough to become attached to a culture (to a culture so much attached that it has to be replaced for being common place, over and over and over). I don't think, therefore, that Roland should be flabbergasted by evaporative numinosity: the evaporativeness of numinosity is commonplace. He really shouldn't be flabbergasted that something common place happened to him. That's where babies come from, after all, and they are legion, ad infinitum.</p>

<p>Just as we can predict that Roland would fall in love with some thing, we know that he will soon enough find something inelegant in the beloved, unloving it. It probably isn't accurate for Roland to say "I perceive suddenly a speck of corruption." It would also probably not be accurate for Roland to say he "perceived suddenly a plethora of elegance and originality." For we know from his narrative something befell him that was beyond his will to resist, either in the falling or the landing back on plain old earth. His will wasn't much involved insofar as making a choice is concerned, he didn't happen it, it happened to him. Ad infinitum.</p>

<p>My dogs have high value objects: prized food, exciting spots on the ground, places to run: isn't that enough for me? I ask myself ad infinitum, OH, the agony! :)</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Roland Bartles - I catch myself carefully scrutinizing the loved body ... . <em>To scrutinize</em> means to search: I am searching the other's body, as if I wanted to see what was inside it, as if the mechanical cause of my desire were in the adverse body (I am like those children who take a clock apart in order to find out what time is). This operation is conducted in a cold and astonished fashion; I am calm, attentive, as if I were confronted by a strange insect of which I am suddenly <em>no longer afraid</em>.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>He <em>is</em> afraid of the loved body, no 'as if' about it: the reality of his feeling life is that the 'loved body' morphs into a confrontational strange insect, a strange insect of which he is afraid. He runs into his 'head' for personal safety, intellectualizing the demonic form of the Beloved, reducing it to parts, taking it apart. All that over-intellectualized activity of his motivated by his own fear; or by his failure to face his fear and stand with it. Not standing with it, he over analyzed what used to be the Beloved, but now demonic, into parts, where the sum total of the parts has no effect on him, reducing his fear. </p>

<p>Olive Oyl is Alice the Goon, and from Alice we men run, yet Olive holds an attraction. Roland is buffeted around by two Images that together form a representation of one thing comprised of two aspects, paradoxically. Roland "perceive(s) suddenly a speck of corruption." And for Roland that perception of corruption creates in him a fear. The "rip in the envelope" creates in him a fear. He is thereafter buffeted again: "...it again becomes imaginary, I return to an Image, to a Whole: once again, I love." Yet he loves again because of something the loved body did, not by any agency of his own. His self-description is a description of a man whose relatedness is governed by the properties of Imagery, his agency lacking, Roland a man in total dependency where things 'happen' to him instead of he being an agent within his own feeling life. His feeling life acts upon him and he is flabbergasted, not recognizing that in his feeling life, he has no relatedness, no real presence, to his beloved. Poor Roland, or poor little Roland woe is me.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Julie - "What's terrible for Barthes, complacent and content in his infatuation, is when art happens."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't know about that, Julie, it seems to me that Roland may think art happens before the rip in the envelope, that porn is art just like a kid thinks that art is something with glitter. Naturally art would happens where you say it does, because naturally, we become adults and see glitter in adult contexts. After all, glitter is joined to the commonplace at the hip and has a paradoxical purpose: we just can't have Olive Oyl without also having Alice the Goon where as adults we men reconcile the two, sort of.</p>

<p> </p>