Imagination and Technique : Process Based Art and Minimalism

 Experimental abstract film and animation  Looks like stuff we can do in processing  Explores ideas of the relationship between visual movement and music  Dada – Absurdist political art – activism  Op-art  Materialism  Richter, Eggeling, Man Ray  Early ‘systems based’ art i.e. Tristan Tzara – “ The Cut up ”  Bauhaus – Gropius, Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy- Nagy,  Early Computer Graphics - Whitney

 Synthesis – “ Point and Line to Plane ”, Kandinsky (1926)  Fundamental elements of design –  The Point  Line (force between connecting points)  Plane (The Background)  For Kandinsky, Lines of different orientations had different subjective meanings – or ‘ tonalities ’

 Moholy-Nagy “ Lichtspiel ”  Constructivism ?  Emphasis on Technology in Creative Acts  Importance of the Machine – mechanisation  Engineering principles as the basis of Art  Is this the basis of Art?  What about Duchamp?  What about Kandinsky?

 Experimental Animator  “Absolute Cinema” (non objective)  What do we mean by non-objective ?  What is the point?  “Grandfather of the Digital Arts”  “ Fantasia ” (1940)

 John and James Whitney  “5 Abstract Film Exercises ”  Early Minimal, process-based art  Pantographs of Moving colour with sound  What is a pantograph?  Winner, First International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium, 1949

 Strip back all elements to basic form and technique  Deploy ideas in the most simple way possible  Make ideas and concepts visible in work through simplicity  Movements in Music, Painting, Sculpture and Animation.  Is Fischinger Minimalist?  Is Whitney Minimalist?  Bauhaus ?

 Artist whose work is characterised by minimalism  Unit Shape – A basic shape for the extension of a set of ideas or works.  Lewitt’s Unit Shape == Cube.  Serial Project – “ Incomplete Open Cubes”  Variations on open cubes can be used to generate lots of interesting shapes : Think about how simple this is.  What is a ‘Permutation’ ?

 What is special about drawing a Cube?  How many dimensions does a cube have?  How many dimensions do we draw in?  What problems does this present?  Does this change the way we have to think about drawing?

More about Escher later