The
unseen/seenness of becOming multiple
by Joseph Nechvatal
published at
INTERALIA MAGAZINE August 2015
An online
magazine dedicated to the interactions between the arts, sciences and
consciousness
Joseph Nechvatal, becOming multiple (2007) 112 x 168 cm (44 x
66Ó) computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
I
In the
beginning was the noise.
-Michele
Serres, The Parasite
The
idea of unseen/seenness re-opens the production of subjectivity in art by
affirming the applicability of multiplicity. I will explore this issue using my
computer-robotic assisted painting becOming multiple as example as it demonstrates aspects of latent
excess. The idea of latent excess
re-establishes an ambiguously private critical distance for the art viewer: a
distance achieved through the connective disparity between pleasure and
frustration.
I
believe that my painting becOming multiple shows that an unseen/seen art is possible and even indispensable to us
now by demonstrating what an art of latent excess might look like. For me, an unseen/seen art
problematizes the pop simulacra and hence enlivens us to the privateness of the
human condition in lieu of the fabulously constructed social spectacle that
engulfs and (supposedly) controls us. This private unseen/seen separateness
offers us a personal critical distance (gap), and thus another perspective on
(and from) the given social simulacra.
Such an unseen/seen art
of phantasmagorical latent excess might provide us with two essential aspects
relevant to our lives. First, it can provide a private context in which to
suitably understand our simulacra situation. Secondly (but more importantly) it
may then undermine this understanding of the simulacra by overwhelming our
immersion in the customary simulacra Ð along with our own prudent pose as
observer and judge. Through the destructive-creative bacchanalia at the root of
an art of unseen/seen latent excess, we are prodded to lose our position of
detached observer. As such, becOming multiple demands our engaged
intellectual and perceptual production.
For me, an unseen/seen
art like becOming multiple, when latently excessive in its own right, is
capable of functioning, paradoxically, by nurturing in us a sense of polysemic
uniqueness and of individuality brought about through a counter-mannerist style
of reproducibility (circuitous, excessive and dŽcadent). It is a style that
takes us from the state of the social to the state of the secret
distinguishable I,
by overloading ideological representation to a point where it becomes almost
nonrepresentational. The psychic rhizome around becOming multiple is regularly swarming
itself into being as micro and macro factors attract. One cannot declare in
advance what its limiting confines are or where it will or will not operate,
nor what may become connected and tangled up in the rhizomeÕs multiple
dimensions because the connections do not inevitably plait common types
together.
This
acknowledged probing at the outer limits of recognizable art representation,
the excited all-over fullness and fervor of this syncretistic probe, isnÕt a
failing of communications within the excessive terms of becOming multiple then; it is its subject.
II
I would like to next explain a bit of how
becOming multiple functions
as unseen/seen art, while simultaneously promoting the aesthetics of obscurity.
Recently in my book Immersion
Into Noise[1] I mapped
out a broad-spectrum of aesthetic activity I call the art of noise by tracing
its past eruptions where figure/ground merge and flip the common emphasis to
some extent. Immersion Into Noise concludes with a look at the
figural aspect of this aesthetic lodged within the ground of consciousness
itself.[2]
For me, the obscurity of becOming
multiple exemplifies well a general noise aesthetic needed now within our
broad-spectrum data-monitoring environment of background machine-to-machine
gigabyte communication[3]
in which we now find ourselves. becOming multiple is perhaps
a good example of the speculative reality of noise aesthetics in our era of
algorithmic globalization.
With the unseen/seen in mind, I became interested in a new contemporary aesthetic labor
based in the unseeablity of becOming multipleÕs obscure
affinity for disconnectedness - one that focuses on an impregnable commitment
to a nihilistic aesthetic of becoming imperceptible.[4] becOming multiple has an affinity with obscurity that takes you into embodied and
embedded resonance perspectives, into radical immanence, and away from both pop
imagery and pure abstraction. I am interested in an exquisite unseen/seen aesthetic for becOming multiple where
personal anthropomorphic eccentricities and indiscretions are tolerated by
combining the neo-materialist[5]
vibrant world with a wider vision of political awareness including private
spiritual, ecstatic or numinous themes accessible through the generative
subjective realm of each individual; an aesthetics of perception-politics based
on resonance (not a politics of visibility) which reveals in minute particulars
the full spectrum of the extensive social-political dimensions.
This unseen/seen affinity is a materialist nihilism of no that (if it goes far enough) can transform a metamorphosis
(subject to the flickering formative forces of emergence)[6]
into an all-embracing yes of delicate unseen/seenness. So I am advocating with becOming multiple not the
passive and thus incomplete nihilism of form, but a generative and virulent and
curative nihilism that unleashes forces of unseen/seen reverberation
to emerge and resonate like a web of inter-connected, molecular and viral
relational affects and intensities that traffics in dissonance, deviation, and
the incidental.
But what
specifically can we glean for art from this instability and resonance of covert
nihilism? In what kind of unseen/seen regimes of
attraction/repulsion can the resonant nihilistic art object participate, and
what may it do differently from other signs and objects?
To these
questions I offer a theory of ˆ rebours[7] exchanges
of figure/ground relationships: a nimble unseen/seen art that
emphasizes human and non-human entanglements. This is an art that depends on
playing out nihilistic negativity by intensifying its forces into an affirmative
nihilism. This nimble nihilist bracketing pushes the audience towards open
de-familiarizations, challenging them to think outside of the normal system of
human consciousness. In this way it is unseen/seen aesthetically favorable.
With a nimble
unseen/seen
art of noise - based in the distinction between
active nihilism and passive nihilism - we can depict the underground vigor of
form as an activity that can only be speculated at by thinking beyond the
discursive. And that enacts a shift away from subject-object dualism.
The
embeddedness of our inner world - the life of our imagination with its intense
drives, suspicions, fears, and loves - guides our intentions and actions in the
political-economic world. Our inner world is the only true source of meaning
and purpose we have and nimble unseen/seen exquisite gazing[8]
(that involves self-investigation) is the way to discover for ourselves this
inner life. So we might consider now that, in contrast to our frenzied data
market surveillance culture,[9]
that which trains us to fear the atrocious eyes of outer perception, a protracted
and absorbing unseen/seen gazing at becOming
multiple could encourage the development of agile clandestine exchanges
based on the embedded individual intuitive eye. Of course this sphere of anti-purist
unseen/seen
gazing (essentially a cooperative rejection of the
tyranny of labels, essential identities, privileged abstractions and fixed
ideas) is what allows art to construct unstable distinctions between subjects
and objects that embraces the entire spectrum of imaginary spaces; from the
infinitude of actual forms to formless voids of virtuality. Subsequently my
interest here is in anti-pure unseen/seen art
that challenge and sometimes exchange the
hierarchy of figure and ground (figure and abstraction) through struggles with
noise.
The
principle of constructing patterns of infinite becomings is perhaps inherent in
avant-garde artistic tradition (avant-garde values). But this avant-garde now,
I think, should be considered in terms of noisy invisibility not ontology, as
deviating from the regularities of visible normality provides the avant-garde
new sources for artistic production. Certainly, the values of the avant-garde
have always been interfering with the channels of artistic production and reception
- and these values are responsible for expanding the forms and definitions of
art itself.[10] But like in
nature, noise in art plays a productive role in the invisible life of a system
when it stresses becoming-imperceptible.
But a
becoming-imperceptible-invisibile unseen/seen art, today
can no longer be a form of enfant terrible with-drawl, akin to Marcel DuchampÕs
strategic invisibility,[11]
but rather a phantasmagorical plunge into what FŽlix Guattari expresses as the chaosmosis.[12]
In that sense, becOming multiple marks a qualitative
transformation into a non-place where being and non-being reverse into each
other, unfolding out and enfolding in their respective outsides. This
short-circuit causes a creative conflagration typical of the unseen/seen art of noise.
LetÕs
consider the difference between unseen/seen art (based
on an individualÕs inner vision) verses the monstrous mass machine data market,[13]
with its digital functionalism. For me the difference is in looking into and projecting onto
something - thereby discovering an emerging manifestation based in invisibility
- as opposed to looking at something.
In that sense it requires an active slow participation on the part of the
viewer - and unseen/seen style demands as
much. For me this requires use of hidden mental participation and, as such, is
now essential in our climate of monstrous mass media (mass-think) in that it
plays against the grain of given objective consensus visibility.
However, my
main interest in unseen/seen invisibility lay in a texture of emerging claims of
art-as-politics, with its emphasis on the production of individuality based in
a political physiology (a political function of living systems) with a strong
proposition of emergence as the key aspect.
III
Noise
nourishes a new order.
-Michele
Serres, The Parasite
Now I would
like to look more specifically at the possibility of further developments in unseen/seen art aesthetics concerning where becoming-imperceptible and
becoming-perceptible nimbly interact. As sketched out in my book Immersion
Into Noise, the evolution of visual noise
art develops from certain pre-historic cave areas and baroque grottoes, to
certain levels of mannerist and counter-mannerist complexity, to noisy spatial
renderings in various exuberant architectural styles, then into cubism,
futurism, dada, fluxus and other 20th century avant-garde movements,
into the screech of technological noise art, and into the softness of software
noise art aesthetics.
As noted
above, what is important in unseen/seen aesthetics is its
intentional and elongated invisibility and enigma. That is why this subject is
so hard to write about. The very topic is a very difficult one to pin down and
make intelligible for good reason.
The art of unseen/seen is an art of
disbelief in habitual codes of practice and understanding.
So unseen/seen art is not a set of homogeneous practices, but a complex
field converging around perceived weaknesses in the art system. Such a noisy
hyper-cognitive stance happens when the
particular of electronic connectivity is seen as part of an accrual total
system by virtue of its being connected to everything else - while remaining
dissonant. Noise unseen/seen aesthetics is a
complex and ambiguous political gazing, and its theory of an art of resistance
and investigation would be increasingly valuable to an analytical social
movement based on skepticism while undermining market predictabilities, as it
strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking. This
is so as it counters the effects of our age of simplification: effects which
have resulted from the glut of consumer oriented entertainment messages and
political propaganda which the monstrous mass media feeds us daily in the
interests of corporate profit and governmental psychological manipulations.
The unseen/seen art aesthetic functions as a way of seeing that reverses
the order of figure/ground[14]
to ground/figure. becOming multiple collapses being into a state
of non-being ontological implosion. It creates ambivalent aleatory[15]
processes that are true to our inner essential world: dynamic pools of
expansion and disintegration.
The art of unseen/seen noise is that screech amid the collapse and extension of aesthetics
connected to immanence and transcendence (where art is in the process of
becoming-imperceptible-perceptible) facing the merging of figure into
environment and environment into figure. We can find moments of this screech of
collapse-extension in contemporary complexity theory and in some areas of
information technology, nano-technology, cognitive science, and biotechnology.
These moments of collapse-extension accompany the contemporary development
where the static image has become dynamically engaged with the human
imagination and personal choices of the viewer. In some cases literally,
engaging the participation of the viewer (who becomes what I have elsewhere
renamed as the viewpant)[16]
to the point of physical interactivity. In other cases they are engaged
conceptually (or post-conceptually) by looking long and hard at the art. I
believe that the forms of this aesthetic post-conceptual participation can be a
decisive element in offering generative possibilities of development. That is
why my preference has been for semi-abstract, palimpsest-like work, like becOming
multiple, that contains subliminal latent excess. It has greater freedom
of choice, and greater uncertainty, due to an excess of information via the
ground/figure catastrophic collapse.
This unseen/seen art concept owes something to Quentin MeillassouxÕs idea
of hyper-Chaos that was sketched out in
his book After Finitude: a form of
absolutization where nothing is impossible or unthinkable.[17]
It must be grasped that hyper-Chaos is not just disorder, but that it also may
produce order and stability, even little static worlds, as well as complete
destruction of what is.
This
potential of unseen/seen art aesthetics is embedded in the recognition of our sheer
potentiality: all the selves we have within to develop or burn out. All the
worlds we might create or destroy. Art shows us that we are more diverse than
we had imagined; and more tolerant. It points out that what we have in common
is a dangerous propensity for overrating our powers of comprehension.
But unseen/seen art aesthetics is hostile to generalizations. It is recalcitrant
by design. It affirms with jubilation our state of varied mutability. That is
my general standard of excellence for it. Its incomprehensibility by design
connects us to our unconscious mind and inner feelings through what I think to
be a type of chaos magic.[18]
Through a variety of techniques often reminiscent of Western ceremonial magic
or indigenous shamanism, many practitioners of chaos magic believe they can
change both their subjective experience and objective reality. Although there
are a few techniques unique to chaos magic (such as some forms of sigil magic),
chaos magic is often highly individualistic and borrows liberally from other
belief systems. In this way, some chaos magicians consider their practice to be
a meta-belief. But I consider it to be a phantasmagoric art of the unseen/seen.
As mentioned
above, what is important in becOming multiple is its intentional unseen/seen enigma. It needs to be obscure to the degree that its
codes cannot be discerned. This phantasmagorical obscurity and mystery is
increasingly desirable in a world that has become increasingly data-mined,
mapped, quantified, specialized and identified in a straight-forward matter of
fact way.
Such
aesthetic enigma is alluring when intelligible mining-type data processing is
perceived as hollow, trite, and insensitive. Its goal is to disrupt
instrumental logic and contradict, counteract, and cancel out false reason and
hollow feeling.
Thus unseen/seen becOming
multiple aesthetics
suggests and produces stress in us; one might even say an urgent anxiety of
disintegration. So dedication to its merits, if there are any, might well be
described as vaguely heroic, because unseen/seen art aesthetics suggests the
revelation of a plentiful nihilistic life force. Thus unseen/seen art
aesthetics can be as creative as it is destructive. Or implies an endless
struggle between the two. In that sense it is a cul-de-sac of ill communication
(vacuole)[19]
Ð the communication of enigma itself.
