Visual kinetic movement in glass and its philosophical connections.
According to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-95), relativity is both a way of thinking, and a way of theorising multiplicities. Space is but one of them.
Deleuze explains space as the multiplicity of our experienced existence
“that brings together the key characteristics of externality, simultaneity, contiguity or juxtaposition, differences of degree, and quantitative differentiations. Space by definition is outside us. Space appears to us to subsist even when we leave it undivided, we know that it can wait and that a new effort of our imagination may decompose it when we choose. Moreover, as it never ceases to be space, it always implies juxtaposition, and consequently possible division. Abstract space is indeed, at bottom, nothing but a mental diagram of infinite divisibility.”[1]
The exploration of space and time is a fundamental part of my practice as an object based glassmaker. The medium of glass is multi-dimensional while visible from all angles simultaneously, and is filled with a visual kinetic life that both physically and philosophically addresses the fourth dimension of time.
While it is true that all sculpture is affected by varying light conditions, detailed emphasis of light cannot be ignored when experiencing work in glass, and this plus the kinetic change within the mass are both central to the experience of the artwork. The glass medium has a specific sense of encapsulated kinetic life, as though made from both light and glass at the same time. The casting medium dramatically expresses both the aesthetic and physical qualities of glass to its full potential, as functions of time and space in which the glass object is viewed.
My work Fractured: Light Space describes the action of a non-linear matrix at the front of the work, which accentuates the physical tension between the edges and the entire mass. Carefully cutting away the back to expose an entry point aimed at drawing the spectator towards the interior core, the glass matrix supports the interior structure at the lead face, and is concerned with a desire to engage with internal light spaces within the mass of glass.
Fractured: Light Space, explores the visual function of space by leaving the interior texture unworked and highly polishing the leading face and profile top, while a considered translucency of the outer vertical curve balances the visual ability to engage with all surfaces immediately. The surface is smoothed to create a solid but transparent form where interior, and its terms of access, are the focal points of interest.
I see the geometric forms I make as various points in space; the boundary lines connecting the points to form edges and faces. In some ways these geometric solids are spatial containers for the interior surface planes, and light spaces.
Space in Vesicle: Complex Boundary and Fractured: Light Space are works defined by the edges of planar surfaces meeting with deceptive simplicity. Geometry within the surface planes creates a visual harmony, while fine exacting finish adds to the strength of design and the ability to asses parts of the optically fractured object simultaneously.
This idea and methodology is similar to aspects of cubist theory but, “for the cubists it was a theory they invented in their heads. Glass is a material that just leads you to it. Glass makes it possible to see the whole sculpture from one point of view, and that is something that glass does quite naturally. This view, which encompasses all, that is contained in a sculpture must be respected. We do not work with a surface plane as classical sculpture would. We work with the light space.”[2]
In his book Les Muses (The Muses) published in 1994, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-) looks for a different conception of artistic production where art is not a representation of the empirical world, but a presentation of the world, of sense, or of existence. Nancy states that,
“The things of art are not a matter for phenomenology, according to an altogether logic, because they are in advance of the phenomenon itself. Or else that’s what the phenomenon is, but not in the sense of what appears in the light, and not the light that appears by clinging to surfaces, but the light that flashes, and that causes to appear, itself nonapparent as such.”[3]
For some artists, technique plays a minor role, and is irrelevant to aesthetic discussion. However, when contemplating the medium of glass, to some degree technique and aesthetics will always remain inseparable. Glass, when viewed in this way has potential for sculpture not possible in other materials, and becomes a three dimensional embodiment of illumination which is in flux over time.
This new vocabulary for describing glass enables studio artists to add an entirely new dimension of interior space to the visual language of sculpture. Sculpture made of glass has an immediate kinetic optical life that it appears to move as you walk by it, as the weather changes, and as it reflects the colours of the environment. Control between convex and concave surfaces on an object creates an internal kinetic life of light and colour. The optical properties of the glass medium are not used to mirror and distort the environment. The life resides inside the glass mass, from reflection to refraction. These concepts open new discussions of space and time in the glass medium. Nancy states,
“In art, a picture is not a representation. It does not show something-the shape, figure and colour of something- but it shows there is this thing. It shows the presence of the thing, its coming to presence.”[4] Becoming or taking place is merely an intersection of time and space or as Nancy would call it its ‘opening’. “This opening is singular, producing each time its own local colour, or rather the place itself as colour.”[5]
At once complex and minimalist in its nature, this visual methodology questions the primacy of visual illusion, and uses objects and vehicles for ideas that do not present themselves as objects.
Nancy suggests that in philosophy there is first of all truth contained in that which happens, and following this is comprehension, “By the light of that truth, of its very production, that which appears outwardly.”[6]
Appearance here is used in the sense of the manifestation of essence of something. The presence of the event is never finished happening, and hence never ceases to surprise itself. The event, when considered in terms of the truth of it’s happening, can be considered as entirely separate from the appearance of it, and hence the glass object will always have a sense of unfulfilment and incompletion.
The surprise of the event in an artwork then does not belong to the notion of representation. American social commentator and expert in comparative literature, Stuart Barnett, states that, “the non-presence of the coming of the presence, and its absolute surprise. And, if you will, it is as surprise, surprising itself, that it is caught in the act of being present.”[7]
According to Nancy, presence is not a quality or a property of a thing. Presence is described here as the act by which the thing is put forward “It is put forward or in front of its nature as a thing, and of everyday which immerses this nature in the world of its connection: origins, relations, process, finalities and becomings” [8]
The present in time is nothing: it is pure time itself. This pure presence or present resides simultaneously between “already no longer” and “not yet”. “It is a passage without pause, a step not taken” [9]
So how do we grasp the ungraspable of this passing? In Nancy’s philosophy, the present-ness of presence is not in time, it lies in front (the past), or ahead of time, (the future). “It is pure time extracted from temporality: the space in which pure time opens out and exposes itself”[10]
Both the scale and the raw unworked surface of my work Temporal Passage evoke a sense of natural weathering and erosion, as well as of time. Striated non-linear patterning contains the entire glassy mass, which has been assembled in segments denoted by boundary colour change. The translucent surface clouds, or increases optical diffraction of the structural interference colours contained at surface level within the clear segments, while a considered level of visual tactility engages the viewer in a sense of exploration.
Temporal Passage explores the notion that time can only be experienced, yet contained within three dimensions, the glass mass has the potential to become a defining, yet paradoxically limitless space that at once contains, and reveals the time transferred in relation to viewing it.
Temporally, glass does not have a front or back, however, choosing the level of translucency in this particular case has deliberately affected how the viewer interacts with the space within which it resides.
Much of my art production derives its inspiration and fascination from the relationship of man to his environment, the apparent underlying order within chaos, and therefore the chaos within apparent order.
“Chaos theory shows a less ordered universe, with room for emergent properties, which allow for more poetic descriptions of the world. Rocks, weather, organisms, society, the economy – these all become non-linear systems with unpredictable developments, but they are still deterministic.”[11]
Space is a condition of temporal passage and time is a condition of spatial passage within Nancy’s philosophy and these are useful terms when talking of objects in space. You cannot experience the event by just standing there, still in front of an object. You have to actually go through with experiencing the work, or by definition, nothing is done. Art articulates our experiencing of events in space-time, or in the case of my own work, it is the physical act of moving to view its entirety that provides the experience. A universal present moment does not exist. Observer based reality is observer dependant, which implies a certain degree of subjectivity.
If experience is the essence of knowledge, then Nancy’s writing examines the most famous words of fellow French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) cogito ergo sum, when he pronounces
“The certitude of the ego sum, ergo existo (I think, therefore I am) is coextensive with the time of its enunciation. Outside of this present, my being or my existence may be nothing but a fiction. But this present, precisely, repeats itself incessantly, it does not cease to arrive.” [12]
The encounter of space-time is the here and now. Such is Nancy’s logic. At this precise moment, the moment erases itself, and this is how we define it as a moment.
“The instant is unstable, and in this way it is an instant. The present is a spacing in which presence conceals itself. It is not given, deposed, posed, available as an object, a thing. The present opposes presence.”[13]
From this, the most we could say about the present is that once presence has given itself, it hides itself in the same comings and goings of the present. The common creative interest of art and mathematics has been the visualisation of time. It was the advent of computer n-dimensional space that allowed artists to visualise spatial conception as non-linear. The spatial properties of an object are no longer confined to the perceptual and relative relationship to the human body. One essential element of this spatial multiplicity we experience in virtual space-time is its fractal nature.
“The encounter with sight with its capacity to have regard for its own opening, for its own gaze. The form of seeing is the opening of the eye, and the spreading of the pupil. This spreading adjusts itself to light, which allow the present of a form with its colour to penetrate the orifice- this little mute mouth open in the centre of the iris. No form without colour, no colour without form. The simultaneous solidarity of form and colour makes the present of vision.”[14]
From this assertion of Nancy’s, it seems that we could argue that glass sculpture does not use colours; it merely produces the colour of a place in time and space. This place is independent of all other places, and each locality in space is absolute, but in a space-time continuum all places are also inextricable linked.
“Nothing subsists in a point, except for the simple exteriority of points in relation to each other.”[15]
Colour value, in relation to light upon my work Fractious: Kinesis becomes a means of expression, ranging from high density to transparency. This work explores the properties and potentials of light and matter within their glass dimension.
Fractious: Kinesis engages both the space and the light it exists in. Physical movement around the object creates interference fringing colours that have a certain dynamic and optically kinetic existence. At the same time, and with equal subtlety, the varied depth of the glass responds to the movement and changes of light, and hence remains marked with incompletion.
What we can say about the absenting presence of vision, is that it is never ceasing to become. This object we see as Fractious: Kinesis is an object at encounter with itself. The encounter is the gaze of the viewer, and the viewer is the starting point for the encounter itself.
“Art has a history, it is perhaps a history in a radical sense, that is not progress but passage, succession, appearance, event. But each time it offers perfection. This completion without end, -or rather this finite finishing…to achieve that very thing, opens the possibility of another completion, and that is therefore infinite finishing.”[16]
This sense of philosophical perfection is not an achievement of the final goal, but perfection in the sense of the coming and the presentation of a thing into its own being. Art articulates our experiencing of events in space-time, or in the case of my own research production, it is the physical act of moving to view its entirety that provides part of the experience.
The glass sculptural object physically embodies this philosophical lack of completion in terms of its light space and kinetic optical life. In this way the art object will always remain unfinished, a becoming that is always in progress, and the realisation of the event that is yet to come.
[1] Grosz, E. Architecture from the Outside, Essays on Virtual and Real Space. MIT Press, USA. 1995. pp 113-114
[2] Kehlmann, R. The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova. London, University of Washington Press, 2002. pg 77.
[3] Nancy, J-L. The Muses. Stanford University Press, U.S.A. 1996. Pg 33.
[4] http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit./ - Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 8.
[5] http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy./ - Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 5.
[6] Barnett, S. (Ed.) Hegel After Derrida. Routledge, London. 1988. PG 91.
[7] Barnett, S. (Ed.) Hegel After Derrida. Routledge, London. 1988. Pg 102.
[8] http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy./
Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 1
[9] op cit., Nancy.
[10] op cit., Nancy
[11] Mealing, S. Computers and Art. Intellect Books, England. 1997. Pg 33.
[12] Descartes, R. ‘Meditationes de prima philosophia’ (1641), http://philos.wright.edu/
DesCartes/ – Accessed on 1 March 2009
[13] http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy./ -Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 6
[14] http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy./ - Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 8
[15] http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nancy./ - Accessed on 26 March 2009. Pg 5
[16] Nancy, J-L. The Muses. Stanford University Press, U.S.A. 1996. pp 86-7.
