Shades of White

Shades of White 

The All White Alphabet - (Ragan)

a Performative Examination of the works of Ronald King

First Impressions
Upon initial inspection, the works of Ronald King  are difficult to categorize. Many of his works are collaged arrays of color and text while others are a distilled and minimalistic work of white on white. The dynamic range of his work is further layered by a distinctly performative element that is embedded in the experience of examining one of his artist books. Beyond painting or graphic design, these visceral visual works of miniature paper sculpture compel the viewer-performer to not only experience them, but to enter into a performance with them. Using visual elements that are varied and complex King creates works that are made to be experienced. The pages are not merely representational of a performance, but are instead the script and set for the viewer-performer. 

Here I will begin by briefly examining the roots of the visual book. A survey of Keith Smith’s Structure of the Visual Book will frame how one to study the components of King’s works. Finally, I will critically examine the experience of viewing the white on white compositions by King in connection to the performative nature of his work with the visual book as a medium. 

A Moment of Disclosure

Before critically examining the work of King, it is important that I disclose my own biases and motivations in regards to dealing with visual media and the visual medium. My area of research and scholarship is currently described as Media Design. This specifically relates to design for the stage, though it could be broadly applied to all performance spaces. This ambiguous title requires an expansive toolbox of skills, and as such media designers are often responsible for: obtaining and installing equipment, designing media playback or interactive systems that produce the desired illusion of a production or installation, programming software to operate within the specified parameters of a project, and designing and generating the artwork. Creating and designing a visual book, or artist book, encompasses many of the same responsibilities. Here the designer is responsible for not only generating the final product, but also designing the process of its manufacture, collecting the materials for production, crafting an experience for the viewer-performer, and generating the artwork for the book. My work is dictated by screens and digital projections, and King’s is grounded in paper and ink. 

Central to the dialogue about the use of technology in performance is the question of interactivity: is interactive technology appropriate if the audience is unable to distinguish between a real-time system and one that is simply playing back previously generated content. It is in this question that King’s work has the most relevance to me. Artist books require interaction; in fact they are predicated upon the assumption that the viewer-performer will choose to both interact with them, and generate meaning out of that interaction. The corporality of the physical form requires the viewer-performer to enter into a performance with the artifact. It is this observation that drives my inquiry and fuels my interest in King’s work; similarly, it is this focus that also creates a corresponding blind spot in my analysis that must be recognized.

The Visual Book – Roots aren’t just for Trees

Somewhere between sculpture and poster, between collage and graphic design, between installation and performance lies the spirit of the artist book. While the form has roots that stretch back as far as Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, artist books are really a form that belongs to the late 20th century. One can see the beginnings of today’s artist books as framed by the tumultuous changes in graphic design and advertising in the early 1900’s. The period often referred to as Plakatstil, or Poster Style, spans the years from 1900 to 1930 and its design was characterized by simple graphics that were composed of flat colors and simple type arrangements (Schaller 30). Incorporating lessons of composition and line from the Art Nouveau movement, Plakatstil moved away from the purely ornamental and instead designers focused on creating a distilled image of the angular and industrial. Embedded in this larger trend is the explosion of expressionist graphic design during the period of 1905-1922. Abstract expressionism especially “took on a distinctive, primitive visual language. The human figure and natural elements were distorted and stretched to emphasize the meaning of the art and for dramatic effect” (Schaller 32). As expressionism began to draw to close, the Bauhaus design movement, and school, began to take shape. Influenced by Expressionism, Dada, Constructivism, and De Stijl art styles, Bauhaus created a unique learning environment for graphic design, art, and industrial design (Schaller 34). In the middle of this turbulent period in design, the experiments of the Avent-Garde Italian futurists, and later the Russian futurists would form the basis of the contemporary artist book. More importantly, their theories and manifestos would establish the idiomatic framework of the form. In her examination of performance art from futurism to the present, Goldberg notes that futurists “turned to performance as the most direct means of forcing an audience to take note of their ideas,” and quotes the Italian futurist Ardengo Scoffici as writing “the spectator [must] live at the center of the painted action” (14). This insistence about the role of the spectator is fundamental to the experience of viewing an artist book. The spectator must be at the center of the experience. In fact, in order to fully engage with the work, the viewer-performer must interact with the object. This declaration about the proximity of the spectator and action was later built upon by the Bauhaus school of design. Goldberg notes that “unlike the rebellious Futurist or Dada provocations, Gropius’s Romantic Bauhaus manifesto had called for the unification of all the arts in a ‘cathedral of Socialism’ ” (97). Out of the Bauhaus school designers were creating works that were no longer singular entities. Instead the school focused on teaching students an interdisciplinary approach to creating new works. It is this composited approach to design that truly gives life to the idea of the artist book. Born of the rebellious Futurist demand for art as confrontation, the artist book is also tempered by the romantic ideas of unification and complete composition from the Bauhaus school. The artist book is simultaneously built upon an understanding of conventionality and rebellion. Far from being a book that one might find at a library, more often it is a miniature interactive kinetic painted sculpture masquerading as a book. 

The Visual Book – Structure

Keith Smith’s Structure of the Visual Book is a comprehensive examination of trends and conventions in artist books. In it he calls attention to several ways in which this medium can be examined: the book as object, convention, composition, distance, color, shadow, transition, and physical interaction. Keith’s conventions provide a scaffolding for analyzing King’s works, and help to provide a frame for how to understand the visual book. 

The Book as Object

The All White Alphabet - (Ragan)

A book, in the traditional sense, is a series of bound pages that contain information. Any trip to a bookstore or library will confirm that books can be comprised entirely of illustration, photography, text, or any combination of those media forms. Further, books – as objects – are classified as being physically manifest. Though a new special case of book, the electronic book, has come into cultural relevance in the past decade, it is important to note that these new forms are marked by language that specifically denotes their digital status. These new forms are referred to by generic terms like ebooks and epub editions, or by their brand affiliations like kindle editions or iBook. The book proper, however, continues to carry the status of a fully physical object. This is an important distinction as the book is often conceived of in relation to the information that it contains. A book with blank pages, for example, may be interpreted instead as a journal. The cultural notion of book is predicated upon its physical manifestation as well as the assumption that it contains some form of valuable, or at least novel, information.. 

The All White Alphabet - (Ragan)

The artist book uses these assumptions and often plays off of the viewer-performer’s expectations for interacting with a traditional book. A fine example of this is King’s All White Alphabet. This work begins with two wooden panels with geometric inlayed designs. These wooden panels act as the front and back cover for the book. Between these two panels are accordion folded pages of heavy weight hand-made paper that comprise the book. Each accordion fold contains a single letter from the alphabet. The letter is centered in the crease of the fold and is framed by an embossed square with rounded edges. The letter in each crease is created using various origami or pop-up techniques to craft a three dimensional letterform – sometimes realistic and sometimes abstract. The book is double sided, that is to say that half of the alphabet is on one side of the accordion folds, and the other half of the alphabet is on the reverse. The entire book fits inside of a book sleeve made of cardboard and fabric crafted to snuggly hold the book in the closed position. This work feels distinctly like a book, but also breaks several of the rules associated with this class of objects: it reads forward to back, but also reads backwards to forwards; it resembles a children’s pop-up book, but is crafted with materials that make it distinctly unlike a children’s book. The combination of its qualities makes it resemble an artistic artifact that has some of the characteristics of a book, rather than simply a book. The features of this form often highlight the status of the book as a specific object, and not just as a part of a class of objects. The novelty of the experience interacting with this composition ensures that the viewer-performer will interact differently with the artifact. In changing the relationship between book and reader, the artist also challenges the previously established roles associated with this pairing.

Convention

Anansi Company, Tiger - (Ragan)

More than just established roles, the artist book often targets cultural conventions and assumptions in its construction. As previously discussed, the object class of book carries a multilayered structure of presuppositions about its intellectual content and structure. Books have a physical presence; that is that they exist in three dimensions and have weight. Additionally, though books are created in various sizes, they tend to have both an upper and lower limit in their printed manifestation. A book that is too narrow or too wide may be too clumsy or awkward to carry or read. Books that stray outside of a normative distribution of sizes also run the risk of not fitting on shelves with other books. This is often common with “coffee table” books comprised primarily of illustration or photography. While these may seem like an all too banal observations, it is important to recognize that while books come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, they tend to fit inside of culturally established expectations of dimension. This is a fine example of the kind of invisible conventions that are often associated with books. Other conventions about these objects can be described as assumptions about how every book should look or behave. For example, books are assumed to progress in a linear fashion from beginning to end (cover to cover). They are also assumed to be constructed so that they open, and so that pages turn, from right to left. Western culture typically reads from left to right across a page, and from the top of the page to the bottom. These established rules for the behavior of information inside of books ensure that the viewer-performer is primed to expect this from every interaction with one of these objects. Smith points out in the Structure of the Visual Book that artist books sometimes break the convention of pagination by following patterns that resemble poetry – AA, AB, AC, AA, AB, AC. Here each letter might correspond to the structure or organization of a page, or it might relate to a pattern in the presentation of text or illustration. In choosing to break from the conventional the artist focuses the attention of the viewer, and has the opportunity to comment or question our established norms. 

King breaks many established conventions with his works, but in particular Anansi Company carries the most obvious challenges to traditional patterns. Anansi Company, comes in a large fabric covered box with engraved and painted lettering. The abstract pattern on the box calls to mind a sense of the tribal and is colored in black and purple. As the viewer-performer opens the box instead of bound pages one finds a series of folded folios. Offset lithography on handmade oversized paper bombards the senses with texture and color. Each folio is decorated with a combination of collaged photographs, illustration, calligraphy, and type. Upon opening the folio the viewer-performer is presented with a poem or song on the left side of the page, and a wire and paper puppet on the right side of the page. Instead of a structured narrative, Anansi Company instead gives the viewer-performer a rough script of poetry, songs, and legends that are to be interpreted and acted out with the puppets. An average puppet is eight inches wide, and twelve inches tall. Here King unabashedly attacks the idea of what a book should be. Far from a self-contained and fixed artifact, King has instead created a work that is perpetually in-flux; a work that is an explicitly shared partnership between the artifact and the viewer-performer.

Color

Matisse's Model - (Ragan)

Color is a powerful tool in relation to media, especially printed media. In addition to thinking about the application and use of color, it is also important to consider the operational constraints involved in its use in print media. With the rise of the screen as the primary window of media consumption there is a shift in the kind of color data that individuals consume on a daily basis. The color that human the eye perceives when viewing a screen is emitted color. A light source behind the screen emits a bright white light which is then transformed into the color that one sees as it passes through a layer of liquid crystals. The color that is generated by a screen is “mixed” out of variations of red, green, and blue. Orange, for example is mixed out of red and green. Alternatively, the color that one sees when looking at a printed page is reflected color. In this case, the light from another source (a light fixture or the sun) bounces off of the surface of an object scattering and absorbing some wavelengths of light while reflecting others. Color for print media can be created using process-colors, or spot-colors. Process-color generates a desired shade by combining varying amounts of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink. This is the kind of color that’s typically used in advertising, and traditionally printed books. Again using the example of orange, the same shade mixed out of red and green for a screen is made by mixing magenta and yellow for print. Spot color is the application of a specific color that has been premixed to be only that unique hue. Orange, in this case, is made of only orange ink. Spot colors and paints tend to have a richer and vibrant visual element. By using spot color and paint, King uses color in a manner that’s visually stunning. 

Circus Turn - (Ragan)

King sometimes chooses to use bright vibrant color, and at other times elects to use only white paper in his works. In Matisse’s Model King first sources salvaged traditional books that would otherwise be destroyed. These salvaged books are then laser cut with a pattern that resembles one of the cut-out works of Matisse. In the middle of the book a reflective Mylar sheet is glued between pages to create a mirror effect in the middle of the book. The rest of the pages of the book are then glued to one another creating a book where only the front and back covers open. On this sculptural book King then paints in vibrant blends of blue, yellow, red, and purple. The resulting stunning combination is part sculpture, painting, and recycled hardcover. In Anansi Company King uses spot colors applied with offset lithography as a technique for creating layered blocks of color, illustration, and print. While the technical execution of this kind of color is vastly different than Matisse’s Model, King’s playfulness and exuberance with bright vibrant pigment is the same.

King’s evidenced passion for color makes the choice to use only white in a series of works all the more interesting. Circus Turn, Turn Over Darling, and the All White Alphabet are three works were King deliberately abstains from using any color in the pages of his books. These striking works are characterized by shadow and texture, and consequently feel bare and exposed. Here King pushes the viewer-performer to scrutinize the works for detail and meaning.

Shadow

The purposeful use of shadow is a bold technique to embrace, and not an easy approach to tame. In working exclusively with shadows, King is electing to paint with light. Light painting most often refers to a technique used by photographers when composing long-exposure photographs. This method creates images that are characterized by long trails of light over dark backgrounds. King’s approach, on the other hand, focuses on using differences in the height of the printed surface to obstruct or allow light to shade and color the surfaces of his work. Unlike painting with brush strokes, King is painting with miniature architecture. His use of curved surfaces tends to create shadows that have a softer edge and blurred appearance. Hard lines and sharp angles create shadows that are angular with crisp lines. Photographers and installation artists always think about the position of three objects in creating their work: the position of the subject, the light source, and the position of the viewer or camera. King must also consider these three variables in working with shadow as the primary medium. While the installation artist or photographer has very precise control of the position and intensity of the light being used, King does not have that luxury. This makes his skillful manipulation of light all the more impressive. This can most effectively be be seen by studying his white on white works. 

Circus Turn

King’s white on white works can broadly be separated into two distinct varieties characterized by their method of construction: wire form and pop-up. Circus Turns uses a wire form approach. King first bends lengths of fourteen-gauge wire into shapes that resemble individuals or objects. These wire shapes are then set into a papermaking screen. Hand made paper is then drenched in water and pressed into the screen and left to dry. The dry paper retains a negative of the wire-form pressed into it while it was wet. Individual spreads are then folded and hand bound to create the finished work. The resulting image is seen both as a positive, and as a negative of the original wireframe work. One face of the spread will mimic wire on the screen creating a positive image – here the raised portions of paper cast shadows onto the flat surface of the page. The reverse face of this same spread creates a negative – in this case the valleys created in the paper by the wire act as pools of shadow.

King’s pop-up approach uses a technique of folding and cutting in order to force portions of the page to sit at some angle away from the otherwise flat surface. In the All White Alphabet King uses this approach. In the case of the letter “F,” three partial rectangles are cut into a single sheet of hand made paper. These partial rectangles are then folded in such a manner as to create a letterform that pops off of the page when the spread is open at an obtuse angle. The letter “X” is created with two horizontal lines cut into the surface of the paper. The paper is first folded in half, and then only the center section is folded twice more to create two diagonal lines that bisect one another. Here the resulting highlight that’s created on the edge of each folded surface creates the letterform. King sculpts each individual letter into an architectural marvel of paper and light. In observation, King’s methods of folding and cutting read simultaneously as both obvious and stunningly clever – choices that seem as though they are the only possible solutions, and yet also intriguingly novel.

Both of the above techniques provide for an interesting visual experience, but it's worth reiterating that the wire-form method feels more organic and more human. This may be related to his choice of subject matter for these forms, but it seems that it's also related to the nature of the curved lines created by the bending wire. The pop-up technique creates imagery that feels distinctly architectural, constructed and engineered; while the wire-pressed technique draws on a very different sense of aesthetic. This aesthetic quality is inherent to the nature of the shadows that are created. The pop-up book creates hard shadows, lines that bisect space. This elicits a sense of the city skyline in the viewer-performer. Meanwhile the curved indentures of the wire-pressed pages are softer. The curvature of the line creates a softer gradient of shadow that falls into and out of the creases on the page, mimicking the curved shape of the human form.

Physical Interaction

Anansi Company, Dog - (Ragan)

Beyond the aesthetic, physically interacting with King’s works is central to the act of fully experiencing the books. Physical contact with these pieces contextualize them as well as synchronizing the viewer-performer with the action of the works. The act of turning the page, for example, “reveals the order of viewing” (Smith 12). This seemingly inconsequential convention is important when considering how the artist book may stray from established norms of viewership. Smith points out that “the book is a single experience, a compound picture of the many separate sheets” (Smith 12). While the book might represent an individual moment, Smith also writes that “in the codex this single experience is revealed in slivers. The total is perceived and exists only as a retention of an afterimage in the mind. The codex is never seen at once” (12). Here Smith is referring to the codex as the entire composition of the book. His observation emphasizes that the viewer-performer is only presented with a single spread of pages at a time, a sliver. King’s books often make use of imagery or sculpture on multiple surfaces; as such, one cannot see all of the surfaces simultaneously. Smith is suggesting that the viewer-performer must therefore mentally reassemble these slivers into a single composite of all the presented pages. This is evidenced in King’s white on white works, and profoundly demonstrated in his large format work. Anansi Company, for example, requires much more from the viewer because of the size of the pages. The viewer-performer is asked to interact and perform with the puppets, not just passively consume the art quietly. Here turning the page is not only about advancing the narrative, but exploring the artwork and story as a single intertwined thread. Anansi Company’s structure also suggests that the experience might well be nonlinear. As discussed earlier, the book is a series of puppets with only broad outlines about the characters and suggested narrative. This places the viewer in the position to perform the roles of a writer, director, and actor. Anansi Company stands as a challenge to the viewer-performer to create the meaning of the work with the artist. Viewing these pages sequentially is a distinctly dissatisfying experience when one might instead open every folio, spread out every puppet, and explore – at will – the imaginary world of King’s characters. 

Turn Over Darling - (Ragan)

Similar to the concepts that are inherent in the forward momentum of turning the page, one must also consider the nature of the two-sided display. In a traditional book pages progress linearly left to right, top to bottom, front to back. In an artist book, the front and the back of a page may or may not be directly related, or ordered linearly. King takes this idea and plays with the perceived forwards and backwards orientation of images and time. His work Turn over Darling is a series of nudes made with the same wire-form method of Circus Turn. Interesting here is that each bust or waist is connected to the image of the previous. As the reader looks through the pages each one is interconnected to the next. A more apt description of this technique can be expressed through patterning. The pattern of images that progresses through the work can be represented as the following where a capital letter represents a positive image (a raised effect in the paper), and a lowercase letter represents a negative (an indented effect in the paper): a, AB, bc, CD, d. Using this method of describing the patterning one can see that while the image of the bust or waist persists from one spread to the next, it is also transformed – changing to either a positive or negative image. This is the same technique used in Circus Turn. King’s purposeful manipulation of linearity and time for the viewer raises questions about how the viewer-performer might examine this work. What direction should this work be read in, if ultimately it feels reversible. Is it imperative that one start at the front or the back? Could one start in the middle? Here the only reference points for the content of the book are tied to the covers – the viewer's only guideposts for beginning and end. 

Turn Over Darling - (Ragan)

The act of turning the page in King’s works is about advancing the experience as much as it is about creating compound images in the viewers mind. Deeply tied to the experience of the white on white works is King’s use of transition from one element to the next. Smith writes that “transition is the interrelationship of the elements of the book. Transition is conceptual, visual, and physical. It might be predominately one or another, but it is necessarily a combination of all three” (79).

A Performance of Paper and Hands

While many artist books exhibit novel or interesting characteristics, King’s works stand out as defined by the relationship they manifest between the object and the viewer-performer. The characteristics of interacting with King’s works depart from the observation of a piece of art, and are instead markedly performance-like in nature. In particular the white on white works partner with the viewer-performer to create a short scene performed for an audience of one. 

Upon first interacting with one of these pieces the observer first must remove the book from its protective sleeve. The nature of the design for the sleeves of these works makes them exceedingly snug. The result of this physical property of the object is that one cannot casually open the book. Rather, one must set aside all other items to focus exclusively on this task, the execution of which might be described as a clown-surgery. Being struck by the delicate nature of these books, one cannot simply manhandle them into submission, but instead must negotiate with flush edges and tight corners. The viewer-performer will have to investigate an array of permutated techniques for extracting the book. A shake here, a finger nail there; a wedged finger, and a tap on the table before a nervous glance to see if anyone is watching. An exasperated sigh leads to a close inspection of the object for a missed secret to its unlocking. Another round of delicate operations is required before a moment of triumphant glee is experienced at succeeding in the simple task of removing a slipcover. Here the observer has entered into a relationship with this object playing multiple roles – explorer, problem solver, frustrated patron, gleeful victor – before seeing a single spread of the work. Prior to opening the book, King has already transformed the simple observer into a participant and object manipulator. 

The conventions that dictate the normative behavior of interacting with a book suggest that the next operation should be to open the cover. Inside the viewer-performer is greeted with nothing but white surfaces. Missing words, the viewer is left to search for another means of determining the content of the book. In the All White Alphabet, Circus Turn, and Turn Over Darling the viewer is presented with a broken convention of direction. Without text one is allowed to linger or pass by pages at any tempo. Further, the direction of examining the book is mutable. It can be examined forwards or backwards, right-side up or upside down. In this circumstance the viewer is allowed tremendous latitude for the manner in which the books “content” is to be enjoyed. Reading with ones fingers, feeling the texture and fold of the pages is just as important as visual examination. The book becomes both a set piece and a sculpture to be explored and traversed. 

The absence of color in these works does not diminish their brilliance. Instead, it accents the world in which the book is being examined. By changing ones orientation to a light source, the shading and aesthetic feel of the surface changes dramatically. White surfaces are also tremendously efficient at picking up reflected color. The color of a nearby table, wall, or article of clothing lends a wash of hue that is both subtle and prismatic in presentation. The viewer-performer, confronted with this control creates new meaning and character by changing the spatial orientation of the book in relation to other colorful objects and light sources. To be unambiguous, while this quality may be inherent to the design of the book there is no preset series of actions – the viewer-performer changes the book by interacting with it; equally, the viewer is changed by the book.
The resulting partnership is of two performers improvising a scene predicated upon a simple suggestion from the artist: read me. Beyond turning pages, the viewer-performer is now locked in an exploratory dance: turn one page, turn two, make a curious discovery, go back to the beginning, stare lost in thought, stroke the corner of one page, lean close and hold at arms length. It is not long before the relationship is dictated by the transitions between moments, and the memory of first discoveries. A scene past its punch line, the viewer-performer lets the act come to a close. The book is given one last moment of scrutiny, before being delicately slipped back into its cover. 

Closing

King’s works resist singular label. Beyond sculpture or painting, and more nuanced than visual book his works invite the viewer into a shared short performance. The all white works, especially, are characterized by a distinctly performative element embedded in their examination. Missing conventional norms of interaction, the pages invite the viewer-performer to create meaning through novel and playful interaction: an interaction that is fueled by the subtly brilliant work Ronald King.

---

Ronald King – Born in Brazil in 1932, King moved to England at the age of twelve. Following art school and four years working as an art director in Canada, he returned to England with his young family and in 1967 and formed Circle Press to design, print and distribute artists books. Since then he has collaborated with more than 100 artists, writers and poets to produce a world-class body of work unique in its variety and quality. Ronald King's own work and that of Circle Press is represented in public and private collections worldwide (Spring Share). The name Circle Press was chosen by Ronald in part to embody the idea of a supported framework of like-minded artists that share an artistic vision (Circle Press). 

---

Works Cited

Circle Press. Circle Press History. 2012. Circle Press. December 2012 <http://www.circlepress.com/history/index.html>.

Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

King, Ronald and Roy Fisher. "Anansi Company." London: Circle Press, 1992.

King, Ronald. Circus Turn. London: Circle Press, 1994.

—. Matisse's Model. London: Circle Press, n.d.

—. The White Alphabet. London: Circle Press, 1984.

—. Turn Over Darling. London: Circle Press, 1990.

Ragan, Matthew. "Research | Art Books." October 2012. Flickr.com. December 2012 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewragan/sets/72157631739931759/>.

Schaller, Scott. Graphic Design: the making of 20th centry pop culture. 1st Edition. 2002.

Shortbus. By John Cameron Mitchell. Dir. John Cameron Mitchell. THINKFilm, Fortissimo Films, Q Television. THINKFilm, 2006.

Smith, Keith A. Structure of the Visual Book. Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1984.

Spring Share. The books of Ron King in the Artists’ Books Collection at IUPUI's Herron School of Art Library . Spring Share. Decemeber 2012 <http://libraryschool.campusguides.com/content.php?pid=328364&sid=2686492>.

Race to the End

Photo by Matthew Ragan

With the semester quickly drawing to a close it's now time for a marathon of writing. This past week was a week of project presentations and the close of Bocon. Sunday was the strike for the show, and in three quick hours, a show that had taken months to design, instal, and program all came down. The strike of a production is always surreal - a strangely destructive frenzy of activity where some pieces of the production are spared and saved, while others are slated for disposal or recycling. Ultimately this very experience is part of the allure of the theatre. Everything is fleeting. Every production is a confrontation with the excitement of creation and a confrontation and surrender to destruction. Everything is transitory and in flux. It's the embodiment of the cyclical rituals we love and loathe. 

What is a Media Designer

An overhead view of the stage for Bocon

It's difficult to describe what exactly one does as a Media Designer. Prior to this first semester of graduate work I would have likely explained that the work of a media designer is centered around creating artwork that in some way represents and supports the world of the play. I also may well have said that a Media Designer is a person who works to erase the boundaries between the set and projection. A designer who works with light that isn't light in the strictest theatrical sense, a scenic designer who doesn't work with sets in the strictest theatrical sense. 

Now, after assisting on a production at Arizona State University, I might be more hesitant to describe a Media Designer the same way. In many ways the work is so much larger than I could have imagined. In hindsight I'd say that my vision was limited by a full understanding of the challenges, obstacles, and options. These things are difficult to understand abstractly, and only truly become obvious when they are manifest around a particular issue that needs to be solved. 

A confrontation with La Calavera

It is interesting that I would have imagined that the primary work of the designer would be in the creation of the artwork itself. This is a beautiful and romantic idea, but in reality the work of creating content is only a small part of this particular role. Instead, central to the successful implementation of a mediated space, the designer is challenged to resolve issues of how to cover surfaces with projection (read as: using angular geometry to calculate the position of projectors), designing an interconnected system of computers and projectors to realize an artistic vision,consistent playback (read as: determining the most advantageous use of playback systems in regards to questions of stability and ease of use for an operator), programming said media systems, mapping the geometry of surfaces for projection, blending and masking the edges of projection, and of course creating the artwork that fills the surfaces.

In the palace, the realm of the voice keeper

This is complicated, of course, by the fact that it's difficult to see these as independent variables. Instead many of these exist as dependent variables - each problem and solution nested or connected to countless others. Each solution or problem with consequences that are difficult to anticipate your first time around.

In a forest full of dangers

All of that to say that this particular work is more than meets the eye, which stands as a rather ironic statement given how much actually does meet one's eye. It's not unusual for the invisible challenges of a particular role to be larger than one expects, but the challenges I continually find myself facing are ever more surprising in their dependency on mathematics and computation for solution. I suppose that it some come as no surprise that mathematics would be a useful tool in regards to operating a computer, but it has surprised me that understanding the computational problems of these challenges provides for the best insight about their solutions.

In a forest, full of dangers

This has truly been a whirlwind of an experience. I think I've learned more in working on this production than I could have learned in any class on the subject. Educationally that makes for a compelling case in favor of project based learning. That said, in terms of assessment it's difficult to capture and measure what precisely I've learned. Further, it's difficult to determine outright if these problem-solving skills with transfer to other domains or even other similar projects. I suppose in that sense I'll be my own longitudinal study.

A moment in the court at the beginning and the end of Bocon

Though, in truth that's really what education is for any individual. That's what education is trying so desperately to unpack, to standardize, to measure, and to reproduce. Does solving problems in real-world scenarios with high stakes make for the best learning? Sometimes. Does abstract conceptual exploration and investigation work to make creative thinkers? Sometimes. At least in this case I got to make some art out of it.

Almost Open

La calavera emerges from a trap in the floor 

¡Bocón! is almost open... it's now so close that you can taste it in the coffee we drink all night while we're working, so close that you can smell it in the hazer fluid that's filling the air. In many ways the transition from the initial days of tech and the final dress seem like an impossible transformation. 

It's difficult to see the forest for the trees sometimes, and this experience has been no exception. It seems like there have been countless nights when I've wondered if we'd actually be able to put together the media for this show. My role in this production has been as the assistant to the very talented and driven Dan Fine - a second year MFA student in the Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance program at ASU. It's strange to think that we actually started this process back in August when he first asked if I'd be interested in working with him on this project. Our initial meetings, that now seem so long ago, were centered around codifying the ideas and aesthetic that we were hoping to create in designing the media for this show. 

The palace in Miguel's journey 

In thinking back to those initial meetings they provided an invaluable scaffolding for the work that would come as we started to install projectors and create content for the show. Those first meetings helped to unify both our vision and conviction for the show and the ultimate look of what we were looking to create. Central to our conversations was the idea that the visual expression of the show was somewhere between a storybook and abstract art. Dan wanted artwork that supported the story visually, helped to create the world of the play, but didn't distract the audience from the actors in the space. The difficult balance of mediating a production like this is to avoid the impulse to fill the space with so much content that it overpowers the actors on stage. It's been an interesting balancing act to support the action of the space without becoming a distraction to the audience. 

Lost in the forest Miguel is comforted by La Llorona

This process of media design has also left me with more questions than answers about how one might meaningfully examine this work. After several long nights in the theatre and working at home I'm left wondering when my most productive and meaningful work happened: was it productive to be in the theatre until nearly 3:00AM? Was I actually designing quality work after midnight as I fought with After Effects night after night? Did our system of versioning our work facilitate better organization or impede our efforts to implement changes from run to run of the show?

By the sea Miguel talks with a collector of shells

The part of me that obsessively tracked the mileage of a Prius as Lauen Breunig and I drove across the country is left wondering how, and what, I might track in the next show that I design or assist in designing. What would help me be a better practitioner, a better artist, a better scholar? What's the appropriate balance of quantitative and qualitative data to be pulled from my process that might tell a compelling or interesting story? Better yet, what method of data collection is going to be unobtrusive enough to warent implementing - this process is about as resource intensive as it can be already, what kind of investigative instrument is going to yield useful data without providing biased results?

Form the media tech table the view of the show is obscured by confidence monitors 

Looking at the opening of the first ASU show where I've made a significant contribution I can't help but wonder what the next semesters and years hold, what my work will look like, and what I'll do after I leave the desert. 

Auslander and Blau: Two Robots walked into a bar

Photo by Matthew Ragan

In 2002 Philip Auslander and Herbert Blau engaged in a debate about the emergence of chat bots and the subsequent implications of their presence in performance. This debate took place in the pages of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art in the January edition. What follows is a description of their perspectives and arguments in relation to this issue, their rhetorical tactics, and the shortcomings of their arguments.

A Summary of the Debate

Auslander’s Perspective and Argument

Auslander’s LIVE FROM CYPERSPACE starts with an overview of his position on the influence and change instigated by broadcast media, specifically radio. Here he asserts that it was the rise of radio that obscured the relationship between the audience and the performer, necessitating the use of “live” as a signal word to audiences in order to indicate that a performance was not pre-recorded. The nature of the broadcast machine that is radio “does not allow you to see the sources of the sounds you’re hearing; therefore, you can never be sure if they’re live or recorded. Radio’s characteristic form of sensory deprivation crucially undermined the clear-cut distinction between recorded and live sound” (Auslander 17). Paramount to this discussion is the question of liveness. Early in the article Auslander provides the reader with a clear definition of “live.” For this article he pulls the definition from the Oxfored English Dictionary. The definition of live reads: “Of a performance, event, etc.: heard or watched at the time of its occurrence; esp. (of a radio or television broadcast, etc.) not pre-recorded” (Oxford University Press). 

Of the utmost importance to Auslander is how the “live” exists in a dependent relationship to the recorded. That is, the “live” is defined by what it is not – it is not pre-recorded – rather than what it is. His position here is that prior to the advent of broadcast media there was no need to differentiate between the pre-recorded and the live performance; simply put, there was no cognitive or economic construct that necessitated a distinction between the live and recorded. One always knew if they were listening to a recording (because of their forced interaction with a playback machine) or attending a performance. The argument follows that it is only in a circumstance where the listener cannot personally confirm that a performance has not been pre-recorded that the terminological distinction of “live” is necessary.

Recording technology brought the live into being, but under conditions that permitted a clear distinction between the existing mode of performance and the new one. The development of broadcast technology, however, obscured that distinction, and thus subverted the formerly complementary relationship between live and recorded modes of performance. (Auslander 17)

With this position clearly articulated and codified he transitions to the topic of web-based bots. In the case of web-technologies the term bot is shorthand for robot and is in reference to a class of programs that run autonomously. These programs are designed for specific tasks and operate within the parameters of their programming. Auslander takes some time to describe search engines as a kind of bot. A query to Google, for example, is handled by a bot that searches an index of web-pages and returns results that match the query. Another kind of bot common on the web is the chatbot. Programmed to engage in conversation with a user, the “best-known chatterbot is Eliza, the program that interrogates the user in the manner of a Rogerian psychotherapist, developed at MIT in 1966” (Auslander 18). Auslander goes on to discuss the ever-growing presence of the bot in web-based interactions. In a crescendo of panic he laments that “although you can still choose to converse with a chatterbot, it is now possible to be engaged in conversation with one without knowing it. Chatterbots can and do participate in online chatrooms and e-mail lists without necessarily being identified as bots” (Auslander 19). Using his previously established position on the definition of live as emergent from the development of radio Auslander is ready for the next transition in his argument. In bold strokes he draws parallels between the rise of recorded media and the distribution mechanism of radio, and the development of bots (specifically the chatbot) and the distribution mechanism of the web. Further, he suggests that “the chatterbot forces the discussion of liveness to be reframed as a discussion of the ontology of the performer rather than that of the performance” (Auslander 20). As he works to clarify the significance of these linguistic intruders he uses the writing of Herbert Blau to make his point:

The magnitude of the challenge chatterbots pose to current conceptions of liveness becomes evident when we consider how both the ontology and the value of live performance have been construed in performance theory, which often invokes the performer’s materiality and mortality to describe liveness in existential terms. In Blooded Thought, Herbert Blau declares dramatically that “In a very strict sense, it is the actor’s mortality which is the actual subject [of any performance], for he is right there dying in front of your eyes.” (Auslander 20)

Finally Auslander concludes his argument by specifying that the chatbot “undermines the idea that live performance is a specifically human activity.” Adding that, “it subverts the centrality of the live, organic presence of human beings to the experience of live performance,” ending with a warning and frantic call to arms that “it casts into doubt the existential significance attributed to live performance” (Auslander 21).

Blau’s Perspective and Argument

Immediately following Auslander’s warning about the impending automation of live performance is Blau’s response, THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE BOT: a response to Philip Auslander. Blau begins by clarifying his position on liveness in relation to theatre and film. Interrogating the liveness of theatre he laments that “everything was so unenlivening in its predictability, so insusceptible to the unexpected, so invariable once staged, that it seemed (to use an image from another era) like a carbon copy of itself.” In addition to describing a faded representation of what it once was, Blau continues that “as for the text, when the play was the thing, it might have done better in a reading without any actors at all (22). Blau later describes the behavior of actors as looking “canned” and “thoroughly coded and familiar.” In the jargon of theatre one might call this a description of formulaic productions: performances crafted according to a recipe that combines a predetermined ratio of aesthetic elements and plot twists ultimately producing something that feels flat and uninspired despite being visually beautiful. 

Addressing this issue of flattened experience, Blau takes issue with Auslander’s objection to the use of bots on the web and the declaration that “it can be impossible to know whether you are conversing with a human being or a piece of software” (Auslander 19). Blau counters by reminding Auslander that “it may be chastening to remember—you may be conversing with a human being and feel the same way, as if the person were programmed.” This then “may suggest that liveness is variable in definition, with inflections of value through a spectrum of meaning from being alive to being lively” (Blau, Nature of the Bot 22-23). Blau makes a hard transition to examine the programmed experience of chatbots. Here he states that bots, as programmed virtual entities, exist as a kind of human mimic that could not be possess any sense of liveness “were it not for the omnipresent shadow of the apparently vanished being, who, dead or alive, endows the notion of liveness with meaning or substance to begin with” (23). His coup de grâce comes as he questions Auslander’s frenzied final statement: 

Auslander says that the chatterbot “casts into doubt the existential significance attributed to live performance,” but I’m not quite sure what sort of doubt he has in mind. We’re obviously engaged with a technology of production capable of making of performance something other than “a specifically human activity,” but it is the specifically human activity that—if not reproduced by the bot, which draws its material from data bases—remains the inalienable referent around which the data’s collected, just as the human conversation is the datum from which, by whatever ambiguous means, the chatterbot proceeds (Blau, Nature of the Bot 23). 

Shortcomings

While both authors have their share of compelling moments in their articles, they also face some steep shortcomings in the presentation of their arguments. Auslander falls short by placing too much stake in the OED. In doing so he fails to correctly interrogate the problem of the ambiguity of language. The current edition of the OED online has ten different definitions for the word “live” that comprise over 4200 words of definition, description, history, and example. In fact, he uses only eighteen words of this definition as the definitive authority by which all questions of liveness are measured. While the OED is unquestionably a respected authority about the development and use of language, this point is worth belaboring if only because Auslander himself heavy-handedly references this definition, and this definition alone in terms of how to frame liveness, on four of the six pages of his article. While he does invoke Blau and Phelan in a short discussion about performance theory, he does not adequately address any issues about the ambiguity and complexity of language. This seems to be an especially pressing concern when dealing with a term whose history in relationship to performance has only appeared as of the 1930’s (Auslander 16). Here his argument would be more compelling if it also included some examination of the use and history of the word “performance.” 

An important consideration in examining Auslander’s position on bots is that he incorrectly describes the operation of search engines. He states that, “the bot itself actually searches the web electronically, locates sites containing that key word, and reports back to you” (Auslander 18). While this may be the case for some search engines, it is certainly not common practice for search today. Todays’ search engines still rely on indexes of cached (saved versions) web-pages for their operation. While a database of cached pages is collected by bots for search engines, search does not operate in real-time the way that Auslander suggests. This is a minor error in his description of search, but it also belies a potentially larger misrepresentation of the technology. In order for his argument to meaningfully resonate it must be based on an impeccable understanding of the technologies he describes. For the technologically literate reader this mistake is an indicator that his conclusion may be based only upon a partial understanding of a premise.

Blau in his fervent efforts to counter Auslander’s claims makes the mistake that is highlighted in Auslander’s analysis of the definition of “live.” Specifically, Auslander takes issue with the practice of defining a term in relationship to what it is not. In the case of the OED, a “live” event is not pre-recorded. Blau makes this same mistake; in writing about bots in a performance he states that “they’d hardly have any presence at all, any sense of liveness whatever, were it not for the omnipresent shadow of the apparently vanished being, who, dead or alive, endows the notion of liveness with meaning or substance to begin with” (Blau, Nature of the Bot 23). Reductively one could restate this as: Bots are bots because they’re not human. Further, Blau seems to suggest that the condition of humanity itself is what gives liveness any meaning. This privileging of the human perspective of self-awareness feels narrow. To the point, it reads as belligerently narrow. One could easily speculate about the state of the scientific community today had the succeeding method of discourse been to celebrate anecdote as evidence rather than empirical data. Ultimately, both authors fail to demonstrate the validity of their conclusions with anything other than philosophizing and empty appeals to authority. 

 

Works Cited

Auslander, Philip. "Live from Cyberspace: or, I was sitting at my computer this guy appeared he thought I was a bot." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 24.1 (2002): 16-21.

Blau, Herbert. "The Human Nature of the Bot: a response to Philip Auslander." PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 24.1 (2002): 22-24.

Oxford University Press. live, adj.1,n., and adv. 2012. Oxford University Press. 25 11 2012 <http://www.oed.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/view/Entry/109299?rskey=a0XRhK&result=1#eid>.

A Review of The Language of New Media

Photo by Matthew Ragan

The Language of New Media. By Lev Manovich. Cambridge, MIT Press, 2001; 354 pp. $16.71 kindle.

What, precisely, is the right term for content that lives with its left foot in a world of traditional gestalts, and its right foot in a mire of experimental methods? How does one characterize the trends that have emerged in the making, distribution, and viewing of media? How does one broadly conceptualize and decode the impact of a digital mechanism as the primary method of cultural expression? These questions frame the narrative in The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich. Heavily constructed around the critical conventions of cinema, Manovich’s perspective works to deconstruct the modalities of today’s media with an “aim to describe and understand the logic driving the development of the language of new media” (Manovich 7). 

In his examination of (what Manovich calls) the “new media” this work looks to create “an attempt at both a record and a theory of the present” (7). Manovich helps the reader towards a working definition of new media by stating that “all new media objects, whether created from scratch on computers or converted from analog media sources, are composed of digital code; they are numerical representations” (Manovich 27). In short, his assertion is essentially that any new works created, modified, or distributed by using a computer fall into the category of new media. Further, historical analogue works that have been transferred into a digital representation also bear the title of new media. While his definition seems, at first blush, to be all encompassing, his explanation heavily relies on the concept of numerical representation. “Numerical representation turns media into computer data, thus making it programmable. And this indeed radically changes the nature of media” (Manovich 52). Here Manovich is really stating that that the numerical nature of media stored on a computer is the defining characteristic of new media. The programmable nature of this media is what makes it new. The problem with this newness is that it is not explicitly visible. A painting scanned and stored on a computer carries the same characteristics as the analogue original. How then does one differentiate between the two? Manovich’s distinction about the programmability of the numerically represented copy here becomes the key to understanding his definition. This new copy can be manipulated in a manner that the original could not. As an example: a tool like Photoshop can be used to instruct a computer to replace all of the color values of a specified hue, with a different hue; or, average color values from specified rows or columns could be fed into a synthesizer with the end result being an auditory representation of the painting. The numerically represented version of this painting can now be changed in an infinite number of ways. At the heart of how Manovich characterizes new media is its programmability – its ability to be altered and changed with a computer. In this way Manovich asks the reader to conceptualize the computer as a meta-medium for media. “No longer just an Analytical Engine, suitable only for crunching numbers … it has become a media synthesizer and manipulator” (Manovich 25). It is here, after a lengthy process of defining his terminology, that Manovich starts to push the reader into interesting intellectual territory. He argues that a computer is the mechanism for consuming new media as well as the tool for creating it, transcoding it, and distributing it. “All culture, past and present, came to be filtered through a computer, with its particular human-computer interface” (Manovich 64). It is at this junction that Manovich begins to push the reader to consider that “at the same time, the design of software and the human-computer interface reflects a larger social logic, ideology, and imagery for the contemporary society” (Manovich 118).

While Manovich goes to great lengths to help the reader see that the medium has a bias, this is not a new problem for media. The medium for every work has a bias, so what precisely is it that Manovich is trying to tell the reader? In a linguistic fashion that feels distinctly dystopian, and also strangely inviting, he slowly spells out the real problems of this initially invisible bias. 

Now interactive media asks us to click on a highlighted sentence to go to another sentence. In short, we are asked to follow pre-programed, objectively existing associations. Put differently…we are asked to mistake the structure of somebody else’s mind for our own. (Manovich 61)

The convention of using hyper-links on the web is one of the underlying principles of a flat network. Unlike hierarchical file structures on a computer that require the user to follow a specified path to locate a file, on the web any artifact can be linked to any other artifact. Manovich reminds us that someone, or something, did the work of creating those connections.  Further, those connections are not arbitrary. The author of a blog makes specific decisions about what links to include, and where to include them. Here Manovich pushes the reader to remember that at some point the relationship between those two highlighted sentences had to be constructed by another party. Another party that, presumably, had a specific agenda for how the user is going to experience that moment. The implications here are tremendously powerful for the reader, but Manovich over-reaches his assertion with a one-up-manship that is logically sloppy. 

Two sources connected through a hyperlink have equal weight; neither one dominates the other. Thus the acceptance of hyperlinking in the 1980s can be correlated with contemporary culture’s suspicion of all hierarchies, and preference for the aesthetics of collage in which radically different sources are brought together with a single cultural object. (Manovich 76)

Correlation is not causation, and without appropriate support the reader is left to question what ideological position they are being asked to adopt.

Perhaps what Manovich is really trying to communicate is the deeply integrated, and partially invisible, impact that this shift towards new media implies. 

Because new media is created on computers, distributed via computers, and stored and archived on computers, the logic of a computer can be expected to significantly influence the traditional logic of the media; that is, we may expect that the computer layer will affect the cultural layer. (Manovich 45) 

The result of this composite is a new computer culture – a blend of human and computer meanings, of traditional ways in which human culture modeled the world and the computer’s own means of representing it. (Manovich 46)

Who then is responsible for this new cultural model that is a blend of traditional and experimental modalities? This work seems to be targeted distinctly towards academics and media historians who are invested in having a sense of the broad strokes that created the new media landscape of the early 1990s. Interestingly, it seems as though an appropriate readership for this work should also include media designers, application developers, cyber-culture artists, and students of new media. This is especially true given his critique of the typical citizen’s daily mode of operation, and the role these individuals might take in reversing this trend: 

Today, the subject of the information society is engaged in even more activities during a typical day: inputting and analyzing data, running simulations, searching the Internet, playing computer games, watching streaming video, listing to music online, trading stocks, and so on. Yet in performing all of these different activities, the user in essence is always using the same few tools and commands: a computer screen and a mouse; a Web browser, a search engine; cut, paste, copy, delete, and find commands (Manovich 65).

Manovich is explicit in his belief that a computer is meta-medium media machine, a cultural transcoder that acts as a mechanism for creation, translation, and distribution. This is perhaps best represented when he says “in short, we are no longer interfacing to a computer but to a culture encoded in digital form” (Manovich 69). He is the most inspiring and the most chilling when he examines the computer as our cultural monolith. His only failing is that the critical language he predominantly adopts is squarely grounded in cinema. While this approach is not without its merits, at times it feels stretched too thinly to make an argument that’s truly compelling. One of his grossest assertions about the reach of cinema comes in his insistence that “cinematic ways of seeing the world … have become the basic means by which computer users access and interact with all cultural data” (Manovich 78). This is true insomuch that the computer interface is a montage of individual actions framed by a screen. However, this opinion seems to deny the reality of reading text as one of the primary acts of interfacing with a computer. Further, it dismisses the fact that not all text wants to be cinema. To belabor the point, not all sound or still images strive to be represented through cinema.  Provided that one accepts Manovich’s bias towards cinema as the dominant cultural form, The Language of New Media provides an inspiring examination of the historical trajectories of mediated culture, as well as a suggestion of what is likely to come. 

Works Cited

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Ed. Roger F. Malina. Kindle Edition. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001.