The Crystal Interface in Contemporary Art: Metaphors of the Organic and Inorganic

Leonardo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Cheetham
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Art Production ◽  
Crystal Interface

What the author calls the “crystal interface” presents an opportunity to historicize and theorize the remarkable fascination with crystals found in contemporary art theory and practice. In aesthetics, science and art production, the crystal materializes intimations of transparency, of vitalistic transformation or of a purist stability. It powerfully articulates a line or gradation between the organic and inorganic. The author's goal is to create a context in which to understand the recourse to the crystal in contemporary art, specifically in the work of Roger Hiorns, David Altmejd and Gerard Caris. As a frame, the author examines Schopenhauer's, Worringer's and Deleuze and Guattari's adoption of the crystal as metaphor and material exemplar.

Alterity in Art: Towards a Theory and Practice of Infra-thin Critique

Paragraph ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhán Shilton
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Aesthetics Of Resistance ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores distinctively visual presentations and performances of alterity from the perspective of art theory and practice. It gives particular attention to Marcel Duchamp's notion and practice of the infra-mince. The ‘infra-thin’ is not usually related to postcolonial questions. However, numerous evocations of alterity in contemporary art, this article argues, resonate with Duchamp's infra-thin — not only in their practices but also in the ways in which they present the relationship between different cultures and views of ‘difference’. Focusing on artwork responding to the ‘Arab Springs’ as a striking instance of wider aesthetics of resistance, this article shows how such art can be seen to adapt the infra-thin for the purposes of a multidirectional critique.

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Art Form

Abstract This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

From Top Down Under: New Insights into the Social Significance of Superimpositions in the Rock Art of Northern Kimberley, Australia

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Motta
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Supernatural Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Northwestern Australia ◽  
Art Production ◽  
Cultural Dominance

Rock-art researchers have long acknowledged the importance of discerning superimposition sequences as a means for exploring chronology. Despite their potential for reconstructing painting events and thus informing on a site's production sequences, the social significance of superimpositions and their associated meanings have been little explored. In the Kimberley Region of northwestern Australia, interpretations of superimpositions as an analytical lens have often lingered on the ‘negative’ connotations of this practice (e.g. to destroy supernatural power embedded in previous paintings and/or to show cultural dominance). As a result, it has been proposed that the overpainting of previous images was tantamount to defacing, leading to the proposition that new images constituted a form of vandalism of older art. In this paper, a sample of rock-art sites from the northwestern and northeastern Kimberley is analysed with the aim of grounding the study of superimpositions in more nuanced practices, leading researchers to contemplate the role they played among populations within the same area. It is argued here that superimpositions brought together past and present experiences that served to reinforce the links between contemporary art production and the inherited landscape.

scholarly journals Condition Verified: On Photography, Trans Visibility, and Legacies of the Clinic

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chase Joynt ◽  
Emmett Harsin Drager
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Biometric Data ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Trans People ◽  
And Gender

We approach this paper with a shared investment in historical and contemporary representations of trans and gender non-conforming people, and our individual research in the archives of early US Gender Clinics. Together, we consider what is at stake—or what might be possible—when we connect legacies of photography used as diagnostic tools in gender clinics with snapshots of early, community-based gatherings, and the presence of trans people in contemporary art. From the archives of Robert J. Stoller and photos of Casa Susanna, to the collaborative photography of Zackary Drucker and Amos Mac, and the biometric data art-theory experiments of Zach Blas, we engage a series of image-based projects, which animate underlying questions and socio-political debates about the politics of visuality, and visibility’s impact on trans and gender non-conforming people. Moreover, we argue that rhetorical strategies of proof—from conditions verified in clinics to shared existence through photography—are tethered to, and thus trapped by, the logics and discipline of legibility and re-institutionalization.

On the Elements of Contemporary Architectural Styling

2012 ◽  
Vol 238 ◽  
pp. 539-542
Author(s):  
Cong Huai Xu ◽  
Ying Song ◽  
Shu Chen Xu ◽  
Qing Feng ◽  
Hao Wu
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Innovation Capability ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Education Design ◽  
Principles Of Practice ◽  
Architecture Modeling ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
Practice Of Science

This article written with a guide of a basic theory of modern architectural aesthetics, aesthetic psychology, constitute the basic principles of practice of science and art to use as the core to form. Combined with the author’ feelings and experiences and a large number of examples from architectural education, design practice and research in the professional career, we grouped the creation of contemporary architecture modeling skills into four elements, in order to meet the desire for the students and architects to increase their own artistic creativity and build up innovation capability, and a way to follow a truly theory and practice.

Gordon Pask: Cybernetic Polymath

Leonardo ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of

Despite his influence in art, architecture and theater, British cybernetician Gordon Pask is rarely acknowledged in histories of digital culture and virtually unknown in the history of art. Pask is better known as a theoretician than as an artist or designer, although his machines, artwork and theories were closely related. This article investigates the relevance of specific aspects of Pask's theories to his best-known artwork, The Colloquy of Mobiles, to illustrate his characteristic unification of science and art, and theory and material experimentation. Select works of contemporary art are discussed to indicate Pask's significance to contemporary art practices.

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