| Title: |
The Frame of Reference: Diagrams as Tools for Worldmaking |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
Poggenpohl, Sharon Helmer; Winkler, Dietmar R. |
| Abstract: |
Reliance on diagrams as quick, cut to the bone communications has become a commonplace in our most public of media, the newspaper and television. In the former we have diagram "bites" enhanced (or trivialized depending on one's viewpoint) with some icon or presented conventionally as a line, bar or pie chart. In the latter, we have Ross Perot with his ubiquitous flip-chart, abstracting the details of economic life and projecting trends. Today, computer software makes comparison, chronology or trend easy to accomplish. It is from this context that we seek to question the diagram as a tool. The purpose of this article is to step aside from conventional ideas about diagrams and to examine how they work, to look beneath the surface of these admittedly powerful tools which bring to its audience the possibility of a common understanding on some issue or relationship. Ideas from a perceptual psychologist, J.J. Gibson, a communication theorist, W. Barnett Pearce and a philosopher, Nelson Goodman, are brought to bear, like can-openers, to smoothly cut or more forcefully crunch open the closed surface of the diagram. The papers are introduced in the three divisions of this issue: Examining the Past, Questioning the Present and Working Toward the Future.
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| Title: |
To Show and Explain: The Information Graphics of Stevin and Comenius |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
Lenk, Krzysztof; Kahn, Paul |
| Abstract: | The development of diagrammatic presentation during the sixteenth centuries is briefly examined with particular emphasis on the work of Simon Stevin and Johann Amos Comenius. Stevin juxtaposed abstract mathematical notation with concrete example from life. Comenius joined languages including Latin, a vernacular language, numbering systems and diagrammatic representation into experiential chunks for effective teaching. The authors believe study of these early visual pedagogical constructs offer renewed insight into diagrammatic possibilities for contemporary education.
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| Title: |
Sign Function and Potential of the Printed Word |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
McArthur, Douglas |
| Abstract: |
Semiology provides a broad perspective for analyzing the range of signs, their differences in form and function, along with the relative efficiency of different signs for different purposes and situations. Some general semiological notions are applied to the printed page.
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| Title: |
Damned Lies. And Statistics. Otto Neurath and Soviet Propaganda in the 1930s |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
Chizlett, Clive |
| Abstract: |
The life and times of Otto Neurath are briefly outlined. The principles of his Isotype Picture Language are reviewed and are critically examined in the light of descriptive statistics. The pre-history and origins of Isotype are traced to the United States, ultimately to the pragmatist philosopher and pioneer semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce, but more directly to the statistician, Willard Brinton and to Neurath's friend and associate, Charles W. Morris. Neurath's views of analytical philosophy and the social sciences are summarized and contrasted with ideas put forward by Popper and Wittgenstein. Finally, Neurath's personal credibility and scientific integrity are tested by looking at his contributions to Soviet propaganda in the early 1930s.
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| Title: |
To Picure or Not to Picture: How to Decide |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
Sims-Knight, Judith E. |
| Abstract: |
This paper proposes that to create visual designs that effectively communicate their information it is necessary to supplement the intuitions of the designer with empirical research. The first part of the paper gives the reasons why institutions - of designers or anyone else - are inadequate. It describes the habits of human reasoning that distort designers' ability to intuit how users will understand and respond to graphics. The second part of the paper gives two alternative solutions to these problems, both of which are based on observing how people actually behave in response to visuals. One solution is to investigate scientifically whether and how visuals communcate to viewers. From such investigations general principles can be developed and examples of research-based principles for educational visual representation are given. When such general principles are not available or appear to be inappropriate for the given situation, designers can use a second solution, that of user-based iterative design. This strategy provides procedured by which designers can explore users' reactions at the same time they are developing prototypes of their designs. In this way user-based errors can be corrected while designs are still being developed.
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| Title: |
Explicit and Implicit Graphs: Changing the Frame |
Vol: 26.3/4 |
| Author(s): |
Storkerson, Peter |
| Abstract: |
A view long venerated in philosophy and science separates image and word into separate worlds. Images resemble their references or ideas of their referents. They present themselves all at once and lack clear linguistic procedures like syntax for ordering and decoding. Words, on the other hand, describe rather than resemble and are read linearly in time. Images are rich but diffuse in meanings, while words have less dense meaning and are more precise. The two do not translate directly into each other. The dichotomics reflect an ideological split between literal and metaphorical, true and fictional, scientific and artistic. Word and image often operate as unwitting stand-ins in this struggle. But the differences between word and image are smaller than they might seem. One area where the function of image is most like a word is in graphs. The graph is a culturally given way of reading - a visual organization as language. It provides a means of systematically thinking about how we use such language without realizing it. Is there an understanding of how graphing as a technology functions? Investigation of this leads to considering ways of looking at and of understanding visual organization in order to put forward some alternative goals.
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| Title: |
Historical Precedents, Trans-historical Strategies, and the Myth of Democratization |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Milman, Estera |
| Abstract: |
The essay briefly outlines some of the uncanny coincidences between the birth of Dada and the birth of Fluxus, charts the adoption of similar ahistorical strategies by members of both movements as they attempted to position themselves historically, and questions our assumption that democratization of the arts is the natural result of artistic actions that purportedly attempt to break down the line of demarcation between art and life. In the process, the article provides introductions to both the World War I movement and its post-World War II successor.
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| Title: |
Historical Design and Social Purpose: A Note on the Relationship of Fluxus to Modernism |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Foster, Stephen C. |
| Abstract: |
This paper explores why Fluxus' ambiguous affirmations and denials of modernism are not contradictory but part of a self-conscious strategy designed to manipulate the operational apparatus of modernism without submitting to its agenda. Aware that the cannons of modernism rest less in the specifics of its terms than in their organization, Fluxus dislocated traditional means and ends relationships endemic to modernist objectives and dismantled the dependent relationships that account for modernism's legibility as a "historical movement." Capable of expanding in an indefinite number of opposite, but mutually inclusive directions, Fluxus submitted to everything. Yet, in its separation of means and ends, Fluxus lost the authority to author itself, became the subject of a traditional modernist debate and the unwitting victim of modernist historical subjugation.
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| Title: |
Proto-Fluxus in the United States1959-1961: The Establishment of a Like-minded Community of Artists |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Smith, Owen |
| Abstract: |
The essay discusses the early developmental phase of Fluxus, which George Maciunas called proto-Fluxus. Concentrating on the presentations of the New York Audio Visual Group, the Chambers Street performance series, events at the AG Galley and the development of the publication, An Anthology, the article addresses the evolution of a Fluxus community and the development of a Fluxus performance sensibility.
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| Title: |
John Cage Discusses Fluxus |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Snyder, Ellsworth |
| Abstract: |
The topics address in this informal discussion include John Cage's response to George Maciunas' work, the composer's recollections of Marcel Duchamp, the complex relationship between inelegant material and revealing works of art, neo-Dada and neo-Fluxus, Wittgenstein and the artist's ultimate responsibility to initiate a change in the viewer or receiver.
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| Title: |
Fluxus and Literature |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Allen, Roy F. |
| Abstract: |
The paper discusses the Fluxus revolution in literary expression during which the tradition of letters was challenged through erasure of the separation of the verbal from other forms of expression and through the rejection of the passive role of the reader. In the process of describing Fluxus' reinterpretation of the concept of "literature," the author provides a means through which to distinguish Fluxus works from Concrete Poetry, one of their direct precursors, through the latter's dependence on verbal text as starting point of the poetic experience and the former's inherent contingency and provisionality.
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| Title: |
FluxacademyFrom Intermedia to Interactive Education |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Saper, Craig |
| Abstract: |
The article advocates a Fluxus based experimental pedagogy which is particularly well suited for scholarship confronted with film and electronic media. Fluxus works have the potential to work the frame of reference, and, by doing so, encourage creativity, and what Saper calls "invention-tourism." The theory explored in Fluxacademy focuses specifically on the use of intermedia for interactive education.
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| Title: |
Road Shows, Street Events, and Fluxus People; A Conversation with Alison Knowles |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Milman, Estera |
| Abstract: |
The discussion recounts the point in time when the Fluxus community first became self-consciously aware of itself during the early European concert tours and provides insights into the identification of criteria by which aspects of European and American Fluxus performances can be delineated. In addition, topics addressed include the use of change procedure by members of the group, their debts to John Cage and the relationship between the composer/performer of Fluxus event works and his or her audience.
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| Title: |
DŽ-Collage and Television: Wolf Vostell in New York, 1963-64 |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Hanhardt, John G. |
| Abstract: |
Photographs by Peter MooreThe photographic essay features photo documentation by Peter Moore of three Wolf Vostell projects produced in New York during the period 1963-64. "DŽ-collage and Television" focuses on Vostell's use of dŽ-collage technique as a means to critique broadcast television. The projects represented are Vostell's first one-artist show in New York at the Smolin Gallery and participation in the "Yam Festival of Happenings" at George Segal's farm, both in 1963.
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| Title: |
On Open Structures and the Crisis of Meaning, a Dialogue: |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Anderson, Eric; Foster, Stephen C.; Milman, Estera |
| Abstract: |
This animated conversation ranges from discussion of the overt questioning of understanding, meaning and the validity of the art situation to the conscious, recurrent renewal of "crisis" as a catalyst for the arts. Topics addressed include: the requirements of culturing, the relationship between randomness and the unavoidable reconstitution of meaning as well as the frustrated expectation of the spectator within a deliberately "non-structured" art situation.
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| Title: |
Two Sides of a Coin: Fluxus and the Something Else Press |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Higgins, Dick |
| Abstract: |
After briefly outlining the process by which the Fluxus community coalesced, the author proceeds to recount the birthing of Something Else Press, Inc., and the transformation of aspects of the Press' objectives into Printed Editions. In the process, the essay discusses many of the parallel concerns shared by both Something Else Press and Fluxus publication activities as well as their divergent agendas and strategies.
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| Title: |
Fluxus: Global Community, Human Dimensions |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Friedman, Ken; Lewes, James |
| Abstract: |
The author discusses the development of Fluxus as a community of individuals who responded to complex, context-specific interactions among themselves, yet who persisted in their struggle against the codification of their activities into "artistic cohesion." Myths of periods of ideological unity and the hierarchy of status dependent upon participation in key Fluxus events are refuted while and attempt is made to provide an overview of consensus among scholars, curators and critics concerning core and peripheral membership in the Fluxus circle.
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| Title: |
Notes on SoHo and a Reminiscence |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Melton, Hollis |
| Abstract: |
George Maciunas' pivotal contributions to the renaissance of SoHo, the burgeoning New York City community south of Houston Street, are discussed. The essay recounts the establishment of Fluxus cooperatives, the history of the Filmmakers' Cinematheque (the precursor to the Anthology Film Archives), Maciunas' long and active struggle with the Attorney General's Office and closes with a description of the February 1978 erotic Flux New Year's Cabaret and Maciunas' marriage to Billie Hutching. In addition, Melton's photographs of the wedding and of Maciunas' and Hutching's piece, Black and White, are reproduced.
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| Title: |
Circle of Friends: A Conversation with Alice Hutchins |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Milman, Estera |
| Abstract: |
The dialogue addresses the context to which Paris-based artists of the 1960s responded, culminating in the 1968 worker and student strikes in May of 1968. In addition, insights are provided into the community structure of the New York-based Fluxus circle and evidence is presented which illustrates that this "art culture" served as a support mechanism for an international group of artists who shared similar convictions about the function of the art experience and the responsibility of the art maker.
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| Title: |
Fluxus Fallout: New York in the Wake of the New Sensibility |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Frank, Peter |
| Abstract: |
The New York-based Fluxus movement began an extended period of dissemination, and in some senses dissolution, around 1967. At the same time the "fluxist" sensibility began to manifest itself in New York art beyond Fluxus' own specific artistic practice -- and, as New York still dominated American artistic discourse at this time, the fluxist inflection in America as well, adding to the limited but growing influence of established regional Fluxus pockets. The essay addresses various phenomena that abetted the "fluxing" of American art.
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| Title: |
FluxBase: An Interactive Art Exhibition |
Vol: 26.1/2 |
| Author(s): |
Partridge, Michael; Huntley, Joan |
| Abstract: |
Using a NeXT computer, art historians and computer software researchers at the University of Iowa created an electronic representation of Fluxus art objects which accompanies the traveling exhibition, Fluxus: A Conceptual Country. The computer program gives exhibition attendees an opportunity to experience the Flux objects in the spirit in which they were originally created. Viewers can, for example, open a Flux box, select an object inside, view the components and move them around. Since the value of the original art objects has increased, they are normally exhibited under glass; the computer program provides a virtual approximation to the original without damaging it.
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