Maria Fisher is a German artist. For her final project at the University of Augsberg, she was tasked with designing and creating a book on the subject of dreams. She created the book “Traumgedanken” (“Thoughts on dreams”) with threaded, analogical hyperlinks woven into the pages of the book, connecting key words of the various philosophical, literary, psychological and scientific theories of dreams. The goal of the project was to create a book that not only informed, but also captured the same elusive and temporal quality of the dream state.
This is why it is designed as a model of a dream about dreaming. Analogue to a dream, where pieces of reality are assembled to build a story, it brings different text excerpts together. On five pages there are illustrations made out of thread. Their shape and colour relies on the key words on the opposite page. This way an abstract image of the dream about dreaming is generated.
Traumgedanken is a fascinating piece of conceptual design and writing.
New York based artist Joseph Moore wrote the software “Permutations” for the currently running exhibition Brion Gysin: Dream Machine on display at The New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York. The Exhibition is a retrospective of the work of the painter, performer, poet, and writer Brion Gysin (born 1916, Taplow, UK–died 1986, Paris). Working simultaneously in a variety of mediums, Gysin was an irrepressible inventor, serial collaborator, and subversive spirit whose considerable innovations continue to influence musicians and writers, as well as visual and new media artists today.
The “Permutations” software by Joseph Moore is a “version” of the program developed by Ian Sommerville and Gysin in 1960 to permute poems. Moore has attempted to create a realization of the work that is sensitive to the original and its process. At the same time, it is a new version, a collaboration done in the spirit of an artist whose work provides a critique of conventional notions of authorship. Moore believes that it is also in the spirit of the work to share copies of it and made his “Permutations” Software avilable to download from Github. The concept and artistic process of this project is fascinating.
Below you find a podcast of the original “I am that I am” poem.
Software by Joseph Moore | Brion Gysin: Dream Machine | Poem by: Brion Gysin | Ubuweb
On Kawara, a Japanese conceptual artist living in New York City, made since 1966 a long series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in white lettering set against a solid background. Other series of works include the “I Went and I Met” series of postcards sent to his friends detailing aspects of his life. A second series of postcards, I Got Up At, rubber-stamped with the time he got up that morning, and a series of telegrams sent to various people bearing the message “I am still alive”.
In 1971 he started with his work called ‘A Million Years’. This ten volume piece was produced concurrently with a series which would later be seen as his defining work. ‘A Million Years’ was, just as its title states, a series of numbers counting back the last million years from 1969. It was later accompanied by ‘One Million Years (future)’ which counts forwards from 1980. In 1993 Kawara transformed One Million Years (Future) from a written to recorded state. The impetus for this metamorphosis was an exhibition for Dia Center for the Arts that ran from January 1, 1993, to December 31 of the same year. The below video made by New York art tours gives an impression of ‘One Million Years”
The exhibition was comprised of three parts, a selection of one thousand Today paintings, the ten volumes of One Million Years (Past) and the recording of One million Years (Future), in which a male and female voice continuously, year after year, count into the future. A segment of this recording was transformed into a CD. With the exhibition the viewer plays a more passive role, entering into the space where the recording plays continuously, whereas with the CD the amount of time is limited, 74 minutes, and contains a set number of years (1994 AD to 2613 AD), thus transforming the infinite time of the exhibition into the finite time of the CD. With the CD the viewer is able to manipulate the duration and chronology of the CD, thus entering into a far more active relation to the work. You can listen to a part of the work in the below Ubuweb podcast.
Photos: On Kawara | David Zwirner Gallery | Sources: Ubuweb, Wikipedia | Video: New York Art Tours Youtube channel
