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Context vs. Content:

 

Context defined: surrounding conditions, the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place.

 

Throughout history the artist was a “content” supplier.  Art was perceived as the appropriate receptacle of meaningful and significant “contents.” Political or religious messages, framed within an artwork, housed in grand venues of political power, or resplendent cathedrals, delivered iconic lessons for the masses.  Eventually, after science replaced religion, abstraction satisfied the intellectual elitist yearning for pure spiritual experience.

 

New challenges face us:

 

Technology surrounds and interpenetrates us. We live in a web of disembodied virtual information. Vast data fields are woven in an invisible lacework of microwave radiation housing the brilliant light of knowledge accumulated across the ages. This knowledge is accessible from any workstation connected to the internet.  With its memories stored in the cloud, the active mind is freed for innovative thought. No longer encumbered by enormous memorized data files the human mind is now fully resourced to contemplate universal truths.

 

My intelligent environments pose some logical problems. What is the form and content of interaction between sculpture and viewer? What is the result?  The thought is that an interactive loop between the two may spawn an area which we might perceive as sublime, or conversely, as the creation of a transcendent moment. There is an additional question, which is born from this process of interaction.  That question revolves around the creation of context as an aesthetic experience.

 

 

 Artist as a Supplier of Context

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