Need sculpture have physical existence?

[fritchie]

Discussion in the Extreme Sculpture! Forum has been very vigorous and inventive the last few days. I’m starting this new thread to take off on a topic which contemporary sculptors will find familiar, namely: Is a spatial idea, however conveyed, but without material form, valid as sculpture?

(Computer sculptors, take notice! Is your work, in electronic form but not physically expressed, valid?)

[gordonrogers]

What interests me about sculpture (or about being a sculptor) Is that its time based. Its the fourth dimention rather than the other 3 that sets it apart from painting, and brings it closer to performance, video, etc.

You have the opportunity to hide and reveal form and meaning (which I guess you can do in painting too), but with sculpture where you have control of the object and its site within a space, you can of govern the order and pace in which the elements of the work are encountered and reveal

It looks like A, but its made out of B

I looks like C, but it contains or hides D.

For me its this 'reveal' that keeps me interested

(I thought it was great that when Carlo Scarpa designed museums around classical sculptures, he put the sculptures with their backs to the doors, so the viewer sees the back first, it never occurs to anyone to walk around the back and see whats going on. http://www.comune.verona.it/Castelvecchio/cvsito/english/scarpa.htm )

Whether the objects are real or illusory I don't think is an issue, its mediating the encounter, so in the case of virtully modelled work, it depends as much about their 'site' within an interface as the apparent 3d form they have.

This site is quite interesting surface.yugop.com/ (http://surface.yugop.com/) a showcase for interactive interfaces (often without any real content) All the works respond to your mouse position and to clicks. I don't thinks its intended as art or sculpture, but it maybe raises questions about how to site and approach virtual forms. Your browser needs all the shockwave / flash plug-ins for the site to work.

[redrajah]

brilliant links gordon. i always thought both yugo nakamura and josh davis (http://www.joshuadavis.com/) were very sculptural in their work. certainly they use the web as a 3 dimensional space.

never knew that about scarpa. brilliant.

[gordonrogers]

Yugo's work in particular is closest to the ideal that the internet is a space, the space we all thought we'd be surfing (instead of browsing) when we saw films like Tron or Lawnmower Man. In reality the web is actually full of pages, so most of the time we're just flipping through a giant card index. The funny thing is, that although you find Yugo's work on the internet, and view it in your browser, its actually running in your computer, not on the internet when you use it.

Drifting off topic, I came across Scarpa's work by accident, changing channels to a documentary about him half way through. Facinating way to work - right alongside the craftsmen and builders - placing a special brass collet to celebrate the first hole drilled. He'd start building before he'd finished designing, because they didn't know what they'd find as they worked their way through the building.

At some point in the future I'm hoping to travel to Italy just to go and see as many of his buildings as I can

[sculptorsam]

Looks like somebody needs to be the counterpoint here so I will say that Yes, sculpture needs an actual physical existance. That is one of the definitions of sculpture. Work that is only about ideas/communication may be perfectly valid in other realms, such as philosophy, but it is not sculpture. In fact, it is entirely possible for a philosopher's work to be "art", just as at the highest levels of creativity and intelligence polititicians, engineers, writers, etc. can be artists as well. But that does not make them sculptors.

To me, sculpture is more than a visual diagram for a philosophical idea. There are diagrams included with philosophical tracts as well, that does not make them paintings. Greek sculpture is not merely a physical place-holder for their ideas about balance and proportion of man, it has a physical presence independent of that. That is where its power lies. Knowledge gained about the Greek's intentions may expand our appreciation of their work, but it does not "justify" the work. A great sculpture needs no justification.

As for web-art, perhaps they can have their own catagory from which to judge the quality of their designs. There would then be enough of a common ground to allow for substantive value judgements. But it does not make much sense to lump them in the same room with Michelangelo's David. At this point, I experience web-art as a succession of two-dimensional images. The illusion of volume is similar to that which can be accomplished with a similarly illusionistic painting.

Sam

[gordonrogers]

I suppose what I was thinking about was exactly that, alot of digital work, online or otherwise is simulation and documentation, I think there is often something missing in the encounter with the work. Its rare to find work on the internet that is best encountered through the internet. Quite often experiencing art online is like only encountering great art through the postcards in the museum shop.

Referring back back to what I said about Yugo's work not really being on-line, I remembered this work by Thompson and Craighead. Nothing to do with sculpture, but it is a sort of online 'truth to materials'

poltergeist (http://yahoo.projects.sfmoma.org/)

It effectively puts a ghost in the dialogue box of Yahoo where you would usually type your enquiry, the ghost's words are the artist's invention / intervention but links yahoo finds are real, and change as the content of the internet changes.

You need to have Java Script / pop-up windows enabled, and is best with the sound on, it takes a while to get started, but is worth the wait.

[Araich]

Great links Gordon. :)

[redrajah]

Originally posted by gordonrogers
I suppose what I was thinking about was exactly that, alot of digital work, online or otherwise is simulation and documentation, I think there is often something missing in the encounter with the work. Its rare to find work on the internet that is best encountered through the internet. Quite often experiencing art online is like only encountering great art through the postcards in the museum shop.



true, much the way sculpture lives unsuccessfully in books. yet there are internet artists out there making work that only exist by virtue of this medium. poke around in here (http://ps2.praystation.com/pound/v4/) or look up the word sculpture here (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html).