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This paper centres in and around words. I have incorporated words into my recent work in a variety of ways including drawing, Letraset, sound and fiction writing. The philosophical questions which arise through any use of language and the various ways of adopting these questions and words within a 'visual art' context is considered in a number of ways. These include The Voyager Interstellar Space Mission which was humankind's first attempt to communicate with other hypothesized populations, conceptual word-incorporating artists, writers of fiction and philosophers within whose work can readily be found an extreme vigilance towards language. Alongside this word exploration I will consider other processes through which I've made and continue to make, works of art. These processes include drawing and film/video. My drawings (which sometimes include words) will be addressed in terms of a crossover between the drawn line and words found in Raymond Carver's story Cathedral. This story made me think about what it means to 'be led' by somebody and how I'm led (by myself or perhaps those mysterious 'populations' the Voyager team of thinkers had in mind) when drawing. It also marks an interesting point in my discussion of a state of being 'without words.' In addition to words an important focus in this paper are the windows through which I've spent a lot of 'my life' looking at 'life pass by' (which are in many ways a physical reality corresponding to the metaphorical 'frame of language'). The time I've spent looking out windows over the past few years has resulted in. several film and video pieces in addition to my latest work (presented as the appendix of this paper) which comprises of a series of short stories. The paper opens with a quote by German philosopher Martin Heidegger: "Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells." The enigmatic broadness of this statement is appropriate to the apprehensive and cautious attitude towards words found throughout the paper (also it mentions 'house' which immediately brings to my mind 'windows')

Author's name: Bc. Zuzana Biľová School: Charles University, Prague Ústav pro dějiny umění Celetná 20, 110 00 Praha 1 Program: Masters program Title: Institutional acceptance of concept art across Europe Consultant: PhDr. Márie Klimešová, Ph.D. Number of pages: 96 + appendix Number of attachments: 4 Year: 2011 Key words: conceptual art, Harald Szeemann, Documenta 5, When attitudes become form, conceptual art in former CSSR This thesis refers to the problems that arise from the definition of conceptual art and the sole development of this term. Through two main exhibitions that were in the beginning and in the end of the conceptual art, I am trying to look closer at the institutional acceptance of this movement in Europe. I have reconstructed a complex description of the preparation, evolution and the process of the so-called exhibition "When attitudes become form", that is seen as the first conceptual art display on the European continent. The exhibition was held in Bern in 1969 and it had served as a main concept for its curator, Harald Szeemann, for the organization of international exhibition called "Documenty 5" that confirmed the domination of conceptual art but marked the beginning of its ideological downturn. My work closely analyses this second project, however, it mostly deals with the...

The two fields of acousmatic music and site-specific conceptual art take strikingly different approaches to the notions of space and place. In this document, I describe how these two areas of aesthetic research diverge and relate to each other, focusing on how their unique approaches can be implemented in the practice of site-specific music composition. The first part of this document surveys the distinctive features of each of these fields, describing the particular differences between them in their approach to space and place. The contradictions between the two approaches are then briefly analyzed in reference to Georgina Born's understanding of music as fundamentally multitextual. In the second part of the document, I describe in detail how I implemented a site-specific approach when composing "…threaded through," a 16-channel audio, 6 video, site-specific installation for the UNT College of Music Main Building. In this, I describe how both the space and place of the UNT College of Music Main Building influenced my musical choices, visual content, and approach to audio and visual spatialization. The final part of the document contains a detailed score for realizing "…threaded through" in the location of the UNT College of Music Main Building.

This thesis analyzes the philosophical origins of dualism in Western culture in the Classical period in order to examine dualist modes of representation in the history of Western portraiture. Dualism - or the separation of soul and body - takes the form in portraiture of the representation of the head or head and shoulders at the expense of the body, and since its emergence in Classical Greece, has been the major influence on portraiture. In this respect the modern portrait's commonplace attention to the face rests on the dualist notion that the soul, and therefore the individuality of the subject, rests in the head. Art historical literature on portraiture, however, fails to address the pictorial, cultural and theoretical complications arising from various forms of dualism and their different artistic methodologies, such as that of the physiognomy (the definition of personality through facial characteristics) in the 19th century. That is, there is a failure to identify the complexities of dualism's relationship to the traditional honorific aspects of the portrait (the fact that historians are inclined to accept at face value the fact that portraits historically have tended to honour the achievements and social status of the sitter). Indeed, scholars have a propensity to romanticise the humanist individualists inherent to this long history of the honorific, particularly in canonic portrait practices such as Rembrandt's and Picasso's.

I am inspired by the mundane activities engaged in, in daily life. Every morning, I check the temperature of outside. At that time I think about the day ahead. Do I need an umbrella? What color am I enamored of today? This is a small but important part of my day. In this moment of my thought paths can be very intuitively chosen. When I water the plants or pour milk into a coffee, I get a similar feeling, something that might be categorized as a sensation of "time apart."I came to The United States to begin to gain an understanding of conceptual art. I could not make it myself and it always fascinated me. I had believed that conceptual art always concerned itself with larger global or political issues, was restrained, and unemotional. I have since change my mind. My new work is about sharing how beautiful the energy is when people join in laughter, how sad people appear to always drive so fast, how interesting it is that pigeons always stay in a specific place. I am interested in not just objects, but their sounds, their history, their physical properties, their potential for change, and the life surrounding them. That which "surrounds" the making is as important as that which is made... so to check the temperature of outside is (in the end) as integral as any aspect.

John Baldessari’s Blasted Allegories (1977-1978) represent a concerted reconsideration of the most active and critical pursuits of the 1960s and ‘70s, including structuralism, post-structuralism, systems-based art, constraint-based approaches to composition, chance, and allegory. Thirty-five of the sixty-some Blasted Allegories are designated here as “later” works in the series because they share formal and structural characteristics; they present arrangements of colored photographs on neutral matte board. Although the later Blasted Allegories initially appear as colorful sentences, the close readings undertaken in this dissertation reveal that these pieces have been generated by the imposition of individual sets of constraints on a combinatorial system. In addition, many of these works appropriate structural models from cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, narratologist A. J. Greimas, and grammarian Noam Chomsky; even though they subsume the rules implied by these structural models, they undergo a post-structural critique wherein fixed relationships are destabilized by word play, homophones, rhyme, and the imposition of such additional operations as algorithms. This dissertation demonstrates how Baldessari solicits art as an experience of cognitive construction, pleasure, and protracted play with the possibilities of meaning. His crypto-narratives take readers along the cognitive spiral theorized by psychologist Jean Piaget that begin with sensory perceptions, expand into operational understandings of these works as products of a combinatory system, and can be built into logical and mathematical apprehensions of the resultant texts. Like many of the embedded models, Piaget’s spiral is counterbalanced in this series by the conflation of vying cultural models into a cacophony of signification. Baldessari’s texts play with readers’ proclivities to search for meaning. The artist solicits protracted interactions from viewer/readers, who are able to discern multiple, simultaneous readings and thus relinquish an ensconced approach toward art as a synthesis of embedded cultural models. Baldessari’s series engages conceptions of allegory as a procedure, a condition of the text, and a hedge against reductive, overarching interpretations. Working in a Duchampian vein, Baldessari posits the components of new syntaxes for art that return readers to these pieces, where variable interactions between readers and these heteroglossic texts ressemble open systems that can unsettle artist-imposed significations.

The Canadian artist IAIN BAXTER&, known before 2005 as Iain Baxter, created an innovative Conceptual Art practice in the mid-60s that continues to make important contributions even today. He has maintained a strong collaborative element in his art, as witnessed by his role in the short-lived group IT (1965) and N.E. THING CO. (1966-1978)--an actual incorporated company consisting of BAXTER& and his first wife, Ingrid Baxter as chief officers--and by the addition of an ampersand to his legal name in 2005 to signify the open-ended quality of his work that relies on viewers‘ contributions to help determine its meaning. This dissertation introduces the term "Pop-inflected Conceptual Art" to describe how BAXTER& merges his use of information technologies, modern and ubiquitous materials, and pedestrian activities with a desire to question the received role and purpose of art through an epistemological approach. By presenting BAXTER&‘s key influences—Zen Buddhism, as described by D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts, and the communications theory of Marshall McLuhan—this study describes five underlying principles that inform BAXTER&‘s work individually and in unison. These principles are: his preference for foregrounding the banal; creation of the "infoscape" that merges the natural world and the constant stream of information within North American culture; proclivity for experimenting with such unlikely media as plastics and telecommunication media; understanding of art‘s kinship with language; and usage of pseudonyms. This study describes the core terms of McLuhan‘s theory in order to analyze this thinker‘s significance for BAXTER&‘s work; moreover, it presents how the above five principles are evident throughout the three main divisions in BAXTER&‘s artistic career: before, during, and after his tenure with N.E. THING CO. Through an analysis of key examples of many of this artist‘s works, this study also determines affinities to both established Pop artists and his Conceptual Art peers, while distinguishing how his Zen and McLuhanesque hybrid approach, which includes a consistent reliance on humor to communicate definitively his ideas, sets him apart from these groups of artists and foregrounds his role as the precursor to such younger Vancouver photoconceptual artists as Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, and Stan Douglas.

This dissertation examines the video-installations created by American artist Dan Graham in the 1970s. It investigates the artist's relationship to Minimalism by analyzing themes Graham highlights in his own writings and in interviews. In particular, I explore how the artist's understanding of Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and R.D. Laing informed his post-Minimalist work and how concepts gleaned from these sources are manifest in his video-installations. Also undertaken are discussions of the artist's interest in aestheticized play, the just-past present, the debate between Behaviourism and phenomenology, surveillance, and Modern architecture. In addition, I investigate Graham's position in Conceptual art, use of site-specificity, and the practice of institutional critique. At the outset, I provide an in-depth analysis of two of Graham's magazine pieces, Schema (March 1966) and Homes For America, that ties together the artist's reading of Marcuse and his rejection of Minimalist phenomenology. Next, I give an account of the artist's connection to early video art and his use of time-delay in works such as Present Continuous Past(s) and Two Viewing Rooms as a means to highlight the just-past present. Finally, I examine Graham's architectural video-installations Yesterday/Today, Video Piece for Showcase Windows in a Shopping Arcade, and Video Piece for Two Glass Office Buildings as instances of site-specific art and as part of the artist's practice of institutional critique. I also explore his references to the notions of art-as-window and art-as-mirror as an expansion of his engagement with Minimalism. Throughout, my discussion includes comparisons between Graham's work and that of other artists like Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, and Hans Haacke. In sum, this study offers an expanded understanding of how Graham employed video and installation in his art as a means to move beyond Minimalism and to interrogate contemporary American society.

Perception greatly affects the way we experience and understand the world. Using self-reflective research processes and data collection, I explore how art can subjectively re-present data and what this means for research and knowledge. The artworks through which I discuss these notions are Self Checkout 2013, Bibliography of Virtual Consciousness: Uniform Resource Locator Volumes 1-12 (BOVC:URL 1-12), and Observation Box. Self Checkout 2013 is composed of all of my receipts from 2013. They not only record my transactions, but also re-present data from which one can make inferences regarding my life—my consumer identity, my needs, my desires, etc. BOVC:URL 1-12 re-presents my web history and suggests a reflection on the relationships between physical realities, virtual realities, and the consciousness that mediates experience between them. These forms of data are analyzed by me and through audience participation in Observation Box in an attempt to construct multi-perspectival knowledges from art.