Artists and Articulations

Artists and Articulations

I got to attend a workshop titled Thinking art, as a part of the Kochi Biennale and on these sidelines we got an opportunity to interact with artists and understand their works firsthand. We were a group of around forty members from a wide background put together by the able Sundar Sarukkai.  I wish to share some of these articulations here. Some of them were deep philosophical investigations and others very practical thinking and some very scientific in their temperament and approach.

Bob Gramsma

Bob in his installation had gorged some earth out, filled the pit with concrete and let it dry and then lifted the solid concrete mass to a certain angle and left it at that. Viola! He claims to have created space and hits upon our ideas of architecture.

While sharing with us his motivations behind creating this massive installation, that had to brave a heavy down pour during its crucial stages of installation, Bob was candid in articulating his philosophy of space.  Bob believes that our philosophical obsession with understanding space comes from the Foetal disconnect we had with space.

He reasoned out that the foetus in a womb has some sense of continuity with respect to understanding sound, smell, etc through its interface with the mother, but unfortunately left crouching in the safe havens of the womb, and left to grasp by itself, a measure of this profound space it is thrown into on birth.

It is this discontinuity that Bob thinks is the reason we are enamoured by space. Bob has attempted to create, show and demonstrate space in the drama of this installation.

Bob’s another sweet observation related to an incident with his Daughter. He described how when she was asked to sketch a cat, the figure resembled just any child’s scribble, while when she was asked  to dig a cat figure out of earth and Bob tried casting that mould, he could get amazingly close to real features of the cat. This is another thing that set Bob thinking on our perceptions of space.

Technical challenges and adhoc solutions are integral part of any installation. In Bob’s case the installation is supported by around 8 stubs of coconut trees buried in the ground to support the concrete mass balanced at an angle. When asked about covering up the concrete with earth, Bob averred saying that he did not want to deceive his Viewers, reflecting certain ethics at work, for us to ponder over.

Miller S Puckette

Miller, a mathematician by training had an installation of sounds, where he reconstructed a varied and diverse range sounds from simple sinusoids on his computer through a software he had designed. You had to feed the software certain inputs and produced a host of sounds.

It was interesting that Miller’s presentation followed, after the stage had been set by a very moved Kabir Mohanthy recounting the valiant effort of Zia Mohiuddin Dagar (14 March 1929 – 28 September 1990) in reconstructing the Rudra Veena over a period of eight years and how it was not being talked about by the informed public. ( this valorising struck me as being romantic, add to this Kabir's tendency to preface even his briefest observation with an unrelated anecdote or incident. For instance this talk about Dagar was appended by quite an elaborate recounting of his tryst with Muhammad Yunus)

It was even more interesting to contrast Dagar's effort and the possibilities of reproducing the sound of the rudra veena through MSP's software, in the context of a movie on Tim's Vermeer, we had earlier watched, where in an uninitiated Tim goes on to reproduce a classic Vermeer Painting armed with nothing but a bunch of scientific techniques, temperament and perseverance.

While interacting with us it was interesting when Miller was asked about his views on  copyright issues, Miller surmised that he was okay with people being asked to pay for a live performance to cover the expenses involved, but for what can be copied and reproduced, he thought not fair to pay for. 

Gary Hill

Gary Hill is a video artist. He broke many grounds in the course of his very open discussion about his art with us. It was very instructive when he revealed that a video artist, unlike a film maker, doesn't think in terms of images. He thinks in terms of ideas, quite clearly demonstarted in his video titled 'meditations'.

Gary Hill's videos are marked by a poignant and disruptive use of language and text, demonstrated by his use of the text ' for everything which is visible is a copy of that which is hidden' in his work Frustrum and the performative and interactive work of Withershins wherein he takes language, gender and biblical constructs. 

Gary was eloquent about sharing his inspirations in Robert morris'  Box with the Sound of Its Own Making and the creation of Klein Bottle with the image of its own making. The creation of another work inspired by Tony Conrad'sFilm Feedback.

While i was curious about his Literary influences, Gary identified with the writings of Maurice Blanchot and Paul Ryan's Video mind Earth mind.