Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1601011555120.16101@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: As if it were Robert Morris'
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2016 15:56:33 -0500 (EST)
As if it were Robert Morris' http://www.alansondheim.org/clicks.png and the box w/ the sounds of its own making, whereas in this case, registration of computer clicks producing the image measuring the registration or the image registering the production of its (digital, imaginary) needle sway or spectral imaginary of the registration of computer clicks; since the digital is always conceptual, always conceived along code and protocol lines; realize that it's easy to produce _conceptual traps_ of this sort, rather than otherwise, and that such traps in fact constitute the very nature of art and its mappings within the framework or aegis of the digital; all that remains to be done here is to acknowledge the entities that produced the (linux) operating system and its (now and current) attendant apps; so it's as if it were Robert Morris but without the labor, the physicality of the world, which has been replaced by the coupling of finger-strokes within the closed apparatus of the computer, just as the Morris box, if I remember correctly, was constituted by a taped recording within it, the sounds evident through a speaker, to one and all, the audience within a gallery somewhere on a street in a city in the world, people milling about, wars, holocausts, nations, in the midst of what would be, at best, a relatively quiet sound, a moment away, within, of silence, even, something thought, something dwelling, among you, something _there._ * * but among the slaughters as well, the sounds of their own making as well, and just as well ---------------------------------- http://www.wikiart.org/en/robert-morris/box-with-the-sound-of-its-own-making-1961 Artist: Robert Morris Completion Date: 1961 Style: Minimalism, Conceptual Art Genre: installation As its title indicates, Morris's "Box with the Sound of Its Own Making" consists of an unadorned wooden cube, accompanied by a recording of the sounds produced during its construction. Lasting for three-and-a-half hours, the audio component of the piece denies the air of romantic mystery surrounding the creation of the art object, presenting it as a time-consuming and perhaps even tedious endeavor. In so doing, the piece also combines the resulting artwork with the process of artmaking, transferring the focus from one to the other. Fittingly, the first person in New York Morris invited to see the piece was John Cage-whose silent 1952 composition 4'33" is famously composed of the sounds heard in the background while it is being performed. Cage was reportedly transfixed by Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, as Morris later recalled: "When Cage came, I turned it on... and he wouldn't listen to me. He sat and listened to it for three hours and that was really impressive to me. He just sat there."