An Embrace of Influence
This essay seeks to explore the motivation for my work and the deliberate choice of working under the influence of others. It does this firstly by exploring an analysis of inspiration in literature and the avoidance of influence that many seek. I then explore what I am influenced by, first intentionally, namely that of the music of Steve Reich. This is then explored in relation to the ideas of structuralism and the visual arts. I then discuss the wider cultural influence that all humans are susceptible to, unwittingly and unavoidably. These ideas are then discussed in relation to my work itself.
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In his book, The Anxiety of Influence (Bloom,1997 p. 6), Harold Bloom explores the influence of poets on one another. Most of this is from the perspective of not wanting to be influenced, or at least not wanting to be influenced in an overt manner, hence: the anxiety of influence. Bloom quotes the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens in saying ‘I am not conscious of having been influenced by anybody’ (p. 7), he goes on to say that he’s deliberately avoided reading other notable authors so as to avoid being influenced by them, consciously or otherwise. Bloom regards him as a failed poet for his inability to overcome this anxiety, and an anxiety that isn’t limited to poetry. Bloom writes within the confines of the poetic literary world, but his book is relevant further afield.
Bloom, wastes little time in getting to his point; ‘influence need not make poets less original; as often it makes them more original, though not therefore necessarily better.’ (p. 7) While poetic influence in itself is not the key to a quality poet, as poetry is not merely bricolage, a person well read in poetry will not necessarily have the ability to become a great poet. The influence of prior works upon the poet strengthens and alters succeeding works.
As the book is about poetry, written for other poets, and written by a poet, it itself is written poetically. Of course, this is fitting for Bloom, who says
‘Every poem is a misinterpretation of a parent poem. A poem is not an overcoming of anxiety, but is that anxiety. Poets’ misinterpretations or poems are more drastic than critics’ misinterpretations or criticism, but this is only a difference in degree and not at all in kind. There are no interpretations but only misinterpretations, and so all criticism is prose poetry’ (p. 95 - 96)
It’s logical then that Bloom’s discussion of the modes of influence that he identifies are explored through obfuscated poetic terms that require ‘misinterpretation’, as he puts it. These modes are what he calls the ‘six revisionary ratios.’ (p. 14 - 16) These methods or techniques explore the ways that one can embrace influence, to work with it and grow from it.
The first of these is the clinamen, which he describes as ‘poetic misreading or misprision proper’, or a ‘swerve’. (p. 14) This is a building upon the predecessor, with a correction to where the work ‘should’ have continued to.
Tessera, (p. 14) the second, is similar in that it builds upon works from a precursor, but instead of swerving away from their work, it holds a piece, or fracture of the work but develops it in another sense, as if to build from it and take it further than it was before.
The third ratio, kenosis, is a ‘move towards discontinuity with the influence’ (p. 14), this is a humbling of the self, a removal of ego. This is done in relation to the removal of the precursor’s ego through a similar re-evaluation of their poem - creating a contradiction of sorts, as a dialect.
Daemonization or a ‘movement to a personalised counter-sublime’ (p. 15) - here the poet reveals that their sublime elements are not wholly theirs, as they come to understand that their precursors’ sublime elements were too not entirely their imagining. This allows the work to be related to the previous to show that it was not so unique in itself.
Askesis, contrasts daemonization somewhat. Instead of revealing that the prior poet is not so unique, askesis reveals their uniqueness through the successor moving into a ‘state of solitude’ (p. 15) in a move to deliberately curtail their ability to remove the influence of the predecessor. This move exemplifies their unique qualities and limitations, while also revealing those of the predecessor.
The final ratio, Apophrades, is usually found later in a poet's life, when they return to influence so readily that one might almost think they are a novice, working with such influence so strongly as their own skills and abilities had begun to blossom. Instead of feeling hollow and appearing as a facsimile of the predecessor's work, or as if it were written by them, the work instead gives the impression that the poet had written the predecessor's work itself, as if it were ‘the return of the dead.’ (p. 15)
These ratios, as said before, are for poets. They’re designed for a specific task, to foster a poet’s ability to overcome the anxiety of influence. But there is no need to limit it in such a way. Furthermore, while they are intended to remove anxiety through revealing that influence is ever present and unavoidable, they can also serve as blueprints for inspiration. I myself struggle to work, not through an anxiety of influence, but an anxiety of decisiveness. For me, the six revisionary ratios can be taken not as the revelation of the destruction of solipsistic creativity, but as guidelines for new creativity. They function in this way as a removal of the writer’s chock, enabling their wheels to turn once again as they move forward to let ideas take flight. Thus, an artist who is ‘stuck’, can choose influence, not simply become comfortable with it and move past it, but deliberately search for it, then grow and change with it using the ratios as a starting framework. Some of them are more obtuse than others, and everyone won’t have the skill, ability, experience or desire to utilise all six, but as a starting point, it reveals the depth of influence that a source can have.
This was my methodology, rather than seek out people to work with, I initially chose to work ‘from’ something and ‘swerve’ away from it into a new direction. What to choose? Something too close to myself or my practice would stifle me, then an anxiety of influence would set in, were it influence or copying?
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Further afield, I studied musicians. While not a musician myself, I am constantly lost in sounds and music. I find it easier to find notes of influence, motifs, quotations in music. I began exploring this as a way to begin to find traces of influence through or across cultures. When we recognise a style as belonging to or originating with one culture, for example jazz, we can identify a transmission of ideas when we find it elsewhere. Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan, does this for jazz in Japan. The book tracks the origins and developments while assessing the authenticity and perceptions of jazz in an alien culture (Atkins, 2001). In doing so it reveals not just an unknown history and shows you that your preconceived notions of culture are incorrect. Influence is everywhere, unexpected and legitimate. Sound Unbound, (Miller, 2008) a reader edited by Paul D. Miller, himself a DJ known as ‘DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid’ features contributions from a wide variety of other DJs, composers and musicians and performers. It in some ways fulfils the same goals as Blue Nippon, but it’s focused on contemporary digital culture and sampling instead of music within a culture. The book has interviews and writings with many different areas of focus, some are about a person and their work, some explore the origins of hip-hop. Within this book I also discovered Steve Reich. Reich quickly became of interest to me. While his work was as adventurous and important as other composers like Schoenberg, Boulez or Cage, it felt more human. The other composers' works are bound in theory, but feel inaccessible without this knowledge. The theoretical backing of the work isn’t audibly discernable to those who don’t know musical theory in depth, and sometimes even to those who do. Reich however, while not immediately understandable, felt human, attainable, and non-theoretically focused.
Reich has had a long career, usually writing ensemble pieces for various arrangements of instruments, sometimes accompanied by tape recorders. Sound Unbound is largely concerned with his early pure tape sampling work such as It’s Gonna Rain, Pt.I & Pt. II (Reich, 1989), which make use of duplicated recordings on tapes played over each other at slightly varying speeds so that they phase in and out of time with each other and create an entirely new audio experience than the original tape provides. Reich also composes pieces in this vein for human players, such as Piano Phase (Reich, 1989), Violin Phase (Reich, 1980) and Clapping Music (Reich, 1989), as well as others. This is where my attention was really grabbed. Piano Phase has an ethereal rhythmic and melodic quality to it. It’s minimalism at its finest, new rhythms and melodies appear and disappear as the players move in and out of phase freely, gradually and seemingly effortlessly. Clapping Music uses the same concept of ‘phasing’, but is more rigidly applied to a bar structure. Two players clap the same rhythm at the same time, and every twelve repetitions one of them shifts their rhythm one quaver forward and continues clapping at the same speed. This continues until it returns back to being in synchronisation. This abrupt phasing creates new polyrhythms every twelve repetitions, changing entirely how the clapping sounds. Some are pleasing, some feel much more messy, some overlap in ways that reduce the empty space between claps, others accentuate it. These phases completely captivated me. It’s such a simple idea that completely changes the way something is considered.
This quality to me was something hugely intriguing, and something to ‘swerve’ away from and develop and explore in my own style and through my own medium. Reich uses the idea of phasing as a ‘process’ to work within and compose his music around. Although it could equally be called a system, or structure. In his essay ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ (Reich, 2002 p. 34) he explains his rationale and the reasons for his chosen process as such: ‘I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.’ (p. 34) This contrasts John Cage, who he mentions by name, saying that Cage might use the I Ching (an ancient Chinese divination text), or the imperfections in a sheet of paper to aid in composing music. While Reich doesn’t question the validity of these methods, he feels that they become a sort of secret known only to the composer, simply a hidden tool that results in music that can be heard and performed. Reich instead values the process and the music as one thing, ‘what I’m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing.’ (p. 35) Reich likens processes and music being experienced this way to watching a swing come to rest, the sand fall through an hourglass, or the waves bury your feet in the sand. (p. 34) These gradual experiences are what he aims to replicate, the promotion of an experience, something that can be understood when you spend time with it, like watching the minute hand on a watch.
These themes can and do carry across well to visual art, while words are sticky and spiky, terms like ‘structuralism’, that I’ll go into more later, ‘serialism’, ‘process’, ‘instructional’, or several others, might be adopted or rejected by any person or group for the same or similar things. Many parallels can be drawn between practitioners in each field. Reich rejects the term serialism and even says that it has given him something to ‘push against.’ (p. 159) Contrasting this in the visual arts world with Sol LeWitt, to whom the term is applied often. However when investigating their work, one can find similarities. LeWitt starts with a simple form and uses a set of rules to determine the overall composition of a piece. This is not unlike Reich, who begins with a simple musical phrase, then uses phasing to determine the sound of a piece. They too both speak similarly of their processes. Reich says ‘once the process is set up and loaded it runs by itself’ (p. 34), which is not too unlike LeWitt’s proclamation that ‘The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.’ (LeWitt p. 1)
LeWitt’s piece ‘Incomplete Open Cubes’ (LeWitt 1974/1982) is a perfect comparison to ‘Clapping Music’ or ‘Piano Phase’ by Reich. It is a serialist work based on the form of an open cube. The work simply shows all the ways that the cube can be incomplete, from three simple lines forming a corner that you extrapolate into a cube of a certain size, all the way up to a cube with only one edge missing. The resulting work shows all 122 variations, accounting for the fact that rotations are excluded. The point however, is not the cubes themselves, much like in Reich’s work that shows the notes chosen aren’t what the music is about. The incomplete open cubes are about how you look at them. When seen initially, the work looks messy. The cubes aren’t isolated to be viewed individually, but displayed as a whole, on a low plinth with grid lines on it, each incomplete cube occupying its own cell, but close enough to each neighbour that they overlap visually. This creates at first what looks like a mess. As you move around it, the way the lines overlap changes, and while you might know the work, the concept and the arrangement, in each moment that you look at it you might not be quite able to make out a particular model. In a video from SF MOMA LeWitt says “The idea part is simple, but the visual perception is complex” (SF MOMA, 2013). He describes the initial impression of the work as chaos, but then as something that becomes orderly when looked at from specific places. It’s not a work that exhibits itself to you simply, but has to be examined or ‘untangled’ as Gary Garrels says in the same video.
This strikes me as similar to Reich’s work. As we move around the incomplete open cubes we can view them from different angles, in a similar way, Reich implements phasing to change our perception of the music. It is the music that moves around us instead of us that moves around the physical work. However, the outcome is similar, we gain a new understanding of the work and can explore it from a new position. The only difference is whether it is using our ears or our eyes.
Of course LeWitt isn’t the only artist to work in such systems in the realm of visual arts, and while his work is systemic, it feels much more rigid than Reich’s music. When compared to another artist, such as Hans Haacke, we can see fluidity and changeability in the artwork itself, rather than simply relying on the viewer to move around it and change their perception. Haacke creates artworks that again use systems, but of a different type. Rather than create an artwork that is based on a mathematical solution such as LeWitt’s work, Haack creates a miniature system itself, that can then run, free from interaction and be viewed as a process that runs by itself, in much the same way that Reich thinks of his music. ‘Blue Sail’ (Haacke, 1964-1965) is a perfect example of this. A blue piece of chiffon is hung horizontally above the ground, weighted in each corner, with an oscillating fan beneath it, pointing up. The fan slowly moves back and forth, as oscillating fans do. The fan simply blows air up to change the shape of the chiffon, a simple process of interaction between objects and the air. This serves as a visualisation of air currents, material properties and becomes something to simply look at and think about. The form is governed by the materials chosen and the power of the fan, rather than be constrained into a specific shape by the artist. This isn’t to say choices haven’t been made, of course they have, but they allow the system to show the material properties and their interaction.
In one of Haack’s other pieces, Condensation Cube (Haacke, 1965), the system is even more contained, but also much more gradual because of this. The work is simply a sealed plexiglass cube with a small amount of water at the bottom. Some of the water evaporates and then condenses on the inside walls of the cube, eventually forming larger droplets that roll down and back into the water, before ultimately cycling again. Of course this is an apparently closed loop, but only to the immediate viewer. If placed in the sun, the work will change more rapidly than in an air conditioned gallery space because the temperature differential will be higher. Of course, unlike Blue Sail, this work requires no electricity. It can simply be placed somewhere and run, or moved to a new place and continue to run, possibly slightly differently depending on its new environment. This work feels more like the ‘gradual process’ that Reich aims for when compared to Blue Sail, with a loud oscillating fan and a large blue chiffon sheet that responds obviously and immediately to the air currents sent its way, with a largely predictable pattern of movement repeating quite quickly. There is subtlety here, but it’s overpowered by rapid movements and noise. The Condensation Cube does not have the problem. It will look slightly different every time you see it, and change subtly and slowly as you look at it. It requires you to spend time with it, to see it move and to appreciate it.
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It’s simple to see how the ideas of structuralism, or a focus on relationships between the elements in a system, can be applied to the visual arts in these ways, and how one can be influenced by it in their own practice as I have. However, influence is not solitary. It’s not a binary switch that can be chosen or ignored. Bloom‘s quote from Stevens where he says he’s not conscious of being influenced by anyone, that was discussed earlier, sticks out here. (Bloom, 1997 p. 7) Stevens might have avoided reading other poets, that is true, but he didn’t exist in isolation. To be devoid of influence one would have to exist in a void, to exist in culture is to be influenced. Victor Shklovsky explored similar ideas in the 1920s in his book ‘Theory of Prose.’ (Shklovsky 1991) Shklovsky was ahead of the curve in many ways, explaining what would be advanced later by Bloom and Saussere. Shklovsky re-states ‘art is thinking in images’, from Potebnya. (p. 1) He goes on to say that poetry is thinking in images, while his focus here is largely on the meaning and interpretation of the images themselves, and how they relate to the poetry and our understanding of them, he does consider the origin of the images also.
Shklovsky states that art is thinking in images, and that images are the distinguishing feature of poetry, so people must expect that poetry consists in changes in the history of the image, however in actual fact the images endure and last. (p. 2) ‘It turns out, however, that images endure and last. From century to century, from country to country, from poet to poet, these images march on without change.’ (p. 2) The images move from person to person, therefore belong, not to anyone in particular, except as Shklovsky suggests, maybe ‘to God.’ (p. 2) Like the apophrades that Bloom discussed, (Bloom, 1997 p. 15), the return of the dead creates a blurring between the influenced and influencer. Shklovsky points out similarly, that ‘the images you thought were created by a given poet were, in reality, passed on to him by others with hardly a change.’ This results in schools of poetry where the artists ‘recollect’ images rather than ‘thinking’ in them, essentially accumulating and reordering arrangements. Poetry is in this way, not wholly original to each poet, but an accumulation and reordering of things drawn from previous poets.
Roland Barthes explores this transference of images in his book Mythologies. Expanding on the idea that ideas are bigger than a person and are rather accumulated through time. Rather than through the transference of images in poetry or art, he explores the ways in which the world around us influences us as ordinary people, and how our perception of things changes because of the environment that we exist in and have been raised in. In one chapter, Toys, (Barthes, 1991 p. 53) Barthes explores the toys that children use and how this conveys the French perspective on children at the time that it was written, as well as how these toys might mould children into a specific way of thinking for the rest of their lives.
Childrens’ toys, as Barthes points out, are rarely invented forms, an exception being blocks, which offer an abstract play experience. The majority however are miniaturised copies of objects that reflect the commonalities of life that adults experience, as if a child were just a shrunken down person needing things made for their scale. (p. 53) Barthes’ analysis is that the toys mean something. They don’t offer an outlet for imagination, rather an avenue for roleplay, which serves only to prepare themselves for adult life, and to encourage an acceptance from a young age. He uses the example of a doll, reinforcing the idea upon a young girl to be ready for a life as a mother. This isn’t gender limited, the army, post office, medicine, school, hair styling, and transport are all other examples that he offers in less detail. These too all prepare children with prepackaged ideas of adult life. They offer a one way path, rarely able to be interpreted.
If presented with one of these prepackaged conventions, there becomes a right and a wrong way to play. A children’s kitchen is only a kitchen, a toy train should stay on the tracks, even toy letters need to be delivered, and inanimate sick ‘patients’ require the right sort of attention. ‘The child can only identify himself as owner, as user, never as creator; he does not invent the world, he uses it’. (p. 54) Barthes shows that adult life isn’t invented by children, just present to them readymade. Contrasting this with blocks, one of the simplest toys, allows for far more creativity. To use blocks is to be creative, each is only a simple 3D shape. Rather than a prescribed activity with each toy or action, they become a blank canvas for any action or activity, helping to create creators, rather than users (p. 54). Lego is the obvious example for this. Simple shapes, modified to allow them to fit together, a variety of colours, and endless possibilities. Lego has even touched on this in their own marketing, with a note to parents included in 70s advertising encouraging parents to let children build whatever fits them creatively, rather than conform to gender stereotypes (Indy100, 2014).
While Barthes’ discussion of toys feels relevant and largely true today, his discussion of plastics does not. He begins by saying they have ‘names of Greek shepherds’ (Barthes, 1991 p. 97), a joke based on the poly- prefix that many plastics share, which sounds somewhat like a name such as Polyphemus, one of the Cyclopes from the Odyssey. This already elevates plastics to something known by those of a more educated stature, equating things to classical poetry is hardly ever an insult. He further praises plastic by calling it ‘the stuff of alchemy’ (p. 97). Plastic is manufactured gold, or the universal elixir.
Today, this reads as an outdated and regrettable opinion, but that’s precisely the point. ‘More than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation … it is this, in fact, which makes it a miraculous substance’ (p. 97). In Barthes' time, plastic is the new wonder material, like asbestos was before it. I’m sure he would have not been so positive about that, much like people today are not positive about plastic. Both of these materials are not better or worse at any given time, instead we understand them differently and we talk about them differently. When we compare Barthes' writing of plastic to today, there’s essentially nothing different about the use of plastic at the time, ‘it can become buckets as well as jewels.’ (p. 97) However the following line ‘Hence a perpetual amazement...’, reveals the difference of opinion to a contemporary reader. He says ‘the hierarchy of substances is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized [sic]’, (p. 99) today we understand that the whole world is being plasticised, and that it isn’t an alchemical wonder material, but a catastrophe. But plastic hasn’t changed, only the attitudes around it. Whenever we see plastic talked about today it’s in a rather different context ‘Plastic pollution: take-out food is littering the oceans’ (BBC, 2021), the title of one of countless articles about plastic that we now see regularly.
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This line of thinking doesn’t originate with Barthes, I only approach it from that angle as it feels more easily understood. It is actually a development of structuralism in linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure developed thinking on language focusing not on how the language has changed and developed from other languages, but as a cultural element that is changed by a society. This presents language as a structure that changes the collective consciousness of the society, and therefore moulds each and every person that is born into that society, or language structure. (Blumenau, 2002 p. 888) Extremely simply, structuralism suggests that words are the thing we see or hear, the signifier, the concept that is evoked, or signified. Sign is used as shorthand which combines these two terms. There is finally the denotation, the actual thing that is being signified, which remains the same even if the signifier is changed. So the word ‘chair’ is the signifier, the idea of a chair is the signified, and an actual chair is the denotation. (p. 889)
While initially focused on linguistics, it’s not hard to see how this was modified into other areas, and broader ways of thinking, such as in Barthes’ work. Saussure himself developed semiotics, a broader study of signs rather than language and words by taking the structure of structuralism and applying the idea of signifiers and signified to other things. Facial expressions can be thought of in this structure. The facial expression is seen as a word is seen, as the signifier, we register the meaning as we do a word, and so it is signified, and the expression itself is the denotation. (p. 890) There is an extra layer here however, that of connotations. Connotations are the additional meanings that are additional and more changeable or even contextual (p. 889). It is these connotations that form the basis for Barthes' discussion of mythologies.
And so, circling back to Stevens’ denial of influence from anybody for a second time, it strikes as particularly hollow when we consider both structuralism and Barthes’ mythologies. Any mention of any number of things that he might have made becomes coloured by his era. As unpoetic as it might seem today, if we return to plastic for a moment, were Stevens to summon an image of it in one of his poems, would he call forth a brightly coloured wonder material that can fill every niche, or a slick, greasy looking ever present nuisance that’s ruining the planet? In the same way, when I create work, I’m not only influenced by those artists and ideas that I choose to work in relation to, but also my culture, upbringing, interests, and the world around me. In this sense, I pull from two paths, the known, and the unknown, the influence of an artist, and my own mythologies.
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I’ve already discussed that I’m influenced by Steve Reich. This is deliberate, known and obvious. The mythologies that show in my work are initially somewhat harder to see, at least for me. They are often so close to us that we fail to see even our own, sometimes only becoming obvious after work has been completed, or shown to us by others with an outside perspective. Of the two influences I’ll discuss here, both only became apparent after the work was partway through, and one was meant to be avoided entirely.
The first of these mythologies, and the avoidance that was intended was that of the digital world. As a person born in the early nineteen nineties, technology in general, computers and the internet has been a huge part of my life. Encouraged by my mother, I adopted these new technologies from a young age, I was shown videogames and learned to use computer programmes rapidly. It’s not to say that I didn’t have physical toys, such as lego sets, however I was endlessly fascinated by the home computer, and some of my strongest memories are of my early interactions with the few 90s computer games that I had access to. Rodent’s Revenge (Microsoft 1991) was the first of these, a now largely forgotten classic that was already old by the time that I got to it. It’s an unattractive greenish brown game where you play as a grey mouse who has to trap cats by sliding blocks around to close them off before being caught. Simple, effective, and fun. Minesweeper (Microsoft, a 1998) too, still well known to this day, took some getting used to as I impatiently clicked around without paying much attention to the numbers. I still remember my satisfaction when I finished a game for the first time. There were avoided games too, Solitaire (Microsoft, b 1998) was, and still is, a boring game. Though worst of all was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (The Software Toolworks, 1987), a programme with good intentions that was avoided, completely, in favour of other things. Mostly for the final game that I wish to mention here: Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 (Microsoft, 1997). To me, as a child, this was incomparable, while it’s a complex game, it’s easy enough to understand as there’s little abstraction. Just planes to learn, and an open sky to fly around in. So it’s easy to understand how I spent many hours learning how to take off in each of my preferred planes, to fly around cities, under bridges and between buildings.
This is the sort of toy that Barthes wouldn’t have imagined in his comparison between miniature facsimiles of everyday objects and a set of wooden blocks, and the advantages of the latter over the former in creating a creator, rather than a user. However, to me, it’s clear to see that this handful of digital ‘toys’ have sent me down a path as a digital native, eager to explore as much as I could get my hands on, until today, where I still play Microsoft Flight Simulator, though the 2020 version (Asobo Studio 2020), and have embraced digital technologies in many aspects of my life. In the same way, as I grew as a creative, this was an obvious avenue of exploration. Modern applications are now much more advanced than early MS Paint was, and so they became useful tools in wholly or partially creating many of my projects. Initially I was using digital processes in my work for this project, but after using it so much over the prior years, I felt completely oversaturated with it, and abandoned digital processes completely for the project. It was surprising to me, then, to be told my work looked digital, not digitally made, but comparable visually to early computer art in ways that I’ll discuss later. It was however, a surprise to me that even as I tried to avoid computers, my passion for them, and overuse of them, shows through in my work regardless.
The second mythology that shows through my work is more complicated. This is that of Japanese art, itself an unwieldy and broad term encompassing several centuries and genres. While I didn’t intend to directly reference this, it’s an area that I’m interested in, and have deliberately tried to implement attitudes from it into my practice over the last couple of years. The complication arises from the fact that this is essentially a misunderstood interest. From a western perspective, I’ve largely been interested in woodblock prints, often referred to as ukiyo-e, which is itself a genre that many prints and paintings occupy. Japanese woodblock prints, or mokuhanga, are of course bigger than one genre. From a western perspective, these prints would occupy the same status as paintings. To be treasured and appreciated, regarded highly, hoarded and hopefully exhibited for people to see. Imagine my surprise then, when upon visiting Japan for the first time, I found in museums and galleries not woodblock prints, but ceramics, swords and sumi. Instead, the prints that were to the west, apparently the most important part of Japanese art, were limited to a few independent shops and galleries, largely forgotten or ignored. The Ōta Memorial Museum of Art is, as it says on its own website, ‘one of the few museums specializing (sic) in ukiyo-e’ (Ōta Memorial Museum of Art, n.d.) and that ukiyo-e is admired abroad as a traditional art of Japan. Rather than analysing the minutiae of Japanese aesthetics, it’s simpler to say that although they fit many elements of Japanese aesthetics, the reproducibility of the printing process means that prints lack the unique, ephemeral qualities that are regarded most highly, thereby often relegating them to objects of function, such as illustrated book pages.
Predictably then, in reading about Japanese aesthetics prints do not appear much, if at all. Though the insights written about the wider field can certainly be applied. It’s this element of understanding over simple appreciation that has begun to influence my work. In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki focuses on the atmosphere around things rather than the things themselves. He explores how we experience things in relation to light, or the lack of it. The book is a discussion, largely lamenting the lost ways of the Japanese style when confronted with a modern world full of white appliances and electric lighting. This is something I had not understood at all until reading the book. I’d always found the Japanese style of lacquerware with gold flecks in it to be ostentatious and struggled to relate it to the simplicity and minimalism that Japan is known for. Tanizaki explains
‘Lacquerware decorated in gold is not something to be seen in a brilliant light, to be taken in at a single glance; it should be left in the dark, a part here and a part there picked up by a faint light.’ (Tanizaki, 2001 p. 24)
In the same way he likens a room to an ink wash painting and the essential nature of the shadows within it, enabling mystery and secrets in shadows, instead of soulless electric lighting (p. 32). This attitude to light and material goes as far as to something as mundane as paper ‘Western paper turns away the light, while ours seems to take it in’ (p. 17). This paper gives a feeling of warmth, he says, it feels natural, human and something of worth, when taken in comparison to western paper that is just something to be used.
Kenya Hara explores the inverse of this in his book White from the perspective of a graphic designer. He positions his work opposite Tanizaki, who works from the standpoint of shadow. Hara posits the contrast of this, a vanishing point not of darkness, but of extreme brightness (Hara, 2010 p. 3). In the same way that Tanizaki compares the shadows of a room to the shades in an ink painting with depth and mystery, Hara compares the different hues of white papers, each with a subtle difference in whiteness and texture. Each paper says something different and plays a role in our experience of a book. (p. 21) Hara says that of natural colours white is the one with the most impact, leading him away from artificial colours entirely. Against these natural colours seen in other papers, cardboard, rust, sand and seeds, white leaves the greatest mark (p. 20)
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It’s in thinking about my influences in relation to these mythologies that I begin to see my work as a realisation of more than just its intention. It’s built on the influence of Reich and his ideas in music; of phasing, and repetition. But it became a representation of analogue digitalism, vectors of blackness on whiteness, to be looked at in natural light through an adjacent window, to see texture, shadow, shape, and the shallow depth of paper. As it was made, the work was malformed by my modern digital surroundings, my incorrect assumptions and half learned appropriations - this isn’t negative, but the reality of the human experience, we’re all coloured by our experience.
Returning, for a second, to Bloom’s ratios and the ‘swerve’ that I had initially intended. It should now be reconsidered. The more I worked, the more I moved away from what I started with. It’s here that the six revisionary ratios become ambiguous to me. Have I swerved too much to consider it a swerve? Am I instead now left with only a fragment of my initial inspiration, a ‘tessera’, that I have built upon and developed in a new way? It is possible that this fits better now, looking back. Similarly, is my rejection of digital media a ‘kenosis’: ‘a move towards discontinuity with the influence’? (Bloom, 1997 p. 14) Likewise, this whole project feels like an exercise in ‘daemonization’, essentially realising that everyone borrows from their predecessors and society at large. It’s here that Bloom’s ratios become ambiguous. They reveal themselves as idealised; influence can’t fit into six neat methods, it’s too complicated and messy. They work as a foundation for understanding this, but not much more.
•
The work itself is simple, hand-cut stamps of simple shapes, pressed in dark oil based ink and then hand pressed into a variety of paper types, and presented on another larger roll of white paper. The ‘phasing’ idea taken from Reich was initially implemented as a visual phasing of shapes, digitally, then as digital mockups of a physical piece. It felt obvious and lazily copied. There was no ‘swerve’ to originality there. This is what drove my abandonment of digital media, seeking a new ground to explore in rather than cycling around the same techniques and programs. This began in the same way, a repetition of a shape over itself, to change the perception of the shape, this was successful, but limiting visually. Music is not one ‘shape’. Each note is different, and each instrument or player adds tone colours and subtle interpretations. To mimic this I developed the work by exploring differing shapes in combination with each other, not so much simply phasing now, but developing micro compositions from a series of base elements, exploring each in relation to another or itself, showing how meaning is not defined by the self, but the surroundings too. From here the structure developed: a set selection of papers, an ink pad, and a selection of shapes.
The paper quickly became as much of a key component as the ink and the shapes that it formed. Western and eastern varieties were used, each highlighting not necessarily an influence from a school of thought, but rather a unique whiteness and texture. The ink forms crisp lines on some of the paper and feathers on others. Some appear flat, others cast minute shadows upon themselves and reveal their texture in a raking light. This appreciation of paper and its interaction with the ink adds a curious quality to the work; the same impressions printed digitally would appear perfect, but to a fault. They become sterile, lifeless, brightly lit, free from any shadows.
The shapes themselves are meaningless, but when seen in different arrangements they begin to form signs, some recall the digital imagery that has influenced me greatly as mentioned before, while others speak to the prior experiences of the viewer. A bird, cookies, mother and child, a cell, a triskelion, a tin of sardines; all things that I or others see when looking at the work. This aspect begins to approach semiotics and the study of signs and symbols that Ferdinand de Saussure developed. What might people who are entirely removed from my culture see? The work shows that taking an idea, in this case that of phasing from Reich, out of one world and into my own small corner of visual arts shows the extent to which recontextualisation is a powerful tool, at both a micro and macro level. Influence is shown not only as a deliberate thing that should be embraced and utilised, but also as an unavoidable byproduct of existing in a society as we all do. There is no need for an anxiety of influence, rather, an embrace.
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