the last chapter

My primary critique or issue with Grosz’s approach in this book is the sweeping, generalized uses of terms and concepts — i.e. art, painting, music, sensation, becoming, and also sweeping claims like “Art is of the animal.” I mean, art is a lot of things, and sometimes it is these things that Grosz describes, and sometimes it is something else, or many other things not even considered in this writing. I am generally open to the critical project of this book, I think, but have to continously locate it within a very particular area of writing about art (art as in painting and music, and in relation to the natural world), should it not become contiously bothersome that ‘art’ as it is thought of here is not forgetful or dismissive of (many) other forms of art and ways that art ‘becomes’ in the world or calls its subjects into being. Perhaps this is what happens when a philospher writes about art. [I did not have this reaction when I read Architechture from the Outside, but then again I am not an architect (and neither is Grosz).] And again (just an aside), why no allusion to Deleuze’s books Cinema 1 & Cinema 2? I’m not saying it needs to be in here, but is there no fruitful dialogue between these writings — ie - the affect image or the mirror image, etc?

“There can be no art without the materials of art, but the artistic is an eruption, a leap out of materiality, the kick of virtuality now put into and extracted from matter to make it function unpredictably. Sensations, artworks, do not signify or represent…they assemble, they make, they do , they produce” (75). The most compelling writing comes when Grosz traces the lines of the virtual and the immanent through materiality and the real and then back out into the world, or cosmos. The argument that a becoming-together or becoming-other through sensation is a compelling idea. 

“Sensation has two dimensions, two types of energy: it is composed of affects and percepts. Sensation aims to extract affects from affections and percepts from perception, which is to say that it disembodies and desubjectifies affection and perception” (76). I also like this concept — would be interesting to further explore and pull apart the concepts of affect and percept as constitutive of sensation, though I do not completely agree with how Grosz frames affect here.

More on Grosz and Sensation - Jolie Ruelle

In the final chapter of Chaos, Theory and Art, Gorsz identifies the concept of sensation. I am still struggling to come to terms with the idea that sensation is somehow unmediated by our perceptions. In the case of our embodied minds I believe this to be impossible. She starts by framing art in this way. “All works of art share something in common, whatever else may distinguish different genres and techniques from each other: they are all composed of blocks of materiality becoming-sensation.”  She further states that “Sensation requires no mediation or translation. It is not representation, sign, symbol, but force, energy, rythm, and resonance. Sensation lives not in the body of the percievers, subjects, but in the body of the artwork. Art is how the body senses most directly, with, ironically, the least representational mediation….” (73). While I do believe that art affects us in a seemingly more direct manner, I find it far fetched to state that these sensations are not in us, and exist somehow in the world around us. I am inclined to believe that this feeling of externalized sensation (which might lead to a sense of universiality or singular truth),  is the working of what George Lakoff refers to as the “hidden hand.” “It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought- and that may be a serious underestimate.” (Lakoff, 13) Is it possible that what Grosz in experiencing is the workings of her unconscious thought?

I would love to hear Lakoff and Grosz debate that “Sensation exists independent of the perceptions and affections that mark a living being’s relations with its objects or its Umwelt” (77)  

In Warholls work he uses repetition to dull sensation. A viewer habituates to an image through repeated exposure.  The unconscious relationship to the image shifts, and therefor the sensation felt is no longer as potent. Is this not proof that sensation is within us and mediated? 

Grosz, Faust and Orpheus

Here, I would like to address briefly some quotes and ideas from Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art in relation to the subject of Faust and Orpheus. 

First, Grosz’s overall assertion is that art is an overabundance; it is what is left over after surviving and thriving is done. The idea of excess or overabundance is particularly prevalent in the Faust legend, as Faust is continually engaging in an overabundance of everything. The deal Faust has made with Mephistopheles is that if ever he says that he is satisfied with a particular moment, that he has reached the pinnacle of perfection and wishes to live in this one moment forever, then he is lost. Here Mephistopheles is offering him the whole of the plane of composition, but never all at once. Faust experiences it, frames it and reterritorializes it repeatedly. This is a case of overabundance at it’s maximum. I connect this to the Orpheus legend because Orpheus as the most talented musician ever is presented with an extraordinary ability to create music through the territorializing of chaos in the plane of composition. Both he and Faust suffer and are brought to their downfall by this overabundance. They are both fables in which there is too much beauty, too much art, too much music, and it cannot help or save either of them; in fact it leads directly to their downfall. 

Beth Ratay

Three is the threshold -- Emily

“Art unleashes and intensifies, through the principles of composition, what science contains and slows down through the plane of reference, precisely the creative and destructive impact of vibratory forces on bodies, on collectives, on the earth itself.  And it is only philosophy that is able to understand this common element shared by the arts and the sciences, for it is only through the mediation that philosophical concepts offers that artistic sensations and scientific theorems can interact without colonization, without the one taking over the operations of the other” (62).

I like this pair of sentences.  They are carefully worded, structured, and balanced, almost in resonance with the triadic system of interdisciplinary harmony for which Grosz advocates.  While I share her enthusiasm and idealism for this type of dialog/relationship among various systems of thought, expression, practice, knowledge, etc, I am simultaneously reminded of how lacking/rare a triadic system of logic (or anything) even is, in so many things far beyond art/science/philosophy.  For example, take the Federal government of the U.S., and its three branches of government — executive, judicial, and legislative — all coordinated in elegant theoretical balance with one another in order to protect their intended function and integrity, so that they too “interact without colonization, without the one taking over the operations of the other” (62).  But we all know how slippery and easily corruptible these well intended, intricate systems play out.  In the case of the U.S. government, the intended triadic system is flawed from the very start, ironically reenforcing  mono/binary thinking instead. e.g. The executive branch reenforces the power of one in practice (maybe two if the vice president counts), and two in the electoral process (p.s. the dominant two party system we default to is an embarrassment, an oversimplification and dangerous polarization of values/platforms/issues that are not mutually exclusive, not to mention a complete insult to the very idea of “democracy” the very system is pretending to uphold).  The legislative branch reenforces two in the senate, meanwhile congress and the judicial system are dealing with numbers too big (as in, various, with no consistency, predictable uniformity) for the mono/binary mind to grasp at in a meaningful way.  But three — three is the magic number we continue to gravitate towards in every attempt to break this system of logical default.  Any yet three, somehow keeps devolving to two, and then one.  What’s up with that?  What is it about this pull to the binary, and then — the singular/point?  Why do we see soooooo many attempts to develop this triadic threshold, fumble under the very weight of the thing — skewed, overpowering, unbalanced disharmony (ego?) — it is trying to break away from?  And why is the binary (two) — an even number / harmoniously quantitative / seemingly perfect ratio — paradoxically the root of the dangerously reductive tendency that seeks to organize “the world” in such a way that it ignores and represses complexity to such a degree, that when it finally does resurface, it is categorized as something “unnatural”, irreconcilable, as something then defined and explained as a dysfunctional convolution (e.g. schizophrenia).  

This tendency to want to “snap to the grid”, to quantize (like in music software, not quantum theory) is something I’ve been reflecting on for a while.  It was one of my fascinations with the kinds of questions and experiments that Ben proposed about rhythm, meter, and perception. What is it about 1:1, 4:4, 2:1?  Our brains and our bodies keep taking us there, for better or worse.   And I realize, once again, I’ve taken this out to the metaphysical outskirts, but I don’t think it’s unfounded.  Lots of questions, lots to ponder…

Grosz Reading Response - Jolie Ruelle

Grosz states “ It will my claim here that it is not exactly true that  art is a consequence of the excesses that sexuality or the sexual drive posses, for it may be that sexuality itself needs to function artistically to be adequately sexual.”  (p 64)This reversal in thinking, that sex needs artistic intensity in order to function at all, helped me to draw a stronger delineation between sexual evolution and natural selection. It is much easier for me to come to terms with the idea that sexuality needs art or excess, rather than the idea that art derives from the excess of sexuality. In this way art can “resonate just for itself” and sexual selection can utilize the intensified sensation.

 I found it interesting that Grosz’s interpretation of sensation echoed some of Lingus’s writings on emotion. That although sensation is sensed in the perceiver, it does not live within us. Grosz discusses Straus’s distinction between perception and sensation, “Geography is the space of the map, that which is regulated by measurable abstract coordinates…Landscape by contrast is that space revealed by sensation, which has no fixed coordinates but transforms and moves as a body passes through it.” (p 72) It strikes me that this distinction is merely the difference between types of thinking, the later being based on emotional processing. It is my stance that emotion does not come from external sources. We turn to emotions or sensations in thinking that they provide a form of absolute truth, but how often are our emotions misleading, misguided by our perspective. By believing that sensations come from external sources, we again give power to this idea that there is a universal or “true” sensation that exists outside of our interpretation of it.  

Grosz states that “Sensation is that which is transmitted from the force of an event to the nervous system of a living being and from the actions of this being back onto events.” (p 72) While I believe that this happens everyday and everywhere around us, I don’t feel enough emphasis is put the interpretation of that event. “That which is transmitted” can take any number of forms at the moment it is percieved. Grosz states “Just as space and time are not in us…so sensation is not in us either. We are in it whenever we sense, and it brings us to where sensation occurs, in the artwork itself.” While Grosz doesn’t make the claim that sensation is universal, if sensations are derived from ways of perceiving, aren’t they in us?

Grosz Response, "Milieu and Territory"

 I figure I bought it so I might as well read it…

One passage from the section “Milieu and Territory,” reminded me of Emily’s response to Bipsham last week. Grosz writes, “Both rhythm and milieu are the slowing down, the provisional formalization of elements of chaos: a milieu, the congealing of a block of space-time, and a rhythm, the emergence of a periodicity, are not separable from the block of emergent territoriality” (47”). One section of Emily’s quote that I think is relevant, “It [entrainment] is embedded in everything.” I agree. I think the external rhythm to which organisms synchronize during the process of entrainment can certainly be separated from a “block of emergent territoriality.” This also makes me think about the source of this “external rhythm.” Where does it come from? Does it necessarily need to be coupled with a milieu? Or do creatures embody this rhythm?  

Not entirely clear to me what is at stake with the definition of “territory” in this same section.  Similarly, I’m not 100% clear about what actually constitutes a milieu for Grosz. Later on page 47, she declares, “only when those fragments or elements of milieus…cease to be regulated in their relations to living beings by natural selection alone, do they become expressive, acquire rhythm, or become dimensional.” First off, I sort of have a problem with these types of bold declarations; I have an immediate natural inclination to think of counter-cases, which admittedly, can be unproductive. Secondly, it seems (to me at least) Grosz is claiming that the milieu - the environment itself - acquires rhythm. While I think this may be possible (and it would be interesting to discuss the metaphysics of how an environment somehow contains rhythm), I think it is much more likely that creatures themselves posses rhythm, and that milieus emerge when these creatures gather, as opposed to milieus becoming dimensional when “elements [of milieus]…cease to operate functionally, causally, predictably…”

Music is Knowledge

I am responding specifically  to Grosz’s section “Milieu and Territory.”

First, in relation to a quote that emphasizes Grosz’s assertions that art is surplus. Here she is referring to the fact that birds are either musicians (singers) or artists (colorful and pretty). She says, “It is almost as if each bird can only contain so much intensity, sonorous or visual, and no more, that it can entice and seduce in one particular way rather than in many.” We could take this a step farther and point out that humans, are able to be artists in many ways, although we tend also to focus our energies into one type of art. However, it can be noted that many well known artists, writers and musicians were involved with other arts.

Second, Grosz’s idea here of music as territory in a very literal sense is quite intriguing, and here, very well argued. At the most primitive level, birds and animals use sound to announce their territory to other creatures. More compelling however, is her example of the Australian outback as a musical score since every object had once been sung. She sums this up very well in the first paragraph of this section: “art is always the coupling of extracted elements from the cosmological order and their integration into the lived experience and behavior of organisms.” Art is what we know. It is an extraction of our own experience. The Australian aborigines in singing all that they saw were territorializing and knowing their world through this singing. 

Beth Ratay

Grosz and Chaos -- Natalie McKeever

*”Chaos is not the absence of order but rather the fullness or plethora that, depending on its uneven speed, force, and intensity, is the condition both for any model or activity and for the undoing and transformation of such models or activities.”*

**

*Deleuze:*

*”Chaos is defined not so much by its disorder as by the infinite speed with which every form taking shape in it vanishes. It is a void that is not a nothingness but a virtual, containing all possible particles and drawing out all possible forms, which sprung up only to disappear immediately without consistency or reference, without consequence.”*

**

*”Art, philosophy, and science each erect a plane, a sieve, over chaos, a historicotemporal and mutually referential field of interacting artworks, concepts, and experiments (respectively), not to order or control chaos but to contain some of its fragments in some small space (a discourse, a work of art, an experiment), to reduce it to some form that living can utilize without being completely overwhelmed.”*

**

*”Chaos, the virtual in all its entwined complexity, can be understood as the ongoing possibility of infinite planes, or the plane of all planes that is the condition of every work and the ability of each work to somehow address the others with which it copopulates the plane.”*

I was interested in Grosz’s further definition of chaos in this chapter. Thinking of chaos and order not as opposites necessarily but chaos as an abundance of order, chaos truly being defined by elements of infinity and rapidity that are outside our ability to comprehend and not thinking of chaos as some sort of mess or explosion. In the previous chapter she had explained our way of looking at the world as putting a frame around chaos in order for our minds to be able to function. I am interested in her concentration on framing and sieving the chaos into an understandable form -I have been interested in reading theory about the sublime moment, where the focus is on the opposite, allowing for or at least recognizing the moments where “chaos” in the forms of vastness, infinity, terror etc. I’d beinterested in further discussing the difference between the two ways of theoretically approaching chaos.

*”Along with dance, with which it (music) is closely aligned, music generates movement and activity in the listener/participant.” page 29*

How do participatory artworks fit into this idea? Works of art that require the viewer’s body and movement in order to properly view the work of art or in some cases complete the work of art - does this circuit between viewer/participant and art make the piece something entirely different according to Grosz’s definitions of art/music/philosophy/science?

*”Every object becomes something completely different on entering a different Umwelt.”*

Relational - This idea of the Umwelt kind of plays off of Harraway’s idea that nothing can exist on its own as a “thing” it can only be discussed as a coyote in relation to dogs and so on.

Why music? -- Jesse Fulton

I think Grosz’s main problem in this chapter is that she is trying to usethe single, generic term “music” to refer to performance (courtship),composition (birdsong, whalesong), and the act of listening (physicalresponse to frequencies & patterns.) And by classifying these all as “music”she seems to treat them all much too similarly. There’s never anydistinction/comparison made between the visceral or emotional responses ofthe performer vs. the audience – it all feels very generic. And I think whenyou’re exploring performative acts, this must be taken into consideration (Ifeel that most of her ideas do eventually land back on musical performanceas opposed to composition.)

So, if she’s really talking about performance, then why did she choosemusic? What about dance? Or theater? If we liken music back to courtship,how can we neglect the choreographed dances that certain species of birdsalso do? Or the theatricality of certain plumages (probably not as strong.)Is it because we physically respond to patterns of sound waves and certainfrequencies, but do not physically respond to patterns and frequencies oflight? I think Op Art and other phenomena show that we do physically respondto visual inputs, but I’m not sure how frequently they occur in “nature” orhow readily apparent they are. (Also, from personal experience, most“visceral” responses from visual stimuli are negative rather than euphoric.)

Still, I think the important fact is that this point should not have beenleft unexplored. Especially when making a link back to courtship,sensuality, and sex – how can you leave out dance? To me, the lack ofself-analysis of the following sentence captures the essence of the manyproblematic holes in the text: “Of all of the arts, music is the mostimmediately moving, the most visceral and contagious in its effects, theform that requires the least formal or musical education or backgroundknowledge for appreciation.” (Grosz, 29)

This reading is very frustrating. Maybe I’m missing something by not painingmyself to read far enough between the lines, I can’t find any “substance”here. I see a “big picture” idea when taking all of the readings together,but I feel like they haven’t presented anything of particular significance;nothing has influenced my way of thinking or seeing. It’s like I’m stuck ata formal cocktail party in an uncomfortable suit and tie listening to mygirlfriend have an in-depth conversation about a topic which I totallyrespect her for being passionate about, but which can’t hold my interest formore than a minute.

Response to Grosz -- Daniel Christopher

This week, I’m going to write a response to Grosz because I am in the groupleading discussion for this reading.

One note (I think I mentioned this first week) - I don’t know why Groszincessantly refers to sexuality as it relates to art and science. On page26, she states “I hope to understand music as a becoming, the becoming-otherof cosmic chaotic forces that link the lived, sexually specific body to theforces of the Earth.” What does a sexually-specific body NECESSARILY have todo with the understanding “the becoming-other of cosmic chaotic forces”linked to the Earth? It is not clear to me why she extensively discussessexuality in this context - I think “survival” is a broader, moreapplicable/relevant theme to Chaos, Territory, and Art, than merelysexuality.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of planes. One quote on page 28 thatI’d like to briefly respond to begins, “Chaos…can be understood as theongoing possibility of infinite planes.” I don’t think so. Rather, I thinkchaos, like the concept of infinity, cannot be fully understood by humans,and attempting to frame chaos as the “ongoing possibility of infiniteplanes” seems to be an attempt at defining/categorizing/classifying theunknown. At the same time, I think its fine to extract “information” fromchaos and “erect a plane,” but I don’t think its possible or reasonable toclaim that chaos can be understood as infinite planes.

The main paragraph on pg. 30 got me thinking - is music derived fromlanguage, or visa versa? I think music came before language, but thatlanguage is not necessarily derived from music. It is interesting to thinkabout music and the arts as a product of sexual selection, although, I thinkGrosz puts too much weight on the need/desire to attract a mate as THEexplanation for the genesis of music. Even in prehistoric times, I speculatethat music served other visceral functions which have nothing to do withsexuality - mobilizing a tribe for battle, community rituals (ex.celebration after a hunt), recounting/recording of history, andsupplication/prayer to a supernatural force. In any case, I would argue thatmusic is, “necessary rehearsal and preparation for what is life sustaining.”(30) In any case, despite my complaints about Grosz’s emphasis of sexualityas it relates to music, I definitely agree with Darwin that, “there issomething about vibration and its resonating effects on material bodies thatgenerates pleasure, a kind of immediate bodily satisfaction.” (32) No wonderdancing is often a kind of foreplay. Although I would argue that nowadays, agood percentage of people [read: males] who go to dance clubs seeking asexual encounter merely ASSOCIATE the music and scene with sex, rather thanFEEL the music stimulating their “vibratory force.” This is because I’mcynical, and think that most people are shallow. They dance because that’swhat you do if you want to get laid. If you ask most guys, they don’t dancebecause they like to, they get out on the dance floor because they have to.Furthermore, I don’t think that most males nowadays need their internal”vibratory force” to be stimulated by music in order to mobilize theirorgans and “prepare them for courtship.” Often times, I would speculate thatsubstances replace music as the catalyst for the generation of pleasure and”immediate bodily satisfaction.”

Personally, I do have an interest in how art, science, and philosophyapproach chaos, but to me, this book is pretty much useless. I can’t imagineciting this work in my masters thesis. I’d be fine with shelving this oneand moving on to another author.

Grosz Response 2 - - James Pollack

I found Grosz’s second chapter to be much more readable than her first, butmore importantly, much more cogent & coherent than Haraway’s introduction (while dealing with many of the same topics.

Through a reiteration of Deleuze, Grosz asserts that, “*Art, philosophy, andscience each erect a plane, a sieve, over chaos”(28). When she then claims,”Of all the arts, music is the most immediately moving, the most visceraland contagious in its effects…” the adjectival aspects that are assigned tomusic must in fact be describing its plane/sieve and not, in some way, thechaos of music itself. Contagion is easier seen in music than say,literature or painting — it happens quite often that a room full of peoplewho hear music may respond to it in a way that is immediately andeffectively displayed (dance, singing along, clapping, other actions ofbodies in motion). It’s less easy to see artists or writers adopting thesame plane as the art/literature that they encounter — probably because theproduction of music itself contains an immediacy that’s lacking in anapproach to creativity that involves some amount of lag between thebeginning of the creation and its finished form. Furthermore, people aren’tgenerally privy to seeing each letter appear on a page of a novel as it’swritten; we do, however, get a certain measure of access to music as it iscreated (even if it is a performance of a prewritten piece). Listening tomusic is like walking down that hallway in the intro to the TV show GetSmart — we go through a series of doors, only each of these doors is asieve through which we must pass to get to the next movement, to understandthe final crescendo. *

* *

*Whether music derives from language (self-preservation) or language frommusic (sexual-selection) may be a false dichotomy. If a bird’s song eitherwarns about an approaching predator or sounds like a Top-40 Radio Hit maydepend on whether you’re a bird or a person. Frankly, without tone-reliantphoneme blocking (being able to tell the difference between the beginning ofone word and the end of another), language acquisition is impossible. Atsome level, it isn’t difficult to imagine an utterance that straddles thisbinary barrier — a language lacking tonal differentiation doesn’t seemlikely to develop, nor does a pre-linguistic music seem likely to spreadaround the globe (the argument might be made that environmental pressuresforced the independent rise of music across geographic regions.*

* *

*Sexual dimorphism, or “the differences in vocal physiology between the twosexes” (31) is often employed by evolutionary biologists to explainbehavioral differences. That is, females can be choosy because they haveless eggs than males have sperm. But I’m not sure that the logic holds inGrosz’s analysis: males can ??? because they have bigger vocal cords thanfemales. It’s much easier to explain dimorphism in terms of survival(breeding, eating). Which may actually be what’s happening. It doesn’tmake much sense to talk about sexual vs. natural selection — isn’t sexualselection an expression of the survival instinct? Or is natural selectionlimited to the individual’s most basic needs (sleep, food, water)? *

* *

*Waxing poetic, Grosz asserts that, “Living beings are vibratory beings:vibration is their mode of differentiation, the way they enhance and enjoythe forces of the earth **itself” (33). This sounds nice, but I don’treally know what it means. What other modes of differentiation arethere? Whatabout nonliving beings? Are there other methods of differentiation? Howdoes vibration enhance the forces of the earth? How does vibration helpenjoyment of the forces of the earth? What are the forces of the earthitself? She continues to say that music, “**serves the vaguer purposes **ofevocative intensification and pleasure” and later that music “**bring(s)something new to the world, create something that has no other purpose thanto intensify, to experience **itself” (39).***

* *

*I’ll return to a complaint that I had about previous readings — looking atthings at a species level may miss some important individual facts: if,say, there were a musician who were going to jump off of a building butinstead wrote a devastating sonata, isn’t that an act of survival? Or mustit be explained as the musician excessive attempt at impressing a musicianof the opposite sex? For surely there’s a better way to look at art than asexcess. I know that after Post-Modernism everyone’s searching for a way toimbue an utter lack of meaning with meaning (often by claiming thatmeaninglessness is wonderful!)….*

* *

*I especially like when Grosz starts to talk about Uexkull’s view that “ananimal is not immersed wholesale in a given milieu, but at best engages withcertain features that are of significance to it, that counterpoint, in somesense, with its own organs” (40). I think this is what Lingus was trying tosay about the walls/ocean/scientist/sailor analogy — that there’s somethingto the boundaries of environments that at a certain point dictates what canbe understood in those environments, whether the environment is the humanbody, a mansion, or a ship at sea.*

Response to Grosz-- Heather Logas

The direction my work is taking is to use games to help us examine and re-write the harmful myths of our society. By myths, I mean stories we tellourselves to help us better understand the universe. This definition hasstrong connections with Grosz, who describes art, science and philosophy inthis way:

“Each is a practice the living perform on chaos to extract some order andpredictability or some force of a concept, quality or intensity from chaosthat it, in turn, gives up to particular types of living being in particularways.”(Grosz, 26)

“Art, philosophy, and science each erect a plane, a sieve, over chaos, ahistoricotemporal and mutually referential field of interacting artworks,concepts and experiments (respectively), not to order or control chaos butto contain some of it’s fragments in some small space (a discourse, a workof art, an experiment), to reduce it to some form that the living canutilize without being completely overwhelmed”. (Grosz, 28)

Grosz here provides an alternative definition (or another way of stating thesame thing) of myths. The myth can be seen, in a broad way, as analternative word for what Grosz calls “fragments” of chaos. Art, philosophyand science therefore are all mythologies. (Religion could also becontained in this category.) It is interesting to note that theseapparently disconnected realms (mythologies) all serve essentially the samepurpose to human kind, that of describing small bits of chaos so that we canavoid being overwhelmed by it.

Response to Grosz -- Beth Ratay

“Darwin suggests, in terms that perhaps ironically anticipate a feminism of difference, that the elaboration of the voice as an instrument of seduction must have occurred before the human was fully human, and before human cultures became patriarchal…”

This quote from pg 34 of the Grosz gives a fairly good summary of what is said in these few pages (33-35). After reading this passage, I was struck by the sheer amount of things that weren’t said. I did not find any indication of whether or not Grosz agrees with Darwin’s overall assertion that women have a sweeter voice than men because they developed it earlier in the primate evolution in order to attract males.

My first problem with this assertion is that what is considered to be the most desirable, most beautiful voice in a given culture can vary radically from group to group. In some places, women sing only in the chest voice (not the “sweet” head voice that is preferred in Western music), and many places prefer a forward, nasal sound. Also, men have a much larger natural range of vocal production, since they have access to the falsetto as well, which could imply the opposite assertion that men developed more flexibility vocally than women to attract mates.

Second, I feel that this portion, and the whole chapter so far, ignores that fact that music is found as a group activity in most cultures. It has been found that music production is found in all humans, and this argues for the fact that it derived from use in sexual selection. However, music has an extremely strong social aspect that thus far has not been addressed by Grosz. How is this group music related to music’s original role in sexual selection?

Chaos, Territory, Art Chapter 2 -- Jolie Ruelle

In this reading Gosz presents the question of whether music comes from language, or language from music. “Even in it’s very origins, evolutionary theory is divided in how it considers music (and the visual arts) as derived from language (and the visual arts as forms of rehearsal for survival) or whether language is seen as an evolutionary outcome of musicality.” (p 30) While at first, either seems possible and this differentiation not of much consequence, the discussion that followed proved that this evolutionary distinction can lead to important discoveries about the role of art and artist. “If music is derived from language, so the argument goes, then music is fundamentally based on natural selection and served the purpose of self preservation. If on the contrary, language derives from music, then it may be that music and the arts are the product of sexual selection, the ability to attract a mate. At stake in this discussion, in other words, is the question whether music remains frivolous, part of sexual amusement, or a more serious and necessary rehearsal and preparation for what is life sustaining. Is music what we share with animals, an outcome of our animal heritage; or is it that which distinguishes the human from the animal?” (p30)

As Grosz points out sexual selection is beyond mere practical means for survival. It operates on excess, and often can not be defined in terms of it’s “ends or goals.” As Grosz states “In affirming the radical distinction between natural and sexual selection - that is, between skills and qualities that enable survival and those that enable courtship and pleasure, which sometimes overlap but commonly do not - Darwin introduced an excessiveness into the development and transformation of species.” Due to sexual selection, a more simplistic Darwinian theory, where the stronger survive as the weaker are eliminated, can not account for all evolutionary processes. The very acts that promote sexual selection are often in contradiction with those geared towards self preservation(e.g. the plumage of a peacock). It is only through this excessiveness that art can focus on sensation, and pleasure, free from the constraints of a mere survival based existence. As Grosz states “What music and the arts indicate is that (sexual) taste and erotic appeal are not reducible to the pragmatic world of survival, although ofcourse subject to its broad principle as a limit: they indicate that those living beings that “really live” that intensify life - for it’s own sake, for the sake of intensity or sensation- bring something new to the world, create something that has no other purpose than to intensify, to experience itself.”(p39)

Whale songs, Songlines, chaos, territory, art — Helen Park

Just wanted to post a few links in an intial response to Grosz’s chapter 2:

Whale songs mapped and ‘framed’ into art:

“Subtle Math Turns Songs of Whales Into Kaleidoscopic Images”

http://aguasonic.com/ 

“The First Australians” - A really excellent documentary series on Aboriginal history in Australia. First episodes discuss the Dreaming & Songlines. Fascinating.

Here is the interactive content link: THE DREAMING

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I am compelled to look more closely at Grosz’s example of the Aboriginal Australians (Grosz herself is an Australian), whose Songlines embody the very essence of her discussion around territory: the convergence of milieu and rhythm from which territory emerges (“..it is only when a rhythm and a milieu cohere, form internal relations with each other, induce each other to come together, the rhythm functioning now as that particular temporal form of a region, that a territory can emerge, that the raw materials of art can erupt and the processes of deterritorialization, which are the condition of art, can begin. 47-48.) The Songlines are an incredible example of these processes, forming deeply complex mappings and mythologies of a land. That a people could navigate the vast, gaping openness of the Australian landscape through song itself is simply amazing.

(I’m going to quote from Wikipedia now, sorry.) “Since a songline can span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Languages are not a barrier because the melodic contour of the song describes the nature of the land over which the song passes. The rhythm is what is crucial to understanding the song. Listening to the song of the land is the same as walking on this songline and observing the land.” (my emphasis)

The songlines, comprised of localized (read: milieu) compositions “sing the world into existence” - so, together through rhythm and milieu, many songlines form and join together; a territory (or many) emerges, songlines perform a deterritorializing of the earth as they frame its chaos into coherence. Through the creator of the songline, the earth and the body are joined in a becoming-together: “It is because there is a direct connection between the forces and features of the earth and those that produce the body, it is because the earth is already directly inscribed contrapuntally in the body, that the body can sing the earth and all its features,… A song sings the earth and signs the body, a song brings a body to earth and the land to the body, enabling one to touch the very core of the other, singing the story of a past while bringing about a new future, a new marking of the earth, a new inscription of bodies and territories” (my emphasis, 49-50). 

Human song, bird song, whale song… “elements of convergent evolution” (39)

Grosz eloquently makes these connections between the body (human, bird, whale), the earth, and song, further elucidating her philosophical proposals in regards to art and the conditions from which it must arise. The beginnings of the chapter concerning bird and whale songs I also found quite compelling, and could not help but make the connections, albeit loosely, to Haraway’s companion species — these readings together forming a conceptual, philosophical framework for understanding this becoming-together of human, animal, insect, bird, rice, earth, cosmos. There is a common thread of this inscribing into each other, which both Grosz and Haraway explore in various ways - biological in terms of evolution and sexuality, ideological, philosophical. I included the links above to the whale song visualizations as they relate to Grosz’s ideas around the whale song and the framing of chaos as the work of art. Here, it is through the wavelet as the framing of the whale song (itself a frame) which finds the visual articulation through circular patterns. 

Response to Elizabeth Grosz -- James Pollack

In the first chapter of her book *Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and theFraming of the World, *Elizabeth Grosz spells out an ambitious plan toexplore the ontological origins of art as an attempt to discover whichconcepts drive artistic creation. Grosz, a philosopher by trade, spendssome time defending her discussion of art: “What distinguishes the artsfrom other forms of cultural production are the ways in which artisticproduction merges with, intensifies and eternalizes or monumentalizes,sensation” (4). If, as Grosz argues, sensation is the basis of theexpressive act, then the study of these sensations and the systems fromwhich they arise and to which they give rise transcends aesthetics into therealm of metaphysics. Indeed, Grosz’s entire project can be (and is perhapsbest) viewed, as making clear the distinguishing characteristics of physicaland extraphysical presence while explaining the extension presence beyond,through, and between domains. After all, “Art,” writes Grosz, “enablesmatter to become expressive, to not just satisfy but also to intensify - toresonate and become more than itself” (4). The artist, in a Gippetto-likedisplay of sheer imaginative desire, wills the inert into motion. That thismotion may not be toward anything in particular is of little consequence toGrosz, who finds that art & nature share a quality of, “excessive anduseless production - production for its own sake…” (9.)

Grosz is not an evolutionary biologist, yet claims that “Art hijackssurvival impulses and transforms them through the vagaries andintensifications posed by sexuality, deranging them

into a new order, a new practice. Art is the sexualization of survival

or, equally, sexuality is the rendering artistic, the exploration of the

excessiveness, of nature” (12). Her justification of the artistic act isbased on an understanding of shared sensations — in isolation, even”sensation as nonorganic life” (9) is meaningless. Hence her preoccupationwith the sexual reproduction as a method of exchange. Thus, “Art is notlinked to some intrinsic relation to one’s own body but exactly theopposite: it is linked to those processes of distancing… that abstractsensation from the body” (12). Here, the Taostic principle warrantsapplication: it hardly seems as through looking at presence is anydifferent than absence. Absence is simply presence displaced, or presenceabsence overcome. The idea that we must commune with the world outside ofour own body requires other bodies. Grosz’s metaphysics, as much as sheattempts to deterritorialize the entire world, requires distinction:”unless it is in some way demarcated, nature itself is incapable of… liftinglife above mere survival” (17).

With this, Grosz’s first chapter leaves behind the grubby, earthy questionof *what* for the ethereal, spiritualized question of *how*. Unlike theuseless or excessive art Grosz , Grosz’s discussion of conceptual framing,realized through a series of architectural examples, seems quitefunctional. Normally this is a critique that can be sidestepped through anexplanation that the author, herself, is not an artist — but in Grosz’scase, given the strength of her pleas that philosophy be seen as a siblingto art, some of the same standards may be applied.

Grosz falls into oversimplification when she explains the, “transitionalpassage from the frame to the screen, a movement of growingdematerialization” (17). Though she mentions that the action of art seemsto occur more and more in the “enfolded second-order constitution of theframe,” Grosz is overeager in her abandonment of the physicality ofcomputing — those bytes and bits are stored in spatiotemporal matter. Thefact that these data are on a hard disk, impossible to see with the nakedeye, adds to a sense of dematerialization, but does not override the lessobvious fact that these data are extant. Her analysis is more successfulwhen she approaches the screen as primarily concerned with “render[ing]visible forces that are themselves invisible” (22). While imagining data tobe invisible, in the same way she imagines the human body’s relationshipwith sensation, may allow for the metaphysical discussion that Grosz wantsto have, she hasn’t done the ground work to convince this reader that thesystems she’s discussing warrant such treatment.

That said, it’s the first chapter. So maybe this is the ground work.

Response to Grosz -- Duncan Bowsman

I was first confused at Grosz’s insistence on holding up architectureas the “most primordial and animal of all of the arts.” It seemed tome that a lot of what was being done was just a sort of metaphoricalmapping of the concepts of one particular form of art onto all art ingeneral, which could have been done with any other art form. However,she later clarifies that “… what is described above may be regardedas a kind of genealogy of the plane of composition and the art-eventsthat erupt on its surface, it is not the only genealogy, nor the only(historical, cultural) reconstruction of the origins of art,” whichpleased me sufficiently as an explanation. Perhaps Grosz’s most important point, to my mind, regarding definingthe frame, i.e., “The frame separates. It cuts into a milieu orspace. This cutting links it to the constitution of the plane ofcomposition, to the provisional ordering of chaos… to arrest or slowthem into a space and a time, a structure and a form where they canaffect and be affected by bodies.” What I didn’t understand is how aconcept as ubiquitous as frames could be made to seem so esoteric (itmight have been all the architecture references that created thisimpression in me, or Grosz’s redundant rhetorical style which namesthings, gives them labels, and appellatizes objects in the world). Ifeel like there has to be an easier way to explain the concept thanterritory-wall-painting-window-mirror-screen-becoming, which is stillan unclear term to me. I get the feeling that maybe it was just somesort of example being used in service of a larger point I might havemissed, though, and don’t want to get too hung up on it. One particular omission struck me as interesting and somehowdeliberate. On pages 20-22, Grosz discusses painting and music, thenlumps literature in with the implications of the discussion of thoseforms without actually discussing literature. Does Grosz feel safewith this omission because literature is, like painting and music,visual and aural? Should we?

Thoughts on Grosz (and Lingis) -- Sudhu Tewari

Two ideas from the Grosz reading stuck out in my mind.

1. The first is perhaps too reductive or essentialized in my summation: The origin of art as a bi-product of indeterminate evolutionary mutations, the only non irrelevant effect of which is its (art’s) influence on sexual selection (and thus the propagation of that specific mutation of living body). – wow-

2. The idea of framing chaos in order to slow it down to facilitate the extraction of meaning. I relate this directly to musical concepts, especially the Indian Nada Brahma, that everything was/is born of sonic vibrations and the Greeks’ Music of the Spheres. Chaos is “the whirling, unpredictable movement of forces, vibratory oscillations that constitute the universe” (Grosz 5). Grosz’s frame could be harmony, the organization of chaos into mathematical relationships more perceptible by us humans. But by the same right, maybe our universe, our chaos is a framed, less chaotic chaos to another, and so on and so forth.

While these two ideas stuck out to me, I’m confused about how Grosz links her arguments. How does Grosz make the jump from art as evolutional excesses to architecture and the frame? Each argument makes sense on its own but I don’t see the connection between the two.

More questing for meaning:

In chatting, a process of casual discourse, with one of my classmates, colleagues, associates, an interest in finding a common, unifying, integrative thread, theme, thesis (theses) between the writings, conceptual outpourings, of these two authors was revealed as a commonality, a shared interest of our, two, respective intellects. I find myself often looking for apoint, the corporate “take-away” and so I’ve striven to construct “useful” meaning, briefly, and flippantly, below.

Lingis seems be working from the perspective of a human, while Grosz appears to be working from the perspective of a larger, less subjective viewpoint (godlike/universal?).

Lingis’ correlates color and emotion. “All colors, according to John Locke and seventeenth century epistemology, including the “color” of emotion are subjective effects within the psyche of the viewer.”

Grosz presents color (a component of the larger category of art) as indeterminate evolutionary development facilitated by an “overabundance of resources beyond the need for mere survival”

Here our esteemed authors appear to diverge, but perhaps they are in agreement. Through the lens of “usefulness” color and emotion are irrelevant, except in the small ways in which art, color or emotion might slightly influence the life or death of a living body, sexual selection being the most relevant example.

Grosz’s concept of the frame, in/through which chaos is slowed down and something less chaotic/more meaningful (to humans) can be extracted could be likened to Lingis’ idea of the face as a blank wall on which meaning is made/shown/perceived.

Grosz: “Art takes a bit of chaos in a frame in order to form a composed chaos that becomes sensory, or from which it extracts a chaoid sensation as variety” (Deleuze and Guattari)

Lingis: “A face is a field that accepts some expressions and connections and neutralizes others. It is a screen and a framework. To be so confronted with a face is to envision a certain range of things that could be expressed on it and to have available a certain range of things one could address to it.”

In the above two quotes, the scope of possibility is reduced, less choice = less chaos, therefore more human understandability, graspability. By framing chaos, we humans create meaning. But these frames are created with or without us humans, whether we conceptualize, write or engage in discourse about frames and chaos.

Grosz considers “Art and nature, art in nature (to] share a common structure: that of excessive and useless production – production for its own sake”. So, if art is being produced, naturally and in nature, and meaning merelya construction of the human psyche, then

Games and Art -- Heather Logas

One of the current problems with discussing games as art is figuring out howgames fit into established theoretical frameworks. Its not that games are arelatively new medium, as is often suggested. Games are in fact an ancientmedium, fully intertwined with human history. It is, rather, that the studyof games *as art* is relatively new and is something that game makers andacademics are struggling to establish.

Even though Elizabeth Grosz does not include games in her list of artisticpursuits, she provides an understanding of art that is easily applied togames. Grosz says that the concept of *framing* is key to the understandingof art. “Framing is how chaos becomes territory. Framing is the means bywhich objects are delimited, qualities unleashed, and art madepossible” (Grosz, 17). She describes framing as the enclosing ordemarcating of a space. Art selects from chaos — all things possible — tocreate a sub-set of things that can be presented. In painting, this can bethought of as literally the frame that surrounds a painting. Inarchitecture, this can be thought of as the walls, floor, roof,that separates the inside space from the world outside. In music it is thenotes, rhythm, instrument choice etc. In games, the “frame” is the set ofrules by which the game is played.

The rules of a game limit the infinite field of possible actions to a fewsmall, specific, chosen actions. In this way, games demarcate a space — aspace of possible action.

“Art enables matter to become expressive, to not just satisfy but alsointensify — to resonate and become more than itself. This is not to saythat art is without concepts; simply that concepts are by-products oreffects rather than the very material of art.” (Grosz, 4) Games areexcellent emotion machines. Playing games can evoke powerful emotions ofexcitement, anger, frustration, joy and elation. It is through the playingof a game, that is the enacting of the rules and participation in the gamespace that evokes these emotions. What makes games work as art isephemeral. It is not the board, the pixels, or even the rules set to paper. Rather it is in the playing of a game that the potential energy of a gameis unleashed. In playing there is the potential for the concepts — the”by-products” to make themselves known. The game*Train<http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/06/24/can-you-make-a-board-game-about-the-holocaust-meet-train/>* (which my classmates are probably tired of hearing about) is an excellentexample of this quote by Grosz in action. In *Train*, the physical materialof the game is intimidating to look at, but it is playing the game that thepotential emotional energy of those objects and the rules that describetheir use become unlocked. *Train* has an intense emotional effect on itsplayers. And the by-product of *Train*, what people reflect on afterplaying, is a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and the people who wereinvolved in the system that kept this horror moving along.

I found it exciting to read the first chapter of *chaos, territory, art *andrecognize the ways in which games could easily, and effectively, bedescribed by the framework of art that Grosz is describing so far.

A million lines of flight -- OR -- The one time I can justify the apparent schizophrenic nature of my response as being completely in line with the ideas presented in this text and all of the texts to which it refers -- Emily Martinez

On sexual ambiguity, the creative process, the acceleration of knowledge, technological evolution, and its relationship to art, the future (and philosophy).

In response to the followiing:

“[Grosz’s interest in] exploring the peculiar relationships that art establishes between the living body, the forces of the universe and the creation of the future, the most abstract of questions, which, if they are abstract enough, may provide us with a new way of understanding the concrete and the lived” (Grosz 3).

“Darwin understands in terms of natural selection: these forms of sexual selection, sexual attraction, affirm the excessiveness of the body and the natural order, their capacity to bring out in each other what surprises, what is of no use but nevertheless attracts and repeals. Each affirms an overabundance of resources beyond the need for mere survival, which is to say, to the capacity of both matter and life to exchange with each other, to enter into becomings that transform each. They attest to the artistic impact of sexual attraction, the becoming-other that seduction entails… a fundamentally dynamic, awkward, mal-adaptation that enables the production of the frivolous, the unnecessary, the pleasing, the sensory for its own sake” (Grosz 7).

If I’m understanding this correctly, certain aspects of sexuality cannot be defined as, or exclusively determined by, either genetic predisposition or philosophical construct. Sexual attraction is instead, the resonance felt, physiologically, through this patterning of “sensory excess” which is already built into the natural world, and which we further (re)define by de/re/constructing ever increasing, infinitely varied, cultural (and subcultural, ad infinitum) worlds . In other words, attraction is not bound to a predetermined biological order (i.e. for the default purposes of reproduction) — it is fluid, subject to mutations and adaptations that arise from this blurring and re-patterning of our epistemological ideas and perceptions of how we are embodied and coupled with the natural and constructed cultural and social orders, and the potential sexualization of every weird thing those orders give rise to.

I can be attracted to a lot of people/things because my reality — the basis from which all possible universes can emerge — is constructed as much as it is inherited. What turns me on, then, results from the infinitely complex overlap and intersection of those worlds, mediated by the physiological response of “my body” to sensual experiences in those worlds. And this applies to art as much as it does to sex/life. The creative process gives rise to new “objects”/attractors, which give rise to new creative responses and categories of identity — “Art is the sexualization of survival or equally, sexuality is the rendering artistic, the exploration of the excessive, of nature” (Grosz 11). This process is infinitely recursive and transmutable. Evolution (biological and cultural), after all, emerges from chaos, and draws its options for diversity from chaos. The frame/ boundary > territory > object/expression, “framing/deframing”, “territorialization/deterritorialization”, “cutting”, “separating”, “unheaving”, “transforming” process, reaffirms that. — “Qualities are now loosened onto the world, no longer anchored in their ‘natural’ place but put into the play of sensations that departs from mere survival to celebrate it means and excess” (Grosz 13). In our current techno-culture, this is further multiplied at exponentially accelerating rates, through the fragmentation and dissemination of information compounded by the proliferation of technology, allowing for what McLuhan described as, “the instant and total rehearsal of all pasts and all processes, which enable us to perceive the function of such perpetual returns as one of purgation and purification, translating the entire world into a world of art”.

With regards to art’s relationship to the “creation of the future”, I am tempted to write about Kurzweil’s singularity and “law of accelerating returns” now, but I won’t — I only mention it to set myself up for what I’m sure will be a future conversation about the multiplicity of possibility that arises from our increasingly deepening relationship with machine/technology.

Other thoughts/tangents on the ontology of “becoming”, rather than “being”:

I’m thinking of Alfred Korzybski and the obscure netherworld of General Semantics (unrelated to semantics, though Korzybski is influenced by Charles Peirce), the basic idea of which is that we only come to know the world through abstractions or “semantic reactions” — limitations imposed by our nervous systems, sensory perceptions, and our linguistic structures. Language creates our reality as emphatically as biology. His main beef was with specific uses of the verb “to be”, particularly the “is” of identity, which has implicit limitations.

But perhaps a better example is Buckminster Fuller, whose ontological philosophy on “being” is also in “always becoming”, or in his words, “I seem to be a verb.” I thought of him last week too, when discussing this business of “3”s. His whole thing with synergetics (studying systems in transformation), non-Euclidean space, the tetrahedron and the 4th vector as the “energy event” / 4D, is about an always present enactment of the multiplicity of possibility:

“By tetrahedron, we mean the minimum thinkable set that would subdivide the universe and have the interconnectedness where it comes back upon itself… the tetrahedron as a basic vectorial model is the fundamental structural system of the universe. The open-ended triangular spiral as action, reaction, and resultant becomes half quantum” - Buckminster Fuller

Anyway, super tangent, but in my mind (the one that makes art), this is a very useful model for thinking about how things actually behave, and for breaking away from the static convention of the cartesian coordinate system (and all other flatten trinity systems).