Date: Tue, 04 Jun 1996 18:43:57 -0500
From: barrett john erickson <barrett-AT-skypoint.com>
Subject: additional note re: aesthetic automatism



>...
>Rather than simply ignore this garbage, the tract, AA was written, as a 
>statement which requires that artists have a responsibility to develope 
>an aesthetic as part of their total awareness. There is no attempt to 
>state WHAT SORT of an aesthetic, nor how much one must have, or to 
>qualify it in any sort of way, we simply stated the necessity for it to 
>be a part of personal artistic evolution.
>
> BARRETT....I hope I've stated this fairly well, but PLEASE add to 
>this....
>...

Not bad at all, william, but a bit of clarification may be called for
nonetheless:

There was "no attempt to state WHAT SORT of an aesthetic...or to qualify it
in any sort of way" because that would be directly contrary to the theory.  

The "aesthetic" we speak of is a unique and natural evolutionary process for
_every_ individual, growing with inevitable beauty from the accumulated
effects of spontaneous action in the pursuit of intuitive desire, or twisted
and deformed by the avoidance or displacement thereof.  

Conceptually, this "aesthetic" is nearly identical to what is usually
referred to as the "self."  We cannot avoid the formation of this
"aesthetic," anymore than we can avoid a sense of "self" -- it is a certain
consequence of reflexive consciousness (aka "self-awareness") -- we can only
encourage or deny the full development of its _unique_ natural (convulsive)
beauty.

The disappointing work we encountered in ARTlab was the result of taking
automatism for an end rather than a beginning of the
exploratory/experimental process.


>The reason I'm bringing this up, is, because I KNOW, once we begin to 
>"look" for works to exhibit, we are going to run into this problem, 
>and, because it was so much greater a problem for ARTlab than I would 
>have imagined before-hand, I think we should address it before it 
>becomes a problem for us.
>

Unfortunately, i am no closer now than i was last year to being able to
offer any clues as to how to utilize this concept in segregating truly
exploratory work from that which merely simulates exploration, unless one is
able to view work produced over a period of time.


~~barrett

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
barrett: <http://www.skypoint.com/~barrett/>
ARTlab:  <http://www.skypoint.com/~barrett/ARTlab/>
Aesthetic Automatism: <http://www.skypoint.com/~barrett/aarc/>
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