More than any other material, glass is probably the one which has most inspired modern cultural trends. Not only physically, but philosphically and mentally. The theories of the likes of Baudrillard, Debord, Irigaray, and a host of other contemporary cultural investigators regarding simulation, the mirror, the spectacle, cyberspace and more, are enormously dependant on the invisible qualities of glass.

What we are looking at here is an image of clear glass transformed through lenses and transparencies of high translucency in such a way that we can perceive images through it. Focusing both light, and our attention, enabling us to perceive an image made in one context - on site - and transported to another - a research students presentation.

Glass barriers, protects, and engages through its invisibility, it opens space up to its surroundings while defining that space at the same time.

The space can be accessible visually, yet not physically, but its shape and size are very clear, the space is viewable, and understood because,primarily it is the visual experience that we rely on more than any other.

It is the visual engagement with the world that has given rise to a primarily visual understanding of it, and for us glass is a mediator between reality and perception.

It magnifies, focuses, with little distortion, and also intervenes as physical barrier or protector, to create demarkated space, which even though visible can be felt to be public or private.

In these images I also appear reflected on the surface of what I am looking through, looking through the camera, at the window and beyond it -and me- at the same time.

"Windscreen", Windshield", the interior space made public through the need for clear viewing, but private enough, isolated enough to be experienced in isolation, still visually aware of the world around, but like the participant in reality behind the camera transformed into an observer/spectator. Baudrillard speaks of "Speed [creating] a space of initiation...The triumph of forgetting over memory" in his book "America", as he's driving across the desert. But he makes no mention of the windshield/window which makes the experience what it is. The absence of the direct experience of speed, while being in motion. He goes on to say "Driving like this produces a kind of invisibility, transparency, or transversality in things..." but this is by no means peculiar to the desert, the adjectives all point to the material glass and the experience it makes possible. Its very likely that much of what makes up the basis of Baudrillard's theories of simulation as reality have to do with the effects which glass have on experience. The invisible barrier/protector, which appears absent but which is very present and directly affects experience so often.

"Seeing through is rarely seeing into." I see myself represented not just as a reflection on what I am looking through, but appearing on screen. It is obvious that I am meant to be aware of my awareness of being watched.

The window allows me to look in, and to see myself as an electronic image, the two glass surfaces are the same material, the same substance; as I appear as a reflection on one, I also appear as as image on the other. The shop behind the window is in many ways as much an image, the physical space is denied me, flattened behind the window just as I am flattened against it.

The invisible barrier allows the camera to see me as much as I am allowed to look in.

Glass is finally the basic substance of one of the most common household objects, television.

It is integral to the technological momentum of the culture of information and communication. I am writing on glass, or looking through glass at what I am writing, I'm not sure. (writing on a computer).

I am manipulating information on the screen,

I can write, record, watch, participate to some extent, an "omnipotent" viewer within the edges of the screen.

I appear to participate, but there is one thing that stops me, and reminds me of the limitations, the invisible barrier, the glass through which I look.

The glass used in installation work such as "Living and Breathing Space" and "The Golden Hind project" was the primary reason for the choice of the sitings for the objects in the installation work. The relevance of these places has to do with the presentation of objects in environments which are not constructed for the display of objects - such as gallery situations - but which were predetermined by previous or existing functions.

The glass in Living and breathing space was as important as the video of sneezing, or the computer, in fact the relationship of windows and screens between these three, and the other part of the installation were integral to the use of the spaces as locked and inaccessible physical spaces.

Metaphorically the glass surfaces of the work, and its spacial bordering are meant to emphasise the relationship between the art objects and the observer, to point to the surroundings of the art objects by blurring the boundary, or edge between the work and its environment by leaving the frame around the work unclear.

What distinguishes one object from another - in the sense of its meaning - is the pattern of its constituents,as much how it is organised, and what is organised around it as the potentially unique aspects of the constituents themselves.

An object is - in some manner - a constituent itself amongst others, it doesn't exist in a vacumn or neutral location, but necessarily becomes an aspect of a pattern of constituents through the nature of its location or where it is perceived. This location is malleable, in re-presentations the framework is adjusted by the perspective of the photographic eye, or the interpretations of the photographer who directs the gaze, positions the frame, or creates a context in which the image is reproduced.

The effects of different sites, both in a physical and a socially conditioned sense, have impacts on the value given to art which is sited within them. To use post modernist terminology: the significance of negotiations between the observer and observed is impinged upon by the navigation undertaken during the observation.

Sculpture is a language of communication which involves the observer in considering not only the object or sculpture itself - its positive shape and form - but also the space around it, the "negative" shape, or the location/settting for the art work. This relationship is fundamental to sculpture. In considering painting for example, we, more often than not, refer only to the space of an image inside a frame, its edge clearly defining borders of the content of the work. Sculpture sits less comfortably within the concept of the frame: when considering a sculpture in landscape for example, the only clear edge is the surface, or skin of the object itself. The place around that immediate surface, where the sculpture exists, may be said to frame the work in some fashion, but this edge is blurred at best. This interplay of meaning, significance, and value between the sculpture and the location is something with which both the artist and observer shape the aesthetics of what they create, and come across.

During the 20th century, the form and content of the art "object" in western culture has precluded considerations of place and context. During the same period, the presentational structures of museums and galleries developed the context of "wide, white, open spaces" for the viewing of art. These spaces provided isolated environs which attempted to neutralize the space around the object, and place significance on its existance within its own frame.

The space of the museum/gallery around it attempted to absent the rest of the world from the viewers consideration. This provoked speculation during the 60's and 70's which suggested that, rather than neutral space, the almost empty white space of the gallery might itself be placed in future histories as the single most powerful visual image of western art in the 20th century.

This is a representation of Marcel Duchamps famous "fountain". I think I'm right in saying that the original was lost, and this image is of another produced after the initial exhibition in 1917. This idea of "authentic original" will come up again later in this presentation, but I'd like to look at some of the story surrounding its first presentation in an exhibition.

"Fountain" was submitted under the name of "R. Mutt" to the first exhibition organized by the "society of Independant Artsits" based in New York, February, 1917. The show was advertised as being open to all exhibitors who paid a $6.00 entrance fee. "Fountain" was seen with very different eyes to the one's we look at it today with, it was a urinal, and it was only the signature which indicated that it sohould be place in a "subverting" manner.

Duchamp was present at the meeting of the steering committee - being a member of the society - where it was decided how to deal with this object. True to his nature, he didn't say a word while the decision of what to do with the thing was being made.

It was decided that the work should be exhibited, to comply with the "openess" of the entrance requirements - being $6.00 (not a small sum in those days, what with the war and all...) but at the back of the hall, where it would be sited behind a partition, as it was considered somewhat embarassing. Once this decision had been reached, Duchamp spoke for the first time to tender his resignation from the society.

Shortly after this, the urinal dissappeared from view entirely, until Walter Arensberg - a friend of Duchamp's came to the exhibition and asked to see "R. Mutt's Fountain". He was told that such a work didn't exist, at which point he said that that was a shame as he wanted to buy it. The work was then miraculously located, whereupon he too resigned from the Society of Independant Artists, as did several others. For me this story is a kind of parable of 20th century art, and anti-art. In the passage of time since this event, the "fountain" has become meaningful in ways which couldn't have been predicted at the time. Its also a nice story to have in the back of your mind when undertaking the struggle to show and exhibit, or "place" your own work.

With this in mind, and the potential significance which might be placed on the "white white space" of the 20th century gallery and museum; its nice to think of a future which may be debating whether an empty room or a urinal is the seminal artwork of the period known as modernism, and post-modernism

I've talked largely about seeing, about visual perception. This arena of observer and observed, artist and viewer, is where the communication of art, as form, material, structure, or narrative all meet in what is called the "perceiving instance". Whether we derive meaning from what we percieve, or are given meaning which is inherant in what we see? The work of art enters into the contemporary arena of culture not just as an object or idea, but as a thing of history or histories, within the history of art with all its relatively recent "isms" impressionism, modernism, surrealism, expressionism, etc. But also within the history of the social world, with the meanings of propaganda as much as aesthetics, truth as much as fiction, content as much as context.

It is these last two terms which interest me as an artist. "Content" is defined in the Longman's dictionary I have as: "that which is contained... the volume of a solid, the significance of a work of art. "Context" is defined as: "the conditions or circumstances which affect something".

What I've tried to get around to is the idea that a work of art never exists as pure "content", it is always contextualized, it doesn't exist in a vacumn. This wonderful yu shang bronze displayed here is given a context by me, by what I'm saying, as well as by the nature of its presentation. It isn't a chinese bronze so much as a representation of one, a slide, it has been framed by the light and lense of the projector, as much as by my blabbling on about lots of things. None of which refer to the object itself so much as the way in which we here are looking at it. Looking at "it" re-presented.

I'd like to finish off with some meaty quotes, the first from Walter Benjamin writing in the 1930's, and the second from Roy Ascott written last year.

This is taken from an essay titled "The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". This isn't the sort of sound bit that is an easily remebered phrase or cliche. Its the sort of text that verges on poetry, to which it is worth going back to, and each time you do so, a different aspect appears. This is the beauty of critical writings when they're done well, there is always much more than what initially appears on their surface.

"The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqeness, that is, its aura. Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of ritual - first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its originaluse value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of "'art pour l'art", that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of "pure" art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter. An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependance on ritual. To an even greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total functon of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics."

Walter Benjamin.

Lastly, this quote is from a paper presented by Roy Ascott at the Fourth International Symposium on Electronic Art in Minneapolis last November. The paper is titled "From Appearance to Apparition: dark fibre, boxed cats and biocontrollers" and explores the potential for the transforming roles of the artist and the observer:

"Instead of creating, expressing, or transmitting content, [the artist] is now involved in designing context: contexts withing which the observer or viewer can construct experiences and meaning. The skill in this, the insight, sensibility, feeling and intelligence required to design such contexts is no less demanding than that of classical orthodox art. But the outcome is radically different. Connectivity, interaction and emergence are now the watchwords of artistic culture. The observer of art is now in the centre of the creative process, not at the periphery looking in. Art is no longer a window onto the world but a doorway through which the observer is invited to enter into a world of interaction and transformation."

Roy Ascott.

end
©mac dunlop 1994