IDENTITY IS AN ADDRESS IN THE TERRITORY OF APPEARANCE
One single critical problem emerges from this period of chaotic
transition. How can a work of art be continuously updated so it does not
lose its value in such a volatile information environment? Information
(and certainly art in an information age) has a very short life.
Contemporary art begins to fade immediately after it is exposed to an
audience. The living artist updates his or her body of work through
subsequent releases of new work. The living body of work is continually
updated through twists and turns, rarely complete flips or radical
changes in direction. The thread of consistency, aesthetic logic, must
remain unbroken. At the core of the living artist's evolving work there
must be a redundancy of form and a consistency in the method by which
disorder is processed into form. This redundancy of form and method must
create enough consistency so the work has a recognizable identity. This
identity is the address of the work–the site of information. An
evolving body of work has no fixed address except its recognizable
appearance. Identity is an address in the territory of appearance.
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A WAY OF BEING ALONE WITHOUT BEING ALONE.
I like working with my machines because it's like being alone without
being alone. Machines are part of an ecology of human nature. When we
are one with a machine we are connected with all machines and everyone
else who touches machines. We are one with human nature and it feels
comforting to be part of an ecology of people connected by machines and
machines connected by people. The thing I like about machines is the
detached intimacy I can establish and maintain between myself and
others. I can be alone with someone else. I can leave my body and be
real close without touching flesh. Flesh to flesh is one thing, being
alone with someone else without touching is another. Human nature is
tied together with machines of all varieties. It's a world wrapped
around a world of other species and other times. It's a point of view
that depends on a shared solitude, a pleasure derived from being alone
with others.