SAHT1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Yves Klein, Eastern Philosophy, University Of New South Wales
12 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
23/04/17 UNSW notes | SAHT1101 Monique Munro
1
Contemporary creative practices
Week 8 notes
SAHT1101 Lecture
The Rise of the Immaterial: The Medium is the message
• Continues modernist thinking but shifts its focus (from looking at things which we
largely locate as having started in the 19th century / mid 20th century)
• Classic example: Shift from modernism to post modernism
• Think of it as the shift from zombie modernism / modernism ghosts into the rise of
the immaterial
• The medium is the message: Presents an interesting challenge for creative
practitioners to think about what that might mean for us
• Modernism was about material things, the accumulation of material stuff, material
things demonstrated power (the more things you had the more powerful you were)
- Colonisation (the process of moving the resources from one county to another)
- Guns, gold, trains, factories, mines, etc.
- The ownership of material things
• Postmodernism: Shift in the contemporary world with the way we think about
power and how power is demonstrated
- Power is now predominantly demonstrated through immaterial forms (still
material / have material elements but can start to think of them as immaterial /
invisible force that shapes the world around us)
- Radio, TV, the internet, finance speculation (the way value is literally considered)
social media, fake news (most recent/ important to us at the moment), etc.
- Digital (most invisible but right in front of us all the time) e.g.; typing notes on
laptop. It is largel iaterial. Its ode. Its ot ritig ith pe o paper
- Immaterialness of creative practice: Default position (you will all use digital at
soe poit he oure akig our ork
- Important to think material creative practice/ practitioners even if our final
product is not digital or is handmade (there has been an immaterial force that
has lead you that final product)
Yves Klein: The Void, 1958
• The first empty gallery exhibition. Nothing was in the show
• Was remarkable how it was basically a joke (an empty space shown as an exhibition)
not only because it was a conceptual work, looking at the void from Kleins P.O.V
(extercential eastern philosophy)
- Joke was made more funny because it was successful (3,000 people queued up
on opening night to see an empty exhibition)
- The reason these people turned up was not for material value but only because
of the speculation/ hype that surrounded the exhibition itself/ the way Klein was
very successful at advertising the show
- Klein Blue: The first artist to have a colour deliberately branded after himself.
Incredibly successful approach even to the point where he would make powerful
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
23/04/17 UNSW notes | SAHT1101 Monique Munro
2
lais like the sk is sk eause its Klei Blue iplies oership oer the
sky). Sold parts of the sky as part of his artistic practice
• Conceptual and important social shift into us as a community/ society accepting the
immaterial as valuable as something worth going to look at. Its just the hpe that
matters rather than the actual object itself
Key Media theorist: Marshal McLuhan
• Mediu is the Message
- The only message it is saying is the content of any message is its medium
- Eg; if you are a painter, it does not matter one drop what you actually paint/
content of the painting. What matters is the medium of paint itself
- Eg; If oure a aiator, it doest atter what you animate. What matters is
that it is an animation
- Hard to believe that since we are going to an art school producing content but at
the same time you know the importance of mediums because we are all thinking
about what mediums to choose. Somewhere along this line, you understand the
power of particular mediums
- Creative artists, art schools tend to put far much more emphasis on the content
rather than thinking about the medium
• The otet or essage of a partiular ediu has aout as uh importance as
the steillig o the astig of a atoi o. MLuha Marh
- His positioning of the content/ message itself/ writing as opposed to the bomb
itself and its destructive power
- Atomic bomb as metaphor: can think of an atomic bomb as those moments that
push us from the material into the immaterial. The material as an accumulation
of power. Once you have the atomic bomb, there is nothing beyond that and still
haet goe eod that rather than just making more atomic bombs. The
ability to destroy all life on earth is an endpoint to materialist power. Cannot go
beyond that. The point of which we could destroy the earth which was in the
1950s to now where you need new forms of control (immaterial, social, cultural
forms of control)
The Medium is the massage book
• Published by Marshall McLuhan
• Tpo i the first editio of the ook Massage istead of Message
- McLuhan thought it was brilliant
- If his whole point was about medium is the message, leave it as it is because no
oe reall otied, it didt atter. What attered as he as ritig his theor
in an academic book and the book was the most important thing because it is an
academic source.
- There is a power just in the fact that it is a book and McLuhan knew that.
Publishing it in this way and seeing this mistake, which to anyone else, would
have seen it as a disaster, he thought it was precisely his point
- Serendipitous moment in which his theory was put into place/ action and proved
itself
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23/04/17 UNSW notes | SAHT1101 Monique Munro
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Leture reakdow: What is the eaig of the ediu of a leture?
• Academic mediums
- As soo as the leture reaks, there is a reak i oetratio/ feelig. As soo
as the computer fails, the lecture becomes something else. No longer a lecture
- What matters in the form of a lecture is that the authority of a lecture itself has
nothing to do with the content on any particular slide but simply the fact that
there are slides up with text that you copy down
• Philosopher Ranicere in the Ignorant Schoolmaster, 1987
- Ist it kind of fu that eer tet is ope to ou for free Ca read athig
aroud the orld heeer ou at for free, a order tets et ou dot do
that, ou dot go ad eduate yourself you come to university/ school because
those texts have to pass through the voices of academics, teachers in order for
you to believe them)
- Why do these texts need to be translated through an academic voice? What is
wrong with those texts that requires an academic to tell you about them?
Because they are the medium of authority. You do not trust your own reading of
those texts. You only trust when an academic tells you what those texts mean
(What is the role of the teacher as opposed to what is the role of the text? -
Where all this information has come from.)
Changing the medium of the lecture
• What will you remember from this course when you are finishing up your degree?
• The concept of the lecturer pouring water over his head. Why is this memorable if it
had no content?
• Everything you thought was important to the course: 99% will be forgotten
• In your own practice, you work hard to produce a message but 99% of that message
will probably be lost in one particular instance
• Experiment: Close all laptops, turn off phones and listen for the rest of the lecture
- You retain less information from just listening
Case Study: Photography
• Most revolutionary medium that has been encountered within the past 200 years
• What is the meaning of the message of photography?
- Ideialit A foot prit i the sad proof that soethig as there
- Do not get that same message with a drawing or painting but you do with a
photograph
- When looking at a photograph, there is a sense of realness
- Mai thig: The otet doest atter so uh. Its the poer/ sesatio of
indexicality
- Links to truthfulness of the image itself. Life stops being liner, living in the
present moment and becomes not liner. Once you have photographs you can
create different narratives of your life and because you think each other of these
images is true, you can reorder them in such a way that creates some sort of
history/ narrative, can keep going back to those moments
- Start to live retrospectively rather than prospectively
• Victorian trend of Memento Mori, 1850-s
- Photography of mothers holding infants who have died
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Colonisation (the process of moving the resources from one county to another) The ownership of material things: postmodernism: shift in the contemporary world with the way we think about power and how power is demonstrated. Power is now predominantly demonstrated through immaterial forms (still material / have material elements but can start to think of them as immaterial / invisible force that shapes the world around us) Radio, tv, the internet, finance speculation (the way value is literally considered) social media, fake news (most recent/ important to us at the moment), etc. Digital (most invisible but right in front of us all the time) e. g. ; typing notes on laptop. Immaterialness of creative practice: default position (you will all use digital at so(cid:373)e poi(cid:374)t (cid:449)he(cid:374) (cid:455)ou(cid:859)re (cid:373)aki(cid:374)g (cid:455)our (cid:449)ork(cid:895) Important to think material creative practice/ practitioners even if our final product is not digital or is handmade (there has been an immaterial force that has lead you that final product)
