ARTDICK

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“The lower the mass of the black hole, the higher its temperature. So as the black hole loses mass, its temperature and rate of emission increase, so it loses mass more quickly. What happens when the mass of the black hole eventually becomes extremely small is not quite clear, but the most reasonable guess is that it would disappear completely in a tremendous final burst of emission, equivalent to the explosion of millions of H-bombs.” (Stephen Hawking)

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“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Albert Einstein)

Variations on these photocopy works were included in the exhibition “Dick Whyte: Retrospective” (91 Aro Street Gallery, Wellington, 2005). Other variations were later published as a comic in “Solar” (Issue 1, 2008).

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“A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these ‘readymades’ was never dictated by aesthetic delectation. The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste in fact a complete anaesthesia. One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the ‘readymade.’ That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. Sometimes I would add a graphic detail of presentation which, in order to satisfy my craving for alliterations, would be called ‘readymade aided.’ At another time, wanted to expose the basic anatomy between art and ‘readymades,’ I imagined a reciprocal readymade: use a Rembrandt as an ironing board! I realized very soon the danger of repeating indiscriminately this form of expression and decided to limit the productions of ‘readymades’ to a small number yearly. I was aware at that time, that for the spectator even more than for the artist, art is a habit forming drug and I wanted to protect my ‘readymades’ against such a contamination. Another aspect of the ‘readymade’ is its lack of uniqueness. The replica of the ‘readymade’ delivering the same message. In fact nearly every one of the ‘readymades’ existing today is not original in the conventional sense.” (Marcel Duchamp)

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Video poem of the moon. First screened as part of Scenes From the Aro Valley, curated by Campbell Walker (Paramount Theatre, Wellington, 20-23 April, 2006). Also featuring films by Colin Hodson, Alex Greenhough, Elric Kane, Diane McAllen, Andy Chappell and Campbell Walker. Part of a suite of videos made in 2004.

“Five experimental shorts in about 7 minutes by Richard (Dick) Whyte, among other things a ghost in the margins of almost all the Aro Valley films, and possibly the least known and most active filmmaker involved with the movement.” (Campbell Walker, Scenes from the Aro Valley programme notes)

“[Sergei] Eisenstein, we recall, championed the use of ‘montage’ theory in film. Here film communicated by a succession of juxtaposed images that did not need to have a linear, narrative or consequential relationship between them. Shot ‘A’ followed by shot ‘B’ created a new meaning ‘C’ in the mind of the viewer. Eisenstein likened this to ‘haiku’ – a traditional Japanese poetic form in which a short succession of separate images combines in the mind of the reader to create a total meaning which is greater than the sum of its component parts. In this way, meaning is suggested rather than stated. Eisenstein hoped to communicate specific meanings, but in the haiku… the implication is far more abstract.” (Richard Howells, Visual Culture)

“Maya Deren had attempted to find a filmic equivalent to the haiku shortly before her death. She left the project incomplete. [Stan] Brakhage too used the analogy to the haiku in discussing his 8mm Songs. By including the two haiku series in Lost, Lost, Lost [Jonas] Mekas contextualized them as steps in the development of his poetic incarnation as a film-maker.” (P. Adams Sitney, Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson)

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“It seems to us that the Smooth is both the object of a close vision par excellence and the element of a haptic space (which may be as much visual or auditory as tactile). The Striated, on the contrary , relates to a more distant vision, and a more optical space – although the eye in turn is not the only organ to have this capacity. Once again, as always, this analysis must be corrected by a coefficient of transformation according to which passages between the striated and the smooth are at once necessary and uncertain, and all the more disruptive. The law of the painting is that it be done at close range, even if it is viewed from relatively far away. One can back away from a thing, but it is a bad painter who backs away from the painting he or she is working on… Cezanne spoke of the need to no longer see the wheat field, to be too close to it, to lose oneself without landmarks in smooth space. Afterward, striation can emerge: drawing, strata, the earth, ‘stubborn geometry’, the ‘measure of the world’… The striated itself may in turn disappear in a ‘catastrophe’, opening the way for a new smooth space, and another striated space…” (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p544)

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“At any rate, you have one (or several). It’s not so much that it preexists or comes ready-made, although in certain respects it is preexistent. At any rate, you make one, you can’t desire without making one. And it awaits you; it is an inevitable exercise or experimentation, already accomplished the moment you undertake it, unaccomplished as long as you don’t. This is not assuring, because you can botch it. Or it can be terrifying, and lead you to your death. It is nondesire as well as desire. It is not at all a notion or a concept but a practice, a set of practices. You never reach the Body without Organs, you can’t reach it, you are forever attaining it, it is a limit. People ask, So what is this BwO?—But you’re already on it, scurrying like a vermin, groping like a blind person, or running like a lunatic: desert traveler and nomad of the steppes. On it we sleep, live our waking lives, fight—fight and are fought—seek our place, experience untold happiness and fabulous defeats; on it we penetrate and are penetrated; on it we love. On November 28, 1947, Artaud declares war on the organs: To be done with the judgment of God, “for you can tie me up if you wish, but there is nothing more useless than an organ.”‘ Experimentation: not only radiophonic but also biologi cal and political, incurring censorship and repression. Corpus and Socius politics and experimentation. They will not let you experiment in peace.” (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus)

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“Perhaps I might begin by noticing how different numbers have found their champions. Two was extolled by Peter Ramus, Four by Pythagoras, Five by Sir Thomas Browne, and so on. For my part, I am a determined foe of no innocent number; I respect and esteem them all in their several ways; but I am forced to confess to a leaning to the number Three in philosophy.” (Charles Sanders Peirce, Trichotomy)

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“The diagram is no longer an auditory or visual archive but a map, a cartography that is coextensive with the whole social field.” (Gilles Deleuze, A New Cartographer)

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“It’s a Dogon’s egg,” explains Félix. “Just hold it in your hand, and you’ll get to the Body without Organs.” (Felix Guattari, in Choose Your Own Philosophical Adventure #1: Escape from the Dialectic)

“I embrace that throne which is in Unu, and I keep guard over the Egg of Nekek-ur.” (The Book of the Dead: Words of Emergence by Day)

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One of two works exploring Britney Spears shaving her head and its relation to gender. Animated GIF made out of unedited screencaps from the game “Britney Spears Makeover” on Girl Games, one of the leading online gaming websites for young girls, dominated by dress-up, cooking and decorating games.

“I suspect that the day Britney Spears shaved her own hair off represented a kind of Sartrean or Socratic argument (rather than, say, a nervous breakdown). She was, in effect, by the use of appearance, shrewdly de-mythifying beauty. The hair lies on the floor, “inexplicably faded” (Sartre), and the conventional notion of femininity likewise.” (Andy Martin, The Phenomenology of Ugly)

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“Consider the process that is already happening on one end of [the] remixability continuum. Although strictly speaking it does not involve increasing modularity to help remixability, ultimately its logic is the same: helping cultural bits move around more easily. I am talking about a move in Internet culture today from intricately packaged and highly designed ‘information objects’ which are hard to take apart – such as web sites made in Flash – to ‘strait’ information: ASCII text files, feeds of RSS feeds, blog entries, SMS messages. As Richard MacManus and Joshua Porter put it, “Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into ‘microcontent’ units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways.” And it is much easier to “aggregate and remix microcontent” if it is not locked by a design. Strait ASCII file, a JPEG, a map, a sound or video file can move around the Web and enter into user-defined remixes such as a set of RSS feeds; cultural objects where the parts are locked together (such as Flash interface) cant. In short, in the era of Web 2.0, ‘information wants to be ASCII’.” (Lev Manovich, Remix and Remixability)

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