Manual is the name of the group work that I participated in. Held in the fourth year studio, it was a weeklong interactive piece of work in which the audience was invited to join the dots of the walls of the studio. It consisted of an empty studio with four large white walls, three of them covered in three thousand dots and one written with the simple instruction of “Join the Dots”.
Indeterminacy is a key word in the understanding this work, and almost acted as a starting point in which the group began to decide what we wanted the work to be. Indeterminacy can be explained by not obeying the law of causality, causality being the relationship between cause and effect. In this work the cause was the three walls covered in dots and the invitation to the viewer to interact with it. The effect was the outcome of the audience’s interaction with it. The end result or the effect of the work was intentionally left out or our control. It is a questioning of authorship, as a group we made a piece of work, to a certain point, by placing the dots on the wall and leaving multicoloured markers on a plinth in the hope that the audience would use them. We had intended that the audience would interact with the piece by actively making marks on the wall, but the outcome of what would happen was unknown. What was interesting about this project was the way in which people did interact with the work, it was undetermined whether people would take part or not, and it was also undetermined the kind of mark making the viewer would utilise.
An interesting aspect to this piece was its placement. One vital element to the work was the environment in which it was contained and the question of how much effect this environment had on the actual work. Contained within four white walls of the studio, the space was transformed into a gallery space. If the dots were moved to a more public space, then the nature of the work would change and possibly not even be considered “a work of art” and perhaps it could have resembled a wall tagged with graffiti, or the walls of a public toilet where people doodle. So even though as a group we had decided that we were, in a sense, letting go or giving up control of the outcome of the piece, the placement of the work was the one other controlling aspect to it, aside from the instructions and placement of the black dots. Walking into a gallery space, or a white cube, one is very aware of the role of this space, it is a place where one goes to view art which requires a code of conduct within the gallery; the viewer generally remains quiet and observant. So the role of the gallery, in turn, almost acts as an instruction in itself, and negates the overall use of graffiti style mark making. The viewer becomes very aware of the environment and this is the case even more so as the studio and the audience or participants were being filmed, which in turn, brings to light an almost performative element to the work itself.
Indeterminacy is a key word in the understanding this work, and almost acted as a starting point in which the group began to decide what we wanted the work to be. Indeterminacy can be explained by not obeying the law of causality, causality being the relationship between cause and effect. In this work the cause was the three walls covered in dots and the invitation to the viewer to interact with it. The effect was the outcome of the audience’s interaction with it. The end result or the effect of the work was intentionally left out or our control. It is a questioning of authorship, as a group we made a piece of work, to a certain point, by placing the dots on the wall and leaving multicoloured markers on a plinth in the hope that the audience would use them. We had intended that the audience would interact with the piece by actively making marks on the wall, but the outcome of what would happen was unknown. What was interesting about this project was the way in which people did interact with the work, it was undetermined whether people would take part or not, and it was also undetermined the kind of mark making the viewer would utilise.
An interesting aspect to this piece was its placement. One vital element to the work was the environment in which it was contained and the question of how much effect this environment had on the actual work. Contained within four white walls of the studio, the space was transformed into a gallery space. If the dots were moved to a more public space, then the nature of the work would change and possibly not even be considered “a work of art” and perhaps it could have resembled a wall tagged with graffiti, or the walls of a public toilet where people doodle. So even though as a group we had decided that we were, in a sense, letting go or giving up control of the outcome of the piece, the placement of the work was the one other controlling aspect to it, aside from the instructions and placement of the black dots. Walking into a gallery space, or a white cube, one is very aware of the role of this space, it is a place where one goes to view art which requires a code of conduct within the gallery; the viewer generally remains quiet and observant. So the role of the gallery, in turn, almost acts as an instruction in itself, and negates the overall use of graffiti style mark making. The viewer becomes very aware of the environment and this is the case even more so as the studio and the audience or participants were being filmed, which in turn, brings to light an almost performative element to the work itself.
