Einstein’s Dreams

Einstein’s dreams is one of my favorite books. I was gifted the book by a classmate last semester as thesis inspiration when I was assuming my project would be directly related to relativity, space-time and gravity. A lot has changed since then but not the feeling I get when I think about some of the stories.

Luckily this week I was assigned the section of the book that contains my favorite short story; 14 May 1905. The story tells of a city where at the center, time stands still. The only people who travel to this city are parents with their children and lovers. Parents get to see their smiling children’s faces for an eternity and lovers get to embrace forever. Everything is all well and good until you leave the center of time. When children leave the resent their parents for trapping them in time and grow up only to have children who they then want to take to the city. Lovers leave and grow jealous of each other, the embrace but the embrace has lost it’s meaning, the lovers separate and go their own ways with just a fleeting memory of their time spent together at the center of time.

The story, a metaphor for the relative perception of time near a black hole (as far as I can tell), evokes so many feelings. Nostalgia for childhood when the day seemed to last an eternity, a longing for the feeling of being recently in love with someone and wanting to do nothing but spend time sitting in their company, and regret for spending time racing through life without slowing down to take stock of the details and small things that bring meaning.

I feel like there are layers to this story that I still can’t quite wrap my head around, perhaps because I see the similarity to the theory of general relativity and assume that dictates the laws of this imagined world. It seems to me that those who journey towards the center of time are tricked into a tragic decision. They want to live in one moment, to stop time, but time does not stop for them, for them. Assuming we are dealing with a black hole, time flows at the normal rate for the traveler. Only for those outside the town do the residents appear to be stuck. The travelers to the center of the city enter, embrace their lover, and exit only to find that everyone and everything they knew is gone. Perhaps it is an allegory for the price one pays for trying to live in the past.

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees impacted me on a personal level more than anything that I have read while at ITP to date. I suppose this is because, somewhat selfishly, it validates most of the artistic work that I pursue. Personally, my struggle as an artist is related to the conceptual validity of my work (which is mostly abstract light sculpture); I often have trouble finding a specific reason or point for why I do what I do or what it means. I sometimes feel that I am hiding behind the veil of "doing experiments" and find joy in viewers becoming transfixed and mesmerized by a light sculpture I make but at the same time feel guilty that I am perhaps tricking them into giving my work attention by using pretty lights and colors. The idea of inquiry appears half way through the reading as it relates to the similarities between fine artists and scientists, this idea of open-endedness that is pursued for no reason whatsoever besides the passion of the curious. I really identify with this concept, my practice mainly follows this pattern of having a question, experimenting to find the answer, discovering something new while experimenting, following that idea down a rabbit hole, and when I finally finish a series of works, to get sick of them and follow a new idea down a rabbit hole. The discovering process is what makes me happy, along with the transfixed gaze of someone deep in thought while looking at something I made.

I was pleased to learn of and discover the details of Irwin and Turrell's somewhat brief collaboration. One of the most powerful parts of the text was reading Turrell's notes from their time together at the UCLA anechoic chamber describing the new outlook on life one has after spending a long time in a lightless noiseless room. It gave me chills seeing the photo of them standing inside the chamber, somewhere I am lucky enough to have been inside. One of my childhood friends is a Physics PhD at UCLA and for a while was in his words "keeper of the woods" of the lab. He once gave me a late night tour and locked me in the chamber for 10 minutes, long enough to hear my heart beating as loud as a normal conversation and to develop a fear of the box in the corner that I had noticed was covered in nuclear radiation warning stickers before the lights were turned out. I had this experience before deciding to pursue art, if I had known where it was I was standing and had read Irwins description of becoming more energy conscious, seeing the aura around things, removing the block on perception of most details that we acquire through the monotony of living, I would have convinced my friend to leave me in there all night meditating. Alas, at least there are accessible sensory deprivation chambers.

My main takeaway from this reading is a new definition of what art is and insight into the motivation behind Irwin and Turrell’s work both of which I was familiar with (much more with Turrell who was one of my major inspirations for pursuing art after seeing his work at MASS MoCA a few years ago). “Allowing people to perceive their perceptions — making them aware of their perceptions. We’ve decided to investigate this and make people conscious of their consciousness”. I suppose this quote puts into words the desire I have when I make a piece, which to date I have usually summed up as loving to make people mystified, remove them if just briefly from their everyday thought process and transport them to a place that makes them consider what including themselves is real or important. The viewer leaves with the art because the art has been experienced, the experience itself is the art. Similar to Agnes Martin who famously took a rose, asked her granddaughter if it was beautiful (yes) and then put it behind her back and asked if it was still beautiful to which the answer is yes, “the beauty is not the rose, the beauty is within you and the rose just makes you recognise that beauty.” A day later I still have a slight tingling feeling as I think about all this and want to focus harder on making art (and illusions which are present in most of my work) that hopefully pushes the viewer to have an experience that they will walk away remembering for the rest of their life. I leave with one of Irwin’s final quotes on the top of my mind, something I hope to internalize and recount as I pass through everyday life: “That the light strikes a certain wall at a particular time of day in a particular way and it’s beautiful, […] that, as far as I’m concerned now fits all my criteria for art".

In And Of Itself

I had heard of In And Of Itself from a couple friends who told me to watch it but not read anything about it going in so was pleasantly surprised when I found out it was required for Nothing and I finally would be forced to make time to check it out. The experience itself was far more emotional than I would have ever expected and found myself in tears at the end. Something that DelGaudio had been priming me (and the audience for the entire show). To my surprise, I found myself far more invested in the story that he was presenting than any of the magic tricks - although it still hurts my mind to try and think of how he disappeared the brick; my best guess for how he reappeared it was by smuggling it out in the book.

For me, the point of the piece can be found in the last window DelGaudio lights up and perhaps the least impressive trick throughout the show, when he drops the entire stack of persona cards on the scale and then adds one card causing the scale to balance out equally. I think DelGaudio wants us to realize that we are equal to the sum of our parts, an immense stack of traits and should avoid trapping ourselves by a label that we decide at some point defines us. Sure, I think DelGaudio is the roulettista, defying the odds every night for over 500 nights, creating pop culture buzz and potentially putting a target on his back to be attacked by those who find him to be the wolf and emotionally manipulative. However, I think it is obvious that he is much more than that, can be described with many labels, and is doing his best to create a positive and eye opening experience for every attendee and now viewer.