Material Systems - A Closed System Aesthetic

Although Burnham was keen to align his thinking with the most cutting edge art practices and emerging digital technologies of the time, and, as such was keen to distance it from some aspects of kinetic art, he does offer a thorough account of the then current

electromechanical approaches to systems aware art practice. These accounts help to show how not only work that is concerned with relationships in a conceptual, informatic or global and ecological sense can be thought of as systems, but also other more traditional sculptural approaches such as kinetic art, a form that might usefully be considered as a material system. This emphasis on systems that are explored and presented materially was important to Burnham’s close friend and associate, the artist Hans Haacke as described by both Skrebowski (2006) and Chau (2014):

for Haacke it was essential that the real time processes and conceptual systems that were signified in his art, performed on a material level. As Haacke said, “I was primarily what you might call job-orientated. Even in the 60s I wanted things to function in a very literal, physical sense”’

(Chau 2014: 72)

I believe there are sound reasons for reserving the term ‘system’ for certain non-static “sculptures”, since only in this category does a transformation of energy, material or information occur (Haacke quoted in Skrebowski 2006: 10)

Haacke’s work does not provide any particularly electromechanical or sonic examples, however his Weather Cube (1965, also Condensation Cube, figure 2.12) illustrates an interesting problem when thinking in terms of localised, situated and material systems.

Here, a clear Plexiglas cube allows water to evaporate, condense and recollect through various compartments within. This process and the subsequent movement of water within the confines of the cube are visible to the audience. Despite the piece having obvious connotations of environmental thinking and the monumental³ (Haacke in Jones 2011), Haacke claims that the piece reflects his fascination with the ‘nearly magic, self contained quality of objects’ (Haacke in Jones 2011), calling it ‘unthinkable’ without physical separation from its surroundings. This last comment from Haacke, points to the idea of the Plexiglas cube as the outer defining limit of the system, the boundary,

conceptually separating it from any other systems, turning it into a single object or a black box with clear sides. In Haacke’s view, the work, like a traditional scientific experiment, presents the isolated world inside the cube as a stand-alone system to be observed, but that remains independent and autonomous of any observation, reflecting what he once ‘confessed’ to Burnham which was that he ‘liked the separation and autonomy of art’ (Jones 2011: 20).

3These are themes which are evident in other work by Haacke from the same time, e.g. the land art influenced Grass Grows (1967-1969) and wind pieces such as Blue Sail (1964- 1965).

Figure 2.12 Hans Haacke Condensation Cube (Also Weather Cube) in 1967 (originally made1965)

As Jones (2011) points out this separation is, in practice, not possible as both light and ambient temperature from the environment within which the cube is placed both affect the system within the Plexiglas, as does gravity and a myriad of other factors including the audience passing through the gallery space (all black boxes have at least one input and output). But these facts do not stop Haacke pursuing the aesthetic of the box as a closed system or an object. These problems and tensions of an autonomous (closed) system and of an object, presented against and within a larger system, are problems that material and kinetic systems are particularly well placed to explore, as they present the transformation and transduction of information, energy or materials in real time, within a single situated space. Both the highly relational and object specific nature of elements within the system, and the system as a whole, are presented on equal terms and in equal measure. In Haacke’s work the black box is, quite literally, made

transparent and the invitation is to try and hold the two worlds of object and system in focus simultaneously.

Haacke’s cube is a particularly useful example but similar tensions can be found when thinking through other ‘pseudo closed’, plinth mounted systems such as have been described with Lye’s dancing musical steel loop, Takis’ electromagnetic experiments and Reich’s pendulums (after their initial –human- energising). Tinguely’s radios meanwhile

[Image removed for copyright reasons.]

take a simple single feed from a larger system (the radio broadcast) and treat it as raw material within their medium sized, relief mounted world of mechanical relations and electronic components laid bare. The black box of the radio is opened and its localised, closed set of relations is set against the more open system of electromagnetic waves.

Even Lucier’s thin wire, although often spoken of in terms its open systems nature regarding the effects of temperature and other environmental factors, first appears resembling a scientific lab experiment disclosing its roots in a scientific collaboration, rather like the inspiration for Acoustic Pendulums coming from an experiment in a college textbook. Simple lab book experiments such as these tend to assume a closed system until challenged through their practical realisation, when percentages of error from a myriad of real world systems creep in. The tension between closed material system and open and emergent behaviour, which is present in Haacke’s cube, also features in much of the work considered here as electromechanical sound art.