3121-4211

 series and variations

In printmaking, I think it would be perfectly reasonable never to destroy the images on the plates and stones, and always to have them available for use in new works, new combinations.

-Jasper Johns, 1978.

variations on a theme—————deviation vs derivation

deviation—late 14c., "a going astray, a turning aside from the (right) way or course, a going wrong, error," from Late Latin deviatus, past participle of deviare "turn aside, turn out of the way," from Latin phrase de via, from de "off, away" (see de-) + via "way" (see via). From 1630s as "departure from a certain standard or rule of conduct or original plan."

derivation—the general meaning "origination, descent" is from c. 1600; that of "act or fact of drawing or receiving from a source" is from 1650s. the obtaining or developing of something from a source or origin……in generative grammar, the set of stages that link the abstract underlying structure of an expression to its surface form.

• fragments in sculpture

• improvisation in jazz

• sets in art

• shape grammars

• maison jaoul, typology and design

variations on a theme : fragments in sculpture

Rodin’s innovativeness resided in the fact that casting versions became a systematic part of his creative process…..…..Rodin also took advantage of the opportunities that multiplication afforded within a work, using the same figure in different positions: the inspiration for Three Faunesses (before 1896) was thus drawn from a figure Rodin employed four times on The Gates of Hell. Likewise, the male figures in The Three Shades (before 1886) were borrowed from Adam (1880-81, itself inspired by the pose of Michelangelo’s Slaves)……………In the late 1880s, in the period of intense activity revolving around The Gates of Hell, Rodin built up a large stock of models of complete figures and fragments, which he could delve into whenever he wanted to experiment with assemblages and transformations. In the early 1890s, Rodin continued his investigations into partial figures (commenced with the Torso of the Walking Man in 1878). He dismantled and reassembled existing sculptures in endless combinations. By casting different parts of figures separately, he could rework the overall composition of a piece, without having to rework everything. Rodin joined his sculptural studies, or bozzetti (c.1890-1900), onto other figures through a process he called marcottage, generally leaving the joins visible in the finished sculpture, thus reviving the idea of non finito borrowed from Michelangelo……….While Rodin drew his inspiration from ancient statuary and Michelangelo’s works, especially fragmentary figures, his own works should be discussed more in terms of partial figures. A fragmentary figure is initially executed as a whole figure, which is subsequently damaged. In a partial figure, only the elements that are visible were actually executed, as was true of Rodin’s works, even if most of his partial figures made after 1890 were casts and enlargements of earlier works. By enlarging fragments of figures, instead of whole figures, Rodin abandoned the practice of representing the body in its entirety, thereby freeing himself from Phidias and Michelangelo’s artistic canons  and problematic issues of anatomical proportions. Flawless in form, the fragment thus earned its independence, broke away from the figure to which it had originally belonged, and became a work of art in its own right. When reproached for only showing “simple parts of the human body”, Rodin defended the expressive force of the partial figure: “Those people,” he said, “didn’t they understand anything about sculpture? About study? Don’t they think that an artist has to apply himself to giving as much expression to a hand or a torso as to a face? …. Expression and proportion are the goals. Modelling is the means: it’s through modelling that flesh lives, vibrates, struggles and suffers…”

——-Known as “The Coltrane Circle” or “Coltrane's Circle of Tones,” the diagram is based on the circle of fifths which, in musical theory, is a geometric representation of the relationships between the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale, their notations (flat or sharp), and their relative shades———

variations on a theme : improvisation in jazz

………….Most jazz music is structured on a basic pattern of theme and variations………..In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these…………..Jazz arrangers frequently develop variations on themes by other composers. For example, Gil Evans’ 1959 arrangement of George Gershwin’s song “Summertime” from the opera Porgy and Bess is an example of variation through changing orchestral timbre. At the outset, Evans presents a single variation that repeats five times in subtly differing instrumental combinations. These create a compelling background, a constantly changing sonic tapestry over which trumpeter Miles Davis freely improvises his own set of variations. Wilfrid Mellers (1964) wrote that "It called for an improviser of Davis's kind and quality to explore, through Gil Evans' arrangement, the tender frailty inherent in the 'Summer-time' tune... Between them, solo line and harmonic colour create a music that is at once innocent and tense with apprehension".…………. 'Theme and variation' forms are however based specifically on melodic variation, in which the fundamental musical idea, or theme, is repeated in altered form or accompanied in a different manner. 'Theme and variation' structure generally begins with a theme (which is itself sometimes preceded by an introduction), typically between eight and thirty-two bars in length; each variation, particularly in music of the eighteenth century and earlier, will be of the same length and structure as the theme.…………..Variation forms can be written as 'free-standing' pieces for solo instruments or ensembles, or can constitute a movement of a larger piece……………Improvisation of elaborate variations on a popular theme is one of the core genres of jazz……………Skilled musicians can often improvise variations on a theme. This was commonplace in the Baroque era, when the da capo aria, particularly when in slow tempo, required the singer to be able to improvise a variation during the return of the main material. During this period, according to Nicholas Cook, it was often the case that "responsibility for the most highly elaborated stage in the compositional process fell not upon the composer but upon the executant. In their instrumental sonatas composers like Corelli, Geminiani, and Handel sometimes supplied the performer with only the skeleton of the music that was to be played; the ornamentation, which contributes crucially to the music’s effect, had to be provided by the performer."…………………..

variations on a theme : sets in art

works of art (simple, uniform, interchangeable elements assembled in a regular, easily apprehended arrangement) that are conceived in series or as part of a larger group; often the individual work is regarded as incomplete in itself, needing to be seen within the context of the whole.

In 1950, at the age of 62, Albers began what would become his signature series, the Homage to the Square. Over the next 26 years, until his death in 1976, he produced hundreds of variations on the basic compositional scheme of three or four squares set inside each other, with the squares slightly gravitating towards the bottom edge. What may at first appear to be a very narrow conceptual framework reveals itself as one of extraordinary perceptual complexity. In 1965, he wrote of the series: ‘They all are of different palettes, and, therefore, so to speak, of different climates. Choice of the colours used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction - influencing and changing each other forth and back. Thus, character and feeling alter from painting to painting without any additional ‘hand writing’ or, so-called, texture. Though the underlying symmetrical and quasi-concentric order of squares remains the same in all paintings – in proportion and placement – these same squares group or single themselves, connect and separate in many different ways.’

……………artists working sets of images represent a dramatic shift in artistic thinking and theory of the twentieth century. With the artistic embrace of multiplicity, the print medium became increasingly more accepted. The individual markings by the artist’s own hand lost its relevance, leading to relative demise of the original………….works do not present final aesthetic solutions, but rather they express a moment in the infinite multitude of possibilities…………………………….

……………jasper johns was inspired by Cage’s aesthetic theories of indeterminacy and chance, as well as Marcel Duchamp’s idea of the readymade……..he faced the dominant trend of Abstract Expressionism by including everyday images and materials in their works. Using a wax encaustic technique to create sensuous, tactile surfaces, Johns painted familiar signs such as targets, numerals, and the American flag—which he described as “things the mind already knows.”……………….

……………..repetition, both an aesthetic and a poetic device, is linked to notions of tradition, to the idea of an original and its copies, originality, authenticity, and appropriation……….Why repeat? Do repetition artists use same motifs over and over again to achieve perfection?............readymades are marked as images that ridiculed the need of tradition to provide special meaning to the production and the choice of materials. Pop artists, minimalists, performance, and conceptual authors, adopted the concept of appropriation and repetition as a way to undermine ideas of authenticity and value……………..

variations on a theme : shape grammars———A shape grammar consists of shape rules and a generation engine that selects and processes rules. A shape rule defines how an existing (part of a) shape can be transformed. A shape grammar minimally consists of three shape rules: a start rule, at least one transformation rule, and a termination rule. The start rule is necessary to start the shape generation process. The termination rule is necessary to make the shape generation process stop.

variations on a theme : typology and design——————-1 - the word 'type' represents not so much the image of a thing to be copied or perfectly imitated as the idea of an element that must itself serve as a rule for the model————————2 - RULE MODELS offer more flexibility than tree models: for instance, while decision tree branches are mutually exclusive, the potential overlap of rules may give additional information. This flexibility comes at a price, however: while it is very tempting to view a rule as a single, independent piece of information, this is often not adequate because of the way the rules are learned. Particularly in supervised learning, a rule model is more than just a set of rules: the specification of how the rules are to be combined to form predictions is a crucial part of the model.

parallel vs serial————————parallel computing is a type of computation where the calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously, In parallel composition, different program components execute concurrently on different processors.…………In sequential composition, different program components execute in sequence on all processors………..

…………………………..jaoul…………….…..It was the end of modernism and the coming of postmodernism, no doubt, that initiated the new interest in the practice of creating multiple images, the very existence of which seems so antithetical to modernist values of originality and authenticity…...a motivation behind an artist's repetitions created during the artistic process would be the artistic process itself, in which one rendition does not necessarily exhaust the potential of the motif……….this explanation preserves modernism's fixation on the purity of the artistic process……….………..the search for invention and absolute novelty continued to generate tensions within design processes, because the frontier that separated preexisting from new was fragile and shifting. Le Corbusier's well-known use of the objets à réaction poétique as a design stimulus, diverts the attention from the architect's relation with its historicity in a suspicious stratagem for inventing the new…………………..beyond his adherence to nineteenth-century engineering, these objets trouvés do not speak of architecture but of new and unforeseen, unplaced sources. This 'surreal' dimension of Le Corbusier confirms that modern design strategies focused on the new, as well as a creative equation - derived from architectural preexistence - consisting of consciously accumulating images…………………

………………………Kubler writes in his landmark The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (1962) that the relevant traits that art objects manifest–are revealed as members of a “formal sequence,” which he defines as a “historical network of gradually altered repetitions.” The focus of Kubler’s formalism is on the appreciation of series–of objects that form a chain flowing through time, connected via their problem-solutions. Its historiographic ambition is to investigate the “continuum of connected effort” that comprises the history of art–the history of any art…………………What does Kublerian serial formalism emphasize, then? Not “wholes,” an interest Kelleter seems to attribute to all formalism. Serial formalism, rather, “centers upon minute portions of things rather than upon the whole mosaic of traits that constitutes any object,” on “mutant fraction” and “prime traits” alike…………..This approach to formalism seems especially well-suited to the study of seriality as Kelleter describes it. Kubler’s formal history posits that art-making is inherently social, the product of a world of makers that stretches back in time. All art is collaborative, produced in relationship to trends not of the artist’s making: “…the artist is not a free agent obeying only his own will. His situation is rigidly bound to a chain of prior events. The chain is invisible to him, and it limits his motion.…………..

conclusion, program vs paradigm? a search for singularity/similarity?

……………….the model, or exemplar, then, may be considered to play the role of an enabling fiction…………….designers need to explore notions of singularity, similarity, and exemplarity in its different forms as it mediates between the particular and the general and in relation to the capacity to educate the senses and to cultivate reason, and thereby to enable creation………………..

……………………the relationship between originating event and subsequent taxonomy forms a structure and process of ordering; it creates a space of transition, where the extraordinary and the ordered merge…………..

…………………….the relationship between the example and the exception reveals the illusory nature of coherence or stability of meaning in our construction of design narratives………………………..