Shoe in Block is a sculpture collaboration between Taylor Levy and Ted Hayes that embedded a pair of sneakers in a pair of cast concrete blocks.  Following is the original commentary.  See bottom of post for the whole gallery.  Click here for the commentary in PDF form.
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SHOE IN BLOCK
The Superimposition of the Ordinary

Commentary
Taylor Levy  |  Ted Hayes

“Shoe in Block” I & II are sculptural objects that render ordinary, highly functional objects useless by superimposing them into the same material space.  An individual shoe is fused into the physical space of a custom-molded concrete masonry unit, creating a new unusable object that still retains the former signs of the shoe and the block.  The remaining signs thus become conflicting, as the observer cannot immediately reconcile the presence of the two recognizable signs, transposed as they are into one unrecognizable object.

This process of signification is disjointed: it forces the viewer to a halt, because the object as a whole has no immediate relation to a particular signified, in effect, the object has a “stalled meaning.”  Abstract sculpture tends to be comprised of subtle forms that give vague suggestions of potential signs, and the signification of the piece for the viewer takes place only over the course of discovering or experimenting with the possibilities of those signs in relation to each other.  In the case of “Shoe in Block,” the component signs are familiar, explicit and obvious, and it is the juxtaposition of the signs that produce new questions and novel readings.

A fundamental principle of semiotics is that the sign itself is arbitrary, and is only understandable as part of a continuum of differing signs.  The difference is critical to the existence of the sign.  “Shoe in Block” enables the viewer to understand each component by realizing that their normal functions are now obviated; that their normalcy itself is attacked.  Sneakers are, today, designed for two purposes: facilitation of movement and vehicles of branding.  As embodied in the sculptures, the shoes are still wearable, but the wearer cannot walk or run in them, and their commodity value is lost to the owner if they cannot be worn and seen.  Surrounded by and encased in concrete, the sneaker is understood by what it is not: a building material, an ad-hoc step or seat, a sign of compressive strength and material solidarity.  Likewise, the Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU), as it is known to builders or architects, is not a sign of fashion value, fleetness, or comfort.

The sculptures are combined inverses that retain only some of their constituent parts’ original properties.  Concrete blocks are heavy and deliberately designed to be unmovable in their final installation; sneakers gained their popularity and enormous market share via their association with basketball and other sports in which speed and agility is extremely valuable.  Combined, the shoe can still be worn and even walked in, granted a strong and patient subject, at a significantly reduced speed.  Similarly, the concrete block can still serve its ordinary compressive function, but not with normal geometric simplicity; these blocks cannot be lined up next to each other to form a gapless wall.

Both the sneaker and the concrete block are the result of elaborate and highly specialized factories that strive to create exactly identical products in mass numbers—yet the concrete block is subsumed in a field of sameness in their final function, joined with hundreds or thousands more and plastered and painted over, while the brightly-colored and eye-catching sneaker is expected to enhance the individuality of its wearer in its final function, and differentiate itself from the hundreds of other styles of sneakers at large.  Both are mass-produced but have diametrically opposed identities and purposes in their intended installation.

Their materialities are also inverted: concrete blocks are made from a material that has been in use for thousands of years and is extremely cheap and easy to produce on large scales, yet is highly durable and long-lasting.  Modern sneakers are produced only with the advent of a wide array of comparatively expensive synthetic textiles that must be assembled in precise and complex patterns by armies of machines and laborers (the employment of which has itself been the subject of much human-rights controversy).

But none of these properties are readily signified by the shoe or block alone as objects of contemplation.  The placement of these signs together allows each to be seen, much as individual neurons in brain tissue are only visible with a contrasting agent that enables them to be identified and studied.  The hardness and immobility of the block allows the observer to identify the softness and swiftness of the running shoe, and vice versa.

The superimposition of inverses is only the most explicit among a range of formal signification that sculpture, and art in general, is capable of.  It is only through difference (and perhaps Derrida’s différence) that signs mean, and it is only when ordinary signs and objects are contextually displaced, as in the case of much modern and contemporary art, that they are ready to be reinterpreted as narratives, dialogues, statements, or simply as a beautiful objet d’art.  The act of interpretation falls on the viewer of the artwork, as does the first choice of whether to view it at all as an artwork.

Confounding this traditional recontextualization, we envision Shoe in Block to be installed in common public locales, such as the Lower East Side’s Allen Street median strip.  A potential viewer, whether pedestrian or passenger or loiterer, is caught unawares at the seeming impossibility of the superimposed objects.  This context introduces a third “ordinary” component into the piece—removed from the gallery, the question of the artwork’s nature looms larger, and the viewer is left without the careful cues that galleries offer: the title, the statement, the bare white walls.  Devoid of these contrasting agents, the  absurd materiality of the shoe-blocks must be considered in new ways.  Does the errant passerby attempt to wrench the valuable shoe(s) from the concrete block, thereby possibly destroying the object so desired?  Or are the sculptures immediately recognizable as such to an art-oriented Manhattanite, and enjoyed or dismissed with that in mind?

“Shoe in Block” I & II lend themselves to a wide variety of readings because of the richness of their component signs.  The sneaker and the CMU come loaded with the viewer’s entire history of associations, their memories and desires and objections, and the strange combination thereof allows these entire semantic networks to collide and be bridged with new narratives and ideas.  The visceral pleasure of surprise, the stultifying wonder at their existence and question of their construction, and the longer process of association and contemplation contribute to the sculptures’ appeal as superimposed ordinariness.

Building out a Flash interface from a PSD can be a time consuming process, so to make things most efficient, here are some handy guidelines for preparing Photoshop files.  Designers may want to duplicate their PSD and save it as a new file specifically for Flash import if they want to keep extra hidden layers, etc..

• Turn off or delete all unused or irrelevant layers.
• Merge all adjustment layers or masks into regular layers.  Masked layers or groups cannot be used!
• Layer effects are OK!  However, if you turn one off and don’t plan on using it at all, make sure you remove the effect by dragging it onto the trash icon in the Layers palette.
• Vector graphics are always preferred!  If you are using Illustrator to design any assets, please provide the Illustrator file too, as Flash cannot import Smart Vector Objects.
• Vector graphics are especially preferred for layers intended to be animated.  Imported bitmaps will often look shoddy and low-resolution when moving around and rotating.
• If an Illustrator file can’t be provided, rasterize any Smart Vector Objects or other non-standard layers.
• Keep groups and layers orderly and named accurately whenever possible

Today Apple prominently published a statement about Flash and Apple’s stance on it.

This is really interesting and I’m glad to see a straight-up, public statement about the situation. It is clear that there are (at least) a host of technological issues behind the Flash absence. Pundit rebuttals about Apple not adopting such-and-such for business reasons have never made any sense—it would only behoove Apple to extend their market further and further, except at the cost of the UX and performance. It never ceases to amaze me that all the Flash-haters suddenly started bitching about Flash’s absence on iStuff just because they hate Apple more. Hypocrites.

Anyway, the third-party development thing is still foggy, I think. First of all, having gotten deep into the iPhone APIs and objective-c this semester, it is clear beyond any doubt that apple’s SDK cares foremost about consistent, effective UI and high performance. Anyone who disputes this simply does not know what they are talking about.

Jobs says:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.

Defining “third party layer” can be tricky, but ok, sure, nobody wants sub-standard apps (meaning worse performance than it could have had otherwise).

If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

In general I’m inclined to agree here but then, the same argument could be made about a developer choosing to adopt changes in the native APIs in the first place. What he (and others) seems be saying here is that third-party dev platforms (again, not sure exactly what this includes and excludes) encourage laziness and are less likely to perform as well as native APIs. Maybe, at best.

Regarding cross-platform dev:

Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features.

Maybe, though there’s no reason the platform couldn’t offer device-specific options that do follow up on new API developments.

It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps.

Now that I definitely concur with. I can tell you from my own painful experience that the majority of Flash developers are total hacks who wouldn’t know a bit from a byte and couldn’t manage memory to save their lives. But who could blame them, since they’re encouraged to program that way? Indeed, the whole premise of Flash started out as, “Oh noes, programming is scary!! Help me to not have to learn!”

I can’t help but think this dances around a development ideology issue: cross-compiled, garbage-collecting, “lazy” development that is not geared towards optimizing for its device, and old-fashioned tweak-the-shit-out-of-this-app-until-it-can’t-possibly-get-any-faster. Yes, the latter is hard than the former. My question is, why the antagonism towards the latter?

Curious to hear some other thoughts on this.

Gawker blawgged about a new survey by the Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism that would seem to indicate the dearth of people willing to pay for news.

What I find interesting about this is that this, like Wikipædia, is the logical conclusion (or progression at least) of the death of the concept of authority.  When Wikipedia came along, a lot of the auld school angrily assumed that this Could Never Work because it’s not backed by an authority that carefully examines a subject and adheres to strict guidelines regarding some particular ideology or ethics, i.e. Not Lying.  Since the intent of the *pedia is to accurately convey True Information, “Not Lying” would seem to be an advantageous strategy.We have pretty much the exact same situation with journalism and the publication and dissemination of news.  Accuracy is the whole point, but we can now finally (re)acknowledge the idea that a story’s accuracy is only as good as the amount of corroboration available.The cool thing is that now we have more new means for corroborating information than ever, or at least new information—for instance, last summer’s Iranian election protests, in which hundreds of individuals acting on their own could post photos of real events as they transpired.  In other words, we no longer have to trust a particular news outlet, as we can corroborate any particular claim with the claims of many other sources.  In more other words, the Information Bottleneck has been drastically widened in at least some cases.

Now there is in fact Wikinews, which I hadn’t heard of until I just tried googling for it, and Indymedia et al., but what I’d like to see is a kind of rating system of corroboration; something that tallies how many people concur with the information in question.  (But yes, I am aware of the millions of practical problems that would present, but in theory it would be interesting).

This process happens between people all the time as it is; it is how trust and reputation works.  I suppose the obvious drawbacks to the death of traditional Authoritative Media is the availability of resources and drawbacks like language barriers.  The NYT has the resources to send a journalist to some far away part of the world and trusts her to report back honestly about what she sees, in English.  Someone living there could theoretically publish their own observations, in another language, and we would not have the benefit of inheriting trust from the already well-established medium.

Plastic tarp rain-sheds put up under the scaffolding next to the Tisch building on Broadway.  The tarps really affect the space of the sidewalk-scaffolding corridor in an interesting way, making it feel more intentional and … agreeable.

The contour that a hand describes arcing through space is of a fundamentally different nature than the contour of a pencil’s mark, which is a remnant, but not from that of the hand that wielded the pencil.

Here we find the critical separation between the act and its imprint, between the cause and the effect.  Dance is a medium of causes that crucially leaves no mark except that of the phenomenological mark in the mind (brain) of the reader (observer).

When viewing a dance, under casual circumstances, we may not bother to attempt to fix in our imaginations the curvature that a body traces in the air, but rather leave it as a more holistic impression, an abstraction characterized by high-level features (degrees of activity, changes in energy-level, recognizable gestural signs, etc.).  The contours of a moving body supplement the contours of the body itself, extending it into another measurable dimension.  Visualizing these lines is not necessarily the goal, but rather building an awareness of them that shapes the perception of the entire dance.

Traditionally, and in general, dances do not leave marks in the sense that drawings do.  Dance does not visibly or permanently alter the intrinsic medium of its performance (spacetime).  A drawing does, however, transform a medium, additively or subtractively, with the aid of an extrinsic influence or medium (a pencil, a brush, an eraser, pigmented oil and water).  A dance’s extrinsic medium is the dancers that make it up, and its mark is like that of a poem read aloud—accomplished over time, with only the audience’s senses and memory available to contemplate the artwork.  A dance-poem leaves no residue upon its own medium.

The notion of function–of goals, of utility–in music is interesting in that music is rarely considered to have an intended function.  Entertainment, perhaps, but usually only implicitly: a band usually does not get together and ask themselves, “What will be the purpose of our songs?”  Many might jump to suggest the transmission of a message of one kind or another.  This is possible with lyrical music, but as I argue in another post, impossible in music lacking a conventional language.

Intentional usage of music is another story, but again, for most it is an automatic act, a habituation that arises over years of learned associations and tendencies.  Here and there our choice to listen and choice of music will have a more conscious intent; a jogger chooses something commensurate to the intensity of their run, or a DJ will seek a style and mood to reflect her audience.

In my own experience, one of the only conscious, self-aware objectives I have for music selection is that to which to sleep.  I have long been fascinated, occasionally obsessively, by ambient music–music with no rhythm*, that lulls and that evolves over long periods of time, challenging the individual’s perceptual capacity to detect change.

Much of this music has a soporific character or effect, which is often, in fact, intentional.  Consider Robert Rich‘s sleep concerts: performances designed specifically and explicitly for an audience to sleep to.  Playing ambient music while falling asleep never emerged for me as a remedy or cure, but rather as an enhancement to the enigmatic twilight state that precedes sleep, a time in which the shadows cast by moonlight take on an even more lustrous character, where poetry abounds in the edges and interstices of consciousness.  I have vivid and affective childhood memories of planetaria in which music like this was played: soft, mysterious tones and drones that hinted of vast silver fields at night and, of course, their accompanying myriad and sundry constellations.

Ambient artists so far within my purview include Steve Roach, Stars of the Lid, Brian Eno, Lustmord, Lull, Coil, Bass Communion, Tim Hecker, Zoviet*France: and the aforementioned Robert Rich, and are but an inkling of the many more that are out there.

For merely one example of these kinds of textures, I offer “You Were Alive,” a piece I recorded last year:

* Examples of ambient music with rhythm are plentiful, the most well-known doubtless being Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works volumes, but I cannot generally sleep to them.  These works may perhaps be more accurately classified as “ambient techno.”

Igor Stravinsky has been labeled a “revolutionary” more or less since the first staging of Rite of Spring, whether as praise or condemnation.  Much of the material of Stravinsky’s 6-lesson lectures, Poetics of Music, I found to be uninteresting at times and nonsense at others—but it was worth every minute for the following quotes, which I think reveal his more truly revolutionary ideas.  Read on!

Igor on imagination vs. invention:

“We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.”
—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, p. 53

“Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.  For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and of achieving full realization of this find.  What we imagine does not necessarily take on a concrete form and may remain in a state of virtuality, whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actual being worked out.
—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, p. 53

Stravinsky’s opinion closely mirrors my own regarding the prototyping abilities of the imagination: it is the fastest method we have, but also the most prone to misjudgment, and the least able to develop an idea.

But it is these quotes, which inspired quite a bit of controversy in Visual Music a few weeks ago, that I am truly interested in and inspired by:

“From the moment song assumes as its calling the expression of the meaning of discourse, it leaves the realm of music and has nothing more in common with it.”
—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, pp. 42-43

“Do we not, in truth, ask the impossible of music when we expect it to express feelings, to translate dramatic situations, even to imitate nature?”
—Ibid., p. 77

“I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc….Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence.”
—Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1935, Calder and Boyars ed., 1975, p.53

It’s rare that I see this sentiment voiced (if you are aware of examples please let me know).  Expression is a form of communication, and communication requires a semiotic code for sent signs to be reliably interpreted by a receiving party.  Codes are arrived at by convention, or sometimes, consensus.  Music has never had, as far as I know, conventional semiotic codes of the linguistic kind, but nonetheless evokes many things to many people.  In this situation, communication has been fallaciously conflated with evocation. The former attempts to transmit the intent of the sender, while the latter is only the result of the receiver’s observation.  The reaction of the receiver to a perceived musical input pattern may be psychological and/or physiological.  A physiological reaction, such as dissonance, can be thought of itself as a sign which then leads to normal psychological reactions; the association of one pattern with another, in the vast chain-reaction that is the living mind/brain.

For some more quotes along similar lines, check out Stravinsky on expression in music and Stravinsky on the purpose of music on Theory of Music.  I also stumbled upon this very fascinating BBC Puzzles piece on musical scores as ciphertexts.