We humans tend to treat our perceptions as holistic—as seeing things as things, instead of as an accumulation of parts, details and features. This is the great abstracting power of the 3-pound neural network in our heads, and is a major differentiating characteristic from other computational paradigms.

The holistic pattern of Deconspectrum is that of the spectrum analyzer, a tool for understanding the components of a sound signal. You’d recognize the spectrum analyzer as the (often colorful) bar graph showing how loud the bass, mids and treble are on a fancy car radio or web MP3 player (which are often just fake animations). These graphical displays are intended to give an insight into the component parts of a signal that complement our own perceptions: we can hear the loudness of the bass or the absence of midrange, but we couldn’t tell you something as specific as how much energy there is at 250hz (at least, not without practice).

Any given sound can be understood as an accumulation of sine waves, a simple oscillation of air. Breaking apart a sound into these components is known as decomposition, and is the basic principal of a mathematical technique called the Fast-Fourier Transform, which gives us access to the raw numbers of a sound, the exact amounts of energy, that the unaided ear can’t provide. The spectrum analyzer supplements our perception by dividing a signal into “bands,” organized by the frequencies of these component parts. Or, at the very least, they give the manufacturers of audio devices something flashy to add to their product.

These tools are always presented as a single whole with a single function, one complete thing that breaks down the features of another perceptually complete thing. Deconspectrum pulls these things apart, eviscerates them, granting their constituents a new autonomy in the form of small luminous cubes that are each tuned to their own frequency band. These bands are mapped to the color of the cube, from yellow to green to blue to red and all the colors in between. They are conceptually identical to the rising and falling columns of the spectrum analyzer, but now spatially distributed and able to be moved and re-ordered—and crucially, still capable of emerging the holistic experience of the sound and its analysis. In other words, Deconspectrum is both the sum and the parts, the spectrum analyzer and its frequency bands, the pattern and the features.

Deconspectrum is best experienced in quiet, when the viewer can whistle, sing or hum distinct tones and see before them their melody reflected in color.

The individual units are completely autonomous, containing their own microphone, processor and color LED, and are also for sale individually as artist editions for $25. As such, they have an additional “standalone” mode that follows the peak frequency of whatever it hears, creating a colorful reflection of a melody, voice or spontaneous noise. They are both 9V battery and wall powerable with any 9 volt+ power supply.

“Cryptophasia” is the working title of a language machine installation that I’ve been working on. Cryptophasia, according to Wikipedia, is “a peculiar phenomenon of a language developed by twins (identical or fraternal) that only the two children could understand. The word has its roots from crypto meaning secret and phasia meaning speech disorder. Most linguists associate cryptophasia with idioglossia, which is literally the same, but cryptophasia also includes mirrored actions like twin-walk and identical mannerisms. Little is known about cryptophasia.”

The installation consists of two motorized drafting machine arms that write to each other, emerging their own glyphic writing system as they do so. It is a continuation of my “language machines” research/art.

These are closeups of the joints of the drafting machine arm:

Following is a paper from 2008 entitled “Art & Signs,” exploring the relationship between semiotics, semiosis and the interpretation of art.

ART & SIGNS

Ted Hayes

As abstractions go, the word and idea “art” could easily weigh in as one of the most widely varied, variously interpreted, hotly debated and bitterly fought-over designations in common use.  It is a pattern that, like many abstractions, can be wielded naturally and intuitively and yet utterly defy explanation or description.

All languages feature these kinds of words—signs that refer to some kind of an idea, as opposed to this or that object, or a particular manifestation of something.  But they are only features toward one end of a continuum of signs, those whose signifieds are themselves vast networks of other signs.  The words that don’t ordinarily inspire much debate—hammer, rock, glass—are still highly interpretable, but have comparatively narrow definitions; networks that are comprised of a smaller number of signifieds.

Understood in terms of patterns, the semantic war zone that is a word like “art” can be elucidated more clearly and scientifically than aesthetic philosophy has traditionally offered.  Indeed, much is made of it by each of us, every day, without us having to even consciously consider the term or its implications, thanks to our uniquely developed neural equipage.

The human brain is an astonishingly efficient pattern-recognition machine.  Even small, simple neural networks easily learn to pick out potentially complex patterns from noisy data, and I believe art to be one of the noisiest datasets that is even remotely definable.  There are almost endless examples to consider and weigh, and despite the equally varied definitions and opinions on the subject, there still seems to be a base level of consensus that allows us nevertheless to communicate about it.

I contend that there is a fundamental “pleasure” feedback to successful pattern recognition and completion that contributes to an artwork’s ability to generate interest and aesthetic responses.  These responses are not evaluative, but rather pave the way for evaluation as a secondary effort; they are an initial “gut reaction” that may be indistinct or inexplicable.

1. Semiotics, Convention & Society

The idea of “abstraction” often confounds linguist and the layperson alike.  When confronted with the task of defining “justice,” for instance, one must prepare for an elaborate and likely difficult philosophical digression, and for good reason: the word signifies a vast array of detailed signifieds, each of which must be understood on their own, entailing a long chain of requisite knowledge.  Consider a common and abstract word such as “beauty.”

Like all linguistic signs, the word “beauty” signifies only by learned convention: as a child develops, he or she will encounter the word now and then in different contexts and from different people.  “You look beautiful,” a mother exclaims, connoting goodness and pleasure.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” asks a friend, referring to an item of clothing perhaps, or an image, and such a rhetorical question actually implies or states that the interrogator believes that the item in question is, in fact, beautiful.  The word is also learned by learning what it is not. A child’s peer could be heard to remark on the ugliness of some other poor child; that the subject in question is “not beautiful.”  Flowers and the actresses on TV are beautiful; toads and story villains are not.

The minute properties and characteristics that each usage of the sign collects build up to what is taken to be the meaning of the sign.  At any given time, the meaning of a particular sign is the network of references and properties accrued by that individual’s entire lifetime of experience.

None of the above examples are endemic to the written or spoken sign “beauty”—it is a process common to all signs.  This framework of a sign’s structure was first advanced by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who proposed that a sign consist of a signifier and a signified, and that the signifier is inherently arbitrary.  The philosopher Charles Peirce developed similar systems; but both offer useful approaches to and models of human language and its sociocultural implications.  The following proposals are my own, but borrow from both semiologists.


“Concrete” sign	“Abstract” sign

Concrete or “simple” signs are those whose signifiers refer to a small number of signifieds.  Iconic and indexical signs, to use Charles Peirce’s semiotic taxonomy, are more fundamentally concrete than symbolic signs, which by definition have arbitrary signifiers.

An icon is a sign in which “the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified.” (Chandler, 2002)  Icons include portraits, cartoons, scale-models, et cetera.  An index, in contrast, is “directly connected in some way (physically or causally) to the signified” and is not arbitrary.  The index is a link that can be inferred, such as smoke that implies fire, tastes that imply certain foods, signals and pointers, et cetera.

The most common linguistic sign is symbolic in nature—its signifier is completely arbitrary and bears no causal link to its signified.  This most fundamental aspect of the symbol’s nature directly results in a profoundly important characteristic of linguistic signs: that their meanings are understood only by convention, an emergent process in which the language use of a number of individuals coalesce into a broader pattern that allows that language to effectively communicate ideas.  We will return to the importance and implications of convention later.

Any sign consists of a signifier that in some way, whether learned or observed causally, indicates a signifier, which can be another sign.  A representationally accurate signifier such as a drawing or photograph indicates fewer and more specific signs than a “vague” signifier, and thus the more concrete we perceive it to be.  A depiction of a chair signifies a commonly understood and observed object, whereas visual patterns within clouds are highly interpretable (abstract).  A photograph of a chair signifies even more directly, as it is both a representation of a chair and an indexical trace of an actual, real chair that existed at one time in a particular configuation.  Symbolic signifieds referred to by a given sign’s semantic network, however, are learned and therefore not intrinsic to the sign.  Strictly speaking, even the processes of recognition called on with iconic and indexical signs must be learned at one time by the basic neural systems of the developing brain.

Though an image of a pipe, for instance, can be seen as “representing” smoke or smoking, or Magritte’s un-pipe as representing Magritte, art, or sarcasm, all of these are learned relationships that cannot be counted on to have a guaranteed consensus among their viewers/readers.

Abstraction is the result of a large semantic topology, where any individual sign in the network is itself a network that refers to dozens, hundreds, or even thousands more signs.  Each sign in the network can be seen as a property of the signifier it is recalled by.  All symbolism and metaphor is essentially the comparison of properties between a signifier and a signified: “lamb” as symbol may come to be understood as representing gentleness, innocence and purity because the animal is incapable of conscious violence in the human sense.  An image of a green, leafy tree might be used to symbolize growth, abundance and prosperity, and yet a desert culture would not even recognize the signifier much less interpret it in that way.

The inherent challenge in the analysis of an abstract sign is that the more potential signifiers in the network, the less consensus there is likely to be about the sign as a whole, but it is this very indefinition that gives rise to the vast multiplicity of readings that artwork is consciously or subconsciously valued for.  The more potential signification it offers, the more a reader has to contemplate, and the more patterns that can be completed, the greater the reward.

To further elucidate this thesis, I propose some useful terminology of my own.

2. Data, Metadata & Value

In the interest of understanding the contemplation of an artwork and the reactions it may or may not give rise to, we must first consider what is knowable about the artwork: an “aesthetic epistemology.”

An artwork’s data or dataset consists of the perceivable artwork as presented.  The dataset is the totality of its delimited presentation: all distinguishable signs within a contextually or consensually determined boundary of the artwork.

An artwork’s metadata consists of all other knowledge immediately related to the artwork, i.e., artist statements and biographical information, all of which are subject to questioning or interpretation themselves.

The value of an artwork is constructed by a given viewer or reader as she perceives and contemplates (reads) the data that the artwork presents, merges it with any metadata the reader may be aware of, and forms an internal representation of the work.  This phenomenological assembly is a two-fold process of pattern-recognition and pattern-formation.  Signs within and without the artwork activate the neural traversal of the networks they signify, and the consolidation of new pattern observations modify existing networks to form new ones.

Like many activities, the physiological gratification of pattern-recognition, pattern-matching and pattern-completion is what lends the contemplation of the artwork its pleasure.  Artworks with a rich dataset and dense network of interrelationships with other signs—whether internal or external to the work itself—will therefore give the reader “more to go on,” and produce a greater potential for pleasure.

It is not at all uncommon for a reader to describe a “resonance” or “identification” with an artwork or its features.  This is one of the clearest examples of pattern-recognition at work, and one of the best cases to support the pattern-pleasure hypothesis.  In this process, observed patterns within the artwork combine with and complete existing patterns known to the reader, forming a denser network than an “inaccessible” or “difficult” artwork.

The latter provides so little knowable, perceivable data that neural provocation never occurs, or doesn’t progress far enough to mesh with any other networks.  This poverty of information can be a primary factor in an artwork’s evaluation, and is likely to produce an ambiguous or lukewarm reaction such as “I neither liked it nor disliked it; it just didn’t do anything for me.”

Evaluation is a secondary process that draws on the interaction of the reader’s experience (their lifetime of neural patterns) with the artwork’s composition of data, metadata and any symbolic resonance therein.  The judgement of a work of art—whether it is good or bad—presupposes the existence of an external (“objective”) standard of judgement that is actually determined by convention and consensus.
3. Composition, Coherence & Complexity

The composition of an artwork is the structure of its data and the relationships of its features, whether visual-spatial, temporal, or otherwise.  The organization of features of a painting or placement of objects in an installation constitutes its composition.  Like systems of symbols, the compositional relationships of a piece form their own internal sign-networks.

What I have described is a framework for further study.  I believe we are at a point where empirical, scientific inquiry and new methods of neural study and observation can begin to answer questions that were heretofore solely within the domain of philosophy.

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.
.
.
.

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.

While doing research for my “Recombinatory Poem for Bushwick” stencil project, I came across a variety of webpages and sites discussing and displaying graffiti art, and observed some interesting rhetorical tendencies.  Several guides to stenciling and painting, such as this one, offer an editorial stance on the raison d’etre behind painting in the first place, and this is often pseudo-politically / economically motivated.  I quote “Idiot the Wise:”

Authentic Human communication is constantly drowned beneath the deafening racket of an inhumane and insane multinational corporate system. This system dominates our collective reality.

This is a pretty pervasive sentiment among more intellectually-inclined writers (to use the vernacular), as it orbits around the idea that graffiti art gives a voice to the voiceless and is a subversive means of signification, and perhaps gives significance to those who perceive themselves to be insignificant.  The jury’s still out on whether or not this idea has any grounding or merit.

Comprehensive Graffiti Glossary