#conceptual process

Ted Talk - Olafur Eliasson: Playing with space and light.

Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro, Par Avion, 2011

In this work contemporary Australian artists Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro deconstruct the form of a Cessna 172 aircraft and airmail its individual parts from Roma to Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern gallery in San Francisco. Commenting on the effects of their ‘reverse-engineering’ of their aircraft’s form, Healy and Cordeiro reflect:

‘The wreckage of the plane that no longer has the capability of flying will be given new means of movement. The speed, maneuverability and size were once the distinguishing features of the aircraft but these have now been stripped away, and the object of these qualities arranged as isolated components. The method of delivery may bring some order out of disorder or lay to rest some of the intrinsic purposes of the original airborne machine’. – Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro quoted on their website, url below.

Week 12 - Reverse-engineering

This week we will be thinking about reverse-engineering. Reverse-engineering is a design process that involves deconstructing objects in order to learn more about the processes that produced them. What can be made by taking something apart? What can we learn from examining the relationship between an object and its constituent parts? How can a conceptual process deliver a new object from existing parts?

Robert Morris, Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, 1961

Robert Morris’ Box with the sound of its own making has been highly influential on conceptual art since it was produced in the early sixties. The work is also interesting to think about in terms of ‘reverse-engineering’. While viewing the final object it is impossible not to consider the process that produced it. Morris explains how his work resolves the split between process and object:

‘The first object I made when I came to New York was a box with sound, which is a cube about eight inches on a side. I recorded the sound of making this box and put a speaker in it so that it plays for three hours the sounds of its being constructed. And it wasn’t conscious with me but I think this was again … I mean this completely split the process and the object. And yet put them both back together again. So in some way I think this was a work that allowed me then to go ahead. I mean really resolved that conflict that had occurred in painting’.  – Interview with Robert Morris by Paul Cummings, March 10, 1968, http://www.aaa.si.edu

Hi guys!

I finally uploaded images of the replicas we made in week 7:

https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/conceptualprocess

Listings are too expensive on Ebay so I put them on Etsy instead.

Check out your listing and see if there are any further details (title, description etc.) you wish to add - then let me know in class this week.

If you made a replica but we didn't document it in class, please upload images to you tumblr (and tag the post with #cofa1002 and #replica) so I can add your replica to the shop.