Recently, I was reminded about the difference between a scientific process, design process, and an artist process when visiting again the show Flowers & Questions by Fischli & Weiss at Tate Modern.
One of their most famous works is a film, Der Lauf Der Dinge (The Way Things Go) and a series or related objects and photographs. This film exploits the 'chain reaction' or domino affect litterally in a scltural object, readymade ballet of explosions and precarious movements.
Look on YouTube for the original:
and some 'fan' versions:
the 'inspired' ad
This film was famously brought in to the mainstream news after an advertising campaign for the car manufacturer Honda largely re-appropriated the concept with items of Honda car, but without any credit of course, leading to accusations of plaigarism.
That the way things go in the 'creativity' of advertising....
Anyway, back to the ingenuity of the artists.
Also showing in the Tate Modern installation of The Way Things Go literally in parallel was another film - the 'making of...' so to speak. Viewed on a screen next to the main film, Making Things Go by Patrick Frey shows the artists at work, making rehearsals and experimenting with the techniques used in the film.
Now to come to the point - what I found interesting; we see in this film a certain sequence - or event - being tested out repeatedly. As familiar in the finished film - tyres drop of a table and rolls over to a plank to make a see-saw and then to go on to touch another wood or wheel to make the next event/reaction. So Fischli or Weiss I don't know who is who drops the tyre of the table aiming for the ramp, it misses, and then repeats, it misses again, then repeats and so on - something like twenty times. Whilst the efforts go on and on and adjustments are made, the crowd of technicians or assistants (I dunno they wear blue overcoats) in the workshop grows and a sense of concentration falls on the tyre, plank and table. Finally a succesful action is produced - the tyre falls smoothly off the table over to the ramp - up it and down the see-saw and on... There is a large cheer from the
Thinking about it afterwards, and on my return visit, I became fascinated that this simple clip of artists at work (or play if you like) shows an example of the differences in process. As I said at the start, the scientific process, design process, and an artist process are different, and have different aims and outcomes. All are or can be experimental. But, it is quite intriguing to what this example and to think of a group of engineers thinking of how to solve this problem of how to drop the tyre and make it hit the point where it must fall to hit the spot on the ramp. My assumption is that they would work this out on paper or in a modelling software, something like that. So why do artists do this like that? Experimenting by doing - I guess that it is the way they now how. They either have a high degree of patience or have the notion that they must do it like that, they must practice.
Just keep doing it. And by this doing - this experimentation -this inventing - they find things.
I've used the film as an kind of contextual example at the beginning of starting classes in interactive media programming in the software Max/MSP, perhaps just because I like it, perhaps because its just fun to watch. Importantly it shows a flow of events, an anticipation of time, the use of materials, movement, interaction, sound, light, space all things important in interactive media. The chain reaction is not itself invoked in a graphical programmming langauge like Max/MSP but more so than in a syntatcical language like Java, C etc.
We can see a parallel between the flow of events, and the speeding up of time and the explosions and reactions of the materials.
So digital media is great and software like max and jitter and hardware devices enable us to manipulte all medias in may different ways.
But we have to think, without thinking to hard, and we have to try, without getting tired, to innovate and experiment, and see the way that the things will go.
