A fly circles about the room, this way and that. The arabesques of its flight pattern speak to me as movingly as the lines of any drawing. As an artist, it is my nature to be distracted by line... line that sweeps and blurs, line that jitters and confuses itself. I cannot ignore the lines that the fly makes; they connect the fly to me just as firmly as do the sure lines of a Picasso drawing, or the exuberant scribbles of a child.
Those flight lines take me beyond the world of pure sensation. They make me ask questions about the invisible processes that lead to their creation. Could there be some kind of complex analysis here, or is the fly merely responding, reflex-wise, to a flood of sensations -- heat, hunger, light intensity, odor -- continuously inundating its tiny brain? As I contemplate these questions, I become painfully aware of the inadequacy of the tools provided me by Science and Art. It occurs to me that neither really helps me understand what the fly is thinking.
Scientists would tell me that the fly isn't 'thinking' at all, that it is in fact incapable of circumspection in the human sense. They would point out how the fly makes the same mistakes over and over... repeatedly crashing into the window pane, never learning that glass is solid. To scientists, it is little more than an organic robot, compulsively executing a fairly simple program. Not that they have ever found the program, for all their cutting the fly into ever smaller pieces.
On the other hand, art culture has given the fly's behavior only the most superficial attention. Believing that the principles which shape the non-human world are either inaccessible, irrelevant, or obsolete, cultural theorists have told us to focus our attention upon the nuances of human subjectivity, that the fly only matters as an image, an icon, an occasional metaphor for human existence.
The present show, "Life of Its Own", rebels against both of these mind-sets. In contrast to the popular role assigned to art, the show concentrates not on appearances or on metaphor, but on the forces and qualities that lie below the surface of things... the invisible swirl, froth, and flow of the informational world. And unlike arrogant science, it pays tribute to living processes large and small, the most experienced and subtle manipulators of that world.
This is not an exhibition where artistic self-expression reigns triumphant. Rather its artists purposefully take a back seat to a phenomenon called 'emergent behavior'. This requires the creation of kinetic works endowed with principles of action and interaction so as to make their behavior largely indeterminate... behavior that not even their creators can predict! Having set their apparatus in motion, the artists allow the unforeseen implications of their design to manifest itself. It's as though, in conceiving the work, each artist is framing a question rather than expressing an opinion. Indeed, the most central defining principle of emergent-behavior-based art is the desire to transcend ones own intention. This is strange, paradoxical business -- willfully devising a system to ignore ones will! It sets emergent behavior artwork apart from a broader category of art of which it is largely a sub-set, namely 'interactive art' (art which responds)... which is in turn a sub-set of 'kinetic art' (art which moves.) All three categories can claim an element of unpredictability, but only work of the first kind is characterized by the creator's overriding need to transcend intention.
At this point I want to emphasize that in no way does this step-wise progression of static>kinetic>interactive>emergent art imply more than a narrowing of focus. Arbitrarily adding movement... or interactivity... or emergent behavior... to an art work will not automatically make it better; indeed, it may well make it worse! In the final analysis, of course, all that matters is the old question: "Does this thing unveil, or help me see afresh, some crucial aspect of my existence?" Nevertheless, this narrowing of focus does open the way to a relatively fresh and fertile new territory for artistic exploration. In an era where the discourse around Post-Modernism has become all too familiar, such opening of new territory is most welcome. The study of emergent behavior has much to teach us. We will learn that rules governing self-organizing systems, and information dynamics in general, are as basic and universal as the fundamental laws of physics. We are already discovering that chaos isn't random, but instead contains a wealth of pattern. Someday, we may even begin to discard a few of our favorite distinctions, such as cause and effect, matter and energy, objectivity and subjectivity, particle and wave, self and other.
Electronic technology plays an important part in "Life of Its Own", insofar as it helps the artists to distance themselves from direct control. I find it delightfully ironic that in a world where technology is seen as a means for maximizing control, it has here the opposite purpose! And there is another important way in which the show's artists reject the power-happy assumptions of modern culture. The show contains no parading of glamourously powerful, ready-made systems, intended more to impress than to inform. Instead, each work embodies both a highly developed personal knowledge of diverse materials and processes, and a confidence that emergent-behavior artwork, reduced to the simplest technical configuration possible, is thereby more accessible.
But let us not forget the most central message of the exhibition: that there is more to art than self-expression; that much is to be gained by not forcing outcomes. The works in the show have unpredictable behaviors, behaviors shaped partly by their configuration, partly by their environment, and partly by those who visit it. Not only does this create a diversity which makes us aware that every moment is unique and unrepeatable; it also allows new meanings to emerge spontaneously in a dialogue between the artist, the art and the audience. This lack of control is something to be celebrated. It is what gives each of these works, as it were, 'a life of its own'.