An artist's work, whether deliberately political, or otherwise, makes a political statement. What an artist openly addresses or doesn’t, shows where they stand politically in the world. Artists can weaponise their works to address world matters, social injustice, animal rights, land rights, civil rights, environmental issues, issues around gender etc. Our lecturer, Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa), gave a wonderful talk in relation to his own Agency within his practice. Through the medium of writing, video and performance, he investigates and responds to material drawn from Māori paradigms. He opened the talk with an image and quote by civil rights activist and artist, Nina Simone. A good reference point for her works, for me, would be Mississippi Goddam, a song that addresses racial inequality. A direct response to the murder of civil rights activist, Medgar Evers and a church bombing that killed in cold blood four innocent African American, She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone.
While my own work does not adhere to a political Agency at this point, matters of civil rights, land ownership and issues around how society deals with mental illness are never far from my thoughts. As It was confronting and educational to experience fellow students works and to view them through the lens of Agency. The works of … in particular, about the Jewish Diaspora was relatable for me as a mother of two children whose father is of Jewish Israeli descent. It generated old hatreds, far left leanings and heated discussions around Israel.
As a first year student, we were able to experience the works of the 2.5 MFA students, both through it’s form and it’s content. The performative poetry work left me in tears, as stripped naked and baring all to us, a Maori queer narrative,
Having been born in Australia, the plight and injustices of Aboriginal peoples weighs heavy on my heart and mind. Recently I discovered the works of Aborigianl artist
Yhonnie Scare. A master glass blower and also from South Australia, her exhibition Missile Park, is a sledgehammer to the Nuclear Testing and it’s rancid aftermath
Her works often relate to the on-going effects of colonisation on Aborigianl people.
She has explored the Stolen Generation and forcible removal of Aboriginal children by the State.
Yhonnie Scarce. Missile Park
Yhonnie Scarce
Blood on the Wattle, 2013
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective Paul Louis
“I understood perception to involve the construction of internal representations of the world (e.g. Palmer 1999 for a full account of this view). I assumed that creativity was explained by the mapping and manipulation of internal conceptual spaces (e.g. Boden 1994, 2004). And I held agency to be the triumph of mind over matter.”
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
*Playing with clay and the uncertainty of agency. A Material Engagement Theory perspective
Here is how Francis Bacon attributes agency and creativity. BI foresee it in my mind, I foresee it, and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint… I don’t know very often what the paint will do and it does many things much better than I could make it do.^ (Sylvester 1975, p. 16).
Exactly how i feel, no control, the material and form take over from the thinking,
the act of making something breathes agency into it.
For Latour (e.g. 1996) the world contains the constant potential for the formation of networks of action between humans, artefacts, things, ideas and cultural constructions. Agency emerges only when these elements come together to form actual networks and becomes distributed symmetrically across those networks.
Agency and AI digital art
If agency is our cognitive deliberation over matter than AI is a ceding of our own agency.
In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure are those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit agents and their decisions.[1] The influences from structure and agency are debated—it is unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained by social systems.
One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one's experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position one is born into. Disagreement on the extent of one's agency often causes conflict between parties, e.g. parents and children.
Stream of consciousness
I think therefor I am
Endless permutations
action or intervention producing a particular effect.
"canals carved by the agency of running water"
“The design process strikes a balance between the expected and the unexpected, between control and relinquishment. While the processes are deterministic, the results are not foreseeable. The computer acquires the power to surprise us.” — MIchael Hansmeyer
Researcher and professor Margaret Boden estimates that “95% of what professional artists and scientists do is exploratory. Perhaps the other 5% is truly transformational creativity.” Generative systems are helping to explore much broader ground faster than ever before.
"Generative art is the ceding of control by the artist to an autonomous system. With the inclusion of such systems as symmetry, pattern, and tiling one can view generative art as being old as art itself. This view of generative art also includes 20th century chance procedures as used by Cage, Burroughs, Ellsworth, Duchamp, and others." - Cecilia Di Chio from the book Applications of Evolutionary Computation.
https://aiartists.org/generative-art-design
Mark J. Stock is a generative artist, scientist, and programmer who combines elements of nature and computation. His work explores the tension between the natural world and its simulated counterpart— between organic and inorganic, digital and analog.
one person's sermonising morality is another's pious enemy.
Human agency. Agency is contrasted to objects reacting to natural forces involving only unthinking deterministic processes. ... Human agency entails the claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world
Agency is thinking in action
Video feedback is a classic example of complex dynamical behaviour. It arises from the way energy circulating in the system interacts chaotically with the electronic components of the hardware.
The two leading contenders – Stanislas Dehaene’s Global Neuronal Workspace Model and Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory – both claim that consciousness results from information processing in the brain, from neural computation of ones and zeros, or bits.