THE DYNAMIC BOOK OF CHANGES
LEFT TO CHANCE: IN SEARCH OF THE ACCIDENTAL BOOK
SFCB | SAN FRANCISCO, CA | FEB. 17 - MAY. 12, 2012
THE CONCEPT
The Dynamic Book of Changes builds on the 3D Mathematical I Ching Chart that I created earlier this year for Get Lucky: The Culture of Chance at SOMARTS. For Left to Chance: In Search of the Accidental Book I show my vision of what the Book of Changes would be if published as a dynamic e-book. The piece starts with a visual representation of the creation stories, the birth of duality, it's multiple permutations, the origin of the traditional hexagrams, culminating with the assembling of the classic I Ching chart. The piece transitions from the classic chart, to the numerical meaning of each hexagram to the mathematical 3D I Ching Chart. The piece continues to showcase a sampling of the 3D Hexagrams rotating in space as it references it's imply meaning.
I left open to chance was the majority of the process that I devised to create the piece for SFCB exhibition. I used software, formats, and equipment I had no used previously in the artistic process and used aspects of these processes that I had not embraced before. The culminating piece reflects the breaking of personal barriers and technical obstacles.
The 3D Mathematical I Ching Chart was reviewed last year by SF Chronicle's Kenneth Baker who wrote: "In composing music and making or staging visual art, Cage frequently used the I Ching, the traditional Chinese divination system, as a means to give randomness to decisions. Several pieces here make explicit reference to it, notably a work by Antonio Cortez in both static and digital display. By adept use of design software, Cortez translated the 64 two-dimensional hexagrams of the I Ching into colorful 3-D models, referencing, as Cage typically did not, the hexagrams' metaphorical associations."
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
In “Left to Chance: The Search for the Accidental Book Art “ artists celebrate the iconoclast John Cage’s centennial birth, his enduring legacy, and love of experimentation with music, mushrooms, Zen Buddhism, I-Ching, visual art, printmaking and typography.
The San Francisco Center for the Book pays tribute to Cage and his influence on visual arts by hosting an exhibition that fully appreciates the range and impact of his life’s work across various disciplines such as collage, prints, book art, edible handmade paper and 3-D structures that float on cyberspace platforms. Artists use serendipity, randomness, unpredictability, luck, found objects, and chance-determined procedures to generate new works that are free of any particular order, rule or aesthetic judgments.
In the spirit of Cage, the anarchist and follower of subversive Dadaists, who persistently sought to unsettle artistic conventions, categories, hierarchies and institutions, experimentation and the use of technology are playing a prominent role in unleashing new thinking of how digital tools infuse new shapes and structures to change traditional book making. Thus, “Left to Chance“ is a deliberate strategy behind the creation of this exhibit and concept that acknowledges chance as a constant companion of the creative endeavor.
“Left to Chance” builds on the curator’s early works such as the “Seduction of Duchamp”, “Get Lucky the Culture of Chance,” and the inspiring book by Herbert Molderings’s “Duchamp The Aesthetics of Chance: The Art as an Experiment.”
MATHEMATICAL FORMULATIONS
© all rights reserved | 2012
SELECTED PROJECTS
THE DYNAMIC
BOOK OF CHANGES
THE DYNAMIC BOOK OF CHANGES
2012, One Channel Video,
Limited Edition, 7’47”
Still Pages from THE DYNAMIC BOOK OF CHANGES, 2012, eight stills from one channel video
