Fred Forest. For an Aesthetics of Communication
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In the systems of reciprocity and exchange which are set up by Communication artists, the aspects of public participation cannot be overlooked. In my view, it will comme to take an ever increasing importance in the future. In the 70's, it was supposed that this would take on the form of a collective, and necessarily physical, relationship. These types of action while well-intentioned, soon fell into the context of " community art action ", which some artists have never quite managed to pull themselves out of... What I have in mind are more involved forms of participation, such as those which occur through multi-media exchanges of information set up by the artist, who is present as the conceiver of the system, and possibly also as the actor-animator of the whole. The idea of feed-back and reciprocity as advanced by cybernetics has already found an application in the most ordinary of our everyday activities, outside the world of science. These are the kind of practices which sustain today's awareness, and which contribute to its being formed. It is this contemporary awareness that to my mind is absent from the theatre of operation in the plastic arts.
" Traditional form is over and done with. There is a marked tendency for a more global culture, in which the distinction between the categories of science ant the artistic category of creativity loses its meaning. A new definition of the triangular relationship/between artist, theorician and spectator necessarily gives rise to new aesthetic thinking... A new art is being born, based on the aspirations and the creative needs of man, and, consequently, encompassing his environment ; it is an art which is able to go past the level of conceptual art, as it can that of propaganda art... Despite the diverse nature of its origins,and of the forms which it takes, the art of environment has a unified direction. By implication, it tends towards a wider dimensions, that of authentical " sociological space " (a privileged area of investigation). " (11).
The " sociological space " that Frank Popper mentions is a space which the protagonists of Sociological Art began to rake over and explore in 1967 (12), and from 1974 this continued through the impetus of the Sociological Art Collective. Just a few years ago, this concept of space was linked to the idea of physical representation, geographically defined. The proliferation of all kinds of media and their widespread utilisation has led me today to a more " abstract " concept of this space. This is the " encounter " space built upon Communication media. It is the space of social communication, created by the superimposition of all the technological media on our physical space. The idea is that of an immense chain-mail network, made of invisible wires which convey our messages, and wherein our emotions are exchanged. Into this netting are woven new kinds of relationships between human beeings, opening up an extra " reality ". A " mediatisation " space which must be seen more and more as a new and privileged field for interactivity. Environment itself has a tendency to " dissolve " and re-surface as an area in which our relationships become " tangible " by means of information. This more abstract sort of environment is no less real either in our representations, or in our experience. The mere mention of the word " environment " used to make us think exclusively of physical perception of our surroundings. This is particularly the case with architecture. Today, this idea has evolved and the concept of space is more and more associated in our representation with the idea of " information environment ".