Fred Forest. For an Aesthetics of Communication
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Through my artistic action and appearances, by the installations, signs and systems of signs which I set up, I have always tried to produce " meaning ". This production of meaning is, I believe, at once the " raison d'être and the justification of all social activity. This production used to be (and still is) manifested by the creation of a certain number of messages. The nature, substance and consistency of these messages is very complex, on account of their heterogeneity. Sometimes the message is composed of the global action, at other times by certain of its special developments, at yet other by factors exterior to my theme which are automatically built in it... One thing is for certain: in each case a metalanguage mut be elaborated (no matter what the medium or form used), which is tacked on to the predominant discourse of the communication, in order to bring about jamming, deviation or the prevailing code of communication, or destabilisation or the specific field of the communication. This action necessarily involves the appropriation of the means of transmission of messages, of working on media - medium by medium - and on the entire system of meaning. In fact, my goal is to create in the potential recipient states of uncertainty. For example, I might well place messages in the mass media, stuctured in such a way that they are self-contradictory (or they contradict neighbouring messages by spatial or temporal contiguity), in order to bring about a rupture, a paradox, an interrogation. Each of these induced communication situations incites the recipient to look for an order or a structure which has a meaning for him. This stimulates his imagination, and calls upon him to participate, even conspire, in the deliberate transgression of the code which I set before him. The artistic work that I have undertaken is indeed a work on Communication itsef. I might even add that it is its capacity for metacommunication, that is to say communication about Communication, which constitutes its fundamental and specific nature.
The aesthetic stimulus of any work cannot be isolated from a context which brings in cultural factors, agreed-upon rules, varous environmental conditions, etc. Its multiform " signifié " depends directly upon these considerations. It is also dependent upon the individual disposition of each recipient. Since the comprehension process is transactional, the birth of aesthetic pleasure is directly linked to the degree of openness of each one of us. This is true (as a general rule) for all works of art, and it becomes explicit in the practice of Communication as put into effect by certain current forms of art, particulary by those which I am experimenting with myself. The primacy of mediatic structure over the content of contemporary Communication was brought to light in all its implications by Marshall McLuhan. It is possible to reproach him on this point with having too categorical a judgment, which probably should have been tempered. However, it is important to take note that in the behaviour patterns of the young generation, there is a practice of communication which is not necessarily based on the desire to exchange " content ", but rather on the more fundamental need to be connected to the network. The content of their communication is paradoxically Communication itself. The attitude of the young is certainly a reply to the evolution of awareness. An awareness which is itself modelled in a complex way by various factors or our contemporary physical, sociological, psychological, technological environment. The problem of content also arises in art. In analytic painting, it is already the work in itself which is presented as its own meaningful essence. The goal to be attained remains the communication and analysis of the act of painting itself. A methodical analysis or the constituent element in every possible configuration. This preoccupation is to be found in different forms of the Support-Surface group. In every case, we see a reduction in content in favour of thought about the relationship between elements, forms and materials. The work relates back only to itself just as certain communication practices relate only to themselves. For my part, I tend to devoid of real content. It is up to the spectator, through the use of mental mechanisms, to reconstitute the message of his choice from the elements with which he is provided. To reconstruct, using every possible variation, the message which the artist has provided him with in a kit. It is up to him to create his " thing ", to make a choice of readings, to construct a satisfactory interpretation from the signs which are placed before him.
The Communication artist no longer feels obliged to give a visual or concrete representation with the help or any " real " materials whatsoever, as he is now experimentig directly on reality itself. From now on, the spectator has a role to play in the meaning of art. The information environment which constitute the daily world of the modern man brings him into a multitude of signs which bombard him, from which he selects to make his own reality. It is in the sphere or this familiar informational context that the Communication artist places the signs which he transmits to the recipient. It is up to the latter to spot them, to identify them, to bring mentally them into relationship with one another, and finally to recognise them as a system which carries meaning. It is only having done all of this that the ultimate and supreme pleasure will be granted him : aesthetical pleasure! In view of this, we are in presence of a new type of work, conceived in the form of a combination of programmed information which reaches the potential recipient. The particular conditions of a performance in the presence of the artist-mediator may facilitate the integration and homogeneisation of this information, but even in his absence the work must nonetheless be discernible. It suffices merely that the initial concept of the production takes into account the special conditions of the actions in order to adapt the necessary means to it. As there is no explicit content, it is up to the artist, of course, to anticipate and invent a model, a spatio-temporal architecture, which will make his action discernible and identifiable in itself.
The close link between reality and communication, even though a recent notion, is now generally admitted. To go further, it is even realised that it is Communiation in itself which virtually creates what we call reality. The resarch of the " Palo Alto " school has largely contributed to this idea gaining acceptance. Up until now, we have tended to suppose that Communication was simple the transaction through which this reality expressed itself, explained itself, carried out exchange. Not so. Communications is not just a transmission medium.
Communication is not a simple operation of information transmission as previously supposed. It is a great deal more than that: it is at once the space in which, and the tool by which reality is forged. The point of view of practitioners of art has always been to give us to understand reality as " other " by means of various fictional proposiions. Which is, of course, in itself a way of making a new reality. If communication itself can generate reality, the multiplication and diversification of the means of communicaion caracterising our society constitute powerful factors or change in the elaboration of our contemporary reality. This also, in turn, means that he who has access to Communication technology may be able to " model " reality. But who, today, has access to this technology ? Certainly not the artist, and even less the average citizen. I have no illusions; I do not share Marsall McLuhan excessive optimism on the subject. The possibility of having access to the channels of communication as an " agent " is at the moment entirely regulated by considerations of power. We are still a long way from the mythical global village which we all dream about for want or being able to inhabit it.. I is nonetheless true that the role of the artist will be precisely to mobilise all his energy in order to appropriate, either by the strength of his imagination or by cunning, all of these new vectors of Communication. Vectors of expression and action where the formulation of languages and ideas appropriate to our times is taking place.
As Derrick de Keckove has put it, " If alphabetical culture in a way made " resistances " (in the electrical sense of the term) out of us - a sort of storage area for information used for constituting knowledge - we have today to become " transistors " which on the contrary accelerate information energy in its transfer ". (19). What matters now is to be " plugged in ", connected, hooked up. Hooked up to the network in order to feel an elbow-to-elbow community with others. With communication aesthetics we have irreversibly entered the age or modulation, the organising age of exchanges and networks, the age of making contact, the age or the electro-magnetic caress. Today, all creation springs form creativity at the level of the structurres of Communication and their organisation, rather than coming from its intrinsic content.