I graduated with my PhD from the University of South Australia in 2014. The simple goal of my research was to make the viewer pause in front of my work in order for the work to have a chance to make a deep imprint in their mind. But How? That is how research starts.
The viewer’s curiosity was what I thought was missing. When you are curious about something, all your senses are awake and I thought that I could use that to my profit. Unfortunately, curiosity is proven to be very volatile so I had to find something else.
Are you familiar with the term OPEN WORK?
There are multiple ways of analysing the terminology of OPEN WORK. The classical way would be to qualify the work as « open ended » which means that multiple interpretations of the same work could be read in it. In any art, it is always the case unless the artist writes a paper for the viewer to read AND the viewer reads it. Unlikely and not very exciting. In the end, not one artist can pretend being able to totally control how one could interpret or feel in front of their work.
At the end of my research, even I could not but that fact became the tool with which I tried to carveinto the viewers memory. While researching semiotics, I came across a book written by Umberto Eco titled OPEN WORK.His definition of OPEN WORK pushes the boundaries of the work and asks the viewer to take action and get involve in the process of creating. HIS OPEN WORK is work that is left purposefully unfinished in the hope that another person will pick up where the artist have left it to participate and render it with a new, unforeseen perspective. With participation, the work lays down an itinerary rather than a destination, and the viewer becomes both performer of the work and is performed upon by its outcome.
It could be a piece of music which partitions could be jumbled to give a new piece of music each time. It could be a book where the reader decides between multiple endings. In his view, the work of art remains the artist’s work because he or she offered the multiple possibilities, letting the viewer or performer only orchestrating the end product. It is organized disorder.
Another type of organized disorder which requires a lapse of time is kinetic work, which moves and is seen differently from one minute to the next by viewers that are not moving. I put video work in that category. Here is a beautiful work titled Narciso by Columbian artist Oscar Munoz.
