Thursday 14 May 2009

Abstraction

Here's an abstract improvisation (with a movie about java programming which I made for RAK). What's the difference between the figurative and the abstract? For me, the abstract is continual disruption (and this was the point of the serial method in Schoenberg): it's constantly interfering with our preconceptions - allowing little recognisable to form. The figurative disrupts too - but often in the detail (I think of Constable here). Where the prime reaction to the abstract is disruption, the prime reaction to the figurative is recognition, cognitive, rational... in saying "this is a chair", it is in a sense coercive.

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