Notes on Fluxus

-began in the 1960s with a group of artists from New York City

-international, interdisciplinary, and broad movement, with artists working in sound, text, performance, and new media

-Black Mountain College

-some artists:

dick higgins

george brecht

la monte young

allison knowles

george macunius

-two major forms:

Flux Kits/Multiples

The Event

*both of these forms are about the "immediate quality of experience"

-"Immediate quality of experience" references New Media technologies. Fluxus developed in the same time as the computer, video, and other "new media."

Fluxus artists in the 1960s were beginning to introduce interactivity and multi sensory experience through the Flux kit, and introducing database logic in the Event Score.

-an Event Score: presents an idea that is then carried out. Similar to programs, or the script for a play.

Flux Kit:

- a database structure

-non hierarchical

-a list of unordered items

-a collection of individual items with every item having the same significance as any other

The Event:

-algorithms- a sequence of simple operations a compute executes to accomplish a task.

-consider your individual score was one algorithm within a database which is the entire class's scores

-each score is pulled up at a pre-specified time

Fluxus experience of Art-Making

- making something 'special' by exaggerating, patterning, juxtaposing, shaping transforming, making the ordinary into something significant.

-making room for the consideration of others' perspectives, and a common respect for difference.

-valuing primary over secondary experiences

-fluxus strives to offer depersonalized, primary information about a subject or action

*a flux kit is like a physical webpage. you create a work of art (webpage), put it on the internet, and anyone can peruse it at their leisure.

* meaning has a visceral basis- touch and exploration creates meaning.

"youre not creating something that means something else.. what you create is what you created. it is."

The Fluxus Event

- originally practiced by John Cage

-his idea was to accept whatever sounds occurred within a specific period of time. those sounds determined the music.

"if you listen to Mozart and Beethoven, you see they're always the same, but if you listen to traffic, you see it's always different"