What is an idea in art?

Lecture, Marseille, 2000, in Conference

In the art universal terms can not be used. They used in art-theory with more fantasy than success. As important in nature history being an idea universal (or its competence exactly determined), as unimportant in art. Here are no competencies and universal ideas. However this is not means, that art (in contradiction with nature sciences) means absolute freedom of subjective personalities. Just the opposite: art has to be constructive, but at least positive: art is not a self-consistent system, like mathematics, buy an open system, its weight-point is outside of itself. The art-experience exist in spectators: the weight-point of the art is the public, the 'non-professional public.

That's why there is no chance to determine, what is an idea in art. But I can tell a story of an idea, my idea. First I thought, art is can not be less, than representing the whole world. I did not want represent the whole from one point of view, and did not want to represent a part of it from all the viewpoints. I wanted all - is it worth to start anything with less?

Art uses signs, and the meaning of them works in the spectator. The meaning (the experience) is very subjective, because it comes into being in the spectator, not in the artwork. I did not like this subjectivity, but there is no way to change directly the meanings. So I finished to meditate on the meaning of my work. In the same time I have seen, the other subjective element is in the traditional way of making artworks. What is this way? The visual idea can be realized in many variations. Some variation in chosen by the artist, and he try to realize them by continuous trials and errors. This continuous correcture has influence the original idea. I did not want choose. I did not want the best, the exceptional. I wanted to make all.

Soon I started use different methods, as I learnt in the school. I created systems, images-making machines, and I was present in them, only as an animator. In my systems always were gaps. That's why I started be busy with mathematics. I recognized, that the main point in a machinery is not making meaning-rich artwork (anyway making the meanings is a job for the spectators), but to show the structure. Using math gave me the possibility to create a system, which can produce such result, as I never could invent. There is machinery, by which the world shows itself. I was impressed very much when I first met with the Penrose-tiling. The Penrose-tiling can tile an infinite plain by two kind or rhombuses, and the order of the shapes never repeats itself. This fact seems to prove my idea about the 'over-human' systems. There is an other interesting fact: this tiling is not present in the nature: not in the living world, not in crystallography and not in the quantum mechanics.

I spend many times to show different aspects on Penrose-tiling:

So I subtract myself from the art. Someone told me I gave up the freedom of creation, and I call into question the mystic inventional creations. I am not interested to call artist, I am interested, what I am doing. I make artworks and want people to see them.

Finally I speak about using computers in my work, because it is an important part of my story, and (maybe) makes things more clear. Once I need a long line of random numbers for an artwork. (Step) I used dices, 13 dices and a coin. I had a complex system to account the final result of a single case, and to record it. The dicing took two months. It was in Amsterdam, I was a participant on the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. Peter Struycken advised me to work with computers, and Dik Groot, a mathematician, working in the academy made to me a dice-modeling program. After this I was always on his neck, to change the software, doing this and that extension. Peter Struycken advised to her to teach me write my own software. First he did not want to hear about it, but soon I get in my studio my first computer. I made my first serious program before touching a mouse. I was impressed by the programming. I write down in a programming language what I want, and things happen. Programming language is itself the Spell. For me computers are not simply tools, or media, but place to think. The development environment is like an universe. I would like to male a software which itself could be an artwork.