Art Talk with Logan Beitmen - Palm Beach

On Thurday March 1st, Logan Beitmen (many of you may know him as “Dontbok) and I gave an “art talk” at “My Coffee House” in Logan’s native Palm Beach.

The talk followed several days of very productive and at times quite “out there” debate between the two of us about where art was heading and what was wrong with the art world today. Our basic conclusions were that the art world, despite a wildly successful market, is stagnant in terms of revolutionary new ways of representing the world, that many of the most exciting new ideas in terms of vision and representation were emerging not from art, but from scientific studies of vision and consciousness, and technology such as google images. We also talked a lot about the nature of consciousness and whether the answers would come from philosophical, religious, or scientific investigations, if there were any answers at all, and if our questions were valid. We didn’t quite figure everything out, but I have to say – if we had that would have sort of spoiled the ending for everyone else, eh?

We also talked a lot about my art’s relationship with theories of consciousness, cultural evolution including memetics, and information theory. I also deeply enjoyed speaking with Logan’s father, Duane, about his religious and metaphysical views, and doing some interesting meditation exercise after he generously gave me a number of books about the subject (but that’s another post…) Oh, we also spent a lot of time talking about such fascinating issues as sex, drugs, rock and roll, and Logan’s idiosyncratic driving techniques.

In the end the talk was a success. I am still digesting all the ideas… There were two parts of the talk – a hands-on experiment with drawing and a more lecture-like chat. We seem to have tackled a topic insanely overbroad, but we had a lot of fun doing it, and I’m glad that we didn’t limit ourselves. On the other hand, there were necessarily a lot of generalities in our talk, which left it feeling unconcluded, and offended some of the sensibilities of the people in the audience. This was not a negative thing however, because it sparked some very lively and positive debate, and most people left thanking us, if expressing their misgivings about some of our ideas. I don’t want to offend anyone, but then I don’t want to tone down my wildest ideas for the sake of agreement. In the future I hope to be more specific and have more concrete examples for my ideas.



The video is the intro section to our talk in which we read a google-translation damaged version of out thesis, which can be found below. The video also has the English “translation.”

The images above are the result of the hands-on drawing experiment we performed. This experiment had much in common with the project “RELAY” but was carried out in a much more chaotic way (Please read about RELAY on my site or this won’t make any sense.) Perhaps next time I should be clearer with directions, but I am wary of forcing people to follow the rules, and I revel in the lack of order. Anyway, one image is a series of images that are clearly evolving or at least changing. I am always impressed by the profound beauty that somehow emerges during these experiments – and in a situation where a goal-based task is emphasized, rather than a personally-expressive creative task. I think this may be one direction in which art is heading. The second image is one sheet of sketches for the first-generation drawings, and three examples of disorderly progressions (which is not a value judgment). In the uppermost, the idea was conveyed without the specific form being addressed in detail. In the second the original was drawn-upon, creating an impossibly complicated image that quickly diverged from any resemblance with the original, and in the last the original was lost, and the “noise” that entered the progression quickly buried the essential form of the original. But these are absolutely essential parts of the idea of evolutionary cultural change as set down in the idea of memetics – mutation without selection will lead to rapid entropy, infidelity, and de-evolution (Q: Are we not men?)

The text as what follows is the “nonsense” version of our thesis. For the English translation, please watch the video!

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(Today the subject of artistic something to say is movement of image: Is to time culture and the trend.)

(The artistic market which is principal is to rise, the artistic world the international will confront from cultural force.)

(The insufficiency of the method which the world is consistent but today did not do to see, us not to be it predicted a defiant information anger time.)

(The internet technique and increase world-wide exchange of culture did the company and our life was exchanged.)

(This change packed the road for the paradigm abutment which is to the opening to traffic prospect wife rum revolutionary one art for the remaking construction of four dimension space three-dimensional green onion painters.)

(The gain and loss where today, we are new does not know and the map which with, next is visible all together quest which it does not know will do and means the theoretical foundation of our today direction of a ceremony ceremony study of cultural development and new concept about under including new rational attention, will be.)