No More Learning

This chapter is about the distinction between medium and form as ex-
1
emplified in the domain of art. That distinction is meant to replace the
distinction substance/accidence, or object/properties--a guiding distinc- tion, crucial for any object-oriented ontology, that has long been criti- cized. The question is: With what can we replace it? By defining properties in terms of object determinations (colors, for example, as determinations
102
Medium and Form 103
of paintings) this distinction separates the "internal" too sharply from the
"external," or subject from object. The distinction between primary and
secondary qualities was meant to correct this bias. However, it ended up
dividing the problem between subjects and objects rather than suggesting
the compelling consequence that both entities, subjects andob)ects, must
be thought "ecstatically. " Nor does the distinction between being and hav-
2
ing, favored by many critics of modernity, point beyond this impasse.
The distinction between medium and form suggests another primary distinction designed to replace and render obsolete the object-oriented on- tological concept of matter. In traditional notions of matter, one thinks of
3
the wax mass that suffers the engraving and erasure of inscriptions. From
a systems-theoretical standpoint, by contrast, both media and forms are constructed by the system and therefore always presuppose a specific sys- tem reference. They are not given "as such. " The distinction between me- dium and form, just like the concept of information, is strictly internal to the system. There is no corresponding difference in the environment. Nei- ther media nor forms "represent" system states of an ultimately physical nature. The perceptual medium of "light," for example, is not a physical concept but rather a construct that presupposes the difference between lightness and darkness. Accordingly, the internally projected distinction between medium and form is relevant exclusively to the art system (just as monetary media and prices are relevant only to the economy), even though the distinction can be applied not only to art but equally well to nature, in a manner that transcends the boundaries of both.
What both sides of the medium/form distinction have in common,
and what distinguishes this distinction from other distinctions, lies in the 4
notion of a coupling of elements. The term element does not refer to natural constants--particles, souls, or individuals--that any observer
5
would identify as the same. Rather, it always points to units constructed
(distinguished) by an observing system--to units for counting money,
for example, or to tones in music. Furthermore, these elements cannot be
self-sufficient in the sense that they could determine or in-form them-
6
selves. They must be thought of as dependent on couplings. They would
be invisible as pure self-references, since one can observe them only by using distinctions. Certain media employ the same elements but distin- guish themselves with regard to the coupling--loose or tight--of their elements.
Let us begin with the notion of medium, which applies to cases of
104 Medium and Form
"loosely coupled" elements. The choice of terminology is awkward, but
7
since the concept has been introduced in the literature, we adopt it here. Loose coupling has nothing to do with a loose screw, for example. Rather, the concept indicates an open-ended multiplicity of possible connections that are still compatible with the unity of an element--such as the num- ber of meaningful sentences that can be built from a single semantically identical word.
To decompose further whatever functions as an "element" in specific media is to broach the operatively impalpable--just as in physics, where the question of whether we are dealing with particles or waves boils down to a matter of prejudice. There are, in other words, no ultimate units whose identity would not refer back to the observer. Hence, there is no in- dication without a sufficient (observable) operation that executes it.
Loose coupling, which leaves room for multiple combinations, can be understood in both a factual and a temporal sense. Factually, it means that a number of tight couplings are likely and selection is inevitable. Tempo- rally speaking, a medium is often understood as a condition for transfers. In addition, there are close ties to the theory of memory, if memory is un- derstood in terms of a delay in the reactualization of meaning. An ob- server must employ modal-theoretical terms to describe such media.
This explains further why media can be recognized only by the contin- gency of the formations that make them possible. (This insight corre- sponds to the old doctrine that matter as such, as sheer chaos, is inacces-
8
sible to consciousness. ) Observed from within the schema of medium
and form, all forms appear accidental; or, to put it differently, no form ever expresses the "essence" of the medium. This is another way of for- mulating the insight that what matters is the distinction between medium and form; we are dealing with two sides that cannot be separated or thought of in isolation. This leads to the realization that the distinction between medium and form is itself a form, a form with two sides, one of which--the side of the form--contains itself. The distinction between medium and form is a paradoxical construct insofar as it reenters itself
9
and reappears within one of its sides.
Forms are generated in a medium via a tight coupling of its elements.
This process, too, presupposes two-sided forms, and our two-sided con- cept of form remains valid here. The forms that emerge from the tight coupling of a medium's possibilities distinguish themselves (their inside) from the remaining possibilities contained in the medium (their out-
Medium and Form 105
10
side).
rather than with its general form, for which the other side is the sur- rounding unmarked space.
The specificity of the medium/form distinction points to the emergence of distinctive features of such forms. This specificity depends on evolution. Forms are always stronger and more assertive than the medium. The medium offers no resistance--words cannot struggle against the forma- tion of phrases any more than money can refuse to be paid at specific prices. Of course, media impose limits on what one can do with them. Since they consist of elements, media are nonarbitrary. But their arsenal of possibilities is generally large enough to prevent fixation on a few forms. If this happened, then the medium/form distinction would collapse.
We can further elucidate the medium/form distinction by means of the distinction between redundancy and variety. The elements that form the medium through their loose coupling--such as letters in a certain kind of writing or words in a text--must be easily recognizable. They carry litde information themselves, since the informational content of an artwork must be generated in the course of its formation. The formation of the work creates surprise and assures variety, because there are many ways in which the work can take shape and because, when observed slowly, the work invites the viewer to contemplate alternate possibilities and to ex-
11
periment with formal variations.
It is worth noting that forms, rather than exhausting the medium, re-
generate its possibilities. This is remarkable and can be easily demonstrated with reference to the role of words in the formation of utterances. Forms fulfill this regenerating function, because their duration is typically shorter than the duration of the medium. Forms, one might say, couple and de- couple the medium. This feature highlights the correlation between the medium/form difference and a theory of memory. The medium supports the retarding function (which regulates the reuse of elements in new forms) that underlies all memory. Memory does not store items belonging to the past (how could it? ); memory postpones repetition. The creation of forms, by contrast, fulfills an equally important function for memory, namely, the function of discrimination, remembering and forgetting. We remember the elements we frequently employ when creating forms and forget the ones we never use. In this way, a system memory can delimit it-
12
self by adapting to the incidents the system experiences as chance events. The difference between medium and form implies a distinctly tempo-
Of course, we are dealing with a special case of distinguishing
io6 Medium and Form
ral aspect as well. The medium is more stable than the form, because it re- quires only loose couplings. No matter how short-lived or lasting they turn out to be, forms can be created without exhausting the medium or causing it to disappear along with the form. As we noted earlier, the me- dium receives without resistance the forms that are possible within it, but die form's resilience is paid for with instability. Even this account is far too simple. It disregards the fact that the medium can be observed only via forms, never as such. The medium manifests itself only in the relationship between constancy and variety that obtains in individual forms. A form, in other words, can be observed through the schema of constant/variable,
13
because it is always a form-in-a-medium.
Finally, let us return to the notion that media and forms consist of
(loosely or tightly coupled) elements. Such elements always also function as forms in another medium. Words and tones, for example, constitute forms in the acoustic medium just as letters function as forms in the opti- cal medium of the visible. This terminology does not allow for the bound- ary concept of matter as defined by the metaphysical tradition, where matter designates the complete indeterminacy of being regarding its readi- ness to assume forms. Media are generated from elements that are always already formed. Otherwise, we couldn't speak of their loose or tight cou- pling. This situation contains possibilities for an evolutionary arrange- ment of medium/form relationships in steps, which, as we shall see
14
shortly, entails an essential precondition for understanding art.
fore turning to art, let us consider yet another example that illustrates the generality of this step-wise arrangement. In the medium of sound, words are created by constricting the medium into condensable (reiterable) forms that can be employed in the medium of language to create utter- ances (for the purpose of communication). The potential for forming ut- terances can again serve as the medium for forms known as myths or nar- ratives, which, at a later stage, when the entire procedure is duplicated in the optical medium of writing, also become known as textual genres or theories. Theories can subsequently be coupled in the medium of the truth code to form a network of consistent truths. Such truths function as forms whose outside consists of untruths lacking consistency. How far we can push this kind of stacking depends on the evolutionary processes that lead to the discovery of forms. The logic of the distinction between me- dium and form cannot determine the limits of what may be possible in this regard. It does, however, permit judgments concerning chains of de-
But be-
Medium and Form 107
pendencies that point to the kinds of evolutionary achievements that must be present so that further, more and more improbable constellations can arise. Most likely, we will be able to demonstrate sequences of this sort in the evolution of art as well.
II
The most general medium that makes both psychic and social systems possible and is essential to their functioning can be called "meaning"
15
[Sinn]. Meaning is compatible with the temporalized manner in which
psychic and social systems operate. It is compatible, in other words, with the way these systems constitute their elements exclusively in the form of events that are bound to a certain point in time (such elements are unlike particles, which possess a duration of their own and can be altered, repli- cated, or replaced). Meaning assures that the world remains accessible to the events that constitute the system--in the form of actualized contents of consciousness or communications--although they vanish as soon as they emerge, each appearing for the first and for the last time. The world itself is never accessible as a unity--as a whole, or totality, a mystical "all at once"--but is available only as a condition and domain for the tempo- ral processing of meaning. Each meaning-event can lead to another. The question is: How?
Initially, the problem presents itself as follows: no matter how distinct, how obtrusive and indubitable any momentary actualization may be, meaning can represent the world accessible from a given position only in the form of a referential surplus, that is, as an excess of connective possi- bilities that cannot be actualized all at once. Instead of presenting a world, the medium of meaning refers to a selective processing. This is true even when concepts, descriptions, or semantics referring to the world are gener- ated within the world. Actualized meaning always comes about selectively and refers to further selections. It is therefore fair to say that meaning is constituted by the distinction between actuality and potentiality (or be- tween the real as momentarily given and as possibility). This implies and confirms that the medium of meaning is itself a form constituted by a spe- cific distinction. But this raises the further question of how to comprehend the selective processing of meaning and in what ways it is accomplished.
At this point, we will have to rely again on the (paradoxical) notion of reentry. The meaning-producing distinction between actuality and poten-
io8 Medium and Form
tiality reenters itself on the side of actuality, because for something to be actual it must also be possible. It follows that the distinction between medium and form is itself a form. Or, considered in terms of meaning: as medium, meaning is a form that creates forms in order to assume form. Meaning is processed via the selection of distinctions, of forms. Some- thing specific is indicated (and nothing else): for example, "This yew-tree is nothing but itself, and it is a yew-tree and no other tree. " The two-sided form substitutes for the representation of the world. Instead of presenting
16
the world as phenomenon,
something else--whether this something is unspecified or specific, neces- sary or undeniable, only possible or dubitable, natural or artificial. The form of meaning is at once medium and form, and is such in a way that the medium can be actualized only via the processing of forms. This shows clearly that, and in what ways, one can speak of meaning (as we are doing right now) and that the actual infinity of the unreachable, intangi- ble world of Nicholas of Cusa can be transformed into, and set in motion as, an infinite process. As a self-reproducing (autopoietic) process, mean- ing must always begin with the actual, a historically given situation in
17
which it has placed itself. It follows that systems constructed in such a
manner cannot observe their own beginning or end and that they experi- ence whatever constrains them temporally or factually from within a boundary they need to transcend. In the medium of meaning there is no finitude without infinity.
These observations go far beyond the specific domain of art. Consider- ing, however, that art possesses meaning, they are relevant to art as well. This is true especially for the realization that we will have to cope with paradoxical but structured phenomena whenever we inquire into meaning or into the world as such, while at the same time we must give a specific meaning to this inquiry in the world In art, too, world can be symbolized only as indeterminable (unobservable, indistinguishable, formless), for any specification would have to use a distinction and confront the question of
18
what else there could be.
One thing is certain, however: the distinctions we have at our disposal to raise such questions cannot be selected arbitrarily (although they can be criticized in each case), and any decision in this realm limits the selection of forms in ways that may be fruitful for an observation of artworks.
The case of art clearly shows that, and in what ways, a form can be used as a medium for further formations. As form, the human body can be
this form reminds us that there is always
In the end, suggestions of this sort lead nowhere.
Medium and Form 109
used as a medium for the presentation of different postures and move-
ments. A play can count as form to the extent that it is determined by a
script and stage directions; at the same time, it functions as a medium in
which different productions and individual performances can assume a
specific form. (We see clearly that, and how, this difference emerges along
with the evolution of the theater. ) For its part, a medium--the material of
which the artwork is crafted, the light it breaks, or the whiteness of the pa-
per from which figures or letters emerge--can be used as form, provided
that this form succeeds in fulfilling a differentiating function in the work.
In contrast to natural objects, an artworks material participates in the for-
mal play of the work and is thereby acknowledged as form. The material
is allowed to appear as material; it does not merely resist the imprint of
form. Whatever serves as medium becomes form once it makes a differ-
ence, once it gains an informational value owing exclusively to the work
19
of art.
mains dependent on the primary medium and ultimately on the medium of perception. There is no other way to render perception as a form that can bring about communication.
The question of whether there is a special medium for what we experi- ence as art today--an art-specific medium with corresponding forms-- poses a significant challenge. Several primary media capable of fulfilling this function already exist in the realm of perception for seeing and hear- ing, and, dependent on these, in the realm of language. One immediately notices a number of striking differences between these media, which raises the question of whether one can speak of a unified artistic medium at all and, if so, in what sense. This situation has a unique explanatory force, however: after all, a plurality of artistic genres traceable to these different media does exist--sculpture and painting, music and dance, theater and poetry. We must therefore radicalize the question and ask whether there is a "unity of art" in this multiplicity (as we have assumed naively) and whether this unity may reside in the specific logic of medium and form, that is, in the evolution of derived medium/form differences that attempt to realize analogous effects--with regard to a special function of art, for example--in different media. This line of questioning abstracts from in- dividual media of perception and regards even language merely as one form of artistic expression among others, which shows how improbable this question, this way of drawing internal or external boundaries, really is.
The beginnings of a theory of a special medium of art date back to the
At the same time, the emergence of more demanding forms re-
Medium and Form
no
late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before the arts began to emerge as a unified subject matter in the mid-eighteenth century. The notion of a special artistic medium was still concealed behind die idea of "beautiful appearance," a counterconcept that referred not only to theater and po- etry but also to the visual arts and even (as in Baltasar Gracian) to the beau- tiful self-presentation of human behavior. "Beautiful appearance" may be an illusion, as in perspectival painting or the stage theater; but if it is, one can see through it. It is an illusion whose frame or stage ensures that one does not mistake it for the real world. Including the entire range of hu- man behavior, as in Gracian, requires a functional equivalent for the ex- ternal frame, a special desengano (disillusionment), a clever strategy for seeing through the deception, which, in this case, equals self-deception. The problem is that the reality of the artworks, the actual existence of the paintings and texts, of the stage and its productions, can hardly be denied. The differentiation of beautiful appearance does not remove art from the accessible world. This is why the artistic medium must be constituted by the double framing of an illusion that, at the same time, is recognized as such on the basis of specific clues. It is constituted by an internal medium that shapes materials--paint, language, bodily movement, spatial arrange- ments--within an external medium that isolates the forms in their strik- ing particularity and guarantees that they are perceived as art rather than as wood, a coat of paint, a simple communication, or human behavior. One hundred years later, Diderot will speak of the paradox of the come-
20
dian who must simultaneously perform and disrupt the illusion.
The technique of double framing for the sake of illusion and disillusion- ment separates the medium of art from other objects and events, from na- ture as well as from commodities and utilities of all sorts. It places high de- mands on the observer, demands that require special arrangements--the stage theater, for example, as opposed to the merely symbolic religious plays of the Middle Ages--but may also have emerged in response to the truth claims of an ever more hectic religious activity in the post-Reformation pe-
21
riod, to the new sciences, or to profit hunger in the world of trade. dissolution of the religiously nourished, unified cosmos of the Middle Ages favors bifurcations of this sort; but we still need to show how this double framing comes about in the case of art. The stage theater and perspectival painting may have provided models capable of illustrating the general con- cept of "beautiful appearance. "
The other arts, in particular poetry, the spatial arrangements of baroque
The
Medium and Form
in
architecture, and eventually the modern novel could follow these develop- ments. At the same time, however, the internal formative media of these genres were still too disparate to allow for a unified concept of the arts.
Ill
Before turning to the diversity of artistic genres, we must clarify a basic distinction that needs to be integrated into the theoretical context we are
22
proposing here: the distinction between space and time. Any further dif-
ferentiation or evolution of artistic genres is based on this distinction, even if some artistic genres, such as dance, deploy both space and time. Whatever one might suppose their "underlying" hypokeimenon (substra- tum) to be, we understand space and time to be media of the measurement
and calculation of objects (hence not forms of intuition! ). By measurement and calculation we do not have in mind culturally introduced criteria;
23
rather, we are thinking of the neurophysiological operation of the brain. On the one hand, space and time are always already attuned to the brain's quantitative language; on the other hand, neither consciousness nor com- munication can follow the brain's computations. They must presuppose the relevant achievements on the basis of structural couplings and permit their interpenetration. In this way, consciousness is free to develop its own procedures of measurement, which rest on comparisons and are used only sporadically, not in a constitutive manner. From the internal viewpoint of conscious operations or communications, the world is always already tem- porally and spatially disclosed. They have no power to control, let alone prevent, the operations that bring about this disclosure; only in position- ing objects within these media do they have a certain freedom. This ac- counts for a certain uniformity of space and time that is presupposed in any meaningful constitution of objects and that can be used as a medium. This uniformity is needed to apprehend discontinuities, caesurae, and boundaries, as well as to estimate distances in both space and time.
The ability to identify places independently of the objects that occupy these places generates space and time. This is true even when the destruc- tion of an object implies the loss of its "ancestral" place (which is not a loss of space as such). Differences between places qualify the medium, whereas differences between objects define its forms. Places are coupled differently from objects but by no means arbitrarily. Again, the medium "as such" is inaccessible. Only forms make it perceptible. Objects, one
IIZ Medium and Form
might say, are based in space and time in order to supply the world with variety. But variety requires redundancies, that is, nonarbitrary relations between positions in space and time, as well as between the two media.
In this regard, space and time are in agreement. They are both gener- ated in the same way, namely, through the distinction between medium and form, or, more accurately, between place and object. They do, how- ever, differ considerably, which makes it impossible to impoverish the world by reducing one to the other. One essential difference between the two concerns the way in which space and time manage variety, the alter- nation of forms: in space, places can be recognized when they are occu- pied by objects. At the same time, space and time emerge isotropically (and thus redundantly), whereas the places occupied by objects can alter- nate (in this sense, space and time are variable). One cannot do without the other, and this is why variety remains bound to redundancy. In time, the same formal accomplishment is tied to the identity of objects that can be recognized and confirmed in new situations, even though the tempo- ral conditions may have changed. Space makes it possiblefor objects to leave theirplaces. Time makes it necessaryfor places to leave their objects. In this way, contingency is furnished with necessity and necessity with contin- gency. The separation of the two media thus permits the unfolding, in the world, of the modal-theoretical paradox that the necessary is contingent and contingency necessary--this is already accomplished by perception, independently of any modal-logical solution to the problem.
An occupied space creates an atmosphere. Atmosphere is always what the individual objects that occupy places are not, the other side of their form, what perishes along with them. This explains the "invulnerability"
24
of atmosphere, along with its dependency on a given occupied space. At-
mosphere is a kind of excess effect caused by the difference between places. It cannot be analyzed by describing places, nor is it reducible to places. It comes into being each time an object occupies a place and cre- ates an ambiance that is neither identical to the object nor able to exist without it. Atmosphere makes visible both the unity of the difference that constitutes space and the invisibility of space as a medium for the creation of forms. But it is not the same as space, which, as a medium, can never become visible.
So long as the differentiation of society needs stable spatial boundaries-- this is true especially in segmented societies but also holds for advanced so- cieties in which stratification or city/country differentiation still rests on
Medium and Form 113
household economies--spatial symbols can be used to mark boundaries or
25
other ambiguous sites, such as markets.
ambiguous, it supports and tolerates the transitory nature of events, the movement from one side to the other at a position determined as a cross- over point. WitJi die decreasing significance of spatial boundaries--for ex- ample, as a result of the universalization of a money-based economy and the dependency of the average household on monetary incomes--en- trenched symbolizations presumably lose their power to convince and must be replaced by a semantics of signs. We shall return to this point.
Time articulates its necessity in terms of a simultaneity ofall conditions and events--a kind of self-negation.
Whatever is actualized at a given mo- ment occupies only one position in time. All other positions momentarily withdraw and hence cannot be accessed; in this sense, they suggest a sta- ble world. Instability correlates with actuality, stability with nonactual- ity--which is a manner of unfolding temporal necessity. The principle of space allows a place to be occupied only by one single object. (Depending on the kind of object, this place can be either reduced in size or enlarged. ) From this unique position, however, any otherplace is accessible witliin die structure of places. Only the objects themselves make movement difficult. The stability (a temporal notion! ) of space relies on each object having its place and remaining there so long as it doesn't move (movement always equals a loss of place, securing a new place is the exception. ) Nor does this necessity exclude contingency; on the contrary, it includes it. The spatial position or place is precisely what is identified as world-place, the position from which other places are accessible. Both space and time thus require a place as a starting point that enables access to other places. The world it- self remains inaccessible, because one can access the world only by mov-
ing from one place to another.
As perceptible objects, artworks must use the media of space and time
so that they can exclude, from their unique position, other spaces and times. As artworks, these objects simultaneously create imaginary spaces and times. The imagination constitutes itself by including die exclusion of the world that is always given here and now, in real space and time. (This is how the imagination remains real and can be fixated in a work of art. ) In the imaginary world, the medium/form structure of space and time replicates itself together widi its unique unfolding of contingency and ne- cessity. In art, however, this structure leaves varying degrees of freedom that can then be exploited for the self-limitation of art.
Since their spatial position is un-
H4 Medium andForm
In the imaginary world of art, just as in the real world, a spatial position defines itself by providing access to other places. Architecture determines how the context of the edifice is to be seen. A sculpture defines its sur- rounding space. Temporal positions in art, above all in music, are deter- mined by their own vanishing, and the artwork must define what remains significant and what can follow--a momentarily fixated and vanishing where and whence. It is always the difference, the boundary, that makes a difference and is turned into information by the work of art.
The most important contribution of the media of space and time to the evolution of art is perhaps the possibility for tightening up redundancies and thus securing a higher degree of variety. If the artwork can be success- fully based on the unity of space and/or the unity of time as a means of ensuring redundancy--the formal sameness of all places---then it can as- similate much more variety. Yet the observer never loses the overview. He can still proceed step by step without running the risk of considering the work a failure. This effect can be accomplished by any optical, acoustic, or
narrative means that ensures everythingcan be painted or narrated, so long as space and time provide the necessary stability. The most telling exam- ple is the invention of unified perspective. Others include temporally syn-
26
chronized transitions in narrative
melody, rhythm, the dissolution of dissonance, or retardation in music.
In this sense, the wealth of artistic possibilities rests on an imitation of the differential structure of space and time--not, as common belief has it, on an imitation of objects in the world of real space/time. Even "abstract" art creates and places objects. Otherwise it could accomplish nothing. But abstract art takes the liberty of unfolding these objects according to the logic of space and time and leaves it to the individual artwork to create a convincing arrangement.
Finally, we must keep in mind that space and time, both of which are media for calculating objects, do not yet provide a basis for classifying
27
artistic kinds.
It would be wrong to think of spatial arts, on the one
or the suggestion of tone sequences via
hand, and temporal arts, on the other. This fails to do justice to narrative,
dance, or the theater. Even genres that tend toward one of these media
might use the other as well. We think of sculpture as arrested in its move-
28
ment
cal or bifurcated order in art--in the sense that the world could be split into space and time, and each of these media would subsequently divide to produce further artistic kinds as if by a Ramist logic. The evolutionary
and organ music as clearly related to space. There is no hierarchi-
Medium and Form
"5
"accident" that led to the emergence of different perceptual media ac- counts for generic differences, and these media cannot afford to specialize exclusively in spatial or temporal observations.
The distinction between ornamental and figurative (representational, il- lusory) components of artworks seems more appropriate to guide our in- vestigation. Ornaments organize space and time directly and supply these media with redundancy and variety. They presuppose a self-defined space that is closed off, as it were, from within. The same is true when time be- comes ornament (in dance, or in the ups and downs of tension in narra- tive). From the viewpoint of the creative process, such an enclosure must first be created in the form of a partial space prepared specifically for this purpose (such as the facade of a building or the surface of a container), or
29
as a slice of time with a self-determined beginning and end.
tional art, by contrast, begins by projecting an imaginary space or time in order to gain a free hand in employing this self-created medium for pur- poses of ornamentation and representation. Since the early Renaissance, European art has preferred this option, relegating ornament to the func- tion of decoration, of placing accents and emphasizing the essential. A closer look, however, reveals that the ornamental is always the work's in- frastructure, even in deliberately representational art forms, for the fol- lowing reason: if one employs space and time (how else could an artwork appear? ), then these media must be organized, whatever might subse- quently be represented in them.
IV
No matter how we place the accents, no matter how much a work's fig- urative or ornamental aspects may capture our attention at first, we must assume that the forms that constitute the work by virtue of their distin- guishing force diverge, depending on which medium of perception or in-
30
tuition they deploy. There is no commensurability between painting and
music, or between sculpture and dance, or between the lyric and the novel--which is not to say that there can be no "onomatopoeia" in music or that dancers cannot become sculptures. These formal differences are conditioned, not by the choice of form (if they were, then they could be avoided), but by the medium that underlies each form and that, by virtue of its loose coupling, makes tight couplings possible. Perceptual media do not display a spectrum as broad as that of artistic genres. Painting and
Representa-
n6 Medium andForm
sculpture, theater and dance, depend on light--a visual medium--whereas the lyric, like narrative (the epic, the novel), relies on language as a medium of fixation for intuition. But the manner in which art shapes and makes use of perceptual media differs in each genre. To radicalize our previous question: How can one speak of the unity of art, or of the unity of an artis- tic medium in view of such diversity?
In anticipating this question, we have taken great care to elaborate the distinction between medium and form. We can start from there. Percep- tual media are media of the psyche in Heider's sense, rather than of a so- cial or communicative nature. No one can share the perception of others, although one can perceive that others perceive or that others perceive one's perceiving. We shall make the controversial claim that the same is true in the realm of intuition, that is, in the realm of imagined perception. It is true when language is used for the purpose of stimulating intuition
(rather than communicating information) and thus holds also for art- works created in language, especially the novel. No one knows what an- other experiences intuitively when reading about Odysseus and how he had himself tied to the mast, or about Siebenkas, who searches for his own
31
grave only to find the woman he will eventually marry.
how others imagine Robinson's surprise when Friday appears, or how Napoleon (in War and Peace) is struck by the events of the Russian cam- paign. One tends to speak of "fictional" literature in these cases. Whatever that means, the fictional medium is primarily constituted by the private nature of an intuition that requires no "continuation of communication" and therefore no special effort on the part of consciousness and memory, but instead allows them to operate freely.
How, then, is art nonetheless possible as communication? And what, in this case, would be the medium of communication?
The key to this question may well reside in the intentionally created observational relationships we analyzed in the previous chapter. Once
? someone (no matter who) recognizes, from the manner of presentation, \ an arrangement that is produced for an observer, a social medium has \ come into existence--whether or not this aspect is communicated in the
work of art. Literary texts in particular often distinguish themselves by self-referential clues of this sort. (Incorporating the text's production into the text, addressing the reader, attacking the reviewers in the manner of Jean Paul are still rather crude stylistic means, aimed at differentiating the text at the level of an observation of observations. ) In the wake of these
No one knows
Medium and Form
117
developments, it becomes possible to establish an "artificial" form that si- multaneously serves as a medium for forms within the form--such as the space contained in a painting, the potential movement of a sculpture ar- rested in time, or the realm of possible events in which a narrative estab- lishes sequences that present in tightly coupled forms--in this and no other way--what might well turn out otherwise. Or consider the decep- tive maneuvers of baroque architecture, which are enjoyable only when seen through, or dance, which does not take the direction of its move- ment from ordinary life but instead presents it so that it appears, from moment to moment, as if it had been selected only for the sake of the dance.
Although perceptual media and artistic genres differ greatly with regard to their concrete materialization, they share a common ground in the manner in which they construct novel medium/form relations that are in- tended to be observed and are intelligible only when this is understood. The unity of art resides in that it creates for the sake of observation and observes for the sake of being observed, and the medium of art consists in the freedom to create medium/form relations.
The possibility for combining forms and thereby tightening the work, as it were, from within, suggests another parallel between individual gen- res. We recall that forms are always two-sided. No matter what they indi- cate and fixate in the work of art, they always simultaneously present an- other side that must cooperate in rendering visible what is determined by the work. This is true if the artwork itself is meant to be recognized as a specific object (and nothing else). It holds for every detail that constitutes the work in collaboration with others.
The unmarked space is the indispensable other side, a reference to pos- sibilities that, for their part, point to an infinity that cannot be contained
32
in one place.
unmarked space into a marked space, and it creates a boundary by cross- ing that boundary. Spencer Brown speaks of "drawing a distinction. " At die same time, a difference between medium and form comes into being, an enclosed, specially prepared marked space, in which the artwork fol- lows the pull of its own distinctions and determines its own forms.
The determination of one side does not entirely leave open what can happen on the other side--this accounts for the specificity of individual art forms. While it does not determine the other side, it renders it nonar- bitrary. What can happen there must "fit" or it will cause dissonance, a
The first step in the making of an artwork leads from the
n8 Medium and Form
flaw, or disruption (which can, of course, be intentional, in which case it requires a balancing fit on its part). The determination of one side, as we just stated, does not determine the other. But it facilitates decisions and the observation of decisions concerning what can happen or has been estab- lished on the other side by the artist. If an indication is to become a work of art, then the other side must remain accessible--which assumes that one can demarcate another unmarked space in relation to this other side.
Whenever an object is intended to be a work of art, the indication does not refer merely to itself (to this and no other object). It also refers to the crossing of the boundary that divides the form into two halves and in- structs the observer to search for and fix what has not yet been decided. This holds for the artist as well as for the observer of art, and ultimately for any observation that depends on time. The indication, we might say, is used as meaning. Crossing the boundary never leads into the unmarked space, never into the world as such, but always executes an indication, a new indication. As we know, indications can only be executed as distinc- tions. They specify only one side of (another) distinction that, for its part,
33
has its own other side. This is why an artwork cannot reject the world.
do so, it would first have to indicate and distinguish the world, that is to say, it would have to execute operations that can occur only in the world.
In this sense, the artwork forces both the artist and the observer to ad-
vance from one form to the next in order to return eventually to the form
from which they began, which is now the other side of another form.
Forms play with forms, but the play remains formal. It never arrives at
"matter," it never serves as a sign for something else. H Each formal deter-
mination functions simultaneously as an irritation that leaves room for
subsequent decisions, and advancing from one form to the next is an ex-
periment that either succeeds or fails. ? This is why, as we shall elaborate be-
low, a "code" emerges in art, a continuously maintained binary orientation
concerning the "fit" or "lack of fit" of forms. This is why every artwork
contains "information" in Gregory Bateson's sense--differences that make 35
a difference. And all of this holds for any kind of art!
Accordingly, for all genres the medium of art is the sum total of possible
ways of crossing form boundaries (distinctions) from within toward the outside and of discovering fitting indications on the other side that stimu- late further crossings by virtue of their own boundaries. The medium of art is present in every artwork, yet it is invisible, since it operates only on the other side--the one not indicated--as a kind of attractor for further
To
Medium and Form 119
observations. The process of discovery transforms the medium into form. Or else one fails. In working together, form and medium generate what characterizes successful artworks, namely, improbable evidence.
Does this always have to be another distinction with another side? One may well imagine an artwork that has two components but only one form (or, more accurately, a precise congruence of two inverse forms that over- lap one another). In this case, one focuses on the side that is the other side of the other side and vice versa. The formal asymmetry necessary for ob- servation is canceled in symmetry. One can only oscillate between die two sides. Any further dynamic is blocked. We have, in other words, the pre- cise image of a logical paradox, a kind of time trap that compels the ob- server to move back and forth between its poles in the shortest possible in- stance. This is not meaningless, nor is a logical paradox meaningless. But the meaning of such a figure--of its form--must be sought in the clue that allows for unfolding this paradox and reintroduces asymmetry into the form.
Paradoxes present the world in the form of a self-blocking observation. It is certainly possible to stage works of art as paradoxes, but only in order to demonstrate what doesn't work, only to symbolize the unobservability of the world. Works consisting of only two components are not yet gen- uine artworks. But to the extent that they carry along the other side of the
36
form as an empty form, as mere exteriority, they are works of art after all. This is particularly true where paradox becomes the work's theme--as in Escher's etchings, in Magritte's work, or in certain forms of sixteenth- and
37
seventeenth-century lyric poetry, especially that of John Donne.
cases, the paradoxical oscillation of truth is introduced deliberately--not to represent the world, but to invite the viewer or reader to search for an innovative exit that remains undetermined in the work and about which
38
even the artist himself may have his doubts.
may work together to accomplish this effect, paradox remains the super- form, the frame suggestive of what remains unsaid in the work and what is only marked as unsaid.
Let us return to the ordinary. What remains open as the other side of a form is generally determined by an indication that actualizes another dis- tinction for which the same is true. This process keeps going until a system of references closes itself off, in which nothing remains undetermined. Oc- casionally, things may go wrong in the process, and the remaining discord must be covered up or minimized. This is a fact of life. Our concern here
While several aesthetic forms
In these
IZO Medium and Form
is not art criticism but the principle of form, the process of observing (the making and observing) of artworks.
It should be clear by now that this analysis precludes comprehending an
artwork in terms of the relation between a whole and its parts. Dividing a
work and judging die relationship between parts misses its internal nexus.
Nor are we concerned with the primacy of the whole in relation to its
39
parts.
bution to the work consists in what they are not, what they make available for further elaboration. The artwork closes itself off by reusing what is al- ready determined in the work as the odier side of further distinctions. The result is a unique, circular accumulation of meaning, which often escapes one's first view (or is grasped only "intuitively"). Eventually, it may turn out that a determination plays a role in several distinctions at once, that it is multifunctional and therefore not interchangeable. This creates an over- all impression of necessity--the work is what it is, even though it is made, individual, and contingent, rather than necessary in an ontological sense. The work of art, one might say, manages to overcome its own contingency.
Several more or less standardized, genre-specific formal models are available for this process. The basic form for generating forms from odier
40
forms is the (misleadingly so called) ornament.
on the problem of broken symmetry, on the problem of form. At stake here is the projection of asymmetries that still exhibit traces of the sym- metries from which diey emerged. Ornaments are recursions tliat keep go- ing by recalling previous and anticipating further forms. They display the
41
unity of redundancy and variety. Transitions are effaced; at least they are
not emphasized as breaks, since each place in an ornament is at the same time the place of another place. This includes the repetition of forms at other points in space or time, whereby their positional difference suggests nonidentity within the ornament's overall identity. Continuation is the principle that integrates what is excluded at first, that defines the excluded as a motif, reiterates it, or connects other motifs. This clearly shows that art is neither a sign for something else nor the mere form of the material. The ornament generates its own imaginary space by continuously trans- forming formal boundaries into transitions that have more than one meaning. It prevents the work from falling apart into isolated figures, on which one can focus or from which one can turn away. The ornament, in other words, holds the artwork together, precisely because it does not par- take in its figurative division. One can call this "mere decoration" only in
If one wants to isolate parts, then one discovers that their contri-
All ornaments are based
Medium and Form 121
social situations in which the differentiation of art is already under way, whereas decorative ornaments also adorn utilitarian objects, jewelry, sa- cred objects, or "crafts," so that mere decoration must be distinguished from art. In such a situation, the ornamental structure can be granted only
42
a subordinate role.
supplements his observation by referring to the masking function of dec-
43
oration:
tinct and enables faster comprehension; on the other hand, it suppresses contradictory, confusing information. The ornament accomplishes all this with a luxurious excess that tends to become an end in itself.
The basic idea is still one of "hierarchical opposition," of a contrast be- tween balanced proportion and mere adornment. One expects art to keep decoration under control. This places the burden on the dominant side of the distinction, on what is supposedly balanced proportion or is later called symbolic meaning. But the inability to resolve the problem of hier- archy eventually "deconstructs" the distinction itself. The ornament, ini- tially meant to fulfill a secondary function, takes on the burden of sup- plying meaning. If one wants to observe artworks as art with reference to their play of forms, then one must pay attention to their ornaments.
Only then can one return to the question of how the work is made and which secondary meanings serve the ornament while receiving from the ornament the electrical charge tliat accounts for their artistic quality. Painting, too, eventually pushes its ornaments to the margins or into the background--which needs to be filled anyway--in order to foreground its figures. Assisted by unified perspective, painting develops the back- ground into an open space--a landscape, for example--only to discover the need to compensate for the ornaments function by filling its imagi- nary space with nonarbitrary objects until, in the end, even the landscape
44
is no longer necessary. While the ornament is marginalized as mere dec-
oration that can also adorn nonartistic objects, a functional equivalent of the ornament emerges from within artworks themselves--an inner "line
45
of beauty"
more distinctly curved and of much greater condensation than any nat- ural line. Even as ornamental adornment is excluded from art, the orna- ment is reborn within the work. Similarly, in poetry sound and rhythm are more easily replaced by meanings, which requires that the play with distinctions be reproduced as a formal nexus among narrative elements. By indicating an action, narrative, for example, can serve two distinctions
Gombrich speaks of an "explanatory division" and
on the one hand, decoration renders the information more dis-
that joins what has been separated figuratively, a line that is
122 Medium and Form
The au-
The intense use of these possibilities leads to the modern novel of the
47
individual. "Flat" heroes become "round,"
parent, the strength of motives is demonstrated (typically those preferred by the author, such as the profit motive in Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flan- ders). At the same time, narrative can induce changes in a character; it can motivate learning, religious conversion, or regret; and it can recommend its result to the reader as a laudable attitude. This development allows the novel to free itself from moral guidelines, and the reader is confronted
48
at once: it characterizes the agent and moves the plot forward.
thor arranges the events, that is, he shapes the medium in such a way that the reader can infer the changing mental state of the hero. The fictionality of the arrangement hides behind the contingency ofevents and actions that must serve as the starting point for the reader who follows the narrative.
with live models and experiences that could be his own.
mal combination of character and plot by means of actions--a combina- tion that informs both of these distinctions--has established itself and guides the reader's expectations, it becomes possible to write narratives that still present themselves as novels but break with this combination. These narratives seek to distinguish themselves by precluding any infer- ences concerning the character and motives of the hero or by refusing to move the plot along by means of actions. This development begins as early as Flaubert's L'Mucation sentimentale (1869).
The internal ornament serves the artworks self-description; it beautifies
49
because it is beautiful.
it can bind. On the one hand, the form combination that is selected indi- vidualizes the artwork and qualifies it as a distinct object. This allows for technical reproduction, which neither affects the work's recognizability nor "damages" its individual form, but instead makes it more accessible. Technical reproduction, in turn, generates a new form: the distinction be- tween original and copy. On the other hand, observing how the work is
50 made yields an observation of a more general type often called "style. " At
the level of stylistic forms, the art system is able to evolve; it can replace form combinations that have already been tested or derive new forms from the rejection of what has become all too familiar. Moreover, the sys^ tem can turn rejection itself into a form that is intelligible only to those aware of what used to be customary and what, accordingly, is the expec-
51
tation to be disappointed.
itself the avant-garde has taken this backward-looking manner to an ex-
their motives become trans-
It absorbs as much variety as possible, as much as
The movement that, strangely enough, calls
46
Once the for-
Medium and Form 123
treme--like oarsmen, who face the direction they are coming from and have the goal of their journey behind their backs.
We will not elaborate on these reflections. Instead, we would note that situations of this sort--in any artistic genre--presuppose the artwork as a specific combination of forms, no matter how this presupposition is then attacked in the search for new forms. This protest is possible only when (and so long as! ) a loosely coupled medium is available for the creation of possible forms. If the previous reflections hold, then this medium may well reside in the need for another, yet undefined side on the other side of the indications that make up an artwork. This need would explain why an artwork, in closing itself off and in determining its open side by means of other distinctions, coagulates the medium in such a way that a tightly coupled form emerges, though the medium always reproduces itself at the same time--that is, the question of what lies on the other side of the form is posed anew in each instance.