On field research:
Continuing explorations into vernacular, organic, and inadvertent design
An exemplary attempt
at Field Work, from my 3000 pictures of Japan:
The fantastic riggings and attachments on telephone poles.
Musashino Art University, Tokyo
where i discovered surprisingly related tendencies of artistic research.
The students explore their environments e.g. with non-visual senses, and map
them out by soundscapes and other experiences, or create publications from
class outings and camps.
Not so coincidentally (see Field Work below),
the school had a lovely exhibit "Angura" (short for Avantgarde): posters of
1960-1980 independent activist theater in traveling tents.
The students gave me:
VOW magazine
V.O.W., voice of wonderland: "all about super street art" is a pocket-book fanzine reporting inadvertently humorous attempts of public communication and culture in Japan -- an ironic counterpart to my presentation and research.
...and, "from the ridiculous to the sublime"...
Field Work
From Bob Sliwa, American design consultant in Tokyo/Nagoya, I learned about
the art movement of "Field Work" in Japan, indirectly influenced by the 60s
Fluxus movement, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp et al. Founder/father of Field
Work seems Akasegawa Genpei.
Excursions into places and areas where idiosyncratic occurrences would be
collected, examined and then presented: The magazine "Shashin Jidai" published
Field Work as a regular section, by the photographer Araki.
--This in turn reminded me of the 70s art movement "Spurensicherer" (Securers
of Traces), prominent e.g. at documenta 6, Kassel/Germany 1977.
Any further hints into this field are greatly appreciated -- literature, contacts, URLs... Thank you! - jml
