Indifference
1) The act of creating is an opportunity to demonstrate a series of possibilities. Possibilities are
boundless with no beginnings or ends. Ideas and actions are interconnected and networked,
one result leading to another. The way that each person filters and perceives the world is a
result of previous experiences, each experience informing the next. The recognition of a
beginning and end is a parameter that we have invented. They are concepts that delineate time
invented for the instinctual purpose of our survival, our ability to co-exist as healthy organized
cultures and communities. Art affords us an opportunity to experiment and introduce shifts and
dramatic changes in our perception of the world without sustained risk. It is an educational tool
that gives us the freedom to conceptualize and implement changes in a closed system, separate
from life without jeopardizing the stability and functions of our current perceived and experienced
realities. Once we can reorder ways of perceiving change becomes possible. In order to
maximize our ability to develop new perceptions we need to suspend moments of judgement
and view indifferently.
2) From the premise that no two things are alike, even though they replicate and the
interconnection and interdependency of all things are infinite, we enter a situation without
“beginnings“ or “ends”. Without definitive stopping and starting points and recognizing that all
things are in a state of flux and transformation, at what point does art and life overlap?
Conceptually art and life meld and their delineation is a subjective interpretation by the one
experiencing or the experiencer. To like or dislike a work of art or any other situation is purely a
response, a response directed by the thing in question, a conformation of the idea or objects
effect. Indifference is without reason and most often experienced unintentionally as a first
response, though we can choose to suspend judgement. What is important during an initial
experience is that we recognize the fact that something has moved or instigated a response or
displacement of our understanding. Taste, judgement, acceptance, and rejection are secondary
responses of evaluation and rationalization intended to categorize and fit an object or idea into a
relevant discourse of culture. These secondary responses are filtered and tainted based on the
way things have been, are and will continue to be. Recognizing the moment when we are
engaged in an indifferent, purely experiential observation is the first and one possible step in
restructuring our perceptions.
Interconnection
I view what I do as a series of projects, studies, and experiments in relation to my body that in
some aspect reflect segments of the life cycle. Each project in its separate parts, broken into
sessions and segments move from idea to a physical representation having measurable
beginnings and ends. As a whole similar to nature the work is interrelated and interdependent
as ideas evolve, build, and inform one another. The accumulation of repeated and recorded
activities is an internal and external, micro and macro dialogue with process inherent in myself
and nature. No one process or study is more valid than the next. Meaning resides in the
process or “act of” making. Creating something with a specific end result, appearance, or
design in mind guided by a necessity to display is not a part of nor does it enter into my thinking
and direct the works production until it is near completion, abandoned or until another project
begins.
Sound
The art or the “object” is not the drawing (a residual product of the action) but the action itself. The
sound recording of the action remains one step removed from the actual process but is closer to
recreating the actual process by triggering an idea of the visual action. Based on sound the
visual action is imagined and constructed in the mind of the experiencer where it remains a
more “truthful” encounter, closer to the actual event because individual perception or imagining
of the action exists internally and cannot be contradicted. The drawing supports the sound
recording, acting as another piece of evidence that something has occurred and is further
removed from the process because it is not a motion or action. This is not a hierarchy of the
senses, but an investigation into how we construct a moment based on selected sensorial input.
Sound is invisible, and does not posses the physical volume and intrusive property of an object,
yet, its ephemeral quality comes closer to conveying the subjective reality of a moment, in
essence our imagined perception of something at a particular moment.
1) The act of creating is an opportunity to demonstrate a series of possibilities. Possibilities are
boundless with no beginnings or ends. Ideas and actions are interconnected and networked,
one result leading to another. The way that each person filters and perceives the world is a
result of previous experiences, each experience informing the next. The recognition of a
beginning and end is a parameter that we have invented. They are concepts that delineate time
invented for the instinctual purpose of our survival, our ability to co-exist as healthy organized
cultures and communities. Art affords us an opportunity to experiment and introduce shifts and
dramatic changes in our perception of the world without sustained risk. It is an educational tool
that gives us the freedom to conceptualize and implement changes in a closed system, separate
from life without jeopardizing the stability and functions of our current perceived and experienced
realities. Once we can reorder ways of perceiving change becomes possible. In order to
maximize our ability to develop new perceptions we need to suspend moments of judgement
and view indifferently.
2) From the premise that no two things are alike, even though they replicate and the
interconnection and interdependency of all things are infinite, we enter a situation without
“beginnings“ or “ends”. Without definitive stopping and starting points and recognizing that all
things are in a state of flux and transformation, at what point does art and life overlap?
Conceptually art and life meld and their delineation is a subjective interpretation by the one
experiencing or the experiencer. To like or dislike a work of art or any other situation is purely a
response, a response directed by the thing in question, a conformation of the idea or objects
effect. Indifference is without reason and most often experienced unintentionally as a first
response, though we can choose to suspend judgement. What is important during an initial
experience is that we recognize the fact that something has moved or instigated a response or
displacement of our understanding. Taste, judgement, acceptance, and rejection are secondary
responses of evaluation and rationalization intended to categorize and fit an object or idea into a
relevant discourse of culture. These secondary responses are filtered and tainted based on the
way things have been, are and will continue to be. Recognizing the moment when we are
engaged in an indifferent, purely experiential observation is the first and one possible step in
restructuring our perceptions.
Interconnection
I view what I do as a series of projects, studies, and experiments in relation to my body that in
some aspect reflect segments of the life cycle. Each project in its separate parts, broken into
sessions and segments move from idea to a physical representation having measurable
beginnings and ends. As a whole similar to nature the work is interrelated and interdependent
as ideas evolve, build, and inform one another. The accumulation of repeated and recorded
activities is an internal and external, micro and macro dialogue with process inherent in myself
and nature. No one process or study is more valid than the next. Meaning resides in the
process or “act of” making. Creating something with a specific end result, appearance, or
design in mind guided by a necessity to display is not a part of nor does it enter into my thinking
and direct the works production until it is near completion, abandoned or until another project
begins.
Sound
The art or the “object” is not the drawing (a residual product of the action) but the action itself. The
sound recording of the action remains one step removed from the actual process but is closer to
recreating the actual process by triggering an idea of the visual action. Based on sound the
visual action is imagined and constructed in the mind of the experiencer where it remains a
more “truthful” encounter, closer to the actual event because individual perception or imagining
of the action exists internally and cannot be contradicted. The drawing supports the sound
recording, acting as another piece of evidence that something has occurred and is further
removed from the process because it is not a motion or action. This is not a hierarchy of the
senses, but an investigation into how we construct a moment based on selected sensorial input.
Sound is invisible, and does not posses the physical volume and intrusive property of an object,
yet, its ephemeral quality comes closer to conveying the subjective reality of a moment, in
essence our imagined perception of something at a particular moment.
Charles Livingston Studio
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