Process vs. Results in Art

There are obvious good reasons why other artists would be interested in details of process used by their peers, since it is a matter of learing their craft. Fans tend to be interested only because they are sentimentally attached to the artists, making every detail about them interesting simply by virtue of it being connected to the object of their sentiment. It's the same associative process that makes some people keep scraps of hair or clothes from someone they love.

I must confess that to me this kind of art has plunged itself into a self-referential circle so tightly drawn as to rob it of any claim to wide significance. It is the pallid intellectual's equivalent to drawings of puppies and sad-eyed clowns.

However, I would say that for whatever audience such art speaks to, the process is what is artful about it, therefore to be interested in the process is not separable from an interest in the 'result', since the only result the artist is seeking is not captured in the created object, but in whatever effect the knowledge of the process induces in the mind of the audience. (This is all too rarified for me, but some folks seem to like it.)

As far as I'm concerned, the above statement (excising the word "whole") is true of all art.

Being interviewed about one's working methods is also creative process (I'm thinking of Matmos in The Wire talking about their bone percussion here, following on from upthread). If the results seem boring, then we really should be criticising the artist's creative interaction in an interview rather than the work about which she is talking. How can the artist make the interview flow more, be more spontaneous?

A true artist is immersed in process 100% of the time. Nothing is ever finished, just abandoned: no results.

Summarize this thread:
"Too much theory, not enough thought."

However, if we rephrase the question to read, 'does it help people other than the artist know that there is no result, only process?' the answer is, 'yes!' All discoveries abou the creative process are useful to people other than artists, if they wish to create something.

"Too much theory, not enough thought" is a contradiction. "Too much theory, not enough thought-free direct perception" is probably more correct. Of course, I could be wrong.

Therefore, pure process is just as futile a figural ideal as pure result is.

Speaking of process and result, I seem to have a difficult time managing the pair, HTML-aesthetically, anyway... ;)

Ok, and I also just spent 2 days reading the entire 600 pages of The Grove Book of Art Writing, so ignore me if I'm babbling.

Pure process is not a figural ideal. By definition process cannot be a figure; nor can it be an idea. These are frozen, while process is movmement - the absence of figure or ideal.

As for the effect that one's art has on an audience, it is always tempting to give it a precise beginning and end point. The beginning might be when you first hear back your own recorded work, as your own audience; the end point could be when you release the record and people out there in the world hear it. These beginning and end points are quite contrived however; apart from using them expediently for the purposes of distribution and propagation of the work, one should avoid seeing audience reception as discrete and located. It's not just when you finished writing the music that you became your own audience; that happened while you were writing it; even before you were writing it, when you were musing on the ideas and perceptions that eventually found their place in the work. As for finding an endpoint like the release date of your record, the first public performance, or the first or last review (or any other criterion), who knows when people will stop experiencing you work? It could be a thousand years away. There is no result.

The artist who really understands what he's doing does not abandon process for a second; nor does she make a theory out of process, except for the fun of arguing. The word process is like the word 'emptiness' - it is a word that denotes non-reference, non-definition - with all the attendant difficulties.

More matter, less philology.

I think, Colin, that you had better...well, it always does come down this in these threads, yes?...I think that you need to define how you are using "result", because I think it is so inclusive to the degree that, in order to suppose your hypothesis, it ends up becoming well nigh to meaningless. I can't speak for the others, but I find that its enlargement makes any sort of discussion of it tautological.

The artist who really understands what he's doing does not abandon process for a second; nor does she make a theory out of process, except for the fun of arguing. The word process is like the word 'emptiness' - it is a word that denotes non-reference, non-definition - with all the attendant difficulties.

Sounds like a convenient way to dismiss (or at the least, disenfranchise and intentionally obfuscate by means of criticism) any "artist" who would bespeak heresy.

My problems:
1. Your use of the terms and language (and intrepretation of others' usage) is too slippery and tortuous - for my tastes, at least.
2. You trust that some critics couldn't possibly, at least subconsciously, have an agenda towards mummifying - and thus rendering inchoate - art.

Hmm...that sounds like an interesting thread of it's own. Are critics, in a sense, really in a battle to un-define the artist to the point of rendering any work an oblate cipher, yielding nothing and everything? It would seem that the only way to escape the "anxiety" of intrepretation would be to not only refuse to indulge in any discourse (or for that matter, exposure to it), but to inculcate a stance of viewing the work on its own without any intentions of making sense of it, beyond making sense of one's own personal response to it, as unrenderable and meaningless as it would be to another. The challenge, to be blunt, is to engage with the art itself, directly, without expectation upon either the art or the observer, nor any requisite external reaction or commentary by the observer. A totally personal viewing of not only art, but The Art.

Wow. I just said all that?

As for performance like improvisational Jazz, theater, dance, etc the process is going on as you view it. This is where the process and results are the same thing.

"Result: a designated end-point to a specified process". The word designated is important here. Someone must do the designation. It is a word that is partially socially constructed, based on expedience.

If a marketing agent says, 'our market window for this product ends at the 18 month mark, at which point we will assess the result', that is a legitimate use of the word 'result'. The end point is created by necessity (eg, based on economic necessity, or available resources), but is not erroneously assumed to be intrinsic to the product itself. The product will of course have some kind of ongoing life beyond the 18 month mark. The causal process will not stop. The error is made when we start distinguishing between process and result in art, as if we're saying something meaningful about the artistic process itself. Actually, we need to recognise that process doesn't automatically turn into result at the precise point at which we lose inteerest in process! However, it is legitimate to say, 'I am not longer interested in following the process, or influencing it.' That's what an artist does when she stops working on a piece. However, the process of change is not suspended; just the artist's involvement in that process through the application of paint.

G, in the numbered sections of your last post, you've made a variety of claims without attempting to justify any of them. That's not to say you couldn't. It's just that you haven't.

In the second of those numbered paragraphs, you wrote: "2. You trust that some critics couldn't possibly, at least subconsciously, have an agenda towards mummifying - and thus rendering inchoate - art."

Did I say that? I don't think so, but I suspect you are assuming that's my position by reading between the lines. Actually, I see it as a pitfall of criticism, rather than a necessary property of all critics. Your warning is worth making. However, not all critics have mummifying tendencies.

What characterises a writer or critic who doesn't misapprehend process? I think it's that they propose without belief in the proposition. For example, I am arguing that 'process' is real but 'result' is an illusion. I would be quite happy arguing the alernative, or that neither are real, or both are real. What matters to me is the creatice evolution of the argument itself: how you respond, how I respond to your response, etc. A good argument is razor sharp, conforms to the laws of valid argument as far as possible, but it is also humorous, and even beautiful. It's sport. In proposing a position without believing it, the critic is a bit like ascientist or philosopher. Most of all, however, such critics are like artists, or anyone really who does not resist change, but revels in it. I would nominate Simon Reynolds as an excellent example of this kind of music critic. He's a real treasure of our times. He entertains positions for the sake of finding out where they lead him. That's why he's so entertaining! There is no results-based thinking in his work. He delights in process. He doesn't care if he's wrong, really, but will argue passionately for the pleasures of meeting and arguing with intellient people. That's why he can write so much, and so well.

Heretical artists are not artists who disagree with my concept of the true artist. Heretical artists are the only true artists. To be an artist and not be a heretic is to be...well... gutless.

Bloody hell Girolamo! You've got me scribbling like an idiot. Over to you.

This has given me much food for thought, which I must digest before I respond. (Though this will probably kill the thread dead, as usual.)

The madness/creativity thread got me thinking a great deal about the process/result dichotomy of art, and which was more important. As an "artist" I have come to feel that the process is the only thing that is important, and that thinking about result at all is the same as rolling around in your own excretement. But that does not diminish my enjoyment of the "result" of other artists' processes. Hrmmmmm.

Painting becomes all about having a painting or Work Of Art to be auctioned at Christie's or collected by Charles Saatchi. Music becomes all about making a Record which can be sold and tabulated on chart sales.

Hence the preoccupation over the past few centuries perhaps of Art being the Product, rather than the process. Process is simply the part of the process that brings the Product to completion. Many might argue that with art that is self expression or communication, that the Process does not end with the result Product, and continues with the interpretation of the viewer/listener/consumer.

So in that case, unless you're pure collector scum that never actually listens to records, or a Record Company Asshole or an art dealer, the process is the important thing whether you realise it or not - because you are a part of it.

Yeah, but this is kind of paradoxical, isn't it?

Even if it's not results-based, there is still some sort of product, be it a review or an article or a blog entry or something, no?

I am sometimes interested in process, but you can write that off as saying its because I'm an artist myself. It really depends on the work of art. Some works of art are so complete - or so mysterious - that you don't really *need* - or even want - to know the process behind them. Others, the process is so much a part of the art that it is what makes it interesting - conceptual art, etc.

Er, this sounds very impressive and sweeping, but if everything is process then that kind of negates the usefulness of the category since nothing ever falls outside it.

crap, I think that's what I am :(

That's quite true. The sooner we dispense with the category 'process', the sooner we can get involved with process (the reality, not the term). Then, we can see that process is ubiquitous and therefore nowhere.

This is not paradoxical I think. When something is everywhere it follows that it's nowhere (in particular). Also, I believe it can be easliy demonstrated that saying 'everything is process' is formally identical to saying 'everything is result'. So I'm happy with either position - or, better, neither position. If I'm against anything it's linguistic dogma or rules of any kind interfering with practice.

Relatively, though, one does make distinctions - as long as one doesn't assume they are anything other than field-based, contingent, relational distinctions directly bound up with our angle of view on, and involvement in, a specific situation. For example, it's useful to pretend that the North Pole is up, and the South pole down, so we have some kind of uniformity in the mass production of globes. Similarly, we pretend that the creation of art is process, and presentation of art is result. However, this only makes sense in the field of economic and commercial planning, and the artist who fails to realise this may end up with a creative block.

God, I hear ya.

Conceptual Art. Invented by Duchamp, conceptual art peaked between 1960 and 1980. An example would be Yoko Ono's 'Instructions for Photographs' (1961-71). Here's one:

Time Photo: Make a photo in which the color comes out only under a certain light, at a certain time of the day.

That's the photograph right there. You take it in your head. There is no object, no relic. Or rather, there's a typed sheet. Or, some might say, there is Yoko Ono, a living 'process'. Which brings us to...

Process Art Runs concurrently with conceptual art. Musicians like Cage, Reich, Riley and Eno influenced or were influenced by process art. An emphasis on the organic, hence a certain hippy new age element (Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy) and crossover with 'Land Art'. (Eno made a 'land art' process album called 'On Land'.) Whereas conceptual art focuses on a single idea, process art focuses on how things change over time.

The 'process' in process art is not the artist's creative process, but time's destructive process, the process of chance operations, etc. Whereas 'artistic process' tends to focus on the artist's intentions (therefore bringing us close to the rocks of 'the intentional fallacy'), 'process art' actually does its best to subvert conscious intention by substituting the I-Ching, throws of the dice, nature, the weather and so on for 'what I really want to say'. Process art is the enemy of (traditionally-conceived) artistic process. It shifts 'process' away from the artist and out into the world.

It's worth pointing out that a new, paradoxical aesthetic of objects has sprung up from the ephemera of these movements which were supposed to shift the emphasis away from objects: witness two recent exhibitions at the ICA, one about the ephemera of Fluxus, the other about single channel video art. In both cases, the textures of the ephemera (a kind of new 'arte povera' consisting of flyers, snap shots, blurry video documents, invitations to happenings) suddenly became attractive in themselves. Time (and the very processes of decay that Process art was interested in) have finally lent these fragments more gravitas, more patina, more pathos and more fetish aura, than the most beautifully-finished and skillfully executed painting could hope to match.

I suspect, though, that 'process v results' in the thread title may just be another way of saying 'form or content', which is like asking which more crucial to travel, velocity or distance?

Who's laying down these laws? 150 yrs ago the exact opposite was recevied opinion; in another 150 it may be again. Godard's post'68 decision to 'make political movies politically' did not result in any greater political maturity on his part; he oscillated between Maoist posturing and Althusserian reductionism. He was immersed in process, but to a political end, however opportunistic. The works were not 'finished' in the conventional sense, but the ideology they reproduced was a 'closed' one, a kind of metaphysical travesty of Marxism. It's a pseudo-scientific abstraction to think that it's all process and nor results, because that simply isn't the way art-works are felt - surely more profitable is some kind of exchange between this impressionistic take and theory, which is always a conceptualization of those basic impressions, not a free-floating metaphysical system.

The second sentence is simply not true.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that the debate seems to me to have relevance pretty much at the level of self-consciously "high" art only. IMO self-consciously "high" art is almost invariably attenuated and inferior art, so I am not going to be much interested in art that concerns itself with process rather than result.

The first fork, from the original question, seems to be talking about criticism, rather than art. If you are reading a review of, or an article about an artist, would you rather read about the process of creation (recording in the original question) or about the creation itself, i.e. "is the music good?". Putting aside the problem of whether or not there is an objective standard of "good" which we can apply towards art ... you are still talking about the other half of the process of communication. The receptor's interpretation of the message. If you were *actually* talking about the result itself, I suspect the criticism would be boring to useless - it would be simply music theory reducto ad absurbum. "This is a contemporary pop ballad recorded in D Major in a 4/4 time signature at 120 beats per minute, with a I-IV-V chord progression, a rising melody and harmony in fifths" tells you nothing of what you want to know about the music any more than "this is a figurative painting measuring 150cm by 200cm painted in oils in 1752" tells you anything about a work of art.

You are still talking about a process in terms of describing a result. It's a question of which end of the process (communication) would you rather concentrate on, rather than whether you want to talk about process or result.

Can your enjoyment of a work of art be twisted or even ruined by knowing too much about the artist's process? Of course. But by the same token there are works of art whose enjoyment hinges almost entirely upon the process.

HSA and I were discussing this quite extensively last night, and it seemed to be quite ironic, given our chosen media, that we took such opposite views.

HSA insists that product is important, that commodification of art is not a problem, in fact, it is a good thing - and went on to point out the hypocracy of a band like Crass, who rail on about commoification being evil, while doing quite well off the profits of selling hundreds of thousands of their own particular commodity. And yet, his chosen medium is Sound Art and Installation Art, which is almost totally idea-driven and process-driven. (Maybe this is because, as someone whose art consists of sitting around all day having IDEAS, he realises how hard it is to actually make a living at it, i.e. convince the Arts Council that he does actually have a product he can take to the people, which they should fund.)

On the other hand, my chosen medium is the bubblegum pop song - possibly the most product-driven medium in the history of art. So, being disillusioned by the way in which my art is judged by such a meaningless standard - how many records I have or haven't sold - I've returned to a more process-driven ideal.

So I guess it does make sense.

This strikes me as generally true, but not for the reasons you suggest. Discussion of the result does not need to restrict itself to factual observation. In fact the default mode is explication of (alleged) meaning, which need not concern itself with process, but generally is certainly both boring and useless.

I think realising the importance of process is not something which is made easy by society now, whether this is due to teaching methods or the absence of cultural studies from primary and secondary education isn't clear but it certainly felt liberating and new to begin thinking of art in terms of process, whenever I did, perhaps after starting university.

Momus's comments about process art are interesting because I was unaware of all this history. My instinct is to say that it's redundant to call art 'process art', as all art - all reality - is process anyway; so not only the process art movement, but also the concept of a discrete movement (contradiction in terms!), and indeed the concept of process itself, is redundant because it is uniquitous (a point made earlier by Aimless).

But back to Kate because she's not coming from theory but personal experience. I think Kate's point is simply this: nowhere in reality is there anything that is not perpetually transforming; and if we approach reality with the view that there is something there we can freeze into a result, we are subject to a profound delusion. Many artists - whether or not they've read Althusser or are familiar with Fluxus etc - have come through a period of being stuck and have started to produce again, and say or write the same thing: that the key to re-enabling their artistic work has come solely through the dissolution of the illusion that there is any kind of goal or endpoint to their endeavour. Is this illusion which you call 'the intentional fallacy', Momus? As this thread starts to go fractal, I hope I haven't got you wrong here.

The problem is that art works in practice, but not in theory.

So.

Theoretically speaking, there is no endpoint, so to speak, for this piece. Yes, it is in constant fluxus, and you can argue that the work's resonance occurs at various instances before, during, and after the eating of the candy (actually, I never ate mine - too freaky for me).

BUT,
and here is where we certainly differ in opinion, Colin,
The process, at least in this instance, happens to be the conceptualization and implementation of the hard candy; in other words, it is everything up the point that the candy is "installed" in the corner. At that point, it becomes result. Yes, the result is one that interacts with the audience; yes, it has no definite "in" or "out" point. So what? That's a pretty weak correlative way to define result. I'm not talking about the result of how my stocks did this week - I'm talking the result as in, what do I have to present? And not for reasons of economy or class expectations of what art is or isn't - it's simply because the

(shit, I have to leave the office...to be continued)

When we met Gal later in a nearby bar, he told us that in fact he recorded the voices onto a DAT, resampled selected phrases with his Kurtzweil sampler, then played the samples back with a keyboard into a MIDI sequencer, using the modulation wheel, cutting and pasting, listening to the sense of the phrases. (Since they were in foreign languages, he made sure he had translations to hand so he wouldn't cut 'against the grain' of meaning.)

Now, this made for an interesting evening 'talking shop'. (Anne is currently cutting my own vocals 'against the grain', so it made an interesting contrast with our working methods.) But I have to ask myself if Bernhard's 'process' has much bearing on my impression of his work. And the answer is, although I'll ask him about it to pass the time, it doesn't much matter to me how he made his records. I'm much more interested in what his work does for me. Where those sounds take me. The pictures they create in my head. My memories of language labs and Kraftwerk records. The inherent pleasures of rhythm and timbre. The textural qualities of the music -- warm, simple, mechanical, organic, human.

Then there are slightly wider factors to do with context. The fact that this music is inscribed in a certain tradition of electronic music, electro-acoustic music, music with strong links to visual art. The fact that this is music related to other music I like currently (Ernst Jandl, Tomomi Adachi, Dominique Petitgand). The fact that it sounds fresh and suggestive to my ears.

You could say that the discovery that Gal uses MIDI and a Kurzweil sampler has 'demystified' his work for me, although I wouldn't overstate that. The music still takes me somewhere essentially rather mysterious, and that's because it's doing something radical with such a familiar sound: the human voice, talking. And because the voices he's used have an inherent charisma and mystery, speaking everything from Hungarian to Japanese. I like hearing foreign languages spoken, and messed around with until they become abstract sound.

So I have to say that in this case results and process stay in pretty separate boxes in my head. 'What Bernhard did' and 'what Bernhard's music does' are different things, and the important bit is the latter.

Oh wait...

So this affects your enjoyment of conceptual (not Conceptual) art? That you have one idea of what the process, and therefore the concept, and when you find that out - does knowing the process is different from your idea change the concept of the art?

If you are discussing a result of some process or conceptual art work (By result I mean what happened during the process of the works existance, or just the concept) then I would think the discussion of the result is much more interesting then actually witnessing the process. For example, disscusing cage's 4"33' is more interesting then watching someone sit at a piano. Listening to people responses to the result (the piece) would be the best part of going to see it.

Possibly, but not much I wouldn't have thought.

So let me modify what I'm saying, without distrubing the important gist of it: what you call the result depends on what you call the process. Therefore, ArfArf, if you say the result is a painting of your wife, then the process is certainly painting the picture; and, Girolamo, if you say the result is the installation of the hard candy, then the process is the creation of the hard candy.

Now this is common sense. However, if we take another equally commonsense position, we might want to say that the result is not the hanging of the picture, but the excitement generated in the audience who saw it. Now, the process is not simply the creation of the picture, but also other processes: the night, the location, the way the pciture was hung, the particular people we invited to view the picture, the theatrical and lubricating components we contrived such as a speech, unveiling, alcohol, etc etc. This is the work of the agent and gallery manager. It is also creative work - a collaborative work (with collaboratrices, if they are female, thank you Momus) with the artist to impress the critics and audience. Results also vary depending on what we designate as the process.

I think economics and hype come into this mainly from my perspective as a musician, becuase that's where I encounter (and accept as necessary) process-and-result thinking most often. It's quite a shift in approach from what happends in many studios. However, I accept Girolamo's and Arf's comment that there are other fields in which process-result thinking might predominate.

Now, depending on where we designate the result, a process can become a result or vice versa, just as all causes are effects of further causes. If the result is to influence the art world or the general public, then the process is hanging the painting in a variety of well-chosen locations.

So, to summarise: 'process' and 'result' are relatiional concepts like 'foreground' and 'background'. They are not intrinsic properties of situations; what is behind and what is in front depends on our angle of view. Ultimately, there is no foreground or background in the universe independently of our angle of vision; and the same is true of process and result.

I have modified my position a fair bit, I think, so it's the claims in this post which I'd be interested in defending, not my former posts. As for my claim that process-result thinking impedes creative work if the same angle of view, and the same definition of result and process is overused, I'm sticking with that. Process-result thinking is fine by me as long as it, too, is subject to random, creative reworkings and definitions - that is, as long as it too becomes a creative process, open to change, rather than dogma, a set of rules followed tirelessly over and over by the artist.

No, no, no! "The night, the location, the way the pciture was hung, the particular people we invited to view the picture, the theatrical and lubricating components we contrived such as a speech, unveiling, alcohol, etc etc." These aren't the result - unless their properties are intrinsic to the art itself. In other words, if the painting is always meant to be hung at a 34 degree angle, I'd call that a process of hanging towards which it is supposed to have a result of perception.

However, whenever you premiere it, whoever sees it, how it's unveiled...that's all just circumstances surrounding a particular showing of the piece. I mean, it's great if you draw a picture of the American flag and plan to premiere it on a clear warm night of July 4, 1976 in front of President Ford and have a grand ball with all the right people there. But your result still is a painting of the American flag, and nothing more. Obviously, certain installations and things require specific times and places because they couldn't exist otherwise. But generally speaking, what you're speaking about are the liminals between result and perception, as well as result and...(I can't remember what I wanted to put here).

While I can see how this position could free an artist from too great a performance anxiety over producing results, thereby avoiding an obstacle to creativity (and that's a good thing), what puzzles me is the apparent need to formalize this position into a theory of art. Left to its own devices, as a sort of formless feeling, it could be claimed as a possibly beneficial branch of mysticism, a Zen of art. But colin's approach of formal theorizing veers it rather close to nihilism, as far as I can see.

If I were you, colin, I'd stick to Lao Tzu: "Those who know do not speak of it. When spoken of, it is the mother of ten thousand things."

Aimless, it has not escaped my notice that Lao Tzu didn't take his own advice. However, since I am not giving advice, I continue to avoid such problems. And I have no problem with a myriad of things.

I would describe my position as not to take a position. That's why I've been able to enjoy the luxury of modifying my position throughout this discussion on the basis of what people have been saying. You suspect this is a weakness, but I suspect it is the key to learning something.

G, I didn't follow? Can you elaborate? At the risk of giving rise to ten thousand things, of course.

Quoting myself from above:
"Are critics, in a sense, really in a battle to un-define the artist to the point of rendering any work an oblate cipher, yielding nothing and everything? It would seem that the only way to escape the "anxiety" of intrepretation would be to not only refuse to indulge in any discourse (or for that matter, exposure to it), but to inculcate a stance of viewing the work on its own without any intentions of making sense of it, beyond making sense of one's own personal response to it, as unrenderable and meaningless as it would be to another. The challenge, to be blunt, is to engage with the art itself, directly, without expectation upon either the art or the observer, nor any requisite external reaction or commentary by the observer. A totally personal viewing of not only art, but The Art."