Non-Rhetorial Questions


Non-Rhetorical Questions: Categorizing Living Traditions David W. Ecker and Carleton Palmer
Some of the concerns encountered in building an Encyclopedia of Living Traditions in Art are described. Consideration of the problematic character of existing schemes for categorizing art serves to generate new ways of looking at, and thinking about art. At least as problematic as the doing of research is the question of what happens to it when it is done. At New York University we are in the early stages of what promises to be a major effort to address the problem of designing the Encyclopedia of Living Traditions in Art. These are the stages where one can ask the most interesting questions -questions one can't answer. These are called non-rhetorical questions, and they are the most dangerous. One reason they are dangerous is because people feed you hemlock when you suggest that their answers to these questions might not be absolute. As an ex ample: another project under way -not ours - is the development of a list of art terms called the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). The AAT mission is to provide a standard vocabulary for the visual arts arranged alphabetically within a hierarchical conceptual framework. The first major divisions we're Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Fine Arts, but the terms Material Culture has since replaced and subsumed Decorative Arts. If it is as widely implemented as expected, the artist-researcher will increasingly encounter the AAT organizational scheme's influence in the future indexes of bibliographic and visual materials and collections of objects. With this in mind we made a Type 0 error and took an informal poll of both cataloguers of art and its surrogates. (A Type 0 error is disregard for self-preservation.) We asked a small sample of our acquaintances among art librarians and curators of collections in New York what kind of thinking had gone into the development of the major cataloging categories in art. Why is the collection universe divided up in exactly the way it is rather than another way? It is our great good fortune that librarians and curators are not by nature violent, or some urban archaeologist might now be sifting our ashes. We would have settled for the most likely answer: historical usage by scholars and artists themselves. AAT, in fact, began with a merged vocabulary from major indexes. In summary, the answers we received could be reduced to three: 1. "There are very smart people who think about these things all the time, and so you shouldn't worry about it." 2. "Who do you think you are to questions the system?" 3. "Huh?" The question of classification is not rhetorical. Our project requires a classification scheme for living traditions in art, and any artist-researcher looking for help from the conventional first line of inquiry is in serious trouble. In looking for existing schemes we find Chenhall's definition of art pervasive: "Artifacts originally created for aesthetic purposes or as a demonstration of creative skill and dexterity; the essential ingredient is that the artifact was created for no utilitarian purpose. . . . decorated utilitarian objects are not considered as art for the purposes of object identification. Folk art is the same as primitive art in many respects. Many of the objects that are considered as prime examples of folk art are artifacts created originally to have some utilitarian functions in the lexical structure." (Chenhall, 1978, p. 32-33). The formalist aesthetic embodied in this definition of art as non-utilitarian rules out the work nature of the art work. This certainly reflects conventional wisdom. If categories created serve to reflect thought, then consumed categories serve to shape thinking, and so conventional wisdom becomes invisible wisdom and accepted as un-reflected truth. However useful nomenclature and all similar strategies may be for cataloging according to this formalist aesthetic, it does not happen to be useful for categorizing living traditions in art. This is because the work nature of the art work is important to the definition of living traditions in art. The nomenclature concept of art scatters the idea of living traditions in art to the winds - not a useful condition for thinking about any subject, but one to which the AAT conforms: The vocabulary in the thesaurus covers the following areas in the visual arts: Architecture; the built environment, or human elaboration of the natural environment. Material Culture (including Decorative Arts); artifacts with a purely utilitarian purpose, often further embellished. Fine Arts; primarily no-utilitarian objects created according to aesthetic, conceptual or symbolic principles. This same formalism compartmentalizes schools and departments of colleges and universities into fine art, industrial art( s), art (s) history, art(s) education and so on. It may take a strenuous wrenching of the imagination to conceive of alternatives, but It can be productive to suspend belief in a tacitly held set of categories long enough to ask some non-rhetorical questions. Should one choose to critically adopt the conventional wisdom, one will have made the necessary moves to know the ground and the limits of one's adherence to it. People continue to make art, buy and sell it, criticize, fake and study it without an explicit list of categories. One does the best with what comes to hand. If the larger philosophical problem remains a non-rhetorical question, then one modifies a set of Library of Congress or International Repertory of the Literature of Art (IRLA) subject headings. Or holds a conference of expert a to assemble a useful list. Maybe that's what our librarian friend meant by "Huh?" The non-rhetorical question currently being addressed at N.Y.U. is "What is a useful way for artist-researchers to organize. and classify living traditions In art? If this were a rhetorical question we would now layout the answer. But we do not know the answer. Even after considerable effort we have found no adequate answer in the various literatures. In fact, engaging in this project has crystallized problems of understanding research, organization, classifications, traditions, and art itself. This alone would be an excellent reason for pursuing the Encyclopedia project, since doing so calls for examination of the ideas of dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus and taxonomy as they pertain to research into living traditions in art. Once a classification scheme has been adopted, a significant aid to research would seem to be the computer data base management system. Theoretical questions about electronic information systems and the arts are emerging, particularly with reference to object documentation. It is the art object as the subject of documentation which is most deceptive. One would think there would be a simple hierarchy of events: 1. object/event 2. descriptive record/document, surrogate, analogue, data 3. management of data Having observed that no description is neutral, we can further see that recording these descriptions also involves critical decisions. Even the selected medium of the record constitutes an interpretation about what is relevant to the object/event. As magnificent an achievement as the technology certainly is, it does not of itself solve the problem of interpretation. Only information that can be input will be input. The purpose of making surrogates of objects and events is to be able to think about them for some purpose in relation to other objects and events. The surrogate is a representation that can be conveniently moved for comparison and contrast with other surrogates. The process for arriving at the point of using surrogates is something like this: 1. Thesaurus. Development or adoption of a thesaurus of terms relevant to the subject. 2. Categorization. Creation of uniform data-capture categories applicable to those terms and subject. 3. Capture system. Adoption of a system for data capture. 4. Capture documents. Preparation of data-capture sheets to control the transition from acquisition of Information to input. 5. Entry. Transfer of data from sheets to some intermediary form. 6. Storage. Entry of data from intermediary form into main storage. 7. Processing and retrieval. Ordering of data processing.		Once available for processing, most such programs perform all or some of the following operations on the data: 1. create and update files 2. sort records into different sequences 3. print reports 4. print to other media 5. retrieve records According to simple or complex criteria 6. split and merge files 7. index on keywords and phrases 8. reconfigure data formats 9. verify or add data using table or authority files 10. interface files with statistical packages and other programs 11. report on the data to aid detecting errors Imposing a format on the descriptive record for data management tends to justify the description itself. It can be self-serving. If description is a critical act, because evaluations are being made in creating the format and the record which represents the object, then the act of managing, then that record is meta-critical. The possibilities for the way data can be organized for a particular system shape the data, because not every way that data can be organized will be acceptable to a particular management system. The actual program which manipulates the prepared data embodies a theory of management. For that matter, removing an object from its context in either space or time makes of it a surrogate for the original event which may be the desired subject for study. Collecting itself embodies a theory of management - as for example the decision to collect one thing of each type, to corral all the examples of one thing, or to judge what constitutes a representative sampling by some criteria. Acquisition is a time-honored method for documenting the object, although it is not necessarily the most informative. If an object takes its meaning from its situation, then a drawing of the object and its site might be a superior interpretation if the researcher's skill could capture the sense of context that is wanted. One might live in a castle all one's life, but never observe the secret passages that are self-evident in a blueprint. Documentation is problematic. Some of the more common modes and tools of documentation are: Modes/Tools I. Acquisition / Not-for profit status; charm; influence; power A. Gift / Charm B. Trade / Entrepreneurship; dealership; possessions C. Purchase / Money D. Theft / Guile II. Making A. Drawing, painting, drafting, printmaking / Knowledge of encoding methods; materials skills B. Photography; still, video, film / Knowledge of and skill with the technology C. Modeling 1. Computer / Programming and program skills 2. Fabrication: forgery / Skill with materials used to duplicate objects in all known respects Documentation generally involves reduction of the phenomenon in question, as when we make an explanatory line drawing to show some unfamiliar route somewhere. The reduction eliminates, hopefully, distracting alternatives and data which would confuse. In this case the document is of the abstraction "route," not the experience of the flowers and trees on the way. This is the task of the semiology of graphics, for example the graphic display of statistical information. If your purpose Is to perform a complete material fabrication of something, you would be trying to duplicate every possible experience of the object or event. There are fascinating Mission Impossible and Star Trek plots involving fabrication of convincing but modeled environments, but they are reduced phenomena or we would never find out that they were not real. One should remain aware that documentation usually involves reduction. It is easier to accept this of drawing and painting than of photography. Photographic documentation is problematic. Light sensitive materials came to be used as a substitute for drawing. To make a drawing one has to develop the skill to perform complex acts of qualitative problem solving. Photography offers standard solutions to those qualitative problems. Decisions about contrast, color. space and so on have been preset in to the system for acquiring photographic images. The success of photography as a substitute for drawing is directly attributable to the ability of the system to make aesthetic decisions for the user. Beyond even that, within the past five years every major manufacturer of popular cameras has incorporated semiconductor technology into the exposure system of its cameras to automate the exposure selection process. Within the coming five years all major film manufacturers will have packaged their products in cassettes than can be read optically, magnetically or electronically by a generation of cameras and film processors that make camera settings unnecessary. Without photography most image making would be done manually. The average camera user can obtain "legible" images by pointing a device and pushing a button. The user can do this because all aesthetic decisions except where to point the device have been incorporated into the system. Users can claim as "my" photograph an object which gives evidence of complex qualitative problem solving without having addressed one single qualitative visual issue. If this system is characterized by a corporate idea of imaging which must be circumvented to express any other idea of imaging, then the documentary nature of photography is called into question. This is not necessarily fraud, it is simply the way that the popular system of making photographic images has evolved. It is, however, so completely taken for granted that "a photograph documents" that the very idea of alternative appearances of the photographic image to the corporate one is, for many, unimaginable. The photograph looks like reality to the perceiver partly because the perceiver has come to accept that it is reality. The distinction is one between metaphor and identity. Photograph as reality implies that the photograph can be other than reality, and that reality can be other than the photographic one. Believing that the photograph is reality establishes identity between the two, a belief that we might not consider exactly sane in this day of "special" effects. However, people sometimes display a piece of paper with a photographic image on It and saying "This is my family," or "Look at my house" on the Assumption that photography in some way captures reality unedited. A question for research has to do with whether one set of answers to the qualitative problems posed by the photographic medium constitutes the set for documentation. When the computer and the photograph combine their authority is magnified. When a photograph becomes information in the digital sense it is a dynamic phenomenon because anything can become anything else within the particular set of rules governing image manipulation. Again, the management becomes meta-critical. What happened to the documentation? The document, obviously, is an interpretation. When this is understood it is clear that every document insists that it is a surrogate and becomes the subject of the same kind of test for referential adequacy as any other knowledge-claim, like any other assertion. These non-rhetorical questions about classification and categorization, the artist as researcher, and authenticity and documentation are among many relevant to our understanding art and its surrogates. Recognizing them as non-rhetorical and problematic informs our work as artist-researchers exploring living traditions in art. Dr. David Ecker is Professor, Department of Art and Art Education, New York University. New York, and Executive Director of the International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art (ISALTA). Dr. Carleton Palmer, is a New York based artist and photographer, and Research Director of ISALTA. Footnote 1. Personal communication with Toni Peterson, Director, Art and Architecture Thesaurus (a J. Paul Getty Trust project). References Chenhall. R. G. (1978). Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging: A System for Classifying Man-Made Objects. Nashville; American Association for State and Local History.

Non-Rhetorical Questions: Categorizing Living Traditions

David W. Ecker and Carleton Palmer

Some of the concerns encountered in building an Encyclopedia of Living Traditions in Art are described. Consideration of the problematic character of existing schemes for categorizing art serves to generate new ways of looking at, and thinking about art.

At least as problematic as the doing of research is the question of what happens to it when it is done. At New York University we are in the early stages of what promises to be a major effort to address the problem of designing the Encyclopedia of Living Traditions in Art. These are the stages where one can ask the most interesting questions -questions one can't answer. These are called non-rhetorical questions, and they are the most dangerous. One reason they are dangerous is because people feed you hemlock when you suggest that their answers to these questions might not be absolute.

As an ex ample: another project under way -not ours - is the development of a list of art terms called the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). The AAT mission is to provide a standard vocabulary for the visual arts arranged alphabetically within a hierarchical conceptual framework. The first major divisions we're Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Fine Arts, but the terms Material Culture has since replaced and subsumed Decorative Arts. If it is as widely implemented as expected, the artist-researcher will increasingly encounter the AAT organizational scheme's influence in the future indexes of bibliographic and visual materials and collections of objects. With this in mind we made a Type 0 error and took an informal poll of both cataloguers of art and its surrogates. (A Type 0 error is disregard for self-preservation.)

We asked a small sample of our acquaintances among art librarians and curators of collections in New York what kind of thinking had gone into the development of the major cataloging categories in art. Why is the collection universe divided up in exactly the way it is rather than another way? It is our great good fortune that librarians and curators are not by nature violent, or some urban archaeologist might now be sifting our ashes.

We would have settled for the most likely answer: historical usage by scholars and artists themselves. AAT, in fact, began with a merged vocabulary from major indexes. In summary, the answers we received could be reduced to three:

1. "There are very smart people who think about these things all the time, and so you shouldn't worry about it."

2. "Who do you think you are to questions the system?"

3. "Huh?"

The question of classification is not rhetorical. Our project requires a classification scheme for living traditions in art, and any artist-researcher looking for help from the conventional first line of inquiry is in serious trouble. In looking for existing schemes we find Chenhall's definition of art pervasive:

"Artifacts originally created for aesthetic purposes or as a demonstration of creative skill and dexterity; the essential ingredient is that the artifact was created for no utilitarian purpose.

. . . decorated utilitarian objects are not considered as art for the purposes of object identification.

Folk art is the same as primitive art in many respects. Many of the objects that are considered as prime examples of folk art are artifacts created originally to have some utilitarian functions in the lexical structure." (Chenhall, 1978, p. 32-33).

The formalist aesthetic embodied in this definition of art as non-utilitarian rules out the work nature of the art work. This certainly reflects conventional wisdom. If categories created serve to reflect thought, then consumed categories serve to shape thinking, and so conventional wisdom becomes invisible wisdom and accepted as un-reflected truth.

However useful nomenclature and all similar strategies may be for cataloging according to this formalist aesthetic, it does not happen to be useful for categorizing living traditions in art. This is because the work nature of the art work is important to the definition of living traditions in art. The nomenclature concept of art scatters the idea of living traditions in art to the winds - not a useful condition for thinking about any subject, but one to which the AAT conforms:

The vocabulary in the thesaurus covers the following areas in the visual arts:

Architecture; the built environment, or human elaboration of the natural environment.

Material Culture (including Decorative Arts); artifacts with a purely utilitarian purpose, often further embellished.

Fine Arts; primarily no-utilitarian objects created according to aesthetic, conceptual or symbolic principles.

This same formalism compartmentalizes schools and departments of colleges and universities into fine art, industrial art( s), art (s) history, art(s) education and so on. It may take a strenuous wrenching of the imagination to conceive of alternatives, but It can be productive to suspend belief in a tacitly held set of categories long enough to ask some non-rhetorical questions. Should one choose to critically adopt the conventional wisdom, one will have made the necessary moves to know the ground and the limits of one's adherence to it.

People continue to make art, buy and sell it, criticize, fake and study it without an explicit list of categories. One does the best with what comes to hand. If the larger philosophical problem remains a non-rhetorical question, then one modifies a set of Library of Congress or International Repertory of the Literature of Art (IRLA) subject headings. Or holds a conference of expert a to assemble a useful list. Maybe that's what our librarian friend meant by "Huh?"

The non-rhetorical question currently being addressed at N.Y.U. is "What is a useful way for artist-researchers to organize. and classify living traditions In art? If this were a rhetorical question we would now layout the answer. But we do not know the answer. Even after considerable effort we have found no adequate answer in the various literatures. In fact, engaging in this project has crystallized problems of understanding research, organization, classifications, traditions, and art itself. This alone would be an excellent reason for pursuing the Encyclopedia project, since doing so calls for examination of the ideas of dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus and taxonomy as they pertain to research into living traditions in art.

Once a classification scheme has been adopted, a significant aid to research would seem to be the computer data base management system. Theoretical questions about electronic information systems and the arts are emerging, particularly with reference to object documentation. It is the art object as the subject of documentation which is most deceptive. One would think there would be a simple hierarchy of events:

1. object/event

2. descriptive record/document, surrogate, analogue, data

3. management of data

Having observed that no description is neutral, we can further see that recording these descriptions also involves critical decisions. Even the selected medium of the record constitutes an interpretation about what is relevant to the object/event. As magnificent an achievement as the technology certainly is, it does not of itself solve the problem of interpretation. Only information that can be input will be input. The purpose of making surrogates of objects and events is to be able to think about them for some purpose in relation to other objects and events. The surrogate is a representation that can be conveniently moved for comparison and contrast with other surrogates. The process for arriving at the point of using surrogates is something like this:

1. Thesaurus. Development or adoption of a thesaurus of terms relevant to the subject.

2. Categorization. Creation of uniform data-capture categories applicable to those terms and subject.

3. Capture system. Adoption of a system for data capture.

4. Capture documents. Preparation of data-capture sheets to control the transition from acquisition of Information to input.

5. Entry. Transfer of data from sheets to some intermediary form.

6. Storage. Entry of data from intermediary form into main storage.

7. Processing and retrieval. Ordering of data processing.

Once available for processing, most such programs perform all or some of the following operations on the data:

1. create and update files

2. sort records into different sequences

3. print reports

4. print to other media

5. retrieve records According to simple or complex criteria

6. split and merge files

7. index on keywords and phrases

8. reconfigure data formats

9. verify or add data using table or authority files

10. interface files with statistical packages and other programs

11. report on the data to aid detecting errors

Imposing a format on the descriptive record for data management tends to justify the description itself. It can be self-serving. If description is a critical act, because evaluations are being made in creating the format and the record which represents the object, then the act of managing, then that record is meta-critical. The possibilities for the way data can be organized for a particular system shape the data, because not every way that data can be organized will be acceptable to a particular management system. The actual program which manipulates the prepared data embodies a theory of management. For that matter, removing an object from its context in either space or time makes of it a surrogate for the original event which may be the desired subject for study. Collecting itself embodies a theory of management - as for example the decision to collect one thing of each type, to corral all the examples of one thing, or to judge what constitutes a representative sampling by some criteria.

Acquisition is a time-honored method for documenting the object, although it is not necessarily the most informative. If an object takes its meaning from its situation, then a drawing of the object and its site might be a superior interpretation if the researcher's skill could capture the sense of context that is wanted. One might live in a castle all one's life, but never observe the secret passages that are self-evident in a blueprint.

Documentation is problematic. Some of the more common modes and tools of documentation are:

Modes/Tools

I. Acquisition / Not-for profit status; charm; influence; power

A. Gift / Charm

B. Trade / Entrepreneurship; dealership; possessions

C. Purchase / Money

D. Theft / Guile

II. Making

A. Drawing, painting, drafting, printmaking / Knowledge of encoding methods; materials skills

B. Photography; still, video, film / Knowledge of and skill with the technology

C. Modeling

1. Computer / Programming and program skills

2. Fabrication: forgery / Skill with materials used to duplicate objects in all known respects

Documentation generally involves reduction of the phenomenon in question, as when we make an explanatory line drawing to show some unfamiliar route somewhere. The reduction eliminates, hopefully, distracting alternatives and data which would confuse. In this case the document is of the abstraction "route," not the experience of the flowers and trees on the way. This is the task of the semiology of graphics, for example the graphic display of statistical information. If your purpose Is to perform a complete material fabrication of something, you would be trying to duplicate every possible experience of the object or event. There are fascinating Mission Impossible and Star Trek plots involving fabrication of convincing but modeled environments, but they are reduced phenomena or we would never find out that they were not real. One should remain aware that documentation usually involves reduction. It is easier to accept this of drawing and painting than of photography.

Photographic documentation is problematic.

Light sensitive materials came to be used as a substitute for drawing. To make a drawing one has to develop the skill to perform complex acts of qualitative problem solving. Photography offers standard solutions to those qualitative problems. Decisions about contrast, color. space and so on have been preset in to the system for acquiring photographic images. The success of photography as a substitute for drawing is directly attributable to the ability of the system to make aesthetic decisions for the user. Beyond even that, within the past five years every major manufacturer of popular cameras has incorporated semiconductor technology into the exposure system of its cameras to automate the exposure selection process. Within the coming five years all major film manufacturers will have packaged their products in cassettes than can be read optically, magnetically or electronically by a generation of cameras and film processors that make camera settings unnecessary.

Without photography most image making would be done manually. The average camera user can obtain "legible" images by pointing a device and pushing a button. The user can do this because all aesthetic decisions except where to point the device have been incorporated into the system. Users can claim as "my" photograph an object which gives evidence of complex qualitative problem solving without having addressed one single qualitative visual issue.

If this system is characterized by a corporate idea of imaging which must be circumvented to express any other idea of imaging, then the documentary nature of photography is called into question. This is not necessarily fraud, it is simply the way that the popular system of making photographic images has evolved. It is, however, so completely taken for granted that "a photograph documents" that the very idea of alternative appearances of the photographic image to the corporate one is, for many, unimaginable. The photograph looks like reality to the perceiver partly because the perceiver has come to accept that it is reality. The distinction is one between metaphor and identity.

Photograph as reality implies that the photograph can be other than reality, and that reality can be other than the photographic one. Believing that the photograph is reality establishes identity between the two, a belief that we might not consider exactly sane in this day of "special" effects. However, people sometimes display a piece of paper with a photographic image on It and saying "This is my family," or "Look at my house" on the Assumption that photography in some way captures reality unedited. A question for research has to do with whether one set of answers to the qualitative problems posed by the photographic medium constitutes the set for documentation.

When the computer and the photograph combine their authority is magnified. When a photograph becomes information in the digital sense it is a dynamic phenomenon because anything can become anything else within the particular set of rules governing image manipulation. Again, the management becomes meta-critical.

What happened to the documentation?

The document, obviously, is an interpretation. When this is understood it is clear that every document insists that it is a surrogate and becomes the subject of the same kind of test for referential adequacy as any other knowledge-claim, like any other assertion.

These non-rhetorical questions about classification and categorization, the artist as researcher, and authenticity and documentation are among many relevant to our understanding art and its surrogates. Recognizing them as non-rhetorical and problematic informs our work as artist-researchers exploring living traditions in art.

Dr. David Ecker is Professor, Department of Art and Art Education, New York University. New York, and Executive Director of the International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art (ISALTA).

Dr. Carleton Palmer, is a New York based artist and photographer, and Research Director of ISALTA.

Footnote

1. Personal communication with Toni Peterson, Director, Art and Architecture Thesaurus (a J. Paul Getty Trust project).

References

Chenhall. R. G. (1978). Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging: A System for Classifying Man-Made Objects. Nashville; American Association for State and Local History.