SLSL Intro "Junkshop or Randomly Assembled Quality"

[David Morris]

Collage, bricollage, cubism (in some of its earliest forms), and jazz are all
"improvisational" art forms:  one combines "found" objects to construct new
wholes.  Reference to content outside the collected new work is inherent from
the source of the different parts.  The question remains as to the value of the
whole versus the sum of the parts.

DM

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
>    "I was to get even worse at this, as is evident
> from the junkshop or randomly assembled quality to
> many of the scenes in 'The Secret Integration.'" (SL,
> "Intro," p. 20)
> 
> 
> "The 'bricoleur' is adept at performing a large number
> of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does
> not subordinate each of them to the availability of
> raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the
> purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is
> closed and the rules of his game are always to make do
> with 'whatever is at hand', that is to say with a set
> of tools and materials which is always finite and is
> also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no
> relation to the current project, or indeed to any
> particular project, but is the contingent result of
> all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich
> the stock or to maintain it with the remains of
> previous constructions or destructions. The set of the
> 'bricoleur's' means cannot therefore be defined in
> terms of a project (which would presuppose besides,
> that, as in the case of the engineer, there were, at
> least in theory, as many sets of tools and materials
> or 'instrumental sets', as there are different kinds
> of projects). It is to be defined only by its
> potential use or, putting this another way and in the
> language of the 'bricoleur' himself, because the
> elements are collected or retained on the principle
> that 'they may always come in handy'. Such elements
> are specialized up to a point, sufficiently for the
> 'bricoleur' not to need the equipment and knowledge of
> all trades and professions, but not enough for each of
> them to have only one definite and determinate use.
> They each represent a set of actual and possible
> relations; they are 'operators' but they can be used
> for any operations of the same type."
> 
> --Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962)
> 
> http://varenne.tc.columbia.edu/bib/info/levstcld066savamind.html
> 
> And see as well, e.g., ...
> 
> http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html
> 
> http://www.lclark.edu/~soan370/glossary/bricintro.html
> 
> http://www.france.sk/culturel/pedagbricolage.htm
> 
> Barthes, Roland.  Mythologies.  Trans. Annette
>    Lavers.  New York: Hill and Wang, 1984 [1970]. 
> 
> http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/culture/myth1.htm
> 
> 
> Assemblage.
> 
> Art form in which natural and manufactured,
> traditionally non-artistic, materials and objets
> trouvés are assembled into three-dimensional
> structures. As such it is closely related to COLLAGE,
> and like collage it is associated with Cubism,
> although its origins can be traced back beyond this.
> As much as by the materials used, it can be
> characterized by the way in which they are treated. In
> an assemblage the banal, often tawdry materials retain
> their individual physical and functional identity,
> despite artistic manipulation. The term was coined by
> Jean Dubuffet in 1953 ....
> 
> http://www.artnet.com/library/00/0046/T004631.ASP
> 
> And see as well, e.g., ...
> 
> Seitz, William C.  The Art of Assemblage.
>    New York: MOMA, 1961.
> 
> http://collageart.org/books/
> 
> 
> "The street finds its own use for things." --William
> Gibson, as quoted in Bruce Sterling, "Preface,"
> Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology (1986)
> 
> http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPtext/Manifestos/Cut&Paste.html
> 
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