kosuth's one and three chairs 1965 and etc.

In Giovanni Aloi's book Speculative Taxidermy he mentions the work of Joseph Kosuth's 1965 work One and Three Chairs, which consists of a chair, a life-size photograph of the chair, and vocabulary definition of the chair.

p.66 "Next to each other, the object, image, and text pose ontological questions designed to heighten the viewer's critical ability to recognize the totalizing force of the linguistic nature at play in realistic representation.
...The relationships between object, image, and text thus appear semantically problematized - their ability to linguistically substitute for each other is exposed with seemingly naturalized fluidity. This fluidity is what conceptually enables the formation of metanarratives - it is the condition under which the material histories of objects regularly dematerialize and congeal into symbolic form..."

https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/joseph-kosuth-one-and-three-chairs-1965/
"In One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth represents one chair three ways: as a manufactured chair, as a photograph, and as a copy of a dictionary entry for the word “chair.” The installation is thus composed of an object, an image, and words.

Kosuth didn’t make the chair, take the photograph, or write the definition; he selected and assembled them together. But is this art? And which representation of the chair is most “accurate”? These open-ended questions are exactly what Kosuth wanted us to think about when he said that “art is making meaning.” By assembling these three alternative representations, Kosuth turns a simple wooden chair into an object of debate and even consternation, a platform for exploring new meanings."

One and Three Chairs (1965), Joseph Kosuth

I've been thinking about ideas surrounding illusion and reality of course, thinking about the artificial landscape and all, but also about the proliferation of digital images. This reminds me of when I saw the work of Nam June Paik at Tate Modern a few years ago, the foundation year I got to London. It was the video installation Three Eggs (1972 - 1985) that made a strong impression on me. I don't think I understood it fully then. I feel that for some works it sometimes hits you years later. Similarly, this work confronts the ideas of how we receive digital images and what is conceived as real.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/paik-three-eggs-t14877

Three Eggs (1972 - 1985), Nam June Paik

This also made me think of another work I read about in The Greenhouse Effect, which was Henrik Hakansson's installation 10 Seconds of Forever (Today) 2000, a surveillance camera monitoring the ponds and birdhouses of the Natural History Museum (?) allowing the viewer to observe the wild through screens. Ironically, these images are projected between two African dioramas.

I didn't know a lot about this artist but the main mode of ideas he works with is exactly what I'm looking at now, which is the relation between nature and culture:

"Looking back at his production of the last twenty years we notice how consistently he works with the relation between nature and culture, but also how he varies his expression by using film, photography, sound and—not least—plants and live animals." https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/34099/henrik-hkansson/

Aloi then describes Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson's work 'the naming of things' (the artists that Geraint also showed me, though it is their other work, the one with many gathered taxidermy polar bears) which consists of a vertical video, slowed down, the process of molding the seal's skin into the shape that it should be... there's a brilliant paragraph where Aloi analyses the different aspects of this work that succeeds.

All of this is making me think of when I read Bill Viola's ideas of perception (which I need to read more of, and in his works as well) when he referenced the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan (which I also referenced in my second year essay..):

There are three ways of perception.

One way of perception belongs to the surface: to the mind. It is thought. Thought manifests to our mind with a definite form, line and color.

The next way of perception is feeling. It is felt by quite another part of the heart: it is felt by the depth of the heart, not by the surface. The more the heart quality is wakened in a person, the more he perceives the feelings of others. That person is sensitive, because to him the thoughts and feelings of others are clear. The one who lives on the surface does not perceive feelings clearly. Also, there is a difference between the evolution of the two: of the one who lives on the surface of the heart and the other who lives in the depth. In other words, the one lives in his mind and the other lives in his heart.

There is still a third way of perception, which is not even through feeling and which may be called a spiritual language. This perception comes from the deepest depth of the heart. It is the voice of the spirit. It does not belong to the lantern, it belongs to the light - but in the lantern it becomes clearer and more distinct. This perception may be called intuition; there is no better name for it.

In order to study life fully these three perceptions must be developed. Then alone is one able to study life fully, and it is in studying life fully that one is able to form a judgment upon it.

-these kind of ideas: video installation: projection mapping : alicia also suggested the boxes thing. : idea of projection mapping onto the object live.something live and unplanned? play with. casual. more than 1 projector, text? floating poem. contradiction