Research Question

 

In A Beautiful Question (2016) Frank Wilczek remarks on the ability of the human mind to imagine complex systems and processes in spatial terms, to picture them in three dimensions, and also in four dimensions (through times and spaces).  This makes it easier to imagine what these systems do, but also to imagine what they might do, to imagine what is possible.  In thinking about theories and processes in terms of these spatial choreographies we can understand them better. Understanding theoretical ideas in spatial terms is a practice carried out by artists instinctively.

 

This thesis sets out to explore the ‘shape’ of creative practice.  That is, it asks, how does practice articulate itself through space, how is it formed, what are the processes of production and how do they come into being?  At the heart of these questions are investigations into how quantum science defines processes of genesis at the heart of matter, and subsequently at the heart of perception.  In essence then, this thesis provides an examination of the production of form and meaning in pursuit of the argument that there is a parallel between various contemporary scientific theories, some of them paradigm shifting, and aspects of artistic practice.  In this, the thesis uses the patterns I perceive as forming in my own practice, and the practices of others, as key reference points.

 

This thesis examines my ceramic practice, and the practices of other artists, in spatial terms in order to articulate complicated ideas from the realm of science.  Equally, the thesis draws on complicated ideas in science to understand some of the more mysterious (or highly complex) processes in these artistic practices.  For example, I use theories associated with complex adaptive systems and quantum science to understand specific aspects of process and meaning generation in fine art practices, and vice versa.  This reciprocity is a central tenet of the research concerns within the thesis.  Such reciprocity is also examined through a constant return between other points generally conceived as oppositional; a consistent dualism is at play, between, for example, making and meaning, theory and practice, stability and instability, structure and mutation, simplicity and complexity, plurality and unity, materiality and essence, with each side informing the other.

 

The energy created by dualism in science is at the core of genesis.  This thesis explores these new ontologies of production in terms of fine art practice and illuminates some ideas associated with quantum physics in terms of an examination of theories associated with generation there, such as dualism and resonance.  Consequently, this thesis examines some theoretical positions concerned with questions of genesis, in philosophy, quantum theory and systems theory, and considers how these positions may serve to illuminate processes of production in art practice.

 

The thesis draws on a series of interrelated theoretical concepts and positions to make its arguments.  This includes Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notions of ‘collective subjectivities’, ‘chaosmosis’, ‘bodies without organs’ and the ‘fold’. It also includes Michel Serres, Manuel DeLanda, Bruno Latour and Brian Massumi’s concepts of distributive agency and complexity and considerations of the ways in which these processes engender genesis.  Key to this is understanding these theories of genesis in terms of how they relate to current thinking in quantum genesis.  On this, the thesis refers to notions such as Niels Bohr’s indeterminism, Frank Wilczek’s complex numbers and Karen Barad’s agential realism.  The thesis considers how these notions inform and support the creative practices of contemporary ceramic artists, and artists working in other media, whose work can be interpreted in terms of the ideas concerned with generative production as informed by quantum physics.

 

The thesis examines work by Barad, Bohr, Greene and Wilczek on the topic of quantum genesis and ontology to show how these theorists establish a new paradigm based on dynamism and differentiation, which acts in terms of moving perspectives.  The thesis establishes that these ideas provide a tool for reassessing processes of production and genesis in material and in ceramic fine art practices.  The thesis makes use of this tool by applying it to the works and practice methodologies of several artists: Pheobe Cummings, Erika Nichol, Rachel Kneebone, Susan Derges, Liu Jianhua, Klara Kristalova, Souvik Settemsdal, Julius Von Bismarck, Annie Cattrell, Marcel Duchamp and Sarah Sze.

 

Experimental ceramic practice is particularly suited to a study with reference to complexity theory and genesis because of the many different compounds and chemicals that create its networks of production and the way these compounds and processes affect the capability of a clay form as it is produced.  These networks of production provide a platform for a study on the nature of particle formation, genesis, growth, mutation and the mechanics of complex system production and proliferation.  The forms and processes that emerge as a result of these networks of production provide a platform for the scrutiny of complex systems in perception and meaning generation.  Essentially these lines of enquiry meet in an examination of complex adaptive systems and quantum genesis because they act as a lens through which practice and genesis can be viewed.

 

Ceramic practices are by nature formed of a network of chemical reactions invoking an alchemy between the physical world of chemistry and the metaphysical world of concept generation.  Both the work produced and the processes of production are defined by the networks of production at work on the microscopic scale.  These networks, or collaborations on the microscopic scale, and their exponential nature provide a blueprint for the concepts they articulate; concepts that are concerned with potential and immanence, proliferation, bifurcation, chaos and autopoiesis within the processes of genesis.  This is where the physical networks created in an experimental practice are transferred to conceptual networks – where form and process become meaning. In the context of this thesis, this poses interesting questions as to how theories of quantum genesis might inform such an understanding.  And, how systems theory be used to unpick the networks of collaboration and production within such a practice?

 

The argument presented in this thesis highlights a limitation in thinking about the processes of genesis in terms of structuralist or post-structuralist perspectives.  This is because these positions rely on a phenomenological perspective to set the terms of the debate.  I argue that, in light of new discoveries in quantum genesis and complex systems and the philosophical writing concerned with them, definitive perspectives of any sort have become highly problematic in explaining genesis.  I argue for the foregrounding of ontologies that produce pluralities, which are concerned with potentials and probabilities, and align production with immanence.  In these processes of genesis as we now understand them the patterns or choreographies at play take on a completely different form whereby static, elite or individual viewpoints are profoundly challenged.  Both quantum theory and systems theory show that potentials and probabilities have a vastly greater influence on genesis than our phenomenological viewpoints had previously recognised.  This is considered by Deleuze and Guattari in terms of collective subjectivities, the body without organs and the fold, though they had not specifically connected their theories to quantum ontology.  Their evaluation of the genesis mechanism, together with the new knowledge on genesis acquired through quantum theory, has shifted emphasis in terms of the validity and limitations of knowledge production and its methodological or systemic relation within that production.  This provides a new means for reflecting on experimental practices such as those defined within this thesis.