Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins

Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press: Selected Writings by Dick Higgins
Author: Dick Higgins
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-11-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781938221200

Dick Higgins and his Something Else Press epitomized the riotous art of the '60s There are few art-world figures as influential--and as little known--as Dick Higgins (1938-98), cofounder of Fluxus, "polyartist," poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the legendary Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term "intermedia" to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries between traditional modes of art-making and the open field for new forms that cannot be compartmentalized. His own contributions to intermedia are many--as a participant and instigator of happenings, as writer and composer straddling traditional and vanguard forms, among others--but it was Something Else Press (1963-74) that redefined how "the book" could inhabit that energized, in-between space. Something Else Press was as much a critical statement and radical experiment as it was a collection of books by some of the most luminary artists and writers of the 20th century: Gertrude Stein, John Cage, Ray Johnson, Dieter Roth, Bern Porter, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Emmett Williams, Robert Filliou, and George Brecht, among many others. Along with his Great Bear Pamphlet series and the Something Else newsletter, Higgins exploited and subverted conventional book production and marketing strategies to get unconventional and avant-garde works into the hands of new and often unsuspecting readers. Edited by Granary Books publisher Steve Clay and Fluxus artist Ken Friedman, this judiciously curated and indispensable compendium of essays, theoretical writings and narrative prose dives deep into the ever-influential ideas that Higgins explored in theory and practice. Clay and Friedman have chosen works that illuminate Higgins' voracious intellectual appetite, encyclopedic body of knowledge and playful yet rigorous experimentation in a selection that includes many writings long out of print or difficult to find.

Fluxus Experience

Fluxus Experience
Author: Hannah Higgins
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2002-12-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520228677

Hannah Higgins explores the influential art movement Fluxus. Daring, disparate and contentious, Fluxus artists worked with minimal and prosaic materials now familiar in post-World War II art. Higgins describes the experience of Fluxus for viewers as affirming transactions between the self and the world.

The Fluxus Reader

The Fluxus Reader
Author: Ken Friedman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1998-11-18
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

Part I. Three histories : Developing a fluxable forum: Early performance & publishing / Owen Smith -- Fluxus, fluxion, flushoe: the 1970's / Simon Anderson -- Fluxus fortuna / Hannah Higgins -- Part II. Theories of Fluxus: Boredom and oblivion / Ina Blon -- Zen vaudeville: a medi(t)ation in the margins of Fluxus / David T. Doris -- Fluxus as a laboratory / Craig Saper -- Part III. Critical and historical perspectives: Fluxus history and trans-history: competing strategies for empowerment / Estera Milman -- Historical design and social purpose: a note on the relationship of Fluxus to modernism / Stephen C. Foster -- A spirit of large goals: fluxus, dada and postmodern cultural theory at two speeds -- Part IV. Three Fluxus voices : Transcript of the videotaped Interview with George Maciunas -- Selections from an interview with Billie Maciunas / Susan L. Jarosi -- Maybe Fluxus (a para-interrogative guide for the neoteric transmuter, tinder, tinker and totalist) / Larry Miller -- Part V. Two Fluxus theories : Fluxus : theory and reception / Dick Higgins -- Fluxus and company / Ken Friedman -- Part. VI-- Documents of Fluxus : Fluxus chronology : key moments and events -- A list of selected Fluxus art works and related primary source materials -- A list of selected Fluxus sources and related secondary sources.

Fluxus Forms

Fluxus Forms
Author: Natilee Harren
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-03-20
Genre: Art
ISBN: 022635492X

“PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art. . . . Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples,” writes artist George Maciunas in his Fluxus manifesto of 1963. Reacting against an elitist art world enthralled by modernist aesthetics, Fluxus encouraged playfulness, chance, irreverence, and viewer participation. The diverse collective—including George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, and Robert Watts—embraced humble objects and everyday gestures as critical means of finding freedom and excitement beyond traditional forms of art-making. While today the Fluxus collective is recognized for its radical neo-avant-garde works of performance, publishing, and relational art and its experimental, interdisciplinary approach, it was not taken seriously in its own time. With Fluxus Forms, Natilee Harren captures the magnetic energy of Fluxus activities and collaborations that emerged at the intersections of art, music, performance, and literature. The book offers insight into the nature of art in the 1960s as it traces the international development of the collective’s unique intermedia works—including event scores and Fluxbox multiples—that irreversibly expanded the boundaries of contemporary art.

Critical Mass

Critical Mass
Author: Mead Art Museum (Amherst College)
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780813533032

Description: Puts New Jersey at the center of key art movements during the sixties

Essential Cowell

Essential Cowell
Author: Henry Cowell
Publisher: McPherson
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2001
Genre: Music
ISBN:

Foreword Magazine "Book of the Year" 2002 Gold Medalion This volume presents for the first time a generous selection from the more than 200 essays and articles written by one of the most original American composers and musical theorists of the twentieth century. There are articles on harmony, melody, notation and music history; essays on vocal innovation, folk music, and the intersection of music with other arts; reviews of concerts and recordings by contemporaries; notes on several of his own works, and several pieces on his life and experiences as a composer. Henry Cowell may be best known as a creator of "tone cluster" compositions, which he began writing while in his early teens, but his influence has been far broader and much deeper. As founder in 1925 of the New Music Society, he became a concert impresario for works by, among others, Carl Ruggles, Arnold Schoenberg, Charles Ives and Leo Ornstein; and publisher from 1927 to 1958 of New Music: A Quarterly of Musical Compositions. His many students included George Gershwin, John Cage, and Lou Harrison, but his interests extended beyond western classical traditions, and his radio program, "Music of the World's Peoples," introduced a large audience to world music long before it was fashionable. Just as Cowell's groundbreaking book of 1930, New Musical Resources, continues to inspire successive generations of composers, Essential Cowell is key to understanding the origins and expanding dimensions of contemporary music.

The Grid Book

The Grid Book
Author: Hannah B Higgins
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2009-01-23
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0262512408

Ten grids that changed the world: the emergence and evolution of the most prominent visual structure in Western culture. Emblematic of modernity, the grid is the underlying form of everything from skyscrapers and office cubicles to paintings by Mondrian and a piece of computer code. And yet, as Hannah Higgins makes clear in this engaging and evocative book, the grid has a history that long predates modernity; it is the most prominent visual structure in Western culture. In The Grid Book, Higgins examines the history of ten grids that changed the world: the brick, the tablet, the gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, the ledger, the screen, moveable type, the manufactured box, and the net. Charting the evolution of each grid, from the Paleolithic brick of ancient Mesopotamia through the virtual connections of the Internet, Higgins demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it may bend, crumble, or shatter, but its organizing principle never disappears. The appearance of each grid was a watershed event. Brick, tablet, and city gridiron made possible sturdy housing, the standardization of language, and urban development. Maps, musical notation, financial ledgers, and moveable type promoted the organization of space, music, and time, international trade, and mass literacy. The screen of perspective painting heralded the science of the modern period, classical mechanics, and the screen arts, while the standardization of space made possible by the manufactured box suggested the purified box forms of industrial architecture and visual art. The net, the most ancient grid, made its first appearance in Stone Age Finland; today, the loose but clearly articulated networks of the World Wide Web suggest that we are in the middle of an emergent grid that is reshaping the world, as grids do, in its image.

Mainframe Experimentalism

Mainframe Experimentalism
Author: Hannah Higgins
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2023-09-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520953738

Mainframe Experimentalism challenges the conventional wisdom that the digital arts arose out of Silicon Valley’s technological revolutions in the 1970s. In fact, in the 1960s, a diverse array of artists, musicians, poets, writers, and filmmakers around the world were engaging with mainframe and mini-computers to create innovative new artworks that contradict the stereotypes of "computer art." Juxtaposing the original works alongside scholarly contributions by well-established and emerging scholars from several disciplines, Mainframe Experimentalism demonstrates that the radical and experimental aesthetics and political and cultural engagements of early digital art stand as precursors for the mobility among technological platforms, artistic forms, and social sites that has become commonplace today.