This article compares and assimilates Jack Burnam's "systems esthetics" and Stanley Cavell's "automatisms" to push forward the idea that art has moved its focus away from the material object towards the technological, mechanical and digital genre of artmaking. She explains that "systems and automatisms were intended to describe a situation in which older ontological paradigms of art-making, those of an earlier phase of modernism, were no longer sufficient." She explains that historically, art was "medium centric" with painting being at the top of the art pyramid. In Brunam's "system's esthetics," artmaking has broadened to encompass conceptually-based, technologically propelled principles. She explains that Burnam "argued for a new take on contemporary art informed by ecology, feedback loops, kinesthetics and systems theory, rather than classical formalism, beauty or the autonomy of the object." Cavell's thoughts on "automatisms" were focused mainly around photography and film. Quoting Cavell, she explains that "the automatism of a work of art 'generates new instances: not merely makes them possible, but calls for them, as if to attest that what has been discovered is indeed something more than a single work could convey.'" It seems that to Terranova, this system of artmaking is more about sensing and communicating as opposed to finding references to art history. It starts with an idea that resonates out to include a broader humanity.
I still love classical formalism, beauty and material objects...
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