The Way Things Go 1987

1. The Way Things Go1987 A closer look at this experimental film created by: David Weiss and Peter Fischli

2. What is --“The Way Things Go”? • Great Question!! • The New York Times says, “Ingeniously choreographed...a Duchampian extravaganza!” by “the merry pranksters of contemporary art” --New York Times ” • A Rube Goldberg drawing come to life.... how did they do it? --Chicago Tribune

3. Comparable to no other film ever made" (Riverfront Times), THE WAY THINGS GO has appeared in hundreds of galleries and museums, and has been applauded by critics worldwide. • Dazzling, amazing... downright hypnotic! --Time Out New York

4. “Duchampian extravaganza!” sounds fun but what does that mean? • The phrase is an allusion to Marcel Duchamp • Marcel Duchamp (28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968)was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, thereby helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period. • A playful man, Duchamp prodded thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much with words, but with actions such as dubbing a urinal "art" and naming it Fountain. He produced relatively few artworks as he quickly moved through the avant-garde rhythms of his time. • The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. -Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, 1957.

5. Marcel Duchamp

6. Dadaist and Surrealist movements. • Dadaist: is a cultural movement that began in Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922.[1] The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including surrealism, Nouveau Réalisme, pop art, Fluxus and punk rock. • Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity — in art and more broadly in society — that corresponded to the war. [3] • Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound poetry, a starting point for performance art, a prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop art, a celebration of antiart to be later embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s and the movement that lay the foundation for Surrealism. -Marc Lowenthal, translator's introduction to Francis Picabia's I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, And Provocation

7. inside joke for people who like dada

8. Anti Art --Foundations of Dada • Anti-art is the definition of a work which may be exhibited or delivered in a conventional context but makes fun of serious art or challenges the nature of art. Title of the work to the left is Fountain by: Marcel Duchamp 1917 His Fountain, the urinal signed with the pseudonym R. Mutt that shocked the art world in 1917, was selected in 2004 as "the most influential artwork of the 20th century" by 500 renowned artists and historians.[5]

9. Marcel Duchamp –Fountain

10. Art Techniques Developed out of the Dada Movement Collage The dadaists imitated the techniques developed during the cubist movement through the pasting of cut pieces of paper items, but extended their art to encompass items such as transportation tickets, maps, plastic wrappers, etc. to portray aspects of life, rather than representing objects viewed as still life. Photomontage The Berlin Dadaists - the "monteurs" (mechanics) - would use scissors and glue rather than paintbrushes and paints to express their views of modern life through images presented by the media. A variation on the collage technique, photomontage utilized actual or reproductions of real photographs printed in the press. Assemblage The assemblages were three-dimensional variations of the collage - the assembly of everyday objects to produce meaningful or meaningless (relative to the war) pieces of work. Readymades Marcel Duchamp began to view the manufactured objects of his collection as objects of art, which he called "readymades". He would add signatures and titles to some, converting them into artwork that he called "readymade aided" or "rectified readymades". One such example of Duchamp's readymade works is the urinal that was turned onto its back, signed "R. Mutt", titled "Fountain", and submitted to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition that year.

11. Ok… so we answered half of the question of the roots of Marcel Duchamp or --- What does “Duchampian” mean? Half of that definition was the roots of the dada movement… the other half is the roots of the surrealist movement…. Ready for the other half? And are they really separate from each other? And what would a surrealist or dadaist half or separation look like?

12. Surrealist Manifesto • Surrealist Manifesto --André Breton (Le Manifeste du Surréalisme) • Breton wrote the manifesto of 1924 (another was issued in 1929) that defines the purposes of the group and includes citations of the influences on Surrealism, examples of Surrealist works and discussion of Surrealist automatism. He defined Surrealism as: • Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation. • Encyclopedia: Surrealism. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life.

13. André Breton (photographed by Man Ray 1930)

14. Foundations of Surrealist Art • As they developed their philosophy they felt that while Dada rejected categories and labels, Surrealism would advocate the idea that ordinary and depictive expressions are vital and important, but that the sense of their arrangement must be open to the full range of imagination according to the Hegelian Dialectic. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse. • Freud's work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious was of the utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. However, they embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness or darkness of the mind. (Later the idiosyncratic Salvador Dalí explained it as: "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."[3])

15. Surrealist Artists • Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. • Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact.

16. Salvador Dalí • The Persistence of Memory – 1931

17. More Surrealist History • Author Oliver Grau in his book Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion notes that the creation of artificial immersive virtual reality, arising as a result of technical exploitation of new inventions, is a long-standing human practice throughout the ages. Such environments as dioramas were made of composited images. • The first and most famous mid-Victorian photomontage (then called combination printing) was "The Two Ways of Life" (1857) by Oscar Rejlander, followed shortly by the pictures of photographer Henry Peach Robinson such as "Fading Away" (1858). These works actively set out to challenge the then-dominant painting and theatrical tableau vivants. • Fantasy photomontaged postcards were popular in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.Many of the early examples of fine-art photomontage consist of photographed elements superimposed on watercolours, a combination returned to by (e.g.) George Grosz in about 1915. He was part of the Dada movement in Berlin which was instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form.

18. Bruce Connor - Mushroom

19. Fotomontage Surrealism • Other methods for combining pictures are also called photomontage, such as Victorian "combination printing", the printing of more than one negative on a single piece of printing paper (e.g. O. G. Rejlander, 1857), front-projection and computer montage techniques. Much like a collage is composed of multiple facets, artists also combine montage techniques. Romare Bearden's (1912-1988) series of black and white "photomontage projections" is an example. His method began with compositions of paper, paint, and photographs put on boards 8 1/2x11 inches. Bearden fixed the imagery with an emulsion that he then applied with handroller. Subsequently, he enlarged the collages photographically. • The 19th century tradition of physically joining multiple images into a composite and photographing the results prevailed in press photography and offset lithography until the widespread use of digital image editing. Contemporary photo editors in magazines now create "paste-ups” digitally. Creating a photomontage has, for the most part, become easier with the advent of computer software such as Adobe Photoshop, Pixel image editor, and GIMP

20. “Duchampian Extravaganza” • The theoretical writings of Henri Poincaré particularly intrigued and inspired Duchamp. Poincaré postulated that the laws believed to govern matter were created solely by the minds that "understood" them and no theory could be considered "true." "The things themselves are not what science can reach..., but only the relations between things. Outside of these relations there is no knowable reality", Poincaré wrote in 1902. • Duchamp's own art-science experiments began during his tenure at the library. To make one of his favorite pieces, 3 Standard Stoppages (3 stoppages étalon), one at a time from a height of 1 meter, he dropped three 1-meter lengths of thread onto a prepared canvases. They landed in three random undulating positions. He varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass. Then he cut three wood slats into the shapes of the curved strings, and put all the pieces into a croquet box. Three small leather signs with the title printed in gold were glued to each of the "stoppage" backgrounds. The piece appears to literally follow Poincaré's School of the Thread, part of a book on classical mechanics.

21. Duchamp’s Three Standard Stoppages • Publication excerpt • The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 91 • A working note of Duchamp's describes his idea for this enigmatic work: "A straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter onto a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases and creates a new image of the unit of length." Here, three such threads, each fixed to its own canvas with varnish, and each canvas glued to its own glass panel, are enclosed in a box, along with three lengths of wood (draftsman's straightedges) cut into the shapes drawn by the three threads. • Duchamp later said that 3 Standard Stoppages opened the way "to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art," such as what Duchamp called "retinal painting," art designed for the luxuriance of the eye. This required formal intelligence and a skillful hand on the part of the artist. The Stoppages, on the other hand, depended on chance—which, paradoxically, they at the same time fixed and "standardized." (Duchamp used the phrase "canned chance.") Subordinating art both to accident and to something approximating the scientific method (which they simultaneously parodied), 3 Standard Stoppages advanced a conceptual approach, an absurdist strain, and a way of commenting on both art and the broader culture that inspired countless later artists of many different kinds.

22. Three Standard Stoppages

23. Network of Stoppages

24. Readymades • It is necessary to arrive at selecting an object with the idea of not being impressed by this object on the basis of enjoyment of any order. However, it is difficult to select an object that absolutely does not interest you, not only on the day on which you select it, and which does not have any chance of becoming attractive or beautiful and which is neither pleasant to look at nor particularly ugly. (Marcel Duchamp)

25. Readymades • Such discussions question the ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, and their association to ideas that are very present in psychological interactions and psychological discovery. • In 1915 Duchamp began doing his "readymades" — found objects he chose and presented as art. He assembled the first readymade, a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool, in 1913 about the same time as his Nude Descending A Staircase was attracting the attention of critics at the International Exhibition of Modern Art, though it wasn't until two years later he called it a readymade.

26. Bicycle Wheel

27. Bottle Rack • Bottle Rack (1914), a bottle drying rack signed by Duchamp, is considered to be the first "pure" readymade. Prelude to a Broken Arm (November 1915), a snow shovel, followed soon after. • In 1919, Duchamp made a Mona Lisa parody by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription L.H.O.O.Q., when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" (translating to "she has a hot ass" as a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability). This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda Roland Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face.[4]

28. 1914/64. Readymade: bottle rack made of galvanized iron. 59 x 37 cm. Original lost. Replica. Private collection.

29. Mona Lisa LHOOQ

30. The Large Glass orThe Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bacheors, Even 1915-1923 • Duchamp carefully created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, working on the piece from 1915 to 1923. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. • Duchamp's ideas for the Glass began in 1913, and he made numerous notes and studies, as well as preliminary works for the piece. The notes reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and myth which describes the work. He published the notes and studies as The Green Box in 1934.[1] • The notes describe that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erratic encounter between the "Bride," in the upper panel, and her nine "Bachelors" gathered timidly below in an abundance of mysterious mechanical apparatus in the lower panel.

31. The Large GlassOil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels

32. Marcel Duchamp. (American, born France. 1887-1968). To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour. Buenos Aires 1918. Oil, silver leaf, lead wire, and magnifying lens on glass (cracked), mounted between panes of glass in a standing metal frame, 20 1/8 x 16 1/4 x 1 1/2" (51 x 41.2 x 3.7 cm), on painted wood base. • Inscribed in French on a strip of metal glued across the approximate center of this work are the words, • "To be looked at (from the other side of the glass) with one eye, close to, for almost an hour," suggesting that viewers look through the lens Duchamp mounted between two panes of glass haloed in concentric circles. Peering through the convex lens "for almost an hour" is supposed to have a hallucinatory effect, as the view is dwarfed, flipped, and otherwise distorted. Duchamp delighted in the fact that the glass shattered while being transported.

33. To Be Looked at with One Eye, Close To, for Almost an Hour

34. Kinetic works Kinetic art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. The term kinetic sculpture refers to a class of art made primarily from the late 1950s through 1960s. Kinetic art was first recorded by the sculptors Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner in their Realist Manifesto issued as part of a manifesto of constructivism in 1920 in Moscow. "Bicycle Wheel," of 1913, by Marcel Duchamp, is said to be the first kinetic sculpture.[2]

35. A kinetic mobile Mirko Siakkou-Flodin Theo Jansen

36. Duchamp Kinetics • Duchamp's interest in kinetic works shows as early as the notes for The Large Glass and the Bicycle Wheel readymade, and despite losing interest in "retinal art" he retained interest in visual phenomena. • In 1920, with help from Man Ray, Duchamp built what has come to be known as Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) (Rotative plaque de verre). The piece, which he did not consider art, involved a motor to spin pieces of rectangular glass on which were painted segments of a circle. When the apparatus spins, the circle segments appear to be closed concentric circles. (Animation of Rotary Glass Plates) • Man Ray set up to photograph the initial experiment, but when they turned the machine on for the second time, a belt broke, caught a piece of the glass which after glancing off of Man Ray's head, crashed into bits. [6]

37. More Spinning Machines • After moving back to Paris in 1923, at André Breton's urging and the financing of Jacques Doucet, he built another optical device based on the first one - Rotary Demisphere (Precision Optics). This time the optical element was a globe cut in half with black concentric circles painted on it. When it spins the circles appear to move backwards and forwards in space. Duchamp asked that Doucet not exhibit the apparatus as art. [7] • Rotoreliefs were the next phase of Duchamp's spinning works. To make the optical "play toys" he painted designs on flat cardboard circles and spun them on a phonographic turntable that when spinning the flat disks appeared 3-dimensional. He had a printer run off 500 sets of six of the designs and set up a booth at a 1935 Paris inventors' show to sell them. The venture was a financial disaster, but some optical scientists thought they might be of use in restoring 3-dimensional sight to people with one eye. [8] (Animated display of the Rotoreliefs) • In collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret, Duchamp filmed early versions of the Rotoreliefs and they named the film Anémic Cinéma (1926). • Later, in Alexander Calder's studio in 1931, while looking at the sculptor's kinetic works Duchamp suggested that he call them "mobiles" which Calder did for his upcoming show. To this day this type of sculpture is called "mobiles".[9]

38. REVIEW OF THE ERA OF DUCHAMP • Lets Revisit the Definition of something that would be as -- The New York Times says, “Ingeniously choreographed...a Duchampian extravaganza!” by “the merry pranksters of contemporary art” --New York Times ” • A piece that would incorporate the art movements we now know and love, other wise known as the Dadaist and Surrealist movements.

39. IF YOU THOUGHT THAT DUCHAMP WAS COOL… NOW LETS GET KINETIC!! In the review of The Way Things Go the Chicago Tribune says: • “A Rube Goldberg drawing come to life.... how did they do it?” --Chicago Tribune

40. Who is Rube Goldberg and what is she/he bringing to life?

41. Rube Goldberg • Reuben Garret Lucius Goldberg (4 July 1883 – 7 December 1970) was an American cartoonist who received a 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning. • He is best known for his series of popular cartoons depicting Rube Goldberg machines, complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. • The Reuben Award of the National Cartoonists Society is named in his honor. In addition, there are several contests around the world known as Rube Goldberg contests which challenge high school students to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.

42. Rube Goldberg- Cartoonist – San Francisco California Soup to Nuts (1930) is a feature film written by Rube Goldberg and directed by Benjamin Stoloff, which marks the film debut of the comic trio who would go on to become known as the Three Stooges. Goldberg made a cameo appearance in the film as himself, opening letters in a restaurant.

43. Rube Goldberg’s Inventions!, a postcard book

44. Rube and other great comics

45. Comics

46. So what is the definition of a Rube Goldberg Machine? • A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually using a chain reaction. Goldberg's drawings, for example, almost always included a live animal which was expected to perform part of the sequence of tasks. • Since then, the expression's meaning has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system. For example, recent news headlines include "Is Rep. Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?",[2] and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine".[3]

47. Which led to progressive inventions like? • Mouse trap… A board game that many young adolescents know and love 

48. So as a reference: • David Weiss and Peter Fischli are: • The New York Times says, “Ingeniously choreographed...a Duchampian extravaganza!” by “the merry pranksters of contemporary art” --New York Times ” • A Rube Goldberg drawing come to life.... how did they do it? --Chicago Tribune

49. The Way Things Go • Comparable to no other film ever made" (Riverfront Times), THE WAY THINGS GO has appeared in hundreds of galleries and museums, and has been applauded by critics worldwide. • Dazzling, amazing... downright hypnotic! --Time Out New York

50. The Movie Preview • Inside a warehouse, Fischli and Weiss build an enormous and precarious structure made out of common household items such as tea kettles, tires, old shoes, balloons, ladders and wooden ramps. Then, with fire, water, gravity and chemistry, they create a spectacular 100 foot long chain reaction performance of physical interactions, chemical reactions, and precisely crafted chaos worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. • "Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have collaborated on kinetic installations since 1979. All of their work to date, whether in photography, film, drawing, or sculpture, has demonstrated a deep interest in the mechanisms that animate the universe of objects."