F l u i d i s m - Artform and Worldview

[robertkernodle]

Ridicule me or dismiss me, if you want, but I feel confident that I am onto something. I consider myself one among a number of artists working with very similar interests. I have given these interests a name - F l u i d i s m. The word, "fluidism" (as I have claimed it and readapted it) refers to art arising from the dynamics of real fluids. So far,.. I know of the following fluidism artists:

(click on names to view images)

Robert Kernodle (http://thedb.com/fluidism)

Chris Parks (http://www.imagequest3d.com/chrisparksart/aboutus.htm)

Blake J. Nolan (http://www.bjnart.com/exhibitions/colorjive/colorjive.html)

Martin Waugh (http://www.liquidsculpture.com)

Rein Nomm (http://nomm.com/FineArt/WaterColors/index.htm)

[janetlthomas]

intersting post and also interesting artwork... would like to see more.

[brockman]

Interesting. Then so is watching a rain drop run down a window. Is it art? Before making a judgement some questions. How much is left to chance? What control is there over the fluids?

[robertkernodle]

To janetlthomas: You want to see more,... then click HERE (http://thedb.com/fluidism)

To brockman: Raindrop? Sure! It's art ... in a certain context and capture ... as are photos of galaxies and stars. How much is left to chance? Ha! What's chance? No such thing, really. But to answer your question: Choice of surface, choice of colors to start with, chemical composition of fluids, viscosity, angle of view, closeness of view, choice of illumination level, choice of illumination source (i.e., the sun), choice of when to capture what image, ... determined by trial and era, visceral feel, practice, failure, ... sounds like art to me .

[brockman]

There is chance. Not all is art just because one says it is. I am not critisizing only asking about your methods. It seems there is much in your fluid works that you do control as much as possible, no different then painting or sculpting, a hand must be involved, to make it art, at least man-made art. Nature is the best artist around.

[robertkernodle]

brockman,

Yes, of course, the word, "chance", is useful,... but I think that our conception of it is too shallow. That's why I assume a position that chance really doesn't exist, as a distinct opposite to certainty.

Let me say this again: Chance does not exist in a shallow sense. Chance is a deep concept, related to the very concept of fluidity itself.

Chance is ralated to our idea of human-limited intention, knowledge and control. The universe, however, operates without any consideration of human intention, yet forms get created. We say that something is "by chance", when we cannot predict it or otherwise control it or anticipate it. On the smallest quantum scale, we could claim such uncertainty about everything.

Chance is a continuum. A gradation. NOT an "either/ or" proposition. Chance is the sea in which bubbles of our resonating "certainty" float.

Robert



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[robertkernodle]

Why does an "EDIT" button NOT appear to enable me to correct grammar or delete other compositional errors to improve appearance and understanding of my comments?

You may delete this question, after answering it, to preserve space for the "meat" of this thread. OR enable ME to delete it.

Thanks,

RK

[brockman]

Even in the univers there is chance. But this is much to much about 'chance'.

[phcroix]

Fluidism... without going into laminal flow or Reynolds numbers; an aesthetic view based upon a chemical phase state. Before I look at any Fluidism works, I'd like to see a manifesto of Fluidism....

[brockman]

Question: Why must there be a manifesto?

[robertkernodle]

The word, "manifesto", has waaaaay too much baggage.

Look at my images, and be open to my written insights about them and their process of coming about. I explain myself at my website, HERE (http://www.geocities.com/robertkernodle). Look under "philosophy", when you click there.

[robertkernodle]

Was it my tongue-in-cheek tone? Was it my link to the site where I explain in detail what fluidism is about ? I referred readers to the next best thing to a "manifesto", which is a clear explanation without the pretense. This was a logical reply to the latest progression of dialogue here.

[robertkernodle]

Now the message board shows the reply that appeared deleted in a previous window. Something strange is going on at control central. And now I have no edit button to withdraw the previous, now apparantly inappropriate post.

[walterking]

Robert, I don't intend to ridicule...and I certainly don't feel like bursting anyones bubbles today...but it seems to me that there is some difference between a choice of subject and medium and a movement. Without asking for a manifesto and explanation as to what is so important about fluidism that makes it a movement. With Impressionism it was a rejection of the tight studio realism established by the Academy with an emphasis on working from life, light and less formal rules. For the Fauves it was an elemental expression of color as light. With Cubism it was a reduction of form to the primary qualities of the two dimensional surface-- and abstraction as a primary focus. The Abstract Expressionists sought an art without objects of focus, more like the abstraction of music. This entire group of artists were given the larger name of the movement of modernists. The Post Modernist movement is named such because of its lack of faith that any of the old ideas are valid any longer. They depend on irony, a rejection of originality of creation and invention, appropriation of other peoples imagery and a kind of deconstructionists intent to undo what has been done (perhaps in a spirit of throwing off the weight of history). It seems to me that for a movement to be vital and live long it should be a collective and concerted effort, or at least an accidental coinciding of a number of artists, philosophers, writers, whatever, during a certain period of history approaching not just the same subject matter or materials but an idea or endeavor with an overview to something more universal concerning the arts in general or some world view in particular. Movements are really fairly rare and not often found in any real sense until around the Renaissance. Prior to that art was transfered from master to apprentice more as a copied craft than an expressive art. It has only been since the artist was invited up to the level of Scientists, Historians, Statesmen, Poets, Philosophers and Theologians that this concept of movements really began to take hold.

There is no reason not to make art with fluid materials that capture the graceful magic of fluid form or movement, refracted color etc., etc.. Pollack did it in the 50's by letting paint drip and flow from his brush to the canvas on the floor. Stained glass is nothing more than frozen fluid...colored silica's melted, flattened and frozen into panes of transparency. Others have used the fluid properties of paint as well, or photographed fluid movements, or more properly, the movement of fluids before. But I'm just a little unsure why this work falls into the category of a new movement rather than simply a focus on a certain subject. I guess I kinda want a movement to be bigger than itself. What makes Fluidism bigger than itself? What makes it big enough for a generation of artists to dive into the water so to speak?

But my questioning does not presuppose that you will stop calling it a movement-- nor should it. It's just a question after all.

[walterking]

Yes, I read the philosophy. It is really only an explanation of technique not so much a philosophy. Again, I see a difference between a technique that several people have fallen upon and a movement. I suppose I could argue for you that fluidism deals with possible environmental issues, on the idea that our bodies are made primarily of fluids, that something about the need for water dictates where life can appear so making art based on these things is of universal importance. However while I could suggest those as possible arguments I don't see a lot of depth to them.

Your images are quite beautiful. No doubt about it you've developed a lovely technique. Movement though? I suppose only time will bear that out. Good luck with that.

[robertkernodle]

Maybe to call my fluidism a "movement" in itself is not so accurate. I suppose the movement I am trying to initiate is a movement to recognize "fluidists" as a distinct group of like-minded people who have a thread throughout history, as you so intelligently seem to support.

To define fluidism as a separate category might have benefits for culture, since (as I have pointed out elsewhere) it is a visual "face" (so to speak) for a worldview bubbling just under mainstream (if there is such a thing) thinking.

I would suggest that all the artists you mentioned could be categorized as "fluidists", including myself, of course.

There is significance to defining oneself as part of a bigger whole that has not been realized until a particular era, where such self-definition might aid in activating a positive cultural mindset.

My fluidism art itself is a sort of material to reshape cultural awareness. The greater medium is consciousness, and fluidism is a technique of enlightening this.

[robertkernodle]

My fluidism definitely CAN be bigger than itself. Google my name, "artist robert kernodle", go to my website, Art Of Fluid, and click on "detailed philosophy".

There you will find my overview that attempts to establish a relevant stream of cultural "coincidences", as you might call them,.... which really might not be so much "coincidencies" as RESONANCES that need recognizing under a proposed new "movement", of which I am one of a few initiating voices.

I associate myself with the writings of Gerald I. Lebeau and Joel D. Morrison, who are on the fringes of orthodox thought. I also feel fairly in tune to philosophers like Maurice Merlot Ponty (with a proper reading, as opposed to misreadings which his writings have been subject to at times), and Giles Deluze (although I'm not as deeply in tune to his overall writings as I probably should be).

[mcqueen]

Pic's loaded on my PC really slow though. It's different!

[robertkernodle]

mcqueen,

Thanks for feedback, and, yeah,... that site where I have the portfolio is notoriously slow, but still a decent site. Hope they get it up to speed in the future - it's still sort of new.

RK

[bradmichaelmoore]

There is chance. Not all is art just because one says it is. I am not critisizing only asking about your methods. It seems there is much in your fluid works that you do control as much as possible, no different then painting or sculpting, a hand must be involved, to make it art, at least man-made art. Nature is the best artist around.

I agree, This is nice, but very old photo-science - no matter how much work goes into it - it's still reenactments of the laws of nature - not true imagination - true calculations for sure. Art need not wait for nature to whirl and splash - the sun will rise again tomorrow for the photosnapper who awaits it - and it will be a little different from every angle it is seen - but no surprise in its occurrence - only variations through our captures...

[robertkernodle]

Fluidism

Fluidism is the art of manipulating real fluid mixtures to discover visually pleasing patterns. Using a container or surface to form a small foundation pool or thin foundation layer of liquid, I drop or pour additional quantities of colored liquid on top of this foundation pool. I then observe spontaneous patterns that emerge from resulting interactions. A human hand controls boundaries of the pool, beginning colors, and the choice of which liquids to use. The so called "laws of physics" take care of fine details. On this constantly wet-on-wet platform, I experiment, frame and capture the most satisfying fluid patterns, using a camera. A camera is the only way to capture (freeze) these particular patterns that critically depend on the fully liquid state of matter. Specific formations that appeal to the eye disperse quickly; they are short lived, fleeting designs that defy drying and hanging on the wall like traditional paintings. Without a camera, static impressions of these "ephemeral paintings" could not exist.

Fluidism is the entire process of preparing, experimenting, observing and photocapturing these impressions. Captured events (locked in film transparency, digital file, printed hard copy, or TV monitor) are the lasting, tangible artifacts of fluidism. Fluidism, thus, is also a group of art products.

Commonly accepted art descriptions might label fluidism as "abstract art" or "abstract photography". This description, however, does not convey the most accurate sense of what fluidism actually is. Fluidism is its own category, its own style. When someone askes, "What style of art do you do?", my preferred answer is, "Fluidism."

Fluidism is NOT abstract expressionism. Fluidism, admittedly, is realism,... real patterns,... real events,... actual shapes that exist in the real world of tangible, fluid substances. Consequently, I am NOT expressing (or trying to express) abstract human feelings, when I capture fluid patterns. These patterns that I capture are ALREADY expressions,... ALREADY expressING, as I notice them. They are substantial, complex, definite physical phenomena of beauty, NOT amorphous, hazy emotions, or ideas. The reality of fluidism, in fact, causes the emotions of liking these designs.

Historians might be inclined to label fluidism as "abstract expressionism" or "action painting". As I have pointed out, "abstract expressionism" simply would be a false label. To repeat: real patterns, real time, real space, real fluid dynamics do NOT constitute abstract expressions. What I capture in an image is a realtiy as real as a tree or flower or face. Fluid dynamic patterns are real structures of real substance events brought to light on a scale of visibility NOT ordinarily experienced in this particular manner. A more fitting phrase might be "primal realism". As for the label, "action painting", it is the most agreeable of the two customary labels, since action of real fluids is the very foundation of fluidism. Fluidism is both action painting that depends on photography, and photography that depends on action painting in its most dynamic sense.

View my latest images by clicking on PAGE 2 of the Portfolio ........ HERE (http://thedb.com/fluidism)
.

[robertkernodle]

Historical Description

I suspect that Jackson Pollock would have preferred a label like "fludism" to describe his drip painting. I regard Pollock as a fluidist. I also regard ancient Chinese and Japanese Suminagashi artists as fluidists. Likewise, I regard old Turkish ebru painters as fluidists. Other artists in the present day fit well into this category too. I deal with particularly fragile fluid patterns that disappear or disperse, once liquid dries, so I have introduced a camera into the process. I am part of an unacknowledged tradition of fluidists. To my knowledge, I am the first person to make a case for this new historical category.


Philosophical Description

Exploring fluids as art has led me to apply the concept of fluidity to civilized thinking as a whole. The concept of fluidity, arguably, is the most viscerally intuitive, sensory supported, tangible metaphor of all human experience. Fluidism, therefore, does NOT jive with the particle-biased, atomic paradigm of orthodox modern science. Instead, it better relates to a paradigm based on perception of fluidity at every size scale of the universe. This perception-based paradigm is bubbling just beneath mainstream thinking as an emerging, self-similar, holarchical, cosmological worldview. Fluidism, thereby, visually supports this worldview professing the fundamental fluid nature of physical reality.

Reality, as fluidism visualizes it, is unbounded, infinite, eternal, with no beginning or end, where human consciousness itself is a bubble in the vast perpetual nesting of little seas within bigger seas. This concept of universal, cosmic fluidity raises us past the impotent philosophical stance of pop postmodernism, and it counteracts the snide angst of pop existentialism. In this way, fluidism transcends mere image making, to become a full-blown, positive outlook on life.

Accordingly, the meaning of life is in the action of finding agreeable forms in a sea of complex currents and catastrophic movements. Fluidism gives the world back to this fundamental meaning with fundamental purpose and worth. Complex currents and catastrophic movements, while unpredictable, nonetheless find within themselves resonant harmonies. These resonant harmonies of substance form cells, which agglomerate into organisms of practical behaviors relevant to a particualar moment (whether "moment" is defined as a lifetime, era or historical epoch).

Universe simply exists. It is. To say the word, "universe", is to name all that exists. In a universe that we name as all existing entities, there can be no non-existence or non-purpose. Even what we might call "space" must be an entity existing. What we might call "God", "Alah", "Brahma", even "Tao", must be different aspects of all existing entities connected in self-organizing movement.

This self-organizing movement is fluid. Reality is fluid. The supreme being is fluid. Meaning arises from fluid dynamic properties. Purpose forms as momentary stable structures within fluid reality. Reality is a vast symphony of such momentary structures, all synchronized according to different intervals of duration in relation to one another.

There can be no aimlessness in this sort of universe. The aim is flow. The purpose is resonance between the poles of creation and destruction. Images arising from the art style of fluidism are material evidence of this innate, primal "purpose" in substance and its motion.

Obviously, then, the art of fluidism is as much about HOW we imagine WHAT we image in its visuals. The images can stand on their own as pleasing artifacts, yet they readily stand open to this farther reaching, conceptual depth.

Painting, photography, philosophy. Fluidism is not so much a new ingredient, as a new combination; not so much a new word, as a refined flavor of meaning. This is the key distinction supporting my claim to its name.

RK
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[janineebeanie]

That's why it's mixed media, (only it isn't mixed, ha ha.) Tough to get a good composition tho.

[supratyana]

yeah thats my present love too...
tried out acrylic latex and to watch the colors mix and flow on canvas was awesome...
chk out my new work[fluidism]..... :)
http://www.absolutearts.com/cgi-bin/portfolio/art/your-art.cgi?login=supratyana&title=Enlightenment-1218050244t.jpg
peace,
chandana

[robertkernodle]

brockman said:

"There is chance. Not all is art just because one says it is. I am not critisizing only asking about your methods. It seems there is much in your fluid works that you do control as much as possible, no different then painting or sculpting, a hand must be involved, to make it art, at least man-made art. Nature is the best artist around. "


bradmichaelmoore replied:

"I agree, This is nice, but very old photo-science - no matter how much work goes into it - it's still reenactments of the laws of nature - not true imagination - true calculations for sure. Art need not wait for nature to whirl and splash - the sun will rise again tomorrow for the photosnapper who awaits it - and it will be a little different from every angle it is seen - but no surprise in its occurrence - only variations through our captures..."

My (Robert Kernodle) response to bradmichaelmoore:

Do I detect disdain for what you perceive as old? Do not be too quick to judge on this basis. Do you realize that, in the history of scientific discovery, the sun-centered model of the solar system had been proposed by an ancient Greek thinker thousands of years before Copernicus, and only much later did it rise to respected prominence as a "new" paradigm?

As for my fluidism's being "reenactments of the laws of nature - not true imagination..." -- Yes, precisely, fluidism is a reenactment of nature's primal, formative actions in its fluid substantial sense. Now I must ask you, What is "true" imagination, if not the ability to perceive what is natural as the first art? In addition, I had to imagine my set-up, before I actually shot any images. I had to imagine what certain colors might look like together, before I chose them to use in my improvisations.

As for my fluidism's having "no suprise in its occurance", you are far from the truth: I am surprised and delighted by each newly perceived form that resonates with me. To think that only a human hand is capable of stroking out novelty with a brush or a tap of the keyboard is human-centered arrogance and disregard for the universe as the greater artist, of which we humans are its materials too.

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[robertkernodle]

.
I have new .. Art Of Fluid .. website:

http://robertkernodle.yolasite.com


Robert Kernodle