OX4D[AFH]

SUMMARY

My main objective is to successfully complete a doctoral thesis and exhibition project that establishes the standard/platform for Fourth Dimensional [+] Art practice and theory. It is my aspiration that I will thereby demonstrate the efficacy and excellence of the Ruskin DPhil in Fine Art program integrative methodology (PRACTICE PLUS THEORY). In the process, I hope to produce or contribute to a number of worthwhile enterprises during the course, of value to my own work, vital work by other art-practitioners, and, in the spirit of expanding the Oxford community, bring attention to important (sometimes undiscovered/under-covered) art/artists/theory/cultural phenomena relevant to current aesthetic discourse.

 

PROPOSAL

My project for over three decades has been the development of a 4Dimension (4D+) arts practicum, supported by substantial theoretical and contextual analysis, informed by science, and enabled by technological means. The fundamental elements of that practice include studio production (both analog and virtual), exhibition, with collective and solo facets in all creative phases, extensive documentation of process and “product,” community-based sharing of findings and methods in open-source distribution networks, as well as the utilization of traditional venues for exposition and art placement, such as galleries, museums, art foundations, academies, and a variety of alternative spaces or environments.

By the mid- to late 90s, my practice expanded to cultivate the emergent multi-dimensional/-disciplinary, iterative and generative platform for 4D+ arts, which is adaptable to scenarios. The 4D+ platform (Art for Humans, or AFH) encompasses the correlative n-factors of and for art, which, upon review, after processing/compilation into inclusively accessible databases, congeal (as in image), so as to facilitate our profiling the demos inhabiting any selected topological point over time (as fact), which may be purposed to produce a parallel (to the material production) immaterial output – a narrative – that describes the cultural and perceptual complex of the people for whom one creates the art, a narrative that is sufficiently accurate and complete, for them, the artist, and for other stakeholders with investment in the formulation of auto-narratives (e.g., as a common democratic function, as in commons). This procedure, provable as such, for establishing vital connectivity among the players in the arts ecosystem, is demonstrably key to art resonating with its site-specific viewer in granularity of effect, inferring generalizing expansions through tools like concentricity models, for art “reaching” the potential whole body of art viewers, universalizing access arrays on rhizomatic paths, a fractal concept. The AFH program for 4D+ arts has been through practice* proved scalable: applicable on a micro-basis to a neighborhood or family home even (as in a kernel); but also applicable at a macro-level (as in global, or universal), a task made easier through the availability of diverse media for content dispersion. The 4D+ practicum has partly evolved as a mechanism for testing concepts against reality, through strategic employment of “virtuality” and through the apparatus of actual presentation. AFH partly constitutes the transmission of viable methods for projecting vision into human-occupied spaces, under the aegis of art and its specific aesthetic architectures. AFH, in short, is timely. In the past half-century we have seen the 4D+ approach gaining traction at every practical level in the arts, even though no common language for the phenomenon has emerged. My doctoral work is an initial effort to remedy that unfortunate situation in particular, by giving 4D+ arts a common ground and language for making sense of what's happening anyway.

The next steps in that work require completion of the textual and online components of the doctoral project, the realization of the exhibition (production) components and publishing of post-production documentation. I envision this unfolding in an appropriately-oriented, capacitated academic exchange that can cultivate 4D+ arts throughout the spectrum of related domains as a specialized, but integrative, methodology, with demonstrably transferrable characteristics. Within such an environment, it is possible to conduct the remaining doctoral work with sections for public offerings, peer-to-peer and/or collective elements, as well as traditional functions, including defense of theses, advisements, student-teaching, participation in panels, lectures, and so on. Ultimately, “products” of the doctoral course include a textbook, art for retail distribution in a variety of formats, a “museum-quality show,” a curriculum, a sustainable web-based platform with international scope and reach, and an effective mechanism for rationalizing discourse on 4D+ arts for affected fields.

My primary goals for Oxford:

  • Digitize, edit, successfully defend, and publish my 4D art thesis
  • Produce career-defining, field-advancing 4D art exhibits and presentation projects that inform & are informed by my thesis [in Oxford, London, UK, European art centers, USA, etc.
  • Teach – and thereby refine and enrich – a 4D practicum and pedagogy
  • Establish a platform for 4D art [correlating to W3C]
  • Re-launch a new, robust iteration of the Art for Humans web network [4Dpop]
  • Conduct strategic research projects, e.g., on Altarpiece of Ghent, Hadrian's Wall, the battlefields of Belgium, the new Lascaux reproduction, that have discursive currency and present opportunities for 4D art production and source-theory

Secondary goals:

  • To demonstrate 4D art's capacity for community-mobilizing value-adding solutions; ~ utilizing 4D team and network organizational approaches, design and develop an effective social media-based, virtual/augmented reality-enhanced app [“Get a GWYP (Go Where You Please)”] for orienting visitors and new students, etc., to historical Oxford University/City, to be designed & implemented by 2021
  • Explore potential for Ruskin-based collective expos in London, and/or acquisition of temporary or permanent extension venue there for performances, projects, shows, panels, lectures, etc.
  • Produce Oxford/Ruskin community portrait project
  • Explore (as an 4D artistic enterprise inspired by others proving viable in Europe, e.g., Iceland's Pirate Party) a remote, virtual third political (USA) party: US Commonwealth Party
  • Contribute to the Ruskin art journal (mentioned at Grad Open Day)
  • Organize a symposium on the significance of Occupy Wall Street's arts and cultural production during the occupation and after
  • Share my contacts/network of art friends and associates with Ruskin peers and/or staff, etc., and where there is interest and logistical viability, arrange exhibits and facilitate artist-visits; ~ Kauai-based surf-legend and artist Ambrose Curry, OWS-affiliated artists (i.e., 2017 Whitney Biennial selection Occupy Museums, and the Novads/OAS), Joseph Nechvatal, Brad Troemel/Artie Vierkant (from NYU Reading Group #1) and many others

My ultimate dream is to find a home/nexus for the promulgation of 4D art and theory, to complete my life's work. As per my introductory note to Anthony Gardner, and consequent to my inspiring visitthere in November, I would consider it an honor and privilege to make that place the unique and excellent Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford.

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