V. History of Fluxus and Reconstructivism in Art

Fluxus and Reconstructivism came from the mystical and ritualist examinations of art and it’s connection to knowledge during the Enlightenment ^[43], but it also came from the post-war trauma of World War II ^[44] just as Fauvism came from the shared consciousness that mechanized war deromanticized conflict and lessened the importance of man ^[45], Fluxus tried to explain how humans could such horrible things to each other, how civilized man perhaps was a fault ^[46]. Works like Felt Suit [image, Beuys work] and worked as an examination of man as a tableau of collected things, of how mythology and primitivism have validity and how isolation and torment can lead to artistic clarity. ^[47]

A. Traditional critique and examples of work

Some other examples of Fluxus work are Cut Piece by Yoko Uno, Optimistic Box #3 by Robert Filliou, and Total Art Matchbox by Ben Vautier, all dealing with appropriation and building narrative just like Beuys’ work. ^[48]

Joseph Beuys is a German artist, through the traumas of the Nazi regime and the horrors that he encountered as a young recruit sough to direct him in ways with he considered reconstructivism, specifically how to rebuild the man as a primitive and spiritually connect part of nature. ^[49]

Beuys’ work relates to my work, and specifically reconstructivism and how it plays into the idea of finding mysticism and meaning in the found objects of the world around us has a profound influence on my work, I look to piece, stitch together found digital elements that shape me, that I find on the web, the discarded but eternally stored elements of digital flotsam and jetsam that a digitally stored lives of seven billion generates. Each piece is a makeup of a person, perhaps myself, and then as I manipulate and hand them over to the computer they change irreparably until a unique artifact, not a representation of the world and a new beginning to something to be built by me and experience on a grand scale.

VI. Context: How My Work Relates to These of Art Movements

My work will relate directly to Land Art and it’s ideas on shared experience. I’m looking toward the idea of the ‘New Monuments’ ^[50] in the way in which it is something that is in on a different (non-human) scale, something that can be shared by others and can transport them to a specific space. 

Monolithic Installation Art and the contemplation on space & time, and working with this idea of scale I’d like them to bring in the ideas of interaction, change, and time. Something that works with the viewer in a way that they can evoke change not unlike the work of the Wooden Mirror, by Daniel Rozen ^[51]. It has a way of captivating attention and showing how we are interconnected to our space. This element also works with the passage of time, and plays directly into how to build interactive game spaces and videogame level design, where you are building a narrative with the locomotion and channeling space, how it all works together to heighten the immersion which is gone into further detail by Mark Stephen Meadows about interaction and the art of narrative space. ^[52]

Speaking of space, a huge part of that is the aesthetics of space, and this is where Brutalism and brutalist architecture speaks to me on a level that I think works well within the context of my work. Speaking objectively, the geometry has imposing weight and power. ^[53]

The starting point is key when working in the strict confines of the videogame pipeline, where ‘Digital Conveyance’ and how it relates to Reconstructivism is important. That’s where I’m looking toward the Reconstruvism and the Jungian ideas of appropriation and association that are used as foundational concepts ^[54], building one’s self from the elements (seemingly disposable like digital media) that make up our world. I can’t see anything more relevant than the digital artifacts gleaned from the internet, images, videos, from the past decade all have cascaded on itself to become something wholly unique. With manipulation, collage, and randomization, these become concepts and building blocks for my work. These disposable and thusly cheap have little value, but the sheer amount and variety make them key building blocks, “aesthetic proteins”, self-identifiers in the makeup of our identity and worldview. They shape who we are as much as the little seemingly insignificant DNA make up who we are.