Consider the ‘Harmony’ concept of Heraclitus within the Digital artwork*.
Research question: Does ‘superficial harmony’ exist in the Digital artworks*?
* In this essay we will look at three artworks: Haptic (Umeda, 2009), Dao Gives Birth to One (Hung, 2009-10) and Feelings Are Facts (Eliasson & Ma, 2010).
Name: Hoi Ieng LEI
Course: MA Digital Art
E-mail: monkeelee@gmail.com
Abstract
In this essay I want to consider the ‘hidden harmony’ concept of Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, within three digital artworks, which are Haptic (Umeda, 2009), Dao Gives Birth to One (Hung, 2009-10) and Feelings Are Facts (Eliasson & Ma, 2010).
Achieving harmony, which is coordination, state of peace and agreement, has been perceived as an ultimate goal in life since ancient times and today. In modern times, a large amount of countries has been pursuing to build a harmonious society in order to obtain stability. Superficially people live in a harmonious atmosphere but in fact the contradiction is throughout their daily life. In order to achieve the real harmony, we have to understand what and how they conflict. The relationship between harmony and contradiction provides an understanding and instructive on creating artwork regarding the form of expression and internal meaning.
From Heraclitus’ notion, ‘The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony’, he thinks harmony has two sides: the superficial and internal. And the ‘harmony’ itself does not mean the ‘same’, but something different and opposite and even antagonistic in a unity. In order to see the existence of superficial or potential harmony in them, we will try to apply the notions of Heraclitus onto the artworks by looking at form of expression and internal meaning of them.
Key words
Heraclitus, Harmony, Superficial_Harmony, Harmonious_Atmosphere, Digital
Introduction
According to Oxford Wordpower Dictionary, the definition of the word harmony is ‘the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole, or the state of agreement or of peaceful existence together’ (2000). Achieving harmony has been perceived as an ultimate goal in life and history has shown we have a long history of pursuing this goal in different forms in different civilisations. Many famous thinkers in different disciplines had explained the theory of Harmony through cosmology, mathematics and aesthetics, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Hegel etc. Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras was the first who addressed this ideology. He believed that ‘scale’ is the base of the world. Moreover, there is a proportional relationship between numbers, and this relationship will result in harmony. Based on Pythagoras’ harmony theory, Heraclitus addressed that harmony is the result of contradiction and he brought up the concept of hidden harmony:
THE HIDDEN HARMONY
IS BETTER THAN THE OBVIOUS.
OPPOSITION BRINGS CONCORD.
OUT OF DISCORD
COMES THE FAIREST HARMONY.
IT IS IN CHANGING
THAT THINGS FIND REPOSE.
PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND
HOW THAT WHICH IS AT VARIANCE WITH ITSELF,
AGREES WITH ITSELF.
THERE IS A HARMONY IN THE BENDING BACK,
AS IN THE CASE OF THE BOW AND LYRE.
THE NAME OF THE BOW IS LIFE,
BUT ITS WORK IS DEATH.
(Heraclitus, cited in Osho, 1978, p.2)
Osho gave the following example to explain his idea. ‘The hidden harmony is better than the obvious. Why? Why is the hidden harmony better than the obvious? Because the obvious is on the surface, and the surface can deceive and the surface can be cultivated, conditioned’ (Osho, 1978, p.11). Osho gave an example explaining this. When a person is going to visit his/her friend’s home, he/she sees the couple is arguing through the windows. After the person goes in, the situation is different, and the couple looks very sweet and harmonious. Osho believes it is obvious harmony because that is a mannerism for display. However, if a person is internally harmonious, he or she may not look harmonious. On the other hand, a person, who has never had self-contradiction and acts exactly the same as people expect, will not have the real harmony. Will Durant also stated that there are two sides of harmony, which are obvious and hidden. ‘To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things’ revealing that harmony has two sides. Neil Bohr said, ‘We will never understand anything until we have found some contradictions’ (cited in Baeyer C. V. B., 2004, p.204). This is what Heraclitus says that ‘Opposition brings concord’.
Heraclitus believed that the world is dominated by conflicts. He said, ‘War is the father at all’. The hidden law of nature which he claimed to have discovered seems to have been that all things live by conflict, which is therefore essential to life and thus good. (Guthrie, 1950, p.44). Heraclitus’ harmony theory not only discusses the externality and internality of harmony, but also explains the concord and discord, fluidity and stability of things etc. Nevertheless, this paper will only discuss the concord and discord of things based on the externality and internality of harmony.
Heraclitus’ notions can also be found in sociology and politics. With the avocation of building harmonious society, Chinese Central Government has been censoring the media in order to control the social harmony and stability(or maintain a superficial social harmony and stability). Chinese Communist Party deals with the inharmonious social affairs through the ostensible harmonious method. The method, which is based on the Chinese traditional Confucian philosophy, finally collided in such different fields as the politics, culture etc. But it was led to a discord in the end due to the contradiction throughout the society and turned out to be a superficial harmony.
In this new era of digital communication, those media which can grant the information for the whole world rapidly is restricted to some extent or even forbidden using. Chinese Central Government censors unfavourable public opinion on internet forums and message boards in order to safeguard the harmonious society. The country utilizes its sway in the world to gain others’ cooperation by compel or benefit. For example, Google was forced to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party. Key words such as ‘democracy’, ’Tian’anmen square incident’ and even ‘Jasmine Revolution in China’ were banned. Yahoo was accused by the public for ‘betraying’ a local Chinese reporter, Shi Tao. Surrounding his private information which was argued to lead to his arrests and the information was used as court evidences. The Party believed that a harmony would be achieved through state controlled media and internet censorship. In fact, the lack of freedom of speech in a society will make the communities feel more and more dissatisfied. In China, the word ‘harmony’ has become a symbol of sarcasm. It reminds Chinese people of the pontential contradiction between reality and the promoted image of the country.
According to Heraclitus’ notion, this conflicting atmosphere can be defined as ‘obvious harmony’ because the wish between government and people is always contradictory while the society is modified as a very harmonious situation. It is what Osho means by being ‘cultivated’ and ‘conditioned’ (1978, p.11). (The book I Don’t Want to Be Chinese Again, written by Hong Kong author Joe Chung, cited Vikings and Mandarins : Sino-Scandinavian Business Cooperation in Cross-cultural Settings by Verner Worm from Copenhagen Business School, revealed:
[‘Face’, is a vital concept in modern Chinese culture] The Chinese fear of losing face, or causing others to lose face, tends to make them sustain superficial harmony in their interrelationships (Tan,1990). This superficial harmony often hides profound internal conflicts that are rarely brought out in the open and resolved. The Chinese can fight ‘harmoniously’, behaving politely towards one another but, fighting indirectly using every possible means…superficial harmony is more important in China than in Scandinavia (2009).
Thus, the opinion of Chung and Worm is consistent with the concept of Heraclitus’ obvious and hidden harmony notion. As cited in The Chinese human rights reader: documents and commentary, 1900-2000, The term ‘superficial harmony’ was stated again:
In daily life, people often attempted to eliminate conflicts and seek harmony between people by melting [away] private interests and eliminating individuality. [They also] simultaneously followed nature, were unfettered and non-striving (xiaoyao wuwei), and made physical and mental adjustments to enhance their sense of superficial harmony (2001).
In this research paper three artworks including Haptic (Hiroaki Umeda, 2009), Dao Gives Birth to One (Hung Keung, 2009) and Feelings Are Facts (Olafur Eliasson & Yansong Ma, 2010) will be discussed. I will consider the notion of ‘hidden harmony’ of Heraclitus within the works above. Does the ‘Harmony is better than the obvious’ play out in the works? If it does, how does it present the idea? If it does not, how does it contradict with the notions?
Context
- 1. Haptic (Hiroaki Umeda, 2009)
Dance performance
Hiroaki Umeda has recently spring up as one of Japan’s most dance artists by using lighting, projections, self-created music and a dance technique to create solo dance pieces. Umeda was a photography student at the Nihon University in Tokyo. He realised that he was more keen on moveable things when he was 20 years old. Then he took ballet and hip-hop classes and began to work on his own solo pieces as an artist. Making use of his technique of dancing such as popping, Umeda goes far beyond the robot and into new territory. And sometimes his dance is considered as Dude dance, or boy-choreography.
Haptic, the name comes from the Greek word ‘Haptesthai’ (the sense of touch) in the adjective form. It is a saturated-coloured set design using lighting and digital sound. The bright colours changes according to the light in relation with his body movements. In Haptic Umeda was dressed entirely in black, his silhouette still against a huge steely blue expanse and later on changed to red, to green. Bathing in a range of lighting, Umeda in constant waves creating an air of expectancy that spills to the edges of the rectangular stage. He gradually built ever-evolving phrases of dislocated, abstract dance. Movement, music and lighting are tightly woven together rhythmically and texturally. Tatsuro Ishii, dance critic and university professor from Japan who has been writing dance, circus, sexuality, film and body culture since the 1990s, mentioned Umeda’s dance work is not a mere performance, but an artwork integrated with movement and technologies, ‘In that sense [His work is the total of everything happening on the stage: the lighting, the sound and the body], this can’t really be called a dance work but rather an art work perhaps, or a type of installation of body, sound and light’(2009).
Haptic
Photo Courtesy of (2009) Shin Yamagata & <http://www.charleroi-danses.be/>
Umeda tried to present a performance with Minimal set design in Haptic through means of body, lighting and even sound. He eliminated any sort of melody in his sound design as much as possible. He said, ‘Melody has a feeling that is close to verbalization for me, and that is not what I am looking for. I want to think of sound in terms of the vibration of air, or as a something physical’(2009). With regard to visual, he thinks that the eye is receptor for light and makes recognition of objects. In the interview in Beat Magazine, Umeda said, ‘It was my desire to transmit dance to the audience as an object touching eyes’(2010). In order to distill things down purely to the function of the eye as a light receptor, he chooses to do things like using very abstract video images and manipulate the volumes of light. The lighting arranges the focus towards the dancer and his movement. As a result, beautiful bright hues shift and morph in relation to Umeda’s movements creating an appealing visual, sonic and immersive experience.
From here, we can see that Haptic is not only a dance, sound or light art. Umeda created a comfortable atmosphere by building up a minimal set design (He was remarked as a cool, minimalist and high-tech dancer by Eva Yaa Asantewaa in Infinite Body (2011). However, after his manipulation of integrating the sound, light and physical movement, a chaotic illusion might be brought to the audiences. Regard to this, Umeda has metioned the confusion in an interview. He said in spite of the chaos produced by diversity of mediums which have their own strong characters, all of them will become a harmonious environment in the end. Back to Heraclitus’ notion, we could see the comfortable atmosphere in Haptic as ‘obvious harmony’, as in ‘superficial harmony’. Whereas the uncomfortable feeling made up of various elements such as blasting electronic noise, manic lights etc is seen as the ‘discord’. Out of this ‘discord’, comes the entire harmonious performance. As for the incarnation of the ‘hidden harmony’ in Haptic, this does not come into existence. Since both Heraclitus and Osho said the internality of things, or we could call the internal meaning of the work here, should be contradicted with the externality. Haptic already achieves a true harmony from its outer form to inner meaning. As Umeda said:
The answer of course is let up to the audience and how they perceive the work individually. There may be people who read deeply into the work and others who feel some kind of metaphoric reference to the fictional and the real, or there may be others who simply enjoy the visual aspects of it (2009).
He takes the function of eyes as receptor of light. Since he is aiming in the direction visuals that do not elicit cerebral judgments about the information involved in the light perceived, but rather seek a more physical and simple perception of the light. He purely let the audience to interpret what they can get no matter the performance, sound, dance or the harmonious lighting effects. ‘There are no conceptual themes in my shows, which I empty of everything that might constitute a meaning’ He said, in the interview for London International Mime Festival (2008). This kind of minimal artwork accord the artistic characteristic of Minimalism that the artwork should be anti-narrative, clarity and simplicity of form, no anecdotal content or references (Battcock, 1995, p.32). It is an objective existence, just like what Frank Stella said, ‘What you see is hat you see.’
- 2. Dao Gives Birth to One (by Hung Keung, 2009-2010)
Interactive video installation
Hung Keung is a new media artist from Hong Kong, Assistant Professor of School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Director and Founder of innov + media lab (imhklab), which focuses on New Media art and design research in relation to Chinese philosophy and interactivity. He was an award receiver for ‘Award for Outstanding Young Artist (Film and Media Arts)’ and ‘Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards: Achievement Awards’ in the year of 2007 and 2009.
Dao Gives Birth to One is displayed by more than two projectors or screens, showing in a large space for projection or screening. The artwork requires audience’s participation. Hung puts sixty stools in fronts of the installation in order to make the audience to be part of the exhibition. By using the stools, he has reinforced a spatial arrangement of the installation. When audience looks at the combination of words and their structure, they have a lot of perspective from different angles.
Here, Hung has represented the Chinese philosophy, Dao (or Tao), through digital technology. Dao is a traditional Chinese culture, which is forming the social norms of Chinese society. His video installation observes the relationship between Dao and the Universe through the notion of ‘one’ as mentioned in the Tao Te Ching in Chinese. In this artwork, Hung uses digital technology to reproduce this traditional culture – Dao by borrowing the concept of ‘The Dao gives birth to one. One gives birth to two. Two gives birth to three, And three gives birth to all things’. According to Shuowen Jiezi, the Chinese dictionary from the Han Dynasty, ‘One’ represents the Chinese stroke. The explanation said that the universe is divided into two parts: the sky, the earth. ‘One’ is lonely and flying in the infinitive space between them. In Tao Te Ching, when the character ‘One’ first appeared, it separated the earth and sky. When there is the ‘One’ in the universe, it will combine others and become ‘Two’. And when ‘Two’ encounter others, they will become ‘Three’, ‘Three’ to ‘Eight’ and so on. They multiply themselves and become a whole universe (2011). The meaning of ‘One’ does not only indicate the number, in fact, ‘One’ reflects a philosophy of how Chinese people see the universe. (Radio Television Hong Kong, 2010) Hung takes this as a metaphor for our lives: When there is just ‘One’ in the universe, it does not make use without others. It can just stroll in the universe. When it encounters human beings, and interacts with us, it will become two. Life is simultaneously a contradiction but harmony through the metaphor of the artwork.
Dao Gives Birth to One
Photo Courtesy of (2009) GovHK & <http://www.gov.hk>
Many have said Daoism has quite a lot of similarities with Heraclitus’ philosophy. For instance, Lao-Tzu, credited as being one of the greatest representatives of the Daoism tendencies in China’s cultural life, is often viewed as the “puzzling “and “unfathomable” This is similar with Heraclitus’ nicknames of “The Riddler” and “The Dark One”(Guthrie, 1995, p.44). Added to it, Lao-Tzu says that ‘Being comes from non-being’. Heraclitus had a similar conception that everything is changeable, such as what we have mentioned before: “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. It is in changing that things find repose.’ As a result, both Lao-Tzu and Heraclitus seem to bring up a similar idea (Skirbekk & Gilje, 2001, p.29). However, the superficial harmony does not show up obviously in Dao Gives Birth to One because Hung fully created a harmony no matter on the form or the internal meaning. One stroke appears, the other stroke combines with each other and this nature law of Daoism in fact is a harmony between human and nature: ‘To live in harmony with the Tao thus means living in harmony with the inner nature of things’ (Lee, 2000). An online review from the audience Eric commented Dao Gives Birth to One, ‘I think that human beings must coordinate with others in order to survive. It is difficult for only one person to live in the World. It is like the artwork’ (2011). What Eric experienced is exactly the internal meaning of the artwork. The direct relation does not agree to what Heraclitus said that Harmony differs to superficial and potential.
The screen of Dao Gives Birth to One, version of Hong Kong International Art Fair
Photo taken by (2010) myself
- 3. Feelings are facts (by Olafur Eliasson & Yansong Ma, 2010)
Collaborative installation by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Beijing architect Ma Yansong
Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark of Icelandic parentage. He creates what is known as installation art or landscape art. This unconventional modern art form can be described as art that viewers must walk through or around to experience. Eliasson’s works make use of natural elements, including light, water, fire, and wood, and he often combines these elements to re-create the outdoors inside, producing effects such as an indoor waterfall or rainbow.
Yansong Ma is a Chinese architect born in Beijing, and graduated from the department of architecture in Beijing architectural engineering institute. Afterwards, he studied in America, gaining a Master’s degree in architecture at Yale University where he also won the Samuel J. Fogelson Prize for design. He was known by his works ‘Floating Island’ and ‘Absolute World’. Ma’s conception of design is to create freedom and Rennaisance. He said buildings are public art works. They should reflect human nature and give people infinite imaginations.
The name of the artwork ‘Feelings Are Facts’ is also the name that the pioneering dancer, choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer chose for her autobiography, published in 2006. It somehow associates with the Plato’s myth – ‘in order to seek the intangible truth, but with a tacit understanding that everything but the purely sensate is suspect’ (2009). In Feelings Are Facts, Eliasson and Ma have built a long, low-ceilinged room in the institution’s largest exhibition hall that forces visitors to use a single door to enter and exit. Inside, a thick, artificial fog — pumped in at regular intervals through wall vents — is lit by hundreds of variously coloured fluorescent tubes set into the ceiling. The brightly hued light is caught and magnified by the mist, making the visitor in an atmosphere of pure colour. (Artinfo, 2010)
Feelings Are Facts
Photo Courtesy of (2010) Olafur Eliasson & Yansong Ma
Moving through the installation, it begins to make a map: take a few steps to the left, and the audience would pass through pink and plunge into an impossibly deep violet; stepping to the right, and a field of piercing sky blue shape. The colours, bright and all-encompassing, suggest the plumes produced over a Bunsen burner when certain chemicals are mixed, as well as obscure meteorological phenomena. Perception is both intensified and consolidated.
The installation may call to mind the work of James Turrell, who uses light and space as his tools for creating art rather than paintbrushes or a camera. But while Turrell often creates skylights, thresholds, and other framing devices to produce controlled viewing experiences. ‘Eliasson and Ma build no such separations between the visitor and the artwork. Instead, their installation has a stronger connection to Ann Veronica Janssens’ works incorporating steam and coloured light’ (Artinfo, 2010). Turrell’s works reveal the intrinsic differences between illusion and perception. If we pay attention, they reduce our bewilderment in encountering the world (Adcock, 1990). minimal artist Robert Morris remarks Turrell’s light image as revealing both similarities and the differences involved in experiencing actual, physically real ‘polyhedrons’ and experiencing intangible light ‘solids’ (Adcock, 1990). This is to some extent similar to what Eliasson and Ma have done in Feelings Are Facts.
Eliasson proposed the idea of ‘The sense of harmony is probably more a sense of uncertainty’ in the interview with ART iT (2010). With his manipulations of light and mist, it is no doubt that Eliasson brings the uncertainty of spatial phenomenon to the audiences. This kind of harmony is uncertain. Thus, we can consider it to be the ‘obvious harmony’ from Heraclitus. In Feeling Are Facts, the artists use this structural marvel to present inquiries into the nature of reality. This raises a question that what the basis of our thought and judgement in a space where reality and illusion interconnect should be. As we stand amidst such accomplished phenomena, whether we can re-examine with greater concern our sensations and experiences of that which is around us should be pondered. That means, under the concord created by the harmonious atmosphere of light and mist, there are more to be revealed. ‘I find it very exciting that an exhibition [Feeling Are Facts] can show nothing but the viewer and yet have that as its strength,’ says Eliasson. And his partner, Ma, says, ‘Space has never existed, but rather exists only in the specific feelings it induces.’ Under the skin of the artwork, they are trying to express an more sophisticated idea rather than the simple natural elements such as fog. Eliasson then told SPIEGEL ONLINE (2010) that, ‘It’s just that we realize the reality we live in is our own construction and it can be changed by the way we engage with it, or by how we use our bodies, or our sense of time.’ In this case, we can understand his words by Heraclitus’ changing of things. The environment could change the existing harmony and this harmony might be is just an illusion. Mary Sherman of the Boston Herald acknowledged that, even though it’s obvious that an illusion is created by the artist, ‘Our senses are heightened, our mind is sent racing, the world seems transformed, and, for a brief moment, the illusion is real.’ As the German philosopher Hegel says, ‘True reality lies beyond immediate sensation and the objects we see every day.’
Conclusion
In conclusion, in order to see the existence of superficial or potential harmony in them, we tried to apply the notions of Heraclitus onto the artworks above by looking at form of expression and internal meaning of them. Superficial harmony, We can regard superficial harmony as the harmonious atmosphere in the work, whether audience feel relaxing or not. And under this concordant environment, the work in fact expresses a contradictory internal meaning which is opposite to the harmonious form of expression. In short, if the way the work expresses accords the internal idea, a true harmony would be achieved. Nevertheless, if they contradict each other that there is another reverse side of the visible harmony, then this is the ‘obvious harmony’ what Heraclitus proposes. In this research paper, we analysed three artworks. Because of the difference in their art form, content and philosophy, the result led to a difference.
In Haptic Hiroaki Umeda built a concordant visual effect although each uncoordinated elements such as sound and light opposes. He turned the discord to concord by use of his own body as the bridge to connect different elements. This verifies the ‘opposition brings concord’ of Heraclitus. However, He sees eye as receptor of light and let the audience feel what they perceive. So the form corresponds to the internal meaning of the work and hence the superficial harmony does not come to existence.
As to Dao Gives Birth to One, Hung Keung expresses the Chinese traditional philosophy – Daoism by digital technology. Daoism advocates harmony, no matter whether it is human-human harmony or human-nature. Heraclitus’ philosophy is considered to have similarities with those in Daoism as they both have similar conception on the fluidity and harmony of things. In the artwork Hung created a three-dimensional space referring to the universe with video projection on the wall and 60 stools on the ground. Audience perceive the silent atmosphere at the same time they receive the harmony concept of Daoism too. The unity of the expression form and internal meaning accord each other without opposition. So I think the superficial harmony does not exist in the work.
Thirdly, Olafur Eliasson and Yansong Ma construct an illusion with the use of light, space and mist in Feelings Are Facts. They made use of the fog to harmonise the environment and hide anything negative, or even cannot figure out the gestalt. Audience can only shuttle within the installation by intuition because of the unclear direction. As a result, the superficial harmony does not come to this work. The name ‘Feeling Are Facts’ clarifies already because what you perceive in the work is exactly real for yourself under the harmonious mist. This is the same as Haptic since it is a unity. The uncertainty of the work enhances the harmony and becomes a proof of ‘opposition brings concord’. As Richard Tuttle said, ‘What I find most interesting is the part which I can’t see’(2004).
Last but not least, the Heraclitus’ notion of harmony can be applied on many fields such as the Politics we mentioned in Introduction. But in Art, by using it the relationship between form of expression and internal meaning of the work could be investigated. If they accord each other, the work is considered to be soothing and positive from outside to inside. Vice versa, if they contradict, the work brings out the introspection under the sugar-coating. We should read the contradiction from the harmony and build up harmony amidst the oppositions.
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