Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology - uncopy

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observations have been made about uninterpreted systems which are directly applicable to the
investigation of any array of elements obeying fixed rules of combination. Studies of isomorphic
(correspondence) relationships are especially interesting.
Practically all systems can be rendered isomorphic with a system containing only one
serial relation. For instance, elements can be reordered into a single line, i. e., single serial
relation by arranging them according to their coordinates. In the following two-dimensional
array, the coordinates of C are (1, 3), of T (3, 2):
R P D
L B T
C U O
Isomorphs could be written as: R, L, C, P, B, U, D, T, O or R, P, D, L, B, T, C, U, O.
An example of this in language is the ordering in time of speech to correspond to the ordering
of direction in writing. All the forms of cryptography from crossword puzzles to highly sophisticated
codes depend on systematic relationships of this kind.
The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
(...)
The structure of an artificial optic array may, but need not, specify a source. A wholly
invented structure need not specify anything. This would be a case of structure as such.
It contains information, but not information about, and it affords perception but not
perception of.
—James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems
Perspective, almost universally dismissed as a concern in recent art, is a fascinating example
of the application of prefabricated systems. In the work of artists like Ucello, Dürer,
Piero, Saendredam, Eakins (especially their drawings), it can be seen to exist entirely as methodology.
It demonstrates not how things appear but rather the workings of its own strict postulates.
As it is, these postulates are serial.
Perspective has had an oddly circular history. Girard Desargues (1593–1662) based his
non-Euclidean geometry on an intuition derived directly from perspective. Instead of beginning
with the unverifiable Euclidean axiom that parallel lines never meet, he accepted instead