Assamblage Art

El Ático Beistegui (1929-1939) es un singular proyecto de reforma que Le Corbusier diseñó y ejecutó junto a Pierre Jeanneret para Charles de Beistegui y de Yturbe. Este artículo trata de construir un nuevo enfoque sobre las decisiones proyectuales, para lo que se plantean cinco disyuntivas encadenadas, relacionadas con diversas aportaciones de autores que se han aproximado al significado de la obra de Le Corbusier en su contexto socioeconómico y político-cultural. Estas disyuntivas se refieren al papel de la arquitectura ante la transformación del medio habitado bajo el avance tecnológico tras la revolución industrial y como parte de las nuevas técnicas de regulación política de la sociedad de masas enfocada al consumo, ahora basadas en la unión de la cultura y los medios. Con este trasfondo implícito, se contrastan las aportaciones de relevantes autores del s. XX con otras más recientes. La idea de que la reinvención de las técnicas de proyecto responde a una voluntad de control se abre a otra posibilidad: la búsqueda de acuerdos parciales y provisionales, en medio de las contradicciones e incertidumbres de un presente en transición.

Interactive art does not have just one clearly specifi ed beginning. Problems encountered
by researchers who attempt to collect its basic features and define the concept
are caused by the number and variety of events and tendencies that underlie interactive
art. These phenomena affected the conditions of its birth, they influenced the
selection of basic attributes, and they determined the dynamics and directions of
its development. It could be assumed that as a result of this complex genesis, the
history of interactive art does not lie in linear order but follows several individual
paths, usually parallel and entangled in some areas. As a result, it takes on the form
of a complex, multidimensional system. The multitude of beginnings implies a multiplicity of histories. Consequently, we have a number of histories of interactive
art, complementary and sometimes conflicting. Their shared map takes on the form
of a continent with ragged contours, blurred borders, perhaps even with the shape
of an archipelago or a form of a rhizome — because of its mobility, changeability,
and vagueness of contours — which may only be described temporarily and in movement, never definitely. I would like to call it a rhizomatic archipelago. The history of
interactive art mirrors its characteristic features in a very intriguing way: nonlinear
construction, fluidity, transformation in many planes and directions, open architecture,
and the multitude of perspectives, occurring in configurations that are always
individualized.
I shall take on the job of archeologist and cartographer to describe this complex
phenomenon in order to distinguish several areas: the most important sources of
interactive art in my opinion and the outline of their mutual map. Then I will identify
and describe the most significant artistic achievements that began shaping the different
tendencies in interactive art and the various sources they developed from, describe
the factors and properties of each of these courses, provide the key to the matrices for
artworks that were created in their influence, and bring together the interactive situations
characteristic of all of them, thus determining the areas of interactive artistic
activities.

The essay is a translation of part of a master’s thesis written and defended at the Kunst im Kontext Institute at the Universität der Künste in Berlin; it consists of a theoretical section in the form of a book and a practical section in the form of video and drawn film. The product in the form of a book was inspired by the art of confectionery, which on the aesthetic plane links two professions the author was engaged in during the writing of her thesis – a saleswoman in a pastry shop and a graduate student. The theory provided here is in the form of legislation, and the artistic practice imitates the art of cooking. The work appears to be a material activity, and the value added to it or subtracted from it, an anthropocentric fiction.