elastic ties | light matters

Ambiente Spazio Elastico by Gruppo “T”, 1967

reconstruction of Ambiente Spazio Elastico by Gruppo “T”, 2006

Day before yesterday I started reading “The Rise of Systems Theory, An Ideological Analysis”, by Robert Lilienfeld (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1978). At the beginning of that book, while discussing a number of early heroes of systems theory, Lilienfeld talks about the ideas of Lawrence J. Henderson, a biochemist, philosopher and a precursor of sociology. As a biochemist Henderson studied the mechanisms in our body that keep the concentrations of various substances in our blood steady, and from this he developed the idea of the body as a system in equilibrium. This idea of system-equilibrium-equals-health he then transposed to the area of social interactions and social systems. Lilienfeld quotes him in connection to the little graph shown below (from 1938):
“In a social system all factors (persons, interests, residues, etc.) are mutually dependent or interactive. In order to fix our ideas, let us consider a relatively simple mechanical system. It may seem that we are reasoning from analogy, but this is not so. On the contrary, we shall be reasoning logically from the premises stated above, because the mathematical formulation necessary to describe this mechanical system would be formally identical with that necessary to describe the analogous social system.
In Figure 1 let A, B and C be objects connected together and to the rigid framework a, b, c by elastic bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Further, let each band be attached in A, B and C to some kind of mechanism which constantly operates in some determinate manner to wind up or to unwind the elastic band, and let this action be a function of time and also of the instantaneous tensions. In other words, let each winding mechanism run on in some manner predetermined so that the winding shall in each instance vary quite definitely with time and with tension, and with nothing else directly. Further, let the masses of A, B and C be known.”

an elastic model of society by Lawrence J. Henderson, 1938.

The setup Henderson describes as an analogy for society (even though he seems to suggest it is more than an analogy; what kind of magic does he have in mind there ?) reminded me of an iconic installation I’ve never seen, only heard about: the “Ambiente Spazio Elastico”, made in 1967 by Gruppo T, an Italian collective of artists active in the second half of the sixties. They made many kinetic or interactive works, as a group, but also as individual artists (especially Gianni Colombo has remained active until his death in 1993). But the kind of work they were most famous for are their “ambiente”; sensory environments, mostly based on optical phenomena. The “Spazio Elastico” consists of a cubic grid made of white elastic bands in a space that is only lit by blacklight. One or two motors pull on points in the grid, thus distorting the elastic grid throughout. Because of the darkness the luminous grid is the only spatial reference for the spectator, and from what I’ve heard the changing distortion does weird things with your perception of space and scale. And ofcourse the whole idea of bending a cartesian grid strongly suggests a commentary on a certain conception of space: the installation is almost a model of the kind of distortion of “square”, euclidean space we should have interiorized by now, almost 200 years after Gauss, Bolyai and Lobachevsky.. “Spazio Elastico” is probably the most famous piece by Gruppo T, and it a reconstruction of it was shown at their big retrospective in Rome in 2006.

Both of these elastic models I find are great examples of ideas embodied in simple materials, but they also evoke similar reservations about what they imply. Hendersons elastic model of society is ofcourse a very early model, but as Lilienfeld points out: “Many characteristics of systems thinkers are foreshadowed in Henderson’s work, in addition to his early and influential use of the term system: his scientism, his passion for quantification, and his enthusiastic and somewhat simplistic belief that systems models can adequately encompass the totality of a society.” One can effectively wonder how productive it actually is to think of social interactions in terms of elastic bands if you imagine how many of these bands you’d need to describe anything real. Ofcourse what Henderson presents is a demonstration of principle, but where he probably wanted to stress the flexibility of the connections and the holistic nature of the interconnections, what remains when you look at it now is the idea of society as a rather static collection of simple mechanisms with fixed links. It also makes one wonder what even more static model Henderson sought to replace ?
“Spazio Elastico” is a great example of a kind of work I really like, an example of art as it should be perhaps: a kind of epistemology, where philosophical ideas are not conveyed in words but demonstrated in experiences. But then what is the philosophical idea in this case ? “Spazio Elastico” obviously conveys an image of space as something flexible and dynamic, in contrast to the idea of space as an eternal, homogeneous, immutable principle that underlies reality. But is that going anywhere far enough ? One could also argue that “Spazio Elastico” is an image of the idea that space, locally distorted or not, has a relatively fixed structure that is independent of observers interacting with it. And that brings to mind that great interview in the film “Das Netz” where Heinz von Foerster asks “Wo ist denn diese Realität ?” (“So where is then this reality ?”). Concerning space the problem is perhaps not so much the immutability or mutability of a principle, but rather the whole idea of an objective reality that has something to do with external principles. To quote von Foerster again: “Objectivity is the delusion that observations could be made without an observer.”

Can it be that the elasticity in these models is a necessary step away from thinking in rigid structures towards thinking of a model in which links are enacted rather than elastic ?

reconstruction of Ambiente Spazio Elastico by Gruppo “T”, 2006

Joost Rekveld