Art Process As a Non-Trivial Machine. Looking at Art Practice As a Second Order System

Art practice as the process(es) in which an artist elaborates her artistic endeveors is seen for some scholars (Niedder, C., y Roworth-Strokes, S., 2005; Hannula, Surorante y Vadén, 2005; Graeme, S., 2010; Borgdorf, 2012; Leavy, P., 2015) as pre-reflexive, preconceptual activity and, almost solely, visually constructed (Arheim).

These scholars and their writings consider the artist and her thinking like a “naked eye” (O’Doherty), it is to say, a walking bodyless cartesian eye, through which “reality” enters directly the human system. Such thinking is unidimensional, leaving aside great part of other human domains, ignoring the artist’s capabilities to model her practice through what Piaget calls “functional continuity”, where biological, affective and logical domains are intertwined and interdifined.

This paper approaches art practice from the point of view of constructivism and its allies, sociocybernetics, genetic epistemology (Piaget), and the cognitive field (Amozurrutia); in order to propose a second order art practice. It is to say, to consider art practice and the artist thinking as a complex system whose aim is to construct sensual, simbolic, reflective and conceptual meaning, built through out empirical, affective and logical relationships.

In order to achieve this goal, I will quicly review current ideas around the subject and contrast these against the constructivist point of view. Then, I explain the selfreflective epistemological analysis I have elaborated of my own art- practice, following Piaget’s genetique theory on knowledge, Amozurrutia’s cogntive field and the heuristic methodology that constructivism offers to researching. The results are a series of diagrams and algorithms that describe epistemological routes within the practice. The main objective of this analysis is to show to the audience how an artistic practice is be informed no just through visual impulse, non-conceptual and pre-reflective thinking.