Gustav Metzger "Auto Destructive Art Manifesto" (1961)
Auto-destructive art is art that destroys itself in less than 20 years, and the auto destruction of the piece becomes a part of the piece
in a major way. in its manifesto, several lines are drawn between this practice to a set of ideas and particular statements. Metzger
connects this art practice to the destruction currently in our world, in particular warfare and bomb dropping, but specifically not
the ruins. Metzger explains that the result of the destruction is not whats important.
Metzger says that auto destructive art is a mirror to the precise makings of weapons for war, which all leads to destruction anyway.
he also talks about chaos and imbalance in our society, and its difficult construction, which i suppose the destruction is supposed to mirror.
The artist may have a lot of control over the destruction, or have almost none at all. the piece should be legitimate: the destruction
should be real, the things being destroyed should be real.
Valentino Braitenberg Vehicles: experiments in Synthetic psychology (A Bradford Book, 1986)
braitenberg talks about theoretical robots. he sets up his robots by explaining that they are not real,
and that they would not really exist in a space like earth nor outer space, as his considerations are
too ideal for either of these places. but more importantly, they arent even important to why hes talkg about these robots.
so first he describes a robot that speeds up in the heat and slows down in the cold, with no other functions.
he says that if you observed this happening in real life, you would say that it was alive, and that it LIKED
the cold and DISLIKED the warmth. of course, liking and disliking are not truly possible for a machine so simple,
as he admits, but his point revolves more about how the simple functions of the mind of a fly is not so far off,
at least from a third persons standpoint, from the mind of a simple robot. braitenberg is bringing up discussion of what
life is and how it can be considered.
