The New Cubism: The Calabi-Yau Manifold

The Calabi-Yau Manifold represents the extra six dimensions neccesary for the motion of String Theory. The added dimensions are represented by the use / interaction of color.

Large Scale Cubist Experiment

Modern Cubists Sarah Hanson, Andrew DeLisle, and Phillip Coppedge are planning a large-scale experiment in which cameras are set up at posts all around the Boston Commons. The idea is to turn on all the cameras simultaneously so that viewers can watch some 100 screens and see the same spot on the Commons from countless different viewpoints. If this experiment goes well, the results will be revolutionary to the Modern Cubist movement and artists everywhere will be closer to incorporating time in their work. 2007.

Cubist Manifesto

As Cubists, we embrace change. We are not content with remaining here and now forever. We cannot choose one Time and one place because a single choice would undermine us, pinning our existence to one. When you are one, you are small, alone, and insignificant, but when you are many you are invincible. We choose to observe many, and therefore, we choose to be many. As our Realist predecessor, Gustave Courbet, implied in his Manifesto, it is necessary to understand one’s origins as a precursor to producing art that reflects the mindset of one’s present state. While we are eternally indebted to Pablo Picasso and George Braque, as they have served as our influence across the ages, we can no longer copy what they have already accomplished. With that said, we still feel the necessity to acknowledge their ingenuity.
Picasso and Braque first met in the Fall of 1907.[1] Braque, who was clearly influenced by the works of Paul Cezanne, had already begun to distance himself from his early Fauvist works by experimenting with a more structured and monochromatic style[2]. His new style had yet to become fully realized, but after meeting with Picasso and viewing his highly innovative painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (See Figure 1), they together formed the original principles of Cubist theory and changed the course of modern art[3].
Andre Breton spoke of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by saying, “with this painting we bid farewell to all paintings of the past.”[4] Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is now considered the work that sparked the Cubist revolution, but Picasso’s deliberate violation of natural conventions and his simplified, jagged depiction of human form was initially described by art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler as maddening and monstrous in the public’s eye.[5] However, it seemed to have an instant effect on George Braque, who showed an increasing fascination with a fragmented portrayal of natural reality as is evident in his View from the Hotel Mistral, L’Estaque (See Figure 2). In an interview with Gelett Burgess, Braque explains the intentions of his works, and the basis of Cubist theory, “ ‘To portray every physical aspect of such a subject,’ he [Braque] said, ‘required three figures, much as the representation of a house requires a plan, an elevation and a section.’”[6] Having already begun to disrupt space and dimensionality, the Cubists would then attempt, as Braque indicates, to move further towards abstracting reality. This desire to achieve abstraction pushed the Cubists to begin their Analytic phase.
Highlighted by a distinct crystallized and fragmented aesthetic, the Analytic Cubist works appeared to strip reality down in an attempt to better understand it. This is evident in Braque’s Violin & Palette (See Figure 3), and The Portuguese (See Figure 4), as well as Picasso’s Portrait of Amboise Vollard (See Figure 5) which maintained a foothold in reality while inching closer towards total abstraction. Yet the desire to change, inherent in all Cubists past and present, forced our predecessors to tweak their style even further. It was not long after they started the Analytic phase that the Cubists began their Synthetic phase. This phase was an attempt to rebuild the reality they had previously dismantled. By applying textures and materials directly to the canvas, Picasso and Braque simultaneously invented collage and papier colle with Still Life with Chair Caning (See Figure 6), and Fruit Dish and Glass (See Figure 7) respectively.[7] These inventive ideas soon spread to a new wave of Cubist followers.
The effect of Picasso and Braque on these other artists is evident in the works of Juan Gris, Henri Laurens, Otto Gutfreund, Bohumil Kubista, and Jacques Lipchitz.[8] This new wave of Cubists is credited with further defining the Cubist sense of reality and change. Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes described the Cubist sense of reality by claiming, “a realist will fashion the real in the image of his mind.”[9] By combining reality and perceptions, the Cubist corroborated Metzinger and Gleizes’ theory that change itself was the most basic aspect of reality.[10]
In discussing the old Cubist masters, it is essential to mention the scientific discoveries of one Albert Einstein, in addition to the works of Picasso and Braque. Our understanding of Time – however incomplete it may be – is indebted to Einstein’s 1905 essay, On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Einstein writes: “We cannot attach any absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which, viewed from a system of co-ordinates, are simultaneous, can no longer be looked upon as simultaneous events when envisaged from a system which is in motion relative to that system.”[11] At its essence, this discovery provides a glimmer of hope to those who wish to analyze, deconstruct, and gain a true understanding of the dimension(s) of Time.
In the years since Einstein’s essay, it has become common knowledge that variables such as gravity and velocity have a substantial effect on the relative passage of Time. Phenomena such as the Twin Paradox and Time Dilation are proof that the manipulation of time is, in fact, possible. Clocks placed in areas of lower potential gravities run slower than those placed in higher potential gravities, and clocks traveling at great velocities run slower than their idle counterparts.[12] Thus, if a human subject travels at a great velocity for an extended period of Time, he will age less than a subject which maintains a minimal velocity. As Bob Berman tells us: “Einstein showed that while we experience a single second, a million years can pass on another planet.”[13]
While many saw Cubism as just a particular aesthetic approach to relativism, there are some who saw passionate ideologies that were meant to be followed in the works of Cubists such as Picasso, Braque, and Einstein. Some saw these works as a way of life, and thus a Cubist painting or calculation was not merely a piece of subjective art, but a window into a very objective world that just happens to consist of more than our normal visual inputs. These “neo-Cubists” (as they were shortly, and unoriginally, named) sought to have such a great understanding of the natural world that they often had interest in every field from human biology to genetics and even quantum physics. Any science that revealed a new layer of “reality” was fair game for the Cubists to pursue, leading many to be well-renowned polymaths.
These neo-Cubists wished to depict the idea of “as above, so below”… and every level in between. As such their works were often about depicting the macrocosm and the microcosm. With 1909 and the discovery of the nucleus by Ernest Rutherford, there was a huge branching off point for neo-Cubists, separating them from the founders of Cubism. With this new atomic model, passionate Cubists were given a whole new, perfectly subjective subject matter. The parallel between the movement of atoms and the movement of planets was too great for them to ignore. Concentric motifs meant to depict these movements would busy paintings of otherwise typical proto-Cubist figures. Now rather than just showing their subject matter from many angles over a set period of Time, the viewer was made to think of that subject in its context to the greater world: the building blocks it shared in common with all other matter, and its place in the clockwork of the universe.
This scientific focus of neo-Cubism was waylaid by World War II. While these trends continued, especially with burgeoning public-interest in Oppenheimer’s fairly secretive Manhattan Project, a new humanist spin was adopted by the movement. Seeing the American ideology encapsulated in propaganda images like Rosie the Riveter and various other Rockwellian works, neo-Cubists of course wished to see the other side of the coin. Interest in Nazi propaganda found the neo-Cubists in an uncomfortable position with the United States government, as did their subsequent paintings, which tried to humanize both sides of the war while using both sides’ popular imagery. The results were offensive to both the Allies and the Axis powers, but in retrospect can be seen as some of the most truly worldly humanist pieces to arise from the war.
The 50s almost saw neo-Cubists fade from memory, as suburbanization and consumerism placated and numbed the artistic soul. Luckily, the socio-political turmoil of the 60s saw a huge resurgence in people calling themselves neo-Cubists, even if few followed the original ideologies. Hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin “magic” mushrooms and LSD gave artists a whole new world of subjectivity that they sought to represent through graphic art. Mandalas became a popular form of Cubist expression, as they attempted to depict the macrocosm through a densely symbolic microcosm.
The next and most recent Time the new breed of Cubists would so tightly latch onto the zeitgeist was during the advent of personal computers. Once again, the powerful scientific minds of those following the new interpretation of the Cubist ideology guided the hands of the artists. This Time the muse is not a new atomic model, but the very idea of binary code. From the late 70s to modern Time, binary code has evolved from a convenient way of expressing pieces of images, sounds, and words using only 1s and 0s, to a code that can theoretically be used to completely simulate reality. To the Neo-Cubists, binary code was just another lens through which to interpret the world. Each 1 and 0 essentially tells the computer a “yes” or a “no”; when the string adds up, you have “01010010” representing “R”, etc… On a philosophical level, the Neo-Cubists saw each number as a decision, and in turn a perspective. Thus binary code became in their mind, a single perspective forged from countless opposing perspectives. Cubist artists would develop an interest in computer programming. To them the idea of programming a computer was a way of creating a “perspective” from the ground up. Many Cubist artists were some of the first highly original video game creators, seeking with each game to create a reality that offers the player a perspective that they could get nowhere else. Perhaps the most famous contribution to art by Cubists at this time is the painting Zero-One (Picture unavailable), which is black 1s and 0s (each less than a millimeter tall) painted on a white canvas stretched over a spherical wire-frame with a diameter of 101 feet. Starting from the top point and spiraling down, the numbers represent a binary coding of the human genome, the first ever attempt at representing the entire genome on a physical surface.
Binary code is responsible for bringing us to our present state and after all of our past attempts at dissecting and re- constructing reality, we stand here, in this Time with the theories and ideas of today present in our art. The field of theoretical physics, with its roots in Ancient Greek philosophy, is rapidly expanding its breadth to further the study of numerous theories pertinent to Cubism. While topics such as the M-Theory and Quantum Mechanics are worthy of note, it is the String Theory which provides us with the best hope of truly grasping the existence of alternate dimensions and it is the String Theory that we strive to understand through our work.
The String Theory, which is frequently referred to as “The Theory of Everything,” because of its potential ability of unifying the previously mentioned building blocks of modern physics, posits that “all particles and forces arise from the vibration of tiny string-like objects.”[14] Thus, all forms of matter are essentially identical, yet they move about in different ways. According to the theory, these strings “have to wiggle in more complex patterns than are possible in three dimensions, so the string theory requires at least six additional (dimensions).”[15] Within these expanded dimensions, strings can take on a variety of forms and be governed by various fundamental constants. Furthermore, they are thought to produce ripples in the fabric of space-time. An example of a string series can be seen in Figure 8. This example is a Calabi-Yau manifold, which represents the extra six necessary dimensions of String Theory. The Calabi-Yau has been studied for many years in the fields of mathematics and theoretical physics.[16]
It is this manifold and this theory that Neo- Cubists of today attempt to incorporate in their art but in looking back at the early stages of Analytic Cubism, with works such as The Portuguese (Figure 4) and Portrait of Ambroise Vollard (Figure 5), one cannot help but draw parallels between the art of Picasso and Braque and the String Theory. The masters pursued a fragmented reality; they attempted to break down the picture plane in order to create within the viewer a sense of multiple vantage points. By combining the two-dimensional with the three-dimensional, and working with flat, deep, and limited space simultaneously, the artists sought to forge a new, holistic vision. While this vision was not fully realized, the very idea behind the work is what sparked the movement that we continue to promote, nearly one hundred years later.
As scientists continue to develop the String Theory, it will undoubtedly be a huge asset and an influence to the Cubist movement. The search for hidden dimensions, the implementation of advanced technology, and the desire to unify all aspects of physics reflect the String Theorists’ pursuit of the unknown as well as the unseen. Their vision, which also has yet to be fully realized, represents another push towards a new sense of reality. These men and women are truly Cubist at heart, and we must applaud their work just as we applaud those who laid the blueprints for the future generations of Cubists. It is particularly satisfying for us to know that our movement, which started on a painter’s canvas, has since expanded to include such abstract realms as molecular structures and deep space.
We, as Cubists, desire to step still further forward in the world-historical drive. We intend to not only incorporate modern scientific theories in our work, but opinions and human perceptions of our Time as well. It is not one man’s responsibility, but all of mankind’s, to report on the happenings of the day and allow their Voice to be heard. Picasso suggested nearly forty years ago that “reality in Cubism is ‘like a perfume,’ an image that is sensual, unlocatable, and not susceptible to the rational mind.”[17] We are reminded that there is no such thing as “truth”. Recorded history has proven to us the slipperiness of language, the unreliability of memory. Countless accounts of Times and places where what was once considered to be the incontrovertible truth was later shown to be a far shakier structure of opinions and observations. Perceptions and memories are constructed by our experiences, desires and cultural expectations; Cubists seek to embrace this inherent subjectivity. We desire to hear all perceptions, all versions and opinions, in order to strive for a deeper truth.
The advent of cyberspace brings us closer to achieving our goal. Interactive websites and blogs, created out of an ascendant digital new mediascape, allow for a better community of reporters and artists alike. It requires men and women all over the world to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.[18] Internet blogs and websites that are accessible to millions combine text, images, videos, and links to other media related to its topic. The exchange is instantaneous, attained by the mere click of a button. It is the first universal interactive format, and it is within this ideology that we wish to explore the nature of our art and awareness.
“We are the traditional journalism model turned upside down," explains Mary Lou Fulton, publisher of online newspaper the Northwest Voice in Bakersfield, California. "Instead of being the gatekeeper, telling people that what's important to them...we're just opening up the gates and letting people come on in. We are a better community newspaper for having thousands of readers who serve as the eyes and ears for the Voice, rather than having everything filtered through the views of a small group of reporters and editors."[19] As Fulton suggests, new modes of researching and technology have played an important role in how we think about history and knowledge, and what has begun to emerge is a view of Cubism in relation to its larger intellectual and social culture. We strive to represent the voice of Everyman within these online forums. It is not enough to show only our own way of looking at the world, we desire to see, hear, and feel how others perceive it as well. By adopting the free, mobile nature of cyberspace we are allowed to represent multiple points of view simultaneously, elevating the ideology of Cubism that its originators first conceived to an entirely new level.[20]
Picasso and Braque have served as our influence across the ages but just as we can no longer limit our Voice to one, we can no longer ‘copy’ what they have already accomplished. We feel that oil, canvas and collage no longer serve our need of expression. While the canvas worked well for the old masters and served as a sufficient beginning to this movement, the canvas remains flat. While the oil paints and bits of paper and glue helped to give the canvas life and to give a personality to Time, they too remain flat and stale. We recognize that the movement had to start somewhere and we are grateful that it was given the Time to grow, but we cannot go backwards in Time. “Efforts to revive the art- principles of the past will as best produce an art that is still-born.”[21] We do not wish to revive what has been nicely buried, but to give birth to something new and living. Therefore, we reject the canvas, the oil and the collage in favor of a new form of art; a hybrid consisting of sculpture, form, and light.
“We can all be tracked by our cell phones. Our purchases are tracked by banks and credit-card companies, our telephone calls by phone companies, our Internet surfing habits by Web-site operators. Security cameras are everywhere.”[22] As Hasan Elahi has discovered, surveillance technology is the ideal Cubist art form. Film is the best way to break down the world (the shattered mirror effect that Picasso and Braque attempted to re- produce) and to see clearly. Previous art movements have attempted to hide from the camera, secretly worrying that they cannot compete with the Realism that the camera can produce and instead venturing into the world of Surrealism and Absurdity. But we intend to embrace the camera as art unique unto itself. We want to break down and to understand the world and what better way to do it than through the eyes of the camera? Neo-Cubist artists will use the camera to see further into the world and to expand their views on the people and things in it.
We also predict the use of sound in art. The modern world is one of Technology blended so tightly that it is infused with our everyday lives and therefore why shouldn’t art make the transformation as well? Cubist Haila VanHentenryck has already begun designing a series of gallery performances involving visual and audio surveillance.[23] If her design goes through, guests will enter the gallery’s rooms and find themselves being recorded in everything they do from socializing to observing the works. Her design includes a separate room in the gallery where the walls are lined with television screens all playing back live feed from the surveillance cameras in other parts of the gallery. The idea here is that the viewers can visually be everywhere in the gallery simultaneously.[24] Another room in her design is completely dark with microphones and speakers lining the walls. When guests enter this room, looped audio recorded from the rest of the gallery will play from all sides. This room will be the ‘ear’ of the show and viewers will be able to hear not only what conversations are occurring in that moment, but what conversations and sounds that occurred anywhere from five minutes to two hours ago.
It is this idea that is worth everything, this incorporating of Time as another dimension in art, that is the only idea worth pursuing. All art is an attempt to break down and to understand the multi- layered dimension that is our world and we intend to continue in this tradition. Surveillance and tracking devices are the absolute only way to observe objectively the world that we inhabit and to better understand it and we promote the use of such devices. Rights and liberties have nothing to do with it; breaking down and understanding humanity is of towering importance and we cannot be troubled by individual freedoms. We are not contented by making more “art for art’s sake.”[25] Instead, we want to challenge what is known by watching, observing, and interpreting what we see through technology. And has for those who disagree, be careful of what you say because we are watching.
[1] Fry, p. 70

[2] Fry, p. 70

[3] Fry, p. 71

[4] Chave, p. 597

[5] Chave, p. 597

[6] Fry, p. 71

[7] Hunter, Jacobus, Wheeler, p. 143

[8]a. Golding, p. 600-601 b. Hunter, Jacobus, Wheeler, p. 146-149

[9] Gray, p. 20

[10] Gray, p. 21
[11] “Let there be given a stationary rigid rod; and let its length be l as measured by a measuring-rod which is also stationary. We now imagine the axis of the rod lying along the axis of x of the stationary system of co-ordinates, and that a uniform motion of parallel translation with velocity v along the axis of x in the direction of increasing x is then imparted to the rod. We now inquire as to the length of the moving rod, and imagine its length to be ascertained by the following two operations:--
(a)
The observer moves together with the given measuring-rod and the rod to be measured, and measures the length of the rod directly by superposing the measuring-rod, in just the same way as if all three were at rest.
(b)
By means of stationary clocks set up in the stationary system and synchronizing in accordance with § 1, the observer ascertains at what points of the stationary system the two ends of the rod to be measured are located at a definite time. The distance between these two points, measured by the measuring-rod already employed, which in this case is at rest, is also a length which may be designated ``the length of the rod.''
In accordance with the principle of relativity the length to be discovered by the operation (a)--we will call it ``the length of the rod in the moving system''--must be equal to the length l of the stationary rod.
The length to be discovered by the operation (b) we will call ``the length of the (moving) rod in the stationary system.'' This we shall determine on the basis of our two principles, and we shall find that it differs from l.” The definition of synchronism, defined by Einstein and signified as § 1, is Tb – Ta = T’b – Tb, where a ray of light traveling from A to B is Ta, its reflection from B to A is Tb, and the time when it arrives back at point Ta is T’b. (Einstein, On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, 1905).
[12] H.E. Hives & G.R. Stillwell, An Experimental Study on the Rate of a Moving Clock (1938), An Experimental Study on the Rate of a Moving Clock II (1941).

[13] Bob Berman includes a discussion of invisible objects and dark matter amidst his discussion of parallel time dimensions: “Dark matter does exist here in our galaxy, and probably even in our own rooms, as a separate unseen dimension.” (Berman, Strange Universe, 2008).

[14] Amanda Gefter, String Theory Fights Back, The New Scientist, 2007.

[15] Amanda Gefter, String Theory Fights Back, The New Scientist, 2007.

[16] http://www.th.physik.uni-bonn.de/th/Supplements/cy.html
These Calabi-Yau manifolds satisfy the requirement of space for the six unseen dimensions of String Theory.

[17] Patricia Leighton, Editor’s Statement: Revising Cubism, Art Journal, 1988.

[18] S. Bowman, C. Willis. We Media:How Audiences Are Shaping The Future of News and Information. The Media Center at the American Press Institute, 2003.

[19] M. Glaser. The New Voices: Hyperlocal Citizen The Media Sites Want You (To Write!) Online Journalism Review. 2004.

[20] This manifesto will be published only through this cyberspace medium so we can better include the Voices of many rather than the Voices of few. To find our manifesto on line go to http://www.thenewcubism.blogspot.com.

[21] Wassily Kandisnky. Concerning the Spiritual In Art. P.1

[22] .
Schneier’s website is the embodiment of Modern Cubism. He has gathered thousands of pages of information on surveillance and tracking techniques and regularly posts updates on government surveillance policies. Located on his site is a link to Hasan Elahi’s site. Elahi is a conceptual Cubist artist who, after being apprehended by the FBI, has begun tracking his movements everywhere through surveillance systems. The public can visit his site at any time on any day and view where he is at that moment in Time.

[23] VanHentenryck’s ideas are revolutionary in that they are able to incorporate not only the past, but the present and the future into accessible works of Modern Art. We predict that future Cubists will follow her lead in incorporating multiple dimensions and scientific technology into their works.

[24] For photos involving Neo- Cubist art and Surveillance, see Figures 9-13.

[25] Gustave Courbet. Realism and Tradition In Art. The Realist Manifesto. 1966 p. 33-36.

Bibliography for Manifesto

Bibliography

Berman, Bob "Strange Universe," Astronomy, 36. 2, (2007):12
Bowman, S. and Willis, C. "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and
Information." The Media Center at the American Press Institute. 2003.
Chave, Annac C. "New Encounters with Les Demoiselles D'Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism." The Art Bulletin LXXX (1994): 597-610. JSTOR. Emerson College. 4 Apr. 2008. Keyword: Cubism.
Courbet, Gustave. “’The Realist Manifesto’ and ‘Art Cannot Be Taught.’” Realism and Tradition in Art. 1848-1900. By Gustave Courbet. Ed. Linda Nochlin. N.p.: Englewood Cliffs: Prentice- Hall, 1966. 33-36.
Einstein, Albert. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” The Principle of Relativity. London; Methuen & Co. 1923.
Fry, Edward F. "Cubism 1907-1909: an Early Eyewitness Account." The Art Bulletin 48 (1966):
70-73. JSTOR. Emerson College, Boston MA. 4 Apr. 2008. Keyword: Cubism.
Gefter, Amanda. “String Theory Fights Back.” The New Scientist. 195. 2612, (2007).
Glaser, M. "The New Voices: Hyperlocal Citizen Media Sites Want You (to Write)!",
Online Journalism Review. November 17 2004.
Golding, John. "Cubist Art From Czechoslovakia." The Burlington Magazine Oct. 1967: 598-601. JSTOR. Emerson Library. 4 Apr. 2008. Keyword: Cubism.
Gray, Christopher. "The Cubist Concept of Reality." College Art Journal 13 (1953): 19-23. JSTOR. Emerson College. 4 Apr. 2008. Keyword: Cubism.
Greenberg, Clement. “Necessity of ‘Formalism.’” New Literary History 3.1 (Fall 1971): 171-175. Jstor. 27 Mar. 2008 .
Hart, Hugh. “The Art of Surveilllance.” Wired. 2 Apr. 2008 .
Hunter, Sam, John Jacobus, and Daniel Wheeler. Modern Art. 3rd ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 2004. 136-149.
Kandinsky, Wassily. “’Introduction.’” Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Trans. Sadler M.T.H.
New York: Dover, 1977. 1-5.
Leighten, Patricia. “Editor’s Statement: Revising Cubism,” Art Journal 47.4 (Winter 1988):
269-76.
Leighten, Patricia. “Picasso’s Collages and the Threat of War, 1912-13.” Art Bulletin 67.4 (Dec. 1985): 653. Academic Search Premier. 27 Mar. 2008 .
Regine. “Orwellian Projects.” Online posting. 11 Sept. 2006. 2 Apr. 2008 .
Rothman, Roger, and Ian Verstegen. “Arnheim’s Lesson: Cubism, Collage, and Gestalt Psychology.” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism 65.3 (July 2007): 287-298. Academic Search Premier. 27 Mar. 2008 .
Schneier. “Schneier on Security: Survelliance as Performance Art.” Online posting. Oct. 2006. 2 Apr. 2008 .
Zucherman, Ethan. “Tracking Hasan Elahi.” World Changing. 19 Oct. 2006. 2 Apr. 2008 .

The New Cubism

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The Calabi-Yau Manifold

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