Experiencing Experience Design: Fluxus: a study in ambiguity

To begin, my favorite quote from all the research I did:

"There is one important thing that the masters of Zen and the masters of Fluxus have in common: the extreme difficulty of explaining to the outside world exactly what it is that they are masters of" (Williams).

After spending a bit of time with my head in fluxus books and articles, I've began to understand the movement (if you can call it that). According to wikipedia, the facts are these:

1. Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
2. Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
3. Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
4. Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.

I'd like to add to this list and include a few thoughts of my own:

5. Fluxus' definition is vague at best, and the argument on what can and cannot be considered Fluxus work seems never ending and extremely opinionated
6. Fluxus members relish in their own ambiguity
7. Fluxus prefers a DIY method and almost never takes their work out to be commissioned.
8. That is not to say that they do not collaborate, as that is completely false; Fluxus simply does not outsource their work. If it is not within their means to do it themselves, they don't do it.

Now, some facts that I found to be very interesting/intriguing:

-Fluxus work has rarely, if ever, been showcased in modern or contemporary art museums
-When asked whether he saw Fluxus as art in his last interview ever, Maciunas replied by saying "No. I think it's good, inventive gags."
-For a large period of time, the only person willing to put up with Maciunas was his mother. He did, however, marry in the last year of his life before dying of cancer.
-Fluxboxes, Fluxkits, Fluxfriends and Fluxenemies are all terms
-John Lennon and Yoko Ono were good friends iwth Maciunas
-John Lennon and Maciunas were both colorblind and in a fluxus piece created "Lennon's Fluxkit" which was a big water-color kit that had lots of bright colored paint tubes that couldn't be distinguished by the color blind.
-On Fluxus, Maciunas once stated "the works were simple, small and cheap. With them, an art form emerged which was projected superficially as a gag and a paradox"

I loved the story about the grand piano we were told about in class. I found an interview by Rene Block with Emmett Williams and Benjamin Patterson:

Emmett Williams: Because it certainly wasn't a practical way to get rid of a grand piano. We could simply have called a junkman to carry it away. but here, in the context of a museum, and music, and composers, it was a startling, symbolic thing. Let's get rid of any vestige of the old music.
Rene Block: But it was an artistic event. It was a piece of music. There was a score.
Emmett Williams: But this piano was destroyed from evening to evening, we were not following a score. Th objective was to reduce this thing to nothing (Laughter).
Benjamin Patterson: As a matter of fact I never saw the score…The way we 'learned the piece' was through George's instructions. It was George's interpretation. He said, well, we're going to do this piece by Phil Corner and this is the way we do it. And here are your instruments.
Emmett Williams: And the instruments were there - a crowbar, hammers, rocks, saws…And we assisted, let's say. I enjoyed it thoroughly, night after night.
Benjamin Patterson: It was wonderful. And it was a music event. We certainly made sounds like you've never heard before (Laughter)" (30).

Fluxus concepts I'm inspired by:

-fluxboxes/kits: they seem to be so full of fun and mystery. I'd like to see how this could be established in an on-screen environment and if it would be as successful as a physical version.
-just the immense quirkiness of all of the Fluxus art. I feel I'm more of a clean artist and could not see myself doing a project in this style. I'd like to try it.
-the humorous, sometimes ridiculous approach to art. it seems that often we take our work so seriously that we don't even consider the humorous or fun approach. it would be nice to create a project that has the objective of making someone laugh or smile.

Some history, quoted from two books I found at the library:

"In the winter of 1960/61, Maciunas, a New York design student of Lithuanian origin, prospective art historian and unsuccessful dealer in antique musical instruments, met some of the young artists and composers grouped around John Cage, and wanted to publish their work in a magazine called Fluxus. From 1962 onward, instead of being involved with the magazine or other Fluxus works in new York, Maciunas began organizing Fluxus concerts in a number of European cities, attracting an international following of young artists. Maciunas saw the concerts developing into an organization which would protect the copyright of the individual artists and successfully market and monopolize their work, building a bulwark of cultural policy against serious art. However, as the intended exclusivity involved insoluble economic problems right form the start and was not even favored by many those involved, most of the musicians, writers and artists soon distanced themselves form him. Maciunas continued to pursue his editorial activities undeterred, producing several hundred different Fluxus products by 1978 He continued to aim for dictatorship of the artistic proletariat, even though Fluxus production depended entirely on him, like a one-man factory" (Kellein 10).

"Fluxus has neither been a style nor has it found its form through certain media. IT has not been dependent on just one artist or a special group of artists, although George Maciunas, the Lithuanian designer and student of art history, has founded and shaped it since 1961. Fluxus products range from paintings to pretend matter and objects. Their sizes differ, their shapes are mostly as simple as well-known everyday objects. Many aspects of Fluxus can only be seen through photos or manifestos. Most of the works are meant to be read" (Williams).

I took pictures (no scanner) of pictures I found intriguing in the books I read. Some of them are interesting photographs and some of them are pieces of Fluxus art work that I found interesting/intriguing/exciting. Please enjoy!