This one seemed worth reposting, 39 years later. My replica is stashed from this secondary source.

Sentences on Conceptual Art

by Sol Lewitt (1969)

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

First published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969.

Amanda Schaffer has written a sly and compact survey of some infosthetic artworks in a new Slate article, “Viz Whiz: How artists are mining data sets to make you see the unseen“. It’s a good introductory article for educators, with discussions of influential projects by creatives like Martin Wattenberg, Jonathan Harris, Ben Fry, and Jason Salavon. I’m honored that she included the Dumpster, which I made with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg, among her diverse selections of artworks based on information visualization.

By “diverse”, I’m referring to the range of media represented by the projects cited in Schaffer’s article, which include prints, music videos (like Aaron Koblin’s treatment for Radiohead), and all kinds of interactive software. Perhaps unintentionally, though, the roster of artists in her article is exclusively male. Schaffer interviewed me (among others), early on, seeking my suggestions for the article, and so it’s possible that I’m partly responsible for this oversight. But searching around this evening, I was dismayed to discover a complete lack of resources compiling infosthetic art or other visualizations by women; indeed, the single and only Googlewhack for “women in infovis” turns up this dreadful chestnut (…”InfoVis is from Venus, SciVis from Mars”). In the hope that this blog post can help correct the situation, I am moved to point out the significant (and evidently underrecognized) contributions to infoviz by artist/designer/researchers like Lisa Jevbratt, Fernanda B. Viégas, Sheelagh Carpendale, and Jana Diesner, along with newcomers like Stefanie Posavec and Stefanie Gray. In this vein, I also highly recommend the work of artists producing wonderful and provocative visualizations entirely without computation, such as Rachel Whiteread, Stacy Greene, Portia Munson, and Kathy Prendergast, among many others!

I was fortunate several years ago to work with designer (Alexander) Gelman, an extraordinary thinker and creator with immense rigor. His practice involves mercilessly eschewing the extraneous, in order to distill the essential. Among other books, Gelman is editor of the Subtraction compilation which illustrates this idea very articulately. Gelman’s vocabulary helped clarify my ideas on the subject.

Today while purchasing coffee I came across the quote below and so I have decided to compile, here,
Some Quotations and Thoughts on Subtraction:

• In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
  —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

NOTICE 1: Please note that the information in this blog post does not represent the official policy of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the CMU Computer Science Department (CSD), the CMU College of Fine Arts (CFA), the CMU School of Art (SoA), or the CMU Office of Interdisciplinary Degree Programs.  Any suggestions below should be understood, instead, as an entirely personal statement of opinion.

NOTICE 2: If you wish to speak with someone about the BCSA program, please contact the Office of BXA Interdisciplinary Degree Programs at Carnegie Mellon University.

Among other responsibilities, I serve as one of the academic liaisons from the CMU School of Art to the CMU Office of Interdisciplinary Degree Programs. More specifically, I assist with the admissions of BCSA students (Bachelor of Computer Science and Art), and I help advise BCSA students once they are enrolled. Even more specifically, I help admit and advise only those BCSA students whose degrees overlap between the Computer Science Department and the School of Art. (Although this describes almost all BCSA students, it’s theoretically possible for the BCSA degree to allow combinations of Computer Science with the other disciplines within the College of Fine Arts, such as Architecture, Design, Music or Drama.) In addition to this, I also regularly serve on the Undergraduate Admissions Committee of the SoA, which means I get to see a lot of portfolios for our regular BFA program.

With the announcement of CMU’s new BCSA program, I’ve started to receive a number of questions about the portfolio requirement of the BCSA admissions/transfer process in particular. If you’re interested in pursuing the BCSA through the School of Art, here are some

Facts:

• High school seniors applying to become BCSA first-year students at Carnegie Mellon are advised to contact Dr. Stephanie Murray in the BXA office prior to submitting their application. Applications made through the School of Art should clearly indicate your interest in the BCSA program. All internal BCSA transfer applications (for CMU students already enrolled in e.g. Computer Science) also go through this office.
• Yes, a portfolio is required for admission into the BCSA degree program.
• A portfolio is also required if you are applying to transfer into the BCSA degree program from the Computer Science Department or another academic division within CMU.
• If you’re applying for transfer into the BCSA, you’ll need to make an individual arrangement to have your portfolio reviewed. Contact Mark Cato, Assistant Head of the School of Art.
• A portfolio is not required if you are applying to transfer into the BCSA from the School of Art. If this is you, you’ll need instead to meet the CSD’s admissions criteria for grades, SAT, and possibly other factors.
• As with any competitive admissions process, there’s a possibility your portfolio may not meet the acceptance criteria for the School of Art. Unfortunately, admission into the BCSA program cannot be granted based on desire alone. If this happens, there are still other options available to you, such as pursuing a Minor in Art, for which there is no admissions process. You are also welcome to re-apply after a period of time, say a year, spent refining your portfolio.

Opinions:

• The BCSA program is intended for students with a serious interest in studying and creating new forms of artistic expression that could only be made possible by computation and communications technologies. Since you are applying for a degree program dedicated to bridging arts and technology, your portfolio should include projects in both areas — or, better yet, which bridge the two disciplines. An ideal portfolio would therefore include artworks you developed using computation (scripting or coding) or other technological means, such as interactive artworks, 3D computer animations, computer games, Processing applets, web sites, electronic or mechatronic sculptures, scripted forms, etcetera.
• Even though you are applying to the BCSA program, your portfolio is reviewed by the School of Art, and must meet the School of Art’s admissions standards. As with any other portfolio examined by the School of Art, we seek talent in the service of formally innovative work with original concepts. The conceptual dimension of your work is especially important: as a rule, the CMU School of Art places a high priority on the strength and originality of your artistic voice, as observable in your subject matter and material execution. Thus, competency in reproducing fixed, well-established idioms such as anime/manga and fantasy-art, however capable, will be valued substantially less than work which manifestly could not possibly have been made by anyone else.
• The BCSA program is ideal for students who want to solve artistic problems by creating their own software. This is a significant departure from many “computer art” courses which emphasize mastery of common imaging applications such as Photoshop. Millions of people use Photoshop each day, and don’t need a Computer Science education to do so. Thus, although Photoshop work won’t hurt your portfolio, it may not be the core of what we’re looking for in BCSA students.
• If coding your own software isn’t your main interest (even if it’s in the service of making art), there are still many excellent options for undergraduate study in art-and-technology at Carnegie Mellon. For example, the School of Art offers a BFA concentration in “Electronic and Time-Based Art” (ETB), which is akin to “Digital Media” degrees elsewhere; the ETB program is an Art degree with a student-directed focus in e.g. computer animation, game design, video and performance, digital imaging, etcetera. Unlike the BCSA, the ETB concentration in the School of Art does not require a separate application to the Computer Science Department; it is a “pure” BFA degree. Another option is the BFA in Art with a minor in Computer Science, which requires no application or admission to the CS department.

Thanks to Toxi, ever the early adopter, I’ve just discovered the excellent LibraryThing service, for sharing catalogues of books. My library is now (partially) indexed there, and will get filled in progressively when I feel like procrastinating that way. Feel free to browse my shelves.