Review
This year under review was a significant one. A research highlight was the project 'Cubical Thousand' which set out to investigate the pig's play behaviour. One thousand (1000!) wooden cubes (70x70x70 mm) in 10 different colours were produced in approximately 130 hours of manual work. The investigation of the pig's colour preferences was emphasised in the project planning, and envisaged the help of students to develop an inventory of artistic patterns. However, due to the lack of funding the plan to visit schools had to be abandoned, and the decision was made to show the cubes at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. At two Sundays during the festival, the cubes featured in a playground event where children and adults were invited to build towers and artistic structures.A successful delivery of the PIGVISION message 'art matters in research' requires three key initiatives, including the annual report, the virtual PIGVISION institute on the World Wide Web and the electronic news bulletin 'The PIGVISION Quarterly'. The annual report for 1998 marks the beginning point for PIGVISION's yearly reviews. They come as posters featuring a calendar, and can be collected as works of art. PIGVISION's presence on the internet has been refashioned with the third version of its website. From a single page virtually all its documents can be accessed. Since August two bulletin issues of 'The PIGVISION Quaterly' have been mailed across the internet, providing information on PIGVISION's research activities
Outlook
PIGVISION has already announced its next research project, titled 'Spinning a Yarn with Sisyphus'. Alluding to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was punished to eternally role a bolder up a mountain, the research will focus on the pig's interaction with a large wooden sphere. Special emphasis is laid on the artistic refinement and the academic treatment. Marketing and PR efforts will continue their focus on project documentation and networking opportunities. There are many reasons why people are welcome to collaborate with PIGVISION, including a shared interest in the philosophy of art and science, intention to support unconventional research and learning more about art work produced in and for specialised environments. 1999 continues to pose exciting challenges for art and science. PIGVISION wishes you all the strength and passion required to make the most of these challenges. Your achievements will be paramount.
Raymond Rohner
Artistic Director
Thank You
PIGVISION would like to thank the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart, Melbourne's Living Museum of the West, Multicultural Arts Victoria and Melbourne Fringe for their support in 1998. Special thanks go to friends and individual supporters of PIGVISION without whom the activities and this report could not have been realised.
Disclaimer
PIGVISION is a business registered with the Victorian Office of Fair Trading and Business Affairs, Australia. PIGVISION's virtual research institute featuring on the World Wide Web is of fictional nature and serves as artistic purpose only. In no event will PIGVISION, its agents, instrumentalities and employees be liable for the accuracy of the information contained on the WWW site, the newsbulletins and the annual report, nor its use or the reliance placed on it.
Editorial
The playful investigative quality of PIGVISION projects guides one down a long wide path of hallucinogenic proportions. Like a hallucinogen, seemingly distant themes and concepts embrace as they morph into one another and produce new ways of thinking. This multifaceted progressive research premise reveals a heartfelt attempt at merging and intertwining the traditionally divergent fields of science and art.The notion of the hybrid serves a discussion of an interdisciplinary nature well. The hybrid is indeterminate - it is capable of change, is never fully defined and can be more than one thing at once. It gives rise to catastrophic tales and apocalyptic dreams. It is, if you like, the requiem of a fading century.
If the hybrid spoke it would do so with a hundred tongues and with equally as many voices. It would give voice to multiplicity and to divergent knowledges. The hybrid would, in effect, counter modernist notions of what it means to exist by its own very existence.
In the Œart world', Marcel Duchamp must be regarded as the hybrid prototype. He challenged the very concept of 'art' by transgressing institutionalised aesthetics and positioning the everyday (the profane) as exhibitable/suitable art object. Duchamp's urinal titled 'Fountain' 1917 heralded a new age in which the scope of art was deemed infinite. Art was no longer about the production of an 'original'. It accepted the playful use of cultural artefacts and became self-referential.
PIGVISION pays homage to Duchamp's triumphs and celebrates the era of the hybrid. The ambiguity of the hybrid challenges all in its path as it scorns absolute definition for probable disjuncture. PIGVISION makes light of scientific rigours whilst dancing around conventional artistic boundaries. PIGVISION's adoption of this experimental stance positions it at the fore of innovative research encompassing artistic and scientific concerns.
Svetlana Matovski
Freelance Curator