Relaunch and Subsequent Closing Down of The Historiotheque Semantic Version 3.0.4.
The Art Operation At The Historiotheque Design Laboratories Is Closing Down! Read what follows for the inside scoop on A.G.’s interdisciplinary art-research practice, how it came to be, and where it is going now…
I
The Art Operation — by A.G. — went up in March of this year, then was closed down. Then it went up again in July of the same year, which also subsequently was closed down after a few weeks. Now, the new semantic version of the Official Release of The Historiotheque, my art studio and design/research laboratory, is coming out after a few weeks of extremely intense activity, and it’s again now being closed down. I’ve explained the process before and will explain it again for those who are just joining us now on this journey. I warn you, this is going to get awful interesting, awfully fast!
First off, as predicted in the previous Official Release of The Historiotheque, earlier this year, last August 11th, I did what I said I would do, following through with the publication of “The Historiotheque” website. That started in July when I purchased the domain name. I only just now created the one-page website, which is temporary until I can create a much better-designed website. Future Official Releases of subsequent versions of The Historiotheque, should all be posted there.
Where do I start? From the beginning: What is The Historiotheque? The Historiotheque, simply put, is the name I have chosen to give my art studio which also serves as a sound design laboratory, a research space, and so many other things, a recording studio, practice space, and of course my only real living quarters in this world. However… since I started my formal studies of theoretical computer science and computer programming roughly 11–12 years ago — I can’t think of the exact date right now, please forgive me! — I’ve learned all about “Official Releases” of software, and semantic versioning, and version control, and so forth, and so The Historiotheque, at least as far as the publication you are currently reading is concerned, is the official place where I “officially declare” that a new release has been released.
What I did was take something from the software development industry and apply it to my interdisciplinary art-research practice. I’m not aware of many artists who operate an Art Operation like I do (currently version “ArtOps 5.0”, if memory serves me right), and also in a MODULAR SPACE with “variable geometry” as I do, in a new kind of cultural institution whose concept I’ve been working on for at least the last fifteen years, if not more.
As I was saying earlier this year, in one or both of my previous “ArtBurst Episodes”, i.e. my “punctual” periods of intense creative activity, it’s all-too-important for a seasoned artist to learn to RAISE UP the level of activity on various art projects, in a limited amount of time, and then learn to BRING DOWN, the art-research practice down to more of a “simmer”.
I refer to this sometimes in terms of a “BABEL UP / BABEL DOWN” process. That is, I RAISE UP the Babel Tower, then BRING (IT) DOWN, just like in the Biblical story. Another metaphor I recently came up with is Moses receiving the Tables of The Law, from God, then SMASHING THEM, only to have the People gather together the “distributed” bits — which I call “Refcards” , i.e. “The Refcards-System”— to make up The Great Book of Life, or Abstract Manual as I sometimes call it, even “Textbook Art” (See also, for future reference: “A Season in The Life of A Manual”) and the ART-OPS-IN-A-BOX CONCEPT (Art-Ops-in-a-Box v.1.0.2.).
The reasons behind this concept of raising it up only to bring it down quickly are simple, and twofold. For one, it’s just not sustainable in the medium-to-long-term to live through such periods of TURBULENCE, because let’s face it, when you are staying up all hours of the night and have your sleep patterns all messed up and are essentially creating art and doing research, editing works of fiction and essays (non-fiction), and publishing works online, as well as DOCUMENTING THE PROCESS, it just gets to be TOO MUCH, TOO FAST.
So there’s that, and it has to do with Order and Complexity, which I wrote about earlier this year (See: “ORDER AND DISORDER IN THE WORKSPACE”). For that is where all the magic happens: IN THE ABSTRACT THREE-DIMENSIONAL (3D) WORKSPACE. (Explained in the hyperlink).
II
So that’s what I had to say about A.G.’s Creative Work-System, tentatively being called “ALX”, which is a “rigorous design workflow management methodology”. That is why I permit myself to launch and shut down and relaunch my Art Operations, and provide Official Releases which each new iteration of the process of BUILDING IT UP + BRING IT DOWN.
It’s because I’ve always prided myself in having a predictable business practice. While I’m not making a lot of money doing this, it’s still a business, which is why I call it an “Operation”, a.k.a. “The Art Operation” (currently housed, as always, in The Historiotheque studio/laboratory space.
This is the Workspace. I also have what I call a Lifespace, and that also has its own “Operating System”, which all put together I have called “AntiOS” othrewise known as “The Anti-Operating System”.
All this being said, I’m going to be doing a bit of a special feat here in the coming years, a kind of 180-degree turn. I’ve started “DISMANTLING THE ARCHIVE”. This process will take years, since I’ve been building up and maintaining my personal archive for the last 30 years or so.
Just as any given individual “Session” of art production needs to have clearly-delimited “START_SIGNALS” and “STOP_SIGNALS”, any given Period, as well as Projects, Series, and Collections, all need to have clearly-delimited BOUNDARIES, using “boundary markers” or “Terminus-Stones”.
The thing is, the entire ART-RESEARCH PRACTICE itself, those 30 years of work leading up to this APOTHEOSIS or CULMINATION-POINT, it has to be taken into consideration how one is going to keep going for possibly several more decades AFTER already having worked this way for 30 years.
In any case, if ever you were wondering, this is precisely how one can build up a mature, successful Art Operation in the 21st Century, and build a “Cathedral-of-The-Soul”. More on this at a later date. I have to prepare for the winter now which will be a slow period or “Long Tail of Analysis”, as I like to call it. It really has a lot to do with “human dynamics”. You have naturally-occurring “bursty” periods with longer, more drawn out “longer-tailed” distributions of tasks and activities.
It’s pretty simple. If you BUILT UP an art operation and were really successful in rapid way, quickly after launching it, chances are that it would die down just as fast, some time after said launch. It’s kind of a law of nature or physics. It’s force of gravity, more or less: What goes up must come down!
Anyway that’s it for now. I may edit this publication and add pertinent data to it at any later time. I reserve that right. Good tidings for the coming seasons! In passing, people often say I’m on a “Quest for Absolutes”. In response, I say this now: I won’t be happy until the year I win THREE NOBEL PRIZES in a single year: One for Literature, one for Economics, and finally, one for Peace. For that’s what this Creative Work-System is made for!
Sincerely,
Chief Art Operator
A.G. © 2023. All Rights Reserved.
