Expression
Why it is usually a tautology
Why it may not be a tautology
"the reason why" or "the reason is because"
"reason" is already by definition a description of why something happens.
"Reason" implies a deeper insight into the cognitive cause for action. "Why did he cross the street there?" - "There was a crosswalk." vs. "What was the reason why..." subtly demands further explanation into the significance for the individual. Note: This use only pertains to cognitive (reasoning) entities.
"free gift"
"gift" is, by definition, something given without charge.
May be used to emphasize the fact that there is no hidden expectation of reciprocity.
"cheapest price"
"cheapest" means "lowest priced", thus "cheapest price" is actually "lowest priced price".Also it is almost a non-sense, as a price is not to be bought.
Using "cheapest" on its own may imply "low price, low quality", whereas "cheapest price" emphasizes that the sale price is the lowest without connotations of poor quality.
"first introduced"
"introduced" generally implies that it is the first time that someone or something has been presented.
A speaker may be introduced to different audiences on different occasions. It would be correct to refer to the first such occasion as being when that person was "first introduced".
"new innovation"
"innovation" is defined as something new.
In context, there might have been previous innovations.
"forward planning" or "planning ahead"
"planning" is always done in advance.
May be used to differentiate the usual planning from a different form of planning done well in advance. For example: "Besides planning this week's meeting in detail, we should also do some forward planning of next week's meeting."
"faster speed"
"faster" means "greater speed", thus "faster speed" is actually "greater speed speed".
"faster" may refer to either an absolute magnitude of speed (e.g. 90 km/h), or the time taken by an event. Mapping software is an example which allows for specification of preference.
"unsolved mystery"
"mystery" is something that is unexplained, unknown or unsolved.
This refers to other "solved mysteries", which are then not mysteries.
"added bonus"
"bonus" is an added extra, thus "added bonus" is actually "added added extra".
May be used when referring to an additional bonus. For example: "Buy two and receive a bonus pencil sharpener, buy five and receive an added bonus steak knife."
"over-exaggerate"
"exaggerate" means "overstate", thus "over-exaggerate" means "over overstate".
May be used to differentiate regular exaggeration from excessive exaggeration. For example: "Exaggerate the size of it a little bit if you like, but don't over-exaggerate it, otherwise you won't seem credible." Proper exaggeration would simply be emphasis, compared to overemphasis.
"short summary"
a "summary" is a "shortened" version of a text
May be used to differentiate a very short summary from one of average length.
In some phrases such as "I can see it with my own eyes" or "I made it with my own hands" the tautology is a rhetorical device that adds emphasis, as double negatives used to do. Expressions such as "all in all" or being able to "read and write" (to have literacy) are not strictly tautological and are instead referred to as siamese twins.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Words its all about meaning
Tautology may refer to:
Tautology (rhetoric), repetition of meaning, using different words to say the same thing twice, especially where the additional words fail to provide additional clarity when repeating a meaning.
Tautology (logic), a technical notion in formal logic, universal unconditioned truth, always valid
Tautology (rhetoric), repetition of meaning, using different words to say the same thing twice, especially where the additional words fail to provide additional clarity when repeating a meaning.
Tautology (logic), a technical notion in formal logic, universal unconditioned truth, always valid
Joseph Kosuth
Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy," when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually."
Monday, 15 February 2010
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Friday, 5 February 2010
Big Business
Big Business film by Laurel and Hardy where Stan and Ollie are Christmas tree salesmen in California. Business is slow and a simple argument with one grumpy prospective customer (James Finlayson) escalates from a simple argument into full scale mutual destruction with Stan & Ollie destroying the customers house and garden, whilst Finlayson reduces their car to scrap metal, all under the disbelieving gaze of a police officer and an assembled crowd. Written by Steve Smith. The story of a man who turned the other cheek-and got punched in the nose.
Elephant
"Elephant" is a 1989 short film directed by Alan Clarke. The film is set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The film's title comes from Bernard MacLaverty's description of the Troubles as "the elephant in our living room" — a reference to the collective denial of the underlying social problems of Northern Ireland. MacLaverty is a Northern Irish author and wrote the screenplay for "Elephant". Produced by BBC Northern Ireland, it first screened on BBC2 in 1989. The film was first conceived by Danny Boyle, who was working as a producer for BBC Northern Ireland at the time.
The film, which contains very little dialogue, depicts eighteen murders and is partly based on actual events drawn from police reports at the time. It is shot in 16mm steadicam and features a series of tracking shots, a technique the director used regularly. The grainy 16mm film, together with the lack of dialogue, plot, narrative and music give the film a cold, observational documentary feel. Nothing is learnt about any of the gunmen or victims. Each of the murders are carried out calmly and casually, in one scene the gunman is seen to drive away slowly, even stopping to give way for traffic. The victims are shown for several seconds in a static shot of the body.
One of the tracking shots in the film.
As with several of Clarke's films, "Elephant" received high praise and attracted controversy. After watching the film, Clarke's contemporary David Leland wrote
I remember lying in bed, watching it, thinking, "Stop, Alan, you can't keep doing this." And the cumulative effect is that you say, "It's got to stop. The killing has got to stop." Instinctively, without an intellectual process, it becomes a gut reaction.
The film is a clear influence on Gus Van Sant's 2003 film Elephant, based on the Columbine High School Massacre. Van Sant's film borrowed not only Clarke's title, but also closely mirrors his minimalist style.
One of the tracking shots in the film.
As with several of Clarke's films, "Elephant" received high praise and attracted controversy. After watching the film, Clarke's contemporary David Leland wrote
I remember lying in bed, watching it, thinking, "Stop, Alan, you can't keep doing this." And the cumulative effect is that you say, "It's got to stop. The killing has got to stop." Instinctively, without an intellectual process, it becomes a gut reaction.
The film is a clear influence on Gus Van Sant's 2003 film Elephant, based on the Columbine High School Massacre. Van Sant's film borrowed not only Clarke's title, but also closely mirrors his minimalist style.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Installation.....Swimming with the Fishes
SWIMMING WITH FISHES
WHAT MAKES A FISH A FISH-IS ITS ABILITY TO SWIM AND LIVE IN WATER
Installation....Knitted fish..can't swim of can they?
"Real fish" in Bowl in Barnes with some knitted fish, postcards and family album.
Knitted fish that cannot swim
going to
Knitted fish that cannot swim
going to
1) Malta and Eigg to be put in the sea.
2) London in a wee box to be put in the Art Bin.
3) be given to people who gave me their fish to do with as they will.
All asked to send postcards back to "Real Fish" Family so they will all swim together
Postcards to be displayed by fish bowl and in family album at installation.
Michael Landy...Art Bin
Artist Michael Landy, who once destroyed his possessions in the name of art, has turned a gallery into a giant bin for the disposal of artworks.
Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The giant bin fills the South London Gallery
Landy made the headlines in 2001 when he destroyed everything he owned as part of an exhibition called Break Down.
All of his 7,006 possessions - from odd socks to David Bowie singles and his Saab 900 car - were lab
Artists trash their work for Michael Landy's new exhibit
U.K. artist's Art Bin is 'a monument to creative failure'
Last Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:13 PM ET Comments5Recommend9
CBC News
Trash is one way to describe an interesting new exhibit by British artist Michael Landy on display in London.
Landy opened his show, Modern Art is Rubbish, on Thursday at the South London Gallery, where it continues through March 14.
The installation features a massive, room-size glass-and-metal Art Bin that is gradually being filled with discarded art.
Describing the installation's concept as "a monument to creative failure," the 46-year-old artist started out by contacting his peers, asking them to donate works they considered poor efforts that they would normally trash, paint over or otherwise destroy.
So far, the Art Bin holds 50 of Landy's own canvases that he was unsatisfied with as well as pieces from noted peers such as Tracey Emin, Peter Blake and Damien Hirst — who donated two of his sought-after skull paintings.
Landy, who is also calling on the public to submit works to his Art Bin over the next six weeks, has said he will not turn away pieces even if he personally considers the artwork to be of excellent quality.
"I'm not a bin monitor," he told the Independent newspaper. "I have so far found myself thinking 'Wow, that's good,' but the success or failure of a work is in the eye of the beholder, and I have to follow what the artists deem to be unsuccessful."
In the bin, all works are equal in having no value, he said.
"In the outside world, there is a certain hierarchy," Landy told the BBC. "In the bin, there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
At the end of the six weeks, all the artwork in the exhibit will be disposed of.
A member of the so-called Young British Artists — the group of painters, sculptors and multimedia artists that rose to fame in the 1990s for their shocking or outrageous creations — London-born Landy is best known for his social commentary works, including 2001's Break Down.
In that exhibit, he labelled, displayed and then destroyed everything he owned, from socks to his car. The more than 7,000 items included artwork by famed colleagues, some of whom — Landy revealed — were not happy to hear of the project and asked for their pieces to be returned.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/01/29/landy-artbin-rubbish-exhibit.html#ixzz0eZxjs6Aselled and placed on a conveyer belt at the old C&A flagship store on Oxford Street, London, where they were then destroyed.
In 1997, his design for Tate Britain's annual Christmas tree featured a large bin filled with empty bottles, used wrapping paper, broken decorations and dead Christmas trees.
Turner prize-winner Hirst has contributed two of his iconic skull paintings to Landy's latest destructive exhibition.
"Damien really loved the idea... and they are good paintings," said Landy.
"There will be good artworks going into the bin, but it is up to the artist to decide what failure is."
"I do find myself thinking 'oh that one looks good' but then I have to remember what I'm doing this for."
At the end of the exhibition the bin will be emptied into a landfill site.
The exhibition will run at the South London Gallery from 29 January until 14 March.Now Trashing Michael Landy’s ‘Art Bin’
February 1, 2010, 1:02 pm — Updated: 1:02 pm -->
Courtesy of Michael Landy Michael Landy has began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can for art.
The British artist Michael Landy will be destroying hundreds of works of art this year, even though he’s gotten in trouble for it before. In his 2001 performance, “Break Down,” Landy shredded everything he owned — 7,227 items in total. Members of the public were most affected by the disposal of his car, his love letters, family heirlooms and the entire archive of his own art. However, he received most criticism from within the art world for destroying his art collection: works by fellow Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, most of which he had received as gifts.
Now Landy is about to do the same to hundreds more works of art, contributed by artists from all over the world. On Jan. 29 he began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can called “Art Bin,” which will contain stacks of artworks Landy is selecting from online submissions to be destroyed. Works will be added throughout the exhibition, and when it closes on March 14, they will all be disposed of.
“In this country it is legal to destroy an artwork if you are the owner,” Landy said in his East London studio as he reviewed the artworks submitted for “Art Bin,” “but you can’t add to it, you can’t change its color — that’s a no-no. It’s bizarre. But within the art world, quite a few people did have issues with destruction of artworks in ‘Break Down.’ Now, just when people can bring themselves to talk to me again, I’ve raised it again. I’m already in trouble. I’ve already had a telling off.”
Indeed the very idea of destroying artworks elicits some extreme reactions as it recalls in many minds the Nazis’ destruction of Jewish and “degenerate” art, and centuries of religious iconoclasm, including the Taliban blowing up the fourth-century Banyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2000. Another common association is the surprisingly frequent phenomenon of art vandalism, which ranges from a sufferer of the so-called “David syndrome” taking a sledgehammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972, while yelling “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” to a guard at the Whitney adorning a Lichtenstein with a love heart and the touching inscription “I love you Tushee, Love, Buns” in 1991.
Though many deplore such actions, elements of the artistic avant-garde have long viewed the destruction of old artworks as a necessary condition to making art new and relevant, following Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto calling for museums to be demolished and Antonin Artaud’s 1938 rallying cry, “No more masterpieces.” Tellingly, the best-known example of art vandalism in New York was the spray painting of the words “KILL LIES ALL” across Picasso’s “Guernica” by the prominent art-world figure Tony Shafrazi in 1974. He later explained his actions as trying to “retrieve [art] from art history and give it life.”
Yet even though he is an actual destroyer of art, Landy seems an unlikely inheritor of the mantle of these fanatics, schizophrenics and provocateurs. With “Art Bin” he grapples with issues around the value of art, success and failure in art, and the moral rights of artists. His starting point for the project was the realization that artists typically destroy their own works when they are dissatisfied with them — he cites Jasper Johns and Frank Auerbach as artists who have discussed this publicly. Landy initially thought of “Art Bin” as “a monument to creative failure” — a kind of collegiate assisted euthanasia for art, aggregating and destroying his own and other artists’ works, which, according to each artist’s own criteria, “got it wrong.”
However, in looking at the art being submitted over the art-bin.co.uk Web site, it is clear that artists are actually offering up works that aren’t failures at all (for example, works from editions in which others from the same edition are still being sold). While he has not attracted a lot of “big names” yet, many emerging artists clearly view sacrificing their work to “Art Bin” as a privilege rather than an admission of defeat.
Landy is bracing himself for questioning over what ends up included in “Art Bin” and what is excluded (though as “Art Bin” is an artwork, not a competition or a curated exhibition, there should be no onus on the artist to explain himself). He is also dreading “the kind of media coverage that makes you cringe as an artist” — from a British media that hasn’t evolved much since it published the headline “What a Load of Rubbish” when the Tate exhibited Carl Andre’s array of bricks, “Equivalent VIII,” in 1976. After all, unlike the vandalism of older masterpieces, the destruction of contemporary art, especially when it is done inadvertently by cleaners and sanitation workers, is usually presented by the press as an irony rather than a moral outrage.
“If fact,” Landy says, “most people feel more angry about the artworks contributing to landfill in the end than the destruction of art.” While the environmentalists are currently giving him grief, expect to hear collectors complaining too, because at the end of an important art event, there will be nothing left or created for them to buy.
Artists and art owners who have obtained permission from artists may submit works to “Art Bin” at www.art-bin.co.uk .
Over the next six weeks, hundreds of works by artists both famous and unknown will be dumped in the "Art Bin" at the South London Gallery.
So far, pieces by Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst, have been thrown away.
Landy said he hoped the bin would gradually fill up to create "a monument to creative failure".
Hierarchy
Members of the public have been invited to submit their own work for consideration, and they could end up in the giant container next to work by better-known artists.
"Some of this stuff is worth a lot in the outside world, but in the bin then it has no value, it has no worth," Landy told the BBC.
"In the outside world there is a certain hierarchy. In the bin there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
The giant bin fills the South London Gallery
Landy made the headlines in 2001 when he destroyed everything he owned as part of an exhibition called Break Down.
All of his 7,006 possessions - from odd socks to David Bowie singles and his Saab 900 car - were lab
Artists trash their work for Michael Landy's new exhibit
U.K. artist's Art Bin is 'a monument to creative failure'
Last Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:13 PM ET Comments5Recommend9
CBC News
Trash is one way to describe an interesting new exhibit by British artist Michael Landy on display in London.
Landy opened his show, Modern Art is Rubbish, on Thursday at the South London Gallery, where it continues through March 14.
The installation features a massive, room-size glass-and-metal Art Bin that is gradually being filled with discarded art.
Describing the installation's concept as "a monument to creative failure," the 46-year-old artist started out by contacting his peers, asking them to donate works they considered poor efforts that they would normally trash, paint over or otherwise destroy.
So far, the Art Bin holds 50 of Landy's own canvases that he was unsatisfied with as well as pieces from noted peers such as Tracey Emin, Peter Blake and Damien Hirst — who donated two of his sought-after skull paintings.
Landy, who is also calling on the public to submit works to his Art Bin over the next six weeks, has said he will not turn away pieces even if he personally considers the artwork to be of excellent quality.
"I'm not a bin monitor," he told the Independent newspaper. "I have so far found myself thinking 'Wow, that's good,' but the success or failure of a work is in the eye of the beholder, and I have to follow what the artists deem to be unsuccessful."
In the bin, all works are equal in having no value, he said.
"In the outside world, there is a certain hierarchy," Landy told the BBC. "In the bin, there is no hierarchy, so everything is treated the same."
At the end of the six weeks, all the artwork in the exhibit will be disposed of.
A member of the so-called Young British Artists — the group of painters, sculptors and multimedia artists that rose to fame in the 1990s for their shocking or outrageous creations — London-born Landy is best known for his social commentary works, including 2001's Break Down.
In that exhibit, he labelled, displayed and then destroyed everything he owned, from socks to his car. The more than 7,000 items included artwork by famed colleagues, some of whom — Landy revealed — were not happy to hear of the project and asked for their pieces to be returned.Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/01/29/landy-artbin-rubbish-exhibit.html#ixzz0eZxjs6Aselled and placed on a conveyer belt at the old C&A flagship store on Oxford Street, London, where they were then destroyed.
In 1997, his design for Tate Britain's annual Christmas tree featured a large bin filled with empty bottles, used wrapping paper, broken decorations and dead Christmas trees.
Turner prize-winner Hirst has contributed two of his iconic skull paintings to Landy's latest destructive exhibition.
"Damien really loved the idea... and they are good paintings," said Landy.
"There will be good artworks going into the bin, but it is up to the artist to decide what failure is."
"I do find myself thinking 'oh that one looks good' but then I have to remember what I'm doing this for."
At the end of the exhibition the bin will be emptied into a landfill site.
The exhibition will run at the South London Gallery from 29 January until 14 March.Now Trashing Michael Landy’s ‘Art Bin’
February 1, 2010, 1:02 pm — Updated: 1:02 pm -->
Courtesy of Michael Landy Michael Landy has began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can for art.
The British artist Michael Landy will be destroying hundreds of works of art this year, even though he’s gotten in trouble for it before. In his 2001 performance, “Break Down,” Landy shredded everything he owned — 7,227 items in total. Members of the public were most affected by the disposal of his car, his love letters, family heirlooms and the entire archive of his own art. However, he received most criticism from within the art world for destroying his art collection: works by fellow Young British Artists, including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, most of which he had received as gifts.
Now Landy is about to do the same to hundreds more works of art, contributed by artists from all over the world. On Jan. 29 he began converting the South London Gallery into a 130,000-gallon trash can called “Art Bin,” which will contain stacks of artworks Landy is selecting from online submissions to be destroyed. Works will be added throughout the exhibition, and when it closes on March 14, they will all be disposed of.
“In this country it is legal to destroy an artwork if you are the owner,” Landy said in his East London studio as he reviewed the artworks submitted for “Art Bin,” “but you can’t add to it, you can’t change its color — that’s a no-no. It’s bizarre. But within the art world, quite a few people did have issues with destruction of artworks in ‘Break Down.’ Now, just when people can bring themselves to talk to me again, I’ve raised it again. I’m already in trouble. I’ve already had a telling off.”
Indeed the very idea of destroying artworks elicits some extreme reactions as it recalls in many minds the Nazis’ destruction of Jewish and “degenerate” art, and centuries of religious iconoclasm, including the Taliban blowing up the fourth-century Banyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2000. Another common association is the surprisingly frequent phenomenon of art vandalism, which ranges from a sufferer of the so-called “David syndrome” taking a sledgehammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972, while yelling “I am Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” to a guard at the Whitney adorning a Lichtenstein with a love heart and the touching inscription “I love you Tushee, Love, Buns” in 1991.
Though many deplore such actions, elements of the artistic avant-garde have long viewed the destruction of old artworks as a necessary condition to making art new and relevant, following Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto calling for museums to be demolished and Antonin Artaud’s 1938 rallying cry, “No more masterpieces.” Tellingly, the best-known example of art vandalism in New York was the spray painting of the words “KILL LIES ALL” across Picasso’s “Guernica” by the prominent art-world figure Tony Shafrazi in 1974. He later explained his actions as trying to “retrieve [art] from art history and give it life.”
Yet even though he is an actual destroyer of art, Landy seems an unlikely inheritor of the mantle of these fanatics, schizophrenics and provocateurs. With “Art Bin” he grapples with issues around the value of art, success and failure in art, and the moral rights of artists. His starting point for the project was the realization that artists typically destroy their own works when they are dissatisfied with them — he cites Jasper Johns and Frank Auerbach as artists who have discussed this publicly. Landy initially thought of “Art Bin” as “a monument to creative failure” — a kind of collegiate assisted euthanasia for art, aggregating and destroying his own and other artists’ works, which, according to each artist’s own criteria, “got it wrong.”
However, in looking at the art being submitted over the art-bin.co.uk Web site, it is clear that artists are actually offering up works that aren’t failures at all (for example, works from editions in which others from the same edition are still being sold). While he has not attracted a lot of “big names” yet, many emerging artists clearly view sacrificing their work to “Art Bin” as a privilege rather than an admission of defeat.
Landy is bracing himself for questioning over what ends up included in “Art Bin” and what is excluded (though as “Art Bin” is an artwork, not a competition or a curated exhibition, there should be no onus on the artist to explain himself). He is also dreading “the kind of media coverage that makes you cringe as an artist” — from a British media that hasn’t evolved much since it published the headline “What a Load of Rubbish” when the Tate exhibited Carl Andre’s array of bricks, “Equivalent VIII,” in 1976. After all, unlike the vandalism of older masterpieces, the destruction of contemporary art, especially when it is done inadvertently by cleaners and sanitation workers, is usually presented by the press as an irony rather than a moral outrage.
“If fact,” Landy says, “most people feel more angry about the artworks contributing to landfill in the end than the destruction of art.” While the environmentalists are currently giving him grief, expect to hear collectors complaining too, because at the end of an important art event, there will be nothing left or created for them to buy.
Artists and art owners who have obtained permission from artists may submit works to “Art Bin” at www.art-bin.co.uk .
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