When I tour people around the Portland Japanese Garden, I always love to point out the paradox of the sand-and-stone garden, that Japanese garden of empty spaces and abstract composition that people somewhat precipitously think of as the Zen garden (A garden is only properly called Zen when there’s a Zen Buddhist monastery around).
The paradox lies in the fact that while it is the oldest, distinctly Japanese style of gardening (circa 12th century), it also seems to resonate the most with our modern sensibilities. Minimalism in art pre-dates artists like avant-garde composer John Cage, with his famous three movements of silence, by at least eight centuries.
The related art of the noh theater, which also emerged in Japan at around the same time as the sand-and-stone garden, is even more striking in its foreshadowing of Cage’s work and others who have experimented with silence as an active form of expression.
There are clear moments of silence in the noh theatrical action that are not meant to be intermissions but are a key part of the performance, just as the sand-and-stone garden exemplifies the Japanese aesthetic notion of the “beauty of blank space (yohaku no bi).” This is the same aesthetic that informs the art of famous mid-century modern designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
Charlie Gere could have been talking of noh and the sand-and-stone garden in interpreting silence and empty spaces in avant-garde art as suggesting that “anything and everything is possible,” an insight that in turn suggests the Internet age tropes of interactivity and multimedia engagement.
Interdisciplinary artist Stephanie Rothenberg who uses participatory performance, installation and networked media in her work have quite intriguingly taken the notion of the garden as a locus of interactivity and multimedia engagement to a new level with one of her recent works, the “Garden of Virtual Kinship.”
A sand-and-stone garden invites us to imagine and interpret. Rothenberg’s garden, which equates the lives of the plants with the movement (or non-movement) of humanitarian capital to developing countries, also asks us to do those and then some — maybe go beyond the artistic space and do some real-world good.
Grace,
This connection you made about the Japanese garden of empty space and abstract composition and Cage’s 4’33 silent piece is wonderful . The composer was deliberate in his actions, actively seeking to create an empty space for the audience to be active participants in the moment and the piece. Do you think there is also the space for participation in the Japanese Garden? Maybe there is participation in the sense that people seek to actively interpret and fill that space with their very presence. After-all, how beautiful can garden be if there is no-one there to bask in its glory?
Great point, Grace! I’m surprised Gere didn’t identify this example in the book. Zen’s aesthetic simplicity, present in Noh drama, Japanese gardens, and Japanese design more broadly, predates Western digital culture by about 1200 years, though I’m tempted to think its focus on quietude may have sprung from conditions similar to ours. Chinese and Indian culture flourished during the Dark Ages of the West, when our development was basically on hold for 10 centuries, and so I think they may simply have arrived at the same conclusion before us- The world was becoming smaller, and so we needed to preserve radical emptiness as a way to recuperate focus and meaning. This is simply a more holistic, complete, and elegant version of the same response to the distraction of modern noise proposed by Siegfried Kracauer in a piece Helen posted yesterday (http://bit.ly/1hfHpII).
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Steve Jobs seized on Zen aesthetics as a way make technology friendly again (vs Sony and IBM’s cold, industrial design), or inversely, that Zen-influenced Issey Miyake was so keen to integrate technology into his design. The mere simplicity of elegant design allows us to imbue our own meaning into otherwise cold and empty, though indispensable, functionality.
The modern relationship between Zen aesthetic form and digital function deserves further attention.
http://bit.ly/16y62OS
Hi Katelyn —
The idea of yohaku no bi (beauty of blank space), the aesthetic related to the sand-and-stone garden and the noh theater, is that the empty spaces are as significant as the filled spaces in conveying meaning to the whole composition. And again, these gardens are so abstract that you, as the viewer, can have various interpretations of it.
Another thing they say about a sand-and-stone garden is that it is meant to be a garden for contemplation rather than meditation. The basic difference between those terms seems to be that meditation implies going inwards while contemplation is the opposite. To contemplate is to project your mind, heart, spirit onto the outside world, so it is in a sense filling a space in a metaphysical manner. What’s more, filling the space in a metaphysical manner is the only way you can engage with the sand-and-stone garden because it is only meant as a viewing garden. You don’t walk into it. It is more like a 3D artwork in that sense.
The same is true with a noh theater performance which came from the same artistic mold as the sand-and-stone garden. The stage is so bare and the actor themselves play dual roles within the same play. So a lot is left to the audience’s imagination.
Hi Joel — Another related thought that occurred to me while reading the book was the parallel between the Cold War, hawkish sentiments that was the context of the avant-garde art movement Gere was talking about and the fact that when they were creating the original sand-and-stone gardens, Japan was transitioning into a military society from aristocracy (The emperor would become a mere figurehead for the next few hundred years).
So these gardens and the noh theater actually reflect the values of simplicity, frugality and austerity espoused by the samurai and his religious cohort, the Zen Buddhist monk. In the case of the 20th century avant-garde artists who embraced minimalism, they’re probably caught in a certain zeitgeist that is quite similar to what was happening in the society ruled by the samurais and monks. I wouldn’t speculate any further than that because that is already beyond my puny knowledge of historical trends.
Grace –I’m so grateful you brought up more ancient systems of contemplation that deeply integrate structure and “flow,” they way the supposedly avante-garde nature of digital culture/art does. A note: Gere’s premise in digital culture is actually to deny the abnormality of digital culture, and rather place it wholly within the historical spectrum of human society. In this sense, I think he would wholeheartedly agree that our current iteration/fascination with form and function and flow through cybernetics, is just a new version of an old human theme, as you point out.
My question is whether or not you think there is a distinction between the current iteration of multimedia art, and the basic premises of the garden and Noh theatre. Gere states that the roots of multimedia art can be traced back to the “combining of sounds, words and images.” Essentially –any form of theatre works for this definition! That said, i think there is something distinct about the way that the computer based art has developed, and I’m curious where you would draw the distinction (if any).
Hi Amanda — Yes, it’s amazing how certain cultural themes recur throughout history and personally, I find it very comforting to be able to find these patterns because it helps me navigate my way professionally and otherwise.
I’ll answer your question indirectly by saying that the basic link I see between current multimedia iterations and the sand-and-stone garden/Noh theater tradition is the way both of them espouses interactivity (in the sense of engaging the viewer to be an active receptor of information). The distinction or lack of it depends on how important is the aspect of interactivity for you with regards to these two artistic traditions.
Current multimedia would have a more literal approach to interactivity obviously. At the click of a mouse or the tap of a keyboard key, you can add to or change the terms of reference for understanding the content. Interactivity in the sand-and-stone garden or Noh theater is mostly confined to the viewer’s mind but to me, that doesn’t make it any less interactive, just a different kind of interactive.
In fact, I think it is that interactive aspect of the sand-and-stone garden which enabled the tradition to survive for so long. People from different times in history are always finding new meanings in it. In fact one of my standard means of getting people to engage with this garden is asking them to interpret what they see. And I usually get very different answers, especially when you tap into the rich imagination of a child.
The idea that Rothenberg’s garden encourages viewers to move beyond artistic contemplation and engage in real-world actions adds a compelling dimension to the discussion. It underscores the potential of art to inspire tangible change and social responsibility.