As Tompkins finds Rauschenberg’s career to be a useful lens through which to summarize the changes in American art in the second half of the 20th century, I am finding ‘Off the Wall’ might be useful for linking together some themes that are showing up in my own thinking.

If a contemporary artist were to consciously assert his place in history [this appears to be a hallmark of current practice] what better way than to make representations of trash? Edward Burtynsky's Urban Mines are a good example, both embodying the concept that all things visual can be embraced by Art-with-a-capital-A, and doing so in a masterful, seductive way.

Better yet, why not use trash as the medium? Consider then, Bruce Sterling, in Shaping Things, [Yay! Another book I've finished!] mentions:

Our ancestors often spoke about posterity and immortal fame. What they would most like us to remember about them is generally gone. Since our values differ from theirs, we often can’t praise them for what they considered their virtues. What we do receive in plenty from past people is middens and refuse. Middens and refuse are so deprived of value that no human being tries to reshape them. We have plenty of rubbish. It lasts for thousands of years.

Indeed, soup cans in landfills might last longer and be more telling of the accomplishments of the 20th century. In Ken Johnson’s NYT review of ‘Monuments for the USA’

Mr. Rugoff's intention was not to select and ultimately build an actual work, however, so few of the artists appear to have been constrained by concerns about feasibility or public reception, as were those, for example, who submitted designs for the World Trade Center memorial. Also, some of the proposed projects could never come to fruition for political reasons - as is the case with Sam Durant's plan to move existing monuments commemorating battles and massacres of the 19th-century Indian wars to the Mall in Washington. Others, like Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla's vision of a pyramid of trash that would become the tallest mountain in the United States, would be technically impossible.

Tomkins discusses at length how Rauschenberg's embrace of garbage extended what Schwitters and Duchamp had done, both as a medium and as subject, equal to other media and subjects. Junk is just a special case of stuff, as are traditional artist's materials.

So, how does one extend Rauschenberg's embrace? Perhaps to include the disposable objects that will be made of grey goo in FabLabs, and once they've outlived their usefulness, will revert back to re-usable grey goo, leaving zero environmental footprint? And then perhaps to include the virtual models that defined those disposable objects? Coincidentally, Sterling writes at length about these future products, and how they will have a deep virtual aspect. He calls them 'spimes' and elaborates:

A manufactured item may start with a digital blueprint, its specifications and tolerances available online even before it exists. Automated production and shipping records provide a detailed history of the materials and procedures that went into making it. Once it's off the production line, a global positioning system can track it in space and time. Social software lets people critique it, offer advice, and suggest improvements. Ad-hoc networks like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi keep the item and the people who use it in constant communication. And if it was designed for disassembly and recycling, the object can be tracked well beyond the end of its useful life.

The future product that embodies these developments will be so radically different from today's that it will need an entirely new name. So let's give it one. Because it's tracked precisely in space and time, let's call it a spime.

White kind of spimes would Rauschenberg or Duchamp create? Until FabLabs are widespread, a good place to explore the aesthetic potential of spimes might be in their natural habitat, in simulations.

A couple of weeks ago a friend started picking my brain about Second Life – a virtual community that I’d heard of in passing. Unlike a multi-user game, it has no particular objective. It’s simply a place where one can create an identity, interact with others, and to a limited degree modify the environment. For example, Cory Doctorow, a sci-fi writer and contributor to bOINGbOING, recently did a virtual book-signing on 2L - his custom avatar was made to approximate his real-world appearance, he discussed his latest novel, and a virtual instance of the book was created in 2L [in fact there were several designs proposed for the 'book' object.]

My friend [who in 2L goes by the name Albedo Ixchel] and I discussed the possibility of creating an art gallery in 2L - one that actually takes advantage of the properties of things that are native to 2L, rather than simply putting up scans of 'real-world' images. This means objects that might have properties, or behaviors similar to works like Rauschenberg's 'Revolver' pieces, or Calder's mobiles. Bruce Sterling writes about the mobiles in a way that I think could clearly translate to 2L objects:

They were invented and built by a world-class avant-garde artist with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Calder mobiles are strongly biomorphic in both shape and motion.

They are thriftily built of cheap, recycled materials.

Mobiles move silently and tirelessly through the use of ambient, renewable energy.

Mobiles are sensitive indicators of local environmental conditions.

Mobiles scale up well, although the truly colossal mobiles require some modest aid from electric motors.

The term "mobile" was coined by Marcel Duchamp, a rather sphinxlike, timeless figure.

Thanks to Calder's iterative balancing technique, a mobile's simple network contains a great deal of subtle embedded judgement.  Thanks to this, the movement of a mobile is not mechanically repetitive, but pleasantly  lifelike and unpredictable.

Calder mobiles are distributed, collaborative networks in action.

Although mobiles can be quite large in volume, even monumental, they are very sparing in their use of materials.  They are dependent on open space, voids, and transparency; less mass, more data.

Mobiles have a life-affirming sense of humor.  It's hard  to imagine a grim, fanatical mobile.

In addition to the kinds of projects that might be *in* the gallery, we've talked a little about the architecture of the gallery as well. On one end of the spectrum, we've talked about something like Duchamps 'Valise,' while on the other end something like a Borges-ian library of all possible books. Perhaps, like Rauschenberg's combines, or the accumulation of objects in Katamari Damacy, it will just be a pile of objects sitting in a vacant lot.