Pinch Neck (1968)

Each of the five elements feature close-cropped images of Bruce Nauman's face framed by bridge of his nose to his Adam's apple by the width of his face. Within this frame Nauman, using his fingers, pinches his lips; pulls his lower lip; pinches his cheeks, pulls his neck; and pulls his lips. The prints, which are printed in black and a DayGlo yellow-green, through the optical play of these colors mimic a holographic feel without the use of the actual mid-century utopian technology.



Nauman's holograms could easily be seen as being about the experience of information because the most intelligible explanation of what is seen in a hologram is given in terms of information.
The esthetic uses of the concept of information up to now have mostly looked like attempts to maintain a kind of abstraction in attitude while playing at immersion in certain kinds of concrete and commonplace subject matter, such as the referents of the statistics found in so much conceptualism. The troubling aspect of all this is perhaps the disengagement of information as a concept from speech, and thus from the kinds of justification which spoken and written utterances are subject to and which frequently determine their value.
You can buy Bruce Nauman (PAJ Books: Art + Performance).

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