Between Limit and Transgression

Between Limit and Transgression

The Play of Meaning at the Image’s Edge

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Matthew Lee [email protected]

Chapman, J. & Chapman, D. (2000) Exquisite Corpse.

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MA DIGITAL ARTS (VISUAL ARTS), 01 DECEMBER 2010

Course Leader: Jonathan Kearney

Supervisor: Andrew Stiff

Camberwell College, University of the Arts London

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Abstract

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How can the frame of the two-dimensional still image instigate a tension between presence and

absence, and a play between limit and transgression?

A frame, by conventional definition, is an assertion that the edges of the still image

are necessary for containing and restricting representation. As a self-contained semiotic device,

the frame presents to the viewer a sign, or a collection of signs, surrounded by an indeterminable

nothingness, which can never come into view. The image frame’s purpose, then, is to make the

world it contains ‘ordered and rational’ (Friedberg, 2009, p.42), by structuring, limiting and

closing the field of two-dimensional representation with the intention to fix meaning and context

neatly within its four borders.

This inquiry, however, challenges the notion that the frame presents fixed and stable meaning;

instead the frame is a device that is capable of facilitating a dialogue between inside/ outside,

presence/ absence. It is this indeterminable space outside the frame that the first part of this

investigation looks at in depth. Examples from drawing and photography demonstrate instances

when the edges of the image support a tension between what is present or viewable in the image,

and what is absent, unseen, out of view, beyond its borders. Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the ‘out-

of-field’ provides the theoretical basis for an exploration into how the still image is able to signify

a “somewhere else” in space and time outside the frame (Deleuze, 2005, p.18).

The investigation then goes on to explore other ways in which the still image is able to

transgress the fixity of the frame. The Exquisite Corpse and patchwork quilt exemplify a frame or

grid with possibilities for limitless spatial expansion. In these procedural activities, the grid is the

underlying ordering and sequencing mechanism, which structures a ‘dynamic tension’ between

‘rules and transgression’ (Kern, 2009, p.5). An examination of these ideas is then explored in

relation to the pixel-based digital image, with its potential for infinite compositional transformation

and spatial development.

This inquiry determines that the still image frame is capable of instigating a dialogical play or

irresolvable tension, between what is present in the frame, and what is absent, beyond its

borders. This inquiry also shows that the frame or gridded mechanism in dynamic spatial

development facilitates a ‘movement of a chain’, a transformative process in which meaning and

context are inherently boundless (Derrida, 1980, p.292).

Key words: Frame, Representation, Presence/ Absence, Semiotics, Play

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Between Limit and Transgression

The Play of Meaning at the Image’s Edge

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The four fixed borders that frame a conventional still image function to demarcate

the space available for representation while limiting the domain available to the artist, and, in

turn, what is presented to the viewer. The frame may have a material thickness, as in the

structural gilt frame around a Renaissance painting, or it may be an immaterial border, as in the

edges of a photograph. However, the essential definition of a frame is to contain and restrict. The

frame of the painting and the frame of the camera ‘always leaves out more of the world than it

can fit in’ (Hedges, 1991, p.xvi); compelling the artist to make critical choices between what is

included and excluded from the visual plane. Michael Carter takes this further, observing that ‘the

fundamental characteristic of the visual image is that it has an edge, it stops. Unlike 'reality' which

appears as unbounded, the image constantly displays to its viewer the fact that it is different from

'reality' by having an edge’ (Carter, 1990, p.149). The purpose of this edge is to distinguish

difference, not only between what is included and excluded from within representational space,

but also between representational space and real space. Framing is a fundamental necessity for

comprehension, because without it, differences between these dualities become problematic:

‘framing always supports and contains that which, by itself, collapses forthwith’ (Derrida, 1987,

p.79). The frame then, attempts to make the world it contains ‘ordered and rational’ (Friedberg,

2009, p.42), by structuring, limiting and closing the field of two-dimensional representation in

order to fix meaning and context neatly within its four borders.

Does this conventional definition of the frame encompass all two-dimensional images? Are

there not examples of images that transgress strict framing rationale?

One such example of transgressing the frame may be the Exquisite Corpse (Cadavre Exquis), a

collaborative game popularized by the Surrealists in which the frame continually extends,

incorporating more and more content to a potentially ever-expanding composition. The process

for this game begins with one person drawing some visual material across a delimited section of

paper, which is then folded over so that the next contributing artist can only see the very end of

what had been drawn. The second person continues the composition, joining the ends of the

previous unseen section with his own contribution; this is again folded over and hidden from the

view of the next contributing artist. The game continues in this manner, with all previous sections

remaining hidden from view until the game is considered over, all connecting sections are then

unfolded, revealing a string of heterogeneous visual material.

It is at the end of the game when the work is unfolded that the mechanisms of the Exquisite

Corpse are fully observable. At the micro level it is revealed that the final image is comprised of a

series of delineated sections, with each of these demarcating (framing) the space within which

each contributor has drawn his part. It is also apparent that each artist has joined his contribution

with the previous input and that the image parts have come to connect across the divide between

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these sections. At the macro level however, this content, which has continually transgressed a

series of gridded sections, has now become static, fixed within a rigid frame, encompassing all

parts that make up the whole. In the end, there is no way for the still image to break free from

framing convention. In the Exquisite Corpse there is a play between limit and limit’s transgression

as more and more content comes into view, into presence, during the game; but once ended, the

work reaches its boundary, it too becomes framed like any other image.

Chapman, J. & Chapman, D. (2000) Exquisite Corpse.

The four edges of the artwork are then necessary for structuring, limiting and closing the field

of representation, ‘[allowing] us to experience the artwork as unproblematically present’ (Duro,

1996, p.5). Though the frame usually does not draw attention to itself, it has an essential role in

focusing the viewer’s gaze towards the meaning it presents and privileges above what is exterior

or excluded from view. As Roland Barthes states in Image, Music, Text:

The tableau…is a pure cut-out segment with clearly defined edges, irreversible and incorruptible;

everything that surrounds it is banished into nothingness, remains unnamed, while everything that it

admits within its field is promoted into essence, into light, into view. (Barthes, 1977, p.70)

Here Barthes defines the tableau (frame) as a rigid, clinical and absolute structure that

operates as a delimiting boundary between what is present or viewable in the image, and what is

absent, unseen, out of view beyond its borders. He establishes that the frame forms a ‘clearly

defined’ divide between dualities of presence/ absence, acknowledging that to limit, is to also

imply there is something beyond limit, which has been rejected. Essentially, Barthes regards the

still image frame as a self-contained semiotic device, one which presents to the viewer a sign, or a

collection of signs, surrounded by a nothingness, which can never come into view (Manovich,

2001, p.104). In Cinema 1, Gilles Deleuze extensively critiques this indeterminable space, which

he refers to as the ‘out-of-field’ (hors-champ) – that which exists in space beyond the frame that

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‘is neither seen nor understood, but is nevertheless perfectly present’ (Deleuze, 2005, p.17).

Unlike Barthes, who refers to this unseen space as absent nothingness, Deleuze instead claims

that the ‘out-of-field’ has a persistent presence in dialogical relation with the image:

In one case, the out-of-field designates that which exists elsewhere, to one side or around; in the

other case, the out-of-field testifies to a more disturbing presence, one which cannot even be said to

exist, but rather to ‘insist’ or ‘subsist’, a more radical Elsewhere, outside homogeneous space and

time. (Deleuze, 2005, p.18)

This concept of the ‘out-of-field’ then challenges the idea that the frame presents fixed and

stable meaning within its borders. This ‘radical Elsewhere’ outside the image also has semiotic

value; it functions as an interpretive space and is set in motion by the viewer’s imagination,

making ‘the image into a mental image, open…on to a play of relations which are purely thought’

(Deleuze, 2005, p.19). This idea can be seen at work across a variety of Edward Gorey’s

illustrated stories, where the ‘out-of-field’ has a prominent role in the delivery (or non-delivery) of

the macabre tale. In Gorey’s abecedarian book The Gaschlycrumb Tinies what is not seen in the

frame becomes the significant focus. Each singular illustration is accompanied by a line of text

that tells us of an absent event which has either already happened and is now out of the frame: ‘K

is for Kate who was struck with an Axe’, or is about to enter the frame in the imminent future: ‘V

is for Victor squashed under a train’. Here, the text and image signify a “somewhere else” in space

and time outside the borders of the frame. Gorey does not present a fixed image of the event

itself, but with just enough contextual information for the viewer to form a mental image of the

incident. In Story For Sara, Gorey uses text this time to describe what is happening outside of the

boundary of the frame at that given instant: ‘The cat didn’t care a bit; he swallowed her in one

mouthful‘. Here, the tail of the cat can be seen just in the right of the frame, but all else has been

censored from view. The specific context is then established through the text – If this text were

altered, then naturally so would our perception of the action implied beyond the frame.

Gorey, E. (1963) The Gaschlycrumb Tinies. Gorey, E. (1971) Story For Sara.

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Gorey, E. (1968) The Other Statue.

One illustration from The Other Statue presents a group of onlookers whose inquisitive focus

leads the viewer towards the lower left of the image edge. Here are two legs of a figure lying flat

on the pavement, the rest of the body cropped out of the frame. The scene provides us with more

questions than answers; to whom do the legs belong? Why are they lying there? Is the person

dead, asleep, or just observing cracks in the pavement? Neither image nor text provides sufficient

information to answer these questions. As Wim Tigges says, ‘The terrible things happen just

outside the framework of the picture, and so Gorey suggests that they happen just outside the

frame of the texts as well’ (Tigges, 1988, p.189). In semiology, a sign is considered to be involved

in a two-part relationship, between a present signifier and an absent signified. Pictures (and text)

are then ‘signs which can evoke the image of, or refer to, absent objects’ (Nöth, 2007, p.61). In

The Other Statue, Gorey’s framing of the situation forces a semiotic gap in the narrative scene,

which denies the reader the ability to comprehend the ‘full picture’. This however allows the

viewer to interpret the event, forming a mental image or multiple mental images that go beyond

what is present in the frame. What is essential in many of Gorey’s illustrations is that the edges of

the frame have an important role in creating a dialogical ‘tension between presence and absence

of meaning’ that remains ultimately irresolvable (Tigges, 1988, p.52).

Gorey’s open compositions, in which elements are cut by or extend beyond the edges of the

frame, seem to take inspiration from the delimiting characteristics of the photograph – It is almost

inconceivable to imagine the creation of these works prior to the invention of the camera.

However, Stanley Cavell explains an important distinction between the frame of the conventional

painting and the frame of a photograph, which, in turn, implicates our reading of the ‘out-of-field’:

You can always ask, of an area photographed, what lies adjacent to that area, beyond the frame. This

generally makes no sense asked of a painting. You can ask these questions of objects in photographs

because they have answers in reality. The world of a painting is not continuous with the world of its

frame; at its frame, a world finds its limits. We might say: A painting is a world; a photograph is of the

world. What happens in a photograph is that it comes to an end. A photograph is cropped, not

necessarily by a paper cutter or by masking but by the camera itself. (Cavell, 1979, pp.23-24)

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The technical and material limitation of the camera forces the photographer to select a finite

section from infinite space, but this restriction also acts as a compositional device, allowing the

photographer to purposefully limit what is ‘framed and fixed for the viewer’ (Friedberg, 2009,

p.129). Unlike in painting, the world actually continues beyond the spatial confines of the two-

dimensional photograph, but the viewer can still only imagine or presume what elements exist in

front, behind, above, below or to the sides of that contained within the frame.

The photographic work of Martin Parr, whose portraits make use of the delimiting edges of the

photographic apparatus to play with notions of identity, also uses framing as a subject itself.

Parr’s compositions often focus on the subject’s midriff, with the head usually cropped out of the

image. This limiting of visual information forces the viewer to make judgments based on what he

or she can only assume – with the subject’s clothing in a given context, now serving as the

subject itself, facilitating stereotypical notions to form the basis of these judgments. Another of

Parr’s photographs features the image of a tourist who is in the process of taking a photograph,

but the delimiting edges of the spatially flattened image restrict from view the tourist’s

photographic subject. Again, the viewer can only form assumptive propositions based on the

context presented within the frame. What is clear, then, is that though the ‘out-of-field’ beyond

the photograph may generally have ‘answers in reality’, this space beyond the finite cut still allows

‘room for thought’ (Cavell, 1979, p.24).

Parr, M. (2007) Dubai. Parr, M. (2002) Mexico.

Deleuze’s concept of the ‘out-of-field’ brings into question the notion that the frame constrains

what the image may signify. This unknown, indeterminable space beyond the fixed image is open

to a degree of interpretation. The image may then operate within the fixed parameters of a frame,

but its meaning, in correspondence with the ‘out-of-field’, is able to transgress what is merely

visible. There is always involvement from the outside: the ‘closed system is never completely

closed’ (Deleuze, 2005, p.18). Herein lies the problem; a frame is a fundamental necessity for

structuring, limiting and closing the field of representation, which seeks to but ultimately fails to

present fully-fixed and unequivocal meaning within its four demarcating borders. The edges of the

image then, provide an array of opportunities for visual artists to foreground the frame; using its

restrictions purposefully, to support a dialogical play or irresolvable tension between what is

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present or viewable in the image, and what is absent, unseen, out of view beyond its borders.

Deleuze continues his interrogation of the ‘out-of-field’:

When a set is framed, therefore seen, there is always a larger set, or another set with which the first

forms a larger one, and which can in turn be seen, on condition that it gives rise to a new out-of-field,

etc. The set of all these sets forms a homogeneous continuity, a universe or a plane [plan] of

genuinely unlimited content. (Deleuze, 2005, pp.17-18)

Here Deleuze presents a potentially unlimited process for the framing and continual reframing

of space: ‘The closed system refers in space to a set which is not seen, and which can in turn be

seen, even if this gives rise to a new unseen ‘set’, on to infinity’ (Deleuze, 2005, p.18). When the

photographic apparatus comes to incorporate a larger ‘set’ of visual information, the meaning of

the in-set becomes recontextualized, forming a continuity with the larger ‘set’ that was previously

unseen. This process can be seen in Takashi Homma’s series of five photographs for Jesus Jones’

Perverse album artwork, which operate as an example of how a meaning of a ‘set’ is affected

when space is dynamically framed and reframed. Homma’s first photograph in this sequence

presents a close up of two formidable masked wrestlers. In the second photograph the ‘set’ is

extended to show that the wrestlers are in fact holding hands. In the third photograph they are

shown to be standing in a front room, joined on either side by two women in pink leotards. When

the ‘set’ extends again, a tripod comes into view, foregrounding the artificial and self-referential

nature of the setting. In the fifth and final photograph the scene is framed by another in-set frame

– the outside brick wall and window of an English Victorian house.

Homma, T. (1992) Perverse.

Across Homma’s series, the four delimiting edges of each photograph are decisive in the

contextualizing and then recontextualizing of content. The work operates as an example of how

‘the value of a sign is affected by the presence of other signs around it’ (Crow, 2003, p.48), with

our perception of the scene changing each time a new set of visual signs comes into view. When

space is continually reframed, the meaning and context are also in constant transformation. In

Homma’s series this transgressive process stops at the fifth photograph, however it is conceivable

to imagine a process that continues to add larger and larger ‘sets’, recontextualizing meaning and

reframing space, onto infinity. This idea finds its theoretical correlation in Charles Sanders Peirce’s

concept of ‘unlimited semiosis’, a semiotic process where the interpretation of one sign leads to

another sign, onto infinity. As Winfried Nöth explains:

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Since every sign creates an interpretant which in turn is the representamen of a second sign, semiosis

results in a “series of successive interpretants” ad infinitum. There is no “first” nor “last” sign in this

process of unlimited semiosis…The continuous process of semiosis (or thinking) can only be

“interrupted,” but never really be “ended”. (Nöth, 1990, 2.4.2)

In his essay, “Structure, Sign & Play,” Jacques Derrida also discuses a semiosis of infinite play

that precludes fixed meaning, stating that: ‘the absence of a transcendental signified extends the

domain and the play of signification infinitely' (Derrida, 1980, p.280). Put simply, there can be

neither ultimate presence nor fixed and final meaning in a semiotic process that is in continual

transition. In such a process there is a ‘play of presence and absence’, between all that has been,

and all that is yet to come (Derrida, 1980, p.292). Derrida calls this operation a ‘movement of a

chain’ (Derrida, 1980, p.292), which evokes quite literally the process–based mechanism of the

collaborative Exquisite Corpse game. The Exquisite Corpse drawing continually extends its spatial

frame, incorporating more and more disparate visual material to a potentially ever-expanding

composition. Each time an artist adds a contribution, a meaning is unpredictably transformed –

‘the turtle becomes a jigsaw becomes the loin of a beast’ (Laxton, 2009, p.34).

This game however, is essentially comprised of a series of repeated gridded (folded) sections,

which are the underlying framework for ordering and sequencing the collaborative activity. The

grid does not formulate an image with a center or a privileged hierarchical order, but a list of

visual parts, which generates ‘an arbitrary assemblage of attachments from one signifier to

another’ (Kern, 2009, p.7). The divide between sections marks differences between parts,

however, these parts are also joined together by the ‘smooth transition of line’ that moves across,

from one section to another (Laxton, 2009, p.32). The string of connected visual parts then works

in compliance with a gridded mechanism, which structures and paradoxically orders the play it

simultaneously allows to happen. In the context of this investigation, “play” refers to a meaning,

which is in constant movement – in either a dialogical tension, or in boundless, ever emerging

transformation. In the Exquisite Corpse there is a dialogical play of meaning between gridded

parts, and also a transformative play of meaning along a linear sequence.

Breton, A., Camille, G., Prévert, J. and Tanguy, Y. (1927) Exquisite Corpse Drawings.

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The Exquisite Corpse, with its gridded repetitions and transitional visual elements would then be

an example of a ‘smooth’ form, which moves through ‘striated’ gridded space. In their essay

“1440: The Smooth and the Striated”, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss these notions of

the ‘smooth’ and the ‘striated’ space:

The striated is that which intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and succession of

distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic planes. The smooth is

continuous variation, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in

favour of the production of properly rhythmic values. (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, p.528)

Deleuze and Guattari examine these ideas of ‘smooth’ and ‘striation’ in relation to the

patchwork quilt, which, like the Exquisite Corpse, consists of repetitions in structure (striation)

and continuous variation in its visual elements (smoothness). The patchwork quilt is made up of

material fragments that vary in size, shape, colour, pattern and texture. These juxtaposing

elements are sewn together to form a square, which is then stitched to other opposing squares to

form a grid. As Rico Franses explains: ‘it appears that the vast majority of quilts evidence a

careful play between order and random “unstructure.” Straight lines and squares often lurk

beneath the visual turbulence above’ (Franses, 1996, p.316). Like the Exquisite Corpse, the quilt

has no center or hierarchical order; each square has the same value as the next. The grid

spatially organizes and structurally frames the material fragments, but as the quilt maker keeps

adding more and more squares to the extending grid, there is also clear potential in the quilt for

infinite spatial expansion. As Rico Franses again explains: ‘It is the endless nature of the grid that

allows simultaneously for a framing function of individual units (the squares), and the infinite

replication of these, which leads not to chaos but to boundless structure’ (Franses, 1996, p.259).

Like the Exquisite Corpse then, the patchwork quilt is both framed and frameless. The grid is the

necessary ordering mechanism of these procedural activities, which structures a ‘dynamic tension’

between order and disorder and ‘rules and transgression’ (Kern, 2009, p.5).

Barnes, N. (1900-1920) Crazy Quilt.

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These characteristics of ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space can also be evidenced in the two-

dimensional digital raster image. At the micro level, the digital still image consists of pixels

(picture elements) – a finite number of abstract squares, each with its own ‘distinct color or tonal

value’ (Manovich, 2001, p.53). These single point units of information form an underlying grid for

an image composition, which at ‘actual size’ may appear smooth and seamless. Framed

microelements then exist within the virtual frame of the digital raster image:

Visually, these computer-generated or manipulated images are indistinguishable from traditional

photo…images, whereas on the level of “material” they are quite different, as they are made from

pixels or represented by mathematical equations and algorithms. (Manovich, 2001, p.180)

As Lev Manovich notes, pixels are numerical representations of an algorithmic code. These

mathematical equations can be altered; which means that each individual picture element, which

comprises the digital image, is ‘subject to algorithmic manipulation’ (Manovich, 2001, p.27).

Digitization then allows a flexibility or variability that is not possible in traditional still image

media. For example, The GUI (Graphical User Interface) actions and commands of Adobe

Photoshop allow the user to continually modify the image composition: content fragments from a

variety of sources can be added, deleted, combined, manipulated, layered, cut, copied, rescaled

and rearranged. The image file can then be reworked an infinite number of times, and saved in

limitless versions and in a variety of file formats. This technical and material flexibility within the

representational field also extends to the compositional frame itself, which can be proportionately

resized, or an area of the ‘set’ selected and cropped. Furthermore, canvas space can also be

adjusted, reshaped or the amount of picture elements extended, thus giving the artist choices

through which to modify what is seen or not seen in the picture plane. The computer display

window, which is the frame around the canvas, also allows for mobility: actions such as zoom-in,

zoom-out and scrolling, allow for an image to be viewed as a whole, or in fluid, dynamic parts.

These navigational capabilities then fundamentally change how an image is read or explored by a

‘viewer-turned-user’ (Friedberg, 2009, p.232).

What is essential is that these variable and mobile characteristics of the digital still image allow

both the artist and the viewer/ user to explore a variety of open compositional framings. The

edges of the digital image are still essentially a boundary, which orders and demarcates inside

from outside, however, unlike the frame of the traditional painting or photograph; the digital

image is ‘not something fixed once and for all’ (Manovich, 2001, p.36). The implied action ‘out-of-

field’ can remain permanently outside the frame, but in some instances it can also be revealed. In

New Philosophy for New Media, Mark B. N. Hanson discusses this capacity for the digital image to

transgress the fixity of the frame:

the set of elementary numerical points comprising a digital image contains within itself, as alternative

permutations of these points, all potential images to follow, and since therefore, any point whatever

can furnish the link to the next image, the digital image explodes the frame. (Hansen, 2004, p.35)

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The numerically constructed and gridded digital image then has the potential for infinite spatial

and compositional transformation. This idea of a dynamic space in which an image’s meaning or

context is in constant process is again reminiscent of Peirce’s concept of ‘unlimited semiosis’ or

Derrida’s ‘movement of a chain’. These ideas can in turn be seen in Gridcosm, an online

collaborative project set up by Ed Stastny, founder of SITO art collective in 1997. The process for

this participatory activity is explained on the project website as follows:

Gridcosm is a collaborative art project in which artists from around the world contribute images to a

compounding series of graphical squares. Each level of Gridcosm is made up of nine square images

arranged into a 3x3 grid. The middle image is a one-third size version of the previous level. Artists add

images around that center image until a new 3x3 grid is completed, then that level itself shrinks and

becomes the "seed" for the next level. This process creates an ever expanding tunnel of images, the

newest level a direct result of the previous level which is a result of the previous level...and so on.

(Gridcosm, 1997)

Stastny, E., Oast, E. V. & Oast, J. V. (1997) Gridcosm Levels 3491, 3490 and 3489.

Each Gridcosm level consists of 450x450 pixels, which is divided into a 3x3 square grid. Again,

the grid is the underlying mechanism for ordering and sequencing this process-based, activity.

Each individual contribution is first created in an image editing software to a scale of 150x150

pixels and is then uploaded to its designated grid position on the project website. When all nine

squares of a level are complete, the overall effect created is one of ‘shared difference’: fragments

of photographs, drawings, text, appropriated material and individual graphic styles appear to both

‘join and separate, couple and divide’ (Laxton, 2009, p.34). Sometimes there are unexpected

juxtapositions between distinct squares, while other times there is a unity, especially in instances

where artists have attempted to blend their delimited section with that of the surrounding, already

completed sections. Regular collaborators often work together, in an attempt to make the overall

image appear ‘smooth’ and seamless, continuing the theme and colour scheme, sometimes across

several levels. In these cases, ‘striation’ acts as a restriction, but also a challenge to overcome.

Gridcosm then, is comparable to the Exquisite Corpse game; both are collaborative activities

that operate through a gridded mechanism, with inherent possibilities for infinite spatial expansion

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and compositional transformation. However, unlike the Exquisite Corpse, this project does not

extend its spatial frame at the four outer edges, but rather forms a tunnel of images, that recedes

towards a single (vanishing) point at the image center. What marks Gridcosm as fundamentally

different from the Exquisite Corpse is that the viewer is able to witness the collaborative process

in real-time, as artists add their sections, and as the meaning and context of the work changes. In

the Exquisite Corpse one only sees the drawing at the end of the activity, when the work is fixed

and bound within its final frame. In contrast, Gridcosm allows the viewer to navigate through its

levels, traversing through space and time, clicking on each compounding layer. In this way, the

viewer/ user is able to see a ‘chain’ of meaning production as it has been unfolded and will

continue to unfold.

The traditional Exquisite Corpse, as played by the Surrealists, involves a set number of players,

working in one location, on a single sheet of paper. In contrast, there are currently 3491 levels in

Gridcosm, created by over 300 artists, across a span of 14 years (Gridcosm, 1997). These

material, time and player limitations do not apply to this online platform, which allows for

continuous and open collaboration over distance. These technical and material differences

between the Exquisite Corpse and Gridcosm prove that the digital domain is not just another

medium, but the next logical step for further enabling a potentially limitless transgression of the

frame. It is this theoretical idea of infinity, which is fundamental to the transgressive process.

However, there still remains the practical impossibility that anything human-created can ever

really be infinite. There may be no foreseeable finality to Gridcosm; but if (or when) the

collaborative project becomes inactive, the work will then become fixed and bound to a frame

that, by conventional definition, delimits inside from outside and presence from absence.

In closing, it is also important to recognize that while the digital image has the inherent

capacity to transgress the fixity of the spatial frame within the computer window, it is still

however inset within the four fixed material borders of the computer display screen. This master

frame is a necessity for ordering and demarcating real material space from the immateriality of

virtual space (Friedberg, 2006, p.6). However, even then, according to Mark B. N. Hansen, the

digital image ‘need no longer be so bounded’ to the screen (Hansen, 2004, p.31):

Regardless of its current surface appearance, digital data is at heart polymorphous: lacking any

inherent form or enframing, data can be materialized in an almost limitless array of framings; yet so

long as it is tied to the image-frame [screen]…this polymorphous potential will remain entirely

untapped. (Hansen, 2004, p.35)

Hansen’s assertion that the digital has ‘polymorphous potential’ presupposes the fracturing or

dissolving of divides between dualities of inside/ outside, real/ virtual and sender/ receiver. This

raises interesting questions in relation to framing, which becomes invariably complex in the

dematerialized, multiform and multidimensional digital domain.

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Conclusion

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The four edges of the still image are a necessity, required for structuring, limiting

and closing the field of two-dimensional representation and also for distinguishing difference,

between what is included and excluded from the visual plane. The image frame’s purpose, then, is

to display the artwork as ‘unproblematically present’ (Duro, 1996, p.5), with the intention to fix

meaning and context neatly within its demarcating borders. Deleuze’s concept of the ‘out-of-field’

however challenges this notion of fixity; while the frame presents a still image within its

boundaries, it is unable to present a fully-fixed and unequivocal meaning (Deleuze, 2005, p.18).

Instead, meaning is able to transgress the formal and material limitations of the frame, by

signifying a “somewhere else” in space and time. The ‘out-of-field’ also has semiotic value; it

operates in dialogical relation with the image and is open to a degree of interpretation. The edges

of the image then, provide an array of opportunities for visual artists to foreground the frame;

using its restrictions purposefully, to support a dialogical play or irresolvable tension between

what is present, in the image, and what is absent, beyond its borders.

The Exquisite Corpse and patchwork quilt exemplify a frame or grid with possibilities for

limitless spatial expansion. In these procedural activities, the grid is the underlying ordering and

sequencing mechanism, which structures a ‘dynamic tension’ between order and disorder and

‘rules and transgression’ (Kern, 2009, p.5). In the example of the Exquisite Corpse, the gridded

mechanism facilitates a ‘movement of a chain’, a transformative process in which meaning and

context are in constant spatial development (Derrida, 1980, p.292). This is then comparable to

the numerically constructed digital image, which has an intrinsic flexibility or variability. The

digital image may still adhere to the basic principles of framing, but it also has the capacity to not

be so limited by a rigid, fixed frame. The implied action ‘out-of-field’ can remain permanently

outside the frame, but in some instances it can also be revealed.

The technical and material flexibility of digital space enable individual artists or collaborators to

create process-based works, where space is in dynamic development, and where meaning and

context are in infinite transformation. It is this theoretical idea of infinity, which is fundamental to

the transgressive process. However, there still remains the practical impossibility that anything

human-created can ever really be infinite. Even in the digital domain framing limitation is enforced

when the project is no longer active, the image file closed, or printed on a material surface. The

play between limit and limit’s transgression then comes to an end, and the artwork becomes

bound by a fixed frame, which by conventional definition, delimits inside from outside and what is

present from what is absent.

15

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Between Limit and Transgression

Design

Transcript of Between Limit and Transgression