The title of the artwork, “Style of Activity” is taken from Michel Foucault’s “The Care of the Self” where he introduces the notion of shifting identities as an opposition to external laws. The body in the artwork represents the ‘Self’ in a state of bondage, tied to the cultural, political, and ideological constraints put forth by the ‘other’ represented by the keys of the keyboard. Each key on the keyboard could also be interpreted as a “Thou Shalt” in a Nietzschean sense. The tension between the key and the body imposed by the underlying string is (or could be) the desire that pulls one towards an ‘inner ring’.
How does one live one’s life being aware of the cultural, political, and ideological constraints that restrict the activities one can pursue and the states of being one can inhabit? If everything that one can do or be is determined by external condition, how does one acquire an identity for oneself?
'The Style of Activity’ provides answers to the above mentioned questions.
Roland Barthes in his “Death of the Author,” brings to surface the mechanistic nature of the creative process. His argument is the following: All art is made up of already existing signs and it is impossible to conceive a sign that does not already exist: one can’t possibly imagine a new color or a new shape that is not reducible to already existing shapes and colors. The creative process is then a discovery of a ‘particular’ combination of these signs.
In that context, within the 9 keys spread out in the keyboard, there exist more than a billion possible sounds that can be produced in 10 seconds (given one stroke per second). However, only a few of them can engage the aesthetic min as wave-forms that entail substance. The artist then, is the one that discovers this ‘particular’ combination from the larger set of possible variations.
The ”Self” in its being constrained by the “other” is analogous to how the rhythm is constrained by the 8 keys. One could either choose not to be/act (commit suicide, which Camus wouldn’t approve) knowing that one is limited by a set of constraints or embrace the absurdity in the same way an artist could either choose to live in misery knowing that he/she cannot possibly ever ‘create’ a new work of art or embrace the possibility of “discover”
Given such a limiting framework:
-For the Waveform, a ‘particular’ conscious traversal between the keys brings substance.
-For the Self, a ‘particular’ conscious traversal between the constraints put forth by the
‘other’ shapes identity.