Defines the open work.

Every work of art is open in terms of the interpretation that different viewers from different cultural contexts, personal experiences etc can provide. However Eco refers to another type of open work and to different degrees of openess. Historically, Baroque provided some degree of this openess as it was a [dynamic form... tending to indeterminacy of effect, in its play of solid and void, light and darkness... pp26]. Eco believes that this [marks the advent of a new scientific awareness as the tactile is replace by the virtual, hence subjective element comes to prevail and attention is shifted from the essence to the apperance... pp 31] Symbolism also, as in the case of Kafka, his work represents [ a world of ambiguity, both in the negative sense that directional centers are missing and in positive sense, because values and dogma are constantly being placed in question pp28] or J Joyce whereas his world [is always changing as it is perceived by different observers and by them at different times pp28 quoting Edmund Wilson]. Another open author is Brecht as he presents characteristics of [ambiguity in social intercourse... in the sense that the debate is open... a solution is seen as desirable and is actually anticipated, but it must come from the collective enterprise of the audience...pp29/30 ] The above cases Eco defines as an [openess based on theoretical, mental collaboration of the consumer... interpreting a datum .... that is already organized in its structural entirety [by the artist] pp30]. Whilst another type of openess is considered in Mallarmes Livre and in general on symbolist poets. [Livre was conceived as an mobile apparatus [...] as a work in movement pp31]] > arising from the need for deconstruction, for exploring different points of view (paraphrasing) If I understand pp 33 correctly, Eco wants to highlight that the work of art starts being regarded as an ontological tool, where inderterminacy (and I would substitute this with the word REDUNDANCY to connect this to cybernetic philososphy) becomes the space for research and verfication. Eco stresses that {DEFINITION of OPEN WORK} > [every performance of some of the open end musical compositions, explains the composition but does not exhaust it. pp33 . Every performance offers us a complete and satisfying version of the work, but at the same time makes it incomplete for us, because it cannot simultaneously give all the other artistic solutions which work may admit] Here Eco treats open works as systems, and links them to the principle of complementarity in physics [par. pp33 we cannot indicate the different behaviour patterns of an elementary particle "simultaneously". These patterns / models contradict one another, hence they are complemantary]. Because of this Eco attempts a definition of the open works as those works for which: an incomplete knowledge of the system is an essential feature pp33. > Eco links this to perceptive ambiguities, concepts of modern psychology and phenomenology that mean some sort of unconventional epistemological tools.

Further down the line a reflection on perception is due. Eco comments that [perception includes horizons which encompass other perceptive possibilities....such as a person miht experience by changing deliberately the direction o his perception, by turning his eyes one way instead of another....pp34]. This connects immediately to La Monte Yongs Dream House installation. The way the sound is perceived can be changed by the viewer moving around the room. He can play his own frequency, the room becomes and instrument and the viewer is the performer. In synthesis, the open work reflects a shift in science as well as in art, society etc that brings us towards a phenomenological approach to reality. The characteristics of [par. "openess" and "dynamism"... are related to the ones of indeterminacy and discontinuity in quantum physics but also in Einstein's relativity - pp35] The objective side of the system is given by the [invariance of the concept of relativity (ie. admitting that everything is different as a consequence of situtations, measurements etc)]. Authorship who does the open work belong to? I was waiting for the topic of authorship to arise as to me this is quite important in the analysis of the open work. I have to say, I was a little let down by the way Eco resolves it. He basically denies that there is a loss of authorship by the artist in the open art work. This is based on the fact that even thought the viewers performance changes the work, this happens within a field of relations that are dictated by the author. Eco see the the open work as an [oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author pp36 - he offers the viewer a work to be completed.... a series of possibilities which had already been rationally organized...] In this point I would like to take a different direction and see whether I can find some more interesting findings. I believe that looking at the open work as a system in which the author, the viewer, the medium are connected parts, can helps us better understand how to navigate the concept of authorship. The system is also a cell of a larger system, in the manner that exists in nature, where every cell is an individual universe of it own account, however it contributes to a larger and larger organism. By going and analyze some of these open works in the manner we do of a complex and deeply relational system, I believe new ideas can emerge about the differentiation of its parts, the way these function and what responsibility / merit every part plays in it.