Simulacrum

Simulacrum (pronounced sim-yuh-ley-kruhm)

(1) A slight, unreal, or superficial likeness or semblance; a physical image or representation of a deity, person, or thing.

(2) An effigy, image, or representation; a thing which has the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities; a thing which simulates another thing; an imitation, a semblance; a thing which has a similarity to the appearance or form of another thing, but not its true qualities

(3) Used loosely, any representational image of something (a nod to the Latin source).

1590–1600: A learned borrowing of the Latin simulācrum (likeness, image) and a dissimilation of simulaclom, the construct being simulā(re) (to pretend, to imitate), + -crum (the instrumental suffix which was a variant of -culum, from the primitive Indo-European –tlom (a suffix forming instrument nouns).  The Latin simulāre was the present active infinitive of simulō (to represent, simulate) from similis (similar to; alike), ultimately from the primitive Indo-European sem- (one; together).  In English, the idea was always of “something having the mere appearance of another”, hence the conveyed notion of a “a specious imitation”, the predominant sense early in the nineteenth century while later it would be applied to works or art (most notably in portraiture) judged, “blatant flattery”.  In English, simulacrum replaced the late fourteenth century semulacre which had come from the Old French simulacre.  As well as the English simulacrum, the descendents from the Latin simulācrum include the French simulacre, the Spanish simulacro and the Polish symulakrum.  Simulacrum is a noun and simulacral is an adjective; the noun plural is simulacrums or simulacra (a learned borrowing from Latin simulācra).  Although neither is listed, by lexicographers, in the world of art criticism, simulacrally would be a tempting adverb and simulacrumism an obvious noun.  The comparative is more simulacral, the suplerative most simulacral.

Simulacrum had an untroubled etymology didn’t cause a problem until French post-structuralists found a way to add layers of complication.  The sociologist & philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) wrote a typically dense paper (The Precession of Simulacra (1981)) explaining simulacra were “…something that replaces reality with its representation… Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real.” and his examples ranged from Disneyland to the Watergate scandal.  One can see his point but it seems only to state the obvious and wicked types like Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) said it in fewer words.  To be fair, Baudrillard’s point was more about the consequences of simulacra than the process of their creation and the social, political and economic implication of states or (more to the point) corporations attaining the means to “replace” reality with a constructed representation were profound.  The idea has become more relevant (and certainly more discussed) in the post-fake news world in which clear distinctions between that which is real and its imitations have become blurred and there’s an understanding that through many channels of distribution, increasingly, audiences are coming to assume nothing is real.

Advertising copy for the 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (left) with graphical art by Art Fitzpatrick (1919–2015) & Van Kaufman (1918-1995) and a (real) 1961 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe (right) fitted with Pontiac's much admired 8-lug wheels, their exposed centres actually the brake drum.

The work of Fitzpatrick & Kaufman is the best remembered of the 1960s advertising by the US auto industry and their finest creations were those for General Motors’ (GM) Pontiac Motor Division (PMD).  The pair rendered memorable images but certainly took some artistic licence and created what were even then admired as simulacrums rather than taken too literally.  While PMD’s “Year of the Wide-Track” (introduced in 1959) is remembered as a slogan, it wasn’t just advertising shtick, the decision taken to increase the track of Pontiacs by 5 inches (125 mm) because the 1958 frames were used for the much wider 1959 bodies, rushed into production because the sleek new Chryslers had rendered the old look frumpy and suddenly old-fashioned.  It certainly improved the look but the engineering was sound, the wider stance also genuinely enhanced handling.  Just to make sure people got the message about the “wide” in the “Wide Track” theme, their artwork deliberately exaggerated the width of the cars they depicted and while it was the era of “longer, lower, wider” (and PMD certainly did their bit in that), things never got quite that wide.  Had they been, the experience of driving would have felt something like steering an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

Fitzpatrick & Kaufman’s graphic art for the 1967 Pontiac Catalina Convertible advertising campaign.  One irony in the pair being contracted by PMD is that for most of the 1960s, Pontiacs were distinguished by some of the industry’s more imaginative and dramatic styling ventures and needed the artists' simulacral tricks less than some other manufacturers (and the Chryslers of the era come to mind, the solid basic engineering below cloaked sometimes in truly bizarre or just dull  bodywork).

This advertisement from 1961 hints also at something often not understood about what was later acknowledged as the golden era for both the US auto industry and their advertising agencies.  Although the big V8 cars of the post-war years are now remembered mostly for the collectable, high-powered, high value survivors with large displacement and induction systems using sometimes two four-barrel or three two-barrel carburetors, such things were a tiny fraction of total production and most V8 engines were tuned for a compromise between power (actually, more to the point for most: torque) and economy, a modest single two barrel sitting atop most and after the brief but sharp recession of 1958, even the Lincoln Continental, aimed at the upper income demographic, was reconfigured thus in a bid to reduce the prodigious thirst of the 430 cubic inch (7.0 litre) MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) V8.  Happily for country and oil industry, the good times returned and by 1963 the big Lincolns were again guzzling gas four barrels at a time (the MEL in 1966 even enlarged to a 462 (7.6)) although there was the courtesy of the engineering trick of off-centering slightly the carburetor’s location so the primary two throats (the other two activated only under heavy throttle load) sat directly in the centre for optimal smoothness of operation.  Despite today’s historical focus on the displacement, horsepower and burning rubber of the era, there was then much advertising copy about (claimed) fuel economy, though while then as now, YMMV (your mileage may vary), the advertising standards of the day didn’t demand such a disclaimer.

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1650), oil on canvas by Samuel Cooper (1609-1672).

Even if it’s something ephemeral, politicians are often sensitive about representations of their image but concerns are heightened when it’s a portrait which, often somewhere hung on public view, will long outlive them.  Although in the modern age the proliferation and accessibility of the of the photographic record has meant portraits no longer enjoy an exclusivity in the depiction of history, there’s still something about a portrait which conveys, however misleadingly, a certain authority.  That’s not to suggest the classic representational portraits have always been wholly authentic, a good many of those of the good and great acknowledged to have been painted by “sympathetic” artists known for their subtleties in rendering their subjects variously more slender, youthful or hirsute as the raw material required.  Probably few were like Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658; Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-1658) who told Samuel Cooper to paint him “warts and all”.  The artist obliged.

Randolph Churchill (1932), oil on canvas by Philip de László (left) and Randolph Churchill’s official campaign photograph (1935, right).

There have been artists for whom a certain fork of the simulacrum has provided a long a lucrative career.  Philip Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László) was a UK-based Hungarian painter who was renowned for his sympathetic portraiture of royalty, the aristocracy and anyone else able to afford his fee (which for a time-consuming large, full-length works could be as much as 3000 guineas).  His reputation as a painter suffered after his death because he was dismissed by some as a “shameless flatterer” but in more recent years he’s been re-evaluated and there’s now much admiration for his eye and technical prowess, indeed, some have noted he deserves to be regarded more highly than many of those who sat for him.  His portrait of Randolph Churchill (1911-1968) (1932, left) has, rather waspishly, been described by some authors as something of an idealized simulacrum and the reaction of the journalist Alan Brien (1925-2008) was typical.  He met Churchill only in when his dissolute habits had inflicted their ravages and remarked that the contrast was startling, “…as if Dorian Gray had changed places with his picture for one day of the year.”  Although infamously obnoxious, on this occasion Churchill responded with good humor, replying “Yes, it is hard to believe that was me, isn’t it?  I was a joli garçon (pretty boy) in those days.”  That may have been true for as his official photograph for the 1935 Wavertree by-election (where he stood as an “Independent Conservative” on a platform of rearmament and opposition to Indian Home Rule) suggests, the artist may have been true to his subject.  Neither portrait now photograph seems to have helped politically and his loss at Wavertree was one of several he would suffer in his attempts to be elected to the House of Commons.

Portrait of Gina Rinehart (née Hancock, b 1954) by Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira (b 1983), National Gallery of Australia (NGA) (left) and photograph of Gina Rinehart (right).

While some simulacrums can flatter to deceive, others are simply unflattering.  That was what Gina Rinehard (described habitually as “Australia’s richest woman”) felt about two (definitely unauthorized) portraits of which are on exhibition at the NGA.  Accordingly, she asked they be removed from view and “permanently disposed of”, presumably with the same fiery finality with which bonfires consumed portraits of Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), both works despised by their subjects.  Unfortunately for Ms Reinhart, her attempted to save the nation from having to look at what she clearly considered bad art created only what is in law known as the “Streisand effect”, named after an attempt in 2003 by the singer Barbra Streisand (b 1942) to suppress publication of a photograph showing her cliff-top residence in Malibu, taken originally to document erosion of the California coast.  All that did was generate a sudden interest in the previously obscure photograph and ensure it went viral, overnight reaching an audience of millions as it spread around the web.  Ms Reinhart’s attempt had a similar consequence: while relatively few had attended Mr Namatjira’s solo Australia in Colour exhibition at the NGA and publicity had been minimal, the interest generated by the story saw the “offending image” printed in newspapers, appear on television news bulletins (they’re still a thing with a big audience) and of course on many websites.  The “Streisand effect” is regarded as an example “reverse psychology”, the attempt to conceal something making it seem sought by those who would otherwise not have been interested or bothered to look.  People should be careful in what they wish for.

Variations on a theme of simulacra: Four AI (artificial intelligence) generated images of Lindsay Lohan by Stable Diffusion.  The car depicted (centre right) is a Mercedes-Benz SL (R107, 1971-1989), identifiable as a post-1973 North American model because of the disfiguring bumper bar. 

So a simulacrum is a likeness of something which is recognizably of the subject (maybe with the odd hint) and not of necessity “good” or “bad”; just not exactly realistic.  Of course with techniques of lighting or angles, even an unaltered photograph can similarly mislead but the word is used usually of art or behavior such as “a simulacrum or pleasure” or “a ghastly simulacrum of a smile”.  In film and biography of course, the simulacrum is almost obligatory and the more controversial the subject, the more simulacral things are likely to be: anyone reading AJP Taylor’s study (1972) of the life of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) would be forgiven for wondering how anyone could have said a bad word about the old chap.  All that means there’s no useful antonym of simulacrum because one really isn’t needed (there's replica, duplicate etc but the sense is different) while the synonyms are many, the choice of which should be dictated by the meaning one wishes to denote and they include: dissimilarity, unlikeness, archetype, clone, counterfeit, effigy, ersatz, facsimile, forgery, image, impersonation, impression, imprint, likeness, portrait, representation, similarity, simulation, emulation, fake, faux & study.  Simulacrum remains a little unusual in that while technically it’s a neutral descriptor, it’s almost always used with a sense of the negative or positive.

Decadence

Decadence (pronounced dek-uh-duhns or dih-keyd-ns)

(1) The act or process of falling into an inferior condition or state; deterioration; decay.

(2) Synonyms: decline, retrogression, degeneration

(3) Moral degeneration or decay; turpitude.

(4) Unrestrained or excessive self-indulgence.

(5) The decadent movement in literature (often with an initial capital and extended sometimes to the visual arts).

1540–1550: From the early fifteenth century French décadence, from the Medieval Latin dēcadentia (decay), from the Late Latin dēcadent-, stem of dēcadēns (falling away), the present participle of the Vulgar Latin dēcadere (to fall away; to decay), an etymologically restored form of the Latin dēcidere (to fall away, fail, sink, perish”), the construct being de- (apart, down) + cadere (to fall (from the primitive Indo-European root kad- (to fall)).  The meaning “process of falling away from a better or more vital state” dates from the 1620s while the use to define epochs is traced by some historians to the sense used of “decadent” in 1837 by Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881): “…in a state of decline or decay (from a former condition of excellence)”, decadent from the from French décadent (a back-formation from décadence).  The use to refer (disparaging) the perceived corruption of literary values began in the 1850s and thirty years later was common in both French and English criticism.  The addition of the sense of decadence being “a form of self-indulgence” seems not to have emerged until the late 1960s when it was applied (negatively) to the counter-culture but modern commerce soon re-packaged to use it of products marketed as “desirable and satisfying”; creamy desserts were often so labeled and the cake “Chocolate Decadence” became a generic term, the recipes varying greatly in detail.  Originally, the term “decadence” was used of “a period of historical decline, particularly of empires or civilizations” but, from the late nineteenth century, it shifted to become a literary & artistic word describing a movement and later a type of moral or cultural behavior, particularly human behavior that is seen as self-indulgent or excessive.  Finally, it became the name of a chocolate cake, something (vaguely) linked to association philosophers and historians would make between the decline of civilizations declined from periods of greatness into moral and structural decay, often with a focus on materialism and indulgence.  Decadence & decadency are nouns, decadent is a noun & verb and decadently is an adverb; the noun plural is decadences.

The related adjective deciduous was from the Latin dēciduus (falling down or off), from dēcidō (fall down) and is now most familiar from the arboreal branch of biology where it describes trees which shed their leaves (variously in winter, the fall (autumn) or the dry season.  However, in the technical language of anatomy it’s used of body parts which fall off or are shed, at a particular time or stage of development (ie not the result of injury or disease) and more generally can be used figuratively of things transitory or ephemeral, this mostly as a literary device.  Obviously also related is the noun decay, from the Middle English decayen & dekeyen (to decrease, diminish), from the Anglo-Norman decaeir (to fall away, decay, decline), from the Vulgar Latin dēcadere.  Decay describes the process or result of being gradually decomposed; rot, decomposition and is widely used of qualities such as (1) a deterioration of condition; loss of status, quality, strength, or fortune, (2) civic, societal or moral decay and (3) systemic decay.  It was also once used of overthrows of governments and even now has a technical meaning in computer programming.

Lindsay Lohan arriving at the Maddox Gallery to attend the Tyler Shields (b 1982) Decadence exhibition private view, London, February 2016.

Despite the spelling, unrelated is the noun “decade”.  Decade (the spelling decad long obsolete) was from the Middle English decade, from the Old French decade, from the Late Latin decādem ((set of) ten), from the Ancient Greek δεκάς (dekás), from δέκα (déka) (ten).  In English, the reference to a “span of ten years” was originally a clipping of the phrase “decade of years”, that seeming tautology existing because over the centuries there have been also “decades of soldiers” (ie ten men), “decades of days” (in history a period of ten days, particularly those in the ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and French Revolutionary calendars, “decades of books” (a work in ten parts or books, particularly such divisions of Roman historian Livy’s (Titus Livius; 59 BC–17 AD) Ab Urbe Condita (literally “From the Founding of the City” and in English usually styled as History of Rome), “decades of prayers” (in the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, a series of prayers counted on a rosary, typically consisting of an Our Father, followed by ten Hail Marys, and concluding with a Glory Be and sometimes the Fatima Prayer), “decades of stuff” (things which existed as a group, set or series of ten),  The dominant, modern sense of “a period of ten years” dates from the seventeenth century while the notion it “usually” is one beginning with a year ending in 0 and ending with a year ending in 9” was (more or less) formalized in the nineteenth.  In technical use “decade” has been re-purposed in some specialist fields including the Braille language (to refer to the various sets of ten sequential characters with predictable patterns), electronics (of devices or components used to represent digits and physics & engineering (of the interval between any two quantities having a ratio of 10 to 1).

For what most people do most of the time, a decade is “a period of ten years beginning with a year ending in 0 and ending with a year ending in 9” (ie the 1980s, 1990s etc) bit it remains correct that a decade can be any period of that duration (such as 1994-2003).  May style guides don’t approve of this, not because it’s technically wrong but because it can tend to confuse if things are not carefully phrased.  That seems wise advice although the suggestion terms like decennium or decennary can be a substitute for “non-standard” ten-year periods is unlikely to catch on.  Words nerds note that the computation protocol for something like “the 1970s” is xxx0-xxx9 whereas for “real” decades it’s xxx1-xxx0, following the practice for centuries and millennia, something which creates the certain anomalies because there was no “year 0”, the Western calendrical shifting directly from 1 BC to 1 AD.  “Decadence” and “decade” do however sometimes mix: the Japanese term Lost Decade (失われた10年) (Ushinawareta Jūnen) coined in the late 1990s to describe the period of national economic stagnation in precipitated by the collapse of the asset price bubble (notably Tokyo commercial floor-space) which began in 1990.  The phenomenon though endured and economists responded in subsequent decades by adding 失われた20年(lost 20 years) and 失われた30年 (lost 30 years).  The 2020s are showing little indication of a return to high growth and given Japan’s structural challenges (debt rations and an aging & declining population, there’s an expectation 失われた40年 will appear in the late 2020.

The other chocolate cake: Chocolate Decadence Soap by Heritage Downs: Aus$6.50 (inc GST) per cake; the gift for the chocaholic who has everything.

In the history of art or literary theory, “decadent” was in the nineteenth century iused to describe a period during which the output was “qualitatively in decline” compared with the (perceived) excellence of a former age.  Historically, it was applied to the Alexandrine period (300-30 BC) the period after the death of Augustus (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (known also as Octavianus (Octavian)); 63 BC-14 AD, founder of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD) and first Roman emperor 27 BC-14 AD).  In modern use it’s applied to the late nineteenth century symbolist movement in France (the poetry a particular target).  The movement emphasized the autonomy of art (exemplified in the contemporary phrase l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), the need for sensationalism & melodrama, egocentricity, the bizarre or (wholly or partially) artificial, and the superior “outsider” position of the artist who was “in” yet not quite unambiguously “of” society; a critic rather than a participant (which of course was a reference to middle-class (or bourgeois society).  What is now classified as “decadent” poetry was preoccupied with personal experience, self-analysis, perversity, the suffering of artists and elaborate and exotic sensations.

View of Amalfi (1844), pencil, ink & water colour by John Ruskin (1819-1900).

In France the exemplar of decadence was the poet & critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) whose book of lyric poetry Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil; the first version published in 1857) is regarded still a manifest of the movement (though some conservative critics prefer “cult”) and the deconstructions who trace the changes in tone (he continued to add material until his death) regard it as something of a “journal” of the times.  In English translation, Les Fleurs du mal is some 300 pages and, in the way of the movement, the poetic forms are not “traditional” and some of the imagery is as suggestive as the thematic motifs of eroticism, suffering, sin, evil and death which will delight some and repel others and the latter wishing to explore the movement might find more accessible the novel À rebours (Against the Grain (published also as Against Nature); 1884) by the French author & art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans (pseudonym of Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (1848–1907)); it’s a slimmer volume which English poet & critic Arthur Symons (1865–1945) would later describe as the movement’s “breviary” (in this context “a brief summary”).  There were many notable figures who devoted their lives to proving their allegiance to this aesthetic cult and the preoccupation with decay, ruins sadness and despair was appealing to nihilists and neo-Romantics, linked even with twentieth century German fascism which was styled (however misleadingly) as a revival of purity and a return to Classical roots.  It never caught on in quite the same way in the English-speaking world the influences are clear in the work of “excessively civilized” & “troubled” figures like the Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and English aesthete John Ruskin.

Chocolate Decadence Cake by Vegan Peace (Striving towards peacefully sharing our Earth).

Ingredients (wet & dry to be mixed separately)

1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour (or gluten-free all-purpose flour) (dry).
1 cup organic white sugar (not powdered) (dry).
3 tablespoons cocoa powder, sifted if lumpy (not Dutch process cocoa) (dry).
1 level teaspoon baking soda (dry).
¼ teaspoon sea salt (dry).
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (wet).
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (wet).
1½ cup oil (sunflower, non-virgin olive, melted coconut, or safflower) (wet).
1 cup chocolate soymilk (wet).

Freaky Frosting Ingredients

5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon non-hydrogenated margarine.
2¼cups plus 4 teaspoons organic powdered (confectioner's) sugar.
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cocoa powder (sifted if lumpy).
2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
Pinch of sea salt.
½ cup chocolate soymilk.

Directions

(1) Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).

(2) Oil 9 x 9 inch (230 x 230 mm) pan or a dozen muffin cups.

(3) Mix wet & dry ingredients separately ensuring each is lump-free and well-mixed.

(4) Gently combine wet-mix & dry-mix do not “over-mix” (the batter will at this point taste strange but this will disappear in the baking process.

(5) Pour mix into oiled baking pan or muffin cups and bake until the point where a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean (ie no trace of liquid or semi-liquid batter).  For cupcakes, this should take about 20 minutes; for the pan between 30-40 minutes.

(6) Remove from oven and allow cake to cool before frosting.

Frosting Directions

(7) Using electric beater, whip margarine in a large bowl until fluffy (do not over-whip.

(8) Slowly add in remaining ingredients one at a time, in the order listed.  Beat at high speed until very fluffy, using a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of bowl as needed.

(9) Refrigerate frosting until cake has cooled.

(10) Frost cake, ideally after allowing frosting to warm to room temperature before serving cake.  A chocolate decadence may be decorated with edible flowers, raspberries, strawberries, chocolate shavings or whatever else seems to suit.

Installation

Installation (pronounced in-stuh-ley-shuhn)

(1) Something installed (which can be physical, as in plant or equipment or weightless, as in software).

(2) The act of installing (to install) or the state of being installed.

(3) In military use, any permanent or semi-permanent post, camp, station, base etc, maintained to support operations.

(4) In art, an exhibit (widely defined) where the relation of the parts to the whole and the context of the space where exhibited are sometimes claimed to important to the interpretation of the piece.

(5) A formal ceremony in which an honor is conferred or an appointment made to an office (the state of being so honored or appointed being to be “installed”).

1600–1610: From the Middle French installation, from the Medieval Latin installātiō.  The construct was install + -ation.  The verb install (which was used also as instal and before that enstall) was an early fifteenth century form used to mean “place in ecclesiastical office by seating in an official stall”.  It was from the Middle English installen, from the fourteenth century Old French installer, from the Medieval Latin īnstallō (to install, put in place, establish), the construct being in- (in)- + stallum (stall), from the Frankish stall (stall, position, place), from the Proto-Germanic stallaz (place, position), from the primitive Indo-European stel-, stAlǝn- & stAlǝm- (stem, trunk).  It was cognate with the Old High German stal (location, stall), the Old English steall (position, stall), the Old English onstellan (to institute, create, originate, establish, give the example of), the Middle High German anstalt (institute), the German anstellen (to conduct, employ), the German einstellen (to set, adjust, position), Dutch aanstellen (to appoint, commission, institute) and the Dutch instellen (to set up, establish).  The suffix -ation was from the Middle English -acioun & -acion, from the Old French acion & -ation, from the Latin -ātiō, an alternative form of -tiō (thus the eventual English form -tion).  It was appended to words to indicate (1) an action or process, (2) the result of an action or process or (3) a state or quality.

The mid fifteenth century noun installation (action of installing) was a reference to the processes (both administrative & ceremonial) of appointment to church offices or other positions, and in that sense was from the Medieval Latin installationem (nominative installātiō), the noun of action from past participle stem of installare.  Of machinery (in the sense of plant & equipment), the first known use in print, describing the “act of setting up a machine; placing it in position for use” dates from 1882 but it may by then have for some time been in oral use.  Installation & installationer are nouns and installational & installationlike are adjectives; the noun plural is installations.  Installationism & installationist are non-standard forms used in art criticism.

In computing, an “installation” can be of hardware or software.  With hardware, the point of distinction is an installation is something which is permanent (or, even if temporary, installed in a manner of something permanent), as opposed to a mere connection (such as plugging to a USB cable).  In software, the idea to is transfer from an external source (the internet, a place on a network or transportable media (diskettes, optical discs etc)) onto a device's permanent storage, the installation process usually taken to include putting things into the state where functional use is possible.  Installations can be as simple as copying a single file to a drive to long, interactive processes involving multiple external media and on-line registration or validation procedures.  Some installations are effortless while some are worse than others, as those who have enjoyed the experience of installing the earlier versions of Nvidia’s video drivers for some flavors of Unix can attest.  Especially in software, the terms “pre-installation” and “re-reinstallation” are common although “un-install” is more common than “un-installation” (the terms “failed installation” and “corrupted installation” are also not unknown although in most use, IT nerds usually clip “installation” to “install”).

Installations and Performance Art

It’s now unfashionable, and probably thought reactionary, to attempt to impose definitions on the various expressions of Western art.  There was a time, in living memory, when such distinctions were taken seriously, one squabble about whether an entrant in an Australian portraiture competition could be considered “a portrait” (and by implication the work of “an artist”) or “a mere caricature” (and the thus the scribblings of “a cartoonist”) ending up in the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Attorney-General v Trustees of National Art Gallery of NSW & Another (1945) 62 WN (NSW) 212.).

Portrait or caricature?  Mr Joshua Smith (1943, left), oil on canvas by Sir William Dobell (1899–1970) and Joshua Smith (1905-1995, right).

Wisely, Mr Justice Roper (1901–1958) decided the bench was not a place for amateur art criticism and agreed the work was indeed “a portrait”, holding, inter alia, that “portrait” “…means a pictorial representation of a person, painted by an artist. This definition denotes some degree of likeness is essential and for the purpose of achieving it the inclusion of the face of the subject is desirable and perhaps also essential.”  Of the work in question, he observed it was “…characterised by some startling exaggeration and distortion which was clearly intended by the artist, his technique being too brilliant to admit of any other conclusion.  It bears, nevertheless, a strong degree of likeness to the subject and is think, undoubtedly, a pictorial representation of him.  I find as a fact that it is a portrait…”  Given that, the judge found it unnecessary to consider whether the painting was a “caricature” or a “fantasy” which was a shame, even if it wouldn’t have been something on which the verdict hung.

Year later, in an essay he titled The White Bird (1987), the English painter & art critic John Berger (1926–2017) would discuss the relationship between artist, artwork & viewer and the tension between accurate depiction (“imitation” as he sometimes called it, a growing trend in modern portraiture) and creative expression: “The notion that art is the mirror of nature is one that only appeals in periods of scepticism.  Art does not imitate nature; it imitates a creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify, to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature.  Art is an organised response to what nature allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential recognition into an unceasing one.”  With that, one suspects Mr Justice Roper would have concurred.

Finding legal proceedings tiresome, the art industry solved the problem of what does and does not belong in galleries by embracing “installations” and “performance art”, two categories without definitional boundaries and thus able to accommodate anything which can’t be squeezed into one of the traditional slots.  In retrospect, it is course easy to identify stuff stretching back many centuries which could be classified as either but in the modern age, there’s certainly a perception curators are now artistically more promiscuous.  It thus both impossible and pointless to try to define “installation” and “performance art” but some characteristics certainly are identifiable.

Installation art tends to be three-dimensional, is often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space in which it exists and the range of materials used is unlimited, the genre notable especially for the use of everyday objects, video & audio content and often, interactive components.  Installation art has encompassed unmade beds so there’s some scope.  Just as there’s no one type of installation, nor are there defined parameters for the mode of display: installations have been hung from ceilings, wrapped around buildings and sat on the seabed.  In gallery spaces however, the most frequently seen installations are those on the floor with sufficient room surrounding them for the viewer to walk around, experiencing the work from multiple angles and perspectives.  Installations can be temporary or permanent or even in some way vanish, decay or be destroyed during the exhibition and in more than one case, the “installation” didn’t actually exist.

The context of location can also dictate the definition.  Wax figures of Lindsay Lohan & Paris Hilton might be all or part of an installation if exhibited in a gallery but when on display at Madame Tussauds in New York City (left), they are a tourist attraction.  More typically, installations combine artistic technique with social or political comment: Gabriel Dawe's (b 1973) Plexus series (centre) was made with a reputed 60 miles (97 km) of embroidery thread hooked from floor to ceiling in a repeating overlay while Judy Chicago’s (b 1939) The Dinner Party, 1974-79 (right) was a feminist piece but one which later attracted criticism because some degree of “ethnic exclusionism” was detected.

Performance art, as the term implies, is a form of “live art” where “something happens”, the actions of the artist or performers components of the work.  Perhaps best thought of as a form of encapsulated theatre, performance art would seem to depend on movement, sound, color and sometimes text although, being art, some performance art has been wholly static.  For that reason, Empire (1965), Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987) eight-hour, slow-motion film of an unchanging view of the Empire State Building must be considered performance art although, given the nature of the experience, it really must be the viewer who is thought the subject.  Performance art is of course intrinsically ephemeral and Empire played with that idea, each moment of the production seemingly the same yet in tiny ways different, rather like the exercise in textual definitional philosophy lecturers like to give students to ponder: “Is the river the ‘same’ river from one day to the next when almost all the molecules of water are different?”

US rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, hip hop identity & fashion designer Ye (formerly the artist known as Kanye West (b 1977)) and Australian architect & model Bianca Censori (b 1995): In Maimi, Florida, December 2023 (left) and in Paris for Fashion Week, June 2024 (centre & right).

The recent, much publicized appearances by Mr Ye and Ms Censori attracted all sorts of comments and the consensus was the project (one presumably restricted to the warmer months) was a promotional device for him and to some extent that seems to have worked, despite Mr Ye being mostly unnoticed while in the presence of his photogenic muse.  Although there are references to the pair being “married”, it’s not clear if that is their legal status and in artistic terms that may be significant.  What is of interest is whether in these appearances Ms Censori should be thought a “performance artist” or Mr Ye’s “installation”; both have been suggested and there’s no reason why the two states can’t be simultaneous.

Mr Ye & Ms Cansori at Paris Fashion Week, June 2024, the latter in character or possibly, installed.

Murmuration

Murmuration (pronounced mur-muh-rey-shuhn)

(1) An act or instance of murmuring (now rare and mostly jocular).

(2) In ornithological use, the standard collective name for a flock of starlings although sometimes (controversially according to the ornithologists) extended to bees.

(3) In sociology and zoology, an emergent order in a multi-agent social system.

1350–1400: From the Middle English, from the Old French murmure (which endures in modern French) from the Medieval Latin murmurātiōn (stem of murmurātiō (murmuring, grumbling)), from the Latin murmur (humming, muttering, roaring, growling, rushing etc).  The wealth of words related to the onomatopoeic murmur includes rumble, buzz, hum, whisper, muttering, purr, undertone, babble, grumble, mutter, susurration, drone, whispering, humming, mumble, rumor, buzzing and susurrus (the last handy for poets).  The construct was murmur + -ation.  Murmuration is a noun and murmurating & murmurated are verbs; the noun plural is murmurations.

The verb murmur was from the late fourteenth century Middle English and was used in the sense of “make a low continuous noise; grumble, complain”, from the twelfth century Old French murmurer (to murmur, to grouse, to grumble) from murmur (rumbling noise), the transitive sense of “say indistinctly” dating from the 1530s.  As a noun meaning “an expression of (popular) discontent or complaint by grumbling”, the form emerged in the fourteenth century and was from the twelfth century Old French murmure (murmur, sound of human voices; trouble, argument), a noun of action from murmurer, from the Latin murmurare (to murmur, mutter) from murmur (a hum, muttering, rushing), probably from a primitive Indo-European reduplicative base mor-mor, of imitative origin (and the source also of the Sanskrit murmurah (crackling fire), the Greek mormyrein (to roar, boil) and the Lithuanian murmlenti (to murmur).  The meaning in describing sounds from the natural environment (a low sound continuously repeated (of bees, streams, the wind in the trees et al)) was in use by the mid-late 1300s while that of “softly spoken words” dates from the 1670.  The use in clinical medicine to describe “sound heard during auscultation” (the action of listening to sounds from the heart, lungs, or other organs, typically with a stethoscope) has been in the literature since 1824.  A “heart murmur” is an abnormal sound heard during a heartbeat (most often described as a “whooshing or swishing” are the result of turbulent blood flow within the heart or its surrounding vessels.  Such murmurations can be ominous if classified as “pathologic” (or abnormal) but those regarded as “innocent” (or benign) are common (especially in children) and often resolve without treatment.  A diagnosis of a pathologic murmur can indicate an underlying heart condition, the most common causes of which are congenital defects, valve abnormalities (such as stenosis or regurgitation) and infections.  The suffix -ation was from the Middle English -acioun & -acion, from the Old French acion & -ation, from the Latin -ātiō, an alternative form of -tiō (thus the eventual English form -tion).  It was appended to words to indicate (1) an action or process, (2) the result of an action or process or (3) a state or quality.

The New Yorker: Shouts & Murmurs

The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” section is dedicated to humorous essays and satirical pieces; the topic range is wide (essentially unlimited) and the whimsical content can be discursive.  It’s reported by many as being the first section turned to when their copy arrives (The New Yorker’s print sales have held up better than most), the takes on everyday situations, cultural phenomena & current events handled in the magazine’s typical way.  In a (vague) sense, “Shouts & Murmurs” is The New Yorker’s “TikTok”: punchy, short form pieces that touch more on popular culture than most of the editorial content.  It’s called “Shouts & Murmurs” rather than “Shouts and Rumors” presumably because (1) it’s a “light & dark” sort of title and (2) The New Yorker really doesn’t do gossip (well it does but usually it’s well-glossed).  While a murmur is “a soft and even indistinct sound made by a person or a group of people speaking quietly or at a distance (ie the opposite of “a shout”)”, a rumor (rumour in British English) is “speculative information or a story passed from person to person but which is just hearsay”.

Birds, sociology & social credit

The adoption of murmuration as the collective noun for starlings is thought almost certainly derived from the sound made when very large numbers of starlings gather in flight, the behaviour most obvious at dusk.  The ornithologists did not approve of the apiarists borrowing the word to describe their bees, saying they’ve already co-opted bike, charm, erst, game, grist, hive, hum, nest, rabble (which seems misplaced given the efficient structure of their industrious societies) & swarm.  There are however no “rules” which govern all this and an alternative collective noun for starlings is a chattering, this applied also to chicks, choughs and goldfinches.

Murmurating eponymously: Tempting though it is to believe, ornithologists assure us that individually or collectively, birds almost certainly make no attempt to form specific shapes when murmurating and are unaware of what shape the formation has assumed.  Such is the variety of shapes achieved, if enough cameras are filming enough murmurations, just about any shape will emerge although, unlike the pareidolias people find in slices of toast, rock formations and such, a specific image summoned by a murmuration is fleetingly ephemeral.

The discipline of sociology relies sometimes on the methods of behavioralism developed in zoology and the term murmuration is co-opted to describe the coordinated, collective behavior of people, an allusion to the movements in unison of flocks of birds which appear both spontaneous and harmonious.  The concept has proved a useful analytical tool when dealing with phenomena where individuals in a group synchronize their actions or thoughts in a fluid and cohesive manner without any apparent centralized direction.  Sociologists tend to group the dynamics of murmuration into four categories:

(1) Self-Organization: The group organizes itself in a dynamic way, adapting to changes in the environment or within the group.

(2) Emergent Behavior: The collective movement or actions arise from the interactions among individuals, rather than from a single leader or directive.

(3) Non-verbal Coordination: Just as birds in a murmuration do not communicate verbally but through subtle cues and reactions, humans in a sociological murmuration often coordinate through indirect signals, such as body language, shared norms, or common awareness.

(4) Complex Patterns: The resulting behavior or movement of the group can form intricate and complex patterns, reflecting a high level of coordination and mutual (and ultimately common) adjustment among the participants.

The seemingly chaotic aerial choreography of starlings murmurating, Sassari, Sardina.  The music is a fragment from the aria Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini’s (1858–1924) last opera, the flawed Turandot (1926).

Sociologists were most interested in understanding how individuals within groups create complex social dynamics and outcomes through decentralized interaction but in the last decade, advances in the processing power of computers and the capability of artificial intelligence have enabled the mechanics of murmuration to deconstruct phenomena such as flash mobs, protests, crowds at events, or even online social movements where large numbers of people synchronize their actions through shared information and collective consciousness.  That has been helpful in developing predictive models of behaviour in situations such as evacuations from fire or terrorist incidents but the dystopian implications have been much discussed and, as some sinologists have observed, in the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) China’s mass public surveillance machine (integral to the generation of a citizen's "social credit" score), possibly to some extent realized.

Deliquesce

Deliquesce (pronounced del-i-kwes)

(1) In physical chemistry, to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the atmosphere and dissolving in it (best illustrated by the behavior of certain salts).

(2) To melt away; to disappear (used literally & figuratively).

(3) In botany, branching so the stem is lost in branches (as is typical in deciduous trees).

(4) In mycology (of the fruiting body of a fungus), becoming liquid as a phase of its life cycle.

1756: From the Latin dēliquēscere (to become liquid), the construct being dē- + liquēscere (to liquefy; liquescent).  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The de- prefix was from the Latin dē-, from the preposition dē (of, from (the Old English æf- was a similar prefix).  It imparted the sense of (1) reversal, undoing, removing, (2) intensification and (3) from, off.  In French the dé- prefix was used to make antonyms (as un- & dis- function in English) and was partially inherited from the Old and Middle French des-, from the Latin dis- (part), the ultimate source being the primitive Indo-European dwís and partially borrowed from Latin dē-.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.  In scientific literature, the adjective deliquescent (liquefying in air) is the most commonly used form.  It was from the Latin deliquescentem (nominative deliquescens), present participle of deliquescere (to melt away), the construct being de- + liquesco (I melt) and familiar in French also as déliquescent.  The figurative sense of “apt to dissolve or melt away” was in use by 1837 while the verb deliquesce appears not to have been used thus until the late 1850s.    Deliquesce, deliquesced & deliquescing are verbs, deliquescent is an adjective, deliquescence is a noun and deliquescently is an adverb; the noun plural is deliquescences.

Deliquesce 1, oil on canvas by Tammy Flynn Seybold (b 1966).

This was the first in the Deliquesce Series, a group of works exploring the themes of transformation and conservation of energy in human forms, the artist noting being intrigued by the deceptively ephemeral nature of materials: “We think of objects - human forms included - as decaying, degrading or ‘disappearing’ but, as we know from the laws of thermodynamics, all energy is conserved - like matter, it is merely transformed from one form to another.  This work, painted with pastel-hued oils was made directly from a live model, the drips allowed organically to happen from her languid form and by using light, bright hues, I hoped to bring a spirit of optimism to this transformative process.”

A footnote to the addition of deliquesce to scientific English is a tale of the chance intersection of politics and chemistry.  Dr Charles Lucas (1713–1771) was an Anglo-Irish physician who held the seat of Dublin City in the Irish Parliament and was what now would be called “a radical”, dubbed at the time “Irish Wilkes” (a nod to the English radical politician John Wilkes (1725–1797).  His early career was as an apothecary and he was shocked discover the fraud and corruption which permeated the industry and in an attempt to reform the abuses published A Short Scheme for Preventing Frauds and Abuses in Pharmacy (1735) which much upset his fellow apothecaries who were the beneficiaries of the crooked ways but the parliament did respond and created legislation regulating standards in medicines and providing for the inspection of the products; it was the first of its kind in the English-speaking world and the ancestor of the elaborate framework of rules today administered by entities such as the US FDA (Food & Drug Administration.  Encouraged, he later published Pharmacomastix, or the Office, Use, and Abuse of Apothecaries Explained (1741), the contents of which were used by the parliament to make certain legislative amendments.

However, as well as a radical, Lucas was a idealist and while the establishment was content to support him in matter of pills and potions, when he intruded into areas which disturbed the political equilibrium, they were less tolerant and, facing imprisonment, Lucas fled to the continent where he’d decided to study medicine, graduating as a doctor in 1752.  One of his first projects as a physician was a study of the composition of certain mineral waters, substances then held to possess some remarkable curative properties (something actually not without some basis).  To undertake his research he visited a number of sites including Spa, Aachen in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia and Bath in the English county of Somerset.  The material he assembled and published as An Essay on Waters. In three Parts: (i) of Simple Waters, (ii) of Cold Medicated Waters, (iii) of Natural Baths (1756) and it was in this work that the verb “deliquesce” first appeared.  Ever the “disturber” Dr Lucas’s tract upset the medical establishment in much the same way two decades earlier he’d stirred the enmity of the apothecaries, the cluster of physicians clustered around the Bath spa angered the interloper hadn’t consulted with them on a topic over which they asserted proprietorship.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

In chemistry, the companion word of deliquescence is hygroscopy, both describing phenomena related to the ability of substances to absorb moisture from the surrounding environment, but they differ in extent and behavior.  Hygroscopy refers to the ability of a substance to absorb moisture from the air when exposed; hygroscopic substances can attract and hold water molecules onto their surface but tend not to dissolve.  Many salts behave thus and a well-known example of practical application is the silica gel, which, in small porous packages, is often used as a desiccant to absorb moisture in packaging. Deliquescence can be thought of an extreme form of hygroscopy (hydroscopy taken to its natural conclusion) in that a substance which deliquesces not only absorbs moisture from the air but also absorbs it to the point where it dissolves completely in the absorbed water, forming a solution.  In the natural environment, this happens most frequently when the relative humidity of the surrounding air is high and the classic deliquescent substances are salts like calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, zinc chloride, ferric chloride, carnallite, potassium carbonate, potassium phosphate, ferric ammonium citrate, ammonium nitrate, potassium hydroxide, & sodium hydroxide.  Presumably because deliquescence is the extreme form of hydroscopy it was the former which came to be used figuratively (dissolving into “nothing”) while the latter did not.

At the chemical level, hygroscopy (a class in which scientists include deliquescence as a sub-set) describes the phenomenon of attracting and holding water molecules via either absorption or adsorption (the adhesion of a liquid or gas on the surface of a solid material, forming a thin film on the surface.) from the surrounding environment.  Hygroscopy is integral to the biology of many plant and animal species' attainment of hydration, nutrition, reproduction and/or seed dispersal.  Linguistically, hygroscopy is quirky in that the construct is hygro- (moisture; humidity), from the Ancient Greek ὑγρός (hugrós) (wet, moist) + -scopy (observation, viewing), from the Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō) (to see (and the source of the Modern English “scope”) yet unlike other forms suffixed by “-scopy”, it no longer conveys the sense of “viewing or imaging”.  Originally that was the case, a hygroscope in the late eighteenth century understood as a device used to measure humidity but in a wholly organic way this use faded (“dissolving deliquescently to nothing” as it were) while hygroscopic (tending to retain moisture) & hygroscopy (the ability to do so) endured.  The modern instrument used to measure humidity is hygrometer, the construct being hygro- + -meter (the suffix from the Ancient Greek μέτρον (métron) (measure) used to form the names of measuring devices.