The Structure of Clutter

Ever since I was very little, I have had a very interesting relationship with organization. The majority of the time, the mere thought of the task conjures up one strong emotion: blah. Categorizing, stacking, filing, labeling… it’s all very dull. Mundane at best. I’ve found that the only time when I actually enjoy organizing is when it involves items which hold some of my interest, like music or art supplies. So, for this assignment, I chose to challenge myself and organize my desk in all its overflowing glory.

After a little mental prep-talk, I decided to work top down. I carefully picked up all my writing utensils and sorted them into different containers according to type. The most tedious job was next, as I filed away all the loose papers into various folders and binders by subject, and threw away all the old and irrelevant ones. I finally hauled all my textbooks onto a nearby shelf. To my surprise, there was a whole host of tidbits and leftover who-knows-what’s that were hiding beneath all those books, so after that was all swept off into the garbage bin, the wood of my desk was visible at last.

The effect of this seemingly obvious discovery that I could in fact see and feel the surface of my desk was shocking. I felt as though an enormous burden was lifted off my shoulders because I realized that all the clutter on this small table had actually been an obstacle in my way—I was always trying to work around it. Before I had gotten started on the daunting task of organizing, I thought very little about what all I carelessly cast to the side, and how those little things can build up into a mountain of stress in no time. With every pen I sorted, every used-up scratch paper I discarded, my outlook on my workload became much clearer and more confident.

I became very curious about the psychological links between the structure and organization of physical objects around me and my mental organization. According to a scientific study (which I was referred to by this blog) by the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, “Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.” This provides neurological evidence for the feeling I felt of clutter in my mind after staring at the physical clutter around me for so many days.

I will definitely be incorporating this useful and therapeutic exercise into my life more often, so that my burdens, physical and mental, never become too heavy.

One Dollar Social Experiment

I recently stumbled upon a video about the work of Mark Wagner, known to some as the “greatest living collage artist”. Although Wagner has pursued several different mediums of art such as drawing and bookmaking, he is most well known for his intricately cut and assembled currency collages composed entirely out of American one dollar bills, which can be seen with this link. I was incredibly intrigued.

Mark Wagner - Money is Material from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

As much as I was in awe at the meticulousness with which he creates his pieces and the unfathomable complexity of detail he includes, I was also confused and uncomfortable when I first watched this video. Questions kept flowing into my mind. At first they were heavy political and economic ones: Is this even legal? Why would you waste so much money like that? Slowly, they became more abstract art and design-oriented ones: Are there really that many shapes and colors one one dollar bill? Who or what does George Washington represent in all these collages? I soon realized that there is a fascinating relationship between these two sets of questions. I would not have been able to ask the second set if Mark Wagner hadn’t taken the risk of leaving the first set unanswered. In other words, by breaking political and economic norms, Wagner allowed viewers to use a art/design/structure lens to analyze the currency in their pockets and the message he was creating out of them.

While I was scouring the web trying to find out the laws governing the destruction of money, I couldn’t help but notice how many times it was mentioned that people mostly do such a thing to send a message. That message is usually protesting capitalism or the United States government. However, Wagner’s message is not so clear. He is not simply burning dollar bills into oblivion… he is making them into something new. Considering this fact as well as the fact that even the legality of currency destruction is unbelievably ambiguous leaves the judgement of the ethicality and merit of Wagner’s artistic choice of medium almost entirely up to the viewer. Through his collages, Wagner is testing the very values Americans hold dear.

Reading Wagner’s artistic statement, I was suddenly reminded of our discussion of the role of museums in English class:

The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it--reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers--striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable... the foreign in the familiar.

Wagner's design choice of using dollar bills in his collages is akin to him simply taking a dollar bill and sealing it in a display case for viewers to ponder. By breaking the connections we viewers have to that piece of money, he is allowing us to not only analyze the story his assemblages narrate, but also analyze the relationship we have with the most basic unit of wealth in the world. In a day and age where the Internet is the largest and most well-stocked museum ever, I hope more people will stop and take a look at the social experiments Mark Wagner has ingeniously cut and glued together.