Flux Chess, Fluxus, Flux Lit
by A.S. Kresnak
Pretend this is handwritten. There's a chess set on a table: the board consists of ordinary black-and-white squares. The pieces are salt shakers: indistinguishable by shape, but each filled with a different spice to indicate their role. To play, you must work by scent and memory. This is Scent Chess by Takako Saito, a Fluxus artist.
Saito was a Japanese artist living in the United States in the 1960's. She made the chess set on the suggestion of another artist (more on that later). These artworks played with the seriousness of fine art, giving the viewer a more personal experience with interactive art. This would be a strong theme in the art movement Fluxus.
The name may not be used much today, but the style of art is everywhere in the internet age. Greentext posts describe scenarios, giving the reader a kind of experience. Interactive websites invite visitors to add pixels to collaborative art. Fluxus artists like Nam June Paik were some of the first to use video as an artistic medium. (I've seen Paik's Electronic Superhighway in person. It makes me want to drive.)
The emphasis on interaction and experience makes their work particularly suited to distribution. The artists would sometimes collect their work in packages called flux kits. Jumping off that, I propose flux lit: literature informed by and responding to fluxus art. Flux Lit invites interaction; Flux Lit is lit anyone could do and should, if they want; Flux Lit plays no tricks on the reader. Rather, if there are tricks to be performed, Flux Lit invites the reader to be an active participant in performing them. Flux Lit is already happening; I'm late to the party.
For example: Actually, My Experiences Are Universal!
, by Juniper White, published in Hex Literary. I'm declaring it an example of flux lit for three reasons: first, an emphasis on both senses and awareness of senses; second, because it invites interpretation and applications; and third, because my subjective interpretation applies the story to art analysis.
In this flash fiction, a society positions itself in relation to a person they've named UMWELT. In her commentary on the story, White notes that she chose this name because it alludes to the difference in experiences that different kinds of organisms have. UMWELT is named for the ultimate subjective; through a socially constructed reality, she becomes the ultimate objective. This story makes great use of the senses: what sounds does UMWELT like? What fabrics, what tastes? Her feelings are ideal, normal, desirable. This extends even to her suffering.
White's commentary parallels UMWELT's experiences with how sensory differences manifest in real life. We cannot know exactly how another person is feeling. We might consider our own pain “normal,” but another person experiencing it might go to a doctor. Let me draw your attention to that proverb that shows up on protest signs: if you're not scared/angry, you're not paying attention.
I was especially intrigued by the note that chefs preparing food had to change their tastes to suit UMWELT's, because the people who would eat their food would be changing their tastes the same way. This is where the story became FluxLit to me. An artist creating work for consumption – whether the literal consumption of food or the commercial consumption of purchase – must either change their taste to suit their imagined audience, or trust that their unchanged taste can find an audience who appreciates it. (Often there's a little of both.)
A socially-constructed objectivity
grows in all kinds of art. A viewer may say they thought work X was imperfect for reasons A, B, and C; others reply with some variation of it's not for you.
The people enjoying the work are the presumed normal.
The negative voices are the outsiders. Even fanfiction, where creators are making things purely out of their personal desires, sees this scenario. Sooooooooo many people say objectively
when they mean my subjective experience but with authority.
Anyway. Fluxus notices the subjective experience. The way these experiences become art is illustrated in another example of Flux Lit: You MUST Use the Word Smoothie: A Craft Essay in 50 Writing Prompts, by Chen Chen, published by Sundress Publications. This is one of Sundress' Craft Chaps, essays designed to open up literary writing. Chen calls the reader's attention to the experience of writing, as seen through many non-writing activities. Brushing teeth. Saying words aloud. One exercise asks the reader to drink a mango smoothie; on the next line, to eat sundubu-jjigae with seafood medley.
This emphasizes living as part of the artistic process. Inside baseball? Yes. That's the point. Chen's essay places Literature (and particularly, poetry) as something that anyone can do. This is not interactive fiction, exactly; where choose your own adventure
stories ask you to identify with a vague protagonist, flux lit wants you to protagonize yourself in your own life.
Discussing Fluxus by name would not be complete without mentioning George Maciunas. He was a graphic designer. He was an immigrant. He was a planner, a friend, the person who organized magazines and events and altogether bringing a bunch of random artists together into an artistic movement. He was the one who put together Flux Kits. When Saito made her Scent Chess and related sets, she gave them to Maciunas to sell.
My experience of Scent Chess was reading about it on Wikipedia and seeing the wiki picture. Your experience of Scent Chess now includes the report of my experience.
Continue
experience.