Fluidism
Fluidism is the art of manipulating real fluid mixtures to discover visually pleasing patterns. Using a container or surface to form a small foundation pool or thin foundation layer of liquid, I drop or pour additional quantities of colored liquid on top of this foundation pool. I then observe spontaneous patterns that emerge from resulting interactions. A human hand controls boundaries of the pool, beginning colors, and the choice of which liquids to use. The so called "laws of physics" take care of fine details. On this constantly wet-on-wet platform, I experiment, frame and capture the most satisfying fluid patterns, using a camera. A camera is the only way to capture (freeze) these particular patterns that critically depend on the fully liquid state of matter. Specific formations that appeal to the eye disperse quickly; they are short lived, fleeting designs that defy drying and hanging on the wall like traditional paintings. Without a camera, static impressions of these "ephemeral paintings" could not exist.
Fluidism is the entire process of preparing, experimenting, observing and photocapturing these impressions. Captured events (locked in film transparency, digital file, printed hard copy, or TV monitor) are the lasting, tangible artifacts of fluidism. Fluidism, thus, is also a group of art products.
Commonly accepted art descriptions might label fluidism as "abstract art" or "abstract photography". This description, however, does not convey the most accurate sense of what fluidism actually is. Fluidism is its own category, its own style. When someone asks, "What style of art do you do?", my preferred answer is, "Fluidism."
Fluidism is NOT abstract expressionism. Fluidism, admittedly, is realism,... real patterns,... real events,... actual shapes that exist in the real world of tangible, fluid substances. Consequently, I am NOT expressing (or trying to express) abstract human feelings, when I capture fluid patterns. These patterns that I capture are ALREADY expressions,... ALREADY expressING, as I notice them. They are substantial, complex, definite physical phenomena of beauty, NOT amorphous, hazy emotions, or ideas. The reality of fluidism, in fact, causes the emotions of liking these designs.
Historians might be inclined to label fluidism as "abstract expressionism" or "action painting". As I have pointed out, "abstract expressionism" simply would be a false label. To repeat: real patterns, real time, real space, real fluid dynamics do NOT constitute abstract expressions. What I capture in an image is a realtiy as real as a tree or flower or face. Fluid dynamic patterns are real structures of real substance events brought to light on a scale of visibility NOT ordinarily experienced in this particular manner. A more fitting phrase might be "primal realism". As for the label, "action painting", it is the most agreeable of the two customary labels, since action of real fluids is the very foundation of fluidism. Fluidism is both action painting that depends on photography, and photography that depends on action painting in its most dynamic sense.
Historical Description
I suspect that Jackson Pollock would have preferred a label like "fludism" to describe his drip painting. I regard Pollock as a fluidist. I also regard ancient Chinese and Japanese Suminagashi artists as fluidists. Likewise, I regard old Turkish ebru painters as fluidists. Other artists in the present day fit well into this category too. I deal with particularly fragile fluid patterns that disappear or disperse, once liquid dries, so I have introduced a camera into the process. I am part of an unacknowledged tradition of fluidists. To my knowledge, I am the first person to make a case for this new historical category.
Philosophical Description
Exploring fluids as art has led me to apply the concept of fluidity to civilized thinking as a whole. The concept of fluidity, arguably, is the most viscerally intuitive, sensory supported, tangible metaphor of all human experience. Fluidism, therefore, does NOT jive with the particle-biased, atomic paradigm of orthodox modern science. Instead, it better relates to a paradigm based on perception of fluidity at every size scale of the universe. This perception-based paradigm is bubbling just beneath mainstream thinking as an emerging, self-similar, holarchical, cosmological worldview. Fluidism, thereby, visually supports this worldview professing the fundamental fluid nature of physical reality.
Reality, as fluidism visualizes it, is unbounded, infinite, eternal, with no beginning or end, where human consciousness itself is a bubble in the vast perpetual nesting of little seas within bigger seas. This concept of universal, cosmic fluidity raises us past the impotent philosophical stance of pop postmodernism, and it counteracts the snide angst of pop existentialism. In this way, fluidism transcends mere image making, to become a full-blown, positive outlook on life.
Accordingly, the meaning of life is in the action of finding agreeable forms in a sea of complex currents and catastrophic movements. Fluidism gives the world back to this fundamental meaning with fundamental purpose and worth. Complex currents and catastrophic movements, while unpredictable, nonetheless find within themselves resonant harmonies. These resonant harmonies of substance form cells, which agglomerate into organisms of practical behaviors relevant to a particualar moment (whether "moment" is defined as a lifetime, era or historical epoch).
Universe simply exists. It is. To say the word, "universe", is to name all that exists. In a universe that we name as all existing entities, there can be no non-existence or non-purpose. Even what we might call "space" must be an entity existing. What we might call "God", "Alah", "Brahma", even "Tao", must be different aspects of all existing entities connected in self-organizing movement.
This self-organizing movement is fluid. Reality is fluid. The supreme being is fluid. Meaning arises from fluid dynamic properties. Purpose forms as momentary stable structures within fluid reality. Reality is a vast symphony of such momentary structures, all synchronized according to different intervals of duration in relation to one another.
There can be no aimlessness in this sort of universe. The aim is flow. The purpose is resonance between the poles of creation and destruction. Images arising from the art style of fluidism are material evidence of this innate, primal "purpose" in substance and its motion.
Obviously, then, the art of fluidism is as much about HOW we imagine WHAT we image in its visuals. The images can stand on their own as pleasing artifacts, yet they readily stand open to this farther reaching, conceptual depth.
Painting, photography, philosophy. Fluidism is not so much a new ingredient, as a new combination; not so much a new word, as a refined flavor of meaning. This is the key distinction supporting my claim to its name.
Fluidism Concepts
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