1. Eco opens the chapter by talking about a lot of pieces of “truly open” art that need to finish being physically “made” by a future consumer/collaborator. He compares this to a lot of other works (to some extent, every other work) that are open in the sense that they require the interpretation of a future consumer to be completed, and that interpretation will vary considerably based on the audience’s era, upbringing, company, mood, or any other of an infinite number of factors. He notes many works that are more ambiguous and therefore subjective, and in their own ways demanding of an inventive response. One piece that comes to mind for me is Holbein’s The Ambassadors, which required the viewer to approach the painting at an untypical angle to appreciate an undistorted Memento Mori skull previously hidden in the foreground.
2. Throughout the article, Eco continuously refers back to history and the sciences to better express his approach towards participatory and open art. Both inherently and explicitly, he mentions various theories and cultural views on reality that better help explain why certain forms of art (and interpretations of art) become or fade out of relevance. This is especially clear when he speaks about certain Einsteinian theories that relates to the ambiguous and clashing nature of the cosmos in terms of the writings of people like Joyce. Within the various interpretations of what the “true” meaning is, there are complementary ideas that can broaden and expand upon the author’s original work. Today, science continues to expand upon our definitions of dynamic movement, but even more so there is a general feeling that no work is truly done until the consumers dissect and reinvent it. We live in a world of mashups and graffiti artists. Even formerly closed works have seemingly thrown open their doors for us.
3. Eco goes over a number of philosophies, but the one that he is particularly drawn to is the aforementioned “complementarity” of both science and art. This idea states that certain systems can be properly utilized in a number of (even contradictory) methods to produce a satisfying result. It is in this way that Eco is able to explain that a piece is still the work of the initial author, even when future or contemporary contributors adjust it in a way that he or she never intended/imagined.
4. As I mentioned before, music has increasingly become the most open medium of our modern times. Artists regularly put out pieces of their songs, either broken up bits of a finished work or just the initial musings of the author. These pieces fly at terrific speeds across the digital medium into the hands of hungry young producers, eager to put their own unique touch on their favorite author’s work. With the advent of digital technologies, it has become so fast and easy to replicate and mutate works of both visual and aural natures that without a frustrating degree of gross watermarking, there is almost no way to protect from it. What many artists of today have come to realize that it is far less painful to embrace this generation of producers and be happy that they now have access to a historically unprecedented amount of possible collaborators. As Eco notes, these pioneers are offering the interpreter a work to be completed.
