Overview

The Open Work, (Opera Aperta, in its original Italian) is Umberto Eco’s first book on the subject of semiotics, although it was not considered such at the time. Eco is concerned with the evolution and values of open works, where openness is in the sense of freedom of interpretation and meaning making. Openness is dependent on the freedom for an observer to interpret or explore meaning within a work.

The Open Work is reaction against Croce, a predecessor of Eco, who was a product of Italian fascism, and strongly emphasized the idea of pure meaning and authorial intent.

semiotics as encyclopedic sense/meaning derives from rules applied to sign systems infinite semiosis- implies that language cannot touch the world (Wittgenstein?) in AI connects to problem of infinite regress.

“Meaning is an infinite regress within a closed sphere, a sort of parallel universe related in various ways to the ‘real’ world but not directly connected to it; there is no immediate contact between the world of signs and the world of the things they refer to.” (p. xxii)

modern work is representation of the knowledge of the contemporary world, and the contemporary crisis. Eco argued that via formal ambiguity, art makes a political stand. Breaking down form is a political act, idea still reverberates in avant garde. (p. xx) Though Eco tones down on this idea during his semiotic period.

Chapter 1: The poetics of the open work

Eco lists a number of composers and their works that incorporate degrees of freedom for the performers. It is interesting to connect this to the composer, Sylvano Bussoti, part of whose piano sheet music was included as the header for Deleuze and Guattari’s chapter Rhizome in A Thousand Plateaus.

can connect with fan/participatory culture in terms of remixing movements

“Every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective for itself.” openness is an interpretive freedom.

The next question: why does the artist need to include this openness?

platonic form argues for closure, that there is only one right way to do something aesthetically.

this is changed in medieval interpretation, where scriptures were read according to moral (or allegorical or analogical) dimensions, and interpreted and applied to the new meaning. This is not indefinite or open, but rather constrains the interpretation along four channels of interpretation. This reflects the order of society, which is imperial and theocratic.

Eco moves onto the Baroque, which has an interesting style: its richness and complexity (between extremes of solid and void, light and darkness, curvature, etc), and certain plasticity, all demand an observer to witness the work not just from one perspective, but to move around to better absorb the movement and dynamic of the Baroque form.

Baroque culture emphasizes a certain creativity in man- in the renaissance, man has changed to a puzzle solver, a creator, etc. However, it still has a significant degree of codification and rigidity in its structure.

Considers Romanticism next, and the emergence of pure poetry, which is by nature, abstract, blurry and interpretive. The pleasure of poetry is guessing. This leads to the idea of suggestiveness, which attempts to create openness for the reader.

Onto death of authorial intent?

Contemporary openness (Kafka, Joyce) lead to the construction of worlds, which are self contained and are microcosms. These worlds reflect the incarnation of ideas, certain *senses*, which are are arguably the real meanings of an open work.

The open work requires the reader to *make* the composition with the composer.

Artistic forms, the aesthetics/poetics reflect the way that science or culture views reality. An example of this is how the emergence of the “field” in physics influences the manifestation of cause and effect in artistic works. Similarly, Eco discusses the logical problem of binary logic. This idea relates to the “Law of the Excluded Middle” which is a foundation of mathematics and recently has been questioned by some logicians. Further examples are mathematical incompleteness (Goedel, notably), as well as Einsteinian relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty, etc.

Openness is a fundamental part of perception. We can observe and interpret, but essentially never exhaust.

For artistic creation, the artist’s role is to start a work, and it is the role for the viewer (addressee) to finish it. The “completed work”, which exists from the interpretation of the observer, still belongs to the artist in a sense, but must also belong to the viewer. Open works are never quite the same, but are also never gratuitously different. The open work is still constrained in its outcomes and limited in that it is still grounded within an ideology.

Concludes with some bullet points:
1) Open works are in movement and are characterized by an invitation for the observer to make the work with the author.
2) Of all works in movement, there are some works that are open for interpretation and uncovering on the part of the observer.
3) Every work, is open to degrees of interpretation.

Eco stops short of connecting these worlds defined by open works- each open work is a field of possible interpretations, together which define a world of connected meanings that is consistent and can be navigated by observers. At the same time, this requires certain degrees of accessibility. Eco still stops short of allowing these worlds of works to connect to each other. This is what Deleuze and Guattari would argue. That these worlds of meanings set up by each work would connect to each other and to the areas from which they borrowed references and ideas.

Dimensions of openness: openness and games- games may be very prescriptive, even despite interactivity, while leaving no ambiguity in terms of meaning making. Contrasting this, we can explore meaning making in games that have essential ambiguity (like Metal Gear, which tears down the 4th wall at points). Other games have a great deal of freedom in understanding meaning, This openness seems to derive from inherent ambiguity in some works.