Even though Conceptual art has been around for more than 50 years and Performance art, as defined by the DADA, for almost 100, I discovered the conceptual aspects for myself in the early 1990's.
I had been amazed by after images for 30 years by then. But in the '90's I started exploring them more. The major thing I discovered is that there were after images of after images. This discovery kicked me in the head and made me realize it was all in our head. Something like the parable of Plato's Cave. I realized that after images did not follow the laws of perspective. Their size never changed as they got farther away. Why? Because they never did get farther away. They were all in my mind anyway.
About this time I was doing performance art and performance poetry. In the early 1990's it was called time art because it existed in time. This time thing always puzzled me and I can find in my notes that I knew this passing of time in space was important but could not really understand it. It finally occurred to me that this movement of physical objects was the essence of it all. By "all" I mean life, existence, God, the works. With this in mind, the creation of original art became difficult. Actually impossible for me.
I then realized that I could create only in my mind without the existence of physical objects. It was like I went back to Plato's Cave. I could use the æther as a complete physical object and add only the movement of the mind within it. I first called this Quantum Poetry and invisible paintings. I also created Mind Medium Sculptures. I could prove that they existed but you could only see and touch them with your mind. Both the poetry and the paintings were place based. Meaning that they were made at a specific place.
The Great Triangles are real. We really made them. With the documentation I prove that we did. They were both space and time based. That is where the Performance Art came in. They are a disturbance in the æther and that is the mind part or Conceptual Art.
Jack Bowman ..........................December 23, 2005