Flux objects often came in the form of boxes or 'kits' to use
A ping-pong kit for a new table-tennis experience
Flux - in Latin, means 'to flow'.
Fluxus was an inter-disciplinary movement involving artists, composers, architects, designers, writers and so on.
The movement embraced the ideas of:
indeterminacy (doing away with control of the artist/musician and letting all sounds have equal value - whether from composer, performer, context)
leaving things to chance,
a DIY aesthetic by using whatever was to hand, and whatever skills you had (anti-traditional-crafts)
about simplicity over complexity,
and generally against the art-market and art-commercialism
a lot of the key Flux People began their work as composers who were interested in the idea of 'performance as creation' - ie: working from a 'score' anyone can be an artist / creator, as each new performance equals a new piece of work brought into being.
Fluxus performances sought to elevate the banal, the mundane, in order to frustrate the high culture of academic and market driven music and art.
info from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus
The movement was seen to be sparked by 2 key figures - composer John Cage, and artist George Maciunas.
In 1963, George scribbled the Fluxus manifesto thus:
amongst the cut-out dictionary definitions for flux, George writes:
Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, "intellectual", professional and commercialized culture. PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, - PURGE THE WORLD OF "EUROPANISM"
PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART, promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be grasped by all peoples, not only critics dilettantes and professionals.
FUSE the cadres of cultural social and political revolutionaries into united front and action.
image from: http://static.guim.co.uk/Guardian/artanddesign/gallery/2008/nov/03/1/fluxusmanifesto-6855.jpg
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George also wrote this, in 1965 - a 'fluxmanifesto on art amusement':
FLUX-MANIFESTO ON FLUX-AMUSEMENT --VAUDEVEILLE -- ART?
TO ESTABLISH ARTISTS NON-PROFESSIONAL, NON-PARASITIC, NON-ELITE STATUS IN SOCIETY, HE MUST DEMONSTRATE OWN DISPENSABILITY, HE MUST DEMONSTRATE SELF-SUFFICIENCY OF THE AUDIENCE, HE MUST DEMONSTRATE THAT ANYTHING CAN SUBSTITUTE ART AND ANYONE CAN DO IT.
THEREFORE THIS SUBSTITUTE ART-AMUSEMENT MUST BE SIMPLE, AMUSING, CONCERNED WITH INSIGNIFICANCES, HAVE NO COMMODITY OR INSTITUTIONAL VALUE. IT MUST BE UNLIMITED, OBTAINABLE BY ALL AND EVENTUALLY PRODUCED BY ALL.
THE ARTIST DOING ART MEANWHILE, TO JUSTIFY HIS INCOME, MUST DEMONSTRATE THAT ONLY HE CAN DO ART, ART THEREFORE MUST APPEAR TO BE COMPLEX, INTELLECTUAL, EXCLUSIVE, INDISPENSABLE, INSPIRED. TO RAISE ITS COMMODITY VALUE IT IS MADE TO BE RARE, LIMITED IN QUANTITY AND THEREFORE ACCESSIBLE NOT TO THE MASSES BUT TO THE SOCIAL ELITE
quoted from: www.artnotart.com/fluxus/
images from:
http://www.uturn-copenhagen.dk/uploads/30083/1214986907.jpg
http://gregcookland.com/journal/2007_03_25_archive.html
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/03.08/16-fluxus.html