--- On Thu, 12/23/10, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
From: Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca Subject: Re: [PD] [PD-announce] Piksel video report: Sonification of IT censorship technologies To: "Derek Holzer" derek@umatic.nl Cc: pd-list@iem.at Date: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 2:51 AM On Thu, 23 Dec 2010, Derek Holzer wrote:
This is a classic example of the ongoing
(mis)communication(s) between artists and scientists. In this case, I think Mathieu is confusing the purpose of art with the purpose of a scientific paper.
That's right, the purpose of art is to have no purpose. Thus spake Captain Haddock, as he explained why he had bought a large plexiglas sculpture of the letter H, in Tintin's (unfinished) opus 24 : http://www.decitre.fr/gi/16/9782203017016FS.gif
;)
One's aim is to establish and demonstrate facts, the
other to explore possibilities and inspire imaginative (and often non-linear) connections.
That's a typical Romantic conception of it. Before that time, art and technique were largely interchangeable words (they still can be, depending on context), and a lot more people knew that the word «technique» comes from classical greek «τέχνη», which has several meanings including «art» and «craftsmanship». In Romantic times, an anti-scientific strand of artists took over, who were really obsessed by their emotions.
Which strand of composers are you talking about?
We are still under that influence, but the reason we're having this discussion is in part because there is a partial reconvergence of art and science happening these years. Some may call it a confusion.
I think that it's pretty clear that to establish and demonstrate facts, one needs to explore possibilities and inspire imaginative (and often non-linear) connections. It's so intertwined, that it's necessary.
Nevertheless, in the scientific culture, much of the «artsy» part of the job has been swept under the carpet although the job's greatest successes depends on it. (I guess that this would be why Einstein appears in that book about creativity that was mentioned some days ago)
For me, far too much of this art-science stuff errs on
the side of technical demonstration.
If technical demonstration can be one of the many purposes of art, ... Gallery contents of the last century is one long argument that art can be anything at all and always escapes any definition.
I too think that art errs a lot : someone needs to pee in Duchamp's urinal, imho. We just don't quite agree on which art is erring.
Yet at once, I don't wish that Marco's work had been a technical demonstration ; it's not what I said. My wish is about valuing the possibility to sense the input through the output. That does happen to be a necessary feature of scientific visualisation and/or sonification, but it doesn't mean art can't have this feature.
The flip side of that coin is that poetry is often
unquantifiable ("program me something sad" says the media artist to their trusty technician) and causes segfaults in engineer-type brains ;-)
It's more like "program me something interesting" and then the engineer-type brain suspects he's being asked to be the artist, and that the nominal artist is in fact some kind of curator except he gets the credit for the whole thing.
But that's the worst case : usually it's a lot more pleasant than that, and the artists' requirements are usually very graspable.
| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
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