Gaston Bachelard makes the point that "bad science can produce good art."
His books reveal how what was once taken to be scientific fact can become a
poetics that retains a psychological truth even when it can no longer claim
any scientific legitimacy. Ordinary language still carries along the
imagery of how we used to imagine the word--and ideas we no longer accept
as scientific may still condition our experience of the world.
I have only seen Ikeda's work in online videos, so it is particularly
difficult to know how to react to it. I do use other works of his in class
as examples both of simplicity of means and large scale immersive
environments. I read the review some time ago, and found it irritating--the
sort of "let's be sure you know my opinion" writing that for me is the
opposite of what I imagine good art criticism should be. Rather that
offering readers analysis that would allow the reader to form her own
understanding Ikeda's work, the critic decides what is good and what is
bad. But that's the pattern of most newspaper criticism for you.
On the other hand, I think that there is a point to be made about artists
learning the language of science in ways that go beyond the facile.
Complexity and chaos theory have been particularly misconstrued--consider
the innumerable times "the butterfly effect" is dropped into conversation.
There is a tendency of artists to skim the surface, pluck a few metaphors,
and consider that their work is done.
best,
-- Paul
On Sat, May 28, 2016 at 11:43 PM, Molly Hankwitz <mollyhankwitz@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Dear Roger,
>
> A very interesting set of questions to arise at this point in time of
> intense mutual admiration between art and science and lack of responsible
> criticism in the arts and as science falls prey to conservative doubting,
> at least in States, and what I would argue is an over determination from
> technology sectors in education.
>
> Perhaps it's not so much that artists should "understand" or take a deeply
> creative interest in mimicking science in their practices, but that both
> can learn different sets of questions and directions for research from each
> other and that deep critique both positive and negative is needed in both
> fields. We have enough problems to solve on this planet!
>
> I had a chat with Erik Davis after a presentation he did about psychedelia
> in which he screened early CIA scientific experiments with LSD - controlled
> in a white office, with clock, with men in ties. If this is "objectivity"
> about the type of mystical experience possible on psilocybin then
> scientists have missed something crucial about aesthetics and sensual
> pleasure in affecting mind-alteration. He also talked about a recent study
> done at Johns Hopkins where it was determined that there was some kind of
> universally-had mystical experience. Presumably this more recent study used
> control environments more conducive to tripping than the CIA did in the
> sixties.
>
> My point being that Science could gain important insights into how it is
> posing questions and proving its ideas from artists and artists would do
> well not to treat their own practices as if Art were for producing results
> that need to be proved--what has seemed a creeping concern in both
> criticism and practice and a peculiar (funding driven?) demand on artists
> in the last decade.
>
> Molly Hankwitz, PhD
> Independent scholar, curator, editor
> Bivoulab "scientist"
>
>
>
> > On May 27, 2016, at 1:13 PM, Malina, Roger <rxm116130@utdallas.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> > Yasminers
> >
> > Here is a very very negative review of Ryoji's Ikeda's art installation
> resulting from his cern residency
> >
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/apr/23/art-respond-science-cern-ryoji-ikeda-supersymmetry
> >
> > Should art respond to science? On this evidence, the answer is simple:
> no way
> > Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda's installation Supersymmetry is inspired by
> his residency at Cern -
> > but signifies little more than that physics is weird. Isn't it time we
> stopped expecting artists to understand the complexities of science?
> >
> >
> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/apr/23/art-respond-science-cern-ryoji-ikeda-supersymmetry
> >
> > this is very much along the lines of my colleague Jean Marc
> Levy=Lebond's book 'Science is not art' where he attacks
> > much of the mystification of art science practice
> >
> > the review ends with:
> >
> > Art<https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/art> and science, we feel,
> should have something to say to each other. But perhaps they speak
> different languages after all. I don't speak the language of science too
> > well, either, but I do know one thing: it is concerned with the wonder
> of nature. There is a depressing lack of wonder in this technically
> sophisticated but intellectually and emotionally empty art.
> >
> > would be interested in Yasminer reactions= has anyone seen the work ?
> >
> > roger malina
> >
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