Glenn is getting at something here which has been on my mind a lot as of
late - where is science-based art headed?
1. There is a lot of reason to believe that the physicality of a medium
will remain important, even if post-media/web-art/etc. become as popular an
art form as oil painting. One example of support comes to mind in the study
of e-readers, and how everyone (publishers, authors, book stores) thought
that e-readers would put physical books out of market, when in fact people
are reading physical books more
<http://www.geekwire.com/2015/paper-back-real-books-rebound/>! Just like we
appreciate professional athletes for their physical prowess, I think we
will always appreciate a painter who can, in whatever style they may be
working in, exhibit the same type of mastery (this is a point that Denis
Dutton made a while back
<https://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty>). I
think we see a lot of artists who engage with science using high technology
to do so because high tech and science are so physically linked, but the
concepts of science, as they predominate our media, are seeping down to
traditional medium artists more and more every day. While science-based art
still has this kind of novelty aura about it (outside of the inner circles
we Yasminers are occupying), art about science someday (hopefully soon)
will be just as common as art about war, politics, etc.
and I'll skip to point 3 -
3. I was recently part of an exhibit called "Visual Inquiries
<http://www.pace.edu/dyson/news-and-events/visual-inquiries>" at Pace
University - this was a science-based art show, and all of the work
happened (as part of the curator's vision) to be very traditional art.
Painting, sculpture, drawing. This fact started a discussion in the gallery
about the difference between high tech and traditional art - which leads to
my thoughts here. I think that the allure of high-tech anything is very
real - it's shiny, blinky, interactive, etc - but this is most often a
one-trick pony sort of deal. These pieces, in my experience, are very
popular when first seen but then fall quickly into the past. Perhaps this
is because technology is always evolving, and in order for tech pieces to
be impressive/important (I'm talking here about pieces made after artists
like Nam June Paik, who will always be important because of the historical
context of his work) the tech has to keep up - artists who use high tech
face the same tech obsolescence issue that consumers face where we are sick
of something that's 1 or 2 years old because the next best thing is already
out. To Glenn's point, creating a real work of Fine Art would be quite the
amazing feat here given art's traditional set of elements interacting in a
composition - I can see here how the conversation could lead into social
practice, but that is a can of worms in itself... But to wrap up, back
around to my first point, once we get past and/or harness technology, and
once we get past the novelty of art about science, I think some really
important, lasting (in the Mona Lisa sense) pieces will be made.
*Julia Buntaine*
*Neuroscience-based art: www.JuliaBuntaine.com
<http://www.juliabuntaine.com>*
*Innovator-in-Residence at Rutgers UniversityDirector at SciArt Center
<http://www.sciartcenter.org>*
*Editor-in-Chief of SciArt Magazine <http://www.sciartmagazine.com>*
On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Glenn Smith <gsmith@space-machines.com>
wrote:
> Dear Yasminers,
>
> Julia Buntaine has expressed a very important idea in connection with
> STEAM, and one which might constitute a Yasmin topic in and of itself:
>
> Additionally, there is the idea that restrictions and set limits (money,
>> time, space, etc) actually breed creativity, because if all possibilities
>> were open, where would creativity be?
>>
>
> Yes, as artists working with technology and science, we are excited to
> have a seemingly unending supply of new tools and imagery; but unless and
> until each of us have the discipline to focus on a specific subset thereof,
> it is unlikely that we will be able to exercise our creativity in some
> meaningful fashion -- and which for many of us is synonymous with being
> able to create truly important and memorable works of art -- as per the
> following series of propositions:
>
> 1. Although there is actually talk of "post-media" art (and I, for one, am
> starting to be instantly suspicious of any term that begins with "post"),
> one can argue that 99.9999% of humanity will continue, as they have for the
> last one hundred thousand years, to understand and respond to art as an
> engagement with some specific realm of physical reality -- i.e., a medium!
> -- be it cords stretched across a sounding board, or oil paint applied to a
> taut canvas, or wet plaster built up over a wire armature.
>
> 2. An examination of a representative sample of works by great artists
> will reveal, even beyond a preoccupation with a specific medium, moments of
> intimacy with that medium which tend to be inseparable from that which we
> experience as "art with a capital 'A' ", and in respect to which (and out
> of my embarrassment at belaboring the obvious) I will offer but a single
> example: that apparent slathering of wet plaster forming the visage of
> Giacometti's "Man Pointing" [1] -- but which visage expresses not only an
> extraordinary nobility, but also the sense of a gaze far, far into the
> future of our species.
>
> 3. It seems unlikely that such moments will occur often in the practice of
> an artist who seeks to tame a circus-tent's worth of technological
> wizardry; and it seems unlikely as well that such circus-tent environments
> lend themselves to that which is a related characteristic of great art: a
> sense of composition among and between a definitive set of elements.
>
> Regards,
> Glenn
>
> [1] http://www.space-machines.com/art_as_phenomenon/giacometti_m
> an_pointing_detail_394x600.jpg
>
>
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