Hi Foci,
I'm (again) catching up on this monthly topic, and decided to quote Tor
because he is closest to what I wanted to say :
Tor Langballe wrote :
[...]
> As a lot of people have written, a lot of the problem lies in definitions.
> One of my major annoyances has allways been how when I'm programming
> (which I'm totally engrossed in now, thus the lack of activity!), I'm
> inventing what concepts to make, visual appearance, user interfaces,
> but also inventing techniques and abtract underlying concepts, but
> this is viewed as "coding" or something very uncreative. When I've
> painted simple still-life paintings where the idea is completly
> standard, and the technique straitforward, people go "Wow! I didn't
> know you where an _Artist_" or "I didn't know you where creative!".
>
> Part of the trouble is that "Art" was probably used to describe a
> dynamic creative process, and was long ago ment for any such creative
> process irregardless of whether it involved technology or not. But
> now Art is often equaled to what in England they call "Liberal Arts"
> (I think): Painting, sculpture, whatever. As long as that's you're
> job and you talk the lingo and where a berret and perhaps have the
> education, you're an "Artist" irregardless of whether you actually
> create anything dynamic or not.
That's exactly what I've been thinking about this whole month, thank you
Tor for expressing it so elegantly !
Ever since "tekne" got divided between techniques and art (at about the
time Aristotle plied his evil trade) everyone got kind of confused about
what Art was about. The word "tekne" and the non-division between those
concepts are a hint at what Greeks initially thought about when
employing this word. For them, I believe, any activity be it
intellectual or social was a form of art. Philosophy was probably
conceived as an art : the Art of Thinking. Technnicians were Artists,
and vice-versa.
To be considered a technician you probably had to have not only the
mastery of a set of techniques, but also the "creative" spark. Which is
to say that a technician wasn't solely recognized for his expertise, but
also for his creativity. The measure here was an appreciation of "Good",
not a diploma gained by an appreciation of "how much". To judge the gap
between then and now, just ask yourself what is an "expert", nowadays :
a person who knows a lot about a subject. It is someone who has the
mastery of a lot of useful techniques, be them manual or intellectual.
The notion of quality of his work is judged by his adequation to a set
of standards, no longer by an appreciation of what he creates. In fact,
implicitely or explicitely, creativity is discouraged in most academic
courses. How would they judge it "objectively" ? How could they rate it
? It no longer defines our appreciation of a person, except perhaps in
artistic circles.
When Sophocle was accused of being senile by grandchildren bent on
inheriting his possessions, he simply presented his last play and asked
the judges if any insane man could possibly have written such a play.
Imagine doing that nowadays, where madness and art are often confused or
at least thought as being close in nature (well, Van Gogh probably
didn't help in this matter !). Imagine asking a judge to use his
artistic judgment to determine if you're sane !
Once the subject-object split was in place (which probably took place
far later, but giving it a date is a difficult thing), Art became
defined as being apart from most other fields of human behaviour, which
had gradually seen their focus reduced to mere utility, and the
relevance of such activity became more and more difficult to see until
no one could really say what we painted, wrote or played music for. The
only reason given, was that it was done was because it felt good, which
under the SOM paradigm is really no reason at all. My own experience
showed me that, when I quit my literature studies and tried to find a
job : I ended up doing removals ! Despite the talk about teaching
humanities, modern society has no more use for them (or so it believes).
As Tor wrote, the confusion today goes so far that to be labelled an
artist you only have to pick up an artistic endeavour, and don't forget
to wear a beret ! "Gunshots on Broadway", the Woody Allen film, presents
a great parody of that. But the "Liberal Arts" are far from useless,
it's just that their use are almost invisible under the current
technopoly (a term I borrow from Neil Postman). Their relevance lies in
the impact they have on both the intellectual and social level. I
believe, for example, in the power of literature to act as a catalyst
for needed social changes, which they often predict. It is possible that
"Fahrenheit 451", by Robert Bradbury, helped to change the social
sentiment that supported the McCarthy trials. In a way, tyrannies are
right when they try to suppress or kill writers, singers or parodists.
Their interest is to control these agents of social change. These people
create new Dynamic concepts of Goodness (and redefine Badness in the
same stroke), in forms that readers might recognize and embrace,
spreading dissent against the socially enforced definition of it.
Artists are the creative engineers of society. They are in no way
useless.
Problem is, the only way to keep them continuing to do that job is,
"don't interfer". Give them some place, and don't expect you'll
recognize one every time. Even they don't manage it, is my guess. And
there are lots of pretenders (in case you wondered : I'm not an artist,
never were, and probably never will be). You can't expect to create a
safe road to DQ when the best definition we can give for it is that it
moves out of any mechanistic pattern, and evades all definitions. All we
can deduce is that some people go "there", and bring back some insight
about something. "How" and "about what" can never be defined, or we
would just block the way.
Another problem I see is that, while we haven't killed the artists
(yet), we've lost interest in them. We no longer pay much attention.
Even if we did, the mass of junk information we wade in everyday makes
it more and more difficult to spot one. I read somewhere in the forums
that old art was no better than modern one, and that this illusion was
only the result of good art surviving, while the other didn't. Perhaps,
but when you're snowed under such a huge amount of "new art",
mass-produced and mass-distributed by new technology, can one tell me
with perfect surety that nothing good will escape us ? I don't think so.
Postman is right, we suffer from "information glut", and this coupled
with the SOM disdain for anything not definable might just do what six
millenium of censure couldn't achieve : the death of Art, or at least of
its power.
Be good
Denis
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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