[PD] [PD-announce] Piksel video report: Sonification of IT censorship technologies

[Jonathan Wilkes]

--- On Thu, 12/23/10, Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca> wrote:

> From: Mathieu Bouchard <matju at artengine.ca>
> Subject: Re: [PD] [PD-announce] Piksel video report: Sonification of IT censorship technologies
> To: "Derek Holzer" <derek at umatic.nl>
> Cc: pd-list at 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-----
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Pd-list at iem.at
> mailing list
> UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
>