Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 19:42:42 +0100 (MET)
To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: jnech@imaginet.fr (NECHVATAL Joseph)
Joseph Nechvatal
Dear Brad, I have been thinking over your bruiser question concerning research and art and the direction art is taking (as it seems to me here from Europe). Art has seemed baffled about what to do in rejoinder to the growing consequence of scientific and technological exploration in modeling our civilization. One retort positions artists as consumers of the new tools, using them to create new images, sounds, and video (I would place you there); another response sees artists emphasizing the critical functions of art to comment on the developments from the distance of time (I would place Saul Ostrow in there); a third intersection urges artists to enter into the heart of research as feeling participants of conceptual design.
It is a mordant boner to visualize coexistent exploration as merely a technical endeavor, and that is why I insist in including 'art' in the proposition (perhaps you are a bit more anti-art than I and so would prefer to drop the art part). When you ask, 'why not just call it research, instead of art as research' it is for this reason: art has both profoundly judicious and philosophical implications for culture. Western culture must develop methods to avoid the premature snuffing out of genteel lines of inquiry and development. I presume art too can replenish a caustic component into technology as an unconstrained meridian of research.
Collective existence is increasingly dominated by the objects and cultural forms created by technology. I know you agree. For example, telephones, computers, entertainment systems, medical equipment, transportation systems, governmental and policing systems, and product distribution technologies shape the ways people in the developed world spend their days, interact with others, and conceptualize the present and the future. Theorists such as Baudrillard and Virilio have exposed the hidden assumptions, shaping of categories and pervasive consequences of imaging technology.
Scientific research similarly reaches beyond meager academic questions, as you often point out. Scientific research has deep sagacious and philosophical implications. Astronomers attempt to understand the origins and shape of the universe. Breaking with all prior human history, they can look at the universe using radio wave, ultraviolet, and infrared "eyes" and see a universe quite different than what has been known. Biologists increasingly unravel mysteries of life and invent methods for manipulating the genetic heart of life.
Many "high tech" artists believe they have already addressed the future by becoming computer artists who work with digital image, sound, and interactive multimedia. They have made a critical error. They have misunderstood the real significance of artists' work with computers during the last decade and a half. Artists need to actively patrol the frontiers of scientific and technological research to identify future trends that could benefit from the artist as researcher investigation. Knowledge of computers and the internet will be valuable assets because they will be required tools in most areas of research, but artists who think, however, they are in the vanguard because they work with the digital image may soon find themselves in the backguard.
What is a befitting function for art in C21? Throughout the centuries science and technology have been increasing in importance, while the fucking arts have failed to advance a viable role. Often (as by and large painting has done) art has tried to ignore these developments and treat them as peripheral to the core of culture. Even when artists did attend to these developments, they did so as distant commentators, sniping from the audience, often without a deep understanding of the world views and processes of scholarly research.
I believe there is a much stronger role for the arts to play when artists integrate critical commentary with high level knowledge relevant to the science and technology worlds - and I am seeing it quite often here in Europe and I am encouraged for I too (as Saul I presume) am worried that the invisible hand of the marketplace might not be so sagacious as many would like to believe. The judgments that make short term reasoning for stockholders do not make sense for the culture at large most often.
Many righteous ideas are orphaned, depreciated in the wasteland of BS. I want to participate in art actions where the arts can function as an unrestrained area of examination. Art could become the site where forlorn, discredited, and nonconformist inquires could be pursued for example.
Art might very well assess research according to criteria quite divergent from those of the marketable and measurable worlds. The roles of artists could consolidate other roles such as researcher, designer, hacker, and producer. Even within research labs, artist's apportionment within investigation squads could annex a standpoint that could foster the research operation - but artists must again broaden their definitions of art materials and contexts.
They must become curious about scientific and technological research and acquire the skills and knowledge that will allow them to significantly participate in these worlds. They must expand conventional notions of what constitutes an artistic education. At the same time they must keep alive artistic traditions of iconoclasm, critical perspectives, amusement, and sensual communications. We must be willing to undertake art explorations that do not neatly fit in historically validated media.
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Joseph Nechvatal, Paris, France, Europa
http://www.cybertheque.fr/galerie/jnech
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Thanks to the author.