Date:Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:47:04 -0500
Novel ways of thinking and doing can be socially, economically and politically beneficial. The wonder of invention is a creative springboard allowing the more adventurous to remix the given. Negotiating territorial discourses and practices requires tenaciousness and makes significant learning demands on the border-crossers. Mironov’s suggestion about living, removable tattoos as possibly being a form bioart , is something to think about. Certainly within the traditions of body and performance art possibilities abound. Many artists have used their own bodies as malleable sites of sculptural form. From Beuys and Nauman to Hannah Wilke and Orlan, performance art is very much alive within the cultural establishment of the artworld. In an earlier post, Orlan talks about a prospective collaboration with Oron Catts. Mironov’s idea about removable tattoos may in fact one day cross the art/sci divide as well.
Invention can also be looked upon as incorporating an element of chance. There are many historical examples in this regard, the discovery of penicillin being one. For the artist, recognizing nuance and possibility in the process of making, is part of artistic creation. Another aspect, furthering collaboration and creative process is the random and not so random meeting of various practitioners at cocktail parties, lectures art exhibits and the like. The scientific laboratory and artist’s studio are generally off-limits to a public audience. Perhaps shared laboratory/studio visits could be arranged?
I am very intrigued to learn about Thomas Edison's tattoo machine. In some ways it can be compared to Paul Winchell's prototype for an artificial heart. The comparison is not one of function, but one of migration between the worlds of art, science and entertainment. Most Americans (of a certain age) are familiar with Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney, as a ventriloquism duo performing on early television. Paul Winchell being sentient, Jerry Mahoney, a puppet. However, what is not well known is that Winchell was also an inventor. He studied acupuncture, was engaged in medical hypnotism and had a close relationship with Dr. Henry Heimlich. In consultation with Heimlich, Paul Winchell designed the first the prototype of what we now know as the artificial heart.
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2 comments:
I want to reflect on some aspects of the conversations from the symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and try to reframe the discussion with notes for myself.
A focal point for the discussion has been to discuss the roles artists play in laboratory settings. A good deal of discussion and effort has been directed over the years towards promoting opportunities and understanding the roles that artists perform alongside and/or despite scientists. Suzanne Anker also introduced the notion of "art as invention"–the migration of social spaces in a recent thread dealing with the social and cultural implications of bioscience.
While these are complex topics full of social and methodological implications, I sense a generalizable way of framing the conversation that, I think, warrants some consideration–if only because it might help draw others into the conversation.
Whatever the engagement of art and biology, be it through individuals, groups, and/or at the level of disciplines, there are certain instances of value created by these multifaceted interactions. Many of these have been discussed. However, these are not characteristic of only art and bioscience, but rather they seem to exists at all levels of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the practice of sensing opportunities and starting new organizations (of concepts even!) to seize on those opportunities.
Quoting Suzanne Anker:
"Novel ways of thinking and doing can be socially, economically and politically beneficial. The wonder of invention is a creative springboard allowing the more adventurous to remix the given. Negotiating territorial discourses and practices requires tenaciousness and makes significant learning demands on the border-crossers...Invention can also be looked upon as incorporating an element of chance...For the artist, recognizing nuance and possibility in the process of making, is part of artistic creation. Another aspect, furthering collaboration and creative process is the random and not so random meeting of various practitioners at cocktail parties, lectures art exhibits and the like."
I like Suzanne's sentiment–though I have to disagree about the role that chance plays in the interaction. Certainly there is an element of chance, but invention is much more an import/export process: "Negotiating territorial discourses, recognizing nuance and possibility, meeting of various practitioners." From my point of view, the majority of what counts as interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice involves translation, mediation, organization, and consultation. If you are involved in an actively engaged import/export process of exchanging ideas, materials, methods...whatever...you generally increase the odds that chance will fall in your favor. The implications, especially for teaching and learning, are that the import/export process can be learned and developed while chance cannot.
Would you agree that a characteristic of artists is their ability to sense gaps in culture or social structures? Would you also agree that artists are able to bridge these gaps because they maintain affiliations and learning strategies that involve and leveraging the concerns of multiple groups?
I see at least two ways of looking at this:
Behaviorally–that is, what are the behaviors of artists and scientists that seek to make these kinds of bridges and border-crossings? A question to ask here is, "How?"
Functionally–that is, what are the benefits that these behaviors confer both for the individuals involved and for their "other" constituencies? A question to ask here is, "For Whom?"
From the behavior standpoint, this idea of entrepreneurship is critical. I admire the symposium participants' overriding desire to identify new areas of investigation, their resourcefulness in building a practice and implementing projects, and their dedication–despite conventional "wisdom."
Woven through this discussion have been themes of
-creating common ground,
-creating new holistic understanding, and
-resolving differences between disciplines through the development of a metaphor–visual or otherwise.
These themes, not coincidentally, characterize Wolfe and Haynes' criteria for interdisciplinary synthesis (at least in terms of writing). (Wolfe, C. R., and Haynes, C. 2003. Interdisciplinary writing assessment profiles. Issues in Integrative Studies 21, 126–169.)
To what degree are the behaviors, practices, and methods of the artists and scientists involved in this discussion and elsewhere indicative of brokering–such that each is translating, applying metaphors, creating common ground, and resolving differences between groups? This brokering, I think, is a fundamental activity and the research seems to indicate that it can be learned.
For much of my argument about brokering, I am drawing from Ronald Burt's work on structural holes and network entrepreneurship. Burt recent presented to NESTA on the topic of innovation.
The domain knowledge and landscape is also critical. The fact that so little is known about biology, and for that matter, about art, necessarily creates opportunities. These are amplified by the apparent and real methodological differences between biology and art practices. Thus, one explanation for why this is such a rich area of inquiry lies in the social, cultural, and ethical implications of bioscience–confounded by the social and cultural "holes" created when we try to align the constituencies and interests of biology and art.
Gabriel Harp
Master of Fine Arts '07
School of Art & Design
Graduate Student Instructor
Department of Screen Arts & Cultures
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
www.semeiotica.com
I offer the following in response to your astute reflections. Your point concerning “multifaceted interactions” do in fact apply to a range of practices going beyond the scope of art and bioscience. Leo Steinberg in his 1953 essay “Art and Science: Do They Need to Be Yoked?”
addresses some of your questions. He sees the “art/sci” connection as only one of the possible pairings of creative thought. He so elegantly asks: “Don’t any two disciplines offer mutual analogies to a rhetorical imagination?”
With regard to “import/export” process in knowledge production, chance remains a variable
x-factor based on many other surrounding socio-economic and political backdrops. Certain
practices: laboratory, aesthetic or otherwise are also influenced by outside variables of funding, cultural readiness and media driven targeting. So it is not the practice itself that is immune to the timing of its reception.
Let us consider this example. I design a cooking contest in which cook-tops, utensils, frying pans, butter and eggs are given to 12 contestants. Each ingredient has the same expiration date, and was purchased at the same store at the same time. The frying pans as well are of equal value. Each contestant is then asked to prepare “eggs over easy.” A panel of three judges are asked to award prizes based on taste, presentation and alike of the food. How can we assess the differences in quality of the results? Does the incorporation of chance effect the results here?
Your points about translating, applying metaphor, creating common ground between disciplines is well taken. In fact, I would like to see a small think-tank take place in which presentations, discussions and performative projects would help to clarify differing discipline-based interpretations. Since specific expertise generates specific epistemological results, assumptions can be reframed in terms of what means what to whom. Since we are dealing with specialized knowledge bases, there is much to learn.
Suzanne Anker
s.anker@verizon.net
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