|
|
|
contact | mailing list | |
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because We Are Digital
crossing the boundaries
page 4 of 7Predictably, the phrase "this will kill that" was repeated with the invention of photography, and is all too often heard again today as we experience the digital revolution. Much in the same way that the text of the book threatened the multimodal cathedral, or photography's imagery that of painting, the computer now threatens the book. Likely there will be a co-existence in the media. The book will likely not disappear, but will inevitably change in function and meaning, as did painting. Furthermore, the computer offers us another Renaissance in our extensions of creative possibilities through the coequal distribution and interconnectedness of age-old multimedia. The Web is an ever expanding territory of thought, commerce and entertainment. Obviously, there is no doubt that technology relieves us of burdensome tasks, whether it is the welding of metal or of numbers or of images, or of all of them together. But, have we allowed it to free us in the greater pursuits of our humanness? Perhaps the blame lies not with technology but with our systems of learning. All too often today, intellectual ideas are treated as chattel property whose purpose remains locked in the discourse of the "knowing" rather than serving the common good. This notion segregates us from our commonality of intelligence and unravels with techno-babel, jargonization the very fiber of our humanity. Pre-Enlightenment myth returns in these forms. Specialists sequester themselves in monasteries of learning, untouched by the great unwashed masses. Something Medieval is happening again. How astounding that at Americas great temple of learning Harvard university, as recently as 1989, the late great Italian poet Italo Calvino needed to patronize eloquently some of our most advanced thinkers of what has been evident in the history of ideas as taught by the Liberal Arts from the beginning; creative visualization is a process that, while not "originating in the heavens," goes beyond any specific knowledge or intention of the individual to form a kind of transcendence. Calvino stated that not only poets and novelists deal with this problem, but scientists as well. "To draw on the gulf of potential multiplicity is indispensable to any form of knowledge. The poet's mind, and at a few decisive moments the mind of the scientist, works according to a process of association of images that is the quickest way to link and to choose between the infinite forms of the possible and the impossible. The imagination is a kind of electronic machine which takes account of all possible combinations and chooses the ones that are appropriate to a particular purpose, or simply the most interesting, pleasing, or amusing." JOHN DEWEY: PRAGMATIC VISIONARY Earlier in the 20th Century, John Dewey, in his pragmatism, advocated an educational system which would recognize the common humanist thread within experience, communication, and art. In his analysis of the Greek Parthenon he noted: The collective life knew no boundaries between what was characteristic of these places and operations and the arts that brought color, grace and dignity into them. Painting and sculpture were organically one with architecture, as that was one with the social purpose the buildings served. Music and song were intimate parts of the rites and ceremonies in which the meaning of group life was consummated.We ought not to have to remind today's thinkers of his philosophies, and yet find we have to over and over again. Dewey sought to recover the continuity of aesthetic experience and normal processes of living through proper education. All art is the product of interaction of living organism and environment and an undergoing and a doing which involves a reorganization of actions and materials. Aesthetic understanding must start with and never forget that the roots of art and beauty lie in basic vital functions. Herein is a mimic of Bacon's earlier notion that all pattern is of the "machine of God." |
|
|||||||
 |
This site ©2003 Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin. Maintained by webmaster@intherealmofthecircuit.com. | |
| ||
| Wells, H. G. :: Leica :: Wright, Orville and Wilbur :: Franklin, Benjamin :: Baran, Paul :: World Brain :: Winkel, Dietrich Nikolaus :: Klee, Paul :: Scitix :: National Library of Medicine :: Dresden Codex :: CERN :: Egerton, Thomas :: Echert, J. Prespert, Jr. :: Joyce, James :: Landsat I :: Philadelphia Zoo :: Higinbotham, William :: Pentateuch :: Deconstruction :: | ||
