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THE NEW PERCEPTION:THE NEW PERCEPTION:
John Toth, MFA, Ph.D. Hunter College School of Education: The Arts
http://www.JohnToth.net/Oxford/NewPerception.htm
HYPERMEDIATING HYPERMEDIATING INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURES INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURES THROUGH AESTHETIC EDUCATIONTHROUGH AESTHETIC EDUCATION
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ABSTRACTIn his book The Two Cultures and A Second Look, C. P. Snow describes how intellectual life in1959-65 seen through the eyes of Western culture was divided into two polar groups: literary intellectuals and scientists who find each other’s work incomprehensible.
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ABSTRACTWhat made matters worse for Snow is that even within the field of science he found that the scientists who engaged in “pure” research had little ability or interest in communicating with the “applied” scientists.
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ABSTRACTSnow makes a plea to educators to develop in their students a “new perception” that opens “imaginative exploration.”
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The objective of my presentation and paper is to consider the philosophy of aesthetics as a method for engaging “new perceptions” through group interaction around a work of art and by carefully noticing the dynamic relationship between the medium and method that make up the language of the arts and sciences.
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How does philosophy define the substance of How does philosophy define the substance of art and science?art and science?
It is possible to say that the language of science and art have both evolved in ways that have become too complex for anyone to understand who has not had special training. Consider the shift in design over the past one hundred years.
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How has the substance of art and science changed during the Industrial Revolution?
Quantum mechanics and Dada have challenged the minds of the best thinkers.
Paul Dirac, Quantum States, 1928, atomic orbital wavefunctions of a hydrogen atom.
Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel,Readymade,1913. MoMA
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PHILOSOPHY OF SUBSTANCE: COMMON GROUNDPHILOSOPHY OF SUBSTANCE: COMMON GROUND
In Aristotle’s Categories he implies that substance is that which has an independent existence.
The substances that makeup the world, according to Aristotle, have a number of characteristics that can be tangibly described: substance, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection.
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How Does Choosing a Medium Interact with the Individual Learning Styles of Scientists?
There is an example in history of creative scientists who explored similar ideas, each with different learning styles. Albert Einstein, Hendrick Lorentz and Henri Poincaré are all credited with developing the theory of relativity, however, not jointly, but each through their own proposition, method and creative disposition..
Einstein, Lorentz and Poincaré
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How Does Interdisciplinarity Interact with the Individual Learning Styles of Scientists?
ScientistScientist FieldField StudyStudy Second senseSecond senseAlbert Einstein
Theoretical physicist - equations
Light, atoms, photons, mechanics
thought experiments -dream
Henri Poincaré
Mathematician Theoretical physicist
Topology,mechanics, optics, fluids, electricity
proof visualization -polymath
Hendrick Lorentz
Physicist - mathematics
Electrodynamic, light, atoms, electrons
astronomy interest
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The great imaginative leaps in science may require thinking outside a single knowledge modality. At the frontier of complexity the need to be able to describe a new quantum world and virtual world suggests a need to perceive with multi knowledge modalities through collaborations between fields of knowledge.
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Lorentz
Poincaré
Einstein
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How Does Choosing a Medium Interact with the Individual Learning Styles of Artists?
.Acts of creation require some thing to hold the expression, be it words for thoughts, sounds for music, numbers for science, or materials for art. John Dewey in his book Art as Experience insists; “Only where material is employed as media is there expression and art… For each art has its own medium and that medium is especially fitted for one kind of communication. Each medium says something that cannot be uttered as well or as completely in any other tongue.“
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Choosing a medium to fit the art form requires an understanding of the characteristics of the art material as being in a relationship with the “how” of communicating with media.
Alberto Giacometti’s skill in using clay goes beyond representing a man or woman. It is how he uses clay; pinching, stretching, pressing that communicates his sense of the world. And it is how he structures his body language that he communicates authority. It is in the relationship of these events that we find meaning. .
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Dewey points out another important relational characteristic of art material.
“Whatever narrows the boundaries of the material fit to be used in art hems in also the artistic sincerity of the individual artist. It does not give fair play and outlet to his vital interest. It forces his perception into channels previously worn into ruts and clips the wings of his imagination.”
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C. P. Snow’s Second LookThese commonalities and differences that make up the language of the Arts and Sciences imply a relationship between the artist and scientist, the medium and the substance and the how of the generated expression or proposition. What Snow does in writing “A Second Look” is introduce reflection and self critique to his own creative process as a writer. What reflection and critique contribute to knowledge requires a philosophical awareness of how media functions and asks, How do we understand and read our world?
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THE NEW PERCEPTION: AESTHETIC JUDGMENT
Medium Becomes Aesthetic Media
By rethinking his earlier book, The Two Cultures, Snow is noticing his work aesthetically..
Whether we choose words, symbols, images, sounds, objects, numbers or raw materials we are exploring a language; and at times we invent new languages.
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Aesthetic Judgment
What role do the senses play in developing new perceptions?
Instead of pitting logic against the senses, Immanuel Kant acknowledges the senses as the starting point of any search for knowledge:
“Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge. Both may be either pure or empirical.”
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RECEIVE
IMAGINE
INTUIT
KNOW
PROJECT
In regards to the arts and sciences, Kant suggests that any manner of gaining knowledge that relates to objects is done so by intuition. Intuition allows us to perceive specific properties of objects through our sensibilities that receive objects.
A certain kind of receptivity is required for perception. And a certain kind of projection is required for expression. Kant suggests that the faculty of the imagination is responsible for forming concepts out of the “manifold of intuition” to be considered for knowledge. That is, as intuition senses the properties, dispositions and relationships, the imagination forms concepts to consider for knowledge.
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Aesthetic Education: The Art of Active Reflection
Aesthetic Education since the early 70’s has placed philosophy at the center of its pedagogy. Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Elliott Eisner and Maxine Greene have all spoken of the relationship that the arts create between reason and imagination.
According to Greene, “For us, education signifies the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn.”
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As a space/place of learning, aesthetic education may provide a philosophy that addresses a diverse, complex world through a process that opens new associations between concepts and methods through a close study of a work of art.
Aesthetic education allows students to find new associations between theory and practice. Students make choices using the visual elements that are in play within the language of the art work under study. This is a process where imagination and reason are in “fidelity” to self knowledge through a shared event with the work of art.
Reflection is guided by inquiry and experimentation that encourage connections between the language of art and the science of life.
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In aesthetic education Aristotle’s categories are what teachers can address their questions to, in order to encourage grounded observations.
substance: What is the sculpture made of?quality: Describe the qualities of the sculpture surface.quantity: Is his gesture public or private? relation: Describe the angles of the body parts?place: Where would you see someone like this? time: What time period or year is he from? position: How are the mans body parts positioned?state: How old is this man?action: What is he about to do? affect: How does medium influence meaning?
Alberto Giacometti, “Man Pointing,” 1948
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HYPERMEDIAHYPERMEDIAElectronic Substance: Electronic Media
It should be no surprise that Snow’s “new perception” should include a new substance. The new medium is hypertext. Invented by Ted Nelson in 1963 as media that has the capability to link to related hypermedia.
Using hypermedia requires new systems of logic that is discovered beyond the bounds of the tradition model of literacy.
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Media Literacy: Hypermedia as Apparatus
Literacy as we know it is being transformed by electronic media. A professor of English, Gregory Ulmer has a name for the new literacy called “electracy” and in his book Heuretics: The Logic of Invention he describes how knowledge is transmitted through the medium of electricity.
Ulmer believes this shift does not replace literacy but exists alongside or perhaps we are living in a hybrid state: “electracy” as a process of knowledge uses computers as a means of generating a virtual or hyper reality.
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Theory: Hypermediating the Image
In his book One Way Street Walter Benjamin attacks the notion of languages as the best choice of medium in communication. His inclination is towards the image rather than the text:
“Only images in the mind vitalize the will. The mere word, by contrast, at most inflames it, to leave it smoldering, blasted. There is no intact will, without exact pictorial imagination. No imagination without innervations.”
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Practice: Hypermediating the Image
The development of the use of image in the 19th century through photography lead Benjamin to consider the retelling of history through the juxtapositioning of photographic images.
Ted Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with the goal of creating a computer network with a simple user interface.
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CONCLUSIONS:
1. Aesthetic reflection of the beauty and the sublime reveals the threshold of both the senses and reason that restores a balance between the Arts and Sciences.
2. This philosophic awareness of the limited and unlimited capacity of the individual as a learner is what makes the arts particularly useful as a learning apparatus.
3. Only philosophy can define a world point of view that will guide who we are and what we dare to create.
4. The plea for a new perception must embrace the new technologies that have taken the Arts and Sciences into new uncharted territory.
5. Hypermedia forms the basis of a new literacy that opens a world community of learners.
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GUIDING QUESTIONS: GUIDING QUESTIONS: DESRCIBEANALYZEINTERPRETIMAGINEWHATWHOWHEREWHENWHYNOTICEREFLECTSKETCHCONSTRUCTCREATECURATE
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Podcast: Podcast: Rossiter & MignotRossiter & Mignot
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MULTIPLE ENTERY POINTSMULTIPLE ENTERY POINTS: One objective is to direct questions to different content areas within the painting of Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon.
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• Body and languageBody and language
• Facial expressionFacial expression
• PosturePosture
• Clothing stylesClothing styles
• Objects of interestObjects of interest
• Pennsylvania GazettePennsylvania Gazette
• GiftsGifts
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ARTART ACTIVITIESACTIVITIES: How can art activities inform the noticing and appreciation of the art work under study?
• Sketch body languageSketch body language
• Draw facial expressionDraw facial expression
• Draw designs & stylesDraw designs & styles
•Act out conversationsAct out conversations
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Artistic expression is a kind of reasoning. Rudolf Arnheim - Visual Literacy
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AESTHETIC - ESTÉTICO - ESUTETIKKO - ESTHÉTIQUE
The Teaching Artist as Curator: The aesthetic curation of historical images with present day images creates a background for an adaptation of four Chekhov plays combined into one.
Chekhov Now! Festival, “Nostalgia,” 1999, Access Arts, NYC
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AESTHETIC - ESTÉTICO - ESUTETIKKO - ESTHÉTIQUE
Artist as Curator:
John Toth http://www.johntoth.net
Light & ShadowPan American Exhibition at the Burchfield Penney Art Center collaboration with Arts inEducation of Western NY. 2001 Diary of a Young Girl - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
Act Without WordsAdaptation of Sam Beckett's play 78th Street Theatre Lab, New York, NY. 2003.
The Red Studioperformance based on Henri Matisse's studio in Issy, French using projected computer animations to create a moving set with fabric sculpture, film, dance, and music.
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THE PODCASTTHE PODCAST
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Podcast: Podcast: Rossiter & MignotRossiter & Mignot
The pod cast will present a series of questions that are strategically designed to encourage careful noticing.
