> Richard Mcbride wrote:
> But then, I suppose the argument has been made from the other side, and
> quite often, that while late 19thC science was slumbering in its
> Victorian dreams ala H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and various escapes to
> other worlds --
I was not talking about the nineteenth century; I was actually referring to
the present-day slumbering of the art wolrld.
> Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauve, etc., were in a way much more
> "advanced" than Science's primitive moves from 17thC wood and bronze
Again I am refering to the present-day art world--the movements above are
all at least a century old.
> So tell me, David: Do you think you will find the answers to such
> aesthetic questions as these in the area of the prefrontal lobes? Or
> perhaps around the corpus collosum, or actually IN it as the highway to
> everywhere? Or maybe it will be found in the right hemispherical lobe
> alone, of the cerebral cortex?
> Indeed, might not much of this be investigated in the nerve train of the
> backbone, and not in the brain at all?
I believe that if I don't find the answer to these questions, somebody else
will.
> .......Still, I cannot help but wonder how much the relationship
> between the praxis of design and its theory have really changed. For
> instance, many years ago when I asked Julian Hochberg (Cornell) to take
> his perception psychology courses, he said, "What's the point? As an
> architectural design student you are far beyond anything we will come
> across in class."
Many years ago the present surge in neurobiological research hadn't even
begun. Julian Hochberg could make such a statement without fear of any
well-founded rebuttal from scientists or anyone else. No one had looked at
the brain in anything like the detail that that exists today with devices
such as MRIs because none of those tools were available.
> If then, the Science part of the curve is presently up while the Art
> portion of it is down, does that really make any difference? For if
> scientific studies entirely fail at explaining aesthetic decisions --
> usually making very poor aesthetic decision in their own behalf -- how
> may scientific imaginations make even a comment on aesthetics? Unless
> they come to grips with aesthetics' very slippery system of truths, and
> candidly confront aesthetic values themselves, is not all this talk of
> an aesthetic mere wishful thinking?
I think the word aesthetic is misleading because it caries so much baggage;
it is loaded with meanings. At this point of the discussion I want to find
out why we like certain works of art and not others. There are a number of
possible answers to this question: the brain, evolution, and environment.
Maybe the following example will make it clearer: only a few years ago,
people felt free to eat foods high in fat. They simply ate the foods they
liked, not knowing what the consequences were. These people thought they
knew what they were doing--that their choices were rational. Similarly,
artists today think they know what they're doing. They unquestioningly
follow customs and trends that are set out for them by society's take on the
role of the artist and activities appropriate to the role. In my opinion,
artists must strive to get beyond the constraints of the given, to define a
new role for art in relation to the new knowledge and the circumstances of
the late twentieth/early twenty-first century.
David Zaig
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