Science and Art, Hand in Hand

I feel there is a lot of unnecessary distancing between science and art. Yeah, fine, I know their places in society and, of course, fundamentally they are different such that they cannot be conflated. But, when we look at these from a high, lofty vantage point, we find that they are both interpretations of life, the universe, and everything; tools made by humans.

Okay, so there are several things that have got me pondering this topic over the last week, stemming from casual conversation, screenings, critiques, and pacing this way and that in my dorm. Of course, I think all of you may have some example of where science and art coexist and that is awesome. I guess my plan is to take it a step further to combat a mentality, very prominent in the college environment, that regularly separates these two ways of thinking through curriculum, student perception, and concern of future employment. Hey, a lot of this makes total sense and such thoughts that usually lead to uncertainty really endorse the immobility for art students to be concerned with science and science students to be concerned with art. Yet, like I said, this coordination of art and science is always apparent just sometimes overlooked (especially in an age where, I'm sorry to throw this out there, people make the conscious decision to use mart mediums like film and video games to just, 'check out').

I mean, let's take a look at one of the finest examples of art and science conflating in what seemed to be a movement of mind, body, and soul to a different understanding of reality. 1905 was a landmark year because a certain patent clerk named Albert Einstein developed a theory that would change the way we look at the universe around us. And, highlighted in many of his biographies, like Michio Kaku's compelling account, he came up with these theories by thinking about pictures, elegant and strange pictures. These projections of a new reality, in which he used mathematics as a tool to describe them as well as prove of their existence, required a conflation of alien imagery and sound understanding in mathematical logic. Although this is an assumption, I would guess such a feat would require not only knowledge of science but an undeterred sense of creativity, one that would allow for such bizarre provocation to happen.

Now take a look at this painting, one of my favorite paintings. Marcel Duchamp's 1912 painting signifies much more than an abstraction of a body in motion. It signifies a new way to look at reality, one that obtains its influence from (maybe) the science that has spawned in the previous twenty years before but also one that extracts the societal and psychological significance of technology, maybe describing on a singular canvas the illusory foundations of the moving image, which was gaining interest among not just a select few but among the general population as a viable source of entertainment. Again, let us take that giant step back and climb up on our high vantage point, looking down at the big picture...in a way, and I may argue to a large extent, don't you think Duchamp and Einstein were doing similar things? Weren't they trying to express a new manner by which we see reality? Space and time as a fabric? Hmm...hey, I may be totally wrong but I'd like to think that there is an intriguing unity between the way in which the search for a 'different' reality matriculates a plethora of interpretations through a plethora of media. In the case of the Duchamp, the palette, brush, and canvas were the tools of interpretation. And, instead of being provable or practical, it provides emotional connection within each of us. It asks us to navigate our thoughts and feelings and articulate a response based of some sort of coagulation of these thoughts and feelings.

I think it is crucial for me to point out that no where in this piece am I trying to make the case that one is better than the other. What I am trying to do is express my thoughts that art and science compliment each other in a way that looking at both with a curious eye leads to a better understanding of not just the topics (spacetime, motion picture, modernism, etc.) but also the historical framework and cultural framework that provided the basis for these phenomena. To understand where I am coming from, ask yourself what is the cultural significance of the special theory of relativity, quantum physics, and black holes. Ask yourself what is the cultural significance of The Nude Descends the Staircase, Sherlock Jr., or even A Serious Man. I would argue that such thought and discussion would spot points of intersections between the impact of these scientific and artistic endeavors.

Another example I wanted to being up was one rooted in linguistic importance. I think it is safe to say that people look to someone like Shakespeare for intuitive accounts about the human condition that even scientists can use to explain some sort of experiment (eh...that did not sound convincing at all, whatever, this isn't suppose to be that rigorous). But let me introduce you to Marcel Proust, a French writer from the early 20th century (yes, there is a trend forming here...I'll leave you to figure out why). He made a titanic-sized book titled In Search For Lost Time that has also been broken up into smaller novels. I had the chance to read the first one, Swann's Way, in my history class. Though it is translated from French, what I found was that Proust seemed to want to intensely push the boundaries of language in an attempt to tap into the consciousness of the characters in a manner that elucidated every inch of the mental landscape of a human as if he was mapping the brain out not with data points or computer simulations but with elegiac prose and river-flowing sentences that gradually draw out what can only be deduced as immutable truths. Indeed, it is not a coincidence that Proust has been called a neuroscientist (it's not a definitive truth, mind you, but the mere fact that he has been labelled that holds weight). If not that, he certainly has something to say about psychology.

And it works the other way around, particularly in discussions of art (and many art students may know this already). I find that troubles with critiques or other forms of discussion about artwork originate from a lack of a common understanding or a common ground all parties can inhabit while they discuss there views all in an attempt to rid their opinions with superficiality. If you are one of the two avid readers of my blog, you know where I am going with this. A careful combination of poetics and hermeneutics, I feel, will result in a more formulaic foundation through which discussants or critics can based their opinions on. This is a more rigorous and, in many ways, scientific manner by which we approach art (art as some sort of experiment or research). The only way, though, to achieve such a combination is to understand form, whether it'd be video game form or film form). One of my heroes, David Bordwell, does an incredible job at expressing his approach using poetics and his pieces of many films are constantly illuminating and profound. If we ignore such a method we risk suffering the inevitable consequence of trying to define what words mean and then what they mean to the specified piece...that or a whole lot of unrelated, unnecessary tangents that carry a trajectory into the stratosphere. While, again, this isn't really science, it does have a scientific framework (or a framework influenced by the impact of the scientific method and other rules of logic).

I know many people of the arts who cringe at the idea of bringing more science into their discussions and interpretations of art. I know some people of the sciences who look over art as a secondary form of interpretation to what is going on around them. This is a call to raise the awareness that science and art should not be at odds with each other but serve as compliments. That, in some very special ways, art can illuminate science and science can illuminate art. There sometimes seems to be a complete lack of understanding of how artistry plays a role in science and how much science there is in art (look at Avatar...really, all you have to do is just look at it). But what is really great about the nature of these two languages is those occurrences where humanity's many plans to understand their place in the universe converge at a point of commonality, at a point that highlights the nature of people's curiosity and the direction that their imagination takes them.