Re: <eyebeam><blast> some rhizomes and ramblings

[Joy Garnett <rglib3@metgate.metro.org>]

more ramblings--Eve, yours certainly got me going

I was thinking about how there has recently developed a (long-awaited)
backlash, across all disciplines, but perhaps most pointedly in science,
against the reductive methods and thinking that has gotten us where we
are today, (no judgements here!), and how the web is a great example of
non-reductive, inclusive, hodge-podge lateral thinking, and a way to
follow through with this paradigmatic shift away from reductionism,
helping us to burn new fuzzy pathways for ourselves. Reductionism, as a
highly effective analytical approach, lieing at the core of scientific
method, at the core of the western mind--seems to have reached an
extreme in our culture, from which we are swinging back. There even seem
to be murmerings from within that most artfully developed reductive
machine, the "scientific community" (or should I say the scientific
"community")--scientists, here and there, some in the public eye even,
who are vocalizing the need for a shift away from the intense
specialization and isolation of disciplines, the need for
cross-fertilization, fuzzy logic, and so on.

Is this happening in the arts? I hope so. It seems to be so. Change is
always so uneven. As Michael Rees points out in his latest posting,
artists as a subculture are barely surviving. We need more ways to cross
fertilize, among ourselves and with those working in other disciplines
altogether. This seems to be starting to happen, and the web is a part
of that--I share MR's optimism. Now, a  friend of mine was lamenting the
changes occurring in New York under the Giuliani administration--the
suburbanization and theme-park mallification and nice-ifying of the dear
old gritty city. These comments elicited by a frustrating evening
--Thursday-- spent trying to find a quiet restaurant in a neighborhood
taken over by loud suburban tourists with their oversized expensive cars
and their zagat guides tucked under their arms. He said: the eyebeam
thing is like the old bars and coffee shops artists used to hang out in
and have discussions (in New York) which are  gone now, replaced by
trendy yuppy joints. Only, you don't have to be in New York, or in any
particular place to hang out at this eyebeam bar. I really like this
bar; I hope it stays open.

I was thinking that our art subculture reminds me of Tibet. Tibet was,
once upon a time, completely cut off from the rest of the world,
isolated geographically and culturally. Left to themselves their culture
was able to develop in its unique and rarefied way, and Tibetan religion
acchieved a tremendous level of sophistication. But that isolation and
privacy was also a huge factor in the eventual invasion and destruction
of Tibet.  Now Tibetans live all over the globe, and their leader
encourages cross-fertilization in a big way. It's about survival and
creativity.

An eccentric biochemist I've been working with says that one reason why
the oncologists have been unable to come up with any practicable
treatments for cancer other than those that poison the organism, is that
they have been unable to conceptualize the normal pathways in the cell;
they try to poison the abnormal and hence they poison the organism on
the way to the tumour. They have conceptualized DNA soley in terms of
the information encoded in it and not in terms of its
electropotential--its energy.  they have approached the cell, and hence
the organism, as a solid, finite entity and not given any thought to the
energy streaming through that entity. The cell has a current, and
communicates with its environs by its charge. And so do we.

We must not remain so isolated...

jg




-
-------------------------------------------------------------
a critical forum for artistic practice in the network
texts are the property of individual authors
to unsubscribe, send email to eyebeam@list.thing.net
with the following single line in the message body:
unsubscribe eyebeam-list
information and archive at http://www.eyebeam.org
Eyebeam Atelier/X Art Foundation http://www.blast.org
-------------------------------------------------------------