Re: <nettime> Locating ArtScience

[Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>]

just wanted to mention two recent works, which can function as a
comment regarding the disciplinarity, relevance and reach of the
works deriving from the exploitation of the intersections of art and
science.


1) the cigar shaped asteroid which took a strange trajectory recently.
based of radioscopic data illustrated by the graphic artist Martin
Kornmesser, employed by the educational reach out program of the
ESA in munich. similar to the recent discovery of exoplanets, hard
science relies on artist's imagination to promote their findings and
"visualize" data. of course these artists are not at all having any
rating in the world of fine arts or media arts, and rather range as
organic intellectuals or applied artisans, with nevertheless far
reaching impact on public imagination.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42329244


2) on the disappearence of the bees. outside of the professionalism
of art, science and activism, Martin Sorg, a part time biologist,
linux freak and eco-hippie samples data about the number of insects
in a little town in germany from 1989 to 2013 and comes up with
a break through study on rapid ecological decline triggering
an avalanche of debate. "Ermittlung der Biomassen flugaktiver
Insekten im Naturschutzgebiet Orbroicher Bruch mit Malaise Fallen..
http://80.153.81.79/~publ/mitt-evk-2013-1.pdf



both fields of science, insects and space, can and have been
exploited by artists, setting up pointers into this areas of
research practise, reframing it with a re-enactments, baroque and/or
shiny visualisations, romantic overinterpretations, or imaginary
politics, making them prone to various kinds of narcissistic
self-identifications, enhancing the narrative material with elaborate
quotes by the theoreticians of choice with temporarily high rankings
in the art charts, transfered into the ethnographic collections
of the ruling discourse networks, imported, exotified, mystified,
valorized, and exploited by a financialized logic of signification
but nevertheless presented as autonomous, original and critical,
biting the hand that it feeds. while these two mentioned works, mostly
distribute themselves in unattributed "viral" ways, they nevertheless
can be regarded as some kind of art, while they dont have to be named
as such to still function well enough, still proving a far reaching
impact on public discourse and future inscription into history,
including a needed "change of consciousness".

but remember, these areas of field research are not unoccupied
by "creative" labour, people without a name in the art world, do
their work there having their type of creative output. they do
not necessarily wait for artists discovering their treasures and
reporting to a general audience, they do might not want to be treated
as unintelligible material for studies, reconfigurable by the
interpretations of social constructivists.

science institutions as well as companies have already employed
graphic designers, marketing experts, and even anthropologists, to
mediate their work to various audiences. some of them reach out to
media arts and fine arts to enhance their portofolios of public
relation, recognizing a responsibility and philanthropic angle to
their put products into a different light.

we could be much more aware of the porous lines of the institutional
outside, opening up to rich fields of cultural production outside of
the inner circles, appreciate and respect the countless works of the
anonymous art collectives outside and below our little circles, and be
aware of their potential historic relevance compared to inscriptions
of a highly fetishized but probably mostly irrelevant production of
the cultural establishments, as lessons in modesty.

rogue science, hackery, mad science, amateur tinkering, militant
and non-militant activism, might be performed by artists under the
strict rule that nobody gets hurt, that everything is just a test,
a simulacra, an offer for communicating opinions, a mere symbolic
act or signification, while the area of hard science of "measured
facts" gets symbolically subjugated in a imaginary hegemony of
cultural/intellectual supremacy, ultimately serving the system it
claims to question. finding methods and loopholes to resist and escape
this logic can be a the a science in itself, hard to teach and learn,
and difficult to find, but nevertheless truly possible.




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: