Re: [-empyre-] December 2005 on -empyre- Art and Cognition

[CP <clp404-newsletters@yahoo.com.au>]

....Sorry, resend... (was probably filtered, my fault...)

The 'constant tension' of variables is indeed something rich for the creation of art. Self-creating art (i.e. software art) can become the infinite variation of random combinations, or develop patterns, traits, tendencies throughout its lifespan. It is the later that is the most interesting.

The tension is ideal for simulating social environments in an aesthetic sense (think Sims meets Rorschach ink blot test), mapping a propositional model (code based) to a non-mathematical aesthetic form might yeild interesting patterns that can be quickly observed. As someone might read the solid-whites of bone x-rays as possible areas of concern, the immediate cognition of aesthetic representation may provide a sound basis for closer empirical enquiry. I agree that we need to leave behind the idea that art is about the imaginary, the ineffable idea, the promise of cognition within an uncommitted determination. Instead, to work backwards and forwards, with the suggestion of forms becoming within tension of a million variables, to the closely inspection of causality away from the centre of form, could yield a very effective method of research.

I'm very much looking forward to how this debate on art and cognition develops.

Artist as researcher? (not as a producer of interesting pie-charts)

CP

On Fri,  2 Dec 2005 04:41:54 -0200
"Raquel Renno" <raquel@influenza.etc.br> wrote:

> Art and cognition
> 
> 
> There are many approaches to the art and cognition theme that we hope that will take place according to the different points-of-view of the guests (Luigi Pagliarini, David Cuartielles, Andy Gracie and Raquel Paricio) and empyre members. The approach initially proposed here refers to a searching for new ways of representation and creation in digital technologies. It is important to leave the real (science) vs imaginary (art) dichotomy for another one that provides for art and cognitives sciences as a whole. Understanding the relation between art and cognition does not take place by means of dichotomies, but by means of elements in a state of constant tension of a kind which does not tend towards the equilibrium. Sometimes, it?s a question of finding a generative model more than the appearance of the thing. This is valid in the translation of physical phenomena as well as in the realm of the symbolic.
> The work developed by Louis Bec during the last decades is one of the important contributions in this discussion. His project Arapuca, explores the potentialities of water as a way to transmit information. Some electric impulses from a electric fish are captured, digitalized and transformed in database that are reinterpreted by a Puredata programming that creates sound and image, receiving, information from a user. This? a back and forth system relating fish/machine/man. Another part of the project connects two electric fish of different families to communicate from the digitalisation of the data. Upokrinomenologic Aberrations, on the other hand, explore the creation of imaginary living creatures, through the distortion of some laws of the medium where a ?real? animal lives:
> 
> ?The Upokrinomenologic Aberrations project finds its process through an alternative to the Artificial Life. Until now, several researches have been trying to reproduce artificial conditions of life, which resemble it, through the modelling of cellular automatons, genetic algorithms, collective intelligence, dynamic morphogenesis, robotic, without nevertheless being able to escape the biomimetic conditions of the earthbound surrounding.
> Beginning with the inherent laws of a defined reality, it becomes possible to model non trivial situations, in which the multiple activities of the living can develop according to twisted parameters, over the frequent adaptive and co-adaptive situations. Factors like gravity, pressure, temperature, humidity, viscosity, density, luminance... by modulating, crossing, interconnecting, twisting their parameters, can become operators producing deciding consequences on the morphogenesis, the behaviors, the technozoosemiotic modes of communication. 
> Then a non-cooperative modelling of virtual environments and universes can generate a strategy to avoid the constraints of the ordinary and introduce new artistic dimensions..? (Bec 2002: unnumbered)
> 
> On the contrary, in Arapuca the element of chance has been included by random sequencing in an effort to integrate causality in the ordered structure of the work. It is known that there are rules in how living creatures organize themselves, but rules, which Peirce called ?evolutionary?, not defined a priori, as a rationalized variety. Still quoting Bec:
> 
> ?While there is every possibility that the cognitive sciences can come up with new interpretations of the mechanics of creativity, it is equally true that they can no longer ignore the extent to which artistic advances are penetrating and transforming them via an input that is no less important on the theoretical than on the practical level. Conversely artistic practise, in its representation or interpretation of the perceived world, cannot expect to escape the influence of the cognitive sciences, especially if it is art is considered as a means to knowledge; especially if it is considered as capable of imparting form to matter in all possible contexts; and especially if the artistic enterprise is considered as a conscious exploration of the now and why of creativity, the how and why of those symbolic representations through which the making of all artefacts must pass. See thus the cognitive sciences cease to be merely explicative and become a  creative well-spring, a take-of
>  f point for the imagination? (Art Cognition, Pratiques artistiques et sciences cognitives, Aix-en Provence: Cyprès/Ecole d?art d?Aix en Provence, 1994 p.20-21).
> 
> It is not a question of assessing referential or non-referential pieces using value judgments where the referential is ?bad? because it deceives and the non-referential is ?good? because it is a liberating truth. In fact, it is a matter here of putting in question unilateral approaches for constructing digital art works which would merely offer one single channel for the perception of how human/machine relate and discuss if art and cognition can propose alternatives for this vision. 
> 
> 
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