I n t r o d u c t i o n
In an introductory essay to a touring exhibition titled Post Human 1992-93, Curator,
Jeffrey Deitch states that ‘Art may have fused with science’1. As Deitch explains, the
discussions that concern biotechnology and computer science in the future will largely
be related to aesthetics. The artist in a post-human culture will have to face decisions
not only about what looks ‘good’, but what is morally ‘good and bad’ about emerging
bio-technologies. It will be the artist, Dietch declares, that will help to provide the
answers for science in what our bodies should look like and what our minds should be
doing.
The field of this research paper considers how some concepts of science and
technology are translated through art. To begin, the paper looks at some movements in
art history to determine where art has been seen to mimic a science. The research
found that artists sought to interpret the ‘real’, in a social or political disposition of their
time, and throughout history have engaged the foundations of science and technology
as a milestone for creative practice.
Chapter One, Basic Math – The Art of the Renaissance (1300-1600), looks at the
revival of classicism in Early Renaissance art and shows how artists from this period
adopted the principles of science as a paradigm in which to work. The imaginative and
intellectual worlds inhabited by a significant number of artists from the Renaissance
period shared so many common features in the ‘science of art’, that a historical
attention to this subject is difficult to ignore. In particular reference is given to the
distinct use of geometry and mathematics in the construction of art works, such as
fresco painting, sculpture and friezes, where artists invented a science of perspective in
order to resolve a naturalised realism in their work. In essence, Early Renaissance
painters worked like scientists in an attempt to render the illusion of the real in three dimensional
perspective, on a two-dimensional surface plane.
To broaden this association and expand on the extent of vital illusionism practiced in
the Renaissance, Chapter Two, Mechanical Intervention in Modern Art, relates to
twentieth century industrialisation and the machine aesthetic found in art work at that
time. In the early 1900s photographers and montage artists searched theoretically and
visually for a ‘real’ image reproduction. The optical technology of photography was, by
then, part of the entirety of scientific revolution in industry and chemistry. The camera
was like an eye that recorded an image free from subjectivity.
Photography was seen
as a relatively new medium and experimental in its early years, but the photograph
nonetheless was the platform that provided a perfect illusion of the ‘reality’ modernist
artists searched for at the time. It was here also that photographic art work was put to
use for political and cultural awareness. The photograph developed as a key
instrument to show the world a true reality and true perspective of the social and
political impetus of the time.
Chapter Three, Future Progress, will continue to address the art/science debate by
referencing some new forms of digital animation created through computer engineered
technology. References are directed at science fiction film genres and artificial effects,
as well as contemporary painting, to show how artists work to tease our current state of
representation and recognition. It could be true to suggest that the demand for
electronic media in our postmodern/post-human visual culture has corrupted our
perception to a state where we are visually overloaded, uncertain of artificial with the
real and the fabricated with the natural. The new technologies and methods explored
through science and art are rapidly changing our perspective, outlook and belief.
The chapter will briefly explore the artificial illusions created by contemporary cinema,
and discuss how advanced graphic computing creates a new visual foundation for
artistic investigation. The research queries whether the use of classical art technique is
in decline.
To represent these concepts in painting has led to many experimental compositions
and painterly sketches over the course of the Masters program. Also the content of
information available on the art/science subjects alone has allowed for a plethora of
aesthetic and research possibilities. In the more recent allegorical set of paintings, a relationship between digital space and physical space shows a more
definitive response to the term ‘techno-science’ than any earlier attempts. The
paintings reveal one thing rational, logical and
representational, such as a figure or animal, along side something that is illusionary or
uncertain. These works correspond with ideas on the relativities and paradoxes that
are discovered in the realm of the psyche through the use of space and illusion, while
also drawing upon a connotation of some ‘abstract’ scientific conviction. The space/time
characteristics of the work also show a relationship to the infinite margins of the
world; that is, the infinitely small microcosm, or molecular atomic space, and the
infinitely great macrocosm or universe.
Will it possibly be the role of the artist in our future to integrate a critical commentary
with a high level of knowledge in increasing science and technology, speculation and
control? In many scientific fields it appears that technology will further interrelate with
human kind and there seems little we can do to stop the progress. Chief Scientist of
Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, wrote that intelligent robots in the not-too-distant-future
threaten the survival of the human race. Once a robot can manufacture copies of itself
and direct its own evolution, humankind will become superfluous. Joy’s essay is a
discussion that depicts some very real scenarios, a parody of ideas as enacted in
endless science fiction movies. But, it’s not in the Hollywood hyped storyline where
Joy’s argument is found. His conclusions are utterly serious 2.
The topic of science and technology is encyclopedic. Attention therefore, is given to
comment on the foundation of the classical technique of painting verses new models of
art explored through computing science, cinema and digital photography. The
discussion explores how painting is represented in the twenty first century and the
purpose of painting as a representation in a technological future. The paper is
integrated with some of the prominent concerns and visual representations that have
transpired through the studio work during the course of the MVA degree.
1 Post Human – Published in conjunction with the exhibition curated by Jeffrey Dietch, Distributed Art
Publishers, New York, 1992.
2 As Joy explains, ‘The most compelling 21st-century technologies – robotics, genetic engineering and
nanotechnology – pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before.’ Specifically as
robots, engineered organisms and nanobots can self replicate. He believes that scientists and
technologists in the rapture of discovery and innovation are failing to understand the consequences of their
own invention. Driven by the overarching desire to ‘know’, scientists are not stopping to notice that the
progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a life of its own. ‘Why the future doesn’t
need us’, Wired Archive 8.04, Apr 2000, feature, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html.
Carla Priivald 2003
contact - carla@htcp.com.au
