Part One: Information Arts

Culture is being re-defined right before our eyes. For centuries, art and technology have been considered separate parts of culture. Now, because we live in an information society, they may be be coming together. We are, say some people who study such things, at a critical place in history, where it's sometimes impossible to distinguish between techno-scientific research and art. The creation, movement and analysis of ideas is increasingly the center of our cultural, social and economic life. And that's why a startling (and hefty) new book calls itself "Information Arts" -- because the art such a culture produces has to deal with information if it's going to remain central. So this is the first part of a series -- inspired by "Information Arts," edited by Stephen Wilson and published by the MIT Press -- which deals with the new intersection of art, science and technology. This book is onto an enormous idea, exploring the science and art from algorithms, robotics, quantum physics, coding, nanotechnologies, genetic and kinetic art to electrical music, telecommunications and A.I.

The fusion of culture and technology into sophisticated art forms seems obvious when you think about it. But until now, few people have. Most of society is too busy clucking about how new technologies are stealing credit cards, transmitting smut and rotting young brains.

This fusion, Wilson says, is a signal that views of art and research are evolving, broadening, integrating. As he points out, the arts and the sciences are any culture's two greatest engines: "sources of creativity, places of aspiration, and markers of aggregate identity." Before the Renaissance, they were considered the same thing -- science was called natural philosophy.

In the l960s, philosopher C.P. Snow developed his "Two Cultures" theory -- Snow asserted that those in the humanities and arts and those in the sciences have developed sufficiently different languages and worldviews that they no longer understood one another. Wilson believes that art and science/technology are no longer segregated from one another, and that the Net, the Web and pioneering work by artists and scientists are re-connecting the two, creating a new sphere of culture he calls "Information Arts."

From programming to telecom design, Wilson has brought together the work great artists and thinkers in culture and technology and shown us how they are moving closer together, even in fields like bionics, parapsychology and bioelectricity. Coders are artists, not just scientists. So are Web designers and people who paint genetic portraits.The book takes this fusion and looks at its groundbreaking influence on life, thought, cultural theory and artistic activity.

"Leonardo da Vince is well-known was history's greatest integrator of art and science, " writes Wilson, but he was by no means unique in having interests that spanned art and science. Educated people of his time were expected to. But, says Wilson, by the 20th century, science and art had already become distinct and separate fields.

New inventions have stimulated artistic experimentation in fields such as photography, cinema, sound recording, electrical machines and lights -- think of Brian Wilson, Brian Eno, U2. Wilson writes about how Xerox's PARC initiated an artist-in-residence program called PAIR, an open-ended approach in which artists and scientists and researchers jointly defined a program on culture and/or technology, with the definition of the problem becoming part of the collaboration. The book chronicles scores of other experiments in business, Academe and science labs.

So who cares about the re-connection between culture and technology? Anyone interested in either, really. The most interesting and revolutionary parts of the Net and Web -- coding, gaming, role-playing -- have always drawn on artistic as well as technological sensibilities. And many of us have had the sense that we are witnessing a re-definition of what culture is. That's of equal appeal to people like me, drawn to the culture of technology but not the machinery, and technologists, who love technology but want it to embrace culture and artistry. In subsequent columns, we'll draw from the book to talk about the "information arts," and some of the amazing work occurring now at the intersection of culture and technology.

Next: Research agendas in biology and medicine, especially biology and genetic research.

Comments

new culture definition?

[Em Emalb]

"And many of us have had the sense that we are witnessing a re-definition of what culture is. That's of equal appeal to people like me, drawn to the culture of technology but not the machinery, and technologists, who love technology but want it to embrace culture and artistry."

from Dictionary.com:

culture Pronunciation Key (klchr)
n.

The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.
Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.

Development of the intellect through training or education.
Enlightenment resulting from such training or education.
A high degree of taste and refinement formed by aesthetic and intellectual training.
Special training and development: voice culture for singers and actors.
The cultivation of soil; tillage.
The breeding of animals or growing of plants, especially to produce improved stock.
Biology.
The growing of microorganisms, tissue cells, or other living matter in a specially prepared nutrient medium.
Such a growth or colony, as of bacteria.

seems to me that culture's definition still hasn't changed Jon ;)

it's a joke...don't laugh.

Re:Gutenberg

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Art and technology have been fused for quite some time.

Exactly. I gather none of these people ever heard of Futurism. Or gone to the movies, for that matter.

Oh well, I suppose, in the Age of the New Economy, we have to have the New Culture as well, even if it's really not new.

Re:Why do we need John Katz?

[pmc]

I disagree (obviously) but

I'm not sure how that aphorism was ever regarded as true.

It comes from Plato, and the apology of Socrates. But in a legalistic sense it comes from the Trial of Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII, when More was charged with treason for refusing to swear an Oath the the King was Head of the Church of England (and, crucially never actually speaking of it at all). During his trial, More got the jury to agree that, legally, silence had to be treated as assent in the absence of other evidence. He was still found guilty, but the legal priciple was established then in common law.

This is dramatised in "A Man for All Seasons". There is a particularly good passage in it which is pertinent to current times, especially in the USA:

Roper (More's Son-in-Law):"So now you'd give the devil benefit of law?"
More: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"
R:"I'd cut down every law in England to do that,"
M:"And when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper?"

M (to himself): "This country's planted thick with laws, from coast to coast: man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"