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Interviews: Ask Jonty Hurwitz About Art and Engineering

Posted by samzenpus on from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.

samzenpus (5) writes "Jonty Hurwitz is an artist with a degree in engineering who says each one of his pieces is "a study on the physics of how we perceive space and is the stroke of over 1 billion calculations and algorithms." Recently, his nano sculpture project drew a lot of attention. With help from the Weizmann Institute of Science and using a 3D printing technique by the Institute of Microstructure Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hurwitz created a number of sculptures that were so small they could fit in the eye of a needle, or on a human hair. Jonty has agreed to answer any questions you have big or very small. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post."

31 comments

  1. Is it art? by digsbo · · Score: 1

    Would you consider these microsculptures works of art, or a craft? We usually consider replication or fabrication of predefined forms (with challenging technique) a craft. If you believe it's art, what distinguishes it as such? Or, does the distinction not matter to you?

    1. Re:Is it art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you can manage to define what is art and what is not, then congrats, you've officially ansswered the unanswerable.

    2. Re:Is it art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you consider these microsculptures works of art, or a craft? We usually consider replication or fabrication of predefined forms (with challenging technique) a craft. If you believe it's art, what distinguishes it as such? Or, does the distinction not matter to you?

      Actually no that is not an operative definition of craft, nor a sufficient differentiation from Art, assuming of course that crafts are not art, as you seem to do.

    3. Re:Is it art? by steveha · · Score: 1

      Would you consider these microsculptures works of art, or a craft?

      Question for you: Would you consider photographs to be works of art, or a craft?

      I think there is no serious disagreement that photographs can count as art, and these microsculptures were carefully planned and posed as art. If you are going to suggest that they may not clear the bar as art, then it seems to me that you would have to rule out photography as well.

      We usually consider replication or fabrication of predefined forms (with challenging technique) a craft.

      Are photos art because they are easier to make than microsculptures? I don't quite follow your emphasis on the technique needing to be challenging.

      All a photo really is: the visual replication of whatever the camera was pointing at when the photographer activated the shutter release. Yet we consider there is art where the photographer chooses what to photograph, how to frame the photograph, and even things like what kind of film to use (black-and-white vs. color, grainy vs. smooth, etc.). It seems to me that similar dimensions of choice were in play when Jonty Hurwitz made the microsculptures: he chose what to reproduce as sculpture, what poses to use, what scale, what materials the sculptures were to be made from, etc.

      Would your position on the microsculptures change if the Jonty Hurwitz had called them "3D photographs"?

      P.S. While we are debating what is and is not art, do you take a position on the dadaist sculpture "Fountain"?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

      Personally, I think that there is artistic merit in taking a pre-made object and changing how one looks upon it (I doubt anyone had ever conflated a urinal and a fountain before this). However, while it was radical (even shocking) in 1917, anyone trying to do the same thing today is bringing little new to art. If I put an upside-down coffee maker on a pedestal and title this work "Brown Liquid Fountain" I doubt anyone would be very impressed.

      If you reject "Fountain" as not art, you are in disagreement with very many people. If you accept "Fountain" as art, then why would you not accept the microsculptures as art?

      And if pre-made art is only clever the first time it's done, Jonty Hurwitz is still on safe ground; I've never heard of anyone else doing this first.

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    4. Re:Is it art? by digsbo · · Score: 1

      I guess I'm looking for him to respond in much the way you did. Everybody's got a different definition, and I'd like to hear his. Case in point, my wife wasn't allowed to enter her glasswork in an art exhibit, because stained glass was defined as a craft by that body. Funny, huh? But I see tiny machine generated sculpture, and I'm thinking more along the lines of exquisitely carved furniture, than, say, the Mona Lisa. But that's just me.

    5. Re:Is it art? by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      Hey. Great question for me the relationship between art and craft can be defined like this: All craft is art, but not all art is craft. I remember being taught this concept by my English teacher in high school. It goes like this: "all dogs are quadrupeds but it does not follow that all quadrupeds are dogs." The concept must have a name in the world of logic. Can anyone help with this? Here's another way of looking at the same question: The art is a subjective opinion in the eye of the beholder. The craft is to some extent an absolute based on time, effort and/or skill. What distinguishes these nano sculptures as art in *my* belief system? Here are a few interesting topics I think this work raises. The fact that these questions are raised make it art: Does this work raise the "Emperor's new clothes" question? How can something you can't see be art? How much would an art piece like this be worth? How can it be proven that they exist? Why have so many millions of viewers been willing to Trust in science to such an extent? Does this work highlight our almost religious belief in the miracles of science? Why are the sculptures based on the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche? Why have so many artists over the course of art history chosen this very topic? When creativity is applied to the process of manifestation, is the result always art? What is the difference between good art and good science?

    6. Re:Is it art? by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      I feel your wife's pain. I have been excluded on several occasions from art competitions and events on the basis of me not having an art degree (an Engineering degree, it appears is not considered artistic enough). Its a human quality to create definitions and boundaries to allow our brains to categorize concepts. One of the core questions I'm raising with this work is "What is art?" Well spotted :-)

    7. Re:Is it art? by digsbo · · Score: 1

      Glad to be of service. As a student of classical and jazz music styles, I struggled (as did my current piano teacher) with exploits into jazz being labeled "not legit" by the classical crowd, so I, too, have a taste of the seemingly capricious rejection you speak of. This rejection was often strange, considering I frequently surpassed the same critics when playing in the classical.

      I've come to appreciate the finer points of the extraordinary difficulty of raising the performance of classical pieces to an artistic level via interpretive effort after years of study on piano (offering substantially more individual freedom and thus requiring enormously more effort than being an orchestral clarinetist as I was back then), and so I can now see more from their perspective the challenges of interpretive performance, and that they believe the jazz player lacks legitimacy because jazz players aren't forced to jump through the same hoops. Dismissal of the difficulties of jazz performance are a distinct issue, I believe. You likely deal with both these dynamics and more.

    8. Re:Is it art? by digsbo · · Score: 1

      Funny, as a musician I'd say all art is craft, but not all craft is art. I.e., I can lay down a genuinely good cover of a swing tune that would evoke a sense of Sinatra or Dean Martin, rehearsed and refined, but in no way profound or transcendent or relevatory. Craft - in a sense, little different from a well-build handmade cabinet.

      John Coltrane can write and perform "A Love Supreme", which people might say is chaotic, self-indulgent, lacking in refinement, poorly structured, and be able to bring to bear some degree of legitimate informed criticism, but regardless it clearly had transformative, profound effects on huge numbers of people.

      State sponsored Nazi artists created highly realistic idealized visual art, idolizing the Aryan ideal. Executed as perfect craft, but perhaps quite corrupted as art. The beholder can look at it in context and see the horrors it represented, even if the artist was simply naively enjoying the craft, without any evil intent.

      I typically take the neo-platonist view that anything done well is representative of "The Good". It doesn't have to be art to be good craft. But I really don't like people trying to create art who never learned the craft side of it. It feels wrong. Making something truly beautiful (or ugly) that creates a transcendent experience is really, really hard. Are you connecting with the people who are beholding your work? Jazz musicians often slip into self-indulgence, as do a number of other types of artists. Is it OK to fall down a hole of artistic inquiry, if no one comes with you?

  2. To misuse and old philosophy question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With your nano-sculpture techniques, how many tiny angles could you sculpt into a scene of dancing on the head of a pin?

    I really want a lower bound on that question...

    1. Re:To misuse and old philosophy question... by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      how many tiny angles could you sculpt into a scene of dancing on the head of a pin?

      That's meant to be an obtuse question, right?

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  3. Does size matter in art? by Threni · · Score: 2

    The Tate Modern had a piece of art which was very big, in the Turbine Room, but other than its size it was utterly unremarkable. Are you in danger of reproducing this problem; your art is small, but...so what? It's already well known that machines can be used to make small things, such as the IBM logo being produced using individual atoms back in 1989. Does your art bring anything to the table?

    1. Re:Does size matter in art? by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      Does size matter in art? To take this question down to its most basic form: If you take away the properties of size and color in the context of sculpture ... you're left with nothing ;-) The size of an object obviously has a fundamental influence on how it interacts with the physical world around it, and it is that interaction that defines the nature of its existence. An elephant and flea have a very different relationship with the Universe. In the context of my series of nano sculptures, it is *partly* their scale which turned them into such a viral phenomenon. Their size went beyond the physical (as did the works of IBM) to encourage viewers around the world to ask a wide spectrum of questions ranging from "how has humanity come so far?" to "does size matter in art?". Would they have been as impactful at any other scale? So to answer your broad question...Yes, size is a crucial part of the message in any work of visual art. As an analogy, you may ask "is harmony important in music?" On a side matter: I very much appreciate your clear way of asking "does size matter in art?". Were you making a clear distinction from the question "Does size matter in sex"? I'm interested in why you didn't simply ask "Does size matter?" Your second question: "Does your art bring anything to the table"? I think this is a matter for each table owner to decide, it entirely depends on whose table you are referring to. On the table of my life, it brings a huge amount.

    2. Re:Does size matter in art? by Threni · · Score: 1

      > As an analogy, you may ask "is harmony important in music?"

      Odd thing to throw in there. No, it's not, whether you're talking about music consisting of a single line, or some variety of dissonant music which has no tonal centre and where it makes very little sense to talk about harmony other than in the very basic "more than one tone at once" sense which is utterly meaningless if you ask me.

      Elephant/flea: well, you're making art for humans. Again, with the musical analogy there's stuff like John Cage's piece which is designed to last years, and at the other extreme people like Stockhausen have constructed pieces where a fragment of music is speeded up so that it's perceived as a "texture" to be used as a compositional building block rather than a series of pitches to be listened to in its own right.

      Yes, I did add "in art" to avoid potential sniggering. Was your question in fact a way of highlighting that art should not be considered separately to anything else; that I might be suggesting that size might matter anywhere else except in the construction of artwork? I have a pretty open mind for what constitutes art. Duchamp said that anything could be art, and Zappa said that art was "making something out of nothing, and selling it"; he also wisely said that art should entertain you; don't worry about whether something is high art or low art.

      Putting all that together, whilst I appreciate anyone doing art for the sake of it, with no rules about what or why or what size etc, when it comes down to it something that fits on a table is no more impressive to me whether it fulls a building or fits on the head of a needle.

  4. With help from the Weizmann Institute of Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So how much did YOU actually do? It sounds like you're taking all the credit for what others did. Way to go.

  5. Odd career choice. by jellomizer · · Score: 1

    You clearly have interests in engineering. With a Degree in engineering, and Art, you can probably get a good paying career in engineering, using Art to improve your engineering designs. However you choose the opposite route using engineering to improve your are in a career where there is a lot of risk of not getting your next paycheck.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Odd career choice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not a question.

  6. Why do you lie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://static.squarespace.com/static/541afcd4e4b09246971aad4b/545f6bc8e4b02ca19c7a9253/545f6bcfe4b02ca19c7a9261/1415539710166/?format=1500w

    http://www.aber.ac.uk/bioimage/image/uwbl-0631-w.jpg

    It seems pretty offensive to me to pass this off as your own, and to pass this off as true.

    1. Re: Why do you lie? by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      Anonymous coward .... What's your real name? Www.art.ninj/nano ... All the credits are there... Do your research and please try and keep this thread intelligent and useful.

  7. Art vs. Hacking by pHalec · · Score: 1

    Jonty, I'm mixing hacking and art and becoming increasingly aware of the self-segragation of creative work into either "art" or "hacking". Here in Vancouver, for example, we have "art" events (art crawls, galleries, etc.) and "maker" culture (maker faires, hackspaces, etc.) with almost zero crossover. The presumption is that art will be expressive, shown in public, and saleable, and hacking will be insular, self-funded, and have limited appeal outside other hackers.

    I've exhibited technological work on a small scale to an art crowd and gotten a positive response, but I worry that going further on that side of things will be an uphill battle. The knee-jerk response may be "that doesn't belong here".

    Have you encountered this kind of pigeonholing? If so, how have you approached it?

    1. Re:Art vs. Hacking by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

      I've exhibited technological work on a small scale to an art crowd and gotten a positive response, but I worry that going further on that side of things will be an uphill battle. The knee-jerk response may be "that doesn't belong here".

      Sounds like you're pigeonholing yourself here - just keep going until you fail, and then pick yourself up and start again. I good friend of mine makes work that might be thought of as 'technological'. Worrying about whether or not other people will like his work hasn't stopped him, and it shouldn't stop you.

    2. Re:Art vs. Hacking by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      hey pHalec. Don't give up pushing the boundaries and challenging others to do so. I face so much artistic and scientific pigeonholing - I'll have you know though that pigeons are remarkably intelligent creatures. Fly with it my feathered friend! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... Being an artist is about challenging the accepted societal mean. Its about creating outlying data points that eventually shift the average opinion.

  8. Software by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

    Can software be art?

  9. What is Art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of the problems with Art is it isn't clear what 'counts' as Art. Some people would not include video games as Art. Some people would exclude practical things like forks from Art, even if they are designed. I believe that code (as in software source code) can be Art. As someone who has an interest in arts and engineering, how do you define Art and what is included and what is excluded from the arts?

  10. You have been accused of photoshopping by excelsior_gr · · Score: 1

    http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

    care to comment?

    1. Re:You have been accused of photoshopping by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

      Direct link to the credits for all aspects of this work are here: http://www.jontyhurwitz.com/na... In several online interviews I have explained that the background images were composited with the sculpture images to help viewers with a sense of scale. Please could Gavin Scott do a little more research and then clarify exactly what his "accusation" is.

  11. Why make art so difficult to appreciate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I once heard of a work of art that consisted (if I recall) rods of steel pushed down into old wells, thus burying them from view. In fact there seems to be a number of works where the "doing" of it is the art, rather than the piece itself, which is either out of sight, hard to see, no longer present, ephemeral, etc. It seems to me that photographs of nano-artwork, blown up to visible size, kind of spoils the point. Why produce art that no one can experience directly?

  12. Re: With help from the Weizmann Institute of Scien by jonty9818 · · Score: 1

    Have you ever taken a moment to look at the credits on a film? So did Stanley Kubrick make 2001:A space Odyssey? Actually you are touching on a very important point though, the film industry shows a huge amount of respect to all the amazing talents involved in the creation process. The art world is not nearly as respectful and you generally find every major artist taking 100% of the credit for the creation of their works which inevitably involve teams. I specifically decided to break the mold in my nano series by treating the works more like a Director treats the team on his film. Am I really taking all the credit? I think not - take a look again a the extensive credits posted here: http://www.jontyhurwitz.com/na...