The May issue of MIT Technology Review is all about invention and the distinstion between "invention" and "innovation".
" 'invention' is the creation of radical new ways of saying and ways of seeing; 'innovation' is the preparation and packaging of those ideas to connect to an audience; 'diffusion' is the final delivery of that innovation and the economic models that keep it flowing. "
Invention, innovation, and the arts
2004-05-11
2004-05-10
Remembrance about what this blog is all about.
Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice (technique that he masters). Technique and content are thus the two components of whatever art form. This was true in the past, remains true today and shall remain true in the future.
Mastering a technique does not mean having been schooled, mastering a technique means virtuosity in the practice of a technique. Schooling can help someone to master a technique but it is the individual who in the last instance will exercise and as such, the exercise, the practice of a technique is what after some time will give the individual the mastery.
Speaking of art, we know for a sure fact that technique and content are inseparable. Good technique with poor content results in shallowness and poor technique with interesting content results at best in unfinished works. Thus technical mastery + rich content is what gives art works.
With the 20th century came an accelerating rhythm of technical changes that led to an overflow of information. Humans were gradually plunged into a maelstrom of noise and images. Total confusion resulted, art lost its meaning and we humans lost our way.
Observing this reality is not enough, we have to understand it to be able to orient ourselves in order to find back our way.
This blog is about my understanding of our human reality (total confusion) and my own search for our human WAY. Surely enough my thinking centers on visual arts, to be more precise painting for this is what I spend the most time at. In my first sentence I wrote "Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice". So my work centers on my understanding and vision of reality. But this is not given by the movement of the brush or by my painting technique. My vision of reality comes from the effort that I consciously make at understanding this reality through reading and searching for answers and this passes through the study of history, culture, economics, politics and science.
Our human reality is made of total confusion and thus it is only natural that the arts have been for some time now mired in confusion. But when it is clearly established that confusion reigns what becomes paramount is the search for a way out of this confusion. Knowledge of the confusion is not enough, we have to give sense to our lives and this is only feasible through knowledge of our human histories and civilizations. Modern sciences do not bring sense they only make sense when they come as an extension of historical and civilizational understanding.
In other words, I believe that the artists' mission in the 21st century is to bring sense to our reality and thus it ensues that artists have to be thinkers and philosophers.
Mastering a technique does not mean having been schooled, mastering a technique means virtuosity in the practice of a technique. Schooling can help someone to master a technique but it is the individual who in the last instance will exercise and as such, the exercise, the practice of a technique is what after some time will give the individual the mastery.
Speaking of art, we know for a sure fact that technique and content are inseparable. Good technique with poor content results in shallowness and poor technique with interesting content results at best in unfinished works. Thus technical mastery + rich content is what gives art works.
With the 20th century came an accelerating rhythm of technical changes that led to an overflow of information. Humans were gradually plunged into a maelstrom of noise and images. Total confusion resulted, art lost its meaning and we humans lost our way.
Observing this reality is not enough, we have to understand it to be able to orient ourselves in order to find back our way.
This blog is about my understanding of our human reality (total confusion) and my own search for our human WAY. Surely enough my thinking centers on visual arts, to be more precise painting for this is what I spend the most time at. In my first sentence I wrote "Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice". So my work centers on my understanding and vision of reality. But this is not given by the movement of the brush or by my painting technique. My vision of reality comes from the effort that I consciously make at understanding this reality through reading and searching for answers and this passes through the study of history, culture, economics, politics and science.
Our human reality is made of total confusion and thus it is only natural that the arts have been for some time now mired in confusion. But when it is clearly established that confusion reigns what becomes paramount is the search for a way out of this confusion. Knowledge of the confusion is not enough, we have to give sense to our lives and this is only feasible through knowledge of our human histories and civilizations. Modern sciences do not bring sense they only make sense when they come as an extension of historical and civilizational understanding.
In other words, I believe that the artists' mission in the 21st century is to bring sense to our reality and thus it ensues that artists have to be thinkers and philosophers.
2004-05-09
Creativity versus borrowing and rearranging.
Forget the hard-won solitary labors of the artist who doesn't pirate or sample. That model just doesn't fit anymore. Lessig considers culture itself to evolve through variants on piracy.
(Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, in his new book, "Free Culture: How Bad Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" Penguin)
This is a thought provoking article that artists and thinkers need absolutely to read.
Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War
(Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, in his new book, "Free Culture: How Bad Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" Penguin)
This is a thought provoking article that artists and thinkers need absolutely to read.
Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War
2004-04-29
Painters and the market.
Here is an excellent article about painters and the market.
Is fame the art world's biggest lottery?
Is fame the art world's biggest lottery?
2004-04-23
New York's flirt with the past.
So I'am not alone to think about New York's design scene as a swim in a minimalist bath. See my post of Tue Aug 12, 2003.
Minimalist Oases in a Bustling Manhattan
Minimalist Oases in a Bustling Manhattan
2004-04-22
Art ...and its function in society.
Here we are again, art and ideology and commerce. Art as a public relation tool at the hands of the ideologues and the merchants. In earlier times, the ideologues were the priests, today they are the merchants.
"...fine art's conceptual leanings are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the facile surfaces of advertising, this ironic fusion of art and commerce is perhaps an inevitable progression. ...the all-important products and logos are deleted, leaving only their surrounding associations hanging in the air like conceptual perfume."
Death of the gallery
"...fine art's conceptual leanings are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the facile surfaces of advertising, this ironic fusion of art and commerce is perhaps an inevitable progression. ...the all-important products and logos are deleted, leaving only their surrounding associations hanging in the air like conceptual perfume."
Death of the gallery
2004-04-10
Art with sense or accountancy of works.
What is culture and art all about ?
Is it to collect all that is realized under the sky without any selection or is it to select from all those creations the ones that offer meaning about the times we live in ? In other words, is there sense in art or are all productions equally interesting and thus deserving collection?
Read in spiked-online 04/09/04.
"The pursuit of aesthetic or historical understanding, of attempting to distinguish good paintings from bad or correct interpretations from false ones, is deemed impossible. Instead, all cultural institutions can do is to revel in 'diversity', by promoting different kinds of art and competing judgements. Today's cultural policy rejects the ways of the traditional cultural elite, and presents itself as far more enlightened. However, if we examine the legacy that cultural diversity policy has rejected, we find that some valuable principles have been lost by the wayside."
"Cultural diversity policy is founded upon the collapse of traditional cultural policy. The celebration of 'diversity' for its own sake expresses the disorientation of the cultural elite, once belief in standards of cultural value had waned. But the same policy is also a response to this disorientation, providing a new logic and role for cultural institutions".
The latest attacks on multiculturalism in Britain have been coming from the left. "An elite that is unwilling to make judgements about why any one cultural practice is better than another, to set universal standards about what role individuals should be expected to play across society, and to promote a distinct set of values that a society should agree upon, finds a useful tool in multiculturalism. This is why it has been so well-suited to Western societies in the past few decades, increasingly disorientated by the erosion of cultural and political certainties. Clearly, the official promotion of multicultural policy has not provided any solution to this disorientation - indeed, by actively encouraging expressions of difference and divisions between communities, it may well have fuelled the process of fragmentation."
Art for inclusion's sake
Facing up to the M-word
Is it to collect all that is realized under the sky without any selection or is it to select from all those creations the ones that offer meaning about the times we live in ? In other words, is there sense in art or are all productions equally interesting and thus deserving collection?
Read in spiked-online 04/09/04.
"The pursuit of aesthetic or historical understanding, of attempting to distinguish good paintings from bad or correct interpretations from false ones, is deemed impossible. Instead, all cultural institutions can do is to revel in 'diversity', by promoting different kinds of art and competing judgements. Today's cultural policy rejects the ways of the traditional cultural elite, and presents itself as far more enlightened. However, if we examine the legacy that cultural diversity policy has rejected, we find that some valuable principles have been lost by the wayside."
"Cultural diversity policy is founded upon the collapse of traditional cultural policy. The celebration of 'diversity' for its own sake expresses the disorientation of the cultural elite, once belief in standards of cultural value had waned. But the same policy is also a response to this disorientation, providing a new logic and role for cultural institutions".
The latest attacks on multiculturalism in Britain have been coming from the left. "An elite that is unwilling to make judgements about why any one cultural practice is better than another, to set universal standards about what role individuals should be expected to play across society, and to promote a distinct set of values that a society should agree upon, finds a useful tool in multiculturalism. This is why it has been so well-suited to Western societies in the past few decades, increasingly disorientated by the erosion of cultural and political certainties. Clearly, the official promotion of multicultural policy has not provided any solution to this disorientation - indeed, by actively encouraging expressions of difference and divisions between communities, it may well have fuelled the process of fragmentation."
Art for inclusion's sake
Facing up to the M-word
2004-04-09
No meaning, only agit-prop. Is it art ?
They do not build "meanings," "messages" or "symbols," they nevertheless know how to trot out agitprop... Ah, yes...it's subversive.
Unreasonable Art
Unreasonable Art
2004-04-08
Change: our earth is breathing.
The earth seems to breathe. Its magnetic field appears to flip from North to South for very long periods. Its last flip from South to North appeared some 780.000 years ago...
Quick flip of Earth's magnetic field revealed
Magnetic Field Flip-Flop Clocked
Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy
Quick flip of Earth's magnetic field revealed
Magnetic Field Flip-Flop Clocked
Our Growing, Breathing Galaxy
2004-03-27
The creative frenzy of art in the Middle Age.
An excellent article about what seems to be an excellent exhibition of Middle-Age artistic creations. In one word, it's about a creative explosion in all fields. "So many works in such a short time: the concentration is amazing. All the disciplines are at it. In these works, it is the history of painting which starts. To follow it a little more, it is necessary to go to the exhibition of "Primitive French". Its goal is not exhaustiveness but the commemoration and research. Commemoration because an exhibition of the same name at the Louvre in 1904 was a decisive event: the recognition of a long time scorned period and its revelation with the visitors - among whom Matisse and Derain".
In one of the works, "the bed is scarlet, in a room with tended walls of ultramarine blue and gold. The window with the background is of a perfect geometry. The beams of the ceiling are red and green. What does this invoque? The red Workshop of Matisse. And what does one think in front of the drawings of the metal point on the boxwood shelf of a notebook, is it not Dürer? However these drawings allotted to Jacquemart de Hesdin date from the years 1380".
The article is in french but Google or other search engines can give you an internet translation of sufficiently good quality for you to get what it is all about.
La frenesie creative de l'art au Moyen Age
In one of the works, "the bed is scarlet, in a room with tended walls of ultramarine blue and gold. The window with the background is of a perfect geometry. The beams of the ceiling are red and green. What does this invoque? The red Workshop of Matisse. And what does one think in front of the drawings of the metal point on the boxwood shelf of a notebook, is it not Dürer? However these drawings allotted to Jacquemart de Hesdin date from the years 1380".
The article is in french but Google or other search engines can give you an internet translation of sufficiently good quality for you to get what it is all about.
La frenesie creative de l'art au Moyen Age
2004-03-05
Cosmic life imitates art!
Central to my views about the present day evolution of the visual artist's creations is space. It makes absolutely no doubt to me that looking to oneself, to oneselve's world from afar is bound to change our view of the world. Speed of movement, of transportation on earth has been since the 19th century the central shaker of our visual perceptions. Let us forget for a moment the visual art absurdities of the 20th century and try to reconnect with the evolution of painters' visions. We now can envision the radical revolution that space will unleash on us all in terms of our vision of the world. It's not only the brutal acceleration of speed that tortures our vision. From afar we somehow reach a state of plenitude where speed is abolished and discover the mirror in which we are looking at ourselves on earth... This experience has been described by some astronauts in terms of a religious experience. But the recourse to religion is a one way street, a no drive through street where one lands in ideological land.
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
I firmly believe that visual artists did not go as far as the road of space. We all have been overtaken by the photographic images of and from space. And space in an outwards direction, the cosmos as macrocosm, is but one of the dimensions. What about space in an inwards direction, the microcosm. Both directions somehow converge in the sense that they force us out of our traditional visual certitudes.
The philosophical implications are absolutely staggering and, to put it in soft words, I'm amazed at how our societies have only been mildly shaken as of today. Often I have this odd feeling that scientists' photographs make better art than most visual artists' creations.
"Cosmic life imitates art "
Here are some more links, have a good time with those artists who are been called scientists:
"Dee Breger"
"Ken Musgrave"
"Loes Modderman"
"Tina Carvalho"
"Olympus America Inc., and The Florida State University"
2004-03-02
Collectors and art history
A must read. Where should art productions be today if it were not for the "small circle of dealers, scholars and collectors who become interested in unfashionable or unfamiliar art".
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
" What have dealers ever done for art history?"
2004-03-01
What is art ?
I started this blog one year ago approximately with the ambition to write about art and design. I was , and I must say I remain, very unsatisfied with today's blabla about art in magazines and papers.
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
My idea is that art (fine art) is a societal answer to the questions and needs of the individuals for sense. Viewed in such a perspective, the artist is someone who is perpetually in searching mode for sense. By sense I mean the philosophical interpretation of reality or to put it otherwise the lightning of the elements that give sense to reality at a given point in time. Our perceptions evolved, very fast those last decades, and thus our questions today are indeed very different from what they were at other times in history.
The following 2 articles by Michelle Marder Kamhi are somehow focusing on the same approach that I personally try to develop. Her conclusions nevertheless are pole apart from mine but that is not of such a huge importance. Another layout is a chance to reflect...
So good reading.
"Debating The Visual Culture "
"Where's the Art in Today's Art Education?"
2004-02-26
Classical Music - Too Old? Too Abstract?
"Mainstream classical music is in crisis. To some extent, the crisis is quantifiable. Classical recording is tanking, classical radio is shrinking, and so is media coverage of classical music. The biggest fear is that the audience will disappear, and while conservatives in the business think that won't happen—"So what if the audience is old?" they cry, "it's always been old!"—reports from the National Endowment for the Arts show that even in the past 10 years the classical music audience has gotten older. "
"View from the East: How We Can Save the World "
"View from the East: How We Can Save the World "
2004-02-24
Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels
About art. In the end, in post modern societies, it's all about sales. "Costco applied the same pricing system to art that it did to other goods, marking them up no more than 14 percent above what it pays".
"In Search of Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels"
Times have changed...
Today the works of Rubensses could be found among toilet paper and other commodities! Are art works really becoming commodities? Well in post-modern societies, meaning has been transferred from reason to merchandise. So should we be surprised that art works be sold among toilet paper, toothpaste and candy? But the supreme irony here is that "The artwork is museum quality, matted and framed".
"In Search of Fine Art Amid the Paper Towels"
Times have changed...
Today the works of Rubensses could be found among toilet paper and other commodities! Are art works really becoming commodities? Well in post-modern societies, meaning has been transferred from reason to merchandise. So should we be surprised that art works be sold among toilet paper, toothpaste and candy? But the supreme irony here is that "The artwork is museum quality, matted and framed".
What's going on in our cosmos?
"Anne Kinney, director of NASA's Astronomy and Physics Division, cautioned that final answers on the nature of dark energy will not likely come for a very long time. Science can sometimes be much like art, she said: 'You approach, you don't arrive.' ".
Read here....
"Universe has at least 30 billion years left, scientists say"
Read here....
"Universe has at least 30 billion years left, scientists say"
Genes find their way from pharm crops to ordinary corn
Another interesting news confirming the validity of the conclusions of the latest Pentagon report. The "NEW SCIENTIST" just published this piece about Genetically Modified Foods:
"Crops 'widely contaminated' by genetically modified DNA"
In summary: "Crops engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs - so-called "pharm" crops - could already be poisoning ostensibly GM-free crops grown for food, warns the study by the Washington-based Union for Concerned Scientists"
"Crops 'widely contaminated' by genetically modified DNA"
In summary: "Crops engineered to produce industrial chemicals and drugs - so-called "pharm" crops - could already be poisoning ostensibly GM-free crops grown for food, warns the study by the Washington-based Union for Concerned Scientists"
2004-02-23
Chaos
Instructive:
Since decades scientists, artists and others speak and write about the damage done to the sustainability of human life on earth by the logic of capital. They were often labeled extremists.
Today the Pentagon confirms those fears and informs of the coming treads to the USA.
Enjoy the reading... But beware it is not rejoicing news.
"New Pentagon's report on coming chaos"
"Key findings of the Pentagon "
Since decades scientists, artists and others speak and write about the damage done to the sustainability of human life on earth by the logic of capital. They were often labeled extremists.
Today the Pentagon confirms those fears and informs of the coming treads to the USA.
Enjoy the reading... But beware it is not rejoicing news.
"New Pentagon's report on coming chaos"
"Key findings of the Pentagon "
2004-02-13
Could China one day save the West?
Looking at how reality is dscribed from different perspectives....
Here are 2 good articles describing how Chinese view the West and particularly the US. Very interesting reading.
"Why I say China will one day save the West?"
"The evil root of all instability in the world today"
Here are 2 good articles describing how Chinese view the West and particularly the US. Very interesting reading.
"Why I say China will one day save the West?"
"The evil root of all instability in the world today"
2004-02-11
The power of beauty
!!!!!!
Very similar to what I wrote already a few times about in this blog.
"We experience the power of beauty when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction".
This commentary is by Elizabeth Sourbut, in the issue of the 14th of February 04 of "New Scientist" about the following book:
"The Secret Power of Beauty: Why happiness is in the eye of the beholder"
By John Armstrong
Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin
MOST of us would claim to recognise a beautiful person or object when we see it. But we are often unable to explain why we find the object of our gaze so appealing. John Armstrong thinks this is a shame, so in The Secret Power of Beauty he sets out to examine the power that beauty holds over us, and to consider why it's able to touch our emotions. His clear and thoughtful analysis leads the reader confidently through art history and philosophy towards a humane and convincing set of answers.
Drawing on examples from art, architecture, literature and music Armstrong traces two historical approaches. One focuses on the outer, physical appearance of the object and looks for serpentine lines, perfect proportion or the fit between form and function. The other asks what it feels like to find something beautiful and considers the response of the beholder - perhaps spiritual or moral. He argues that the power of beauty lies in a combination of these two. We experience it when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction.
An appreciation of beauty deepens our enjoyment of life, and with his elegant and accessible style Armstrong encourages readers to seek beauty in everyday life, not just in high culture. Look around you. Is any of your furniture beautiful, or the view from your window, or the heart of your Valentine?
Elizabeth Sourbut
Very similar to what I wrote already a few times about in this blog.
"We experience the power of beauty when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction".
This commentary is by Elizabeth Sourbut, in the issue of the 14th of February 04 of "New Scientist" about the following book:
"The Secret Power of Beauty: Why happiness is in the eye of the beholder"
By John Armstrong
Publisher: Allen Lane/Penguin
MOST of us would claim to recognise a beautiful person or object when we see it. But we are often unable to explain why we find the object of our gaze so appealing. John Armstrong thinks this is a shame, so in The Secret Power of Beauty he sets out to examine the power that beauty holds over us, and to consider why it's able to touch our emotions. His clear and thoughtful analysis leads the reader confidently through art history and philosophy towards a humane and convincing set of answers.
Drawing on examples from art, architecture, literature and music Armstrong traces two historical approaches. One focuses on the outer, physical appearance of the object and looks for serpentine lines, perfect proportion or the fit between form and function. The other asks what it feels like to find something beautiful and considers the response of the beholder - perhaps spiritual or moral. He argues that the power of beauty lies in a combination of these two. We experience it when spiritual value and outward appearance seem inseparable, capturing a sense of what it means to be human in those rare moments of deepest satisfaction.
An appreciation of beauty deepens our enjoyment of life, and with his elegant and accessible style Armstrong encourages readers to seek beauty in everyday life, not just in high culture. Look around you. Is any of your furniture beautiful, or the view from your window, or the heart of your Valentine?
Elizabeth Sourbut
2004-02-08
Thoughts and reality
Western thinkers from the left as well as from the right take the substance of the idees that are foundational to their discourse from the Greek philosophers. These established as their ultimate truth that there is an absolute and general root cause to everything that happens, a root cause that influences even the conception of natural movements. In this model, reality is the result of a cause.
For both the ancient Chinese and the Greek philosophers, change is thought of as the result of the princip of opposites.
But while in the Chinese tradition the opposite princips of YIN and YANG by themselves contain the full explanation for all changes, the Greeks need to add a third term to the opposites (antikeimena).
For the Chinese, reality is THE FLOW FROM YIN TO YANG and vice versa while the Greeks, thinking that opposites distroy each other, had to reject the idea of opposites transforming into their opposites. Thus they needed to come up with a substantiation of the opposites into matter (hupomenei). Hupomenei could than change (metabole). In other words they thought that matter could change into its opposite.
The flow from YIN to YANG is powered by the perpetual burst of power that is unleashed by the differential of energy residing in both of those polarities which makes that change is conceved as spontaneous emergence in autoregulation mode.
In comparison, the Greek metabole is inert so to put movement and change into motion, the Greek philosophers needed to invent an external motor and energy (to kinoun). Change is then the result of an outside cause and causality is thus established as the philosophical model.
The external motor that will cause change is god (ens realissimus) and his energy is love or the thirst for his love. This thirst, and the desire that it induces, is then what allows the Greeks to stop the search for an earlier more originel cause, the relegating process had indeed been internalized as by an act of magic.
The advent of reality for the Chinese is just a spontaneous process of emergence that auto regulates. In this view, there not only is no finality but there is also no good and no bad, reality is only what is.
In the West, reality is seen as the consequence of god's universal love that projects upon all and everything which in return causes all and everything desiring to imitate god's so perceived perfection and love. In this process of perception, of god's perfection and love, lies also the "recognition" and the justification for the authoritarian establishment of those who perceive, god's perfection and love, as the holders of the supreme good. Bad and evil, defined as not bowing to god's perfection and love, are thus becoming the ennemy. History is full of this kind of thinking that led to so many wars. By the way, please check out the words of Georges Bush after 9/11, they seem to be the perfect caricature of what I try to describe here.
From the perspective of whatever side of the cultural divide between east and west, the other's cultural build-up upon such vastly different foundations is bound to be incomprehensible and thus the difficulty of the West and the East to understand each other.
Post-modernism, I think, shall be vastly different from what Western right and left thinkers are making about it. They are privileging the Western internal tendancies to the point of blacking out all that may be going on externally. But it seems to me that what is going on outside of the West is bound to have gradually a decisive impact on the West itself. The awakening I believe shall be rude because there is no doubt that the foundations of our Western civilization are already crumbling. We are nowadays economically so totally dependant on science that the conclusions arrived at by scientists will, there should be no doubt about it, shake our certainties. Their establishing the fundamental truth contained in the foundations of the Chinese civilization is bound to lead to the most fundamental revolution in Western thought since the early days of Western civilization itself. A very readable account of what is going on in the scientific community is given by Mitchell WALDROP in his books "Chaos" and "Complexity".
I believe that the recognition of the princips of spontaneous emergence and auto-regulation are engendering a whole new form of consciousness in the West and post-modernism is the right title, I thinks, to describe the forms that will emerge under this new consciousness.
Post-modernism is an economic rebalancing act. The center of capitalistic power is shifting towards noth-east asia. This process that is already at work should last some 50 more years at least and shall gradually pull in its track the emergence of Chinese culture on the world stage and in the process, I bet that Beijing shall impose itself as the world's premier cultural center. But what does this imply in terms of content in the arts? Well, first and foremost we'll assist at the relegation to the dustbin of history of large swathes of so called Western post-modern productions. It will not be a loss since most of those productions are not more than garbage that collectors' greed only can establish as works of art . Furthermore, it will also establich the primacy of personal visions instead of the vision of schools and that of their their masters. Last but not least, it will establish the primacy of the princip of rich content + technical skills.
For both the ancient Chinese and the Greek philosophers, change is thought of as the result of the princip of opposites.
But while in the Chinese tradition the opposite princips of YIN and YANG by themselves contain the full explanation for all changes, the Greeks need to add a third term to the opposites (antikeimena).
For the Chinese, reality is THE FLOW FROM YIN TO YANG and vice versa while the Greeks, thinking that opposites distroy each other, had to reject the idea of opposites transforming into their opposites. Thus they needed to come up with a substantiation of the opposites into matter (hupomenei). Hupomenei could than change (metabole). In other words they thought that matter could change into its opposite.
The flow from YIN to YANG is powered by the perpetual burst of power that is unleashed by the differential of energy residing in both of those polarities which makes that change is conceved as spontaneous emergence in autoregulation mode.
In comparison, the Greek metabole is inert so to put movement and change into motion, the Greek philosophers needed to invent an external motor and energy (to kinoun). Change is then the result of an outside cause and causality is thus established as the philosophical model.
The external motor that will cause change is god (ens realissimus) and his energy is love or the thirst for his love. This thirst, and the desire that it induces, is then what allows the Greeks to stop the search for an earlier more originel cause, the relegating process had indeed been internalized as by an act of magic.
The advent of reality for the Chinese is just a spontaneous process of emergence that auto regulates. In this view, there not only is no finality but there is also no good and no bad, reality is only what is.
In the West, reality is seen as the consequence of god's universal love that projects upon all and everything which in return causes all and everything desiring to imitate god's so perceived perfection and love. In this process of perception, of god's perfection and love, lies also the "recognition" and the justification for the authoritarian establishment of those who perceive, god's perfection and love, as the holders of the supreme good. Bad and evil, defined as not bowing to god's perfection and love, are thus becoming the ennemy. History is full of this kind of thinking that led to so many wars. By the way, please check out the words of Georges Bush after 9/11, they seem to be the perfect caricature of what I try to describe here.
From the perspective of whatever side of the cultural divide between east and west, the other's cultural build-up upon such vastly different foundations is bound to be incomprehensible and thus the difficulty of the West and the East to understand each other.
Post-modernism, I think, shall be vastly different from what Western right and left thinkers are making about it. They are privileging the Western internal tendancies to the point of blacking out all that may be going on externally. But it seems to me that what is going on outside of the West is bound to have gradually a decisive impact on the West itself. The awakening I believe shall be rude because there is no doubt that the foundations of our Western civilization are already crumbling. We are nowadays economically so totally dependant on science that the conclusions arrived at by scientists will, there should be no doubt about it, shake our certainties. Their establishing the fundamental truth contained in the foundations of the Chinese civilization is bound to lead to the most fundamental revolution in Western thought since the early days of Western civilization itself. A very readable account of what is going on in the scientific community is given by Mitchell WALDROP in his books "Chaos" and "Complexity".
I believe that the recognition of the princips of spontaneous emergence and auto-regulation are engendering a whole new form of consciousness in the West and post-modernism is the right title, I thinks, to describe the forms that will emerge under this new consciousness.
Post-modernism is an economic rebalancing act. The center of capitalistic power is shifting towards noth-east asia. This process that is already at work should last some 50 more years at least and shall gradually pull in its track the emergence of Chinese culture on the world stage and in the process, I bet that Beijing shall impose itself as the world's premier cultural center. But what does this imply in terms of content in the arts? Well, first and foremost we'll assist at the relegation to the dustbin of history of large swathes of so called Western post-modern productions. It will not be a loss since most of those productions are not more than garbage that collectors' greed only can establish as works of art . Furthermore, it will also establich the primacy of personal visions instead of the vision of schools and that of their their masters. Last but not least, it will establish the primacy of the princip of rich content + technical skills.
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