Hi Eduardo,
Thank you for your erudite and brilliant reply - as always!
I'm trying to draw attention to two subtle issues that seem to get
overlooked.
Typically, both get reinterpreted as part of mind-body or science/art
debates rather than Philosophy of Theory.
The first is to draw a clear separating line between the subjectivity needed
by artists and designers to *do* art and design and the very different
processes of making theory about how artists and designers do art and
design.
Creating art and designs, and interpreting or using both requires subjective
emotional/affective skills. Being an artist, designer, viewer and user
requires specific subjective skills. For artists and designers these are
gained and refined as a result of specific experiences of education and
learning and involve specific bodies of knowledge and ways of thinking.
Making theory about what artists and designers do, in order to improve it,
requires a completely different set of skills. These are usually developed
and refined by a different form of education and learning.
It's been a problem that its been assumed that the subjective skills of art
and design are sufficient for creating theory about doing art and design.
I'm suggesting this situation needs to change. Part of it is to be aware
that the subjectivity and self reflection of artists isn't obviously the
best basis for understanding or making theory about what artists and
designers do and how to improve what they do. In other words, to ignore
subjective interpretations by artists and designers about how they create
art or design as irrelevant and likely to be erroneous. This viewpoint is
widely accepted parallel fields of practice such as singing, performance,
sport and engineering.
If you take the point that the subjectivity and viewpoints of artists and
designers is not helpful to understanding and improving art and design
practice, then it's necessary to look in other directions. One way is to
look to see how emulating art and design practices by robot gives insights.
It's not the whole story but it seems an interesting exploration.
Warm regards
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo
Corte Real
Sent: Wednesday, 7 April 2010 12:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Life drawing robot offers insight into art, design, creativity
and aesthetics
Hi Terry, Hi Fil, Gunnar and Charlie (please drop the dr. my siblings
are all MDs or Lawyers which in Portugal are normally the only we
address as Drs, I choose to be different)
Of course, Fil, that I could answer "the problem is what computer
scientists AND engineers think is art" but that would may be regarded as
unpleasant and more than that would have an unfocused result.
Did you saw the sketch? Gunnar saw it and knows what I mean.
It is made out of a photography portrait of Stephen Hawking. The robot
acts by searching different gray areas and notating in conformity with
some twitches added. Although the real Stephen Hawking wouldn't
constitute a real problem drawn from live (he would keep his pose for a
while) drawing from a picture is very different from drawing from life.
Also, the process of sketching is so near to abstraction that its
procedures must not be confused with photography (with scribbles instead
of photo-chemical impressions). If you remember Niépce's view of his
window in Garches - the alleged first photography in the early 1830's -
the process is very similar).
I agree that street artists may be creative but there is a reason to be
in the street and not in a gallery or a museum.
This brings me to Terry's post and especially to its title (and I hope
to address also the questions raised by your long post) "robot drawing
offers insights into art, design, creativity and aesthetics"
Starting with art: In the beginning of this millennium we must agree
that a system has been developed to place objects "as art". This system
also stratifies art. To my knowledge this "drawing" could be classified
as naïf. It shows some knowledge of the technique but it has no clue
about how to use it.
When you are dealing with drawing as art you are in a position in which
being artist or doing art in ignorance of the art done before is
impossible. Drawing as Art is a highly complex activity in which the
layers of reference must be enormous in order to validate a work. This
is so stressing that I refused to be called an artist in a recent event
about Drawing and suggested the much calmer "author". This means that
drawing as art, even from life, is an intellectualized activity and not
a "natural" activity.
In conclusion the insight about art that this drawing gives you is that
poor art is at the reach of anyone, even robots. Let me stress that I
consider myself much closer to the robot than to any draughtsperson
represented in the MoMA drawings collection.
Design: this is where Charlie's post gets in. If the core of producing
knowledge in engineering is Math why teach sketching to future
engineers. There are a lot of good reasons, otherwise Charlie wouldn't
be doing it, but mostly because most of mathematics for engineering is
of the visual type, and more than that, have visual outcomes. A Graph is
a Graph! Sketching is abstract, only it looks like something. The
problem is that our teaching of drawing focus on likeness (or in
artistness) i.e. what relates the abstract world with the real world
instead of focusing on the coherent internal relations of the abstract
world that drawing constitutes. That is a problem when you learn drawing
and more that that a learned society casts you out of the talented ones
just because of likeness. The way back in is focusing in the internal
coherence of the sketch as an abstract device in itself, related with
reality not necessarily trough likeness.
Terry talks about the robot being a device helpful to improve better
ways of teaching drawing and sketching. I agree, by separating what is
not separable (our biology from our intellect, culture and purpose), the
results are evident: poor. That is not a strategy for understanding
through drawing. Sketching from life has only one purpose: trigger gut
knowledge (what Baumgarten called Aesthetics, but we will come to that,
there is still creativity to go) and unlock imagery (note that I do not
say imagination). Sketching from life is nothing else different from
training.
Creativity. At this point there is no doubt that the "Stephen Hawking
Street Portrait by a Robot" is not an example of creative practice.
That kind of line is especially used by sculptors (see, for instance
Henry Moore's sheep drawings at
http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/hmf/press/press-information/henry-moore-wor
ldwide1/henry-moore-sheep-on-tour
or Marinetti drawings at
http://albertogiacometti.tripod.com/giacometti-drawings.html . In the
robot drawing the effect is to flatten the already flatten image whilst
in Moore's and Giacometti's work you see a constant preparation trough
life drawing for the creative practice in a three dimensional media.
What is at stake here is not likeness but the excellent coherence of the
abstract device and the final sculpted works.
Terry finds no evidence of the relation between sketching from live and
creativity. The reason is because people have tried to link it in a
subjective way. Although I have the subjective testimony by Alvaro Siza
(for instance) that his work depends a lot on his life and studio
sketching, I can see the objective result of his designed work as
creative, why can't I validate this fact? If I rewind the history of
human kind back to the invention of schizzi by Giorgio Vasari what I see
is this constant verbally and textually expressed faith in the relation
between sketching (life and studio) and creation by the creators
themselves (proved by their work, from jewellery to Brasília). Plus,
history witnessed a boost of creative practises based on that
conviction. There is a great deal of historical evidence about this;
probably we need some statistic to satisfy Terry (Love, not Gilliam).
Aesthetics. Here we must draw a line between what is gut knowledge or
the science of sensible perception as defined by Baumgarten, and its
common use, and Aesthetics as a discipline of philosophy especially
devoted to understand Art.
As Designers or Design Theorists or Design Researchers we normally bang
into this word, and since one of the ancestors of Design was the
Esthétique Industrielle, we know that we are skizzing in very thin ice.
As I said before Aesthetics have these two roads to approach Design, one
from the emotive response to objects and the emotive way of knowing
things. The other, also legitime, through the theories of art that study
designed objects as part of a larger domain of Art (the way in which
some objects of design pop in an out of museums and the way objects of
art pretend to be design objects are great examples of this)
Given the present drawing, I fail to see in which way this robot will
give us insights about Aesthetics or aesthetics. Unless... Unless you
could see some traces of Angelina Jolie in the sensuous mouth of the
scribbled Hawking.
Cheers,
Eduardo
PS, Terry, You like my architecture drawings because I'm an architect.
You can feel the gut knowledge happening, but I draw everything else as
an architect too... even my mom.
On 06-04-2010 14:14, Gunnar Swanson wrote:
> Fil,
>
>> If you didn't know the sketch was generated by computer, would you
>> have thought differently?
>
> No. The pretense of artiness is hardly exclusive to computers and
> their programmers. I see tons of that sort of crap from humans all of
> the time.
>
>> If you are raised on KFC and McDonald's, you will likely find "fine
>> cuisine"
>> not to your liking.
>
>
> I was not meaning to attack the Colonel or Ronald McDonald. I was
> talking about ersatz "authentic" food foisted on tourists. And I
> wasn't attacking that food so much as noting that asking the tourists
> whether it's "real" is silly, just as claiming that "like a street
> artist might rustle up for tourists" might not be relevant information
> to claims about quality of drawing.
>
>> I find the Fembot remark a
>> little out of place here.
>
>
> My FemBot comment was not meant to be a general slur against science
> geeks but rather a general slur against the tendency to present
> reflections of a silly sci fi view of technology as if it were
> important science. It is the technologists' version of the equally
> obnoxious therapy as art stuff we see so much of.
>
> BTW, the whole "art mark" thing is an interesting problem for graphic
> designers. We are often asked to somehow encapsulate the idea of "art"
> in, say, a trademark for an arts organization. The result is a glut of
> logos with brush strokes, splashes, or squiggles that are no better
> than the computer sketch.
>
> Gunnar
> ----------
> Gunnar Swanson Design Office
> 1901 East 6th Street
> Greenville NC 27858
> USA
>
> [log in to unmask]
> +1 252 258 7006
>
>
>
> On Apr 6, 2010, at 8:18 AM, Filippo A. Salustri wrote:
>
>> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think it is the viewer that
>> gives
>> meaning. If you didn't know the sketch was generated by computer,
>> would you
>> have thought differently?
>>
>> If you are raised on KFC and McDonald's, you will likely find "fine
>> cuisine"
>> not to your liking. And chefs can make food that may taste good but
>> is very
>> bad for your health.
>>
>> And as a science geek myself - who has also enjoyed several visits to
>> some
>> of the more impressive art museums of Europe - I find the Fembot
>> remark a
>> little out of place here.
>>
>> Cheers.
>> Fil
>
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