Dear Keith, Ken, Chuck, Terry and artful lurkers,
Thanks for your insightful observations and reflections on Alva Noe¹s
stimulating article:
I thought Noe¹s conclusion that, ³Art is itself a research practice, a way
of investigating the world and ourselves,² seemed to contradict his earlier
³art isn¹t a phenomenon to be explained.² And I wonder why we continue to
assume that what science is looking for and the way it goes about that
looking needs to be the same for art - that it can all be gathered into one
big happy ontology. Why the need to be so tidy? Isn¹t there just something
fundamentally different between such things as traffic statistics and being
hit by a car?
Re: neuroscience¹s probing of human nature from the inside and art from the
behavioral outside. The inside view for me can be both neuroscience and
also the lyric voice of fiction and poetry.
I liked his word unveil, the capacity of art to pull back at least some of
the curtain on the grand opera of being human (oh so human) to reveal hidden
aspects of our artifacts and culture. Paul Klee said something similar in
his notebooks, ³Art doesn¹t render the visible. It makes visible.² But Noe
goes much further when he says, ³Art, in contrast, [to design] makes things
strange.²
I think he differentiates much too strictly between design and art with,
³Design, the work of technology, stops, and art begins, when we are unable
to take the background of our familiar technologies and activities for
granted, and when we can no longer take for granted what is, in fact, a
precondition of the very natural-seeming intelligibility of such things as
doorknobs and pictures, words and sounds.²
Yes, Human beings....are designers by nature," but their art reaches down
into "The Design of Everyday Things." I continue to think of designing and
art as overlapping, open concepts with evolving cultural agendas.
Re: the concept of a ³human nature.² If there is ³a human nature² to
discover, I think it will be found in the sealed box along with
Schrödinger's cat.
Warm regards to all,
Jerry
--
Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service € University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://pages.uoregon.edu/diethelm/
€ https://oregon.academia.edu/JerryDiethelm
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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