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Dear all, I was very afraid of this when entering the list that this month would be too filled with other duties to be able to repsond properly to posting and questions raised. The end of the month is herem, and probably CRUMB is on to a new them tomorrow. Too bad... However, I would like to clarify a critical point that seems very important to consider now, and on this point I disagree, or at least take a sharply different point of view, from Ken Friedman (in the best and most appreciative manner of his contribution to the discussion, obviously, but still looking quite distinctively different at these matters...). At 22:57 +0100 15-2-04, Ken Friedman wrote: >I want to suggest that the notion of an "art/science >blockage" strikes me as a cliche. There may be individuals who belong >to a group of artists or scientists that cannot communicate between >and among fields, but this is their fault as human beings. It is not the >fault of "art" or the fault of "science." This seems to me like rushing to a point without considering what kind of blockages we are actually talking about. >IMHO, the idea of "art/science blockage" is one of those mythic -- >or cliched -- notions that does not hold up under scrutiny. I understand >the problem to which you refer, but this a problem either of artists >or of scientists, not of the fields of art or science. More important, it >is generally the problem of individuals who look toward art or science >from a deficient perspective and background. > >As someone who works in more than one field, I'll suggest that there >are multiple and plural approaches. The first step is to give up the >notion of a blockage, of Snow's two cultures, and so on. I'd feel much >better with a note reading, OK - on the point of giving up CP Snow's concept of the "two cultures" I can readily agree, and replace it with a more complex understanding of how scientific and artistic enquiry, at least in the Western frame, are part of the same cultural continuum, even if they may be operating in generally quite seperated fields. This is more a question of the social organisation of these respective practices, rather than some fundamental incongruity. I think that even someone like Lyotard would agree that there is a shared affinty, and that there is no condition of incommensurability that divides both practices in fundamentally disparate "language games". However, if we talk about blockages in the context of this discussion (referring to the introduction by Beryl, which followed up on a discussion in Rotterdam at a V2_ conference on media art and research that went a bit haywire unfortunately), we were not immediately pointing to these kind of conceptual differences (wether they be percieved or real). Rather, we were referring to very real and actual blockages of productive collaboration that apparently hamper a productive cross-disciplinary collaboration. The starting point here would be that there is a very rich history of art and science, and art and technology exploration in the frame of Western contemporary art practice, as well as contemporary techno culture, but that a really firm institutional basis that supports and enhances these kind of practices is by and large absent. The respective roles of art and science, as "methodologies" have within that history been identified and quite clearly described as primarily complementary, not as fundamentally contradictionary (even though local contradictions may very well exist). Roughly summarised the argument is that the scientific approach provides rigorous methodology, and constructions of arguments and experimental settings that have a sufficient degree of verifyability, but as a result of these demands lack the required flexibility to explore vast solution spaces, or shift swiftly between different possible methodologies. Artsitic enquiry lacks a certain methodological rigor, but adds an intuitive ordering of theoretically vast solution spaces to a given problem, which may indicate new directions for research and problem solving. Artistic enquiry is less strictly bound to specific methodologies, but can instead appropriate multiple methodological approaches within a single strategy of arriving at a desired solution. This is not to say that artistic enquiry is entirely "free", it is still bound to a set of conventions that can in part be understood as the unwritten rules of the art world, but on the methodological level there is a greater degree of flexibility. In a research context artistic and scientific disciplines should then be able to benefit greatly from each other. While artistic research can be more flexible in identifying new directions for problem solving, scientific methodology can provide the rigor to test these assumptions and provide them with some degree of reliability / verifyability. In the field of new media arts this connection becomes closer because the artists and the researchers basically share the same (digital) tools, which makes it more likely for their practices to converge at different points. If such a highly productive relationship in the field of digital media seems probable, why then is there so little substantial activity in this direction? Why are there no highly developed fundamental and applied research trajectories in which artistic and scientific enquiry stand on equal footing and complement each other, as pointed out in the argument above? It seems to me that the problem is neither on the conceptual level (the "two cultures") not on the human level (individual artists and scientists are simply not interested in each other), but rather on the institutional level. Traditionally the access to mainstream research funding is located within sceintific institutions, from which the artistic actors (artsist and arts organisations) are excluded. Access to these sources of funding is entirely dependent on the willingness of research foundations, companies, research laboratories, universities, research consortia, governments and ministries to grant cultural actors access to these funds. Research funding within the arts and culture sectors itself is by and large non-existent. If sufficient funding was available within the sector, these cultural actors could simply set up their own research trajectories and invite scientists and engineers to work with them. This is indeed what is happening a lot, but because of the limited fnding available for anything that is not directly related to the production of art works, or the mediation of art and culture to the audience, these projects tend to be marginal, often interesting, but in size, scale and number insignificant in comparison with mainstream academic research and industry R&D. So, the real question I would like to see discussed, not just here but genrally, is how to address this institutional inbalance? I firmly believe in a productive synergetic relationshiop between scientifc and artistic enquiry, but seeing how slowly this relationshiop is taking shape, even after the tidal wave of digitalisation more or less across our whole society, I think it is not enough anymore to merely talk about the conceptual side of this question. In The Netherlands this institutional question is very much on the table right now. The country's rather curious but intersting 4-year cycle for structural arts funding is reaching it's critical phase of decision time this Spring, and policy plans are being considered as we speak for the period 2005 - 2008. From debates so far about the relationship art/culture and new/digital media (dubbed "e-culture" in the best of euro-speak) it seems that most funding for new development and investigative projects in the arts go in the direction of the digitising of, and multi-media access to, cultural heritage. The "living arts", experimental settings for new media arts and artistic research are once again no policy priority. Simultaneously artsitc research or cross-diciplinary research between art and science is not playing a mayor role in debates on "innovation" and the "knowledge economy", where they should be a naturally constitutive element of the national innovation strategy and ICT related policies. The question of how the arts might address the wider social and cultural significance of the "fact of the new technologies" is even much farther out of sight.... Our strategy from the field of new media culture / arts is twofold right now. We engage policy makers, including cabinet members in the current (liberal/conservative) government in active debate to create awareness of these issues and the potential of cross-dicplinary activity. Secondly we will be highlighting exemplary projects that have been realised in recent years despite the dreary financial circumstances of most organisations in the field. Although nobody really counts on the big frameworks of research funding and support, it would really help to bring the field of "artsitic research' to maturity. I doubt that this strategy is strong enough to break the institutional blockages that I have outlined, but "real" power simply does not exist within this sector, and therefore creating awareness and understanding among decision makers is the only possibly strategy right now to create in-roads into the wider domain of research and R&D. A strategic coalition with (new media) education might be another important element of the strategy. Connection points between the arts field and new media education have existed from the very start, but it might be useful to consider them more strategically if we ever want to get beyond the current 'constipation'. The necessary complement to this is the development of a critical vocabulary and a willingness to examine practices self-crticially within the field of new media arts/culture itself. Our discussion going haywire in Rotterdam (people in the audience at the first critical tone asserting a "crisis of new media") showed that we have not even begun to develop such a vocabulary, nor a proper framework in which to develop it in the first place.... Eric Kluitenberg Media theorist and organiser Head of the media program at De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam.