[Gav] thank you for the very kind comparison but please now let me shoot myself in the feet... i am not sure i totally agree with bob here.
[Arlo] I think Pirsig's phrasing here is dry, and I think he is too dismissive of refining our use of these terms. But I think the basic foundation (he lays with his statement) is a good one. [Gav] what about imagination, dreaming...? [Arlo] Well I think these are skillful manipulation of symbols that have no corresponding particular experience. (Okay, dreaming doesn't entail such a deliberate manipulation, but Pirsig quotes both Einstein and Poincare over the abductive process that, I'd say, pulls from these more free flowing symbolic patternings). I think it's quite a morass to say that imagining numbers interacting is "intellectual", but imagining "dragons" is social. [Gav] does this all hinge on our conception of art? how does it fit? [Arlo] Well... I'd say that "art" is "high Quality experience", and is best thought of a verb rather than a noun. What we typically refer to as "art" in the West are the objects born out of a high Quality endeavor. So for me, "art" is the "dance" between the mechanic and the machine, the painter and the canvass, the dancer and her/his body. That said, I don't think "art" is intellectual or social (or biological or inorganic). I think much of the artifacts we call "art" are symbols meant to convey very specific meaning; sometimes to express social patterns and sometimes to express intellectual patterns. [Gav] the code of art is DQ/sq right? [Arlo] I'm going to have to think about this, but my inclination is "no". The code of art, or just "art", is IMO that which allows us to catch a fleeting glance of the indefinable Void (DQ). [Gav] does it therefore sit atop the fourth level? [Arlo] Pirsig seemed to think a "code of art" was the next emergent level, but I think all I can really say is that "art" moments transcend our socio-intellectual capabilities by pointing us at what Campbell called "always the one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story we find, together with a challenging persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be known or told." (Hero with 1000 Faces) [Gav] the artistic process is the process of creation itself. it is the source of new sq patterns, latched from a continual and purposeful immersion in DQ by the artist....that is, the artist's question/desire/initial idea (or struction as jaynes would say) is interrogated in the silence of meditative contemplation....which allows DQ to interrupt a solution/synthesis, leading to a new struction and so on - a dance of creation, LiLa. [Arlo] Well said, I agree. [Gav] is this process 'the skillful manipulation of abstract symbols'? - or is it more than that....i don't know. [Arlo] Well I think its that and then some. I think the "artistic process" involves much symbolic manipulation (even modern art often entails some deliberation in meaning on the part of the "artist", even if the meaning is "there is no meaning"). I'd say that for "art" to function, it must deploy a recognizable symbolic-cultural form. A "sign" that must be recognized as a "sign". That's not to say its nothing more than "intellectual patterns", "art" very much is. But just like the intellectual patterns of "mathematics" entails the social dialogue of mathematicians, "art" goes beyond the skillful manipulation of symbols. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
