Re: Locating ArtScience

[Pit Schultz]

just wanted to mention two recent works, which can function as a
comment regarding the disciplinarity, relevance and reach of the
works deriving from the exploitation of the intersections of art and
science.


1) the cigar shaped asteroid which took a strange trajectory recently.
based of radioscopic data illustrated by the graphic artist Martin
Kornmesser, employed by the educational reach out program of the
ESA in munich. similar to the recent discovery of exoplanets, hard
science relies on artist's imagination to promote their findings and
"visualize" data. of course these artists are not at all having any
rating in the world of fine arts or media arts, and rather range as
organic intellectuals or applied artisans, with nevertheless far
reaching impact on public imagination.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42329244


2) on the disappearence of the bees. outside of the professionalism
of art, science and activism, Martin Sorg, a part time biologist,
linux freak and eco-hippie samples data about the number of insects
in a little town in germany from 1989 to 2013 and comes up with
a break through study on rapid ecological decline triggering
an avalanche of debate. "Ermittlung der Biomassen flugaktiver
Insekten im Naturschutzgebiet Orbroicher Bruch mit Malaise Fallen..
http://80.153.81.79/~publ/mitt-evk-2013-1.pdf



both fields of science, insects and space, can and have been
exploited by artists, setting up pointers into this areas of
research practise, reframing it with a re-enactments, baroque and/or
shiny visualisations, romantic overinterpretations, or imaginary
politics, making them prone to various kinds of narcissistic
self-identifications, enhancing the narrative material with elaborate
quotes by the theoreticians of choice with temporarily high rankings
in the art charts, transfered into the ethnographic collections
of the ruling discourse networks, imported, exotified, mystified,
valorized, and exploited by a financialized logic of signification
but nevertheless presented as autonomous, original and critical,
biting the hand that it feeds. while these two mentioned works, mostly
distribute themselves in unattributed "viral" ways, they nevertheless
can be regarded as some kind of art, while they dont have to be named
as such to still function well enough, still proving a far reaching
impact on public discourse and future inscription into history,
including a needed "change of consciousness".

but remember, these areas of field research are not unoccupied
by "creative" labour, people without a name in the art world, do
their work there having their type of creative output. they do
not necessarily wait for artists discovering their treasures and
reporting to a general audience, they do might not want to be treated
as unintelligible material for studies, reconfigurable by the
interpretations of social constructivists.

science institutions as well as companies have already employed
graphic designers, marketing experts, and even anthropologists, to
mediate their work to various audiences. some of them reach out to
media arts and fine arts to enhance their portofolios of public
relation, recognizing a responsibility and philanthropic angle to
their put products into a different light.

we could be much more aware of the porous lines of the institutional
outside, opening up to rich fields of cultural production outside of
the inner circles, appreciate and respect the countless works of the
anonymous art collectives outside and below our little circles, and be
aware of their potential historic relevance compared to inscriptions
of a highly fetishized but probably mostly irrelevant production of
the cultural establishments, as lessons in modesty.

rogue science, hackery, mad science, amateur tinkering, militant
and non-militant activism, might be performed by artists under the
strict rule that nobody gets hurt, that everything is just a test,
a simulacra, an offer for communicating opinions, a mere symbolic
act or signification, while the area of hard science of "measured
facts" gets symbolically subjugated in a imaginary hegemony of
cultural/intellectual supremacy, ultimately serving the system it
claims to question. finding methods and loopholes to resist and escape
this logic can be a the a science in itself, hard to teach and learn,
and difficult to find, but nevertheless truly possible.




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Re: Locating ArtScience

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Dear Gary,

> On 14 Dec 2017, at 17:06, Gary Hall  wrote:
> The only thing I might add would be that, for me, any such subjectivity would 
> not assume that the boundaries between the human and nonhuman are drawn 
> arbitrarily. Nor that they are largely meaningless. Rather, the drawing of 
> such boundaries would be where the political comes into play.
> 
That is a good / important point. So, while these boundaries might in 
themselves be rather arbitrary, the act of drawing them and the choice how and 
where to draw is deeply political.   
> One way of developing that line of thought would be to build on Chantal 
> Mouffe's definition of the political as a decision taken precisely in an 
> arbitrary terrain. Another would be by adding the concept of the 'cut' to 
> those of diffraction and intra-action that Annie pointed us toward in the 
> work of Karen Barad.
> 
Ah, interesting to link back to Mouffe’s work, will re-read some of her work 
with this in mind!

And yes, the ‘cut’ belongs to this exploration, as well as other figures, such 
as ‘rupture’, ‘negation’, ‘erasure’ - for someone who comes from the field of 
the arts such figures feel familiar - the only thing to be careful about is not 
to think exclusively in ‘negative’ categories since we are also looking for 
more ‘generative’ approaches.

Many thanks for your feedback!

bests,
Eric

—— 
> Thanks, too, for the kind words about Reinventing the Humanities and 
> Posthumanities etc. Actually, a nicely packaged version of that material 
> (with pictures and everything) has just been published in the Techne: 
> Art+Research series as The Inhumanist Manifesto: Extended Play. If you're 
> interested, you can download it for free here:
> 
> http://art.colorado.edu/research/Hall_Inhumanist-Manifesto.pdf 
> 
> 
> Best, Gary
> 
> On 11/12/2017 01:44, Eric Kluitenberg wrote:
>> Dear Gary,
>> 
>> Thank you for your highly articulate and critical questions, which deserve a 
>> far more thorough answer than I can provide here with limited time 
>> available. Still I want to respond in brief to some of the issues  / 
>> problems you raised.
>> 
>>> On 10 Dec 2017, at 19:58, Gary Hall >> > wrote:
>>>  
>>> The mention of Latour in the context of the Anthropocene and its 
>>> undermining of the human’s ‘natural’ boundaries with the nonhuman brings to 
>>> mind Graham Harman’s presentation of his work in Prince of Networks. Here 
>>> Latour is portrayed as having given us ‘the first object-oriented 
>>> philosophy’, on the grounds there’s ‘no privilege for a unique human 
>>> subject’ in his thought. We cannot split ‘actants into zones of animate and 
>>> inanimate, human and nonhuman, or subject and object. Every entity is 
>>> something in its own right…. This holds equally true for neutrinos, fungus, 
>>> blue whales and Hezbullah militants’. ‘With this single step,’ Harman 
>>> writes, ‘a total democracy of objects replaces the long tyranny of human 
>>> beings in philosophy’. He proceeds to quote from Latour’s The 
>>> Pasteurization of France: ‘But if you missed the galloping freedom of the 
>>> zebras in the savannah this morning, then so much the worse for you; the 
>>> zebras will not be sorry you were not there... Things in themselves lack 
>>> nothing.’
>>>  
>>> Yet, for all this, the work of both Latour and Harman is shot through with 
>>> humanism, the consequences of which they do not think through rigorously. 
>>> After all, the zebras don’t care whether Latour writes about them or not. 
>>> In themselves they lack nothing - including books by Bruno Latour 
>>> presumably. So what - or rather who - is Latour writing these books for, 
>>> containing as they do original philosophical ideas and ontologies that are 
>>> attributed to him as unique, individual, named, human author or 
>>> personality, to the exclusion of all other human and nonhuman actors, and 
>>> published (in the case of Facing Gaia [Polity, 2017]) on a ‘copyright, all 
>>> rights reserved’ basis with a for-profit press?
>> 
>> Well, I cannot say too much on the inconsistencies of Latour’s publishing 
>> politics, quite obviously part of the global reputation machine. Nor do I 
>> have to or feel the need to defend him on this point, and for that matter 
>> also have my own disagreements with some of his arguments proper (aside from 
>> the issue of collusion with copyright / for profit publishing - in the past 
>> I have attempted to reach a subtle, balanced, reasonable public position on 
>> copyright by uttering the phrase: “Copyright? Fuck it!”).
>>   
>> I wanted to get a better sense of your position as I am not (yet) overly 
>> familiar with your work, and I think on your website the last part of the 
>> biography does a good job at summarising what is obviously a thoroughly 
>> developed position. I’m thinking here particularly of the 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[Kristoffer Gansing]

Dear Eric and all,

Thanks for a really enjoyable discussion so far. Not long ago, I would
skip over most ArtScience related material, because as Florian Cramer
already pointed out, this seems to belong to another era and a
particular lab-oriented approach that isn't up to scratch to the
challenges of today. But in the past year or so, I had been wondering
why Art & Science seems to be making a comeback and Eric's article is a
timely response to this. The reason why I am under the impression that
this "field" is surging back is simple - I surprisingly found that this
year, all my transmediale related invitations to participate in a panel
or give a talk were under an ArtScience umbrella. This is rather unusual
for a festival that isn't overtly concerned with Art & Science and its
relation to the legacy of Leonardo and artists that work within the
natural or so called hard sciences. What I ended up doing at these talks
was arguing for transversal approaches, across and beyond disciplines
(much like Eric is advocating), the recognition of the value of the arts
beyond advancing knowledge in linear ways (art does not have to be good,
innovative) while still interacting with all sectors of society and the
importance of including humanities based approaches into ArtScience. The
latter point was made by Eric too and reiterated in the discussion with
Gary Hall - and I can't stress how important this is as there seems to
be a tremendous lack of critical theoretical discussions in many of
these artscience gatherings. At the same time though, there is a doer's
mentality in ArtScience which is refreshing in our current times, not to
say that it is reactionary but rather that there is a positive outlook
on hybridity and the possibility of making ArtScience out of that. This
became evident to me at a meeting in Grenoble under the title "Future
Collaborations between Art & Sciences and their Role for Europe" which
seemed untypical as the participants were a mix of "softer" cultural
institutions like transmediale and Schloss Solitude, EU politicians,
science labs and big corporations. It was uneasy for sure, but there was
a feeling of uncertainty of how to move this field further that could be
productive. At least, it is important to intervene in this field as Eric
suggests, since a lot of policy making and financial resources are being
invested in it, an aspect which has not so much been brought up here
yet. Just take the Horizon 2020 programmes which has set a new agenda
for collaboration between art, technology and science on a European
level and which dictates a very technology-centred view with clear
quantifiable results. A few interesting projects have been able to slip
through and we need to see much more tactical action and long-term
strategies to influence this growing field. As Eric's post was initially
coming from an institutional context, maybe there are other voices on
the list who can share experiences from working "within" projects in
this field and reflect on how it might be transforming?

best,
Kristoffer


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Re: Locating ArtScience

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Dear Gary,

Thank you for your highly articulate and critical questions, which deserve a 
far more thorough answer than I can provide here with limited time available. 
Still I want to respond in brief to some of the issues  / problems you raised.

> On 10 Dec 2017, at 19:58, Gary Hall  wrote:
>  
> The mention of Latour in the context of the Anthropocene and its undermining 
> of the human’s ‘natural’ boundaries with the nonhuman brings to mind Graham 
> Harman’s presentation of his work in Prince of Networks. Here Latour is 
> portrayed as having given us ‘the first object-oriented philosophy’, on the 
> grounds there’s ‘no privilege for a unique human subject’ in his thought. We 
> cannot split ‘actants into zones of animate and inanimate, human and 
> nonhuman, or subject and object. Every entity is something in its own right…. 
> This holds equally true for neutrinos, fungus, blue whales and Hezbullah 
> militants’. ‘With this single step,’ Harman writes, ‘a total democracy of 
> objects replaces the long tyranny of human beings in philosophy’. He proceeds 
> to quote from Latour’s The Pasteurization of France: ‘But if you missed the 
> galloping freedom of the zebras in the savannah this morning, then so much 
> the worse for you; the zebras will not be sorry you were not there... Things 
> in themselves lack nothing.’
>  
> Yet, for all this, the work of both Latour and Harman is shot through with 
> humanism, the consequences of which they do not think through rigorously. 
> After all, the zebras don’t care whether Latour writes about them or not. In 
> themselves they lack nothing - including books by Bruno Latour presumably. So 
> what - or rather who - is Latour writing these books for, containing as they 
> do original philosophical ideas and ontologies that are attributed to him as 
> unique, individual, named, human author or personality, to the exclusion of 
> all other human and nonhuman actors, and published (in the case of Facing 
> Gaia [Polity, 2017]) on a ‘copyright, all rights reserved’ basis with a 
> for-profit press?

Well, I cannot say too much on the inconsistencies of Latour’s publishing 
politics, quite obviously part of the global reputation machine. Nor do I have 
to or feel the need to defend him on this point, and for that matter also have 
my own disagreements with some of his arguments proper (aside from the issue of 
collusion with copyright / for profit publishing - in the past I have attempted 
to reach a subtle, balanced, reasonable public position on copyright by 
uttering the phrase: “Copyright? Fuck it!”).
  
I wanted to get a better sense of your position as I am not (yet) overly 
familiar with your work, and I think on your website the last part of the 
biography does a good job at summarising what is obviously a thoroughly 
developed position. I’m thinking here particularly of the section Reinventing 
the Humanities and Posthumanities” Let me quote you from there:

"To decenter the human according to an understanding of subjectivity that 
perceives the latter as produced by complex meshworks of other humans, 
nonhumans, non-objects and non-anthropomorphic elements and energies (some of 
which may be beyond our knowledge), requires us to act differently as theorists 
from the way in which the majority of those associated with the posthuman, the 
nonhuman and the Anthropocene, act. We need to displace the humanist concepts 
that underpin our ideas of the author, the book and copyright, together with 
their accompanying practices of reading, writing, analysis and critique.”
http://www.garyhall.info  (biography - bottom of the 
page)

So, in this view then we cannot continue copyrighted publishing practices 
exactly because they reinstate a human subjectivity that is detached from the 
material and immaterial networks that we are all immersed in and composed of. 
And this in turn implies that if we want to reach a non-anthorpocentric 
understanding of ‘ecology’ (and work with that practically) then we need to 
renounce such confining and detaching practices and instead really embrace the 
notion of 'the collective’ (in Latours' terms the collective of humans and 
nonhumans), which collapses not so much the boundaries between man and nature 
as between ‘society’ and nature.

By and large I think I agree with you on that. However, I still find this idea 
of Latour to start thinking in terms of ‘the collective’ a very useful one to 
get rid of the redundant dichotomy of society and nature, and start thinking 
about larger interconnected networks that produce what we used to call ‘the 
social’. This is a set of ideas introduced in his Politics of Nature, back in 
2004, as a response to the stagnation of ecological (‘green’) politics.

My feeling is that Latour takes a very pragmatic position when it comes to his 
engagement with politics (one might argue overly pragmatic - he would call it 
‘realist'), in that he tacitly 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[Annie Abrahams]

A suggestion : Start thinking in a completely different ways. Use
diffractive reading, writing and researching to find new approaches.
We need it.

Some sources :
Three Minute Theory: What is Intra-Action? An introduction to Karen Barad's
concept of "intra-action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0SnstJoEec
Iris van der Tuin, Reading Diffractive Reading: Where and When Does
Diffraction Happen? https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0019.205?view=
text;rgn=main
A "concreet example" Down the methodological rabbit hole : thinking
diffractively with resistant data. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=3184=sspapers

Best
Annie Abrahams


On Sun, Dec 10, 2017 at 5:33 PM, John Hopkins 
wrote:

> Thanks Brian for introducing Earth Systems ideas, they go a long way
> towards an understanding of the connectedness across the wide scale of the
> entire planet from an approach that is understandable to a literate
> Westerner. There is a lot of new, creative, and very pertinent science
> happening within that sphere, related to stories of deep-time pasts and
> futures, in which we are scaled more to the global glitch that we are,
> despite our propagation of globe-girdling effects. James G. Miller's work
> dove-tails with this and may be of interest to you. As well, for example,
> Franesco Gonella's piece "Systems thinking and the narrative of climate
> change" http://prosperouswaydown.com/gonella-systems-climate/ might be of
> interest. (I append a short selected bibliography of some other sources)
>
> Latour suggests that 'things' be related by negotiation. I believe that
> his presumptive objectification of nature ('that-which-we-perceive') as a
> set of 'things' continues the travesty of Cartesian disconnect that brought
> us to where we are in the moment.
>
> The essence of the 'connectivity' between *everything* is not a
> language-based negotiation. It pertains more to the energized relation and
> an awareness (almost a dis-awareness!) of those flows. Definitely
> pre-verbal to our English descriptive system.
>
> Any 'solutions' that are based in the model of 'relations of things'
> (species, environments, ecosystems, regimes) and so imagined by/through
> their thing-ness (which includes most scientific processes) are bound to
> fail, as we so-far witness. Not only that, but the solutions are too often
> framed even by eco-conscious folks as a catastrophe to *us-things*. Perhaps
> if science proceeded on the assumption that all is connected, then created
> hypotheses to disprove that assumption...
>
> Unfortunately our language restricts the essence of the discussion to
> thing-ness -- it permeates all discourse (including the John Tresch article
> about Latour). Using terms like 'assembled body', 'assemblage', 'agent',
> even, 'apocalyptic', keeps us mired in the self-limiting and impotent
> thing-ness of our realities, our histories, and our futures. Even Latour's
> ANT which suggested the possibility of fluid connection between the actors,
> remained mired in the defined material-ness of those objects, and did not,
> imho, delve into the (energized) flow that both makes them up and
> permeates, *is* the interstitial dynamic.
>
> Where is change? It is deeply internal. If it is not rooted there, it will
> not propagate to wider systems. I agree, Brian, *that* is the most
> diffucult issue.
>
> The suggestion in the article of a return to an understanding by "granting
> epistemic weight to the natures of indigenous collectives" need be driven
> by adopting their language for circumscribing reality. Other models of
> reality may be adopted or at least studied, as they may provide mental
> tools and the mental re-wiring necessary to let go of the materiality that
> makes capitalism and our 'indigenous' world-view such a (stupidly)
> compelling model -- one that most people take for reality itself. Of course
> this poses the crucial question of how people approach reality -- most, it
> seems, simply adopt what the dominant social order provides ('it's always
> been that way'). What is first necessary is the development of a creative
> milieu that points out explicitly that the social order is constructed on
> models, and the models are *not* the phenomena of reality itself. Fluid and
> pre/non-disciplinary creative learning situations are what need to
> undergird any art/acience/politics question. One's own awareness of reality
> may then possibly be developed in such a way that the connectedness is
> forgrounded. If your program in NL is doing that, Eric, good on ya'!
>
> anyway.
>
> JH
>
>
> On 09/Dec/17 00:48, Brian Holmes wrote:
>
>> This is a great discussion! CAE just wrote this:
>>
>
>
> A selected bibliography:
>
> Abraham, Terry. “Archives and Entropy: The Closed System,” February 1999.
> http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/entropy.htm.
>
> Al-Fedaghi, Sabah S. “Systems of Things That Flow.” Proceedings of the
> 52nd Annual Meeting of the ISSS, 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[John Hopkins]

Thanks Brian for introducing Earth Systems ideas, they go a long way towards an 
understanding of the connectedness across the wide scale of the entire planet 
from an approach that is understandable to a literate Westerner. There is a lot 
of new, creative, and very pertinent science happening within that sphere, 
related to stories of deep-time pasts and futures, in which we are scaled more 
to the global glitch that we are, despite our propagation of globe-girdling 
effects. James G. Miller's work dove-tails with this and may be of interest to 
you. As well, for example, Franesco Gonella's piece "Systems thinking and the 
narrative of climate change" 
http://prosperouswaydown.com/gonella-systems-climate/ might be of interest. (I 
append a short selected bibliography of some other sources)


Latour suggests that 'things' be related by negotiation. I believe that his 
presumptive objectification of nature ('that-which-we-perceive') as a set of 
'things' continues the travesty of Cartesian disconnect that brought us to where 
we are in the moment.


The essence of the 'connectivity' between *everything* is not a language-based 
negotiation. It pertains more to the energized relation and an awareness (almost 
a dis-awareness!) of those flows. Definitely pre-verbal to our English 
descriptive system.


Any 'solutions' that are based in the model of 'relations of things' (species, 
environments, ecosystems, regimes) and so imagined by/through their thing-ness 
(which includes most scientific processes) are bound to fail, as we so-far 
witness. Not only that, but the solutions are too often framed even by 
eco-conscious folks as a catastrophe to *us-things*. Perhaps if science 
proceeded on the assumption that all is connected, then created hypotheses to 
disprove that assumption...


Unfortunately our language restricts the essence of the discussion to thing-ness 
-- it permeates all discourse (including the John Tresch article about Latour). 
Using terms like 'assembled body', 'assemblage', 'agent', even, 'apocalyptic', 
keeps us mired in the self-limiting and impotent thing-ness of our realities, 
our histories, and our futures. Even Latour's ANT which suggested the 
possibility of fluid connection between the actors, remained mired in the 
defined material-ness of those objects, and did not, imho, delve into the 
(energized) flow that both makes them up and permeates, *is* the interstitial 
dynamic.


Where is change? It is deeply internal. If it is not rooted there, it will not 
propagate to wider systems. I agree, Brian, *that* is the most diffucult issue.


The suggestion in the article of a return to an understanding by "granting 
epistemic weight to the natures of indigenous collectives" need be driven by 
adopting their language for circumscribing reality. Other models of reality may 
be adopted or at least studied, as they may provide mental tools and the mental 
re-wiring necessary to let go of the materiality that makes capitalism and our 
'indigenous' world-view such a (stupidly) compelling model -- one that most 
people take for reality itself. Of course this poses the crucial question of how 
people approach reality -- most, it seems, simply adopt what the dominant social 
order provides ('it's always been that way'). What is first necessary is the 
development of a creative milieu that points out explicitly that the social 
order is constructed on models, and the models are *not* the phenomena of 
reality itself. Fluid and pre/non-disciplinary creative learning situations are 
what need to undergird any art/acience/politics question. One's own awareness of 
reality may then possibly be developed in such a way that the connectedness is 
forgrounded. If your program in NL is doing that, Eric, good on ya'!


anyway.

JH


On 09/Dec/17 00:48, Brian Holmes wrote:

This is a great discussion! CAE just wrote this:



A selected bibliography:

Abraham, Terry. “Archives and Entropy: The Closed System,” February 1999. 
http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/papers/entropy.htm.


Al-Fedaghi, Sabah S. “Systems of Things That Flow.” Proceedings of the 52nd 
Annual Meeting of the ISSS, July 2008.


Alter, Steven. “A General, Yet Useful Theory of Information  Systems.” 
Communications of Association for Information Systems 1 (March 1999).


Bailey, Kenneth D. “Living Systems Theory and Social Entropy Theory.” Systems 
Research and Behavioral Science 23 (2006): 291–300. 
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.738.


Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Organismic Psychology and Systems Theory. Boston, MA: 
Clark University Press, 1968.


———. Perspectives on General System Theory: Scientific-Philosophical Studies. 
The International Library of Systems Theory and Philosophy. New York: G. 
Braziller, 1975.


Biggart, John, ed. Alexander Bogdanov and the Origins of Systems Thinking in 
Russia. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.


Farnsworth, Keith D., John Nelson, and Carlos Gershenson. “Living Is Information 
Processing; from 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Thank you Florian for these further comments and your problematisation of the 
concept of ArtScience.

The extended lineages of ArtScience I’m overly familiar with and I deliberately 
tried to avoid them in this text so as to develop a slightly more ‘fresh’ 
perspective’ - I’ve been reading Leonardo since my student days (i.e. back in 
the 1980s), though less in recent years, and have always been amazed by the 
presence of really good and really terribly bad texts and works there - never 
managed to wrap my head around that entirely.

ArtScience as affirmative techno-spectacle is a real risk, or maybe even more 
than that an already existing condition as also Steve has pointed out here. So, 
there is an obvious need to get beyond that and Brian has made clear where the 
urgency lies in this.

However, critical making, as much as I appreciate the initiative, will not be 
able to deliver what Brian is rightfully calling for. What is needed is a broad 
synthetic perspective that can anchor itself in specific practices. This 
requires at the very least grounded research, critical theory, and 
sophisticated forms of ‘making’ if we follow that term (i.e. critical making?).

And when I write ‘research’ I mean all the different forms of research, in the 
arts as well as the sciences (and other domains, including non-professional 
ones - see in praise of amateurism), and when I write ‘arts’ I mean all the 
arts, and when I write sciences I mean all the sciences, i.e. the so-called 
hard sciences, humanities, but also social sciences). Nobody and no practice 
can contain such a scope - that’s clear, so how this becomes specific is 
through this idea of creating specific intersections. Every project / work 
coming out of this creates new and specific intersections between these 
different ‘fields’. What emerges is a hybrid practice that cuts through these 
existing fields, but every time in a highly specific / singular manner - you 
could call this a ‘mathesis singularis’, borrowing from Barthes (Camera 
Lucida), as opposed to the mathesis universalis of the so-called hard sciences.

Inevitably then subjectivity takes a central position in such a praxis, along 
with all its inherent problems - this is a ‘methodological stance’ we know from 
the arts, yet is inadmissible in the sciences. For this to become political it 
needs to be translated into a collective practice, and this is where what Brian 
is calling for (the triad of art / science / politics) clearly transcends the 
current frame of ArtScience. So the question is what this would translate into?

bests,
Eric


> On 9 Dec 2017, at 03:12, Florian Cramer  wrote:
> 
> Hello Eric, Brian,
> 
> Historically - as fas as I do overlook the subject matter -, ArtScience is 
> rooted in the collaboration of artists and (hard) scientists in research labs 
> as described in Douglas Kahn's  and Hannah Higgins' book "Mainframe 
> Experimentalism" and, from a very critical political perspective, in Lutz 
> Dammbeck's feature documentary "The Net". In the 1970s, it often involved 
> artists with backgrounds in 1960s experimental and intermedia arts (such as 
> Fluxus artist Alison Knowles and filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek), and was modeled 
> after earlier collaborations between electronic music composers (such as 
> Lejaren Hiller and Dick Raaijmakers) and scientists in university and 
> corporate research labs. In most cases, ArtScience meant/means that 
> contemporary artists chose to affiliate themselves with science and 
> technology research instead of the humanities and cultural studies as the 
> traditional academic counterparts of the arts. Perhaps the "Leonardo" 
> journal, which has been published since the 1960s, is hitherto the best 
> manifestation and documentation of the ArtScience discourse and field. (On 
> top of that, "Leonardo's" name suggests a larger history of ArtScience that 
> encompasses Renaissance neoplatonist and classical Pythagorean discourses 
> that thought of mathematics, sciences, musical and visual aesthetics as one 
> integrated whole.) 
> 
> Just as 'contemporary art' (as a discourse and field with close affiliations 
> to the humanities and cultural studies/critical theory) has tended to be late 
> and/or superficial (such as in much of the trendier Post-Internet art) in 
> grasping and engaging with the social and cultural impact of new 
> technologies, ArtScience conversely runs the risk to end up as affirmative 
> techno spectacle (or just some court jester experimentation in research labs 
> without actual contributions to the core research). 
> 
> While I do know and appreciate the ArtScience study program in The Hague - 
> and even collaborate with some of its graduates -, I wonder whether the field 
> of ArtScience as a whole can be extended towards the critical ecological 
> discourse and engagement that you propose. Factually, that discourse does not 
> only require the intersection of art and science (again, in 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[Joseph Rabie]

> Le 8 déc. 2017 à 18:57, Brian Holmes  a écrit :
> 
> Similarly, the notion of "fundamental research," outside applications and 
> consequences, has become fallacious. For example, I believe fundamental 
> research into the constitution of twenty-first century authoritarian racist 
> capitalism is now going on in the US White House and in the vast 
> actor-network of which it is a part. This is highly consequential research 
> into the denial of the present.


(Briefly)

Thank you for this, Brian,

I have been thinking of this, insofar as Trump's declaring Jerusalem capital of 
Israel is the symbolic act which consecrates authoritarian racist capitalism as 
the up and coming political ideology.

In the old days we called this Apartheid (I grew up there), which was all about 
domination based upon deprival. I do not believe that they are "in the denial 
of the present". They are preparing for a future of limited ressources of which 
they intend to be the sole masters .

Best -
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Re: Locating ArtScience

[David Garcia]

Brian wrote
> 
> Like Eric, and to Steve's bemusement, I'm influenced by Bruno Latour. The 
> best way to say why is to recall a scene from an interview made perhaps two 
> years ago for the French Ministry of the Environment, which pictures Latour 
> sitting on an indoor chair outside his country home saying something like: 
> "At least the war has finally begun. It was terrible, for so long, the Phony 
> War (*la Drole de Guerre*). But now it's good. The war has started." So what 
> in the hell does he mean by that one?
> 
> 


I have found Latour’s suggestion in "Pandora’s Hope” very helpful of 
substituting the 
concept of science with research . He argues that this would have the effect of 
rendering practices we call science less cold, less aloof and distant; less 
likely to 
act as if it were disconnected from the collective.

This shift he asserts would result in something more uncertain and open ended; 
an alternative to the "purifying practices of modernity”. Something similar was 
introduced into
art by Feminists artists of the 70s who were among the earliest to critique the 
purifying practices 
of modernity in art (sometimes called formalism). This turn generated new 
hybridities that have been 
further productively complicated by the emergence of the category of the 
artist/researcher. 

Perhapse the dynamic nature of these hybridities (reflecting Eric’s important 
distinction between 
intersectionality and interdsicciplinarity).

While we are on the subject of Latour..
here is a terrific review of, Facing Gaia: 8 Lectures on the new climate 
regime..

http://www.publicbooks.org/we-have-never-known-mother-earth/


David Garcia


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Re: Locating ArtScience

[Brian Holmes]

This is a great discussion! CAE just wrote this:

One of the reasons we stopped doing these projects was due to the fact 
that our experience of the ArtSci world was that it was not progressive. 
In fact, our experience was that most were unknowing agents for the 
neoliberals. Aestheticizing the domination of nature, acting as lab 
public relations agents, and worst of all making science look mysterious 
and cultish.


I totally agree with this and for a long time my interest in the 
crossroads of Art and Science was basically limited to - CAE. When asked 
to admire the wonders of Symbiotica, or dozens of other such endeavors 
you might find at Ars Electronica, I looked and declined. The conflation 
of values like "research" and "invention" with simulacra like 
"innovation" and "excellence" was obvious. It was a tech boom, right? 
Science laid the golden eggs. Neoliberals handled all the lingo. Profit 
and power were the keywords. And what was art supposed to do?


Mystification is not for me. Concerning science, I did the 
historical-materialist critique of what Armin Medosch and I called 
"technopolitics."


Then this thing called Earth System Science came onto my horizon. It 
emerged right out of NASA, with some major help from geology and 
chemistry and statistical modeling. But the significance of it lies in 
ecology. The point was to understand biogeochemical cycles: the 
intricate dynamic union of organic and inorganic elements in the 
all-encompassing metabolic process that is the biosphere. This metabolic 
process extends about ten miles up into the atmosphere, and it goes all 
the way down into the earth's mantle, where petrified organic compounds 
from the crust are gasified in contact with molten material and vented 
back up into the soil and the atmosphere. The system of biogeochemical 
cycles is crucially affected by one extra-systemic input: solar energy, 
transformed by photosynthesis. And now, this remarkably stable 
homeostatic system is being decisively transformed by one 
*intra*systemic component: we humans, the Prometheans, who love to burn 
things. That's what we're literally doing, burning, releasing smoke, 
accelerating Earth's metabolism to totally unknown degreees.


For the first time I could see something beautiful and urgent in science.

I gotta confess, I've been immoderately influenced by the programming of 
Bernd Scherer and the rest of the Anthropocene Curriculum crew at HKW in 
Berlin. Recently the group Deep Time Chicago which I co-founded hosted 
some of them in Chicago. Bernd said something tremendously interesting 
which answered a question I had about the changing thematic focus of the 
institution, which in the mid-2000s had been closely associated with 
postcolonial critique. For Scherer, Earth System Science and the 
discourse of the Anthropocene represents an *internal critique* of 
Western hegemony - a way to pursue and drive home the postcolonial 
critique. That's an astonishing conclusion. I love TJ Demos, whose book 
Against the Anthropocene was cited here, and I urge him to think a 
little more about this idea.


Like Eric, and to Steve's bemusement, I'm influenced by Bruno Latour. 
The best way to say why is to recall a scene from an interview made 
perhaps two years ago for the French Ministry of the Environment, which 
pictures Latour sitting on an indoor chair outside his country home 
saying something like: "At least the war has finally begun. It was 
terrible, for so long, the Phony War (*la Drole de Guerre*). But now 
it's good. The war has started." So what in the hell does he mean by 
that one?


Earth System Science is the kind of truth that forces you to take sides. 
Or rather, its rejection forces you to take sides. If Earth System 
Science makes you see the current form of technoscientific development 
as a kind of planetary suicide - inevitably preceded by a cortege of 
horrors - then you must seek allies among those who oppose that suicide. 
This is a political truth, at least for the people who see it that way. 
Latour's belief is that scientists are slowly but increasingly 
recognizing that they have to choose sides in this war.


I am no scientist. I come from another people. In Chicago, which like 
everywhere in the US is anti-intellectual, they prefer to call me an 
artist. I did not wait for Earth System Science in order to develop a 
critique of capitalist technology, and indeed, there are many pathways 
leading to that critique (Marxism, decolonialism, certain varieties of 
religious belief, surely many other things). Yet science makes me 
realize how ineluctable the current process of eco-suicide really is. 
When you are faced with imminent murder, as in a war, you seek allies - 
the more powerful the better. Not phony, self-interested relations of 
commercial convenience like Steve has described, which is most of what 
you'd find on any random walk. But the rare thing, real allies, which 
are not born but made.


Eric, what a 

Locating ArtScience

[Kurtz, Steven]

Just a few random comments related to the discussion Eric has initiated.

Between 1997 and 2007, Critical Art Ensemble did quite a few 
art/science/politics projects. When speaking about those projects we would say, 
“it looks like science, but its not.” If someone wanted to engage us as 
scientists, we would, but that didn’t make it science. We were not using the 
scientific method to produce information to be reviewed and replicated by our 
scientific peers. Rather we were appropriating the vision engines of science 
that we needed to make a political point. We needed them to lead our viewers/ 
participants to places where they could see and understand their stake in how a 
scientific or a technological development would manifest itself in the world. 
To understand what kind of policies were being made around these developments, 
and to understand if they were in their interest. We were trying to create 
informed (amateur) interventionists regarding key issues that would impact 
society and/or the planet.

One of the reasons we stopped doing these projects was due to the fact that our 
experience of the ArtSci world was that it was not progressive. In fact, our 
experience was that most were unknowing agents for the neoliberals. 
Aestheticizing the domination of nature, acting as lab public relations agents, 
and worst of all making science look mysterious and cultish. “Only a genius 
like myself can understand the mysteries of art and science.”  And people 
believed it. The contempt we had for that attitude is difficult to describe. 
The alienation that they would create was unforgivable. We would tell people 
that scientific work is not that difficult to understand in a general sense, 
and that lab work is little more than following a cake recipe. Not wanting to 
be affiliated with so much of the work that was being generated was why we 
stopped, and returned to doing art and politics without the sci. Perhaps it’s 
better 10 years later. Someone please show me that  my opinion is an artifact 
of the past.

And while I am on ethical bankruptcy, I do think it’s important to address 
educational institutions, because they are bureaucracies that endure even when 
there is regime change. Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) culture 
as it now exists in the US at tech universities is the worst, and it’s what 
many state universities now aspire to so they can promise jobs to the debt 
slaves formerly known as students. (The Ivy League schools will remain 
universities proper, so the wealthy may do as they will.) In STEM culture, 
students are absolved of all criticality. It’s all problem-solving education. 
Just solve the technical problem, it’s someone else’s job to make the policy. 
If something horrible happens in society or the environment, it’s not your 
problem—it’s the policy-makers problem. And just to make sure you won’t 
accidently stumble into a place where you might have a critical thought, the 
arts and humanities will be purged from the campus. Welcome to Cal Tech (often 
ranked as America’s top university).  We do need to do something on college 
campuses before art is reduced to drawing and art appreciation and English is 
reduced to technical writing courses. The purge is on.

“Amateur” is another term that needs to be called attention to again. In the US 
the term is in crisis. Right now it means that any know-nothing with an opinion 
(amateur) should be considered equal to or better than experts, specialists, 
and those who have reviewed a topic with interest and care so that they may 
participate in a knowledgeable way in debates on the issue (what an amateur 
should be). This is part of the reason the US currently has a political system 
packed with total incompetents. In a moment of total double-think, particularly 
among populists, ignorance equals intelligence and capability.

I am unsure whether ArtSci should be a discipline unto itself. I’m cautious. It 
makes me think back to the 80s when all the radical break-away English and 
Philosophy professors started semiotics departments. Don’t see many of those 
any more.
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Re: Locating ArtScience

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Thanks so much Brian,

Very relevant critique. Without wanting to get stuck on a term, I was using the 
word ‘field’ partly because there is a field of practice that refers to itself 
as ArtScience (with a growing number of initiatives, organisations, museums 
even), towards which I wanted to take a position / open it up for scrutiny and 
discussion. Also, this text is written from within the program in The Hague to 
stimulate critical debate there, and is possibly a bit too much written from an 
‘internal’ perspective, which is why it is good to post it here and get 
responses from outside that inner-circle.

More important is your call for a triad of art, science, and politics. I fully 
agree that this would be much stronger and it would really be something to 
develop a strong research and practice context where these three come together 
- as you write so articulately: "Science makes the invisible visible. Art makes 
the visible meaningful. Politics makes the meaningful actionable.” That’s 
exceptionally well put.

The political is, of course, there throughout the text, though mostly implicit. 
Most overtly in the link up with Latour’s politics of nature and his more 
recent reflections on the Anthropocene (a by now somewhat over-used term, but 
still) - facing Gaia. There’s also an overabundance of ‘institutional critique’ 
implicit within the text (towards both the arts and the sciences). Still, it 
would make a lot of sense to be able to bring this out much more explicitly and 
indeed turn the political here into a fully fledged third constitutive element 
of a new intersectional practice.

The urgency of taking on such a ‘three-field formation’ is abundantly clear, 
and it would be a super challenging thing to do. Such an initiative should 
consist of both research (theory) and practice. The question would be where you 
would find support (institutional or otherwise) to develop a viable structure 
for that?

Not an institution, but rather a ‘program’ of sorts, more directly geared 
towards actionable interventions, combining research, theory, and artistic / 
design practices - nothing ephemeral, but something much more ‘grounded’. This 
is something I want to seriously think about - it was somehow already there 
when I was writing this text, but you pushed it just a step further - very 
inspiring!

Last comment, more from my personal perspective: In the 12 years I was 
developing projects at De Balie in Amsterdam, our main purpose was to link 
culture and politics - at least that is what I always saw as the main raison 
d’être of the place. At the time the evolving practices of new media culture, 
network culture, digital culture, whatever you call it, provided a vibrant 
context to make such linkages (thinking of tactical media, the new 
internet-driven transnational arts and culture networks, the (still) on-going 
info-politics debates, net.criticism and so on). Currently, at the ArtScience 
Interfaculty, the program is exploring intersections of art and science as 
emergent supra-disciplinary practices.

Now, what if we can fuse these two approaches? - an forever emergent set of 
intersectional practices that cut through the arts, the sciences, and politics, 
where these practices constitute themselves anew every time they create a 
specific intersection between these ‘fields’. That’s what I mean with ‘forever 
in becoming’ - such an intersectional (transversal?) practice can never fix 
itself in static definitions or rigid structures, but it does require a viable 
structure, a strong basis from which to act, to avoid complete marginalisation 
- how to do this?

Now there’s something to think about!

All my bests for now,
Eric

> On 8 Dec 2017, at 18:57, Brian Holmes  wrote:
> 
> Eric, I totally appreciate and admire your interest in all this, but with due 
> respect I think making ArtScience into a "field" is an archaic 
> twentieth-century delaying tactic, from the days when liberal society could 
> believe itself eternal. Reading this morning about California's winter fires, 
> it seems that much greater things than an academic field could "overheat" and 
> "melt down."
> 
> And California is just an anecdote: housing troubles of the excessively rich. 
> The Syrian drought, the Russian wildfires of 2010, the South Asian floods of 
> 2017 spring vividly to mind. These are something radically new: harbingers of 
> the present.
> 
> Why can't deal with what's all around us?
> 
> Science makes the invisible visible. Art makes the visible meaningful. 
> Politics makes the meaningful actionable. Each of these activities is 
> separate, resting on its own base, delivering what it can. Under present 
> circumstances, each "field" (if you want to call it that) needs the other. 
> Alone or even in pairs, they can make no difference.
> 
> Similarly, the notion of "fundamental research," outside applications and 
> consequences, has become fallacious. For example, I believe 

Re: Locating ArtScience

[Brian Holmes]

Eric, I totally appreciate and admire your interest in all this, but 
with due respect I think making ArtScience into a "field" is an archaic 
twentieth-century delaying tactic, from the days when liberal society 
could believe itself eternal. Reading this morning about California's 
winter fires, it seems that much greater things than an academic field 
could "overheat" and "melt down."


And California is just an anecdote: housing troubles of the excessively 
rich. The Syrian drought, the Russian wildfires of 2010, the South Asian 
floods of 2017 spring vividly to mind. These are something radically 
new: harbingers of the present.


Why can't deal with what's all around us?

Science makes the invisible visible. Art makes the visible meaningful. 
Politics makes the meaningful actionable. Each of these activities is 
separate, resting on its own base, delivering what it can. Under present 
circumstances, each "field" (if you want to call it that) needs the 
other. Alone or even in pairs, they can make no difference.


Similarly, the notion of "fundamental research," outside applications 
and consequences, has become fallacious. For example, I believe 
fundamental research into the constitution of twenty-first century 
authoritarian racist capitalism is now going on in the US White House 
and in the vast actor-network of which it is a part. This is highly 
consequential research into the denial of the present.


The three-field formation of Science-Art-Politics would be much stronger 
than authoritarianism: more robust, more dynamic, able to integrate 
vital energies for transformative work in the present. Why not make a 
vast social movement for urgent times, instead of another specialized 
niche for all eternity?


thanks for your reflections,

Brian

PS - As the below shows, you yourself are arguing, not for a fusion, but 
for two "complementary" disciplines. Why not add the third essential 
one? Because the window of opprtunity is short: in ten years, if nothing 
changes, "politics" will be replaced by "the military" as the necessary 
partner in any transformative process.


4) Closing the experiential gap between rigorous scientific enquiry and 
subjective appraisal


Through the reconciliation of scientific method and subjective 
experience ArtScience can contribute to efforts to close the 
experiential gap between the abstractions of scientific enquiry and the 
experience of everyday life. ArtScience can do for science what art does 
so well for itself: turn abstract ideas into lived experiences. Here we 
see the unique intersection at work of two methodological 
universes considered to be ‘incommensurable’ [7], where in fact they are 
complementary and mutually reinforcing modes of understanding and 
experience.

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Locating ArtScience

[Eric Kluitenberg]

Dear nettimers,

For a few years I’ve been teaching and coaching at the ArtScience Interfaculty 
in The Hague, a very nice small scale experimental program located between the 
academy of visual arts and the school of music, with some modest links to local 
universities, and since one and half years as part of their faculty. It struck 
me in this time that there are many different understanding of what this 
emerging field of ArtScience might be, tons of expectations but very little in 
terms of a more precise articulation of what defines and demarcates the field. 
To stimulate debate on this matter internally I wrote a short essay / position 
paper called “Locating ArtScience’. The second draft of that essay is appended 
below as this could be of interest here I think, given previous discussions 
about the Earth Sciences, why some of us did not want to ‘March for Science’ 
and more..

I understand that some of this is susceptible to various forms of criticism and 
contention (maybe all of it?) - that’s fine and part of the debate. Aso, it is 
important to note that this is my personal take on what I still see as a field 
‘in becoming’ (despite having some extended lineages), and one that I see 
mostly in danger of overheating as a result of which some particularly valuable 
potentialities might be lost or obscured. Most of all I have become more aware 
of the great potential for methodological innovation that could and sometimes 
already does emerge out of this hybrid set of practices, but it needs to be 
shaped / refined / re-articulated - probably an endless process.

I appreciate any comments / criticism this might evoke - hope this is of 
interest to some of you.

all bests,
Eric

— 

Locating ArtScience
Eric Kluitenberg, Second draft, December 2017

ArtScience as an emergent field of practice

We should start from the premise that ArtScience at the moment is a field of 
practice in becoming. There is enormous interest in this renewed convergence of 
Art and Science around the globe, with new institutions founded, public 
initiatives functioning increasingly professionally, a plethora of projects, 
events, and a considerable number of publications. The picture is thus one not 
of crisis or stagnation, but rather a booming field that if anything might be 
in danger of overheating.

At the same time there does not as yet seem to be anything of a consensus about 
what exactly defines this field, what its specificity might be, and where its 
boundaries, its demarcations lie. This is the first and most serious problem 
that ArtScience has run into, and one that needs to be urgently addressed to 
avoid a melt-down of its inner core.

The problem can be summarised as follows: ArtScience as a field of emergent 
practice is simultaneously oversignified and underdefined.

This rather curious condition invites a surplus of speculation and 
unfulfillable expectations, which once these expectations have been revealed as 
unfulfillable might generate an equally exponential loss of interest in the 
field. However, something truly valuable might be lost if such an implosion of 
interest, and subsequent de-investment from the field (in people, institutions, 
activity, knowledge production, financial flows) were to happen.

To pre-empt this scenario of overheating and subsequently deflating and 
collapsing the field, it is useful to identify some of the most defining 
characteristics of this emerging field, and figure out what might be important 
and valuable about them.

This short essay stops short of providing a comprehensive definition of the 
field, nor does it provide a ‘complete’ mapping of a field that is currently 
and perhaps by definition in an emergent state. Rather it tries to identify 
some key characteristics as well as some key-misunderstandings, to question 
what might be the special significance of ArtScience, and what could be 
particularly important and valuable about it.

ArtScience: not an ‘interdisciplinary’ but ‘intersectional field of practice

The first important distinction to make is that ArtScience is not an 
interdisciplinary, or cross-disciplinary field of practice. The seemingly 
endless series of ‘collaborations of Art and Science’ type of events miss the 
most crucial point of this emerging field: We should understand ArtScience as 
an intersectional field that intersects a range of different established 
disciplines and domains, but ultimately establishes a new practice building on 
and moving beyond these established disciplines and domains.

The problem with the notion ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘cross-disciplinary’ is that 
it leaves the existing disciplines in tact. So, in this image, on one side we 
find the Arts, on the other side the Sciences, both understood in the broadest 
sense. Then some project is defined where representatives from both sides 
collaborate and produce joint results, which can be more, or less, fruitful. 
Regardless the outcome though, both domains