I have to jump in on this discussion. I am an artist,writer,musician,theorist,curator,almost scientist (will explain) and a bit of an early math whiz.
I played with pattern variations in long number strings as I saw symmetry flux and pattern emergence while waiting in the dark and cold for the bus as a boy in elementary school. I began giving weather forecasts and correcting the men on tv (one actually corrected his error after our phone call) around 8 or 9. I also collected an amazing fact corner in the sunday comics that has fueled a lot of my later work. It was etymology (word origins) and fascinated me. I collected hundreds of them over my young years. I also began writing at that age, although not taking it seriously. I was one of those highly gifted kids so the teachers basically just accelerated everything and didn't look for individual interests. I am not bragging by any means, in fact I spent several years failing out of school as a teen partially because everone bragged endlessly about iq and how little they studied and also I just felt lost. My point is that I saw mystery, answers, searches, curiosity and patterns (in math,weather,language and writing) There long has been a perception here in america that art and science are polar opposites. But it depends on what perspective of the field you are talking about. I was planning to be a field researcher in experimental meteorology looking at uncertainties , patterns, new forms and how to model them graphically. Now I am a locative and new media artist and have published poems, stories,criticism, critical theory and have had my music in some experimental music shows. I still am obsessed with wether and devour info on nanotechnology, genetics, string theory etc...... It is important to see how a hypothesis....a question of combination or comparison........steps of exploration.......smaller and larger questions.........and a conclusion............can be biology or how many poems are constructed.......... I teach writing, design theory, semiotics, art theory and english composition and often have been stuck on a point and found a science example that filled it in clearly. One example is when I was teaching how to write personal essay and trying to explain how a certain essay was both about a broadening discussion of racism in america and simultaneously a tighter and tighter journey into understanding the writer (James Baldwin) and his father's blank dead look in his eyes. I tried to explain the two movements, then drew diagrams of the spirals and key points in time (personal essay is often not linear in time and instead a resonant accumulation/"jumping around") and being saturday morning the students went "mmm pancakes!" I had to scramble..............so...........thinking oh no this is wacky........I explained the simulatenous tightening of eye wall/low pressure and fanning upper level exhaust system/high in intensifying hurricanes.....and how it was the same thing in a way...........the students listened then nodded...... I was on a panel in a conference at M.I.T last year and it was great to speak to creative scientists and researchers and to artists in one place. There is great similarity, we are simply taught not to see it. jeremy hight ______________________________________________ SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe Info, archive and help: http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre