Merging “creativity” and science
Before any confusion happens, let’s clarify what this short post is about. First of, it is not what you think. It is unfortunately not that interesting …
Couple months ago, I was asked to write a quick blurb regarding a project of mine. It was meant to be used as PR material on an Advertising-centric blog. As usual, when working on ‘Ad’ orientated stuff, turnaround are ridiculously tight, whilst briefs are usually loose and vast, to the point that it feels like any interpretation of it would do.
Since my project, at the time, dealt with science research, I was tasked with writing on the importance of merging ‘creativity’ and science. No big deal, despite the fact that I had no clue about the meaning of ‘creativity’ in this particular context.
As I learnt later, creativity, here, was meant as the creative prowess that leads to effective advertising. Interestingly, the projects I do within the framework of my own practice are not products to be sold, nor revenue boosting instruments. So why bother writing few words about them on an Ad blog in first place?
Well, I am not sure … But I am not often asked to do such thing, and to be honest it feels nice sometimes to pretend writing seemingly interesting things. ‘Seemingly’ here is ‘the’ keyword … It’s like working hard on showing off how hard you work, rather than simply working hard.
Anyway, I was happy with writing that post. The couple people who read it ‘seemed’ happy too. And as usual, the blurb got sent, then … until this day none of my chasing emails got answered (I haven’t chased that long either!).
The little note was never published … Maybe people thought its content was too bad to be published, or my timings were too wrong. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to put it here:
Conversely to what we may believe in today’s popular culture, whereby the scientific and artistic paradigm might feel rather opposed in their process and methodologies, the rapprochement of art and technology is not, in my opinion, a completely new phenomenon. A while ago, I was looking up the etymologic origin of the word ‘technology’, and found that ‘tekhnē’ was also the ancient Greek word for ‘art’. Hinting at the fact that both may have always been tightly linked.
For centuries technics and tools were invented to create accurate visual representations in painting and sculpture. But it is maybe no surprise regarding today’s circumstances that this relationship appear to be more obvious and rather encouraged.
It is rather clear that our current modes of living are increasingly technologically driven and mediated, from our social interactions, modes of consumption, to leisures and jobs; our devices appear to be, sort of, ‘natural’ extensions. The divide between virtual and real is no longer as clear as it used to be and within the blurry boundaries resides our profiles and online widgets, available to anyone 24 hours a day and definitely part of our ‘reality’.
Interestingly when I moved house not so long ago, it took me a while to feel totally settled, which unsurprisingly corresponded to the amount of time it took me to get internet up and running in my new home.And it is only getting ‘worse’ or ‘better’, depending on the perspective one can have on science and technology as a whole. If we consider the merging of life sciences with the engineering paradigm providing us with various emerging fields within genetic engineering. The very basis of life is being used as the ground for the elaboration of future technologies. Biomedical practices such as viral transfection or molecular biology and others are granting us control over natural processes enabling the repurposing of living organisms.
Which means that we may one day experience ‘nature’ in a very different way — when the home or office has become an ecosystem of ‘living machines’, where we may all believe in biocentrism — But which also means that ‘nature’ would have eventually partly merged with the technological realm.
This enables an interesting perspective on our definition of nature and by extension addresses our personal understanding of Human nature in relation to technology. As what we consider ‘natural’ today would become a set of values and beliefs attached to a concept of nature, and not a trivial, almost ‘technical’, state description. The boundary between biomedical treatment and enhancement may become even more blurry too.
In this context, it is then important for the arts to engage with science as it enables us to question and reconsider the values inhabiting the technological paradigm, being so far, pushed into my ‘home’ shaping every aspect of my lifestyle, in a non-democratic way.
For instance, I usually take for granted that development and advances in fields of research strive to enable a ‘better’ future, however I do not often question and rarely redefine the foundational values implicit in the normative use of ‘better’. Which can be very polarised, influenced by market and political factors, etc.Today’s interest in the merging of ‘creativity’ and science is an important shift as it allows us to engage with the values and beliefs systems intrinsic to technology, broadening the engineering and technical paradigm to their social and cultural implications. Helping us by providing a more holistic and eventually more human perspective on technology, to shape what future progress may be.
