Technology and Art: Hubris, Habitus and the Hybrid Imagination

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Technology and Art Hubris, Habitus and the
Hybrid Imagination
1. The View from History

• Andrew Jamison

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Reading matter Today
Introduction and chapters 1-3 Tomorrow
Chapters 4-6
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The problem

• When we look at modern man, we have to face
  the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of
  poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring
  contrast to his scientific and technological
  abundance. Weve learned to fly the air like
  birds, weve learned to swim the seas like fish,
  but we havent learned to walk the earth like
  brothers and sisters.
• Martin Luther King, Jr

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An Underlying Tension Hubris...

• Hubris (overmod) impious disregard of the
  limits governing human action in an orderly
  universe. It is the sin to which the great and
  gifted are most susceptible, and in Greek tragedy
  it is usually the hero's tragic flaw.
• Encyclopedia Britannica

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...and Habitus

• Habitus ...a set of dispositions which
  generates practices and perceptions. The habitus
  is the result of a long process of inculcation,
  beginning in early childhood, which becomes a
  second sense or a second nature.
• Randal Johnson on Pierre Bourdieu,
• introduction in The Field of Cultural
  Production

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...versus Hybrids

• Hybrids ...offspring of parents that differ in
  genetically determined traits
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• or, more colorfully
• By the late twentieth century, our time, a
  mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
  fabricated hybrids of machine and organism...
• Donna Haraway, A manifesto for cyborgs

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The Hybrid Imagination

• At the macro, or discursive level
• making connections, integrating concepts
• At the meso, or institutional level
• creating contexts of mediation, hybrid forums
• At the micro, or practical/personal level
• forging hybrid competencies and identities

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Hubris in History

• The myths of Icarus and Prometheus
• The scientific revolution New Atlantis
• Industrialization Prometheus Unbound
• Atomic energy Science - The Endless Frontier
• The arms race and the Apollo Mission

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Hybrids in History

• Medieval monks artificial people
• The renaissance men artists-engineers
• Experimental philosophers scholar-craftsmen
• Professional engineers theoretical technicians
• Environmentalists scientist-activists

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Artistic Appropriations of Technology

• Market-oriented, commercial, machine-made
• art for the masses, low-brow, vulgar (hubris)
• Artisan, exclusive, traditional, man-made
• art for arts sake, high-brow, luxurious
  (habitus)
• Hybrid, synthetic, intermediate,
  co-constructed
• popular art, making the mundane meaningful

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Different Ideas of Beauty

• The beauty of commerce
• attractive, appealing, desirable. exciting,
  cool
• The beauty of the artist
• elegant, sublime, authentic, classical, fine
• The beauty of the hybrid imagination
• functional, useful, tasteful, appropriate, neat

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A Brief History of Science

• Ancient, or Traditional science, up to about 1600
• philosophical, spritual knowledge, distinctive
  regional modes
• gap between theory (episteme) and practice
  (techne)
• Modern, or Western science, from about 1600 to
  1970
• instrumental, rational, universal knowledge
• functional differentiation of theory and practice
• Global, or Technoscience, from about 1970
• situated, pluralist notion of knowledge sciences
• combinations of theory and practice

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The Making of Modern Science
From the Reformation to the
scientific revolution reform of society
reform of philosophy visionary,
utopian realistic, pragmatic decentralized
organization (central) academy technical
improvements scientific development informal
communication formal publication
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The Scientific Reformation as Cultural
Appropriation

• At the discursive level
• a discourse of useful knowledge
• a language of mathematics and mechanics
• At the institutional level
• academies of science
• professional norms and quality standards
• At the level of practice
• hybrid identities
• routines for technical applications
• procedures for experimentation

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At the discursive level...

• Francis Bacon,
• statesman-philosopher
• Human knowledge and human power meet in one
  for where the cause is not known the effect
  cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must
  be obeyed...

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At the institutional level...
Gresham College in London, where the Royal
Society first met in 1660 and where the first
scientific journal was published in 1666
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At the practical levelan experimental way of
life
...to Benjamin Franklin flying kites and looking
for electricity in the age of Enlightenment
From Robert Boyles air pump...
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Some cultural factors

• A supernatural God, religion of the book
• Monasticism and labor discipline
• Regulation of time and space
• Urbanization, cathedrals, and universities
• The Protestant Ethic (Weber)

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Some economic factors

• Agricultural improvements, food surplus
• Interurban trade and competition
• Mercantile expansion and exploration
• The Asian connection (compass, windmills)
• Invention of printing

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Modern Science as Hubris

• positivism, or scientific rationalism
• science as a new (secular) religion
• scientism, or (logical) empiricism
• science as superior to all other ways of knowing
• universalism, or cultural imperialism
• Western science as valid everywhere

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Hybrid Identities 1

• The Renaissance Men Leonardo and co.
• Artists and engineers in combination
• Inspired by magic and humanism
• Emphasis on describing and imagining

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Leonardo da Vinci The artist-engineer
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Hybrid Identities 2

• The scholar-craftsmen
• Paracelsus, Agricola,Tycho Brahe
• Inspired by Protestant Ethic
• Emphasis on observation and work-practice

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Tycho Brahe The scholar-craftsman
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Hybrid Identities 3

• The natural philosophers
• Galileo, Huygens, Newton
• Inspired by mathematics and machines
• Emphasis on instruments and experiments

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Galileo and his telescope
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Artistic Appropriations of Modern Science

• The market-oriented turning the vision into a
  new technical reality
• The artisan reaffirming traditional ideals
• The hybrid developing new kinds of art

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Agostino Ramelli (1588)
The market-oriented approach
Agostino Ramelli, 1588
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Robert Hooke, 1665
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The artisan Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Prometheus Bound, 1610-11
The Fall of Icarus, 1636
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Diego Valázquez
Las Meninas, 1656
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...and onto a new kind of art

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-69
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Johannes Vermeer 1632-1675
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Jacob von Rusdael, 1660
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...and then came Industrialization

• A political and economic revolution
• from agriculture to industry mechanization
• A process of social change
• from the country to the cities urbanization
• Cultural, or human transformations
• from community to society modernization

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A new kind of technological development...
Joseph Wright, 1760
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...and a new kind of society
from a painting by William Wyld(e), ca 1840
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...and a new kind of hybrid art the machine in
the garden
George Inness, 1851
George Inness, 1851