On Sun, 17 Jul 2005, mwp wrote:
I think it may be a peculiarly American thing to demand of art that it be entertaining. May be. I've never felt comfortable with the term myself, although I respect it when artists like Anderson and Fonda take it up. To me, Godard's Tout va bien (starring Fonda) neither heals nor entertains, but is great nonetheless.Gads, I've seen it a number of times and always found it entertaining! It was a popular success I believe - and for good reason...
All theories are outmoded, or will be in time, so I'd say that it's futile to try and adopt a theory to outlast all theories. At best we can extend our lead a few pedals ahead of the pack, before the peleton of obsolescence eventually swallows us back up.
Not necessarily; some theories exhaust themselves - trignometry is one that's often mentioned. Theories can portend closure; it depends on the domain.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'philosophy of science' in this regard. Look at Penrose, Bohm, for example - both philosophical in terms of their quantum mechanics. Or even Feyerabend - there's no technology that I know of related to his paradigm shift.Yes, tech and sci are separate, but not in today's world, unfortunately. It's well nigh impossible, at least for me, to conceive of a philosophy of science without a technology following quickly in its wake. (Maybe Serres is the only one to do this?)
What _is_ sometimes true is that new scientific discovery is often quickly exploited. But some discoveries aren't of course - it depends on their potential relation to the lifeworld (although that might be begging the question).
- Alan
As usual, I'm probably not giving these topics the level of pondering they deserve, so be gentle. . .!M On Jul 17, 2005, at 8:56 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:This is probably it, although maybe not the outmoded theory part - It tends towards existentialism -Re entertainment and science - I remember Laurie Anderson saying that she wanted her work to be entertaining, to give the audience entertainment value - and Jane Fonda in her good years saying she wanted to make films that healed as well as entertained.Re science - well, I separate technology from science - the latter of course I agree, not the former - it doesn't necessarily follow - alanOn Sun, 17 Jul 2005, mwp wrote:On the other hand. . . An outmoded theory is better than no theory at all.A washed-up aesthetic is better than a dependency on commerce and audience surveys.A marginalized politics is better than a cynical rejection of politics that leads to selfish gain.-Yes, art is better than entertainment, as it offers no relief to humanity in the way of three-act plots, Aristotelian catharsis, widely telegraphed punchlines, and mawkishly happy endings.Yes, art is better than science, as it offers no hope to humanity in the way of myths of progress, invention, and better living.Yes, at the end of the day, as with Sisyphus, it’s the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve pushed the ball a little bit further up the hill that makes the difference between the desire to keep going and the bullet to the head.-Then again, I’d chuck it all in a heartbeat, if ever I meet the right woman. . .m On Jul 17, 2005, at 8:18 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:State of new media from strawberry fields forever - The work I'm doing isn't much different from the work you're doing. It will disappear when the net goes down or when it's no longer tended. Nobody tends things forever. It's amazingly ephemeral; there's nothing to it; it's stillborn, passed in email or on a website, that's all. It's not as if we're contributing to the well-being of humanity; the idea that art makes any sort of social or political difference is long outmoded, repeatedly proven wrong. We're not even making paintings which have a modicum of a chance of survival, 'being as how' they're concrete, inert, almost idiotic things (in the sense of Rosset or Sartre). Certainly we haven't made any contribution to physical theory or the sciences in general, and our work is rarely entertaining. At our performances and readings, only the rest of us show up. The 'culture' such as it is, follows mass media, corporate distribution systems, subtended radicalities; the best one hopes for is museum sponsorship. We've saved no one's lives through our art - turn the machine off, and we're pretty much done for. We engage in outmoded theories, bouncing one theorist off another, as if any of it mattered in the universe at large. We work through fast-forward intellectual fashions, situations in whichphenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism, deconstruction, and so forth- name your 'movement,' name your theorist - are considered outmoded, as if philosophy had advanced since Heraclitus. We ignore scientific theory, or borrow from it, on a simplistic or meta- phoric level, as a form of legitimation, as if we're somehow connected with scientific 'advances.' We confuse science with technology, substituting cleverness for any real disciplinary understanding, in fields ranging from psychoanalysis through physics. Our theoretical work is written as if it somehow matters, somehow says something about the world, which we hardly understand. We substitute cultural politics for political action and depth; we ignore war or illustrate it. We entertain ourselves endlessly, as if our work had nothing to do with entertainment (some might call us failed comedians, novelists, what haveyou, substituting surface transformations for that hypothetical depth thatseems to infest the canon). I am guilty of all of the above. We go on and on and on... _( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
( URLs/DVDs/CDroms/books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - revised 7/05 )
