From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Apr 16 2000 - 14:19:57 MDT
QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
>
> >scerir@libero.it writes:
>
> >Can I add something to my original question?
>
> >>I think that (real, true) works of art (paintings, sculptures, etc.) last
> for ever and ever. Meaningful. Timeless.
>
> >>That is, in my opinion, a sort of supreme, old, Extropy.
> The assertion that "real", art must be an object is wrong. Extropic art
> eschews the rigid idea of art as object and explores various forms of
> creativity, bioengineering, performance, conceptual art, virtual reality, new
> film media, nanotechnology, ideas, etc., as valid mediums. It must.
I think though that what the writer is trying to communicate is their
own view that the artists of the Renaissance were, in the eyes of their
own time, transhuman beings. We can appreciate the breakthroughs they
acheived, and the beauty they created with the technologies they had, as
indicative of a local exponential growth in artistic expression in that
time period. The idealism of classical figures in renaissance art is
reflected in the current day in much fantasy and futurist art.
>
> >>What is not a work of art has (just) a temporary appeal, beauty,
> >interest, meaning. Or is handicraft….
>
> Not true.
> Twentieth century music and art's most invigorating element was it's very
> changeability and cultural liquidity.
True, the transience of some art says nothing about its credibility as
art per se, but merely is a matter of being limited in its marketability
and it audience.
>
> Snobbery in art is a result of illiteracy of the general populace. Images
> today are omnipresent.
yet much art is created with the eye to disenfranchise the eye of the
general populace. Abstract artists tend to really excell at trying to
disconnect the audience from understanding.
>
> We are bombarded daily with High and Low Art - and our eyes are VERY
> different from they were in the mid fifteenth century. We have been literally
> cortex reconfigured to accommodate far more information than ever.
And far more varied information as well. This is the great thing about
current transhumanism, there are no predifined limits, in fact limits
are discouraged. Expansion, extrusion, and xenofusion/fission are the
names of the game.
>
> Going forward, 21st century explorations of slippery new mediums will
> increase the mutability of design and problem solving, causing artists to
> become more inventive, imaginative and spontaneous than ever. This is the
> challenge and the excitement about art these days!
>
> > Laws, principles of science are timeless, meaningful, for ever?
> > After Popper (and Einstein, etc.) I’m not sure.
> I am once again mystified that once more, on this list of "futurists",
> when art is brought up we are still talking about sappy smiling cross dresser
> Mona Lisa and her ancient armless cousin the Venus De Milo.
>
> Question:
> Why be five centuries behind in one's information about art while thirty
> years ahead in one's ideas about science?
I can answer this one: because when those of us who are technically
astute but not aethetically astute take a look at contemporary art, too
often we feel like we are being asked to wear the emperor's new
clothes..
This is not to say that contemporary art, per se, is crap. It rather
recognises that we currently benefit from the filter of previous
generations who weeded out the crap of the art world from their own
generation, such that we only see now, for the most, the 'Oscar winners'
of art, rather than the C grade horror flicks of art in history. Thus it
is easier to appreciate the art of prior generations, because it has
been filtered, so the consumer gains greater utility from each exposure
to art of prior generations than having to wade through the the slough
of current art.
As they say in the movies,"I'll see it when it comes out on video."
beyond this, I think that the sort of transcendental art that most
futurists appreciate the most is that which looks to the future with a
positive utopian view, rather than with the distopian perspective of
most artists of this past century, their focus on the gutter, the
anti-hero, etc. The only real utopian art of this past century belonged
to the propaganda machines of the various socialist/nazi/communist
governments, something that many of us look on with distain, properly...
>
> > So art is timeless (lasts for ever) because is qualitative, but not
> > merely subjective.
> >
> > Science laws are quantitative, objective, but not final.
> >
> > And – interesting enough - in art and in science we can often
> > identify exactly the same philosophical “input”.
>
> It is true that exceptional art and music does bridge cultural and time
> barriers, and carries the user into a new consciousness which can prepare the
> mind for the future and for the upheavals that the new technologies and
> scientific discoveries will bring upon our cultures.
>
> However this does not imply timelessness, but timeliness, in other word, good
> art is of our time and for our time, yet perhaps a bit *ahead* of it's time.
>
Also that it speaks to the heart or root of the human condition and
human desires, no matter what the age.
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