Everyone has a different impression of me when I tell them I am an artist, or likewise if I tell them I am a photographer, each person uniquely responds in a different. We each cannot help but associate what we know to be a qualified or genuine artist, and what we understand as that which makes an artist might not be compatible to another.
"Most of us think about artists in an independent role: asked to conjure up a typical artist, we imagine a painter, working alone in a high-beamed studio--- perhaps standing before an easel in a scarred-floor loft made over from a down-at-the-heel manufacturing space."
Bill Ivey
(Ivey reflects on the American art Industry in the 21st Century in an argument for cultural rights of the people. He is also the former chair to the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts; the only nationally funded program for all forms of art including plastic, theatre and music))
OCCUPATION
What I consider what makes an artist might have more expectations, or be a lifestyle, while other might see being an artist as an occupation. I presume that many people associate what you do, with what you are, and so an artist has certain tasks they do that qualify them as artists.
When I tell someone I am a photographer, many people might impose what they understand that a photographer does and that I must do something rather similar. Again my understanding of what a photographer is differs greatly from some others, others who might see a photographer as someone who takes images with a camera either of people, places or things.
When I tell people I make collages, the same personal responses come from their experience of what collage art is. Some know a little history of Dadaism or Surrealist collage, but it can be difficult to explain such an aesthetic. If only I could be as general and specific as Ivey on the same subject.
"We know collage as a specific form of cut-and-paste visual art, but it is also a metaphor for a range of art making--- from documentary films to hip-hop sampling--- that creates something new using snippets of existing work."
I wish I could explain that some artists and photographers, including me, don't meet up to a general idea of what those titles might assume. Combining them as I do in my blog, calling it Fine Art Photography only seems to distance it further from the essence of what it is to be an artist.
So if the title were to reflect what I do, is it that I use artistic and photographic techniques to ask and answer the questions that make me ponder, and in that case I work with ideas, I create images of thoughts, and reflect on relations of my senses and what I experience. Not much unlike techniques of philosophy.
I record, reflect, edit, make guesses and retry. Not much unlike techniques of science.
At times I measure and calculate to similar degree as a scientist, and the photography I do involves making my own light sensitive chemistry involving plenty of trial and error and plenty of factors that must be accounted for if you want it to actually work.
In the 19th century when photography had been invented, it was itself considered a child of science, a combination of new progress and discovery in chemistry and optic. Not a tool of the artist or an artistic medium. I use a combination of recent technology along with old photographic processes that at one time was an astonishing new discovery and have slowly become an appreciated art form.
But I do not engage in this traditional process alone, instead use it in a new way, one that involves other sources of creativity and expression as well as but not restricted to my emotions and spiritual experience in addition. I may use the philosophical or mystical train of thought at times, excited by that which can signify or reside outside reason, in the depths of the unknown, unexplainable, paradoxical, irrational, imaginary or illusory. I enjoy the questions that have no answers.
For this I am a philosopher, but if I introduced myself as one, I would need to meet the requirements that each person had in regards to what philosophers are meant to be; or for a scientist, or an artist or photographer for that matter. If it is what I do that defines what I am, I would rather be someone who does many things and not be considered just an artist, or solely a photographer, whom are restricted by their very titles.
INSPIRATION
There is an inspiring discovery in science that feels and exists and captivates the greatest discoverers, innovators and scientist of mankind. These many unnamed discoveries can be just as significant and encouraging as the inspiring discovery found in taking a photograph, or being an artist, feeling like a true philosopher or seeker of truth.
Attuning to this inspiration, sensing it out, becomes an art in itself.
Visual Aberration 1, 2016. Vandyke brown and Cyanotype print collage.
The inspiration of science is not too much unlike the inspiration of faiths or religions, where in both they can share similar existential experiences. Many scientists engage in the search just as full-heartedly as a priest. The way one might engage in the doing of science can be rather inspiring in itself and many almost adapt behavior that gives it an expression of artistry. I could also argue that artists have the same kind of endeavors; each group reverberates their inspiration through their work and what they occupy themselves with.
We have mostly all heard of The Art of War from SunTzu, or of The Art of Charisma that fuels politicians. But what about The Art of Science?
Is it by definition paradoxical? I think not, for it is this very inspiration that captures the attention of a genius or a scientist is what gives an art to the science. The Art of Science happens in the actions of science, like the way an inspiration leads to successful accomplishment. By capturing that moment of existence, whether in the field, the lab or the studio, when done under the inspiration it causes great outcomes.
There could be an art to nearly anything, so long as it inspires the person and shares a level of truth.
"Isn't artistry, among other things, the willingness to continually take up the challenge of conveying universal truths through specific, particular actions; distilling meaning into a few square yards of canvas, a three-minute song, or a performance onstage or in a movie?" ...or of developing a scientific argument, athletic practice routine or inspirational speech.
So what about the Science of Art? The opposite statement from above, and seems equally paradoxical, but the meaning has suddenly switched.
Do the words seem to cancel meaning from one another though? no. Instead they encourage the two words to be interchangeable. The science of art sounds very structured, yet trustworthy. I could definitely attest to the facts that science and art do cross paths, whether it involve Photography and Eadweard Muybridge's time-captures or the convoluted ratios of color theory. There is so much systematic recording, whether in words or data, in both art and science. They share much to much to be opposites.
Surely there could be a science to anything, whether it be the science to athletics, science of music arrangements or science of behavior and communications. Why shouldn't there be a Science of Art, or an Art of Science.
Could these two words really be interchangeable, when the common factor in both art and science can be that they engage in a process involving inspiration and unique response to that inspiration?
With the precision, practice and relaxed discovery, the Science of Art allows me to discover and understand new ideas that go beyond what I previously believed I knew of the world. The Art of Science is a brilliant expression of inspiration that reaches the outermost of human knowledge, understanding and reasoning.
The brilliance of the art or artistry, and what makes it so important, momentous and influential, is that an Art allows others to reach the same kind understanding and similar inspiration that originally captivated the inspired. It can be shared!
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Bill Ivey, Art, inc. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), in order of post page 61,72, 69.
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