: What if Arts and Science get blended? Should we mingle disciplines? Combine methodologies? Treat scientific facts and theories with artistic desire and curiosity? Most of us would respond – yes, indeed – to the first two questions, and – probably- to the last one. The intention of combining Arts and Technologies might sound adventurous, ambitious and ambiguous, mainly of few following reasons. And we clearly see it happening on the everyday basis, we see technology, sciences and media as being creatively used. The first serious issue arises when we try to predict the outcomes of this emerging practice and think how and why to contribute to its evolution. Are there any interesting outcomes that we could expect? Ontologically, Arts and Sciences are operating in and speculating on different reality levels, but have a lot of points of interference. Combining them, their methodologies, would mean trying to satisfy the goals of each discipline and find a consensus, a right balance between both. This merging act traditionally marks the moment of birth of new discipline. And this is what we would Media Arts. The dilemma rises once we try to analyse the different natures of these two approaches toward the construction of reality and culture. Technological mindset, computational machinery and similar apparatus are purely and all about productive performance, accomplishment, problem solving, efficiency etc… It’s based on the acquainted knowledge, facts, and precise logics. Ideally, there’s no space for error, otherwise, if it does not perform it’s task correctly, as Jon McKenzie (book “Perform of Else”) suggests, theory becomes outdated and rejected, an object, machine becomes obsolete, program unusable and useless. Then machine or its process becomes an art object, different logic and canons apply to it. It’s a hard task to try to generalize all contemporary art practices in one sentence and chose one prevailing. But technology entering the dimension of arts constitutes the appearance of new art categories. Apparatus can only obey, calculate and blindly multiply, represent, transmit, generate or receive information. It’s strictly functional and instrumental and in this perspective, no human being could compete with a performativity of machine. Unless the creator is involved, who would transcend the mere action of mindless obedience. : Do we need Media Artworks? But let’s analyse the appearance of the autonomous para-poetic devise. Media artist Adam Parrish recently created a device automatically generating poetry. The old media artists, or simply traditional poets or writers probably wouldn’t even call the automatically generated and randomly rendered text to be uplifted to the status of “poetry”, simply, because the nature of “real” literature is not something that can be instrumentalized, functionalized, become more efficient, or even eternal (try how it works). But what could probably be important in this case is that similar artistic experiments allow us to explore and grasp the whole surrounding culture of the artwork in which is appears. I might make us think of possible configurations engaging old and new media and concepts related to them. It might reshape our understanding of the value of literature in media art context, or where raise a question of how and when it should be read. It might encourage the sense of loss for some, since a particular poem only appears once, and there’s no way to preserve it if it’s gone from the screen. All of these questions are raised while facing this tiny romantic device. All but one – is there a need for these artworks? Since the artwork is already there, the question could only serve as a provocation in discussion. Most of the artistic innovations began from experiments with what artists had at hand at that moment (Jonas Mekas – video camera or notebook, Nam June Paik – video or TV, John Cage – music or silence). That’s where Umberto Eco’s idea, that works of art reflect the intellectual worldviews of their time, makes sense to us. The result of merging artistic and scientific disciplines might imply profound effects on the experience of nowadays culture and be a step-stone for its further transformation. It’s the reality we live in. We have all this scientific knowledge, technological innovations within our hands reach, why not push it further? Helmut Draxler, who’s discussing the differences between media and artistic production, thinks that for art’s working methods, new technologies and media formats are important new realities. He separates though, the direct participation in technological and media routine (consumption) and successful creative use. According to him, artists role is to challenge technological conditions and seek for interaction. This approach is actually allowing the creation of synthesized narratives between Arts and Science, a constant dialogue, combination of knowledge, methodological and technological awareness and innovative human mind. We could call this narrative Media Arts Culture. And the development of this depends on the intellectual and creative energy focused on it. Since any culture has to be actuality and must be used by its user. But will we read that poetry? How will we read it? And where lies the beauty of it?
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