THE NEW PERCEPTION:

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THE NEW PERCEPTION
HYPERMEDIATING INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURES THROUGH
AESTHETIC EDUCATION

• John Toth, MFA, Ph.D.
• Hunter College School of Education The Arts
• http//www.JohnToth.net/Oxford/NewPerception.htm

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ABSTRACT

• In his book The Two Cultures and A Second Look,
  C. P. Snow describes how intellectual life
  in1959-65 seen through the eyes of Western
  culture was divided into two polar groups
  literary intellectuals and scientists who find
  each others work incomprehensible.

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ABSTRACT
PURE

• What made matters worse for Snow is that even
  within the field of science he found that the
  scientists who engaged in pure research had
  little ability or interest in communicating with
  the applied scientists.

applied
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ABSTRACT

• Snow makes a plea to educators to develop in
  their students a new perception that opens
  imaginative exploration.

new perception
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The objective of my presentation and paper is to
consider the philosophy of aesthetics as a method
for engaging new perceptions through group
interaction around a work of art and by carefully
noticing the dynamic relationship between the
medium and method that make up the language of
the arts and sciences.
AESTHETIC EDUCATION
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How does philosophy define the substance of art
and science?

• It is possible to say that the language of
  science and art have both evolved in ways that
  have become too complex for anyone to understand
  who has not had special training. Consider the
  shift in design over the past one hundred years.

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How has the substance of art and science changed
during the Industrial Revolution?

• Quantum mechanics and Dada have challenged the
  minds of the best thinkers.

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel,Readymade,1913.
MoMA
Paul Dirac, Quantum States, 1928, atomic orbital
wavefunctions of a hydrogen atom.
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PHILOSOPHY OF SUBSTANCE COMMON GROUND

• In Aristotles Categories he implies that
  substance is that which has an independent
  existence.
• The substances that makeup the world, according
  to Aristotle, have a number of characteristics
  that can be tangibly described
• substance, quality,
• quantity, relation, place,
• time, position, state,
• action, and affection.

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How Does Choosing a Medium Interact with the
Individual Learning Styles of Scientists?

• There is an example in history of creative
  scientists who explored similar ideas, each with
  different learning styles. Albert Einstein,
  Hendrick Lorentz and Henri Poincaré are all
  credited with developing the theory of
  relativity, however, not jointly, but each
  through their own proposition, method and
  creative disposition..

Einstein, Lorentz and Poincaré
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How Does Interdisciplinarity Interact with the
Individual Learning Styles of Scientists?
Scientist Field Study Second sense
Albert Einstein Theoretical physicist - equations Light, atoms, photons, mechanics thought experiments -dream
Henri Poincaré Mathematician Theoretical physicist Topology,mechanics, optics, fluids, electricity proof visualization - polymath
Hendrick Lorentz Physicist - mathematics Electrodynamic, light, atoms, electrons astronomy interest
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The great imaginative leaps in science may
require thinking outside a single knowledge
modality. At the frontier of complexity the need
to be able to describe a new quantum world and
virtual world suggests a need to perceive with
multi knowledge modalities through collaborations
between fields of knowledge.
Lorentz
Einstein
Poincaré

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How Does Choosing a Medium Interact with the
Individual Learning Styles of Artists?

• .Acts of creation require some thing to hold the
  expression, be it words for thoughts, sounds for
  music, numbers for science, or materials for art.
  John Dewey in his book Art as Experience insists
  Only where material is employed as media is
  there expression and art For each art has its
  own medium and that medium is especially fitted
  for one kind of communication. Each medium says
  something that cannot be uttered as well or as
  completely in any other tongue.

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Choosing a medium to fit the art form requires an
understanding of the characteristics of the art
material as being in a relationship with the
how of communicating with media. Alberto
Giacomettis skill in using clay goes beyond
representing a man or woman. It is how he uses
clay pinching, stretching, pressing that
communicates his sense of the world. And it is
how he structures his body language that he
communicates authority. It is in the relationship
of these events that we find meaning.

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Dewey points out another important relational
characteristic of art material. Whatever
narrows the boundaries of the material fit to be
used in art hems in also the artistic sincerity
of the individual artist. It does not give fair
play and outlet to his vital interest. It forces
his perception into channels previously worn into
ruts and clips the wings of his imagination.

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C. P. Snows Second Look

• These commonalities and differences that make up
  the language of the Arts and Sciences imply a
  relationship between the artist and scientist,
  the medium and the substance and the how of the
  generated expression or proposition. What Snow
  does in writing A Second Look is introduce
  reflection and self critique to his own creative
  process as a writer. What reflection and critique
  contribute to knowledge requires a philosophical
  awareness of how media functions and asks, How do
  we understand and read our world?

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THE NEW PERCEPTION AESTHETIC JUDGMENT

• Medium Becomes Aesthetic MediaBy rethinking his
  earlier book, The Two Cultures, Snow is noticing
  his work aesthetically..
• Whether we choose words, symbols, images, sounds,
  objects, numbers or raw materials we are
  exploring a language and at times we invent new
  languages.

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• Aesthetic Judgment
• What role do the senses play in developing new
  perceptions?
• Instead of pitting logic against
• the senses, Immanuel Kant acknowledges the
  senses as
• the starting point of any search
• for knowledgeIntuition and concepts
  constitute, therefore, the elements of all our
  knowledge, so that neither concepts without an
  intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor
  intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
  Both may be either pure or empirical.

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In regards to the arts and sciences, Kant
suggests that any manner of gaining knowledge
that relates to objects is done so by intuition.
Intuition allows us to perceive specific
properties of objects through our sensibilities
that receive objects. A certain kind of
receptivity is required for perception. And a
certain kind of projection is required for
expression. Kant suggests that the faculty of the
imagination is responsible for forming concepts
out of the manifold of intuition to be
considered for knowledge. That is, as intuition
senses the properties, dispositions and
relationships, the imagination forms concepts to
consider for knowledge.

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IMAGINEINTUIT
KNOW
RECEIVE
PROJECT
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Aesthetic Education The Art of Active Reflection
Aesthetic Education since the early 70s has
placed philosophy at the center of its pedagogy.
Immanuel Kant, John Dewey, Elliott Eisner and
Maxine Greene have all spoken of the relationship
that the arts create between reason and
imagination.

• According to Greene, For us, education signifies
  the nurture of a special kind of reflectiveness
  and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings,
  a learning to learn.

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As a space/place of learning, aesthetic education
may provide a philosophy that addresses a
diverse, complex world through a process that
opens new associations between concepts and
methods through a close study of a work of art.

• Aesthetic education allows students to find new
  associations between theory and practice.
  Students make choices using the visual elements
  that are in play within the language of the art
  work under study. This is a process where
  imagination and reason are in fidelity to self
  knowledge through a shared event with the work of
  art.
• Reflection is guided by inquiry and
  experimentation that encourage connections
  between the language of art and the science of
  life.

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In aesthetic education Aristotles categories are
what teachers can address their questions to, in
order to encourage grounded observations.

• substance What is the sculpture made
  of?quality Describe the qualities of the
  sculpture surface.quantity Is his gesture
  public or private? relation Describe the angles
  of the body parts?place Where would you see
  someone like this? time What time period or
  year is he from? position How are the mans body
  parts positioned?state How old is this
  man?action What is he about to do? affect How
  does medium influence meaning?
• Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1948

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HYPERMEDIAElectronic Substance Electronic Media

• It should be no surprise that Snows new
  perception should include a new substance. The
  new medium is hypertext. Invented by Ted Nelson
  in 1963 as media that has the capability to link
  to related hypermedia.

Using hypermedia requires new systems of logic
that is discovered beyond the bounds of the
tradition model of literacy.
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Media Literacy Hypermedia as Apparatus

• Literacy as we know it is being transformed by
  electronic media. A professor of English, Gregory
  Ulmer has a name for the new literacy called
  electracy and in his book Heuretics The Logic
  of Invention he describes how knowledge is
  transmitted through the medium of electricity.

Ulmer believes this shift does not replace
literacy but exists alongside or perhaps we are
living in a hybrid state electracy as a
process of knowledge uses computers as a means of
generating a virtual or hyper reality.
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Theory Hypermediating the Image

• In his book One Way Street Walter Benjamin
  attacks the notion of languages as the best
  choice of medium in communication. His
  inclination is towards the image rather than the
  text

Only images in the mind vitalize the will. The
mere word, by contrast, at most inflames it, to
leave it smoldering, blasted. There is no intact
will, without exact pictorial imagination. No
imagination without innervations.
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Practice Hypermediating the Image

• The development of the use of image in the 19th
  century through photography lead Benjamin to
  consider the retelling of history through the
  juxtapositioning of photographic images.
• Ted Nelson founded Project Xanadu in 1960 with
  the goal of creating a computer network with a
  simple user interface.

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CONCLUSIONS

1. Aesthetic reflection of the beauty and the
   sublime reveals the threshold of both the senses
   and reason that restores a balance between the
   Arts and Sciences.
2. This philosophic awareness of the limited and
   unlimited capacity of the individual as a learner
   is what makes the arts particularly useful as a
   learning apparatus.
3. Only philosophy can define a world point of view
   that will guide who we are and what we dare to
   create.
4. The plea for a new perception must embrace the
   new technologies that have taken the Arts and
   Sciences into new uncharted territory.
5. Hypermedia forms the basis of a new literacy that
   opens a world community of learners.

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GUIDING QUESTIONS DESRCIBEANALYZEINTERPRETIM
AGINEWHATWHOWHEREWHENWHYNOTICEREFLECTSKETC
HCONSTRUCTCREATECURATE
Podcast Rossiter Mignot

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MULTIPLE ENTERY POINTS One objective is to
direct questions to different content areas
within the painting of Washington and Lafayette
at Mount Vernon.

• Body and language

• Facial expression

• Posture

• Clothing styles

• Objects of interest

• Pennsylvania Gazette

• Gifts

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ART ACTIVITIES How can art activities inform the
noticing and appreciation of the art work under
study?

• Sketch body language
• Draw facial expression
• Draw designs styles
• Act out conversations

Artistic expression is a kind of reasoning.
Rudolf Arnheim - Visual Literacy

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AESTHETIC - ESTÉTICO - ESUTETIKKO - ESTHÉTIQUE

• The Teaching Artist as Curator
• The aesthetic curation of historical images with
  present day images creates a background for an
  adaptation of four Chekhov plays combined into
  one.
• Chekhov Now! Festival, Nostalgia, 1999, Access
  Arts, NYC

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AESTHETIC - ESTÉTICO - ESUTETIKKO - ESTHÉTIQUE

• Artist as Curator
• John Toth http//www.johntoth.net
• Light Shadow?Pan American
• Exhibition at the Burchfield Penney
• Art Center collaboration with Arts in
• Education of Western NY. 2001
• Diary of a Young Girl - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
• Act Without Words?Adaptation of Sam Beckett's
  play 78th Street Theatre Lab, New York, NY. 2003.
• The Red Studio?performance based on Henri
  Matisse's studio in Issy, French using projected
  computer animations to create a moving set with
  fabric sculpture, film, dance, and music.

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THE PODCAST
The pod cast will present a series of questions
that are strategically designed to encourage
careful noticing.
Podcast Rossiter Mignot

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