Jonathan Keats gave a curiously engaging presentation on "Extraterrestrial Aesthetics, Divine Genetics, and Other Thought Experiments" at the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium of UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media Monday night. Jonathan noted that both art and science are too inwardly focused, so he uses art to tease out nuances in science, and science to tease out nuances in art, with a style of conceptual art that was introduced as a "purposeful rejection of pragmatism."
Among the projects he covered was the quest to pass a law that couldn’t be broken (collecting petition signatures in Berkeley for Aristotle’s law of identity), the creation of a futures market for neurons in his brain (a new type of brain trust), the founding of the International Association for Divine Taxonomy (an attempt to genetically engineer God) and the buying and selling of real estate in the extradimensionalities identified through string theory.
Jonathan has raised some interesting questions in each of the projects he has undertaken. What I found most interesting, though, were the more general insights Jonathan shared about art, science and religion. His observation that art is interesting for its ambiguity, its open-endedness and the questions it raises contrasts with the goals of science, which are more focused on certainty, decisiveness and the questions it answers.
These distinctions reminded me of themes raised by James Carse in his book Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, in which the author notes that
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continiuing the play … Finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries … Finite players are serious; infinite players are playful.
At first, I pondered how science might be considered a finite game, and art might be considered an infinite game. But upon further reflection, this distinction breaks down. While much of science might be described as incremental — filling in the details within boundaries (previously defined by other scientists) — some scientific advances represent paradigm shifts where boundaries are shifted in signficant ways. And although the many notable works of art also stretch boundaries, I believe that much art is rather incremental as well.
Curiosity is a trait that Jonathan emphasized several times during his talk, a trait that is shared by both artists and scientists. The differences may lie more in the way that curiosity is channeled, and in the perspectives that people adopt in facing the unknown(s).
Jonathan’s observations about openness and embrace of ambiguity suggest that the distinctions are largely attitudinal — how one goes about creating art or science … or religion, which seems much more closely aligned with science, and its quest for certainty, decisiveness and answering questions, differing primarily on what constitutes a basis for declaring victory … the kind of declaration that is absent from art and other infinite games.