Literary.NonFiction

One of the interesting things about modern art is the development of “Experimental” art. I think alot of people are turned off by the term and I’ll admit, there’s a great deal of bad lazy art that is passed off as “Experimental”. Recently though, I’ve re-examined the semantics of this term, and I think that there is an interesting idea in the concept of art as an experiment.

If we look at what the word means, an experiment is a test, doing something to see what happens. Science does it all the time and there is no reason that it should have sole command over this realm, albeit, it does have a much more formalized and rigorous process in place. It should be argued, however, that while art does not have the same quantifiable measures as science - and therefore cannot be as readily adapted to the scientific process - is no reason we should not use it as a tool to explore our world. I would argue it is especially valuable for exploring the realms science cannot. Aristotle said “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” in a sense, what is poetry but a thought experiment manifested? The same goes for any work of art for that matter.

With that in mind, I think technology, and specifically the internet, facilitates a bey interesting cross section of science and art. By combining technology that allows us to connect (and collect data on) people from across the world, with an artist sensibility towards meaning making, we approach some interesting things.

Here are a few such experiments I find interesting:

http://learningtoloveyoumore.com/

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

http://www.bumplist.net/

http://publicwhitecube.com/pwc/