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Arts and sciences are two aspects of the human impulse to play and interact with nature.
Nature: the fantastic play engine . But, contrary to games, its rules are invisible (perhaps indeterminate as well).

The sciences focus mainly on repetitive phenomena.
Scientific fields create models of repetitions observed in nature.
This gives us interactive control (from medicine to space flights).

The arts focus on the unique.
Artistic creations picture the special
in a person, a moment, an aspect of nature.

Unfortunately, science and art are asked to speak truth.
Science is asked to uncover presumed basic universal laws
(the rules of the hidden games of nature).
Classically, art reveals how things really are or should be.
These protocols are divisive and unnecessary.
They tend to decrease interactivity.
Claims to truths build walls which must be knocked down to see farther.

Bohr, Piaget, and Poincaré exemplify the scientist's dilemma:
does science give us a deep knowledge of how the cosmos is in itself?
or does science give us increasingly better adaptive tools to interact with our world?
Who knows where science is taking us to.
Such uncertainty stimulate the emergence of new areas of research.

The artist, like the scientist, is driven by an irresistible curiosity.
The artist plays with the unknown according to personal preferences
(here I think mostly of Borges and Cortázar).
The sign of vibrant art a tempting curiosity: a dramatic and inviting sense of wonder.
This sense of wonder radiates from the works of Bosch, Bruegel, and Goya, for example.
The artist can't help but invite the viewer to share in the adventure of creation
(I feel that call in the works of  Neruda, Paz, Gaudi, and even Baudelaire).

Art is interactive at heart. The object created is part of a flow process.
A book on a shelf calls to be read. A painting invites reflection.
Quality is something more subjective than objective.
Value is an interactive process (look at how value emerges in any type of marketplace).
Art education is not about reverence to objects hanging on museum walls:
it provides a language of sorts which allow us to interact with creations
and feel a vital breath (in the works, in us, perhaps both).

Openings (most recent entries appear first)

A good source of selected digital images of art works is Artchive. The Artcyclopedia has information on art.

For the latest research news from journals and institutions about science and technology, see EurekAlert and Scienceonline.

For science fiction check the World Science Fiction Society.

Science fiction comes to life at NASA, perhaps our greatest human adventure. Space is our next frontier (most likely not the final one). See also the Planetary Society.

SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE AND LITERATURE   The Society for Literature and Science (SLS) welcomes colleagues in the sciences, engineering, technology, computer science, medicine, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, and independent scholars and artists. SLS fosters the multidisciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology.

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interactive art space      © 2000 by luis o. arata    contents | here | there | everywhere