LIPPITY LANGUAGE

One of the core beliefs of Transparent Drawing is the primacy of the visual.  Another core belief is that the scientific and artistic methods are identical.  Here is a link to a past post on this subject.  Basically, the concept is that language follows the visual.  Scientists visualize before doing.  The visual is superordinate.

So it was satisfying to read in Mr. Glass’ Words Without Music this same thought.  He writes that while researching Einstein on the Beach, he saw the direct parallels between music and science.  On page 285, he writes,

“What interests me is how similar these visionaries’ way of seeing is to that of an artist.  Einstein clearly visualized his work.  In one of his books on relativity…he wrote that he imagined himself sitting on a beam of light, and the beam of light was traveling through the universe at 186,000 miles per second.”

I have long admired Mr. Glass’ work.  And it is therefore gratifying to hear him reinforce these visual creative themes.  Certainly our culture conditions us to think of the scientific and artistic methods as polar opposites.  Yet the deeper we dig, the more we realize that our processes are the same:  we visualize before we do.

Most assuredly, this might be disconcerting news to some of us.  I could certainly see some artists not wanting to be any part of the highly structured, scripted and monetized scientific world.  Likewise, I most assuredly can forecast that most of the scientific community will think that an artistic analogue is nothing short of a cultural demotion.

And that in the end is good.  In our current cultural milieu in which binary definitions are dissolving, we might rejoice that a path is being forged between.  These new paths will then require new words, new tags if you will.

So how do you know when ideas and cultural precepts are shifting?  How do you know when progress is being made?  When new words are being coined.  The language goes lippity-lippity-not very fast.