[ISEA2008] Paper: Carlos Augusto Moreira da Nóbrega – Art as a field phenomenon

Abstract

Defining art is a difficult, maybe an impossible, task but it can be said that the nature of art has close connections with unpredictability, uncertainty and paradoxes. While the artistic process heads for zones of tension and mystery, science filters the noises of reality in order to predict and control. Decades of positivist methodologies have lead the actions of science towards an increasingly reductionist approach.

The challenges of a new quantum phenomenology have guided several researchers to rethink this process of discretization of the world and to adopt methodologies that disclose reality from within a holistic framework.

The creative use of photo multipliers and highly sensitive CCD (charge-coupled device) cameras by biophysicists have shown living organisms as an intricate networks of photons exchanging information at light speed. Due its quantum nature (wave–particle duality) the so-called bio photons indicate that organisms are under the influence of a meaningful field and express themselves through it. For some spiritualistic schools bio photons are thought to be an interface between the body and its more subtle dimensions.

From this perspective this paper investigates the hypothesis that at a macro level we are part of a meaningful field that interconnects living and non-living things. It proposes that art and its entangled relationships with science and technology has nourished the creation of artefacts and could be understood under the concept of art as a field phenomenon. We are looking towards an understanding of the aesthetic experience as the perception of a flow that collapses into objects, systems and organisms.

This paper reflects on the current state of the author’s Ph.D. research in which he analyses the symbiosis of organic and synthetic systems in the context of art experience.

  • Carlos Augusto Moreira da Nóbrega, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK /
    Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL.      gutonobrega.co.uk

Full text (PDF) p.  351-352

I would like to acknowledge CAPES/Brazil (Coordenadoria de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) and Escola de Belas Artes – UFRJ for providing PhD scholarship and financial support.