The Artist as Design Scientist

The Artist as Design Scientist

    Youngblood opens with naming various films that are known for transcending their genres - Pierrot le Fou, Beauty and the Beast, Citizen Kane, ect. Yet he also notes that although these films explore into the unknown with regards to technological advancement, they are still aesthetically pleasing to the audience. The films are not extraordinary for their stories, but for their design. He then goes on to quote Susan Sontang - “If there is any ‘knowledge’ to be gained through art, it is the experience of the form or style of knowing the subject, rather than a knowledge to the subject itself.” Thus, we learn more through the process of creating art rather than what we are creating.
    According to Youngblood, at their base levels, Art and Science are one and the same - they seek to find order amongst the unknown and to unleash the hidden potential within the natural world. Art is a way of creating symbols to represent the world around man, and thus is a way of helping the mind to understand. It is the first step in trying to venture out into unknown knowledge - one must first have an established imagery bank, then they can learn to reach beyond it. Youngblood notes that the word ‘design,’ when broken down, forms ‘de’ and ‘sign’ - thus, a designer is meant to deconstruct our current knowledge of symbols and create new ones. As a design scientist, then, one is expected to develop technology that enables us to get closer to reality and real human experiences. It can enable us to cope with what we see around us and make sense of it all.
    “The language is the experiential information of aesthetic conceptual design,” states Youngblood. Thus, we form words and descriptions that inform what we see in a design and in life. We do this using the inarticulate conscious (the domain between the subconscious and the conscious that can’t be expressed in words but of which we constantly are aware). It is the artist’s job to utilize the inarticulate conscious to create new symbols and languages for the audience, and, in turn, the design scientist’s responsibility to create new technology to activate the members of the consciousness.
    The author notes two theories surrounding digital design - the auteur theory indicates those instances when the filmmaker’s design science transcends the parameters of his genre; our comprehension of that genre, that human condition is thus expanded. It holds that a director’s film reflects the director’s personal creative vision, as if they were the primary ‘auteur’ (from the French word for ‘author‘). It is usually the case that the auteur’s creative voice is distinct enough to shine through studio interference and the collective process. The theory was first created in 1996 by Edward Lang, and drew on the work of a group of cinema enthusiasts who wrote for Cahiers du Cinema and argued that films should reflect a director’s personal vision. In turn, cybernetics (a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities) has demonstrated that the structure of a system is an index of the performance which may be expected from it. Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics in 1948 as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Thus, the conceptual design of a piece of art determines the quantity and quality of information we obtain from it. Youngblood also determines that the amount of new information we receive is directly proportional to the degree of available choices we have in our art and film genres. Thus, the auteur is obviously limited to creating new designs from old information - but such a process can be enjoyable and very informative for an artist. It gives a filmmaker or designer something to go off of and then enables them to create something new and different without having any sort of backing to go off of. We see films like Avatar where the story is nothing new, but the way the story is told and the immense technical development of the world of the movie is so unique that the story seems fresh once again. Thus, James Cameron is credited with being a pioneer in the world of technology and filmmaking, even though what he created was not 100% new to us. Such a process allows us as humans to explore something further than we ever thought possible - to stretch an idea until it becomes something completely unrecognizable and fresh, and thus in turn leading to even newer ideas.
    Rudolph Arnheim states, “Perceiving achieves at the sensory level what in the realm of reasoning is known as the understanding...eyesight is insight.” Thus, if insight means to see intuitively, we come to understand that Arnheim’s claim is true only when ordinary vision is freed through design information and conceptual art - for instance, when someone sees an innovative film. Film is a way of seeing the world through the filmmaker’s eyes - we experience something firsthand from someone we don’t even really know, and it allows us to see things in a way you may never have thought before. Thus, we become artists when viewing others’ art when we take that sensory information and make it our own.
    Finally, Youngblood points out that although it is nothing new to the human consciousness, seeing films depicting aesthetically pleasing sights like mountains or oceans with breathtaking views, we are still responsive and desire to see more regardless whether the technology is new or not. Some things are beautiful for beauty’s sake. But with regards to true design, “Where beauty ends is where the artist begins.” (John Cage)