I was listening to a recent Radiolab podcast (March 19th's
"The Turing Problem") the other day, and one of the concepts that was
discussed on the show really struck me. By the way, if you don't know what
Radiolab is, please stop reading this blog right now and go educate yourself. The
question that caught my attention was "are humans anything more than
machines?" and if they aren't, what are the implications of this fact for
humanity?
One of the commentators, author James Gleick, explored this
notion by commenting that even if we are machines, this fact doesn't
necessarily diminish any art we create, whether it's a beautiful song or a
painting. It doesn't matter if we are
machines, as long as we still have a sense of mystery about how we create that
art. Addressing the question posed by host, Robert Krulwich, "…if I built
you a computer that could create equally beautiful watercolors and equally beautiful
musical composition [to those created by human artists], would you feel
happier, or diminished?" Gleick answers,
"I
think in a way you’re asking is that if you see how the trick is done, does it
then vanish? Does it just become
a trick – the trick being a great painting or a great piece of music? I feel the art I love is always art that I
don’t fully understand. There’s some
mystery there, always. I don’t quite fathom it [...] And when the machine produces music that is as lovely as the music
that you and I love, I believe it will still
be unfathomable."
I found this answer to be particularly interesting because
of the effect it had on me: initially, I wholeheartedly agreed, and upon
analysis, it all fell apart. To reduce
"beauty" and the act of classifying "art" to something
being simply "mysterious" and "unfathomable" is a notion I
find myself a bit weary of; it implies that we shouldn't try to understand
something, and if we understand it, we will no longer appreciate it, and it
will cease to be art.
Why do we need to not understand something for it to be
beautiful? To understand something is to destroy it? And of course Gleick covers his bases by
saying that true art will ultimately be mysterious no matter what, we won't be able to figure it out. And I think, again, that's a little
ridiculous. It goes against a lot of
things I believe about writing and about other forms of art- mostly that it can
be analyzed and understood as a process.
To argue that true art cannot be understood is to also imply
that true art cannot be deliberately created.
I think to say that understanding the concepts behind photography and
then taking a photo with those concepts in mind- to say that that would impede
an individual from creating a piece of art implies that the only true art is
created by ingénues or created spontaneously without knowledge or just with
some sort of deep inherent knowledge and without any discussion of the process,
and in some ways, this is an extremely anti-intellectual, anti-academic
argument. And, as much as academia can sometimes miss the point through over analysis,
I think it's an important element of all of our forms of art, of all of our
culture, and all of humanity- the analytical element.
If we don't seek to understand art (to figure out why The Great Gatsby seems so perfect, why
Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know" is so catchy, or why Degas'
"Waiting" is so haunting), and if we are content to classify it as
mysterious magic only, what else will be content with not looking at more deeply? Culture?
Humanity? The universe? Art is not some
inherent ability that is bestowed upon only a select few at birth and that the
rest of us can only look on in awe.
Nothing is too beautiful to be understood and
through understanding, beauty is not diminished, but reaffirmed.
