Thanks to Chris Corrigan for the link.
 

When you give people too much information, they instantly resort to pattern recognition, in other words, to structure the experience. I think this is part of the artist’s world. The artist, when he encounters the present […] is always seeking new patterns, new pattern recognition, which is his task. The absolute indispensability of the artist is that he alone in the present can give the pattern recognition. He alone has the sensory awareness necessary to tell us what our world is made of. He is more important than the scientist. The scientists are going to wake up to this shortly and will resort en mass to the artist’s studio in order to discover the forms and the matter they are dealing with.

—Marshall McLuhan

 


Comments

maureen

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:08:11

Nice blog, Dave -- thanks for the follow on twitter. that's how I found your blog. This film is fascinating. I'm interested in McLuhan's stance that scientists are going to be in the art studio eventually, maybe sooner than later. I have an artist son and a physicist son. They have lots of overlap in their interests and attitudes. Both were gifted from a young age in music, art, math and science. They eventually diverged around age 12 or 13, I always thought in order to establish themselves in something different from their closest sibling. But they have remained fast friends into their late twenties and I know they trade knowledge and collaborate often.

Maybe that's the way scientists will be connected to the studio -- through collaboration.

 

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