Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

As evinced by this previous post, I am making a piece with animated images of scientific models and diagrams. Much of this project comes from my fascination with the beauty of these forms - I always allow myself to yield to the persuasive power of form. But one cannot spend months working with forms and not start to build up a theoretical framework to explain why one is spending one's time with these particular forms.

I have been having trouble blogging about this topic partially because it is so important to me, and partially because I am in the middle of creating this project. My research is unfinished, my conclusions not yet (and hopefully never) fully drawn. Even the form of the final work is still very much open and changeable. So it seems that every time I sit down that I write a completely different set of ideas, an unfinished and wandering essay. I am resolved to share these wanderings, which will perhaps show an evolution of the theoretical framework behind this project.

I should offer a host of caveats, excuses and escape hatches for myself. I cannot say for certain which comes first in the creation of a project - the vision or the reason for making it. Indeed, there is no hard beginning to a project - I recall discussions with my father I had as a child that inspired fantasies which may only now be coming to fruition. Even the specific process of collecting animated gif images for this project could be traced back a decade or more. I also reserve the right to say contradictory and sometimes unintelligent things about my own work which I may later disown and later regain. I want to reject all authority over the interpretation of the finished work while still maintaining that the research I am presenting is relevant.

Now that you have been warned, I will state that one major way I have been framing my approach to this topic is by exploring the discipline of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK). I am not prepared to sum up this topic here, but you can refer to the following;

Here is a playlist of videos on youtube that are related to SSK.

Here is the wikipedia article on SSK.

I am putting myself in a very weak position by posting a playlist that incorporates more than its fair share of hokey new age spiritualism. I say this because saying that SSK is controversial is an understatement - it is a topic that probes an open wound in Western thought and has a bitter history. However, artists, unlike philosophers, scientists and cultural theorists, are not interested in creating unassailable arguments and watertight theories. The fact that we operate in a world where art objects have become tokens that theorists can use in their elaborate mind games allows artists new freedoms; instead of conceiving of an art object as a positive expression of a philosophy or as a statement of the artist's opinion we can create a work that functions as a question. A work positively conceived as a token for a productive mind game should function as a foil to test ideas out on, a field in which a new game can be played. Such an object has the strength of submission, the power of the ying rather than the yang, the soft blade of grass that weathers the storm that topples the rigid oak.

SSK is a ripe field for exploration through the creation of art objects because it is an unresolved battlefield, a scarred landscape in which the words of the partisans tend to perpetuate entrenched views. By making a work that explores this issue I aim to open up a new area of play, an area that, while not unconnected to the history of the issue, offers the possibility of a fresh way of thinking.

A big fat boast that! One aspect of thinking about why one makes work is a process of building oneself up, creating grandiose reasons to continue to work in the face of the yawning void of meaninglessness. But I claim this void to be my partner in the process of creation. If I could provide a URL that answered all my questions, if I could even write a pithy essay explaining why these images fascinate me, then I put forth that there would be no reason to create the work. Art is an exploration of ideas that may not even count as ideas, motivated by as-yet unnamed emotions on the brink of despair. Part of the fascination of following the laborious route of theory is the joy of shrugging it all off and returning home to the physical pleasure of the senses, of being entranced by seeing.