[spectre] science and art

[hight at 34n118w.net]

I have to jump in on this discussion.

I am an artist,writer,musician,theorist,curator,almost scientist (will
explain) and a bit of an early math whiz.

I played with pattern variations in long number strings as I saw symmetry
flux and pattern emergence while waiting in the dark and cold for the bus
as a boy in elementary school.  I began giving weather forecasts and
correcting the men on tv  (one actually corrected his error after our
phone call)  around 8 or 9.  I also collected an amazing fact corner in
the sunday comics that has fueled a lot of my later work.  It was
etymology (word origins) and fascinated me.  I collected hundreds of them
over my young years.   I also began writing at that age, although not
taking it seriously.

I was one of those highly gifted kids so the teachers basically just
accelerated everything and didn't look for individual interests.   I am
not bragging by any means, in fact I spent several years failing out of
school as a teen partially because everone bragged endlessly about iq and
how little they studied and also I just felt lost.       My point is that
I saw mystery, answers, searches, curiosity and patterns (in
math,weather,language and writing)

There long has been  a perception here in america that art and science are
polar opposites.  But it depends on what perspective of the field you are
talking about.  I was planning to be a field researcher in experimental
meteorology looking at uncertainties , patterns, new forms and how to
model them graphically.

Now I am a locative and new media artist and have published poems,
stories,criticism, critical theory and have had my music in some
experimental music shows.     I still am obsessed with wether and devour
info on nanotechnology, genetics, string theory etc......

It is important to see how a hypothesis....a question of combination or
comparison........steps of exploration.......smaller and larger
questions.........and a conclusion............can be biology or how many
poems are constructed..........

I teach writing, design theory, semiotics, art theory and english
composition and often have been stuck on a point and found a science
example that filled it in clearly.

One example is when I was teaching how to write personal essay and trying
to explain how a certain essay was both about a broadening discussion of
racism in america and simultaneously a tighter and tighter journey into
understanding the writer (James Baldwin) and his father's blank dead look
in his eyes.       I tried to explain the two movements, then drew
diagrams of the spirals and key points in time (personal essay is often
not linear in time and instead a resonant accumulation/"jumping around")  
     and being saturday morning the students went "mmm pancakes!"

I had to scramble..............so...........thinking oh no this is
wacky........I explained the simulatenous tightening of eye wall/low
pressure and fanning upper level exhaust system/high    in intensifying
hurricanes.....and how it was the same thing in a way...........the
students listened then   nodded......

I was on a panel in a conference at M.I.T  last year and it was great to
speak to creative scientists and researchers and to artists in one place.

There is great similarity, we are simply taught not to see it.

jeremy hight