Cultural String Theory – By Regina Gleeson

Earlier this year, revolutionary physicist, Stephen Hawking, publicly abandoned his quest for a single, scientific, unifying theory that was to explain everything from an atom to a universal black hole and even how they relate to each other.

Cultural String Theory

By Regina Gleeson

 

 

 

 

Earlier this year, revolutionary physicist, Stephen Hawking, publicly abandoned his quest for a single, scientific, unifying theory that was to explain everything from an atom to a universal black hole and even how they relate to each other. The theory of everything came to be known as the string theory, as it was thought that minute, vibrating strings were the common denominator in everything. The frequencies of their vibrations were what were thought to create the endless variations in life and lifelessness in the universe. While a scientific theory of everything remains elusive, perhaps a cultural theory of everything is a possibility. The cross-disciplinary engagement between art and technology affords us an opportunity to cover some ground in making some kind of sense out of the chaos with which we are surrounded and proceed to research a potential cultural string theory.

Cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan argued that in the electronic environment of his time, the latter-half of the twentieth century, it was inadvisable to be coherent. In our current times of datafication through profusions of digital networks, does this still hold true today? It would appear to be politically incorrect to produce any cultural expression through a single statement for fear of being perceived as having monocular vision. Singularity is at odds with our pluralistic times. The greater part of present day visual expression has become layered – layered with multiple facets of the same image and under-cut with multi-sensory augmentations. Even beyond the current trend for multiple-choice cultures, a difficulty still exists in referring to non-linear multiplicity in a single manifestation. This is because there is the problem of trying to make sense of the innumerable splinters of information we encounter daily, containing data about how our planet works and about how our society and communities interact and communicate. While it maybe inappropriate to be singular in ones’ approach to art practices, coherence need not necessarily be lost in multiplicity.

In his latest book to be published by MIT Press mid-2004, From Technological to Virtual Art: The Humanization of the Mechanic through the Artistic Imagination, art-historian Frank Popper points out that this non-linear, technology-based art which he collectively calls ‘virtual art’ has a responsible role to play in our society. He maintains that it has an ethical role to play in the ever-expanding clutches of globalization through its emphasis on human factors in relation to the artists and the multiple users. In contrast to McLuhan, who feared the consequences of the extension of mans’ nervous system in technology, Popper believes that this is where technology-based art holds the point of critical impact for the world. This human factor is central in trying to understand the digitized pulse of our globalized society. Without such an understanding it would be futile to consider a theory of anything, not-to-mention a theory of everything! Technology-based art research minus artists – whose primary well of knowledge is formed around individual, intuitive responses – introduces vulnerability towards a techno-fetishism of creating innumerable devices and modes of digitized communication where the actual human communication and connections are dropped along the way. The artist has the delicate ability to act as a medium, a kind of a cultural barometer, in contextualizing the changes shaping our society. The value of genuine interplay between art and technology is in being able to contextualize the contemporary epic and minute through using the central medium and lingua franca of today – technology and code – in an expressive manner. This facilitates a conceptual point of entry into the seemingly impenetrable mass of sensory, digitized information and thus holds greater potential for being able to relate to the vast quantity of information with which we are surrounded.

At the turn of the previous century industrialized mechanization boosted the change in focal shift away from the object d’art towards the process by which the object was conceived and produced. In a similar way, technology has given rise to a progression from linear process to hypertext and now hypertext to interface. The demise of singularity and linearity that influences the changes in visual aesthetics as well as basic physical and virtual structures is most aptly addressed by using the technology that powers that same multiplicity and pluralism. It facilitates a practical, cultural model for a theory of everything; everything that is affecting our day and shaping our environment and society.

If the art of cross-disciplinary research is to form a framework for a cultural theory of everything, then it must arise out of an equal respect and understanding with the contrasting disciplines whether that is science, technology, philosophy, mathematics or any other discipline. If art is to be used as a vehicle to popularize or interpret the complexities of science to the un-initiated masses, it fails in maintaining its integrity as an expressive medium and is not communicating on an equal level with another discipline. If, on the other side of that coin, artists try to prevent inter-disciplinary collaborations out of dedication to the purity of their discipline, they are acting as an impediment to exploration and discovery of the entangled dynamos of our networked communities. Perhaps if Stephen Hawking had the opportunity to collaborate with artists, he may have found a new way to approach the theory of everything and looked towards a cultural string theory!