366 – A Scriptovisual
Composition Unknown is the result of several artistic processes. Founded in
the artistic way of working called, not
knowing, and the surrealist technique of writing described by André Breton
in the First Manifesto of Surrealism,
the work is simultaneously located in both the expressive and the cognitive. But
the work is more than just a book, for it is also the product of working
simultaneously in two forms of expression – descriptive and plastic. Thus the
work is the product of a dual creative process, being scriptovisual in form: a
painting and a book which together form the work with the title: 366 – A Scriptovisual Composition Unknown.
And the reason for the above, it transpired, was to
undertake an artistic investigation of the spaces between spaces as part of the
author’s life-long quest to create a post-European era, post-Enlightenment science
and technology. Now is the time to bring this search to fruition, for it is
surely the case that a move beyond a science and technology – a culture – that
is based on conquest and domination is much needed. Many people in the modern
world are weighed down with baggage from the past that comes in the form of
functionalism, determinism, positivism, mechanism, scientism, technocracy,
materialism, historicism, … The list is quite long! It is a baggage that is
destroying humanity and the planet!
The supremacy of the fragmented, reductive, and overly
rational mind, heroised in the European world, is leading humanity to the edge
of doom, to the creation of a dysfunctional – dystopian – world in which no
sane person would want to live. Yet the very nature of the problem – the
fragmented, reductive, and overly rational mind – which craves the one best way
of knowing, the sole truth, and unambiguousness, even though the complexity of
human existence point towards there been many ways of knowing, many truths, and
a state of ambiguity as the norm, is preventing the step forward that humanity
must now take. Mix the fragmented, reductive, and overly rational mind, with
mind-sets that value and prioritise data, numbers, mathematics, and
computations, above other ways of knowing, as well as softer thinking based on
intuitions, feelings, etc., then one has a recipe for a disaster on a scale
never before been seen in human history.
Provided in this work therefore, are the reasons, presented
in a way that is highly unusual, why the development of a different type of
science and technology is now needed. The reader will also discover pointers
towards the creation of this new form of science and technology, the
development of which, the reader will learn, is far more advanced than people
realise. Raised also as a consequence is an issue called Unity of Knowledge, for which so-called consilience, the author has
concluded, is an irrelevance. The author proposes that what is required is the
development of a new Theory of Knowledge;
one that is built on a different perception of the universe and humanity to
that which dominates in the European world.
The book is also a demonstration of the value of artistic
thinking and practices, which contrasts sharply with the obsession that some in
the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have,
which in many cases is nothing more than an appropriation of the arts for the
furthering of an old vision of STEM, which is – to borrow from Ancient Greek
mythology and the story of Prometheus – just entrails (more of that baggage
referred to above), dressed up with a little good meat (art).
To be published in late 2017: www.cheshirehenbury.com/366-scriptovisual-composition-unknown/index.html
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