Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
behaviour in terms of machines. Although this is helpful at times, I do not see any
reason to set both equal.
We all seem to have some sort of experienced understanding of construction and
intuition. When working and teaching at the Bauhaus, Paul Klee observed and noted
that “We construct and construct, but intuition still remains a good thing.”
19
We may
see construction as that kind of human activity where we are pretty sure of the next
steps and procedures. Intuition may be a name for an aspect of human activity about
which we are not so sure.
Construction, we may be inclined to say, can systematically be controlled; in-
tuition, in comparison, emerges and happens in uncontrolled ways. Construction
stands for the systematic aspects of work we do; intuition for the immediate, non-
considerate, and spontaneous. Both are important and necessary for creation. If Paul
Klee saw the two in negative opposition to each other, he was making a valid point,
but from our present perspective, he was slightly wrong. Construction and intuition
constitute the dialectics of creation. Whatever the unknown may be that we call
intuition, the computer's part in a creative process can only be in the realm of con-
struction. In the intuitive capacities of our work, we are left alone. There we seem
to be at home. When we follow intuitive modes of acting, we stay with ourselves,
implicit, we do not leave for the other, the explicit.
So at the end of this mental journey through the algorithmic revolution (Peter
Weibel's term) in the arts, the dialectic nature of everything we do re-assures itself.
If there is anything like an intuitively secure feeling, it is romantic. It seems essential
for creativity.
In the first narration, I presented the dense moment in Stuttgart on the 5th of
February, 1965, when computer art was shown publicly for the first time. If you
tell me explicitly, Georg Nees told the artist who had asked him—if you tell me
explicitly
how
you paint, then I can write a program that does it. This answer con-
centrated in a nutshell, I believe, the entire relation between computers, humans,
and creativity.
The moment an artist accepts the effort of describing how he works, he reduces
his way of working to that description. He strips it of its embedding into a living
body and being. The description will no longer be what the artist does, and how
he does it. It will take on its separate, objectified existence. We should assume it is
a good description, a description of such high quality concerning its purpose that
no other artist has so far been able to give. It will take a lot of programming and
algorithmic skill before a program is finished that implements the artist's rendition.
Nevertheless, the implementation will not be what the artist really does, and how he
does it. It will, by necessity, be only an approximation.
He will continue to work, he will go on living his life, things will change, he
will change. And even if they hire him as a permanent consultant for the job of his
own de-materialisation and mechanisation, there is no escape from the gap between
19
(Klee
1928
) Another translation into English is: “We construct and construct, but intuition is still
a good thing.”
