Science versus Art Reflection (A world of dichotomies)

The article that the content group assigned “Science versus Art” it reminded me of the movie/book Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and the quote featured in the movie, “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” The reason the two connected to me was the ending of the poem and the ending of the movie produced important realizations when science killed art and three weeks later, the whole world died of boredom and when Ender killed the species of ants and realized they weren’t trying to kill them; in both those moments science and Ender realized that they loved their enemy and merely misunderstood them or did not appreciate them. I think the root of the problem is bases of dichotomies in the world. In the poem the dichotomy is science and art, in Ender’s Game the dichotomy is good and evil. Without the dichotomy one doesn’t have to view things as opposites but more so as a spectrum. If science and art viewed science on one end of the spectrum and art on the other end then when the two intersected it would show that neither is better than the other but merely different, even sometimes the same. Much like in the play Picasso at Lapin Agile when Einstein and Picasso came to the realization that even though they apply it differently they both, “ dream the impossible and put it into effect,” when they realized this it created a sort of love for each other and their contributions.(pg.24)Dichotomies are a dangerous aspect of life and are discussed a lot in thought provoking classes like sociology and women studies but it seems only the people who take classes like that recognize the dichotomies operating in society. When dichotomies exist one thing is usually deemed superior and the other inferior. A prime example in everyday life is gender the gender dichotomy of male and female acts on society as a whole and few can recognize it but let me make it apparent; males: strong, breadwinners, leaders, outspoken and blue(the color)females: fragile, homemaker, followers, timid/quiet and pink(the color). Now is it more obvious the two are directly opposite from each other. Now let’s relate it to this unit; science: equations, numbers, rules and art: canvas, colors, freedom. Now that I’ve made it a dichotomy can you see that maybe those two can be seen on a spectrum where equations equals a new color and freedom created new formulas and canvases are used to show rules. I know this seems far-fetched but look back at the gender dichotomy and think about women who pull the double-shift as both the breadwinner and the homemaker or women body builders or stay at home dads. These people described don’t fit to their dichotomy but if we view them on a spectrum it makes more sense, things can become intertwined people can have both masculine and feminine qualities and people who don’t follow the gender prescriptions and proscriptions won’t feel silenced or weird. All in all when viewing things on a spectrum whether it be science and art or male or female we can love it or them for how they are and they will no longer be enemies.

Picasso Reflection

The classic debate between science and art in Picasso is reminiscent of Stuart Kauffman’s book, “Reinventing the Sacred.” Kauffman details that science has had a longstanding reign of credibility over our spirituality since Galileo, Newton and their followers. He said that our worldview has increasingly become more reductionist. That is that to say we are a society driven by scientific pursuit that continually looks to smaller and smaller particles to answer more questions. In the words of Stephen Weinberg, “All the explanatory arrows point downward, from societies to people, to organs to cells, to biochemistry, to chemistry, and ultimately to physics.” That is what Kauffman calls the Galilean Spell, which has reigned for over 350 years. It is the belief that the universe and all in it are governed by natural laws (131). Kauffman also says that humanity has been divided into two cultures, one of reason and the other the rest of our human sensibilities (246).  This is a contemporary view extended from Steve Martin’s writing about science and art. Science has largely come to be viewed as the preeminent self-correcting path to knowledge. The humanities have reacted to science for 350 years and have adopted a variety of stances toward science, which dominated and pushed society forward. But Kauffman said the problem with science as a ruler of society is that feverishly turning to particle physics for answers leaves us in a meaningless world of facts devoid of values. Science will never fully be able to explain our universe that is ceaselessly creative, in which agency, meaning, value, consciousness and emotion. There are things that exist that natural law can’t explain.

This dilemma appears to be grown from the same seed that Picasso and Einstein argued from.

Kauffman seeks to heal the wound between the two disciplines by stating that science and humanities can co-exist and should harmoniously co-exist. Einstein and Shakespeare must live in a common framework, that in which the universe is beyond reductionism and harbors emergence and vast and ceaseless creativity as it explores the adjacent possible, Kauffman said. Cultural evolution depends on science, art, ethics, politics and spirituality.

“Living involves knowing, judging, understanding, doing, caring, attending, empathy, and compassion, whether science, business, the law, the humanities, the arts, sports, or other ways of going about our lives. If we cannot marvel at our own created, lived, meaningful, unforeseeable human culture, we are missing part of the sacred that we have created and we can instead celebrate,” (253). Just because we replaced science to be the model of rationality hundreds of years ago, doesn’t mean we need to continue living with that view. The two elements of culture, science and the humanities, need not be divided. “Full legitimacy for this spawning cultural creativity, our own invention, is part of reinventing the sacred,” (254).

Kauffman, Stuart. “Reinventing The Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion.” 2008.

Reflection for Picasso-Deb's review

So as I was reading the book..er..uh playbook? Anyways, as I was reading Picasso at the Lapin Agile, I found it to be very interesting and somewhat really funny. This isn't just some ordinary book that I am reading and it is very weird and I can't quite get the thought process of the play that led Steve Martin to write such a book. But...I didn't care, because I still enjoyed the read and to be honest.. I have always wondered what it would be like it Einstein and Picasso were to have such an engagement to meet and converse their thought process. I think they are great guys from the past and have such immense talent for a girl like me who enjoys art and science and math and all that other subjects. Two different backgrounds come together to form one group of intellectual thoughts and words of opinions. I enjoyed the laugh of the different characters in the story and I have never seen the actual play but I can imagine it in my mind.

Einstein

Picasshole

Schmendiman

Gaston

Freddy

https://imgflip.com/i/7qsx3

https://imgflip.com/i/7qt40

https://imgflip.com/i/7qt89

Schmendiman

Schmendiman

Einstein's Annus Mirabilus

1905 was the incredible year when Einstein went from a nobody patent-clerk to an internationally known super-scientist. In that year he published his five groundbreaking papers, his "Annus Mirabilis" papers. They were on the photoelectric effect, special relativity, and the mass-energy equivalence. To understand what Einstein means in “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” when he says:

Einstein: I want an idea to take them at light speed to the edge of the universe

He is refering to the special relativity, which states that no object can travel faster than the speed of light. He was not the first to propose this idea, but he was the first to explain how this could fit in our universe. No matter how fast you go, the speed of light is the same and to compensate, time streches out to allow for the speed of you relative to the light remains the same. Essentially the big idea Einstein proposed was that time is not static, that it bends to fit the universe of mass and energy. Mass and energy turn out to be the same, shown in when he says:

Einstein: I canʻt believe youʻre saying this! A fourth dimension!

Which is a weird thought to have. We move in three dimensions don't we? Forward-back, side to side, and up and down. But because information can only move at most the speed of light, there emerges a fourth dimension that's characteristics are modeled after the dimensionallity of the speed of light multiplied by time. Three-space is then condensed to a planar coordinate system and cones of space-time emerging from it. This planar three-space is then distorted by mass, but also by energy it is found out to distort space as well. It is from this equivalence a direct ratio of mass to energy is found with a ratio of the speed of light squared. When the energy of momentum is factored in, the completed equation:

E^2 = (M*c^2)^2 + P*c

P being the momentum of the system. Energy and mass are one of the same, and this shook the physics community to its core. No experiment has been able to disprove this theory, and the results can be found in the proof the existance of atomic weapons.

Girl Power, Germaine!
By Mallory Erickson

It’s hard for me to think of Steve Martin as a play writer, since the last movie I’ve seen him in was the made for kids movie “Cheaper by the Dozen.” I knew that he was funny, but the underlining jokes and jabs in Picasso at the Lapin Agile were hilarious I enjoyed the banter between characters, but I think my favorite part was the conversation between Picasso and Germaine.

Germaine was in supporting role, yet she became a more staple character for me when it became known that she has relations with Picasso, while she is with Freddy. The way that she tells Picasso that he will never earn a woman or appreciate a woman. Also, that like Picasso was using her, she in turn was just using him.

I like that Steve Martin could illustrate a woman who isn’t lusting over a man with power or money, but rather someone simple with faults that she can live with. Germaine is a smart woman, who like a man, can separate fantasy from reality. She isn’t naïve to the fact that Picasso wants only her, he wants any woman that lusts after him.

I really enjoyed reading the play, and was pleasantly surprised that it made me think beyond the story line. It’s fun to think about people meeting or attending events that could never happen. I would love to go back to the 1920s if only for a night, maybe to attend one of Gatsby’s parties.

Science vs. The Arts

Picasso: Before me, artists used to get ideas from the past. But as of this moment, they are coming from the future, fast and loose.

Einstein: Absolutely from the future.
Picasso: I think in the moment of the pencil to paper, the future is mapped out in the face of the person drawn.

Imagine that the pencil is pushed hard enough, and the lead goes through the paper into another dimension. (Picasso and Einstein start to get excited.)

Einstein: Yes!

Picasso: A kind of fourth dimension, if thatʻs what you want to call it. . .

Einstein: I canʻt believe youʻre saying this! A fourth dimension!

Picasso: And that fourth dimension is. . . the future.

Einstein: Wrong.

Picasso (arguing): The pencil pokes into the future and sucks up ideas and transfers them to the paper, for Christʻs sake. And what the hell do you know about it anyway. . . youʻre a scientist! You just want theories. . .

Einstein: Yes, and like you, the theories must be beautiful. You know why the sun doesnʻt revolve around the earth? Because the idea is not beautiful enough. If youʻre trying to prove that the sun revolves around the earth, in order to make the theory fit the facts, you have to have the planets moving backwards, and the sun doing loop-the-loops. Too ugly. Way ugly.

Picasso: So youʻre saying you bring a beautiful idea into being?


Einstein: Yes. We create a system and see if the facts can fit it.


Picasso: So youʻre not just describing the world as it is?


Einstein: No! We are creating a new way of looking at the world!

Picasso: So youʻre saying you dream the impossible and put it into effect?

Einstein: Exactly.

            This passage was my favorite part of this play. I think that not only in the play but in society today science and the arts are constantly at war, trying to prove to be the most important. This causes a lot of competition and unnecessary conflict. The two subjects are both very important in very different ways but neither could exist without each other. They are also both essential to mankind and society today. The play Picasso at the Lapin Agile is about the conflict between a scientist and an artist both thinking that their work was the most important. Throughout the play they go back and forth until they finally come to the realization that they are both very similar and are doing very important things in life.

“There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.... Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.” Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was an American screenwriter and a novelist. He lived from July 1888 to March 26, 1959 and was greatly affected by the Great Depression. He was in the arts and wrote many major movies and he fully believed that the world needed the arts and the sciences. If more people were to have this train of thinking I believe that a lot more could be achieved. 

Content Group Post: Science and Art

Source Link: http://www.infotextmanuscripts.org/science_v_art_poem.html

The source our group chose to use that relates to our topic, Finding Common Ground Between Art and Science, deals explicitly with just that. Published by Alexander Baron, this poem reflects the argument Einstein and Picasso had in the play. Though Einstein and Picasso do not follow everything from the poem, their refusal to understand the similarities and what each of them offer is what shines through. (Spoilers)The poem is set up by introducing our two competitors and why they were always against each other. It gives an example argument of theirs from the past in which art tries to make a case and science invalidates each case by listing what art could not do without him. Angered, art challenges science to a duel. Science wins, but loses all when the world dies of boredom. The conclusion of both the argument between Einstein and Picasso and the poem is the same: art and science do not need to be competitors. Rather, they can and must coexist and complement one another. Despite what the beginning of Einstein and Picasso’s argument as well as the beginning of the poem would lead us to believe, art and science are not opposites, and it proves very easy to find common ground between the two.

reflection for picasso

     On thursday while the class was reading outside I had a strange moment of deja vu.  It hit me when Freddy and Germaine were arguing about wether Germaine’s romanticism was Neo or Post.  I was immediately taken back to being 18 and sitting outside the venues my old band use to play.  My band mates and I would sit outside with random kids from the music scene arguing about what genre certain bands fit into and which genre is best.  The conversations would usually go something like this “No man, even though The Faceless does have breakdowns on occasion they aren’t death core.  I would classify them more as progressive tech death.”  The amount of sub genres in the Metal/Hardcore scene has gotten so ridiculous that a lot of musicians, including my bandmates and I, have adopted the idea that music is music and there is no point categorizing it.  Now whenever I hear people arguing about music I just can just laugh it off.  All they are trying to do is prove to whoever they are arguing with that they know more about music, but hearing it from the perspective of a bystander they just sound pretentious and for lack of a better term douchey.  I think Steve Martin wrote this segment into the play in order to convey this same observation.  I think it would be fair to assume that if the audience was presented with two paintings and asked to identify which one was Post and which was Neo, a majority would not know.  Since the audience has no real idea of what Germaine and Freddy are arguing about, they laugh at the same vibe of pretentious doucheyness that I see constantly in the music scene.

Female Characters

"Picasso: Germaine, men want, and women are wanted. That's the way it is, and that's the way it will always be." This quote seems to ring true on the surface of the play. Every female character in the play seem to be in positions where they are the object of a man's desire. Germaine is Freddy's wife; Suzanne is the pretty girl waiting to be pursued by Picasso; the Countess is Einstein's date; the female admirer has one line and is basically a groupie. Suzanne spends the first part of the play waiting for Picasso, and talking about him to the rest of the bar. She explains how she was wooed by him, despite her lack of interest at first. Then later on in the play, after he doesn't recognize her and she gets upset, he easily woos her again. This demonstrates how naive and easy to manipulate she is, and the power that Picasso has over her. The only power she is shown to have is sexual power, in that she is portrayed as attractive and sexual and very little else. She allows Gaston to watch her as she changes, and he exclaims that everything he is wearing must be lucky. Beyond her, there is the Countess, who is portrayed as intelligent and beautiful, and Einstein explains that she thinks like he does. However, when she enters, the only response to her intelligence is Einstein exclaiming "God, she's sexy!" This clearly shows that while the purpose of Einstein's genius is to discover and learn, the Countess' intelligence serves only to be attractive to Einstein. The only woman who comes close to being a full character is Germaine, and she is still mostly an extension or reflection of the male characters. She explains how she was using Picasso just as he was using her, and she explains how she projects her fantasies on the men she pursues. While she is not easily manipulated or there only to be attractive to a male character, she still only seems to exist in relation to the men in the story.

Reading Reflection for Picasso at Lapin Agile – Emily Bugielski

        I think that this play had a very unique mixture of characters and times. Many people have a difficult time accepting science, art, and common folk together. Usually people are very dismissive of one or the other and they think that their subjects could never mix. However this play shows that no matter what “type” of person you are, odds are that similarities will show stronger then differences. To have Einstein and Picasso in a setting together shows two different minds and opinions working towards similar goals in life. These difference are not proof alone to make someone “better” than the other. What is more important is putting ones brain to good use. Germaine made a good point of this in the play when she said “a mirror is like a mind, if you don’t use it, it loses the power to reflect”. (Martin 11) People will always reflect on different topics and it is good in many cases, because we need differences. For example “Einstein: mine touches the head”. “Picasso: mine touches the heart” (Martin 67) Both the head and heart are important and so too are the different types of people. I also thought it was very interesting how the characters addressed the past, present, and future. At one point they are talking about horse carriages and rare cameras and at another they are already speaking of aircraft, lawn flamingos etc. Without different minds some things would never be in reality today for our head and heart to admire.

I decided to draw the bar scene and what I think the set would look like. I made sure to havd a ugly sheep painting and a table for picasso and Einstein to sit. I even gave gaston a little stool in the corner. I made sure to also give lots of movement space for the charactes. Since I was also habing problems with trying to show the outside of the bar and the hanging sighn, I decied to give the bar two large windows with a runing rabit on one and the name underneath the rabbit. It is also very simple in desighn and could be made very easily. This was a awsome play and think this set design would work very well.:)

Costume Design Sketch

I chose to do a costume design sketch for my Reading Reflection of the mysterious singer at the end of the play. Got to love those blue suede shoes.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile: Foreshadowing the Twentieth Century

The element that stood out for me the most in this play was the commentary you could draw from it regarding our emergence into the Twentieth Century. The biggest indication of this was at the very end of the play when all of the characters do a toast.  

“Freddy: The pendulum swings to the left…”

“Countess: The pendulum swings to the right…”

This part of the toast indicates that “times they are a changin’” as the legendary Bob Dylan would say. The start of the Twentieth Century was the start of many social, cultural, and artistic changes. “Visitor: ‘Cause in this century, the accomplishments of scientists and artists outshone the accomplishments of politicians and governments”. People started seeing the world in a new light. Einstein produced his Theory of Relativity, which changed how we viewed things in motion, how light transferred, and how distant our stars are (I think, all that science stuff is really over my head); Picasso, along with Matisse and a slew of budding artists, introduced a new way of painting the Twentieth century. He painted to fit his mood, the Blue Period and then the Rose Period are both mentioned in this play as he transitioned from one century to the other, with the Rose Period reflecting his delightful anticipation of great things to come, such as his emergence into Cubism and many other great works. It was also a time a new identity for women with the emergence of the Womens’ Sufferage movement. Germaine and Suzanne represent this “New Woman”, a woman who had ideas and something to say.

“Gaston: The past was driven by horses….

Einstein: The future is driven by light….”

This part of the toast, again, shows an emergence to new thought, which leads to new technology driven by not only by industrialism, but scientific theories. In the Twentieth Century, scientific discoveries of our place in the universe trumps industrial discoveries (as indicated by Schmendiman, who is very unimportant and portrayed as a buffoon). Much of Einstein’s theory was based in light and how it travels. “Driven by light” is a direct comment on these new discoveries and also the notoriety it lands these Great Thinkers; we are told their names are written in the stars because the Twentieth Century will be their time to “shine”.

“Freddy: The mistakes of the past are over…

Picasso: The Modern waits to be met….”

Freddy’s part of the toast is simply: it’s time to move on from our mistakes. War, poverty, discrimination, artistic stagnation- these are all things of the past. The Twentieth Century allows artistic and social freedom from all the political and social tyranny that reigned supreme in the past centuries. This century marks the Reign of Artists and Social Liberations. It also marks the emergence of Modernism, that went beyond art and seeped into how we viewed every aspect of life. “Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, and activities of daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism). Artists focused on the process taken to create art, as opposed to the finished product. It was during this time that Picasso and Matisse created their most famous paintings and also Cubism, which focuses on the form and process of art, instead of the picture itself. Picasso says “waits to be met”, which foreshadows all of the greatest movements to come

“Sagot: Say good-bye to the age of indifference…

Visitor: And say hello…to the age… of regret.”

This one was a little puzzling because the Visitor’s comment, who is a time traveler from the future (i.e. Elvis Presley), indicates bad things on the horizon. But- it also makes sense. While the rest of the characters are full of optimism of great things and times to come, the Visitor knows that this idealistic and eventually, the Twentieth Century, with all of its new advances in technology, scientific discoveries, and artists movements, along with new social rights, eventually leads to the fall of our society. People become so advanced and so individualized as a culture that we lose some of the great aspects of the past centuries. We are divided; we are egocentric and destroy our environment with new advances in technology; Einstein helps create the Atom Bomb, which is used to destroy thousands of lives; women are still discriminated against, but in more subtle ways that are protected by loop holes in laws. The prospect of a great future is trumped by the realization that it eventually births destruction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-etgd6fb8Q

I found this video (I’m kind of a YouTube junkie) that shows clips and pictures of events in the Twentieth Century that happen AFTER 1904 and shows how these new technologies lead to poverty, war, death, starvation through food that is made in laboratories, and, while women eventually earn the right to vote, we see the segregation, degradation and genocide of Jewish population, African Americans and Japanese Americans. This video is pretty powerful and it’s set to the music of The Beatles While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which comments on how, even with all of the advances in society and science, we are still experiencing the same problems we saw in the past. BUT, towards the end of this video we see some GREAT advances of the Twentieth Century that we could not have had, had not great thinkers such as Einstein and Picasso had the strength to expose the world to their art.