Honors 1360
– Complexity and the Arts
This course explores the interplay between physical and biological
systems and the realm of the arts. As with any human endeavor, art emerges from
a social milieu that includes the creatorÕs and the observerÕs education,
belief systems, cultural immersion, political commitments, and so on. What a
work of art ÒmeansÓ to the artist and what it ÒmeansÓ to the observer clearly
depend to a considerable extent on social factors. But esthetic response is
also very much a biophysical phenomenon—shaped by how sense organs detect
energy and by how information is processed in the central nervous system and
the brain. The biophysical mechanisms associated with esthetic response result
from eons of evolution occurring on an ordinary planet orbiting an ordinary
star in an otherwise vast, cold, dark universe. This course argues that a full
appreciation of the role of art and music in human culture requires at least some
recognition of the irreducible influence of the physical universe on the realm
of esthetics. In Complexity and the Arts we will explore the physics and
physiology of sound and light. We will think some about observation and
reality. And we will look at how the tools of complexity science can be applied
to making new art(s) and, perhaps, to how they can help us understand why we
Òdig rock and roll music.Ó
Power point files
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painting done by a robot?