Reinhold Bertlmann - The aesthetic dimension of physics

Aesthetics as a sensual perception plays an important role in the construction of a
physical theory and is not considered to be in contrast to mathematical rationalism.
On the basis of quantum theory the aesthetic dimension of physics will be
demonstrated. In particular, it will be shown how the quantum states of modern
quantum information, the entangled states of the observers Alice and Bob, can be
illustrated in an abstract space which exhibits an amazingly simple and elegant
geometry.

This presentation deals with the aesthetics and affects of Deleuze’s control society. Surveillance cameras and far reaching biopolitical technologies are all processed through multiple screens. Contemporary audio-visual culture addresses these issues of the control society frequently and explicitly in films and television series such as Enemy of the State (Tony Scott, 1998), Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom, 2003) and The Last Enemy (BBC, 2007). While the political implications of control, safety and loss of freedom raised by these films and series are very important to address in order to create a critical conceptual framework for developing these aspects of the control society, I will look at the aesthetic and affective implications of contemporary control society.

By analyzing and comparing two contemporary surveillance films, Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006) and A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2007) I will address the implications of a “multiple screen aesthetics.” Ranging from raw realist aesthetics in Red Road to “hyperrealist rotoscope” aesthetics in A Scanner Darkly the screen is “multipresent” in quantities and qualities with various effects. The affective implications of surveillance technology will be addressed by relating Deleuze’s concepts of affect to the latest findings in neuroscience on affect and emotion. Through a transdisciplinary approach of ‘fear’ that is expressed in the above mentioned films I will map a diagram of paradoxical feelings, emotions and affects that move between positions behind and in front of the surveilling camera eye.

My artistic production is structured in the form of projects, which I realize in cooperation with specialists in other knowledge fields. Till Up to 2000 I dealt with issues within the field of biosciences, in particular with the analysis and the transformation of basic organizational structures and their implications. In the projects and collaborations that followed, I considered the role of the computer with and its possibilities and limitations in relation to the acquisition and the transformation of the real. These studies lead to a research in the fields of physics and theoretical mathematics.
My latest project, Stop Counting, a cooperation with the theoretical Physicist Dr. Thoralf Chrobok, deals in particular with the field of topology, in which geometrical relationships are defined outside of the Cartesian coordinate system. Concepts such as frontier, neighbohood, interior, path and open set become crucial for handling bodies in space. An artistic production in the form of sketches, objects and installations runs parallel to theoretical work in the form of workshops and platforms.
http://www.t-c-pollmann.de/
www.stopcounting.de

In my contribution, I would like to discuss three distinct, though interrelated, questions: 1. What is beauty in the first place? Is it a property in the objects or something that exists exclusively “in the eye of the beholder”? 2. Is it possible to create beauty? If yes, what kind of activity is this? 3. What is the relation between beauty on the one hand and sensation and feeling on the other?
It shall be pointed out that it is indeed possible to conceive of beauty as a property in the objects, although as a particular kind of property, namely as a relational and dispositional property which is dependent on other properties. Beauty is created by the creators of beautiful things and complexes of thought, in particular by artists. This process of creation (which will be considered in some detail) is (just as the process of reception) closely related to sensations and feelings, but not in the way that the work of art is simply a means to transmit the private sensations and feelings of the artists to the recipients.

In times of astonishing scientific and technological achievements it becomes most evident how extraordinary human brains are. Despite the immense effort done in the last decades we are still far from understanding how such complex structure manages to orchestrate all aspects of our lives. However, recently developed research techniques provide us for the first time with a window to the functioning brain while performing a variety of complex cognitive tasks. The fruits of behaviourism and cognitive research can now be matched to neural firing and brain activity patterns, allowing for the study of the mind at its biological source. A vast amount of information is continuously delivered by our senses to our central nervous system; the brain interprets the environment not only based on this sensory information, but also integrating stored knowledge and previous experience to actually construct a world of our own. At the same time, this subjective interpretation of the physical world is driven by a set of evolutionary-shaped universal principles that are common to individuals from a determined socio-ethical context. Most artistic forms exploit this process to the maximum by providing us with a wealth of sensory information that emotionally appeals to our own memories and experiences to assemble an aesthetic percept that goes beyond the physical sensory stimulation. The brain is the organ of the mind, our personal interpreter of the world and the biological substrate of emotions and feelings. In this talk, I will introduce some basic concepts from cognitive neuroscience and will try to instigate discussion by presenting some demonstrations on how low level perceptive integration can also influence higher psychological processes.

Ausgehend von einer Szene seiner interaktiven Oper "Heptameron" erläutert der Komponist, wie in seinen Arbeiten interaktive Netzwerke auf verschiedenen Ebenen, vom abstrakten mathematischen Modell, über Partitursynthese, bis hin zu Ausdrucksgesten und direkten interaktiven Steuerungen, - der MusikerInnen untereinander wie in der Kommunikation mit live-elektronischen Interfaces (Sensoren, etc.) -, den "Körper" des Werkes ausformen. Dieses Zusammenspiel der Ebenen wird vom Komponisten als "Realtime-Score" definiert.
Wesentlich ist dabei das Konzept des Situativen, das Schaffen von Situationen, die durch die Art der Interaktionen charakterisiert sind: nicht das Fixieren eines endgültigen Werkzustandes ist das Ziel, sondern das Ermöglichen der Realisierung immer wieder neuer Versionen. Im Falle von "Heptameron" betrifft dies sowohl die Gesamtform der Aufführung, als auch die inneren Abläufe der einzelnen "Szenen", die teilweise in mehreren Versionen während einer Aufführung zu erleben sind und zum Vergleich einladen.
Die Hoffnung ist dabei, dass durch das Schaffen der Situations-Charaktere auch eine Art strukturelle Emotionalität entsteht, der Umriss einer relational definierten Gefühlsästhetik.

The dualistic opposition between the natural and the artificial has been with us since antiquity. In recent times definitions of the boundary has have thus become more complex and less definable.
Current scientific research opens up unexpected horizons at the levels of observation as well as at the level of sensory and symbolic perception of the world. We are able to observe the extremes of scale. Time and space have been regauged, making us experience unusual dimensions. The individual experience augmented through the development of machines transposes the other, the collective, into an artificial elsewhere. The biological body with its prostheses (bio- and non) makes us imaginary subjects of immortality, cloning, auto-nomy and individual unsolvability in a history made of past, present and future.

Under the conditions of postmodernity, the future becomes immediately past, and this causes a disorientation, anxiety and discomfort. Time is the present, the instant. This immanence causes the dismantling and the implosion of the subject her- or himself. Progress becomes demystified, seperated from its definative meaning and becomes happening (Vattimo). Traditions don´t speak to us anymore: only science mantains a roots in the real, however, this is difficult to grasp because of the extreme specialization and the continuous acceleration in of the production of knowledge.

This situation opens up the problem of humanity fearing what she herself has created, of the obscure fear of a technique revolting against, or subordinating the human. The problem is not whether or not to accept the cyborg, but if whether the cyborg can be asserted as a self determining subject i.e. is compatible with the rights and duties of a democratic society.
Moreover, one has to accept the confrontation between ethics and technique, because, when the first is activated , the second has already passed beyond the limit of interrogation. Gehlen states that the humanity who sought to be freed by technique is today imprisoned by it and morality is reduced to the desperate role of having to constantly hinder the efficacious, the realizable, the functional. According to this author, the loneliness that the individual must deal with, projects his/her attention towards the „periferic territories of existence“ where perhaps, the image is going to be a better communication tool than the word, by then already inadequate.