Art & Science:
Water and Rock Building the Texture of Complexity
Jônatas Manzolli

The interdisciplinary activity is by definition multi-characterized. It encompasses the most different dimensions of knowledge, the inherent aspect for the development of ideas – the complex and life nature. Each time we observe the strength with which dominions, spaces and tendencies are enlarged, we can think: How does this outstanding phenomenon occur? Where does it come from?

Just like the freezing water generates great expansion energy, the humanity knowledge, in a freezing process of the hierarchical structures, expands and creates new dimensions. The freezing water tears up the recipient containing it with such a power able to deform or even explode the recipient. This process may leave splinters, fragments that basically depend on the interaction between the expansion strength of the water and the material of the recipient. If the recipient is elastic and permeable, new configurations and new geometric forms will appear. In the case of the human knowledge, its development takes us to the dynamic construction of the architecture of knowledge, which is not necessarily functional. Many times, it appears as a structure, a sphinx to challenge us about our own nature. Just like when Leonardo da Vinci painted the enigmatic smile of Monalisa. On the other hand, if the material is rigid, avoiding the water to expand, an explosion to fragment the dominions is certain, taking everything to a new configuration. Like Copernico, when he established a new planetary order.

The interaction between the human knowledge and its spheres has this nature. The more you try to freeze it, the more it expands. The more you try to confine it, the more deformations or explosions happen.

The process of putting together Art and Science has a transforming dynamic empowered by the nature of creativity, and the strength of expansion inherent to the most different cultural, artistic and scientific manifestations, acting in a way to gather and adapt the reticulate machine of the human knowledge. In this gathering, there is plasticity and adaptation that yields situations like the "memes" that Dawkins (1) described as a form of "Universal Darwinism". In his theory, the intellectual, as well as the artistic, ideas are the results of the competition among concepts . When, in the process of cultural evolution, the individual creativity makes use of technology in order to transform the nature of a masterpiece. The diversity of these transformations questions the authorship and the individual is confronted with its digital representation. Is this a symptom of weakness of the Creative Individual? Who is the author of the masterpiece that manipulated by technological processes? Copy, fragmentation, transformation, change and reproduction develop new roles and become mechanisms of creative manifestations. The professor Pedro de Souza of the Center of Communication and Expression of the Federal University of Santa Catarina , Brazil discusses "The Authorship under the Technological Support View". Furthermore, he points out that the need for respecting the authorship has a priori fundament of two representations over which lay the unquestionable principles of its existence: the first one concerns the juridical aspects that states the author as a person responsible for an act of any nature. The author presupposed that the juridical concept of authorship encompasses " the one that creates as much as the one that pretends the masterpiece to be his using a copy of non-authorized diffusion". Than, could we consider that in the diversity of the cyberspace, in a different system of distribution, a new Creative Individual is possible? In this avalanche of information, we could say that in the virtual scheme, it is more important to know who gives the information that the content of it.

After studding African music in Gana, the compositor Steve Reich (2) , writes about Music as gradual process , describing the musical development as the act of observing, feeling and listening to the waves that slowly surround feet in the sand in the beach. Projected in an esthetical form, the music-process of Reich encompasses little gradual changes in a rhythmical subtract tracing its own trajectory. This way, the multiple variation of each musician generates, in its particular version, a pre-established sonorous pattern. This pattern promotes the final sonorousness of the masterpiece – the sonorous complex results from the interaction among each participant of the performance. A way to observe a similar process, is to look to the contemporary product of the multimedia diversity, which is able to harmoniously use a video and the reuse an existent contents in order to produce the final product. The contribution of each user leads to the expansion and creation of new contexts. The professor Nuno Correia of the New University of Lisboa and the professor Teresa Chambel of the Department of Computer Science from the College of Science of the University of Lisboa, Portugal , state the "Multimedia Integration in Enlarged and Mobile Environments in Educational and Cultural Contexts". In this article, they embrace the theory that the new tendencies derive from the intensive use of multimedia mechanisms. They bring an overview of technologies that link the presently vectors and point out a more intense and effective partnership among national and international institutions. This is an emerging scenery in which new concepts are unveiled. They describe hypermedia spaces, which use the video in multifunctional scenery and in a context of enlarged environment. The article aims to clarify the new mechanisms, that are only possible because of these new technologies in Arts, Cultural and Educational fields.

Since the last decade, concepts taken from the Biological Evolution are used as a paradigm for artistic creations. One of the first cases, was the work of Lathan (3) in his systems Mutator e Form Grow used to create tri-dimension objects in the computer . He emphasized that these methods gave him the freedom to explore and create complex forms, beyond our imagination. This search for new ways of expression also lead to the construction of interactive systems of musical composition. The same way, in "Khorwa" the compositor Mikhail Malt of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), Centre Pompidou , Paris, França, uses a Tibetan word which has different meanings in order to name his developed composition system. The word can be interpreted as spin, spin in circles, the world, a cyclical existence, the cycle of transmigration in every class of living. The author describes a well-creative proposal defined as a real time sound installation. His masterpiece is lead by the dynamic interaction of agents called "musical beings" living together with a model of artificial life. The author describes many aspects of this dynamic process and gives many sonorous examples to enrich the interaction of the reader with the masterpiece. Khorwa works with the cycles of life, like the period of birth, of reproduction and death what yield music that has no beginning or end. It is a continuous music flux.

In his book probably autobiographical book " The Meeting"(4), Fernando Sabino quotes a description of the human being trajectory as a meeting with the other. In this epigraph, he states that wisdom begins in the moment that we realize that we have nothing and will remain this way, since we have or intend to have all the world. He goes further, mentioning that in this moment, the solitude reaches our hearts as a weapon. In "NonSequitur: Sonorous-visual Collage to a meeting between Logic and Music", we can find an enigma of the same nature: the meeting of the man with rationality and the inevitable perplexity caused. The logic Walter Carnielli from the Center of Logic, Epistemology and History of Science (CLE), Institute of Philosophy and Human Science (IFCH), Unicamp, Brazil, the compositor Raul do Valle from the Interdisciplinar Nucleon of Sonorous Communication (NICS) and from the Department of Music (DM/IA), the mathematician Adolfo Maia Jr. from the Interdisciplinar Nucleon of Sonorous Communication (NICS) and of the Department of Applied Mathematics (DMA/IMECC) and the compositor Jônatas Manzolli from the Interdisciplinar Nucleon of Sonorous Communication (NICS) and of the Department of Music (DM/IA), take this search for a masterpiece including logic, music and video very seriously. "NonSequitur", described as sonorous-visual work, embodies the changeable characteristic of logical truths, discussing the fact that a total incoherence is not possible. They said that " there is always a bit of rationality, even in the most extenuate attempts of producing the absurd" . Their work is presented in the website, so that the reader can watch "NonSequitur" version in MPEG format. The text touches the esthetical views of authors who presuppose that contradictions, utopias, and absurd play an important role in the evolution of the human knowledge.

Seeking consciously thinking about Art and Science for the Volume II of Multiciência Magazine, a huge number of possibilities were opened, an innumerous form of possible relations. As editor, I firstly challenged this very selected group of authors with some inquietude and them, just like flowing river, brought me a multitude of concepts and ideas. Looking at these four works, I could detect a flow that embraces identity, authorship, cyberspace, Internet, multimedia, evolution, emerging computer, artificial life, logic, music, oximorous, paradox, incoherence and absurd. This is not an ideal sequence or a causal line to explain the organization of the ideas in the articles. However, when looking to such diversity, I was made fortunate for touching the elements of this complexity, the interchange of so many concepts, so different and rich.

Talking about the contemporary world, Debrun (5) mentions that new development of logic, in the theory of information, in the cybernetics, in physics, in chemistry, in molecular and cellular biology and in cognitive science. This development led to a reaction of the scientific and philosophic questioning concerning to the notions of order and disorder, what definitely lead to an overcome of the most traditional theoretical oppositions. Prigogine (6) says that the legacy that circumscribes democracy and the modern sciences to the same historical heritage would yield contradiction if the deterministic view of nature triumph. He points out the birth of a science for which simple and idealized situations are not enough anymore. A Science that is face to face to the complexity of the real world: "a science that has the human creativity as a unique expression of a trace that is fundamental and equal in all levels of nature".

Maybe there, in case we conceive creativity in all levels of nature, is the link that puts together the water, the knowledge and the rock. Put together Arts and Science. The capacity of absorption of energy by the water and the power of sustaining of the rock are clear. The water, restates the environment and several times unbalances it. On the other hand, the rock has the creativity to re-configuration, of re-allying and of rebuilding itself.

Notes:

(1) Richard Dawkins, R. "The Blind Watchmaker", Penguin Books, 1986.

(2) Reich, S. "Writings about Music". New York: Universal Editions, 1974.

(3) Latham, W. & Todd, S., "Evolutionary Art and Computers", Academic Press, 1992.

(4) Sabino, F. "O Encontro Marcado", São Paulo Editora Record, 1956, pg. 5.

(5) Debrun, M. "A idéia de Auto-organização". In: Auto-organização, estudos interdisciplinares, Coleção CLE, ed. Debrun M., M.E. Gonzales, O. Pessoa Jr. - Unicamp, pg 3-22.

(6) Prigogine, I. "O fim das certezas". Editora Unesp: São Paulo, trad. R. Leal Ferreira, ISBN 85-7139-131-9.

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