The Space of Creativity:

Hypermediating the Beautiful and the Sublime

_____________

A Dissertation Submitted to the

Division of Media and Communications

of the European Graduate School

in Candidacy for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

______

By John Toth

September 2005

ABSTRACT

The Space of Creativity:

Hypermediating the Beautiful and the Sublime

John Toth, September, 2005

This thesis will consider the creative process of the arts as a life method that awakens an awareness that develops thinking, aesthetic inquiry, creative activity and heuristic reflection of the beautiful and the sublime. The argument of this thesis situates lifelong learning as a creative approach (endorsed by Ramon Cortines) to fulfillment that wages battle with conformity, conventionalization and politicization (Margaret Spellings and NCLB) at the expense of emancipation. What does it mean to be a lifelong learner who contributes as a citizen in the year 2005? The argument for this question will consider the space of the sublime as the place of learning.

This thesis begins with two leaders in the field of education who comment on the current role of education in the United States, Ramon Cortines and Margaret Spellings. Central to this argument is an examination of the disparate views between leaders in the field of education that pit logic against imagination and creativity and of the differing views held by various philosophers, thinkers and educators throughout history as to the objective of education and the means by which we achieve knowledge. Martin Heidegger suggests the need to understand the historical past and remove any decisiveness from the subject. Plato contends that education is about lifelong learning as citizens who contribute to their world. Creation myths are considered as the framework for our contemporary understanding of the creative process of learning. Kant posits that the way we reach creative understanding is through the analytic and synthetic judgment, both of the beautiful and the sublime. Schirmacher stresses the importance of the thesis - antithesis approach to knowledge.

The way we communicate is first an act of choosing our own medium of expression, be it words, facial expression, body language, image making, dance, logic or thinking in virtual reality. This chapter moves from Plato’s notion of medium as substance to Dewey’s understanding of medium as an agent of artistic expression. Merleau-Ponty suggests that we are in a relationship with medium that IS our world. While aesthetics refers to the beautiful to most people the sublime introduces abject media and unconventional methods which open new possibilities for conceptualizing media into knowledge. The electronic apparatus opens new ways of learning through hypermedia that suggests a shift from the age of literacy to the age of electracy.

This investigation will pursue a philosophical orientation of the creative space and its relationship to the process of lifelong learning. Education systems should prepare individuals to creatively choose their own path towards fulfillment. A decision to act toward one's own fulfillment is what Badiou calls a superposition of a “fiction of knowing” and a “fiction of art.” Assessment as a proving ground for educational success pits philosophy against ideology. Ronell speaks of the impossibility of “excellence” through the test, while Schirmacher says that freedom of failure is what makes art possible. However, Agamben describes the opposite effect when artificial ideals emerge in a “state of exemption,” that arises when a political system thrives in an unending “state of emergency.” Badiou’s remedy suggests a fidelity to an event as one’s own ethical assessment. Aesthetics opens a space for learning through the arts by bridging imagination and reason. The argument concludes with Derrida, Walter and Ulmer considering a rethinking of the Greek concept of "chora" as the creative space of learning.

Appendix

Dissertation Project

- Light & Shadow: The Pan American Exposition 1901-2001. Dissertation Project, Video installation with 45:00 min. DVD. 3 video projectors. 3-D virtual reality.

Table of Contents

0. Introduction: Starting from a Void 7

1. Creative Process 13

· Education: Creativity and Knowledge 13

· Question Strategies: Maps of Approximation 18

· Creativity & Symbolic Language: Transforming the Medium of Earth 21

· The Myth about Creation: Creativity and Reason 24

· Cura’s Creative Orientation 26

· Creativity & Imagination: Kant’s Analytic and Synthetic Judgment 29

· Play: Creativity in the Arts 30

· Creativity in Science and Technology: Invention 34

· The Camera: Scientific and Creative Process 36

· Another Side of Creativity: Antithesis 37

· Abject Creativity 39

· The Re-Created Body as Art 40

· Politics and Creative Learning 43

· Defining a History of Creativity 47

2. Media: From Raw Material to Medium to Media to Virtual Reality 50

· Medium 50

· Medium that is Present: Tangible and Intangible Objects 52

· Generating and Assessing Media 57

· Medium Becomes Aesthetic Media 58

· Choosing a Medium to Live In 61

· Vital Interest of Medium 63

· Transactional Agency of Media 64

· Merleau-Ponty: A Relation With Self In the World 66

· The Sublime: Art Media as Doubt 69

· Abject Media: 73

· Electronic Media Across Modalities 76

· Hypermedia as Apparatus: Media Literacy 78

· Hypermediating the Image 80

· Artificial Media: Cinema 83

· Defining the Medium of Hypermedia 85

3. The Spacing of Creativity 87

· Creating the Space for Living 87

· Learning as a Fiction of Knowing 90

· Creating a Political System of Learning 92

· Developmental Methods for Modalities 94

· Assessing the Gold Standard 96

· Weapons of Mass Deception 99

· The Test Drives the Method 101

· The Dubious Duplex 104

· Constructing a Fidelity to an Event 107

· A Language for What Has Yet to Come 109

· The Art of Active Reflection 109

· Imaginations Method: The Beautiful and the Sublime 110

· The Method of Situated Place 113

· Virtual Politics: The World Wide Web 117

· Testing the Fidelity of the Event: Aesthetic Reflection and the Sublime 118

4. Conclusions 122

· The Unknown: Hypermediating the Sublime 122

· Questioning Questions. 123

· The Creative Space: The Haptic Joining of Terms 125

· The Sublime: Letting Beauty Fail 127

· Abject Materials 128

· Choosing a Medium to Live In 128

· Media that Communicates: Going Underground 130

· Education as a Minimalist Work of Art 131

· Assessment: Pedagogy of Doubt 134

· Fidelity Based Living 134

· Hypermedia Exposition 135

5. Bibliography 137

Appendix 146

6. Media and Communication Project: Light & Shadow 146

· Project Objective 146

· Exposition as a Method for Discovery 146

Inquiry 149

The Space of Creativity:

Hypermediating the Beautiful and the Sublime

0: Introduction: Starting from a Void

This thesis will consider the creative process of the arts as a life method that awakens an awareness of our world which induces philosophic thinking, aesthetic inquiry, creative activity and heuristic reflection of the beautiful and the sublime. The argument is towards rethinking the place of the sublime in aesthetics as having a vital role in the philosophy of learning through the arts.

Aesthetics can be thought of as an awareness of something beyond sense and reason that describes the boundary of learning. A beautiful sunset or the horrors of 9/11 are examples of the kind of range that expresses the sublime[1]. The arts as an aesthetic process offer an approach to learning that allows a playful way to explore learning actively. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten[2] first coined the term aesthetics but it was Friedrich Schiller[3] who described aesthetics as the condition where sense and reason are active at the same time causing a mid disposition where the psyche is free to explore without constraints. Aesthetic character for Schiller was free from compulsions while being compliant to laws; openness, but not anarchy. Aesthetics for Schiller allows an individual to educate his or her whole self: health, understanding, morality and taste. Aesthetics can then be said to open the possibility of an ethical self-assessment that poeticizes lifelong learning.

Immanuel Kant further builds on aesthetic theory considering reflection of the beautiful and the sublime[4]. The question must be asked: how does the creative space of the arts, through one's understanding of the reflection of the beautiful and the sublime, become a conducive ground for engaging the senses to make decisions that construct ideas that can be synthesized into knowledge?

How we think about the space of learning should include creative exploration and acting on choices that model the freedom that all citizens share. Action and aesthetic reflection of the beautiful and sublime allow experience to embrace the limits and the limitlessness of our own creative self in a search for fulfillment. How we embark on this journey of self creation follows a process that is both open to possibilities and, conversely, framed by demands that make up daily living in a post modern world. Learning to understand contradiction is as important as learning facts. Dealing with contradiction is understood within the first few moments of being born: with our first cry, we learn how to breathe and for the next two decades we are schooled, educated, trained and formed into citizens.

For Plato the goal of learning was to produce an informed citizen who debated meaningful issues of the day, using the method of rhetoric. Plato’s method of dialogue and disputation of life was a process of resolving differences through thinking, problem solving and thoughtful argument. Plato first defined the word citizen to describe a freeman of Greece who was educated in the methods of becoming an ethical contributor to their utopian society. While the postmodern condition has resolutely attacked any possibility of a utopia, it has also restricted learning goals through the systemizing of education methods and ideologies that limit the objective of learning to excelling at tests.

The argument of this thesis situates lifelong learning as an approach to fulfillment that wages battle with conformity, conventionalization and politicization at the expense of emancipation. The philosophy that leads an individual to be a lifelong learner who contributes, finds in aesthetics a condition that lacks external judgment thereby opening a space for free experimentation. This also describes aesthetic education as a model for learning. (See research appendices; Partnering: Theory and Practice; Curating Art: Lessons for the Classroom Teacher as Curator).

Aesthetic education has around since the 1970’s and Lincoln Center Institute’s pioneering work in aesthetic education had from its beginning the guiding philosophy of Maxine Greene whose theory traces itself through John Dewey, Immanuel Kant, Paolo Friere and Ivan Illych. Greene suggests that what aesthetic theory provokes in the classroom is engaged perceivers acting on behalf of their own choices in determining outcomes[5]. The implicit social justice evoked by the above philosophers establishes learning as a process of emancipation; Dewey presents art as one’s own experience, Kant presents aesthetic critique and ethical self-judgment, Freiere teaches the oppressed compasinos to read and recognize their plight and Illych exposes the negative agenda of curriculum as an instrument of conformity. The implication of aesthetic education is that learning is in the hands of the student. Other early progressive education programs like Montessori, the Lincoln School at Teacher College, A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School, and the Waldorf School had philosophies that considered the education of the whole, integrated life. While many progressive schools have a place for the arts in student learning, aesthetic education places the arts at the center of learning through the creative process that is led by aesthetic judgment. How does aesthetic decision open a space for learning?

The first chapter of this thesis begins with two leaders in the field of education who comment on the current role of education in the United States. Their comments about education can be compared to Plato who contends that education is about lifelong learning as citizens who contribute to their world by generating something new. Another objective of this chapter is to consider an historical perspective on the creative process and its role in generating the world we call humanity. This thesis will consider the role of the arts as an integral foundation to acquiring literacy, critical thinking and a sense of fulfillment. Also, the arts go further by opening a creative space for an awareness that speaks to Plato’s idea of constructing lifelong learning.

Creativity as an individual and public event is expressed in Chapter One as an active process. In Chapter Two a new question must be addressed as to the substance of knowledge that is communicated: what is the significance of medium in the creative choice of expression? Heidegger, Kant, Merleau-Ponty, Dewey and Ulmer frame a perspective of medium in the creative process that shifts from literacy to electracy. Electronic networks of hypermedia, such as, the Internet, e-mail, RSS feeds, blogs, instant messaging, satellite broadcasts and public forums require new ways of thinking about what makes communication medium. How do electronic technologies enable creative thinking, heuristic activity and aesthetic reflection?

In Chapter Three the notion of the creative space of learning is considered through education systems that shape and determine how most people feel and think about knowledge. What contributes to a creative space of learning that fulfills life learning? Where is the creative space of the twenty-first century learner? The need to understand multiple learning methods that reach a world citizenship requires a look at modes of communication that have changed since the advent of the electronic age. The topology of this new global communication cannot be understood by words alone and demands a rethinking of the methods that communicate the potential of this new electronic medium with its icons and hyperlinks. A philosophy for this innocence of becoming requires a space for creativity as the subject of aesthetic reflection of the beautiful and sublime. While the current state of aesthetic education addresses the aesthetic reflection of the beautiful it is the aesthetic reflection of the sublime that exposes the limits of conventional knowledge and opens a creative space for learning.

Media Project: Light & Shadow

This thesis also includes an Intermedia artwork titled Light & Shadow which creates the space for a hypermedia exposition. The task of this project was to infuse philosophy into the artistic, curatorial, musical, educational, historical and personal aspects of the artwork. Not as a limit but as another way of making new associations. Walter Benjamin’s concept in his Passagen-Werk was to rethink history through a presentation of ”dialectic images” that change our interpretation of history. Alain Badiou’s definition of philosophy suggests we construct a ”fiction of knowing” and a superposition of a “fiction of art.” This hypermedia installation uses images from the Pan American Exposition of 1901 as a fiction of knowing (a socio-historical exposition portrayed through the diary of a young girl who traveled to Buffalo in 1901 from Saegertown, Pennsylvania) and a superposition of a fiction of art (the diary of an artist’s journey to Buffalo from Chester, New York in 2001). Badiou suggests that a void is opened in the gap between these fictionings where truth is seized. As such an experiment begins to awaken the possibility of noticing the space that opens between historical events and an individual’s place in the present as the creative space of learning. An intermedia performance allows perceivers to experience words, images, icons, sounds and animations as an environment of individual meanings orchestrated into networks of different points of view, all available for inquiry: knowledge is actively experienced as hypermedia rather than a linear reading of a text.

An educational component to this project meant partnering as a Teaching Artist with four school districts in Buffalo which also created artworks that related to the theme of the anniversary of the Pan American Exposition of 1901. Each school district chose one class with students participating in art, technology, photography, painting and sculpture. Students were asked to make an artwork that represents their generation’s contribution to the world. The students created their own curatorial staff that organized a “Youth Pavilion“ art show that was presented alongside Light & Shadow at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

1: Creative Process

Education: Creativity and Knowledge

“Let me show in an image how far our nature is educated or uneducated…”

Plato, The Republic

How nations educate their young has a direct association to the openness or narrow mindedness of the people of that nation. However, better teaching may not be the answer; something else emerges when we start thinking about learning rather than teaching. Learning through the arts opens a space for creativity that is conducive to understanding the beautiful and the sublime of education?

In the January 2005 edition of Education Update,[6] Ramon Cortines, chancellor of New York City schools from 1993 to 1995[7] was interviewed by Pola Rosen. When asked what his goals for the school districts were his response was, “Education is about creating a community of contributing citizens.” Cortines describes his teaching method as an investigation into the inner lives of his students: finding out what they are good at and calling attention to the value of a student’s response. This education practice is considered to be student-centered because it relies on a student’s own motivation for learning. Cortines calls himself a co-learner and suggests a variety of methods that provide individualized instruction through an interactive process that opens students to a larger community, and to “the joy and spirit of the community.” Cortines continues “– all those things come through the arts.” He also identifies the obstacles to achieving these goals. Cortines contends there are numerous programs and standards that are suppose to address learning objectives, but teachers have very little time to work together at linking objectives across disciplines. Consequently there are few people who know how to connect the dots between the complexities these programs address. He suggests that it is critical for teachers to be able to have an understanding across disciplines to see that “math is literacy.” That is, numbers are a language that allows us to become mathematically or logically literate. Cortines states that the other obstacles for teachers today are the heavy demands of meeting the requirements of “getting the test scores up.”[8]

When Margaret Spellings was sworn in to her new post as secretary of education in January of 2005 she repeated the mandates of the Bush administration’s education reform law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The law demands yearly tests to track progress in reading and math as measured by test scores. If students do not pass the tests they are left behind to repeat the grade level the following year. Schools that fall short of these mandates are penalized by cuts in funding. Spellings says “When you [President Bush] signed the No Child Left Behind law three year ago, it was more than an act - it was an attitude. An attitude that says it’s right to measure our children’s progress from year to year.”[9] Spelling’s means of assessing this goal is the test. The method of the NCLB law is defined as learning through the rigor of scientific logic. For teachers this law means lesson plans are restricted to meeting these new standards and in many schools the bulk of learning time is devoted to preparing students for math and literacy tests. The demand on students to past these tests begins at eight years of age and this practice is extended through high school. Schools are asked to assign only teachers who are trained in the field of study for each subject under study. Put simply, tests are consuming the space for learning.

Both of these education theories share a common goal of preparing children for a future world. The mandate of NCLB certainly suggests a desire that every student move on to success. Cortines’ “community of contributing citizens” not only expresses a desire for a learning community, but also for students to become contributing citizens. However in some significant ways the two educational theories are also conflicting. Cortines’ theory starts with the needs and desires of a student as the entry into learning and Spellings’ theory starts with a desired outcome that is method driven. In other words, one theory is student centered while the other is curriculum centered: the former theory trains students to think independently; the latter trains students to follow the rules. Clearly there is a dilemma in deciding the process of education. While the test is easy to quantify, what does it reveal about understanding and application to life? What kind of future does the test prepare someone for? How do the arts address a holistic method for student learning? Cortines is quite clear when he states that the arts are a good means of realizing these goals. He goes on to say that social and cultural issues are important in developing young citizens and play an important role in his education goals which address the whole child, not just the intellect. How does someone assess the interdisciplinary learning that comes through the arts? Cortines admits that assessment of this creative process is lacking because teachers have not learned to make connections that link multiple disciplines. Spellings’ NCLB mandate demands higher math and language scores and little attention goes to the arts. Einstein once said, “it is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” What can a teacher do to awaken the joy of learning?

Perhaps Plato can shed some light on the contradictions in the world of contemporary education. What comes to mind in Cortines’ comments about “a community of contributing citizens” is its relation to Plato’s notion of developing citizens. Plato’s The Republic is said to be the first example of education method and frames our own contemporary educational and democratic process. Plato constructs an image of the ideal state in which freedom, justice, knowledge, imagination and education co-exist. What is the task of education and what is the measure of its success? Plato states that the first responsibility of leaders of the ideal state is to focus on education, not only for the young, but also for everyone, as learning does not end in childhood but continues through life. It is Plato who first imagined a higher level of learning through the arts and sciences.[10] In Plato’s time art and science (ars sciens) was not independent, but fused theoretically. For example a sculptor needed to know how to produce bronze to make a casting of his created form.[11] A question might consider how the arts can be used in such a way as to restore the unity between logic and expressive medium: thinking in paint or math literacy.

How does creativity open a space for awareness and action that presents unexpected encounters with self and the world? What is the appropriate method of creating good citizens? Plato is considered by many to be one of the greatest teachers throughout history. As a student of Socrates, Plato uses his mentor's question strategies[12] to get at the heart of knowledge along with argumentation and demonstration called rhetoric. At the time of Plato the distinction between the creative process of the arts and the logic of science was fused within the term ars scientia (art science). Plato’s method moves his dialogues forward through the art of careful questioning he calls the Socratic Method. Plato masterfully weaves questions that draw out specific details and considerations that synthesize understanding into knowledge. However, later in his life, Plato began to develop his own theory of “idea” or “forms”[13] and his method of delivery shifts to a more logical critical philosophical examination or exposition. What we see here are two important techniques in Plato’s method. First, questions form the basis for a dialogue between him and a small group of students. This dialogue is kept going by further questions[14] that are directed towards reason and intelligible understanding. Second, once Plato creates his own theory, his method of teaching is transformed to a style of exposition through a self-critical examination or dialectic.

How can philosophy guide the construction of an education method that considers thinking and knowledge acquisition across intelligence domains that foster reason and imagination? In the words of Plato, “seeing” is one of life’s greatest assets. “The sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered.”[15] Plato gives homage to the relationship between seeing and knowledge:

But now the sight of day and night and the months, and the revolution of the years, have created number, and have given us a conception of time, and the power of enquiring about the nature of the universe; from this source we have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to mortal man.[16]

The source of our knowledge is that we notice the things in our world. The intuition of our noticing he suggests gives rise to our reason that constructs knowledge.

Plato says that seeing gives rise to language; noticing the revolution of years gives rise to numbers or math/logic and inquiry about the universe gives rise to science. Plato also presents the notion that the method of seeing is not accidental but led by inquiry. It is noteworthy that Plato presents the sense of seeing as a vital link to the creation of language as communication. Noticing is a kind of seeing over time that discovers logical patterns, relationships and systems. Noticing occurs when seeing becomes transactional seeing, which happens over time. For Plato questioning the nature of the universe imparts scientific knowledge.[17] Plato’s process reveals a method for creativity where noticing and thinking are a give and take experience that leads to a productive understanding of the world. Plato suggests there are multiple intelligences and learning modalities at play in this understanding which is made possible by noticing. From the earliest examples of Greek philosophy we find a method for knowledge based on observations or empirical knowledge which gives rise to analysis or logical knowledge. And we can finally deduce first causes.

The Socratic Method that Plato engages in is more in line with Cortines’ process of a student centered approach to learning that encourages students to become contributing citizens. By contrast, Spellings’ NCLB method is driven towards passing the test or following instructions.

Question Strategies: Maps of Approximation[18]

Martin Heidegger suggests that a question must be able to understand itself as being of its own historical past. To start with a question on creativity it is necessary to consider the history of the subjects within this subject: creativity, invention, art, self, media, philosophy, interdisciplinarity, method and communication.[19] The outcome of these questions will suggest a mapping or network of ideas that approximates an understanding of the idea of a creative learning space.

What kind of question strategy would isolate the critical categories that reveal what it takes to create a self that is both oriented to the possibility of imagination (arts and sciences) and the necessity of reason (mathematical and linguistic) in the pursuit of fostering citizens who contribute?

Heidegger contends that the nature of question strategies and the historical past of this subject matter should “stake out the positive possibilities of the tradition” that this question explores and at the same time uncover the negative side of the idea under study through a “destruction [that] does not relate itself towards the past: its criticism is aimed at 'today' and at the prevalent way of treating the history about an ontology.”[20]

A first question should consider the history of the subject of creativity through a timeline that may reveal periods in history where creativity and invention occur. This question on creativity should be addressed to interdisciplinarity where evidence can be seen through multiple disciplines and systems of beliefs from cultures around the world. This timeline will allow us to locate the positive aspects of creativity across disciplines as we consider the development of a contemporary definition of creativity. In science a positive outcome of creativity is seen in the invention of new technologies. The camera and optical sensors create eyes into areas of nature that were unimagined a century earlier: sonar, radar, laser and optics. In art the invention of the camera opens new possibilities in visual ways of communicating: film, movies and digital imaging. In communications a global network opened through invention and discovery: radio, telephone, TV, teleconferencing and the Internet.

Heidegger suggests that the negative side of the results of this creativity should be uncovered as it influences our current history. Heidegger maintains “in principle, we carry out this destruction only with regard to stages of that history which are in principle decisive.”[21] So a question on creativity would certainly need to shift focus to a variety of situations that are decisive and influence creativity. Good social programs, like the GI Bill, equal opportunity and human rights programs opened the door to higher education without the decisive training that was mandated during the Cold War that only funded education programs that contributed to the war effort. It is this framing of knowledge that narrows the way in which we view our world. It is only this predetermined framing by politics, religion and culture in the present that must be removed so that openness can allow for a new understanding of the subject at hand. Documentary filmmaker Joan Grossman explores history by suggesting, “one thing I have examined in my work was the way in which history continues to arrive always open to reinterpretation, never fixed in the past.”[22]

Furthermore, Heidegger requires that our question consider the temporality of our being in the present: “Entities are grasped in their Being as presence.” [23] This means that entities are understood with regard to a definite point in time--the present. Lastly, Heidegger states that the nature of this question should have a relationship to the method of investigation, i.e. a phenomenological investigation. Heidegger continues, “Thus phenomenology means to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way it shows itself from itself.”[24] By removing the decisive we can truly notice what is there. This is a call for a method that favors an ethical logic as opposed to a moral judgment or a judgment of taste.

Wolfgang Schirmacher, in his article Homo Generator: Media and Postmodern Technology contends, ” Revealing deconstructs, opens up, tears the fabric of the known.”[25] Heidegger suggests that truth is not about being right or wrong but about accepting “aletheia,” the powerful interplay of revealing and concealing, that shapes humanity’s destiny.”[26] Heidegger defines the concealing as the undiscovered, the buried, the disguised, or the accidental concepts that must be “drawn from the primordial sources.”[27] The desire to understand requires a disposition that is open to contrad