Audience

If it isn't clear, my intended audience for this blog is you. Yes, you.

A Test of Faith

Rene Magritte, 1928-1929, The Treachery of Images.

I don't recall my dreams very often nor do I think much about religion. But recently things have been a little different.

In early May, I had a dream that began rather abruptly. I was driving off a cliff into a gorge. I remember going over the edge, the car falling out from under me as it traced a slightly different arc in space. I was able to grab the steering wheel just before impact, just as a storm of images assembled itself like cobblestones beneath the tires. The car righted itself and my free-fall turned quickly into a climb up the opposite wall of the gorge. Pictures paved the way. Each image full of faces and places I had never seen before.

Several days later I dreamed that I was shuffling through the prints I had chosen for my graduate exhibition. In the blink of an eye they became oily to the touch and the inks that had once described the things I photographed began to move across the pages. I picked up one of my favorite prints for closer inspection, lifting it by the top-left corner. The image slid in a series of eddy-filled streams off the sheet onto the floor. There was nothing left to see but paper and a puddle of ink.

In my mind, the two dreams capture the essential characteristics of imagery. On one hand, images have utility. They allow us to be transported or transformed, to imagine possibilities. They focus attention and sensation. On the other hand, images are little more than arrangements of materials. They are subject to the forces of nature and will inevitably become dusty, scratched, or faded.

Because of this tension between imaginative possibility and banal physicality every image invokes a test of faith. Do I believe in transubstantiation, here and now? Can this thing escape the limits of its own body and become something divine? Gods and Devils both have something to say about it and recently their whispers have been turning into screams.

An Open Letter to Google #2

Dear Google,

If I weren't around to suggest it, do you think you would ever pair that picture I sent you with this one?



I worry you might not, even though they do belong together. See.





Concerned,

Justin Schuetz

An Open Letter to Google #1

Dear Google,

I am writing to thank you for reading this, even if nobody else does. OK, maybe you aren't reading it right now but at least you have it stashed away under your bed or in the lower left drawer of your desk, ready to pull out at a moment's notice. Either way, it makes me feel good that you think it worth keeping.

Best wishes,

Justin Schuetz

P.S. I have also included a picture that I took the other day. Some trees outside my window at Friday Harbor Labs in Washington. I thought you might like it.

Science and Art-Part II

(A response to my father's letter)

Dad,

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you with a response. Your email was full of good questions but none of them are very easy for me to answer. The short answer to the big question of how science and art can interact with each other in a meaningful way is: "I am still figuring that out, and probably will be for a while".

The key areas of overlap that I see are related to process. Maybe surprisingly, both fields typically involve identifying a "problem" or question, extensive experimentation or structured observation, and critique by peers.

The differences between the fields can be pretty vast, however. The most significant for me surrounds the fundamental issue of representation: scientists are obliged to generate representations, or models of the world, that capture some aspect of its reality; artists are not at all obliged to do so, though some choose to try.

The result of that difference is that the products of science (i.e. models of the world) can be evaluated according to how well they explain observations. The models can be right or wrong, or right in a specific context, but not in all contexts. (As you know, the source of the hormones that induce egg development in starfish can be identified for one species but that does not mean it is the same for all species.)

The products of artistic endeavor are not subject to that same sort of evaluation unless they make specific claims about reality. Typically, it doesn't mean anything to say a piece of art is right or wrong. But works of art can engage the sensibilities of viewers more or less convincingly, and ask them to consider the values, priorities, or perceptions that structure their life. Georges Braque was not right or wrong to paint "cubist" structures but it did influence how people considered the nature of space and perception.

With respect to my work, yes, number, sequence, and characteristics of the images were all really important. In the process of making a final edit for the show it was amazing to me how switching the order or identity of just one or two images changed everything quite dramatically. Apparently small things do matter.

And, yes, I struggle with how much I want to explain the imagery. I realize it may not be immediately accessible and I think it is actually a hard group of pictures to negotiate but it becomes something else altogether, and less alive in my opinion, if it has too many words trying to define it.

You mentioned at one point during the weekend that it was like a puzzle. That is exactly right. I want people to look and to think. I want people to feel some underlying structure in the images but maybe not quite be able to define it. Isn't that part of the sensation that scientists feel when approaching a new study site or study organism? Isn't that part of the allure? Maybe I am just trying to replicate it in a way. That approach seemed more provocative to me than producing images that have a single "answer".

The work is not to everyone's taste. I know that for sure. But I think it has been born, somewhat uniquely, from my backgrounds in science and art. I am not sure if any of this helps, but I hope so.

Love,

J