Art and Technology

Abstract

Art has as many meanings as contexts in which it operates. It can mean surface decoration or the integral sum of parts and whole which a historian analyzes as structure using visual, musical, theatrical or other criteria. Art serves as decoration, but also serves to signal or sign a particular meaning. Art often confers an elite social status on its patrons or provides goods which support the power and prestige of a special group or person. Art is also used to describe the experience of viewers, usually as “aesthetic experience”; for instance, we experience art as beauty, as a shared emotional experience or empathetic understanding, or as interactive play or a process of performance by which we investigate or relate ideas, occurrences, or objects and give them meaning.Technology, in contrast, is usually defined as “praxis” and involves doing things, as a craft practice involving materials selection and refinement, followed by making those materials into useful things, artifacts, or objects which serve useful functions for individuals, a social group, class, or culture. The products of technology can be useful as tools that enable a task to be accomplished, or as products which satisfy subsistence needs, or devices, or even practical ideas. When put to use, they enable travel, communication, transportation of goods, or control of energy. But technology has another meaning which is often thought to be less useful, namely technical marvels—things which amaze or surprise us. Some examples are the mechanical automatons of the 17th and 18th centuries, the latest computer game, a special way of hearing or seeing, or even the gas and light spewing magic machines described as being used in Greek temples to get peoples' attention. Another example is the technology described by the 11th century monk Theophilus, used to equip a church, from bells and censors, to glass windows and painted walls. In these examples, doing technology or learning to use technological marvels is a way of almost magically extending our own power and understanding beyond ourselves.