What's the difference?aMUSEd wrote:I thought it was pretty obvious actually. You are the one wanting to apply criteria and standards relevent to scientific discourse to artistic experimentation. I am the one saying they are not the same thing - that they may have some similarities in terms of trying to understand the world around us but very diferent methods.RTaylor wrote:How's that?aMUSEd wrote:It's not me that's confusing the two.RTaylor wrote: Why do you seem to confuse the two?
Experimentation isn't the same as exploration at all. I think artists dealing with experimentation should at least try to deal with something undealt with in order for their experiments to be valid. If they don't... they're just doing something that's already been done. In other words... what's the point of doing an experiment if you already know the answer?Maybe there is a problem here with the term "experimentation" - to an extent the term exploration or exploratory may be relevent. For example one problem with the thread question as posed is that it assumes that such "experimentation" needs to be "bleeding edge" or "new" in some way. If we use the concept of exploration then maybe it's possible to see that to explore new terrotory doesn't require that it is you making the first steps but that you could also be going quite legitimately into territory others have begun to chart. The universe of musical and artistic discourse is vast and largely uncharted - we are all fellow explorers in that sense but there is room for people who want to stick to fairly familiar routes as well as those who want to explore less well charted areas.
Exploration isn't really creative. It's sort of like fractals... you're basically an observer. You can influence the results to some extent and you can experiment. That's not the same as simply selecting a rectangle and hitting the zoom button.
Simple exploration may be the reason some experimental stuff seems so pointless. It's someone just looking around rather than creating. {"Here's a snapshot for all the folk back in Kansas."}
I don't disagree with you at all on that last point. Sticking to well traveled routes isn't experimentation though. Personally, I prefer "the road less traveled".
What does that have to do with the above?This whole question is a bit like asking someone to explain a joke - if you don't get it it's not going to be any funnier once it's explained - its like Munch when he was asked about what his paintings "meant" (fairly conventional remember by todays standards) - his response was something like "if could put it into words I wouldn't have painted it". I feel the same way about music and painting - if I could explain clearly enough what I am expressing in words I wouldn't need to make music or paint. They are difference types of discourse.
