[ExI] Art and myth as systems thinking of a sort/was Re:systems thinking

[Natasha Vita-More]

Emlyn wrote in response to Dan:
 
"I totally disagree that any of this stuff relates to systems thinking.
You could stretch and say that various types of art could help stimulate
novel system-related ideas, but as part of the actual system design /
modeling / understanding process, no. Also, I'm sure elements of system
thinking help stimulate the artistic process. But they are separate things."

I have to disagree.  Dan was correct.  Art and systems thinking share many
common aspects.  It seems that you are trying to categorize art as a single
thing, when art is an ever-changing process of exploration, imagination,
invention and which builds upon the gestalt of systems networks and in
returns supplies variables/agents into the system.  

Systems thinking includes the STEEP categories plus - (social,
technological, economic, environmental, political, etc.) and art is about
STEEP in making socio-political references through whatever format art takes
- be it literary, filmic, pictorial, interactive, immersive, virtual, etc.
Art is all about systems because it approaches its own field from the
perspective of the complexity of social networks.

One area which expands on this is aesthetic theory.  Even going back to the
narrow-focus of aesthetics in the Ancient times, beauty and truth-seeking
were based on how art interprets the world and formulates objects of art
based on such formulations.  After much revisiting of aesthetics by Hume,
Kant, Nietzsche, Beardsley, Dewey, Deleuze, aesthetics became the
realization of perceptions and functionality.  Today the field of aesthetics
is focused on "information aesthetics" through HCI and other digital
protocols and which frames the relationship of human to computer to
information.  While the interface is a system, the "information" is about
systems thinking on an individual basis and the relationship of the
individual the environment, in all its complexity.  

Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More