MAIN | CALENDAR | ART | ART/SCIENCE CONFERENCES | LITERARY | SCREENINGS | PERFORMANCE
MAIN | CALENDAR | ART | ART/SCIENCE CONFERENCES | LITERARY | SCREENINGS | PERFORMANCE
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PROGRAMS FOR THOUGHTProgram director: |
| Ghost of Man Thinking, (1996) Neil Grayson |
ABOUT
Our public program series features the work of humanities scholars who are applying research in the sciences to the study of the arts. Dactyl Foundation's programming mission (guiding its art exhibitions, readings, film screenings, and lectures) is "to develop an aesthetic that is informed by science, history, and philosophy and that takes into consideration both the intellectual and intuitive responses to art." Dactyl Foundation currently offers partial support (in the form of small cash awards, travel to conferences, and a think tank environment) for several scholars. We provide researchers with the opportunity to invite scientists and artists working in relevant fields to visit Dactyl Foundation in order to consult or collaborate. The results of these meetings are presented to the public in the form of exhibitions, readings, and talks. Each presentation investigates an aesthetic concept in terms of natural/physical processes (e.g., the relationship between metaphor and cognitive processes, the emergence of intentionality as a result of nonlinear processes, the influence of theories of causality in defining literary trends etc.).
CONFERENCES
New York Art Science Festival
20th Annual Conference for the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan, & Eric Schneider.
287 Speakers
November 9-12, 2006
Poetics-Cognitive Science Colloquy
John Ashbery, Angus Fletcher, Walter J. Freeman, Rebecca Goldstein & Steven Pinker
35 speakers
September 16-18, 2005
RESEARCH SUPPORT Small cash awards for travel to conferences are available to qualified scholars. Recent projects supported include:
Sharon Lattig, neuroscience and poetics 2002-05
Lisa Zunshine, cognitive science and narrative 2005
David Herman, cognitive science and narrative 2005
WRITING AWARDS
Dactyl Foundation offers a $1,000 award for essays on literary theory, aesthetics, or poetics, which are grounded in science. The award is given periodically only when a suitable recipient is found. Awards are determined by the board. We are no longer accepting unsolicited entries. (The award amount was formerly $3,000 1997-2001)
2005 Award Recipients: Walter J. Freeman and Jennifer Ruth Hosek, "Osmetic Ontogenesis, or Olfaction Becomes You: The Neurodynamic, Intentional Self and Its Affinities with the Foucaultian/Butlerian Subject," Configurations 9 (2001): 509-541. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for Literature and Science. The authors will present at Dactyl Foundation's Poetics-CogSci Colloquy in September 2005. Walter J. Freeman, UC Berkeley, is a Professor of the Graduate School in Biophysics, Graduate Group in Bioengineering. See The Freeman Laboratory for Nonlinear Neurodynamics . Jennifer Ruth Hosek is a Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley in December 2004, for a dissertation entitled: Cuba and the Germans: A Cultural History of an Infatuation. In addition to work in cultural, gender, postcolonial and film studies, Jennifer is interested in representations of selfhood in scientific and literary texts.
2001 Award Recipient: Dominick LaCapra, "Trauma, Absence, Loss," in Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr, 2000) In his essay, "Trauma, Absence, Loss," Dominick LaCapra shows a sensitive understanding of the subtleties of deconstructive technique, and then, without refuting any of its claims, he advances the next intellectual step that takes us beyond postmodernism and into a more productive future. Trauma, explains LaCapra, is an extreme condition, and its victims are often unable to make any progress toward recovery. Traumatic events seem to deal with metaphysical concerns, such as the realization that some formerly recognized truth is an illusion or that there exists no essential ground for a perfect understanding of reality. The situation is hopeless if the victim wishes to return to a condition of na?e faith. Thus, when deconstruction is applied to idealistic narratives, it uncovers "aporia, paradox, or impasse." Some of the best postmodern art forms, argues LaCapra, have convincingly illustrated this situation by reenacting, without working through, the discovery that an ideal is an illusion. According to LaCapra, Waiting for Godot is an example of a deconstructive point of view because it does not pretend that the absent ideal is a real historical loss, somehow to be regained. Appropriately then, he adds, "nothing" happens in Beckett's play. The action takes place within a sustained meaningless traumatic present. The parodic repetition of the same day does not differ so much as defer; no historical progress can ever be made. Godot never existed, and nothing will ever change this circumstance. Waiting, without hope, is all one can do. LaCapra deals mainly with representations of the Shoah and the way it has been misconceived as an anti-pastoral like Waiting for Godot. Although the Shoah is one of the most tragic events in human history, the issues it forced us to examine are not, as Adorno has implied, of a metaphysical nature. The losses sustained in the Shoah are situated on a historical level and are the consequences of particular events. LaCapra suggests that it is possible to work through these losses. The objective is not to reinstate idealism, but to deal practically with real historical loss. He also suggests that an absence can be worked through too, if "only in the sense that one may learn better to live with it and not convert it into a loss." LaCapra's analysis offers a constructive approach to what seemed like an insurmountable problem. As he writes, "It is important not to hypostatize particular historical losses or lacks and present them as mere instantiations of some inevitable absence or constitutive feature of existence. ... [P]rejudice (such as anti-Semitism, racism, or homophobia) can be engaged ethically and politically only when they are specified in terms of their precise, historically differentiated incidence." Read Press Release
2000 Award Recipient: Angus Fletcher, on John Ashbery's "Middle" Poetry, lecture delivered at Dactyl Foundation April 5, 2000. More info. Copies of an essay derived from the lecture, "Long Amazing Unprecedented Way," in murmur Vol ii (New York: Donc Alors, 2000) can be obtained for $10 by writing to essay@dactyl.org
1998 Award Recipient: Wai Chee Dimock "A Theory of Resonance." The essay, which appeared in the October 1997 issue of PMLA, offers the concept of "noise" as a provocative analogy for interpretive contexts. Unlike many other writers on the same topic, Dimock makes the claim that noise is positive, "a necessary feature of a reader's meaning-making process. And even as it impinges on texts, even as it reverberates through them, it thickens their tonality, multiples their hearable echoes, makes them significant in unexpected ways" (1063). Understanding a reception theory such as Professor Dimock's is prerequisite to understanding of a theory of "phenomenal patterns," the topic suggested for the Dactyl competition. Dimock's theory of literary resonance is enhanced by her example of experiments with the phenomenon of stochastic resonance, "in which a weak signal is boosted by background noise and becomes newly and complexly audible" (1063).
It becomes clear in her essay that interpretation is actually an effort to deny the existence of noise. Certainly if the attitude toward noise is one of wonder, as Dimock suggests it can be, then the listener is not perceiving simply noise, but, in his/her mind, a signal. The noisier the pattern of that signal, the more wonderful the decoding will be.1997 Award Recipient: Steven Vincent "Listening to Pop." In his essay, Vincent demonstrates how the lesson of Claes Oldenburg's work is distorted as it is reinterpreted today. According to the argument, representational art has reinforced the illusion of a knowable, static reality, while at the same time it has always explicitly deconstructed that illusion by its very nature of being artificial. Pop Art attempted to apply this lesson at large, showing how everyday objects should be seen as signs trying to establish an eternal logos. An important lesson indeed. But one that has backfired. As Vincent argues, these everyday objects have come to re-present themselves as signifiers of a signified, reversing Pop Art's intention. They now "represent" the Mythology of the era in which they were produced. Vincent captures the eeriness involved in such a reinterpretation and reminds us how deeply invested the human race is in its will to believe. Copies of the essay can be obtained for $7 by writing to essay@dactyl.org. Note: Steven Vincent was murdered in Iraq in 2006 for questioning political practices in a NYTimes Letter to the Editor.
LECTURE SERIES / PANELS: A forum for discussion about the arts, sciences, philosophy, history, literary theory, aesthetic theory and the science of image. Facilities include an exhibition space for art and screening room for film/video and slides. Previous programs have included:
Fri, Oct 12, 7-9
Dorion Sagan, Notes from the Holocene: A Brief History of the Future, Reading /Signing
In a thought-provoking, humorous, and engaging style, Dorion Sagan, the eldest son of Carl Sagan and evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, combines philosophy, science, an understanding of illusion, and the fantastical writings of Philip K. Dick to probe the deep questions of existence. Operating on the precept that the universe if far weirder than we might imagine, Sagan provides fresh insights into the nature of technology, the prognosis for humanity, and the living, the living nature of our planet, and a reasoned explanation to why our universe is probably just one of an infinite number. Notes from the Holocene is a prime example of the writing coming from a new generation of scientific writers. It will inspire readers to think for themselves while leaving them chuckling with tongue-in-cheek anecdotes -- a rare combination that Sagan delivers with ease. And yes, as geneticist J.B.S. Haldane says, "the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine." www.sciencewriters.org
Thursday April 15, 2004
Dactyl celebrates the release of
A New Theory for American Poetry:
Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination by
Angus Fletcher (Harvard University Press)
wine and hors d'oeuvres 6 p.m.
presentation 7 p.m.
Friday, October 24, 2003 Society for Literature and Science 17th Annual Conference Austin, TX October 23-26, 2003 The Status of Emergence Roundtables Victoria Alexander (organizer/chair), Katherine Hayles, John Johnston, and Eve Keller.
Friday, November 8th, 2002 2-4 pm panel discussion on new ways of interrogating dichotomies in the sciences Hosted at CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5409, by the 20th Century Group & Dactyl Foundation.
Panelists: Susan Oyama (Philosophy of Biology), Victoria N. Alexander (Narrative Theory), and Sharon Lattig (Poetics).
November 10, 2001
"Nabokov, Evolution, and Insect Mimicry"
a public lecture by Victoria Alexander
Public Lecture: "The Poet, The Critic, & The Interpreter: A Crash Course"
Angus Fletcher is the author of books on allegory, prophecy, court
masque and the philosophy of literature; he specializes in the theory of
literature and the symbolic connections between literature and the other
arts.
Panel Discussion: April 4--6, 2000
sponsored by
In history, chaos is anarchy, mutability, disorder, chance, indeterminacy, flux, non-linearity, entropy,
This event is part of the Dactyl Foundation Retrodiction Project.
John Ashbery is author of numerous poetry collections, including Flow Chart, Hotel Lautréamont, Some Trees, The Tennis Court Oath, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and System. He is recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Robert Frost Medal, Poetry Society of America, Gold Medal for Poetry, American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Chancellor, Academy of American Poets, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
Jim Crutchfield is a physicist and Research Professor at Santa Fe Institute. One of the original investigators of "deterministic chaos," Crutchfield studies pattern and complexity in nature, focusing on the processes by which we perceive regularity and distinguish it from disorder. He is also involved in the arts. He recently helped found the Art and Science Laboratory
in Santa Fe and lectures on aesthetics and complexity in conjunction with the Santa Fe Art Institute. He was the scientific advisor on the San Francisco Exploratorium's exhibition series "Turbulent Landscapes" in which artists were
commissioned to create interactive sculptures from natural complex and chaotic systems. Turbulent Landscapes is currently touring the nation's science museums. Angus Fletcher, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at English at the Graduate School and Lehman College, CUNY, is a leading authority on allegory, Edmund Spenser, the literature of nature, and postmodernisms. His published works include: Allegory: Theory of a Symbolic Mode; The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser and Colors of Mind. Joan Richardson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School, CUNY, and Executive Officer of the Ph.D. program in English. She specializes in American Literature and the Philosophy of Science. She is co-editor (with Frank Kermode) of the Library of America Wallace Stevens edition and author of the definitive Wallace Stevens biography. October 29,1998: Panel Discussion:"Science and Art." Moderated by Victoria N. Alexander. The new sciences have made us realize the degree to which chance is both a principle of continuity as well as discontinuity. Regularity and structure do not necessarily bespeak the tyranny of some a priori principle. Order can evolve over time by chance operations being played out against a ground of accumulated structures. Unfortunately, much of the art today eschews the kind of complexity we find everywhere else around us. Dactyl Foundation has organized this panel in order to provide a forum for discussing the advances in science that insist that we take another long hard look at our aesthetic principles. The panel includes art reviewers who are also artists themselves, as well as poets/artists who have a science background. Tom Breidenbach is a regular contributor to Artforum and a poet whose most recent work is entitled The Fit Debut. Mark Cohen is a New York City-based art critic and sculptor. He is a regular contributor to Review magazine and Art New England. He is currently co-authoring, with Friedrich Ulfers, a book on Friedrich Nietzsche and twentieth- century theoretical physics. Jonathan Goodman writes for Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, and World Art. He formerly worked at Scientific American. His first collection poetry, Metropolitan Rooms, was published in 1994. Sharon Lattig is pursuing her doctorate in English at Graduate School at City University New York. She is currently conducting research on the relationship of Science to Wallace Stevens' poetry. Her own poetry has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Murmur, Whatever. Sharon is curator of the Dactyl Foundation Poetry Series. April 23, 1998 Lecture: Stephen Jay Gould and the Antioch Review, with an introduction by Robert S. Fogarty. Gould teaches biology, geology and the history of science at Harvard University, where he has been on the faculty since1967. Well known for his popular scientific writings, in particular his monthly column in Natural History magazine, he is the author of thirteen books, including: Ever Since Darwin; Evolution & Extinction : Eassys; Full House : The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin; Human Evolution; Mismeasure of Man; Ontogeny and Phylogeny; and Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. "The history of life is not necessarily progressive; it is certainly not predictable. History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points." -Stephen J. Gould. April 30, 1998 Panel Discussion:"The Interpreters: Shaping American Art." Moderated by Steven Vincent, Wall Street Journal, Art & Auction. DACTYL asked five writers: Do your essays and reviews reveal or conceal your process of interpretation? As interpreter you shape the way art is perceived: as a self-evident sign or image; as a mysterious code that requires a professional interpretation; or as an "inkblot" in which one may find any meaning one likes. In your opinion, what is the best approach for engaging or creating a serious art audience? Over forty art professionals attended the discussion. Here are some quotes from the panelists: Carter Ratcliff, whose books include: The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Andy Warohl, John Singer Sargent, Pat Steir: Paintings, and Robert Longo, and is a regular contributor to Art International, Art in America, Artforum, Art & Auction, ARTnews, remarked, "The first responsibility of the art writer is simply to keep track of things. The larger purpose is speculation, a specialized kind of mind-reading." Said Rosie Schaap, French NY News, Unmuzzled Ox, "When I was young I faced Abstract Expressionist art with the excitement of not knowing how it worked. I was filled with wonder, but this doesn't move me any longer. Meaning doesn't matter to me the way it once did. These days I'm against interpretation." Sarah Schmerler, ARTnews, Time Out, argued that "Providing multiple readings is a way of inviting the viewer/reader to contribute her own reading." Grady T. Turner , Curator of Education New-York Historical Society, ARTnews, Flash Art, Art in America, ironically noted, "It is necessary to translate the art object into a language that Art History will understand." And Alexi Worth, ARTnews, Art New England, Slate pointed out that "Because the image is immediately available people get a false sense that they understand." 64 Grand Street New York, NY 10013
212-219-2344 info@dactyl.org
& Wednesday, April 5th, 6pm
Angus Fletcher, CUNY
on Spenser's "Mutability Cantos"
and the poetry of John Ashbery
Pfizer Corporation
Herbert Lee Grayson Foundation
John Ashbery, Bard College
poetry reading
Jim Crutchfield, Santa Fe Institute
on the physics of chaos
Joan Richardson, CUNY
on science & poetry
&Angus Fletcher, CUNY
respondent
irrational thought, creativity, destructive emotion and the primal source of all that is.