Sensing Meaning

Writing last time about experimenting in art and why it rattles conservative perspectives drew me towards a broader realization.

Remove the notion of experimentation into a broader context and apply principles of scientific method. The scientific method works like this: You form a hypothesis, you test that hypothesis, you publish the results. In other words, you come up with some possibly crazy notion, you start experimenting to see how that notion plays out, then you throw it out there so somebody else can react to it.

And this method is the antithesis of so-called ‘intelligent design’, perhaps the most profoundly reactive and intrusive form of conservative authoritarianism and a topic which drives me right out of my water.

With intelligent design the experiment is rigged – only previously accepted constructs are applied. You don’t break new ground, you simply firm up the ground beneath established structures. Mind you, it’s not creationism I’m objecting to necessarily, so long as it is a matter of faith. Faith I get. Faith is internal. I deeply hold there are things going on in the universe beyond human comprehension.

If I may paraphrase the scientist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (hopefully not badly), one might break human thought into science, politics, and faith. Under faith, a person can believe anything they want. Anything at all. But as soon as it’s brought into the political or the scientific now that person is trying to impose their views on me, and it is no longer an issue of faith but of religious dogma.

For me, adherents of intelligent design lack faith in their beliefs, and find it necessary to reinforce those beliefs by codifying them into pseudoscience with an intent of forcing others to go along with it. It’s the science of stupid.

Religion is a great comfort to many, and, again, as a matter of faith I completely respect that. When it becomes dogma, well … it’s the smile on a doll.

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This work is more digital composition than photo art because it combines multiple photographic captures with digital elements. There are a number of subliminal influences going on – I’ll be anxious to hear your interpretations.