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Multidisciplinary Art A polymath (Greek polymathēs, πολυμαθής, "having learned much") is a person whose expertise fills a significant number of subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable. Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as a "Renaissance man" and is one of the most recognizable polymaths. The term "Renaissance man" is used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. The idea developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72): that “a man can do all things if he will.” It embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism which considered man empowered, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. The idea of a universal education was pivotal to achieving polymath ability, hence the word University was used to describe a seat of learning. At this time Universities did not specialize in specific areas, but rather trained their students in a broad array of science, philosophy and theology. This universal education, as such, gave them a grounding from which they could continue into apprenticeship to a Master of a specific field. Since it is extremely difficult to acquire knowledge, and be proficient in several fields at the level of an expert, the word polymath or more often "Renaissance man", may also be used, ironically, with a potentially negative connotation as well. Under this connotation, by sacrificing depth for breadth, the "Renaissance man" becomes a "jack of all trades, master of none". For many specialists, in the context of today's hyperspecialization, the ideal of a Renaissance man is judged to be an anachronism. However a new trend fostered by the need to deal with complexity and the computer environment calls for generalists who can organize a steep learning curve to execute projects. This need for generalists with a broad base of reference in multiple disciplines defines the new "Techno-Age Polymath." Spherical Thinking The hermeneutic circle refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle. It stresses that the meaning of a text must be found within its cultural, historical, and literary context. Heidegger (1927) developed the concept of the Hermeneutic Circle to envision a whole in terms of a reality that was situated in the detailed experience of everyday existence by an individual (the parts). So understanding was developed on the basis of "fore-structures" of understanding, that allow external phenomena to be interpreted or in a preliminary way. Gadamer (1975) developed this concept, leading to what is recognized as a break with previous hermeneutic traditions. But while Heidegger saw the hermeneutic process as cycles of self-reference that situated our understanding in a priori prejudices, Gadamer reconceptualized the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence. My reference to spherical thinking is a conceptual metaphor to indicate that a process of organizing perception in the age of mega data requires filters similar to the Mercator projection. For other thinkers, the fact of demonstration as a method to define certain words, clearly is evidence of a degree of shared experience among all humans. For example, anyone can point to the sun, as it exists, and then name it any sound, symbol, or word that represents or literally points to that actual being, the sun. There might be some disagreement about what the sun is exactly, but there is agreement that it exists, and that to a human on Earth it looks like the drawings and pictures we see of it. Therefore, some concepts and ideas are universal. Multidisciplinary Knowledge Assimilation The process of gathering storing and cataloging knowledge for reference and retrieval is primary to the successful Multidisciplinary. Art by it's nature crosses boundaries of language, intuition, symbolic representation, and forms of expression. Cross-referencing information within the disciplines of the artist's library enables the artist swift identification and localization of relevant information. Art is unique in the continuing balance of universal experience based evidence, "We see the sun.", "We see the art work." and the literature of collected information. At the most basic level, a primitive artist may have little intellectual knowledge of art or their process. A multidisciplinary artist by contrast is obliged to consider ontology, historical precedence, schools and periods. Handling complexity and conceptual order governs the macro-micro zoom between disciplines. As contemporary art may require both generalist and task specific expertise, the Multidisciplinary platform provides a strong vantage point. Part of the Multidisciplinary voyage in creating art includes the disintegration of structure, chaos, discovery of form within apparent chaos, re-framing macro parameters and redefining relationships between localized values and the totality. Kazimierz Dąbrowski describes a theoretical framework which views psychological tension and anxiety as necessary for growth. The distinction between normal creative practice which may include a similar referencing system and the multidisciplinary practice is the volume of complexity and interdisciplinary cross pollination. Basically the Multidisciplinary Art practice includes a mapping system to negotiate greater intersecting field forms which produce apparent chaos. | ||