In a conversation with Lincoln last week he made a statement that really changed my perspective on the work I have been creating this class, and I wanted to share it with all of you. While reviewing my work, Lincoln commented that I have a tendency to make an artistic statement and then immediately attempt to explain it. He was able to improve the quality of my work not through revising it but by simply deleting these explanations and allowing it to stand on its own.
I found this process fascinating because I was subconsciously adding in all of this clarification when it really wasn't necessary. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense why I had developed this habit. Because of our field of study, we are constantly asked to explain ourselves. Not just in the technical sense of showing our work and supporting our conclusions, but even in our everyday interactions. Relative asks what about what you are doing in school? You are going to have to explain yourself. Classmate wants to know how your control system works? You are going to have to explain yourself. We're even constantly told that we need to learn how to communicate so we can explain our ideas to others, free of technical jargon and unnecessary detail.
But think about how great it would be if, just sometimes, we didn't have to explain ourselves. This is an airplane, and it will fly because I say so. I have no supporting calculations, no CAD drawings, all I have is an airplane. That is what we have the opportunity to do in this class. I encourage you all to take more risks as we finish the third cognitive fusion and zine, and don't feel the need to explain yourself. A page that has an upside down poem in green font? Sure. A completely illegible page of jumbled text? Sure. No one ever asked Pollock why he put his canvas on the floor. No one asked Ansel Adams why he only shot in black and white. No one asked Hendrix why he played his guitar upside down. Follow in their footsteps and don't explain yourself to anyone.
Sam thank you for sharing this! I agree that as STEM students we are oftentimes expected to explain every minute detail. To add on to that, I think we are asked to explain ourselves so thoroughly because people not involved in science and technology simply don't have the same background and experience, which creates a disconnect. It is our job to help fill that chasm to promote unity. My go-to example of this in my own life happens when I explain what I'm studying to people outside of Mines. When I tell them I'm majoring in metallurgical & materials engineering, I'm often greeted back with blank stares or furrowed eyebrows. To combat that, I started adding on a "dumbed down"explanation: "it basically means I like chemistry and one day I'll make the materials other engineers will make bridges out of." After the explanation, their confusion turns into ahh-ha moments, and sometimes people even look at me like I just put the stars into the sky myself because "it just makes so much more sense when you say it like that!"
ReplyDeleteEvery week through McBride, we are privileged to get the opportunity to escape the explanation. We have complete freedom from feeling obligated to explain our every emotion or creative decision. Yeah, let's write upside down green poetry! After all, you're right. We don't owe anybody else an explanation as to why. But as future STEM professionals, do we have that same privilege to not explain? How can we take this idea of not sharing our explanations into our professional lives with us? Would it be enough, as engineers and scientists, to say, "Just trust me that this airplane won't crash because I was one of the engineers who designed and built it. Just trust me." As STEM professionals, how do we balance our obligation and responsibility to share our explanations while simultaneously keeping the idea of keeping these explanations personalized?
Sam, I've noticed myself struggling with the same issue. I have also noticed that the more abstract of a piece I am working on, the harder it is to resist the temptation to explain myself. A metaphor can't just be a metaphor - I want to be absolutely sure the reader will understand what I meant. I think it involves a certain aspect of letting go that we as engineers are not comfortable with. Just as we are accustomed to needing to explain ourselves, we are not familiar with situations open for interpretation.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a truthful observation about our nature as STEM people, and you are completely right, in some circumstances art should just exist for the sake of art. But I think one thing that separates good art from bad art, is when there is just enough explaining, whether through language, or visual medium, to point the viewer in the right direction. A completely abstract painting of cubes in the middle of nowhere subway tunnel c, probably won't gather much attention or make people think, but the same painting in an art gallery focusing on the notion of dimensionality and geometry in human thought, would have people musing and pretentiously swirling their wine. Its all about context. If Jimmy Hendrix hadn't been an amazing guitar player all around, striking heart chords in his listeners with each strum, no one would have cared that he played the guitar upside down. In fact, if it weren't good playing, people probably would have just remembered it as a bad experience made worse. Why couldn't he just play the guitar normally, thats not art, that was just bad. But in his case, the context was amid good music, which gave him the artistic freedom to play it upside down and people could jive with it, see it as personal expression that had meaning, demonstrated mastery of a skill, and was beautiful because of these things.
ReplyDeleteMy point is this, in your example of the airplane, the appropriateness of calculations and figures demonstrating that it wouldn't blow up are more appreciable and beautiful explanations that make it more art than "trust me, its good, it won't blow up, I designed it." In this context, the explanations are needed for others to appreciate the art at all, because peoples lives are at stake, and that comes down to a lot more than just "trust me, I'm a scientist," because as one of the core aspects of science is reproducibility and documentation. That is what makes science an art.
Art for arts sake still needs a context to have an impact on others, to communicate something, even if that impact is just that the art is meaningless, and thats its meaning. The right amount of explaining, the context, is part of what makes something art.
I get the feeling that Lincoln has had to tell a lot of us not to explain the decisions we make in our creative works, and I also have a feeling that my own tendency to unnecessarily explain things extends past this and into other areas of my life. When I decided that I wanted to go on the Hike for Help trip to Nepal, I spent days trying to rationalize to myself how the trip would benefit my future, even though me wanting to go should have been a good enough reason. While it is important to explain your reasoning behind an engineering drawing you submit to your supervisor or a proposal you give to a client, it is okay to do things for the sake of doing things sometimes. That’s definitely something I need to remember.
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