Restoring phronesis and practice: marketing's forgotten p's

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of marketing’s philosophical conversation over the past 120 years, focusing on the emergent meaning of the notion that marketing should become more “scientific”. Design/methodology/approach – This paper focuses on the US academic marketing literature, primarily journal articles and books published in the first half of the 20th century. Findings – The Aristotelian distinction between techné, epistemé and phronesis provides a rich basis for framing philosophical discussion in marketing, and should supplant the art-science debate and Anderson’s distinction between science1 and science2. Prior to 1959, the marketing journals provided a forum for phronesis, though this diminished as the academic marketing community largely abandoned the inductive, contextual approach in favour of a deductive, “scientific” methodology. The Ford Foundation played an important role in effecting this change. Practical implications – The paper highlights the importance of forums where practitioners can reflect on the ethical and social implications of their practices and then work to enhance these practices for the greater social good. Social implications – Questions the value of distinctions between marketing theorists and practitioners and the consequential focus of marketing journals. Originality/value – Advances the concept of phronesis in the marketing literature and distinguishes it from epistemé, which has dominated academic marketing discourse over the past 60 years.

El rol del medialab en la Educación Artística Superior pública ecuatoriana: primeras experiencias en arte, ciencia y tecnología

La educación artística universitaria pública en el Ecuador adolece de materias ligadas al estudio del espacio convergente actual entre arte, ciencia y tecnología y sus respectivas prácticas creativas. Ante esta situación, que denota cierto anquilosamiento bajo técnicas y perfiles tradicionales, son los nuevos medialabs creados en los últimos años en el contexto de las Facultades de Arte de la Universidad de Cuenca y de la Universidad Central del Ecuador (Quito), los que vienen implementando las primeras prácticas en este sentido, cubriendo así las carencias curriculares de dichas carreras en lo que a cultura digital, arte y nuevos medios se refiere. Este estudio analiza las características de estos centros y la metodología seguida para introducir el arte y las nuevas tecnologías de forma pionera en el país. 

Daniel Palacios: Technology & Handcraftsmanship

Conferencia y debate posterior con Daniel Palacios, artista multimedia de reconocida trayectoria internacional. La sesión versó sobre los modos de trabajo del artista, en los cuales el uso de las tecnologías digitales y la captación de datos mediante programas específicos forman parte esencial de los procesos de generación de diversos tipos de esculturas tanto estáticas como cinéticas. Formado en la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Daniel Palacios cuenta con Masters en “Arte y Tecnología”, “Arte en la Esfera Pública” y “Artes Visuales y Multimedia”, junto al Diploma de Estudios Avanzados en Bellas Artes. Visto en términos estrictamente formales, su trabajo se basa en maquinaria compleja y software difícilmente comprensible, y, más allá de estos aspectos técnicos, su interés reside en la relación que guarda con cuestiones extremadamente humanas y filosóficas acerca de la percepción, la memoria, el tiempo y el espacio. Lo fascinante de las obras de Palacios surge de estas imágenes y experiencias intuitivamente comprensibles, resultado de una metódica exploración del mundo, así como de la discrepancia entre la precisión técnica de su ejecución y una reproducción subjetiva de la realidad, representando las intrincadas relaciones que se dan en un determinado momento y lugar. Sus proyectos han sido presentados en museos, festivales y ferias de arte en Europa, Asia y América incluyendo CAAC, MEIAC, ZKM, NAMOC, Ars Electrónica, FILE, Science Gallery, LABoral, VOLTA y ARCO entre otros. Ha sido invitado en dos ocasiones a representar a España en la Trienal Internacional de Media Art (organizada en el Museo Nacional de Arte de China) y sus trabajos han sido producidos para colecciones privadas, instituciones tales como la Bienal de Arte y Tecnología de Noruega, y empresas de la talla de Nike Sportswear. Galardonado en numerosas ocasiones, incluyendo dos veces los premios internacionales VIDA Arte y Vida Artificial, su trabajo es ampliamente reconocido y ha sido editado en diversos libros y publicaciones especializadas como Leonardo de MIT Press o Art+Science Now del profesor Stephen Wilson (Ed. Thames & Hudson), al igual que expuesto individualmente en I+CAS, Casal Solleric, MAG y Palacio de Orive entre otros centros artísticos.

Three flying saucers

Three Flying Saucers is wall mounted set of three works which parody the iconic kitsch set of three flying ducks which inhabit the walls of many houses from the 1950’s to today. The project proposes a time in the future where contact with alien intelligent life has been established and we have finally obtained proof that Flying Saucers were real and had been visiting our world for many decades. Now these mysterious celestial forms have been adopted as the new kitsch and adorn the homes of the future.

Star drawings and intersections

Star Drawings and Intersections (an experimental installation) With the camera attached directly to my body extended exposures of stars were made. The images were therefore subject to the physicality of the body and it’s movements. They represent the act of photography as an extension of the body and the lens as a replacement or extension of the eye (by utilizing the camera the primary and initial a point of visualisation). The final images render the movements of the body (during the time of the extended exposures) and traces of starlight imparted during these enacted and involuntary movements. Presented as a large scale (horizontal life/figurative size) grid of images the audience is afforded the ability to view and compare the individual images and to consider them as an experimental form of phenomenological data. The work also aims to be considered as a representation of an embodied relationship to both the medium of photography and the sublime cosmos, which captured during these gestural performances. During the exhibition audience members are encouraged the engage with the grid of images by placing various objects, such as timber dowel rods, against the images as a way of invoking an extended connection - a physical line of sight and as an act of pointing to and delineating single moments within the continuum of the rendered exposure. These interactions are also a way of engaging both the physicality of the gallery and temporality of the exhibition as the timber rods cast shadows across the images which shift over time with the ever changing angle of the Sunlight as it enters though the circular arched windows of the gallery.

Looking at the night sky

There are two series of images in this exhibition: Series # 1: Images 4 – 9 Astronomical observatories in different countries and telescopes which have made some important discoveries in science of astronomy. These images were taken with simple primitive camera including a homemade toy camera and a Holga pinhole camera. The toy camera use a simple plastic lens and film. It produces a very softly focused and blurred image. The Holga Pinhole camera has a panoramic format and also uses film. (The pinhole camera has no lens and only a very small pinhole to lets the light into the camera to produce a simple image) For me the limited resolution of these primitive cameras invoke a sense of wonder, mystery and imagination which the ancient observers must have experienced when looking at the night sky. Series # 2: Images 1 – 3 and 9 - 14 presents individual celestial objects including, the planet Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, a comet and a Star Cluster. All these images have been re-photographed through a number of large primitive lenses. Some are hand made glass lenses and others are hollow and filled with water. These primitive lenses distort and stretch the images and represent the way in which the lens and (the telescope) have changed our vision of the cosmos. They also represent the subjectivity of the lens, something that all photographers know about - just because we see something through a lens, does not mean that all has been revealed and that what finally perceive is both a combination of what we see and what we feel inside and our imagination. The toy and pinhole camera images were made during a 5 year period starting in 2010 and up to 2015. The second series have all been made during 2015.

Artscience in practice : exploring the critical and creative potentials of transdisciplinary art and science practice using a methodological and conceptual framework of creative becoming

In response to a growing interest in art and science interactions and transdisciplinary research strategies, this research project examines the critical and conceptual affordances of ArtScience practice and outlines a new experiential methodology for practice-lead research using a framework of creative becoming. In doing so, the study contributes to the field of ArtScience and transdisciplinary practice, by providing new strategies for creative development and critical enquiry across art and science.

Art and science as creative catalysts

Science, Art and Science Art collaborations are generally presented and understood in terms of their products. We argue that the process of Science art can be a significant, even principal benefit of these collaborations, even though it may be largely invisible to anyone other than the collaborators. Hosting the Centenary of Canberra Science Art Commission at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has shown us that while Science and Art pursue orthogonal dimensions of creativity and innovation, collaborators can combine these directions to access new areas of imagination and ideas.

The Science and Art of Light

Architecture today often is praised for its tectonics, floating volumes, and sensational, gravity-defying stunts of “starchitecture.” Yet, very so often there is a building that inspires descriptions of the sublime, the experiential, and the power of light and architecture to transcend our expectations. The new Meinel Optical Sciences Research Building, designed by Phoenix-based Richärd+Bauer for the University of Arizona, Tucson, is one of these architectural rarities. Already drawing comparisons to Louis Kahn's 1965 Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, the indescribable quality of light that characterizes the best of Kahn's work also resonates in Richärd+Bauer's new building. Both an expansion and renovation of the existing College of Optical Sciences facilities, the Meinel building includes teaching and research laboratories, six floors of offices, discussion areas, conference rooms, and an auditorium. The new 47,000 square-foot cast-in-place concrete structure, wrapped on three-sides in copper-alloy panels, harmonizes with the largely brick vocabulary of the campus while reflecting the ethereal quality of the wide Arizona sky. The façade, however, is merely a prelude for what awaits inside—where light and architecture seamlessly combine to create moments of pure awe.

Music and symbolic dynamics: the science behind an art

Music signals comprise of atomic notes drawn from a musical scale. The creation of musical sequences often involves splicing the notes in a constrained way resulting in aesthetically appealing patterns. We develop an approach for music signal representation based on symbolic dynamics by translating the lexicographic rules over a musical scale to constraints on a Markov chain. This source representation is useful for machine based music synthesis, in a way, similar to a musician producing original music. In order to mathematically quantify user listening experience, we study the correlation between the max-entropic rate of a musical scale and the subjective aesthetic component. We present our analysis with examples from the south Indian classical music system.

[Book review] Colour: Art and Science

Tony Mann provides a review of the book: Trevor Lamb & Janine Bourriau (Eds.) Colour: Art and Science, 1995. (Darwin College Lectures), Cambridge University Press, 237pp. ISBN: 0521-49645-4 (hbk.) 0521-49963-1 (pbk.)