SCULPTURE: Sol LeWitt, Sentences on Conceptual Art

Sol LeWitt (Hartford, 1928 – New York, 2007), Costruzione cubica, 1971

1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
4. Formal art is essentially rational.
5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
24. Perception is subjective.
25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

Sol LeWitt (Hartford, 1928 – New York, 2007), Sentences on Conceptual Art,  first published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969

MATHEMATICS: Number Theory

Number theory is a vast and fascinating field of mathematics, sometimes called “higher arithmetic,” consisting of the study of the properties of whole numbers. Primes and prime factorization are especially important in number theory, as are a number of functions such as the divisor function, Riemann zeta function, and totient function. Excellent introductions to number theory may be found in Ore (1988) and Beiler (1966). The classic history on the subject (now slightly dated) is that of Dickson (2005abc).

The great difficulty in proving relatively simple results in number theory prompted no less an authority than Gauss to remark that “it is just this which gives the higher arithmetic that magical charm which has made it the favorite science of the greatest mathematicians, not to mention its inexhaustible wealth, wherein it so greatly surpasses other parts of mathematics.” Gauss, often known as the “prince of mathematics,” called mathematics the “queen of the sciences” and considered number theory the “queen of mathematics” (Beiler 1966, Goldman 1997).

Source:
Wolfram – Mathworld

PEOPLE: Alan Turing

Alan Turing:

Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time.

First published Mon Jun 3, 2002; substantive revision Mon Aug 27, 2007

Alan Turing (1912–1954) never described himself as a philosopher, but his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is one of the most frequently cited in modern philosophical literature. It gave a fresh approach to the traditional mind-body problem, by relating it to the mathematical concept of computability he himself had introduced in his 1936–7 paper “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem.” His work can be regarded as the foundation of computer science and of the artificial intelligence program.

Sources:
BBC News – Alan Turing History
Alan Turing Official – Managed by Andrew Hodges
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Alan Turing
The Telegraphy – UK