Stewart Dickson 23115 Bluebird Drive Calabasas, CA 91302 USA (818)223-9117 (tel.) (818)223-8986 (FAX) dickson@mathart.com
I believe that the rigor of passion, which motivates human action, is as philosophically valid as scientific rigor. I inhabit cyberspace because of its historical legacy of human interaction governed by a mutually accepted logical universe of discourse. We build experimental, prototype worlds in cyberspace. Once these are proven of value, we have the opportunity to build the physical replicas of these social worlds in Actual Reality.
I have faith in the collective consciousness of cyberspace. I subscribe to the notion of Internet Pronoia*. I would like to be able to prove that it works.
The art market is driven by egos and personalities which may mask the value of the work, itself. The market is also driven by the elusive aesthetic tastes of the viewer, "for which there is no accounting." The indisputable value of Art is that it supports human impulses which may seem to contradict logic.
Goedel's theorem on the essential incompleteness of a formal system has as its corollary that a higher-level meta-universe must be constructed in order to understand the apparent self-contradiction of an incomplete universe. I believe that human passion can be understood in these terms.
Art, as a concrete, philosophical language, begins with the way the world is, and pushes the viewer toward a world which ought to be. This is my definition of the philosophy of aesthetics.
The artist is a researcher in the philosophy of aesthetics. His value is no less than a scientific researcher or a technologist. Indeed he can be all these things. Art gives the artist the freedom to speculate, which scientists may not have. A scientist must have a body of physical evidence sufficient to at least establish his speculation as a working hypothesis.
An artist's working hypothesis need only be supported by an intuitive notion of fact from the point of view of the collective social consciousness.
A good deal of my current work centers on the following question: What lies beyond the frontier of our knowledge? It there a top-level meta-universe? It is God - by any name one might wish to choose. The proof of this statement is shown throughout human history. It is the spiritual search for God which ultimately drives all scientific and artistic endeavor. It is the moment of Enlightenment which I seek. It is the spiritual content of this search which makes my art valuable. In my estimation, mathematics and the Tantras strive equally for the same goal. They had the same roots.
Art is permitted to push far beyond the knowledge of that which is accepted fact. This makes the ground upon which the artist treads much less stable than where the scientist is. But it is precisely this condition that gives art its value.
I seek the sponsorship and support to pursue work, whose form might not resemble anything shown in the accompanying material, but using methods refined from those presented here.