In this week’s reading on “Revisiting the Foundations of Network Analysis” by Carter T. Butts, he explores the idea of a Network as a system and explains examples through different uses of it. He elaborated on the complexities of the system and gave specific defining factors of the network: nodes and edges. Through models, he explains diverse scenarios of using a network system and how it can be translated or affected across data. I appreciate the details of the reading, but a lot of it seems very technical which made it complicated to understand. The reading made me consider in what beneficial ways you can use a network and how it can be merged with art.
This week’s other reading on “Systems Esthetics”, by Jack Burnham was interesting and confusing. His writing style seems very unique because of his radical artistic language and the overuse of complex vocabulary which made it difficult to understand some of his points. “He had investigated the effects of science and technology on the sculpture of this century, and saw a dramatic contrast between the handling of the place-oriented object sculpture and the extreme mobility of Systems sculpture”. He does make an interesting point about what we prioritize in traditional art forms than what we tend to accomplish with products of contemporary concepts. Also, he explains the ways in which art has broken the conventional norms and how that has influenced a trend. The “major paradigm” explains a scientific conception of the natural order so pervasive and intellectually powerful that it dominates all ensuring scientific discovery; this theory had me thinking a lot of conceptual material that expands past the meaning of art, but this case science. He furthers his point about art that separates itself from the material entity and into the interaction between comprehensive humans in an environment. I believe thinking about art on this existential level can offer power thoughts, but I have a hard time getting past the realistic means of it. Considering this information made me contemplate an environment where art can live in a new territory that could only be perceived by art, similar to how technology functions in a separate space/ realm.