tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7206373238418288113.post7680837520201413166..comments2023-08-19T10:04:08.922+01:00Comments on Thought • Art • Representation: AmbiguityJim Hamlynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16488331333061422244noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7206373238418288113.post-44390427979936160552012-05-02T20:53:02.347+01:002012-05-02T20:53:02.347+01:00I’m not so sure Brian – I think of art, on the con...I’m not so sure Brian – I think of art, on the contrary, as something that selects from the infinite, that picks out patterns and, most of all, highlights significances (which itself is probably a form of pattern recognition). It makes sense (though much strikes as nonsense) amongst the chaos.<br /><br />I’m also not so sure that it makes sense to think of ambiguity as a property of things (if that is what you’re implying?) so much as a property of our interpretation of them – where I see ambiguity you see clarity (or at least you see less ambiguity, as our earlier discussion regarding Derrida seemed to suggest).<br /><br />But yes ambiguity is clearly ambiguous – even if it is oxymoronic to say so!Jim Hamlynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16488331333061422244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7206373238418288113.post-32834883082131252062012-05-02T17:03:53.877+01:002012-05-02T17:03:53.877+01:00Ambiguity, it would seem then, is itself ambiguous...Ambiguity, it would seem then, is itself ambiguous. Perhaps life is full of ambiguity, and art responds to this. The law strives to be clear precisely because it accepts this feature of lived life, and tries to deal with it through reason and common sense. Spontaneity and ambiguity are related in some way, perhaps through chance? Art accepts this and uses of it to open up infinite possibilities.<br /><br />[thanks for your email, Jim, which I will answer soon]Briannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7206373238418288113.post-19896760139592756382012-04-18T17:34:49.850+01:002012-04-18T17:34:49.850+01:00Yes getting embroiled in thinking at the wrong poi...Yes getting embroiled in thinking at the wrong point in the process can be a disaster. It reminds me of that famous philosophical analogy of the donkey caught between two identical bales of hay and who starves through indecision over which to eat first. If meaningful ambiguity can't be engineered then the worst thing you can do is to try to engineer it ahead of time. Best just to act through accumulated experience and expertise (to improvise) and reflect about the consequences later.Jim Hamlynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16488331333061422244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7206373238418288113.post-76782668967590555232012-04-18T14:09:30.418+01:002012-04-18T14:09:30.418+01:00Blimey, this is a whole banquet for thought. I'...Blimey, this is a whole banquet for thought. I've been thinking about ambiguity ever since I started this recent painting life (ie the last couple of years). And only today I wrote a post about the effects of removing one kind of chance (watery fractals) and tentatively trying out another (emergent variation and experimentation in the conscioulsy placed acrylic mark - at least I would like to think so!). <br /><br />I would need to watch that I didn't start to think about this too much, because I could get myself in a real tizzy about whether or not I was just being vague etc. For me, it seems to work to not interrogate all this with my endlessly pinickity mind, which has the capability of destroying the very thing it's interested in. But what a treat to read your post.Tamsinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10005849693688143703noreply@blogger.com