HUMANITIES OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

A Proposal for a New Course

Julianne Pixley

Minneapolis, MN

This is not, in fact, a complete proposal for a new course to be called by the above title.  The necessary proposal for administrative approval will develop over the course of the next year. This paper is an expansion of one element of such a course, the camera as twentieth century art medium, to demonstrate a method through which one might lead students to the point of informed speculation about the future.  While it is not likely that every topic treated in the course could focus on a specific artifact, all topics would have the goal of such informed speculation.

I tend to take a broad view of the humanities as the study of human activities in all of the areas which tend to distinguish human beings from other animals.  In order to study past cultures or cultural developments in most of the areas which are generally considered to be parts of the humanities, it is necessary to rely on written records, however primitive. One exception is the area of art.  Pre-literate and non-literate cultures are largely inaccessible except as their art and artifacts point out for us the paths they took. It seems appropriate, then, to arrive at a HUMANITIES OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by beginning with this most ancient of our cultural antecedents and sketching the path of its development, mapping along that path the major developments which allowed for further progress.  Since teaching units must have titles, I'll call this one "Art, From Cave to Computer--and Beyond."

This exploration of art is not meant to be an art history or art appreciation course.  The preliminary sections on art are meant to establish a key concept:  the creative urge and the urge to communicate are basic to human nature.

BACKGROUND MATERIALS

1. 1.  A survey of the development of artistic expression ought to begin with cave drawings, establishing the existence of the creative urge and the need to communicate in some of our earliest ancestors. Visual materials will be available from and at the Minneapolis Art Institute and the University of Minnesota's Anthropology Department.
2. The survey should continue with examples from the great schools of art through the centuries, selected especially to show the changes enabled by growth in knowledge and technology.  It will be useful to focus on:  the introduction and development of perspective drawing; management of light sources before about l850; suffusion of canvases with natural light made possible by the introduction of aniline dyes, flexible paint tubes, portable easels, and stretched canvas.
3. Throughout the survey of recognized "great art," a parallel study of folk art should keep in focus the activity of people everywhere in adding art to their daily lives.

MAIN FOCUS

The background material should lay a foundation for an examination of the camera:  its introduction in the nineteenth century; its development into the safe, simple, and ubiquitous "kodak"; its refinement into the computerized, programmed modern camera flexible enough to allow "idiot-proof" recording or recreational photography or highly creative artistic expression.

ACTIVITIES

1. Students will need to see and handle nineteenth century photographs and equipment.  (I am the curator of the family photographic museum, and fortunately acquainted with the owner of a good collection of antique camera equipment.  A demonstration of flash powder illumination should be a convincing illustration of technological progress.)
2. Students will become acquainted with the history of the Eastman-Kodak Company and its marketing techniques.
3. Students will make photographs in an experimental situation with several old but functional cameras side-by-side with sophisticated modern cameras, and evaluate the results.
4. Each student will check out a modern, 35-mm camera from the school's photo lab for one week. They will develop their film and print it in the lab.  A photo exhibit will include a brief resume of each photographer's previous experience with a camera.

Many questions about cameras and photography will generate discussion.  I see some key questions as:

• Who used the early cameras?
• Who used the later, simple equipment?
• Did cameras fill a need -- or create one?
• Is photography an art form?  For whom?  Under what conditions?
• A camera is expressive.  What does it say about the user?

FINAL PHASE:  SPECULATION

Students will need to see computer equipment such as I have seen at Princeton, graphic arts studios with laser production, video production facilities --whatever might be available in the area.

Questions to ponder:

• What new medium of artistic expression might be available to people in the twenty-first century?
• Will traditional media be abandoned?

I am hopeful that students will not impose the constraints of practicality or rationalism on the final phase of the work, since those constraints may have as little application in fifteen years as their most wildly creative imaginings. Besides, it is good for people to use their minds sometimes as a playground, and not always as a workshop.

Afterword

I believe that the disciplining of the mind to express thought in rational discourse is a mark of an educated person.  Depending upon the degree of reinforcement one gets for such expression, this conscious discipline can become a habit. The rational verbalization does not, however, become the mode of operation of the human mind.  We have no way of organizing or imposing discipline on the electrical currents in the brain so that the thoughts occur in the order we need for rational verbalization.

The human being who imposes no discipline on expression of thought sounds like or is a babbling idiot.  It is necessary to discard without expression the irrelevancies if one wishes to communicate a specific train of thought.  If communication is not a goal, the individual can allow the natural chaos of the mind uninterrupted flow.  However, such a personal style can also become a habit, one which effectively excludes the person from human interaction.

I believe that it is the responsibility of educators to lead students to a middle ground where they can experience the fullest enjoyment of the capacity of their minds.  Educators must exercise and illustrate the method and style of rational expression, allow students to practice it, make adjustments, and enjoy the rewards our society provides.  We must also provide demonstrations of the exercise of imagination, encourage them to practice its expression without even their own prejudice, and help them to find the rewards which are often, in our society, only intrinsic.

Ideas about the future begin from a foundation of carefully ordered rational products of human minds, and continue into uncharted territory where imagination is the guide.  If a futures course, or even a small unit such as I have sketched here, is to achieve the goals I have in mind, I must be successful in implementing the ideas in the preceding paragraph.