Media design

Reading Ars Memoria

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Media Design

PURPOSE OF "ARS MEMORIA"

Artur Matuck, Iowa city, 1977

"Ars Memoria" can only be understood within the framework of art. It represents an experience in media language, and like all of my recent works is subtitled "Medium Art", which is an art concept that I have been developing. The general idea here is to produce an art whose main concern is with the role of the media in our society.

I have been trying to correlate in a dynamic way, art theory and production, each piece resulting of a theoretical idea. However the final product sometimes reflect and sometimes do not reflect the original idea.

I accept that the production process is an integrate part of a work of art. Therefore I consider that I can be as free as in the beginning in any part of this process. I have learned that it is in the production process that I have my mind more stimulated, more challenged.

Because what I do is art, my works have an exploratory nature, which means that they stress experimentation in ideas and also in the language in which these ideas are transmitted.

I consider that new ideas are enough to cause a shock, mainly if they challenge a whole set of established thought. If, besides that, the work puts into discussion the language used and the medium, the possibility of a misunderstanding is higher.

Any real experimentation in human communication takes the risk to be rejected or misunderstood. This is so because any experimentation, that eventually could lean to human advancement, must deny a whole body of established beliefs. We cannot really advance our thought if we don't have a flexible attitude in relation to our established beliefs.

Anyone who have been eating meat all his life and that now receive the message that men should not kill animals, will tend to reject this idea simply because the idea challenges a part of his identity.

However exactly in this moment a real moment of communication is happening. His mind is obliged to check attitudes it has before his own ideas and ideas coming from outside. The purpose of my works has been the producing of these moments in which new visions of the world could arise.

The purpose of "Ars Memoria" is to discuss the present role of man as predatory animal. To kill animals in order to survive has been an adaptative behavior for man through history. With a simple technology he had no other choice for a long time.

If this is true to a great number of human cultures, it is not true to all of them. In India the Jainists have developed a great sensibility to the sacrality of life. Buddhism also has stopped animal sacrifices that were common in ancient times.

The point that we should stress today however is related to science and technology. To understand how human values, like ethics and morals, can be significantly related to science and technology should be one of the main concerns of our time.

Man using his scientific technique to disseminate horror and death is one of the most regrettable facts we have been witnessing in our time. If however we could use our intellectual capability allied to ethical and moral concerns science could lead us to spiritual evolution. Science could today create new ways to feed human beings avoiding animal slaughtering.

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