From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jun 09 2004 - 13:50:05 BST
Hi Marsha,
Here are some semi-coherent thoughts on the subject from a long ago
abandoned post in progress:
In ZAMM Pirsig said, "Art is high-quality endeavor. That is all that
really needs to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is
demanded: Art is the Godhead as revealed in the works of man. The
relationship established by Phædrus makes it clear that the two
enormously different sounding statements are actually identical."
Def. Art: the process of making Quality choices for the sake of Quality
as an end in itself.
Why is art often considered irrational? It has no end in mind other
than Quality itself which precedes reason.
"DeWeese had frowned at because it was a print and prints are of art
and not art themselves, a distinction he didn't recognize at the time."
What's the difference???
Pirsig's emphasis is on process of creation--making Quality
choices--rather than on the result (art not in the object)...
"DeWeese brings over some instructions for assembly of an outdoor
barbecue rotisserie which he wants me to evaluate as a professional
technical writer. He's spent a whole afternoon trying to get the thing
together and he wants to see these instructions totally damned.
...He's unable to comprehend things when they appear in the ugly,
chopped-up, grotesque sentence style common to engineering and
technical writing. Science works with chunks and bits and pieces of
things with the continuity presumed, and DeWeese works only with the
continuities of things with the chunks and bits and pieces presumed.
What he really wants me to damn is the lack of artistic continuity,
something an engineer couldn't care less about. It hangs up, really, on
the classic-romantic split, like everything else about technology.
...
Narrator says, "What's really angering about instructions of this sort
is that they imply there's only one way to put this rotisserie
together...their way. And that presumption wipes out all the
creativity. Actually there are hundreds of ways to put the rotisserie
together and when they make you follow just one way without showing you
the overall problem the instructions become hard to follow in such a
way as not to make mistakes. You lose feeling for the work. And not
only that, it's very unlikely that they've told you the best way...
Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there
never is. And when you presume there's just one right way to do things,
of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with the
rotisserie. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways
to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the
relation of the machine and you to the rest of the world, has to be
considered, because the selection from many choices, the art of the
work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon
the material of the machine. That's why you need the peace of mind.''
``Actually this idea isn't so strange,'' I continue. ``Sometime look
at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with
that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the
difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of
instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason
he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he
doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in
a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions
because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and
motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at
hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a
progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the
material's right.''
``Sounds like art,'' the instructor says.
``Well, it is art,'' I say. ..
``You mean,'' DeWeese asks, ``that when I was putting this rotisserie
together I was actually sculpting it?''
Based on the above, art seems to lie in the choices rather than the
product produced.
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