“Esthetics of Islamic Art: Potentials of the synergy Science/Art/Spirituality” presented by Chafchaouni

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Aesthetics of Electronic Art

Presentation Title:
  • Esthetics of Islamic Art: Potentials of the synergy Science/Art/Spirituality

Presenter(s):


Venue(s):


Abstract:

  • Islamic Art is of a sacred nature. The language of the Koran is omnipresent in the Islamic world and determines subsequently the types and measurements of art. The most profound relationship between the Koran and Islamic art is of transcendental nature: it is reflected not in the form of the Koran, but in it’s HAQIQAH: its essence without form is more specifically found in the concept of TAWHID, the Unity or the One, with its infinite contemplative implications. Islamic art is essentially the projection in the visual world of certain dimensions of the Divine Unity.

    To summarize the essential characteristics of Islamic thought, we find that the muslim quest of the ultimate truth implies at once an awareness of the world of  phenomena (the importance of science), but after this step we pass from the profane to the sacred. The entire Islamic theory of knowledge reposes on esoteric wisdom.  The principal objective of the Koran, then, is to awaken in man the ultimate consciousness of his multiple relationships with God and the Universe. Science is practiced in order to decode the laws and mechanisms of the cosmos and reflect these qualities into Being capable of achieving Godhood, since he is at the image of God and created in His Image.

    To express the (Unity of Being, Unity of Existence, the muslim artist has 3 tools: geometry that manifests unity in the spatial order, rythm that manifests in the temporal order and light. There is no better symbol of the Divine Unity than light. Thus, the aim of Islamic art is to transform matter into a vibration of light. The contemporary expansion of technology, misunderstood and confused with science, has become a synonym for alienation, specialization, and division of knowledge. Nonetheless, the end of this century seems to bring together all the conditions for the development and generalization of previously inconceivable means of the performing of reality, of  methods of formalization and modelization supported by important progress in mathematics, the technology of electronics, and extremely powerful methods of calculation and simulation.

    Today’s physics inform us that our environment is a complex of frequencies and angles; we live in a universe of multidimensional frequency-realms. Sight, sound, touch, tornados, nova, rocks, mosquitos and dolphins are all frequencies of varying levels of complexity.

    It is from this macroscopic and infra-atomic platform that electronic art must elaborate its vision, build up its knowledge, establish systems, interact with scientific and human experience; in short, it must master the limits of universal knowledge before it establishes the models that transcend it.

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