Technology Is a Must

Greetings,

Free-thinking, free-conscienced, beautiful people.

Continuing to look through the mirror of art…

What appears to us today in the mirror of art is,

Technology…

You were surprised when I said technology! Weren't you?

If I were in your shoes…

I would be surprised too.

Because when technology is mentioned, the first thing that comes to my mind is mechanical relationships operating within a system, designed for a purpose that can produce utility.

Or so it seems to me.

According to the Turkish Language Association, it is the entirety of tools and equipment developed by humans to control and change their material environment, along with the knowledge related to them.

Let us take the production of utility from my definition and the changing of the material environment from the Turkish Language Association's definition, and build a theory for art upon them.

Adding the proposition that “necessity is the mother of invention” to this, let us rethink producing utility and changing the material environment along the axis of needs.

I feel like I can hear you saying, “Abidin, human needs never end, which need are you talking about?”…

Biological needs, housing needs, spiritual needs, security needs, justice needs (anyway, let's not get into that), or cultural needs? This list goes on and on…

Anyway, let's get to the point without dragging it out any further.

You know our human civilization that we praise endlessly? Well, this thing we call the “last remaining tooth” is a response to the never-ending needs of the being called mankind. Civilization is something in which human intellect and labor show us ourselves.

Let us start with the role of technology in the creation of civilization, but let us not forget art along the way.

The fundamental truth underlying all human abilities, such as creating art, has been the human ability to use their hands with a dexterity incomparable to any other living creature. Humans discovering the dexterity of their hands enabled them to develop tools and equipment, and consequently, to create technology. Humans, capable of inventing and using tools, subsequently discovered the potential of what they could do with them. At this point, human labor, intellect, and technology set the wheel of history in motion, first toward creating culture and then civilization.

If we accept tool-making as the first developmental step in the emergence of technology, and considering that cave wall paintings, accepted as the first examples of visual art, were colored with plant roots and similar materials produced under the conditions of that day, we reach the fact that this act of visualization also began with paint-making technology. In other words, we arrive at the fact that for a visual image to externalize itself, there was a need for a paint technology, however simple, and again, a tool, however simple, to paint on the cave wall with that paint.

Wow… So it turns out technology and art were like Siamese twins.

So, professor, are you trying to say that art could not exist without technology?

I am not saying it, dear friends, the phenomena I gave examples of above are saying it.

Oh, and history says so too.

When we look at the historical roots of the terms Art and Technology, we see that in ancient times, both were expressed with a single concept. The word “techne,” the root of the word technology, was used in Ancient Greece to correspond to the concepts we separate today as art and craft, and it meant the ability to manufacture and perform. Aristotle defines “techne” as: “The equipment required to produce under the guidance of correct rules.”

What Aristotle tried to explain with the concept of techne is that this concept encompasses all human production skills. The Latin equivalent of the term techne is the word Ars, and it covers not only fields like painting, poetry, and music, but also other skill-based fields such as carpentry and horse training, as well as the entire ability of the human mind to govern living and non-living beings. During this period, art and craft were still conceived and evaluated as a whole.

Technology and art will, of course, part ways.

But they will part ways without ceasing to use their possibilities for each other.

The Renaissance will open the door to this transformation.

We will continue to talk about the relationship between technology and art.

Until our next meeting, goodbye for now; now and always, breathe with art, stay with art.