arts and humanities

arts and humanities

The Intersection of Arts and Humanities: Exploring Connections and Impact

1. Introduction to Arts and Humanities

The arts and humanities include a varied spectrum of activities which rely on cultural traditions—oral, written, visual, and performing. They enable both individuals and groups to make sense of, and contribute to, society as they express and share experiences that are enjoyed by all of humanity. The arts and humanities are collective expressions of who we are within many diverse cultural contexts. The arts and humanities are recipients of gifts generated by people with an exceptional range of talents and skills but also depend on an expanding pool of donors. This generosity is an expression of trust and of the belief in the stability and purpose of these institutions in a wide array of social and cultural contexts. This report focuses on a meeting about the relationship and interaction of the arts and humanities.

The fields of arts and humanities are areas of human endeavor that are important to the health and well-being of every person throughout the world. Both the arts and humanities are vital for the well-being of a nation. The federal and state governments of the United States have long considered the arts as worthy of their support. The most direct way that arts are supported is through organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. These federal organizations actually make some of the most crucial and needed contributions through their matching of funds—government funds act as a catalyst encouraging a diversity of local and regional programs and projects. At the turn of the millennium, as humans face many new challenges and opportunities, the arts and humanities seem to be, for many other reasons, more vital to the health and well-being of the spirit, mind, and body of everyone throughout the world.

2. Historical Perspectives on the Relationship Between Arts and Humanities

The arts and the humanities are “born” together because they share the same epistemological matrix, which is based on the creative impulse of human action and thought. The founding act of Western “knowledge” is the synphytos of the Greeks; the relational confrontation, the three G or EGG model, allows the discovery of new aspects, ideas, and solutions. The progressive rationalization and formalization of the synphytos has provided birth to new sciences: musicology, mathematics, logic, and astronomy. The conversion of the knowledge model from EGG to ABC is, on one hand, an effort of rationalization and formalization – going back to the general and to the elemental; on the other hand, it moves away the knowledge from the synphytos and creativity. This is what happens to the liberal arts and studia humanitatis, sulking them into an “introverted” vision of the world: the free man neglects all material aspects, entrusting them to the manual workers (or slaves). The reformulation of the scheme composition, execution, and reception in the form reception, production, and response is, instead, consistent with the base nature of expression and performance. This consideration is reinforced by the Aristotelian parallel between music and operatic genres and, in particular, their link with the ideas of mimesis, catharsis, melos, and rhythmos.

There is an extensive, not always recognized, historical and genealogical connection between the “arts” and the “humanities.” That intellectual intersection is not new. It dates back to the ancient Quadrivium and Trivium, the seven traditional liberal arts, or even further. The concept of “the humanities” (or studia humanitatis in Latin) has its roots in the fifteenth century, and was originally related more to what we define today using the term “art” – primarily classical studies, philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, as well as language studies – than to “humanities” as we define them, including more of the non-literary fields of knowledge and artistic creation. This original humanitas concept, which predates the renaming of what was previously categorized as a balanced cross-curriculum (comprising grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) as the “liberal arts” or humaniores litterae, brings the arts and humanities into a more dialectical, relational relationship, even if the two identities are not equal or are not the same.

3. Contemporary Interdisciplinary Approaches and Collaborations

The role of the arts in technological discovery, particularly in the fields related to the frontiers of supercomputing, also continues to surprise and amaze these authors. As an added benefit to blending art with supercomputing discovery, the public is exposed to not only new discoveries in the supercomputing field but new discoveries in the arts, opening up new potential interest in, and appreciation for, the fine arts. These authors cite several examples of projects underway that investigate the role of the arts in technological discovery.

The digital humanities community has seen increasing collaboration across disciplines, leading to innovative projects that link the humanities with fields as diverse as statistical computing, digital art and design, social networking, and large-scale image and archaeological data. For example, humanists have been known to use innovative spatial and network analysis and geoscience techniques in their historical and literary analyses; to create interactive kinds of scholarship such as ‘literature games’; and to create 3D models and visual displays of cultural objects such as the Parthenon frieze, allowing lay people to explore these objects in new ways. Arts-infused educational techniques, removing the barrier between arts and sciences, have even shown to increase scientific discovery skills and to improve retention beyond students who are not exposed to the arts in their scientific education.

4. The Societal Impact and Relevance of Arts and Humanities Today

But we need not fall into a trap of overweening scientific technological arrogance and inflated instrumentalism that great politicians and military strategists have always sought escape from. We need a balanced appreciation at all levels – grand, moderate, and local – of how all fields, including and notably the arts, humanities, and social sciences, play their critical roles in balancing, illuminating, checking, and enriching the multiple conceptual and cultural assumptions beneath fair and rational policy in ways appropriate to each differing culture and educational context. Each technological breakthrough or other contribution to culture raises a myriad of questions that go far beyond the intellect of introverted scientific instrumentalists. The more powerful the instrumental contribution – think next of biotechnologies for body, brain, health, behavior, and reproduction; or the information revolution in science, cultural heritage, creativity, and global economics – the more urgent, intricate, and independent are the humanities, arts, and social sciences questions provoked around it.

There are many academics and many universities that continue to promote a utilitarian and instrumental view of what and why we study and invest public funds in arts and humanities. Bluntly, they wish these fields to be “handymen” to what they see as the “real work” of science, engineering, and the professions. As science and engineering have transformed the physical world of life, control, and creation, these critics argue that the soft human world – especially in the arts, humanities, and social sciences – has been left far behind and is of interest mostly as ancient or entertaining curiosities. Politicians, the media, and the public can revel in the transformative successes in medical science and engineering (transplants, antibiotics, scans), information control (in every machine we build today), personal movement (automobiles, space travel), and the creation of materials and energy (power stations, power grids, mobile phones).

5. Future Directions and Innovations in the Field

The relationships between the arts and humanities are integrated with multilevel, complex, and interdependent and need to be researched, articulated, and recognized. Overviews across the broad and growing field of digital arts and humanities research explore connections both within and between data and influential theory and methodologies and impact in natural and built environments. Six publications illustrate a broad range of recent interdisciplinary research approaches and methodologies, at a range of temporal and spatial levels of integration, based on publications in a number of specialist journals. Preview publication patterns and a read of referenced experts within eight venues of publication, including studies within the fields of JISC, DARIAH, ARLIS, CADRE, and DHQ, reveal significant overlap and continuing diversification in research contributors.

Within the broad and growing field of cultural data, research on the arts and humanities is receiving increasing recognition. This exploratory study investigates the relationship between arts and humanities data used to understand natural and built environments, including landscape, literature, visual arts, film, cultural sociology, and volunteering. Overviews reveal a growing professional community of practice and publication patterns. The research identifies multiple research approaches and methodologies, proposing a broader range of influences including cultural, philosophical, political, historical, societal, and environmental. Including in the previous digital humanities literature, scientific research is more integrated, socio-technical, comparative, long-term, thematic-driven, and end-user focused. Increased advocacy and investment, interdisciplinary research, and global palettes of data and venues are advocated to deliver greater inclusion, more innovative studies, and broader public understanding as impact, recognition, and support develop.