Artification: Dr. Janez Strehovec's Revolutionary Exploration of Modern Paradigms in Art, Science, and Economics

Dr. Strehovec: Art is not just a matter of beauty, pleasure, pleasantness, aesthetics, and subtle perception, nor is it just an object of the art market, but a field that in the present addresses science, media, and politics; art does not only beautify but also helps people (it becomes ethical), raises questions, collaborates with science, contributes to a new scientific picture of the world (e.g., bio art, solar art, wind art).  The theory of relativity is not only scientific; it is also found in avant-garde art, which has also destabilized its "Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry" - Renaissance perspective in painting, tonality in music, linear narrative and metrics in poetry, and the stage in a theatre. Today, we are facing a social and performative turn in contemporary art. Still, the challenge has also been moving from art based on mimesis (imitation) to art based on the principle of poiesis (creation), which creates new worlds that stimulate complex perception and imagination and develop artistic thinking oriented towards problem-solving activity.

Dr. Strehovec: What distinguishes this book from other works in the philosophy and theory of contemporary art is its starting point in artistic cognitive service as an algorithmic, problem-solving activity. Of course, contemporary art is also oriented toward the exploration of perceptual forms and is a field of passion and emotion, but its connections to highly cognitive fields also make sense. We live in a world in which the cognitive is becoming increasingly important in all fields; not only the cognitive society and science are topical, but also cognitive warfare, cognitive weapons, and the transformation of security and information services into their own cognitive agencies. Cognitive warfare is hybrid and aims to alter the cognitive processes of the enemy, such as perception, sleep, imagination, and decision-making. Cognitive product companies are also at the forefront of today's financial markets. We need only recall Thursday, February 22 of this year (2024), and the eschatological anticipation of the announcement of the results for the last quarter of the new Nasdaq giant, Nvidia, which boasted record quarterly revenues. This book also deals with the connections between art and science, and with specific issues related to the context in which the book was written, i.e. Slovenian culture, art, and politics.

Dr. Strehovec: Some of the perspectives presented in this book are new. The concept of artistic thinking and artistic method is introduced, and the artification of non-art fields is also a new concept, i.e. the transfer of artistic approach and thinking to other fields. In particular, the media of story and performance (at home in art and literature) are excellent tools that can also be used in science and politics. This means presenting scientific results in the medium of story, of which we already have examples in the Higgs boson, black holes, chaos theories, and AI. The use of performance also contributes to the power of persuasion and drama in the presentation of scientific results. There is also play, which is also one of the fundamental areas of art and can be
applied elsewhere.

Dr. Strehovec: Anyone who reads this book and considers its main theses will realize that a significant part of contemporary art is also cognitive, and therefore art belongs to the current cognitive society, with algorithms and AI at the forefront. Contemporary art still challenges perception, stable artworks are still produced, but there is an increasing emphasis on flexible services, economically organized according to the logic of the algorithm. But attention will also turn from artistic autonomy to art integrated into a world of new movements, currents, and paradigms. Integration is also becoming essential for art, which is also hybridizing and amalgamating.

Dr. Strehovec: This book also covers the field of art and politics, which is less typical in the US than in Europe and elsewhere, such as Asia (e.g., the art activist Ai Weiwei). In the US, people are skeptical about art, especially its new political functions and its collaboration with science. The idea of art as a problem and an enigma is alien to them. In Slovenia (a small country of 2.1 million inhabitants, a member of the EU), things are different. Art, and especially literature, are understood as constitutive fields of national identity and statehood. The cultural day dedicated to the poet France Prešeren is a day off work. The entire political elite gathers to celebrate the awarding of national art prizes. There is also an exaggeration, a national ideology reminiscent of the old days, which is why I criticize Slovenian literary nationalism in this book, to which I devote a chapter. When it comes to the social implications of contemporary art, I also deal with artistic activism in the book, as well as academic fascism as a new, original field, which is treated for the first time in the academic world in this book, which means that it is my original contribution.

Dr. Strehovec: I continue to write in the field of contemporary art theory, but I also focus on new topics in environmental studies, critical social theory, the nonhuman turn, and art and literature in the age of artificial intelligence. These are three articles, available in online journals, that show my new explorations:

• The Art State, Artistic Activism, and the Expanded Concept of Art, 2021
• Upcycling and Reappropriation - On Art-Specific Circular Economy in the Age of Climate Change, 2022
• From Poetry as the Excess of Language to Poems Generated by Artificial Intelligence (The Poet as Researcher in a World of New Cultural Paradigms), 2023

Janez Strehovec taught art theory, cultural studies and cultural politics at University of Ljubljana, University of Maribor and University of Koper. He was also a teacher of the Erasmus program at University Complutense, Madrid, and the principal investigator of the ELMCIP project (2011-2014), involved in the European research scheme in humanities HERA. He published six scientific monographs in Slovenia and two in the USA. Several of his essays are included as book chapters in reference books and published in scientific journals (e.g. Digital Creativity, CLC Web, CTheory, Journal of Popular Culture, Afterimage, Cybertext Yearbook, Electronic Book Review, Cultura, Technoetic Arts, First Monday, Teksty Drugie, Canadian Journal of Language and Literature Studies).

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