I enjoy going to art galleries.\u00a0 I enjoy looking at art and I can recall vividly the thrill of seeing the \u201cImpressionists\u201d in Paris for the first time.\u00a0 For me, visiting a gallery is still something of an occasion and I get the added pleasure of people watching.<\/p>\n
For some time, though, I have felt mystified by the prose used in galleries to describe exhibitions of contemporary art.\u00a0 Here are two good examples of the style:<\/p>\n
\u201cDisplay devices, specifically those employed in the presentation of consumable goods fascinate Mooney and often appear within her photographs.\u00a0 These empty structures become the focus and subject of the work, questioning conventional notions of function, commodity and value exchange.\u00a0 Other work transposes found imagery, for example of precious stones embedded in rocks, to create a lexicon of images and objects that move between the artificial and the organic\u201d<\/i>\u00a0 Exhibition note, Spike Island, Bristol.<\/p>\n
\u201cVersion Control is a large-scale survey exhibition about the notion of appropriation and performance in the expanded field of contemporary artistic practice.\u00a0 Instead of an understanding of performance as a live activity or connected to an exploration of the artist\u2019s body, the exhibition explores performance in a radical sense as a method of making the past present.\u00a0 Performativity, in this way, explores the conscious moment of staging, appropriating, archiving and re-visiting images and other forms of representation, touching on questions of historiography, mediation, subjectivity and ownership\u201d<\/i>.\u00a0 Exhibition note, Arnolfini Bristol.<\/p>\n
I was reassured recently to read that my unease and confusion generated by this overblown pretentious verbiage were shared by others.\u00a0 An article <\/a>by Alix Rule and David Levine appeared last year in the trendy American art journal Triple Canopy analysing and debunking what has come to be called \u201cInternational Art English\u201d (IAE); covered recently by Andy Beckett in the Guardian<\/a>.\u00a0 Rule and Levine used computer software to analyse the language used in exhibition announcements appearing on an influential American network for art professionals called e-flux.\u00a0 They analysed many thousands of these announcements and identified unique language patterns and word usage that define IAE.\u00a0 As you might guess, IAE always uses more words when fewer will do.\u00a0 Words take on new meanings and there are trends in word usage:\u00a0 \u201cspeculative\u201d was popular in 2009 and \u201crupture\u201d peaked in 2011. The power of IAE has been increased by the internet where these announcements circulate very widely.\u00a0 Despite the fact that it is critical of art practitioners, Rule and Levine\u2019s article has been read extensively within the art community.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s the point of IAE, why do people use it?\u00a0 I identify two principal reasons: IAE defines a select elite within the contemporary art world, and at the same time it keeps the outsiders at bay.\u00a0 So, if you are fluent in IAE, you define yourself as an insider; IAE acts as a knowing membership badge for this exclusive club.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t use IAE you mark yourself down as being outside the contemporary art elite.\u00a0 For the contemporary art world this exclusivity may be exactly what they intend. Those with the money to buy contemporary art will understand IAE whereas the outsiders who don\u2019t understand the language don\u2019t have the money anyway.<\/p>\n This set me thinking about scientists and language.\u00a0\u00a0 I wondered whether scientists also used language to define their elites.\u00a0 If so, do we use language to keep outsiders away and how much does this affect understanding of science?<\/p>\n So how do scientists use language?\u00a0 They need to communicate with one another and when they discuss their work, they use a language liberally spattered with technical details and jargon related to this work.\u00a0 As a biologist, I would also expect the language to include some use of the passive form, also many convoluted sentences and\u00a0many abbreviations.\u00a0 There may be odd word usage, for example utilise for use, methodology for method etc.\u00a0 Conclusions will be hedged around with many caveats.\u00a0 Conversely, implications will be spelled out very strongly as in the form \u201cThis work could provide a cure for [choose your disease]\u201d.<\/p>\n We might call this International Science English (ISE) but it\u2019s not really a single language as science is no longer a single culture.\u00a0 The increasing specialisation of science means that scientists separate in to different tribes according to their different disciplines.\u00a0 Each tribe speaks its own version of ISE and only closely related tribes understand one other\u2019s dialects.<\/p>\n The art world uses IAE as some kind of unnecessary conceit that serves no purpose in understanding. For scientists, however, ISE and its dialects are necessary in order to communicate the technical details of their work in papers, seminars, grant applications etc.\u00a0 Whether all aspects of ISE are necessary is open to debate.\u00a0 The high point of the use of ISE occurs when tribes assemble at scientific conferences and celebrate their particular branch of science using the language of ISE.\u00a0 This specialised language defines the tribe as an elite but it also creates huge barriers to external communication. Indeed, an outsider attending one of these events might be as mystified as when they visit a gallery and read descriptions of artworks couched in IAE.<\/p>\n So science and the contemporary art world have some similarities.\u00a0 They both form closed elites that are difficult for outsiders to penetrate and understand but there are also differences.\u00a0 In the case of the contemporary art world, it is still possible to visit a gallery and make your own appreciation of the art works.\u00a0 Because IAE is basically pretentious guff, you can ignore the IAE-descriptions of the art and be no worse off, although a little explanation in plain English sometimes helps.\u00a0 In the case of science, however, it is very difficult for the outsider to understand the content and importance of a scientific paper or a seminar without some assistance.\u00a0 \u00a0The tribal language gets in the way and if we want our work to be understood more widely by the non-specialist we must translate or get someone else to do it for us.<\/p>\n Some scientists do this themselves: they give talks or write about their work using language accessible to the general audience.\u00a0 Some write blogs, some use social networks, some may even write books designed to spread the word and some have used video to great effect, my favourite being the Periodic Table of Videos<\/a>.\u00a0 Most of this is excellent because those who do it are self selecting.\u00a0 They are likely to be gifted communicators who feel passionately about their work and the need to communicate, but they are a minority.<\/p>\n For many scientists, external communication is not a priority; they want to stay in their labs and keep their heads down.\u00a0 In this case, if the work is to be understood more widely there have to be other routes to translate from ISE in to Standard English.\u00a0 Popular science magazines like the New Scientist have long fulfilled the role of translating scientists\u2019 work in to easily digestible forms and nowadays there is also an army of science bloggers who write about headline grabbing science.\u00a0 The newspapers carry some reports of science discoveries but these are of patchy quality especially in the print versions.\u00a0 \u00a0One factor that influences the quality of these translations is whether the person writing the report is scientifically trained.\u00a0 This will determine whether they read the original paper when compiling a report or whether they rely on a Press Release.\u00a0 The combination of a non-scientist journalist and the Press Release leads to much misreporting of science (Ben Goldacre skewers this problem in his book, Bad Science, and I have written about another example here<\/a>).<\/p>\n So, for both the contemporary art world and for science, the use of specialised language erects barriers and hinders understanding.\u00a0 For scientists, this may also contribute to the rather mixed image we have in the eyes of the general population.\u00a0 We are associated with wonderful discoveries and medical breakthroughs but also with disasters and scandals like BSE, MMR, Chernobyl etc.\u00a0 We are perceived as aloof and non-communicative, the owners of knowledge inaccessible to many.\u00a0 I had always attributed this to bad press coverage and general ignorance of science.\u00a0 Having written this piece, I now wonder how much we are ourselves to blame.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps we enjoy our elite status and don\u2019t do enough to dissolve the barrier this creates.\u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps this causes resentment and leads to some unnecessary science bashing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I enjoy going to art galleries.\u00a0 I enjoy looking at art and I can recall vividly the thrill of seeing the \u201cImpressionists\u201d in Paris for the first time.\u00a0 For me, visiting a gallery is still something of an occasion and … Continue reading