Hello there! It's Jocelyn Mathewes from my studio in Appalachia. I’m back to talk about all the juicy books I’m reading, along with a little bit more about artificial intelligence. (If you missed my previous thoughts, you can read about how I used Midjourney to manipulate and contemplate generalized anxiety here.)
And right now I’m reading a long, winding book called Making Sense: Cognition, Computing, and Embodiment, by Simon Penny. Penny is a professor and artist working in quite the interesting space between art and technology. The book, published in 2017, predates the recent explosion in AI enthusiasm and usage, and offers a critical analysis of computer culture.
Why am I talking about Simon Penny? I share his “longstanding concern for embodied and situated aspects of aesthetic experience.” As an Orthodox Christian I believe that soul and body are a unity, each component not greater or lesser than the another—and that is unity the root of knowing, experience, and humanity. Penny’s book, Making Sense, provides a rigorous analysis that points to a similar understanding of knowledge.
While this book is several years old, I think Making Sense a vital and important work for the everyday artist to reference and understand. Penny has worked at the leading edge of computer imaging and at several institutions where now-ubiquitous technologies were in their infancy. He is uniquely positioned to offer us his insights, and even though I’m only halfway through, I am offering this book my strong recommendation.