2.2.4.2. Confronting motives: Science, technology and design context
A variation on Feyerabend’s theory was presented during DEAF04 (2004) by Bas Haring[136], who initiated an interdisciplinary science and art Masters program based on the idea of Wild Thinking. He promotes the vision that ‘Artistic Wild Thinking’ shakes up scientific reasoning patterns and breaks the conventional (computer scientific) research methods. These new ways of thinking and dealing with technology might be useful in research done in computer sciences. He experienced that it turned out to be an approach unsuitable for scientific research as the outcome of his ‘Wild Thinking’ courses was mostly ‘aesthetic’ projects, not something to be evaluated in a scientific context. The starting point Haring takes for his approach is in agreement with Feyerabend, who refers to unconventional thinking as a catalyst for unexpected reasoning patterns as fertile ground for invention and new scientific discoveries. According to Haring, ‘Wild Thinking’ works as a collision but it does generate mainly aesthetic works, not the planned impulses for scientific breakthroughs. Here some clues for Feyerabend’s inquiry for ‘Wild Thinking’ are discovered, and the intentional clash should be considered as part of the artistic method. The artists in Haring’s Masters program however, are better equipped to take advantage of these collisions and have their personal heuristic ‘collision method’ in place.
