Global disenchantment, Bachelor thesis, 2019

In a world full of technological and scientific innovation I wonder, are we getting disenchanted? By researching what imagination can add to our disenchanted world, I look for the relationship between the human brain and nature and wonder if this still exists.

When I produce work I am lead by my childlike curiosity and can philosophize for hours without needing an answer. In this thesis, my side that needs answers, and my side that can speculate will join forces. By using both in my advantage, I will make the reader dive into the connection and disconnection between the human desire of control and at the same time interest in the grandeur nature. With this, I give you a glimpse of the type of world I miss.
In my text I first introduce you to Max Weber, a philosopher who in 1919 came up with the term disenchantment. Due to rationalization and intellectualization, our world contains no sense of wonder anymore. After that I discuss the human habit of categorization and how this eventually turned into ‘Wunderkammers’ where we try to create an overview of the wonders of the world. By investigating the image of Earth, through on the one hand looking at the shapes given to the Earth and on the other hand our human view on the Earth, I try to detect if our view on the globe has always been the same? I investigated this by creating globes with kids and interviewing them about their worldview to see if ratio and imagination can go together. Eventually I turn to technology and its relation to nature, do we for example lost our navigation tools opposed to the ones of a bird, the biggest migrating bird of them all; the arctic tern.
In the end I try to connect this lost sense of wonder to the arts and discuss how arts gives insight to science and how science gives insight to arts. Where I either discuss artists who work with science to look at the future, I also deal with artist who are looking at the presents wonders, the ones that have become so normal, we don’t notice them anymore.
The latter is where I relate to and where I jump in as an artist. A world where art and science come together, a world where nature and wonder go together. I wonder: is nature imagination and is science facts or can the two combine?