Why are the arts important?

[archytas]

Some expert views:

'They inspire, take risks, provoke thought, challenge, communicate, connect and innovate. Are fun and good for your mental health and well-being.' Sara Semple - Artist and voluntary workshop facilitator at Castle Community Crafts in Scarborough.

'The arts are important to create interrogative and experimental thinkers.' Lucy - Part of collaborative duo Reetso.

‘The creative impulse is a natural part of life.’ Chris Lee - Freelancer.

‘Without the arts, life is reduced to the functional. The arts add depth, meaning and perspective to our lives, they help us to imagine things differently.’ Anon -  Kent.

‘Because they allow you to learn new skills, experiment with different opinions and thinking processes, challenge yourself and learn more skills.’ Beatrice Prosser-Snelling -Turner Contemporary, Margate.

‘Because it is a subject that is completely inclusive and nobody has to be an expert. It also enables people to discover their learning styles and interests in a way that is accessible.’ Sarah Wilkie - Jewellery designer and maker.

‘Because they contribute to our own social, cultural, moral and emotional development.’ Lesley Butterworth - The National Society for Education in Art and Design.

Wow - I missed out.  The only role I might play in creating work like Facil's would be carrying it to the exhibition.

[Molly]

Something tells me you have taken the other side of the equation, equally important Neil.  Recognizing the beautiful is as important as creating it in physical representation, in the big scheme of things. Then there is the intangible artwork - what comes of daily expression.  Yours is quite beautiful.

[facilitator]

I ask myself this question maybe once a week.   I guess the most important aspect of it from my perspective would be communication.  Which is odd since the most common response at galleries would be "I don't get it".   There is also the pain involved in knowing that you are partially exposing yourself and opening the door for others to critique your soul.  

Neil, your mind is a work of art which garners great admiration.   Is it difficult carrying it around?

[archytas]

As in my best mate's comment, 'there you are, brain the size of a planet, up ladders fixing a cute women's gutters' kind of heavy Tony.  Now I get to look after his retired Guide Dog, a rather lovely privilege.  If I ask how he knew the women was cute, he'll tell me she must have been as I was up the ladders.

[Molly]

I think that art allows the artist and the viewer to self examine and this is essential to human life beyond the animal basics.  If we cannot self examine and self correct, we go through life reacting to stimuli. Not a life worth living as Whitman would say.

On Wednesday, November 5, 2014 2:14:57 AM UTC-5, archytas wrote:

[facilitator]

True Molly.

The problem with the artist is that too much introspection leads to the "Center of the universe" view.  We (I) become the child in the center of the room needing attention.  The artist also confuses the right to speak with the right to be heard.

[Molly]

That artistic communication is a two way street, and while no one artist can make that connection with everyone, making it with enough people over time - having that communication stand the test of time, answers the question for us - is it art?

[archytas]

This should be a standard consideration in research Tony - but ain't.  The term 'my research' quickly feels like 'my precious'.

[archytas]

That's the rub of it Moll - from Augustine and Abelard to Popper on the 'eternal' (or RP for that matter).  Yet there is a fleeting context of art too and such as 'to express the truth is to ensure revenge' (Wilde somewhere).

[Molly]

There are those who cannot stand the edge of their own comfort zone where all in sight is a mirror, that is for certain. Yet, at any moment, that weight can come down on us, truth expressed or not.

[archytas]

Gabby's influence creeps up on us all Molly!

[Gabby]

Greetings from Gabbyland: They are there. And there is this certainty. This certainty that manifests in borders around zones. Light bubbles only to disappear again. Good God.

[archytas]

Doesn't light cone rather than bubble?  Still all smoke and Spiegels, my dear.  You are Emily Howell, or might be if you chose to write such annoying music.

<iframe width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7Pq-S557XQU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> - that is, we might say, the very embodiment of a work of art.

[archytas]

Verschlimmbessern.

[Molly]

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't dismiss anything from you Gabby, or take it personally.  And while I don't pretend to understand all of it either, or where you are coming from, I can appreciate the long term contribution and effort. Everyone is who they are, and each expression here is propelled by circumstance we know nothing of, the everyday pressures and joys of life that are unexpressed but temper what is said in words to each other here. We really don't know much about each other, and what we do know could be horsefeathers. But the conversation does go somewhere, seen or unseen. And I do appreciate that. Good God indeed.

[gabbydott]

I happen to rather move to hard Detroit techno, gendered and rendered to sounding Emily-like, than having to listen to Rilke's arch of unimagined bridges.

Every now and then we cannot avoid taking the personal political here where I live. A lot of what overwriting your own history does can be seen and heard these days. Referring to the One&Many any way I like it is a very romantic way of creating a good god. Historically false though.

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[archytas]

I meant my own verslimmstuff, of course.  Marx, of course, had religion as 'the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions  ... the opium of the people'.  Work of art, like good god contains its opposite meaning. 

[Molly]

Statements like these are often made out of context, making a consideration of the source imperative. Considering Marx in the context of his life and how that applies to the present is complicated business. Yet not all of us take time to do so, and take words at their superficial value, or worse, personally, tying all manner of historical emotion to it.  Once our words, like our artwork, are offered, how they are received is out of our influence until we are lucky enough to get direct feedback, and then communication begins (or ends.) In the cases of artwork, the art itself is rarely altered as a result of communication, and communication about interpretation can take a life of its own.

When we are communicating (or creating) and our intention is only to establish an image of our self, and not to connect with another in understanding, can we be engaging in artwork or beauty? What does it serve to only be self serving? Can we even be self serving when this is done, since the act of being only self serving isolates, and does not serve (by definition.) Does artwork require connection with the audience? Does communication require connection with other? If we really don't care how our words are received or if an understanding can be reached, are we communicating?

[archytas]

Emily is, of course, a bot, gendered or otherwise.  Communication can be split between life-world and system.  Mutual understanding is key in communicative rationality, yet how would we ever know the other party means or is authentic in her claim to be concerned with anything mutual?  Does the artist present the shock of truth or just what is expected of the naughty boy-girl (otherwise gendered) in the artist-role selling system?

Art and religion have been found in most human societies, including Neanderthal.  Defining either tends to exhaustion - Marx on religion is the 16th definition in a cursory literature review by Jared Diamond.  Reading explorations of 'what is art?' my only certainty is 'this ain't'.  Jurgen Habermas' two volumes on communicative rationality gave me a similar impression on mutual understanding.  Do Bowery birds do art?  They are at least better at decorating than I. 

[Molly]

Can someone with little or no appreciation for beauty appreciate art? Both stir us, and what is important, the stirring or the definition? If I do not "know" if someone is being authentic in communication, my odds of ever reaching mutual understanding are greatly diminished, although I could come to the understanding that anything but superficial communication with such person is hardly possible.

[andrew vecsey]

I believe that appreciation of "beauty" is inherent in us. We are born with that. And "beauty" is in the eyes of the beholder. That is part of our freedom one can call "god given". We are not able to "know" the "authenticity" of people like we are not able to "know" the authenticity of god. Unless the people "show" that they are not truthful by their lies. We have to have faith, the want to believe before we believe. With children, you can tell they are lying by their red ears. With adults, it is more difficult. Arrogance is one indicator. When I see someone being touched by modern music, whether classical or contemporary, in the same way as other music touches me, I believe that they are authentic. Just like primitive people memorized by drums. But I do not know why.  

[archytas]

I have never seen the 'red ear syndrome' Andrew.  Lying seems pervasive in newsrooms, adverts and more than 90% that washes through my life as entertainment and education, but rarely seems as evident as a smack in the mouth.  Art seems to have lost that 'lie that tells us the truth' capacity too, certainly popular music to me.  Politicians seem to work on me as though they have red ears, but I don't see any.  There's a kid across the road in mid-teen crisis who lies so badly he might be painted red.

I am still affected by female beauty, but find, say, the absence of people in wheelchairs and even ordinary looking people in our newsrooms quite disgusting.  The beauty of content seems lost under presentation.  My blind friend has to find more beauty outside the visual realm and I find it increasingly irrelevant.

On the science side I'm inclined towards function explanations on how such as art, religion and aesthetics persist and give us benefits that outweigh costs.  I wonder on art that might change how we can experience each other.  Primitive societies give us a glimpse of 'the world until yesterday' and I wonder what art might make us realise we are not remotely modern.  We do something called science fiction profiling or prototyping to imagine what a future society might be - and consequently on the products and services to develop.  I keep coming up with scenarios without people in them and biological intelligence surpassed!  Maybe mobile phones get tired of being handled by naff teenagers running up freemium bills and grow legs?

Viruses that work by self-replicating cells to death also work in a symbiotic way in some cells.  There would be beauty for me in finding out why, or how we might put our better feelings into action.  Bots are now doing art, writing for newspapers and making music - it seems in blind trials we can't spot bot versus human origin.  I'm not so sure on the eye of the beholder thing - even in lie detection machines are getting better than us (multiple points of 'red ear' observation, including under skin thermal images we can't see directly).  We might extend this to art, literature, newsrooms, religion and education to extend our perception to produce a view of 'molten reality' all could 'see', rather than having Nietzsche dive in and come back telling us to relish war.

If I spend time observing rolling news, in my eye of the beholder I discover I haven't noticed much other than the women being 'pretty like Barbie' and the rest of the content feels like undergraduates winging presentations after too many nights out and very little investigation.  The men doing nothing for me.  Content analysis against such as women I actually meet, what one can actually experience in a job centre, applying for jobs (bits of work in my case), dealing with bosses and so on, tells me I am watching something very false and full of the 'bigotry of the beautiful'.  Hearing our schools are wonderful and I think of the litter the kids in these splendid learning emporiums have dropped on my route to the park watching out for glass under my dogs' feet and various 'red eared louts'.  A machine could reveal much of this in real time now and such a machine would be a work of art to me.

[Gabby]

I see that the common ground metaphor is connected to the above mentioned abyss. And that the same page metaphor is the mutually accepted one - the equivalent to Rilke's bridges. Regarding the real life context and the search for positive money creation sources this makes perfect sense and is not to be treated literally. My apologies.