"The artist's job, said surrealist painter Paul Klee, is to make the invisible visible"

I'm starting this thread for folks to discuss, if they care to, the function of the Arts as it applies to this group's primary interests (evolution and, by implication, communication quality). I'd been thinking of doing it for a while; this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6309, sort of spurred it on finally.

It would be a reasonable assertion to say that all communication, including how we communicate with our selves, happens through some art form.... even language and its use is an art. Various ideas are suited to various art forms ... there's lots and lots to be said that just doesn't float very well in written language. Somethings written don't even project their ideas very well when spoken. Other things well spoken fall short on the page.

The case referred to above is a good example: It is a pretty good depiction and spoof of a state of consciousness that is flimsy, mildly hungry', shallow, unmotivated, consistently dis-satisfied and non-committal. It makes what was invisible 'visible'. And not to knock Bach at all, but nothing in his works suggests that anything he could have ever produced would have depicted that state of consciousness. (And the depiction of such a thing IS good, in that it helps us to be aware of it at all!). Similarly, It is hard to imagine that the idea could have been expressed in a painting or drawing.

This thread is not about the one particular case cited above though. It is about the properties and uses of art in general. It does occur in other reality systems, after all.

This thread could easily be re-named to "How to create shinier, more effective ROTE-balls".

-Montana

I don't know whether I go into the direction you asked for - but I would like to comment on that.

I do not support that statement. If everything is art - art is everything and therefore nothing - hence no art.

Nietzsche once wrote: 'Kunst kommt von Können. Käme es von Wollen, so hieße es Wulst.'

This is very hard to translate - even impossible. The idea is that art is the skill to create something [paintings, videos, music, poetry, prose, aphorisms etc.] with the help of which one is able to communicate an experience, state of mind or consciousness or an idea. ['Können' in German translates to 'being able to do something'. So Nietzsche says that art is the skill of being able to do, i.e. to create something.]

I agree with him. In the case of art I am really conservative. Japanese or Chinese painting pretty much sums up how I view art: the student learns to duplicate the masters by studying them thoroughly. As soon as they can replicate their teachers they can pursue their own works. Skill is the essence of art. So naturally I am an opponent of the so called modern arts. I accept modernism and minimalism, but everything going beyond that into post-modernism really lacks substance in my eyes.

So: I disagree when you say that communication is in itself art. Communication is just that: communication. If it were art it would have to create something that is conditioned by a certain skill. If I were to write this in poetry - this post would be art. If I write it in the tedious style I just did - in my view - it is nothing of the like. ;)

BTW: If you combine 'art', 'modern', 'Nietzsche' and 'music' you get something like this... ;)

_________________
"Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world."

- Dao de jing, 1.

Nemo,

I didn't say that everything is art. But all communication seems to take place through a medium which can be used as a vehicle for Art. Some events in media are quite sloppy. Most. Nearly all have imperfections... things that detract or distract from the main message, especially if there is a lot of nuance attached.

The more the educated and disciplined agency one brings to the able, of course the more exquisite the art form expressed through that agency is likely to be.

Art is in fact food for consciousness... or maybe catalytic is really a better term to use: The correct 'piece' of art can assist a consciousness to assemble an understanding that it might not have otherwise, or might not until a much later point in time.

Yes, I agree with that. But the medium itself is only a part of the message. This though is in someway self-evident for art having to use a channel of communication for it to be communicable. ;)

_________________
"Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world."

- Dao de jing, 1.

Everything comes out of the nothingness of the Void. There are no meanings inherent to reality, no absolutes. All meanings are thus created and a matter of agreement. Metaphors are used in literature and art. For art of any kind, creation of 'things' or performance, it all must be a matter of this is 'like' that, pattern matching. And what those pattern matchings mean is a matter of subjective experience. What have you experienced in PMR, where you can have a 'physical' experience, that aroused passion or brought pleasure that you then pattern match against an experience of what you call art.

Ted

This singer hasn't resonate with me. That's all. I cannot say, if she is good or bad, simply because my consciousness and hers don't have a crossing point, at the time, when I was listening to her.

I used to love to read fiction. One day it did become very boring, and for last ten years I've read ten or less fiction books. Most of the time I read them, because I would be asked to do so. I would drag myself through it, and feel relief, when I reach the last page. A book still has it's value for many other readers, and this doesn't make me more sophisticated than others, or vise versa. It taught me a lesson, do not pass a judgment. May be I am not ready for this, may be this is not my piece of pie. As simple, as that. Being a friend with several people, who are 15-20 years younger than I am gave me many good opportunities to see some differences between my generation and those, who are younger. If you'd like to be not only a parent, but a good friend too, listen to your children, they have as much wisdom, as you do.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Ted,

It may be true, but to me this a limiting and dry description of what Art can give to us, what kind of feelings, emotions and thoughts it can generate or open up for a person. Art can clear up a path to who we are, if we know how to listen, be open minded, and not to be afraid. I firmly believe, that more often, than not Art has its roots in NPMR, and PMR serves only as a screen, a display to it. Art is an expression of an artist's self, if we talk about Art. If so, we can dismiss its significance to us personally, but we cannot deny its possible significance to others.

Lena

_________________
'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Lena,

This is how everything developed. This is how consciousness developed. NPMR has no physical aspects to it. No bodies, no forms except information, no physical pleasures and really, no basis for art. What we learn here in PMR, just as described, is the basis of art. But you must understand in order to see it.

The following was taught in all American schools in my time. This is the first stanza.
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

All of this is simile, pattern matching. The image of the huge tree is there along with the image of the smith and a pattern matching is created. All of these images are impossible within NPMR except as returned there from PMR experience.

The following was also commonly taught in that period. All you have to enter on a search is 'my love is like a red red rose' and 87 million links spring up. This again is just the first stanza.

My love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June :
My love is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
Robert Burns

But in what way is this 'like' meant? Curve of lips and color? Shape of womanly hips or rose hips? Perhaps a more intimate reference? None of this exists within NPMR except by way of PMR experience. No sights, no sound and no sex.

Or consider music as inspired by images and moods. All PMR based as metaphors, not NPMR based.

Ted

Lena and Ted,

I think, perhaps, that you two are confusing NPMR (VR) and the "self" (IUOC) in consciousness-space at the being level.

In other words, I agree with both of you but I don't think you're talking about the same thing.

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Mike

I am not confusing them and I believe Lena is expressing an attitude rather that doing so either. It is difficult for many to understand how consciousness and everything arose from random data but such is the case. By just such pattern matching, reiteration of pattern matching and matching of patterns of patterns does it all arise from nothing except randomness. All by Tom's expanded evolutionary process.

I would never say that it is easy, once one is into the right brain style of simile and metaphor, to go back and follow the left brain based understanding of how one got there.

Ted

Sorry Ted, but you are wrong. This is my view of Art. I wrote that not to contradict you, but just to say what I think. We are still an existing part of PMR, and its metaphors, as well as feelings which these metaphors can invoke in us, is a part of our personal growing process. I am not sentimental, and I think never was, but all my life Art, a part of it, which I am able to take as my own, was and still is changing me by adjusting how I see myself, how I comprehend this world. I see it as a spiritual movement, and to me, it comes from NPMR, to knock on my PMR door, and wake me up one more time.

Lena

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'Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.' Confucius.

Lena,

I fully understood that that was your attitude or view of art. Mike was referring to something else. I am not disagreeing with you, only putting the whole thing into context. No matter how someone feels about art and themselves in relationship to it, this is where it must originally come from. Just as the right side of the brain can understand things that the left cannot, the left side can understand what the right cannot. Full comprehension of the nature of our reality as a VR and how it arose from the LCS requires both sides working in conjunction and provides an understanding also of the nature and origin of art. Where else more fundamental can it come from? So is my opinion.

Ted

Sorry, I misunderstood in that I thought Ted was disagreeing with Lena. I can see that it is not really the case now.

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Mike

For myself, art has helped me get to the level of understanding where I can (just about) grasp MBT. Artists often use imagery and metaphors from our PMR existence to explore and express abstract ideas about existence. Take these lines from Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey':

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 100
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,*
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 110
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

To me thats a good effort at trying to express his inner intuitive feeling about what MBT would call AUM.

Another example is the first four lines of William Blake's 'Auguries of innocence':

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

I think Blake is expressing his intuitive grasp of the interconnected nature of existence, almost along the lines of the theory of the holographic universe, which is not entirely compatible with MBT (I don't think so anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong) but another example of PMR imagery being used to try to explore something more abstract.

Also Nabokov's Pale Fire which I wont quote but here's a link if anyone is interested: http://www.shannonrchamberlain.com/palefirepoem.html

Various art forms demand a high level of verisimilitude (realist painting, film, literature ) which create an illusion within the illusion of PMR ( and another interactive learning opportunity as a result ,I think). It was this aspect of art in particular that gave me the feeling that everything was information, which laid the foundation for understanding Tom's theory.

To me this speaks of the fractal-process nature of AUM. You see it more towards the end of the trilogy. Welcome to the forums! Have you gotten that far in the books?

You're right about the holographic universe part, although there are some similarities.

_________________
Mike