A&O – COMMUNICATION – MEDIA

ART & ORGANISM

MEDIA

how can we represent what we think, how we feel?

(under development)

In A&O, we propose that experiences, beliefs, feelings–and their indelible imprint on who we are by means of implicit or explicit memory–are who we are — and we want to be understood as much as we want to understand (in fact these are likely necessary to each other)

We communicate as best we can.  We began with just a few poorly coordinated gestures … a few vowels (expressive as they may be, gurgling, grunting, crying, laughing … and it takes off from there… Developmental biologists spend vast amounts of time documenting, categorizing, and hypothesizing the underlying processes as they mature … and then there are the evolutionary processes by which communication trickles through the generations.

But how do we represent ourselves?   EXPRESSIVE AESTHETICS is concerned with the selective representation of thoughts to communicate as accurately as we can;  RECEPTIVE AESTHETICS deals with perception and its changes from stimuli to concepts.  IN BETWEEN these, we make the best use possible of the media available to us.  (look at the A&O page on principles of communication); then …

Here is a quick survey of a few typical as well as rare modes of transmission:

MUSIC: Auditory Worlds:

• Sounds and their meaning;  The Emotional Effects of Chords

• Reading on Musicophilia (McGinn reviews Sacks in NYRB)

• Reading on Mind and Body in Music (Aeon)

• Reading on Walt Whitman and Music (Brainpickings)

• The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music (Gray et al in Science 2001)

WORDS:  The Problem with Words

The FOUR ESSENCES (the fifth is QUINTESSENCE)

• Earth, Air, Fire, Water

VISUAL

• Color and its emotional meanings

DANCE / PERFORMANCE

TACTILE

CHEMOSENSORY, TASTE, SCENT 

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EARTH Earthworks (Land Art comments from Tate Gallery) (PBS on “The Case for Landart”) Andy Goldsworthy examples of work;  Goldsworthy at work. volcanic lava

 

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AIR Berndnaut Smilde’s clouds  collaboration between Japanese studio Tetsuo Kondo Architects, and environmental engineering firm Transsolar

 

 

 

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FIRE Rob Prideaux’s smoke and fire | in modernmet Fire Art ….

 

 

 

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WATER The Rain Room Chris Witcombe’s class page… Martin Waugh’s liquid sculpture Clouds Water (great fountains are obvious, but new ideas and technologies go far beyond (whirlpool–waterfall in shopping mall) water represented in art

 

Collaborations with other species

• The Caddis fly and “extra-somatory self”  (read about using another species in the expression of your vision: collaboration with a caddis worm

| visual/graphic/painting | auditory/music/song | chemosensory/ scent/taste | performance /dance/acting | tactile | language | (links need reconnecting)