Art Defined
Art is any man-made creation designed to influence the subconscious of those who perceive it.
I say “influence the subconscious” because art bypasses the foreconscious and makes direct changes to the state of the audience's subconscious. Instead of the word “influence”, I would prefer to use “manipulate”, which is a more accurate word, but people can't seem to get past its malevolent connotation so I'm avoiding that term. Most any experienced artist should be able to relate to gauging their intended audience and deciding which buttons to press. If I play a minor chord people will feel sad or serious. If I paint a picture that is black and white and the only splash of color is a green tree in the background, all eyes will be drawn to that tree. If I am writing a story and I have many terrible things happen and then something joyful happens, that joyful event will mean more than if the entire story had been pleasant. With all of these artistic decisions I am anticipating what will happen to the audience when they are exposed to these different combinations of elements.
I say “designed" because for art to have meaning it must have an intelligent purpose. For art to have value it must have a intended goal that it can accomplish. Art is not a random action with the goal of allowing the audience to get whatever they want from it. That is vanity. If haphazardly throwing paint onto an easel is creating art, then so is taking a bath or a dead cockroach or talking about paying the bills. Everything that in any way influences a person's subconscious would fall into the category of art and its definition would lose all distinction.
I say “man-made” to further make a useful definition of art by distinguishing between God's creation and our creation. God created everything, and everything he has created has the potential, when perceived, to influence a person's subconscious. Also, since God is both omniscient and omnipotent, he has the ability to gauge and control how everything influences each person's subconscious. Thus, everything God created potentially can meet the first two criteria I outlined for defining art, so if a distinction is not made between what we make and what God has made then once again everything is art, all distinction is lost and art as a term loses most of it's usefulness.
It's important to clarify that I am not taking God out of my definition of art. God created us, and one of the functions we are designed to do is to create art. The art we create can be seen as a subset of God's creation.
The dynamics I've outlined above are not unique to art, for they are the same with any mode of communication. Art is a form of communication, and communication is a form of mind control. Not to say that any form of communication can control any part of the mind, but certain communications generate certain effects within the targeted audience of that communication. It is a universal rule for any system: in order to receive and process any communication some part of your mind must be altered to reflect the impact of that communication.
For example, if a person introduced himself to me and said that his name was Bob, several parts of my mind would change in response to that communication. Firstly, in some part of my mind the word “Bob” would be attached to whatever other attributes I had perceived about this man and neatly cataloged away within some “Bob” file. Secondly, an entry for that specific event of Bob introducing himself would be registered in my memory banks. Thirdly, the decision-making parts of my mind would factor that communication into deciding what course of action to take in response to receiving it, so that as an example, after receiving that communication from Bob my mind would conclude that there would be no reason to ask for that person's name. Fourthly, my intuition would make a wide sweep of my knowledge and cross-reference the word Bob with any other instances of the word Bob that I may have encountered and further store its findings somewhere for other parts of my mind to potentially utilize. Those are all that I can think of off of the top of my head, although there are probably a myriad of other procedures that would likely take place within any mind during that circumstance, but perhaps those few examples will give some idea of the magnitude of influence that communication commands.
Most people I tell these things to immediately disagree with me though no one has yet given me any actual arguments against these ideas. I think the reality is that most people including myself do not travel through life with the understanding of just how vulnerable our minds really are to the world around us. Though our minds can do a great deal of filtering, the only way you can completely filter out a communication is to not expose yourself to that communication in any form.
Finally, for art to achieve the purpose of it’s design, it must be perceived. Not to say that an object does not become art until it is perceived, but that an object is not art until it is designed to be perceived. Intent is the crucial ingredient here.
I debated with myself a great deal as to whether or not to directly include a reference to audiences in my definition of art because the intended audience is such a crucial component of art, but I decided that I just wanted this to be an introduction and won't make things too complicated for now, so I’ll talk more about audiences later. I don't want to spend too much time at once talking about the technicalities without getting back to the real meat of how God fits into all of this.
I say “influence the subconscious” because art bypasses the foreconscious and makes direct changes to the state of the audience's subconscious. Instead of the word “influence”, I would prefer to use “manipulate”, which is a more accurate word, but people can't seem to get past its malevolent connotation so I'm avoiding that term. Most any experienced artist should be able to relate to gauging their intended audience and deciding which buttons to press. If I play a minor chord people will feel sad or serious. If I paint a picture that is black and white and the only splash of color is a green tree in the background, all eyes will be drawn to that tree. If I am writing a story and I have many terrible things happen and then something joyful happens, that joyful event will mean more than if the entire story had been pleasant. With all of these artistic decisions I am anticipating what will happen to the audience when they are exposed to these different combinations of elements.
I say “designed" because for art to have meaning it must have an intelligent purpose. For art to have value it must have a intended goal that it can accomplish. Art is not a random action with the goal of allowing the audience to get whatever they want from it. That is vanity. If haphazardly throwing paint onto an easel is creating art, then so is taking a bath or a dead cockroach or talking about paying the bills. Everything that in any way influences a person's subconscious would fall into the category of art and its definition would lose all distinction.
I say “man-made” to further make a useful definition of art by distinguishing between God's creation and our creation. God created everything, and everything he has created has the potential, when perceived, to influence a person's subconscious. Also, since God is both omniscient and omnipotent, he has the ability to gauge and control how everything influences each person's subconscious. Thus, everything God created potentially can meet the first two criteria I outlined for defining art, so if a distinction is not made between what we make and what God has made then once again everything is art, all distinction is lost and art as a term loses most of it's usefulness.
It's important to clarify that I am not taking God out of my definition of art. God created us, and one of the functions we are designed to do is to create art. The art we create can be seen as a subset of God's creation.
The dynamics I've outlined above are not unique to art, for they are the same with any mode of communication. Art is a form of communication, and communication is a form of mind control. Not to say that any form of communication can control any part of the mind, but certain communications generate certain effects within the targeted audience of that communication. It is a universal rule for any system: in order to receive and process any communication some part of your mind must be altered to reflect the impact of that communication.
For example, if a person introduced himself to me and said that his name was Bob, several parts of my mind would change in response to that communication. Firstly, in some part of my mind the word “Bob” would be attached to whatever other attributes I had perceived about this man and neatly cataloged away within some “Bob” file. Secondly, an entry for that specific event of Bob introducing himself would be registered in my memory banks. Thirdly, the decision-making parts of my mind would factor that communication into deciding what course of action to take in response to receiving it, so that as an example, after receiving that communication from Bob my mind would conclude that there would be no reason to ask for that person's name. Fourthly, my intuition would make a wide sweep of my knowledge and cross-reference the word Bob with any other instances of the word Bob that I may have encountered and further store its findings somewhere for other parts of my mind to potentially utilize. Those are all that I can think of off of the top of my head, although there are probably a myriad of other procedures that would likely take place within any mind during that circumstance, but perhaps those few examples will give some idea of the magnitude of influence that communication commands.
Most people I tell these things to immediately disagree with me though no one has yet given me any actual arguments against these ideas. I think the reality is that most people including myself do not travel through life with the understanding of just how vulnerable our minds really are to the world around us. Though our minds can do a great deal of filtering, the only way you can completely filter out a communication is to not expose yourself to that communication in any form.
Finally, for art to achieve the purpose of it’s design, it must be perceived. Not to say that an object does not become art until it is perceived, but that an object is not art until it is designed to be perceived. Intent is the crucial ingredient here.
I debated with myself a great deal as to whether or not to directly include a reference to audiences in my definition of art because the intended audience is such a crucial component of art, but I decided that I just wanted this to be an introduction and won't make things too complicated for now, so I’ll talk more about audiences later. I don't want to spend too much time at once talking about the technicalities without getting back to the real meat of how God fits into all of this.
Labels: God and Art
posted by Chris Johnson at
9:41 PM
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