Week 2, Fundamentals of Art Inquiry

Living With Art defines the role of the artist as such:

"Create extraordinary versions of ordinary objects:
Art is an interface, or a portal, to a world beyond.
Record and commemorate
Give tangible form to the unknown
Refresh our vision and help see the world anew"

Of the artists and theorists discussed in the Aesthetics video, I thought this one was important:

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, PC (22 July 1621 – 21 January 1683)
"beauty and good are one in the same, and that God is the source of harmony and order. The perception of beauty is based on the viewer's sensibility.  Even if one is sensitive, that is not simply enough.


The carbon-dating approach to tracing the origins of art and creativity is incredible important.  This school of knowledge is linked to our biological evolution, as Changeaux puts clearly. Art was an early form of emotional communication, before the inception of language. 
Ramachandran has theories that explore psychological changes in human beings that explain our recognition and awareness. The most interesting theory is that human brains show activity when perceiving certain shapes and colors, meaning the artist can distort and rearrange images to stimulate that part of the brain.  The artist abandons realism (attempting to capture still-life detail) in order to create a more adaptable image. 
4. How do the videos and article relate to the readings in the text?
In the Paleolithic developments in art, people have an urge to smear or compile dirt to alter some surface to create an image.  Changeaux simliarly discusses the discovery of symmetry in the Chauvet Caves, an early aesthetic rule.  
In nature, most biological images are symmetrical, therefore our impulsive instinct to catch, mate with, dominate, or evade that think which we see is based off of an visual image.  

I personally think these studies of art are extremely far-reaching. I think art is a process that generates internally and happens externally, so I think locating the sections of our brain that are sensitive to images is only partially important to humanity.  I think the art of the 16th-21st centuries, as described in this book, is amazing because the artists were guessing at what was inside the human skull.  I think integrating the MRI into a study of art takes away much of the magic associated with it.  


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