RE:
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 18:09:56 -0500
From: Bruno Deschênes <musis@globetrotter.net>
......................
Bruno Deschenes' frustration is far from unique, and I sympathize with
it. But I feel that his argument is a mixture of intuitions and half
baked science. Of the two, his intuitions would seem to be far more
reliable, and as a musician, I would hang my hat on what he says.
But not as a scientist.
He says:
> This is a facet of Western society. Most books on philosophy of arts,
> being music (e.g. Dahlhaus) and others dichotomize art from everyday
> life, as well as from science, and even society. I read a book written > in the first half of the century that art and politic should not mix.
This is good solid Pragmatic criticism. Dewey's first paragraph in "Art
as Experience" (as I recall) sets the tempo of his work by stating as
much, in Dewey's case in terms of the problem with museums.
....................
Bruno says:
> This is a problem because many of these scientists make
> universally claims about how art works in the brain, based almost >exclusively on visual arts.
Here I think he is into red herrings. Now, it is most reasonable to be
sensitive over the high use of visual research versus so little audile
research. In large part that is because about 90% of our perceptions are
visually based. But in physiological terms, as David Zaig is stressing,
the internal stuff is all the same. The very same electro-chemical
carriers are conduits from the eyes as they are from the ears. And I
think (I am not certain) that synapse connections, etc., in the brain
offer no distinctions either (that is, differentiating sound from
sight). Is that not basically why research is centered upon brain scans
associated with the local geography of the brain?
So, this complaint really says there are far too few exterior
(environmental) studies associating the response of the subject to the
structure of the music one is experiencing. It is complex, isn't it?
......................
Bruno's final question on how specific modalities shape the brain is
quite interesting. If he here refers to Modal Logic, as C.I. Lewis used
the term, then he is far beyond my understanding. I could never pass the
Calculus, much less Modal Logic.
If he refers to Modalism (which I doubt), he would be invoking the
heresies of Sabellianism.
Otherwise, if he refers to Probability Theory, then he might be
discussing the distribution of certain instances as a measure of
location to some network, or median grid, of values. If this were the
case, then the discussion could verge into the Phenomenal Theory of
Transparency, and that would be interesting.
(There is also a Modal Realism, but I don't think many people take its
mixture of same-time yet variable worlds too seriously.)
........................
In a way, Bruno seems to be suffering from the same problem he decries:
That of putting his own art on a pedestal to the exclusion of others.
The idea, which I find valid, that art NOT be pedestalized at all, but
put/done in the barber shops, beauty parlors and grocery stores, thereby
celebrating its reference to that from which it emerged (for Steve Lauf,
this would be Recreation; for other it might be some sort of Mimetic
recall) -- that is, recentering art (music, sculpture, etc.) in the
realm of its meaning as opposed to the realm of its patrimony, this
would not be novel so much as it were valid and arguable.
For David Zaig's problem, however, it doesn't seem to say much for
Brain activity. What it does suggest is that if one wants discuss
aesthetic issues in terms of brain studies, then it will be necessary to
really do just that: Discuss aesthetics.
Richard McBride
School of ARchitecture
University of Texas at Arlington
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