The discussions are getting interesting, yet very dense. It is somewhat hard
to keep track of everything. I would like to comment on one thing from Amy
Lone's last message.
Amy Lone wrote:
> First of all, while I am a visual artist, I think Bruno Deschênes made an
> excellent start by bringing music into the discussion.
> To return to Bruno's point, as he mentioned, the areas of the brain that
> apply to visual modalities would not apply across the board to all art.
My point here is that a musician does not "use" his mental imagery
the same as a visual artist, or as a sculptor or even a cook.
There is now more and more work done on aural imagery. Musicians
think in notes, sounds, music structures, etc. Sculptors think in
regards
to touch, texture, and the like. etc. The inherent training for each
of these art discipline force one to entrain and condition one's mind
(and brain to a large extent) accordingly. I met musicians that will not
notice any shade of a particular color on a painting but will notice
a note played by a basson by a symphony orchestra, while the opposite
for a painter will be the same. He or she might love music, but might
not
be able to make sense of the harmonic or contrapunctal structure of
peace.
As artist, we entrain and condition our mind (and brain - I put brain
purposefully in parenthesis because I am not a neuropsysiology or
cognitivist) to respond to our artistic for the prerogatives of this
entrainment, often to the detriment of other sensations. This is what I
referred to when I talked of sensory modalities. Aesthetics is framed
by these. A person that love painting but does not know much about
sculpture, will not criticize music so openly and so clearly.
One's training train our mind to respond accordingly to our interest
and I should say focal interest. We attend to what gives us the best
aesthetic "pleasure" and experience, ignoring and even denigrating
other things.
Also, the point that was raised that 90% of our perceptions are visual. If
one reads the litterature on hearing, this is an overstatement. The whole
body respond to sound in a way that a painting cannot. The French researcher
Alfred Tomatis was one of the first to indicate that the ear is connected to
the cerebellum, as we all know, but it is also connected to the vagal nerve,
which is in turn connected to all visceras and many other parts of the body.
Although we do not consciously perceive the effect of sounds, it has a
deeper and stronger impact than vision.
I am currently reading Maxine Sheets-Johnstone on movement: The Primacy of
Movement. She convincingly shows that scientists ignore movement from
aniamte life forms. They play a much stronger role than is usually believe
in our overall perceptions and mind and consciousness.
Ciao!
_____________________
Bruno Deschênes
Tel.: (514) 277-4665 * Fax: (514) 844-5498
Courriel: musis@globetrotter.net
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