Sometimes you read or watch something that really grips you. Another time you read something, and you just cannot concentrate at all. Then you wonder what it is that grips you like that. It is not your will; your will would allow you to concentrate on whatever you choose to concentrate on. The German psychologist Carl Jung called it The Self. He thought that the mechanism that directed your attention in the present, was your future self-displaying itself to direct your attention to something that might better yourself for the future. you have a potential and that potential is what you could be in the future. For that potential to manifest, it must be noticeable (palpable) in the present. And in this way your instinct manifests itself in the present by directing your attention towards things that will likely increase your competence and further your growth right now. Something as fundamental as your attention is controlled by something so primary of which you do not have an immense amount of control over. One of the topics that I would like to touch upon is what intrigues people, what is it that makes you emotionally interested in something. Maybe you experienced an art exhibition with a piece that inspired you so much that you decided to create art yourself. Or maybe you read a book that got you so emotionally and mentally invested that it changed something inside of you. This connection you experience is interesting and important. How can you connect with your audience, how can you share a message or emotion.
We possess art lest we perish from truth ~ Nietzsche Art is very hard to pinpoint. Why is art important? What exactly is art and how does it function? The fact that these questions cannot be answered also gives it value and beauty.. One can never predict the ways that cannot be predicted. This is why art is very often seen as a treat by the one’s in power. Art can change someone's life and be invaluable later. From an economic standpoint this can be massive as well, just look at countries like France and Italy where in the summer there are more visitors than natives in the country. A real piece of art can be a window into the transcendent for you. You have to develop a taste for art. Something that speaks to you, something you really like. Finding this takes time and effort. You read literature in the humanities so that you can learn from the wisdom of our civilization. This is rich beyond comparison. People have been working on all kinds of important topics for a long time. We live by beauty, we live by literature, we live by art. We can not live without it, life is too dull in the absence of the sublime.
Storytelling
One way we connect to art as humans is through stories. We love reading or hearing stories. From books to movies, from theatre to music. Connecting emotionally to the characters. “how it feels” or “what it is like” to be somewhere, in some time, or in the shoes of another, and to feel or appreciate their affective experience. (Dewey, 1980, Swanger, 1993) Humans always were deeply invested in imagination, into forgetting reality for a few seconds. Creating fantasies, stories and dreaming. This has been a distinctive part of our humanity. You can see this as far back as in ancient tribes and their creations. Many of which created songs, dances, wall paintings and many other items and ways of expression. We enjoy using our imagination and creativity to place ourselves in stories, especially those of which we could only dream about. Most obvious examples are books, theatre, movies and games. We as humans always tend to keep wanting more and more. This goes far back, we think that the prehistoric people expressed themselves with wall paintings. These were not only used to describe but also to express. A story is very important, It creates life and depth to things and events. Just by looking at Ludovic Florent his work Chrysalide (Image on the right) for a short time makes you feel uncomfortable, the person looks trapped screaming for help. In a short amount of time this work tells you a lot of information. The expression on her face immediately hits you, The way her body reaches for help and her hand on her throat as if she can’t breathe. You start to wonder and imagine the situation. Oxytocin starts running through your body. This makes you feel more human. We do this through empathy. A research from 2018 in Vienna done by Matthew Pelowski, Eva Specker, Gernot Gerger and Helmut Leder. found that in “some cases (2 of 3 artworks) viewers did consistently feel more emotions then the artist had intended, they also spontaneously reported feeling similar emotion patterns as those reported by the artists when making, regardless of whether these had been intended”. One of the most fundamental aspects for artist-viewer interaction involves emotion. We connect through emotions and experiences. More recently seen as empathy or “feeling into” the emotional state of a person or artwork. We will be using Ludovic Florent his work Chrysalide throughout this text.
Medium is the message
As Marshall McLuhan said the Medium is the message. The medium is the means of communication. Verbal and non-verbal, Your voice is a medium and twitter too. The use of a medium includes a message by itself which can easily be overlooked, and this applies on top of your content or message. This doesn’t necessarily only apply to digital media, this applies to all forms of expression and media. But the medium will influence the expression you wish to transfer. For example a story written in a book will transfer the message completely differently than shown in a performance. This is because the imagination, experience, targeted audience and the way this is written or shown contextualises a huge part of the original message. The medium Ludovic Florent uses is his website which displays his artworks. In general putting your artwork online makes this very accessible for others to view and experience. By having his own website he also has full control over how his works are displayed making the focus more clean and guided. But this website is fully in French making it limited accessible for non-french speakers.
Social connections
Like I have written in the previous paragraph, we are more connected than ever before. Yet we feel more distant and lonely. How is it possible that while we are more connected to the world, we as humans feel more disconnected from society? In sheer numbers we have way more connections, but those connections tend to be less close and intimate. Chrysalide work displays an immense. Humans are biologically used to living in tribes or small villages where the average person knows around thirty people. Those were the people you spend most of your life with and with most of them you had a really close relationship. These days your world is way larger both in social aspects as in physical distance travelled. You are likely to travel to different cities for education or work. Especially in your early life.. you go from school to college to university. and meet way more people along the way. Now with the world wide web, internet and social media connecting to people in different countries is done within seconds. These connections generally are more temporary and less intimate. Adriana M. Manago, a psychologist at Western Washington University, researched the difference and sociocultural switch from face-to-face communities and social networking and how that influences friendship. In general we know more people but the amount of close relationships and bonds are smaller because of this. This has led to the increase in depression and social anxiety. A lot of time is spent online these days, and while the interactions are often just as social they are generally much less personal. Leslie J. Seltzer did research on the release of oxytocin while instant messaging compared to physical contact, in which the oxytocin release is quite lower during online communication in contrast to physical interaction, Oxytocin is the chemical responsible for bonding.
Sometimes you read or watch something that really grabs you. Something that might have changed something inside of you and stays with you for many years. A piece of art with a beautiful concept that instantly resonated and connected with you. We connect really well with each other through expression, intimacy and empathy. It is important for us to connect, find things we really enjoy and be inspired by those. We are curious beings who love to fantasise and explore all kinds of thoughts and mediums.
