a work of art exists. yet the art is not finished in this way; art has two parts; the artwork the artist created, and a part that comes from the viewer / listener / reader. he has to add his imagination, his perception, reception to make the artwork complete. this is a point of view i tried to avoid for quite some time, since it reminded me of "active audience" theories of postmodernism, which i hated for their relativism and opinion that for me led to a 'everything is in the same way meaningful and meaningless' stance (which, in itself can have some merits - but not in the way the people with these theories imagined).
art is created, and needs activity in the person who perceives the art, in order for it to be art. yet there are
vast difference between different artforms and mediums, and also there has been a shift in the last decadeds, or rather, centuries.
i will look at a few different forms of art and mediums here; there are more to be looked at, but this will not be addressed in this text, maybe in a future text.
comics
comics are one of the best examples to illustrate the point i am trying to make. what is special with comics is, that if the main action happens, you do not see it. or rather, you never see any actual action or events happening. you only see individual isolated pictures, that capture tiny frames of what happens. so what happens to the comic reader is that he has to, and does, create a whole movie - or rather, a whole scene - or rather, a whole world - in his imagination while reading the comic. one panel shows an object falling down. the next panel shows it sitting on the ground. the whole event of the object completing the fall, hitting the ground, and coming to lie still, has to be pictured, envisioned and created in the mind of the reader. this is a bit of a simple example, but i think it helps to illustrate the point. with more important and complex happening, the mind of the reader has to become even more active. a page could have 8-12 panels. but the reader has to create thousand of frames, "panels" in his mind in order to follow whats going on. even if most people do that subconciously, and might not even "visually" envision these images, this flow when reading the comic. so in a sense, one could say, the reader of a comic has to create more art than the actual artist who drew the artist. the artist might have drawn 200 panels; the reader created 20.000 frames in his mind.
movies
movies are basically the complete opposite of what i wanted to point out with comics. modern movies condemn the viewer to complete passivity. nothing is "left to the imagination" anymore. it is no wonder visual effects, animations, the way things are shown in movies get better and more perfect as time goes on. everything is rolled out, drawn out for the viewer, nothing has to be filled in by imagination. together with the fact that a movie goes on all the time, this actually *forbids* the viewer to use his own imagination. with a comics, or a book, you can lie it aside and think about what you just read, and, or, drift off in your own imagination. with movies, you can not stop to do this (at least not in a movie theatre or similiar surrounding. and even with a video you can pause, it is not the same). you are not allowed to use your own imagination, basically you are not allowed to think - at least not allowed to think too much, with movies.
yet, as with most media, there are of course directors who skillfully subverted this treachery of the world of movies. with david lynch, you have to think all the time - put your mind at max efficieny - to be able to follow the plot.
but regardless of what, it is no wonder people doze off at TV. movies are the medium of passivity.
books
books have a wonderful potential in that they have no visual information for the reader. which means, that even more than with comics basically, he has to create a world in his imagination, rely on his own creativity. he has to transform the words he reads into visual images. it comes no surprise then the books have always been the choice medium who those who are "dreamers", or creatively interested or talented.
on a cold winter night, with a candle burning and a stunning novel, you can cast off into a different world of imagination.
i would rate comics actually above books in terms of actual activity though - as in books there is a flow of events. a book rolls out to you, in a similiar way as movie, you just have to add the imagines - and you can stop every time to think out how you would like the events to happen in your own way. yet with comics you have to imagine the events themselves - not only visually, but fully.
visuality and text
before going on, i want to address two further key issues. visuality and text. both can be useful, but also very treacherous. anyone who has been disappointed by a broken spoken promise might agree - to give a simple example.
thus, i am always more sceptical about media that rely heavily on visuality and text. movies have both; another reason to distrust them.
music
purely instrumental music, on the other hand, does not. that's why it always had one of the closest places to my heart. even with music with vocal and text, a heavy focus lies on the instrumentation - i.e., the nonverbal part.
music is the media i would rate highest in this context, for the activity the viewer has to do to be able to comprehend it. music is able to create whole images in the imagination of the listener. whole worlds, created by sonic. it is said a picture can paint a thousand words. for me, music can paint a thousand pictures.
i've heard certain architecture to be called "frozen music". maybe one could say it the other way round too: music is frozen architecture - of the architecture of imagination.
there is so much magic and specialness in music, that it is hard to express.
paintings
painting are visual but (usally) textless. this is already a plus. yet they too are very restricted, but are able to enchant the imagination of the viewer, much more so than movies could ever do. also, with paintings, similar to comics, the viewer often has to employ his own imagination to create or complete the event shown in the paintings - another plus. just think of these renaissance paintings, that are, even though they are still, seemingly buzzing with activity and action.
a change
now the problem i want to address is the following. in the past decades, or rather centuries, as already hinted, there has been a shift in these things. art and reception of art has moved away from this activity. the viewer becomes more and more passive. he has to employ imagination less and less, has to less think for himself. his artistic ability grows smaller. as said, people no longer create their own world of imagination while reading a book, but watch a movie that rolls it all out for them. now with fantasy and other movies, that are sometimes very creatively made and fascinating, people might have the feeling to drift off into imagination too. but it is not their imagination. they do not use their own imagination. it is already laid out for them. they are not creative - not creating.
that the shift is from textless or non-visual media - such as book and movies - to visual and textual media like movies, makes it worse.
people are losing their ability to be creative and artistic themselves. the ability to use their imagination. the core of art. they become less imaginative. no wonder the world is more and more uncreative and visionless.
music is a good example of this problem.
is it said that most of todays "mainstream" music is similiar and same-sounding. but it simply has to be this way, since people are becoming less able to do the things i mentioned above. for them, to even "understand" it, it has be in pre-conceived, convential, repeated forms. if a slow piano in a minor tuning starts the song, they know it's gonna be a ballad. if it has dance beats and girls singing, they know it is an upbeat party song. otherwise they would not understand it. they wouldn't get it if a song with "party" type production would actually be sad, or the other way round. i've seen this way of thinking in action, with people listening to what they thought to be happy dance music, without comphrehending the dark and twisted images conceived by the lyrics of the song. it didn't add up, so they didn't notice - they just saw what it was at the surface, how it was structued.
music that has methods and structures that go beyond these pre-formulated concepts has a hard time these days. music that requires people to use their own imagination. that goes deeper, is more complex, not easily seen through.
why is all this important? because there is an impoverishment of imagination going on. the loss of this ablity.
it is important because this is a key ability. for oneself. for life. for the world.
if people lack vision, we will live in a world without vision.
with this i want to end this text.
if you do art yourself, if you want, you could think about the concepts i illustrated here, any maybe they can help you or add something to your art or the way it is perceived.
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