The Story: So Far
Posted on | November 22, 2006 | No Comments
So here’s my theory-in-progress (warning: pseudoscience ahead):
When human brain function developed consciousness – and all those things we can do that “lower animals” can’t – what it got was particularly advanced pattern-recognition software. Not only could we perceive patterns in the world, but it could perceive patterns in those patterns, whereby we came to deduce that we are conscious.
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So essentially, this evolutionary leap forward moved us from mere perception-and-reaction to perception-and-interpretation, creating that “voice in our head.” It means that everything involving a fully-functioning human being is, in fact, a dialogue. A negotiation of impulses and impressions of the senses. A conversation between that part of “us” that is out in the world, and the part of “us” that is a brain function, trying to make sense of it, trying to impose patterns in it. That thing which makes us human is the the thing that tells us our story: who we are, where we are, and the relationship between those two things. So:
Anything involving a human is a story.
So what about art? Art is the process by which we actively create stories – stories, perhaps, with varying relationships to our personal Story. In this way, we are playing around with the very building blocks of our existence – in a real sense, it’s quantum physics.
(And, in the case of more “abstract” art, like some visual art, or music, for instance, the goal is to create a perception. Any human perception, one could argue, and especially one that is seized upon and actively recreated, is bound to be related to a larger story – it is a way of seeing a can of soup, for instance, that suggests a way of seeing the world. But in any case, if “narrative” arts play around with protons and neutrons, “abstract” arts play around with quarks.)
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