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Neuro-plasticity of an artist.

This project of understanding is merely an exploration of my practice and a look at how my work has been influenced by my understanding of medium, my experiences and my epistemological journey.

I reflect on how I negotiate my environment and by doing so, aim to challenge the preconceived ideas of identity questioning ones location in space. Using multiple disciplines to create conceptual pieces that may become interactive installations and representations of shared complexities. Using Art and the ideas and practices of those that have come before me. Mixing media and medium.

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a project relating to our legacy to the planet and the hand prints found at archeological sites across the globe, medium, Cast plastic bottle tops fine plaster and created earth pigments.

 

 

 My thesis is a notion and exploration into the importance of art and how those links between the reaction and the importance of the image may have a direct correlation to the experience of art, to peak inside the holistic or therapeutic qualities in art the differences in identity and possibly culture, to explore the possibilities in our consciousness, the way in which our commonalities could be our greatest strength.

Studies into mythology, psychology, physics and Euclidian space have taken my work in many different directions yet my starting points can be varied the thematic practice remains constant, location access and perception and the search for something new whilst looking and exploring our past, merging it with our present. Using mediums and social sciences that give hidden qualities to a piece of work.

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 Created with stencils from the shadows of ten to represent the eleven million dealing with disability and access.

During a lecture and film presentation in Plymouth University 2016 about Tony Conrad a thought occurred to me, if the combination of sound, image and experience changes the way we feel about art, could a formula be derived to create an immersive experience. Also what else could that formula teach us? Exploring with reference to film, how the image has become diluted, and the experience of art seems to be another Avant guard.

After seeing works by Tony Conrad I gave consideration to what music is and the experience of art. His films and approach interested me.

Music moves me; it can transport my emotion and my thoughts, and art is all I seem to think about, it is my distraction.

This is art from a personal view, and the image does the same. Yet, the score of a movie, the sounds that make it real are an illusion to create an immersive experience and with the visual we are absorbed into is a world far from our own. 

 

Indeed in the performance of some of Conrad’s performances produced, hallucinogenic, emotional and physical responses, the showing of the film flicker is a perfect example of this, made in 1966, produced with Jonas Mekas and consisting of only five frames, the stroboscopic film came with a health warning and was considered as a key work into structural film making.

“Who is in Charge?”

In an interview between Tony Conrad and Brian Duguid in June 1996, points out, "History is like music - completely in the present". He goes on to say that the breaking of the use of formal structures, to explore psychological states and attitudes, and to adopt genre expressive forms as vehicles for constructing public art.

Firstly, it dispensed with the "edifice of high culture" - it was music to participate in, anywhere, not just fodder for galleries and concert halls. Secondly, it dispensed with the musical score, offering a way for classical music to ditch compositional authoritarianism in favor of the improvisational collaboration already mapped out by jazz musicians. Finally, it focused not on the act of composing at all, but thanks to the minute harmonic intervals the group were now exploring, on the act of listening. This act of listening reminds one of John Cage and 4”33’ and works by Susan Philipsz.

 

Philipsz creates sound installations using recordings of her own voice that can be heard in specific geographical locations to "heighten the visitor's engagement with their surroundings while inspiring thoughtful introspection." Though Philipsz sings in many of her works, it is a key element of her work that she has an untrained average voice, Philipsz cannot read or write sheet music.

 She said:

"Everyone can identify with a human voice. I think hearing an unaccompanied voice, especially an untrained one, even if it's singing a song you don't know, can trigger some really powerful memories and associations. If I'd gone to music school and had proper training, I would not be doing what I do today."

The idea of identification can be seen and experienced with that of Conrads work.

According to Conrad: "This was a total displacement of the composer's role, from progenitor of the sound to groundskeeper at its gravesite".

With the addition of John Cale and his viola, the newly named Theatre of Eternal Music became dominated by the drones, and soon left Young's saxophone elaborations behind. They explored new harmonic intervals, dissonant but not discordant, and developed a sound that would ultimately become legendary.

 

(Contact Table of the Elements, Box 5524, Atlanta, Georgia 30307, USA. Special thanks to Jeff Hunt for assistance. Interview © Brian Duguid 1996.

Sourced 24/10/16)

 

The work of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann through to that of Hans Zimmer have used music to illustrate a narrative with the image. It is immersive.

An exhibition and talk by Douglas Gordon was interesting with the idea of using the collected memory and the perception of time, In his well known work 24 Hour Psycho (1993), he slows down Alfred Hitchcock's legendary 1960 film Psycho into a full day's duration, drawing out the horror until it has ceased to be suspenseful. As Gordon himself has said, “I am the one who provides the board, the pieces and the dice, but you are the one who has to play.”

This statement using this idea of individual interpretation is not a new one.

Duchamp said that, “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone”.

Could it not be possible to construct a work that was completely left for the interpretation of the viewer and yet give a solid foundation to its conception?

Through out modernity, science, philosophers and artists have questioned the formula of creativity.

E. H Gombrich has surmised that the act of liking art is something different.

“ All of us, when we see a painting are bound to be reminded of a hundred –and –one things which influence our likes and dislikes.”

(Gombrich E.H (1989) Intro, The story of art, 15th edition. Oxford; Phaidon Press)

 

With the use of the combination of using experience and the qualities of sound and the visual to examine the unseen or unsaid, could there be an explanation that art and music does something more. It can change us and on the unconscious level, although how exactly can music affect us is another question.

 It can change ones mood, even ones location, the way in which we understand the emotion of music on the unconscious level the visual of art does the same, the experience with the art does more.

There always remains an identity to relate. Could this not be the unconscious act or intentional act of the artist or could one relate it to the added experience of the viewer.

 

One might consider that this observation is possibly influenced by our subconscious as well. The obscure does on occasion lead to discovery Indeed the processes of perception and experience relates across the way in which we interact with everything and everyone. However the information to which is relevant to the viewer or the participator is only relevant to the individuals experience if one is looking to create a reaction.

Reactions can be similar and are more often than not separated by our individuality and the paradox is, we are not so diverse and we have inherent traits such as the mechanisms, neurons, life experience, psychological factors, perception and knowledge. These whilst can be similar in normal attribute’s are often separated by the experience or the memory. By using the complication of these, creates an alternating perception.

 

 While perception cannot occur without sensation as humans we need the  ‘raw material’ from which our awareness of objects is constructed. Although we feel we’re in direct and immediate contact with the world as it really is, in fact our awareness of things is the end product of a long and complex process.

[Psychology- The science of the mind and behavior 6th edition-R. Gross (Hodder, 2010) page 79.]

The idea of relationship.

Art for me is about the sensation, feeling and experience. A journey into the conversation and questions that may be invoked, the common experience and the conflicting experience used in a way that although might be uncomfortable for some may be enlightening for others.  The quest is looking to express a common experience.

 

 

A common experience.

Pariedolia is one of those phenomena and explored in earlier works. The faces that we see in curtains or the carpet. The ideas that those common traits are not shared else where within our identities but are part of us and have a direct effect.

 

 In 2012 neuroscientists and art historian David Freedberg, Art history professor at Columbia University, examined the reaction from the examination of the detail of Adams posture in Michelangelo’s “expulsion from paradise”. The results from trans-cranial magnetic stimulation showed that the sight of his wrist stimulated the primal cortex that related to the subjects own wrist. This visible response demonstrates that on an un-conscious level that our brains react to an image in ways we are not aware.

Ulrich Kirk, a neuroscientist at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, is also interested in artworks’ contemplated.  Would a viewer respond the same way to a masterpiece enshrined in the Louvre if he beheld the same work displayed in a less exalted setting, such as a garage sale? In one experiment, Kirk showed subjects a series of images; some, he explained, were fine artwork; others were created by Photoshop. In reality, none were Photoshop-generated; Kirk found that different areas of viewers’ brains fired up when he declared an image to be “art.” http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-does-the-brain-process-art-80541420/

 

 

With out further investigation I see this only as evidence of reaction however could the results be affected by the deception or indeed experience, that is to propose the subjects might be reacting to the false hood, the image or the relief in knowing?

However this “firing up” may be a way forward into the understanding of consciousness itself, or at the very least explains the function of interconnected stimuli on the neurological and the relation to the physical. If this explains that “The meaning of art” affects us in many ways we do not understand.

 

Showing that the “Narrative is a process of unconscious and conscious experience”, now this took the idea that music, art and creativeness come from somewhere else.

 

Dr. Ben Seymour talking on BBC radio four broadcast 24/11/16 explained the way in which the brain relates to external stimuli regarding art / music colour etc., also how the neurological effects are present with fMRI functional magnetic resonating imaging, Dr Seymour is working in the realms of fear and anxiety disorders.

Using coloured images he and the multi national team are able to predict the areas of the brain that function in response to particular coloured shapes, using additional information such as heart, blood pressure etc. So little is understood about these physical reactions and why they are occurring within the brain and the effects.

The idea that art has a measurable qualitive affect on the brain this required further examination and lead my research into neuro- plasticity and the work of Dr.Eagleman, my first approach came from thinking how a blind man might perceive a work of art. Or how might someone with other disabilities experience the world. Echo-location fascinates me, using sonar to navigate the world with a series of clicks it is almost a superpower”.

Dr.Eagleman has helmed groundbreaking studies on time perception, brain plasticity and “neuro-law”. His latest research explores technology that bypasses sensory impairment -- such as a smartphone-controlled vest that translates sound into patterns of vibration for the deaf.

 ““Eagleman has a talent for testing the un-testable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness.”   “ http://www.ted.com/talks/david_eagleman_can_we_create_new_senses_for_humans/transcript?language=en

 Sourced 01/12/16

 

Neuro-aesthetics.

Neuro- aesthetics explores how the brain processes a work of art. The discipline emerged 17 years ago with the publication of British neuroscientist Semir Zeki’s book, (Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford press, 1999).

Zeki explores the relationship between the physiology and the perception of art and the process of exploring the conscious reaction, talking about the influences of music and language to communicate language and emotion across cultures and how the likes of Wagner and Beethoven and other great artists understood without realizing something about the organization of the human brain. He relates the encompassing views of philosophers such as Hegel to that of Plato.

Hegel held that reality must be rational, so that its ultimate structure is revealed in the structure of our thought. Everything that is thinkable, especially apparent contradictions must be resolvable under some common concept of the reason. In what follows, we will examine in detail the logical apparatus Hegel employed in pursuit of knowledge. Even more than Aristotle and the Stoics, Hegel believed that the study of logic is an investigation into the fundamental structure of reality itself. According to Hegel, all logic (and, hence, all of reality) is dialectical in character, that is to say we should talk about it. As Kant had noted in the Antinomies, serious thought about one general description of the world commonly leads us into a contemplation of its opposite. But Hegel did not suppose this to be the end of the matter; he made the further supposition that the two concepts so held in opposition can always be united by a shift to some higher level of thought. Thus, the human mind invariably moves from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, employing each synthesis as the thesis for a new opposition to be transcended by yet a higher level, continuing in a perpetual waltz of intellectual achievement.

Schelling and Objective Reality

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5k.htm

Sourced 15/11/16

With the idea that knowledge and intellect are considered by some, as the prime factors in fine art. One might make the superstition that by using a collection of ideas and adhering to those for a time, one might have a thought that has originality, going into a different direction or using opposing or juxtaposed values and ideas can lead down a rabbit hole of interpretation.   

 

The relationship to my work connects with the considerations of conditions, these might be the tried and tested of a process, such as one of the “isims/ tions” such as structuralism, minimalism, abstraction and deconstruction or indeed be an exploration of consciousness using these to find an affiliation to that of experience and the human condition. In deed location, material even the involvement of the creativity can determine works of art.

I have been considering if these occurrences could be some how harnessed, or used to consider the formula of what makes a piece of art, and an immersive and inclusive piece of work. The aesthetic make up as it were.

The idea that the work communicates on an unconscious level as well as to be working in the considered levels, form, colour, occupied and unoccupied space.

In 2014 previous research into The Gestalt theory School gave thought to the reaction against structuralism and behaviorism and identified the elements or laws of perceptual organization. Which contribute to our understanding of the perceptual process. The examination and research into Gestalt theory these rules were as follows;

• Law of good gestalt. - Explains that elements of objects tend to be perceptually grouped together if they form a pattern, as individuals perceive the world, they eliminate complexity and unfamiliarity so they can observe a reality in its most simplistic form. Eliminating extraneous stimuli helps the mind create meaning. However by combining the objects that are not familiar could one not recreate a familiarity?

• Law of Past Experience. -The law of past experience implies that under some circumstances visual stimuli are categorized according to past experience. If two objects tend to be observed within close proximity, or small temporal intervals, the objects are more likely to be perceived together. For example, the English language contains 26 letters that are grouped to form words using a set of rules. If an individual reads an English word they have never seen, they use the law of past experience to interpret the letters "L" and "I" as two letters beside each other, rather than using the law of closure to combine the letters and interpret the object as an uppercase U.

 

• Emergence. –I would explain that this was a description, which occurs in vision and not in music. However I would propose that it also occurs in music as experimentation with the sounds I have created have resulted in the listener hearing words and phrases- see multi stability.

• Reification. -Is the constructive or generative aspect of perception, by which the experienced percept contains more explicit spatial information than the sensory stimulus on which it is based?

• Multi-stability. - Is the tendency of ambiguous perceptual experiences to pop back and forth unstably between two or more alternative interpretations? This also applies to-

• Invariance. -Is the property of perception whereby simple geometrical objects are recognized independent of rotation?

The idea that sound has a shared quality a shape and form. Not just by audial and vibrational responses but also on a level within our brains.

The perceptions of sound A 2009 report from Sweden's Lund University put forward six psychological mechanisms through which emotions may be produced when the brain reacts to sound.

1) Brain stem reflex:

When the acoustic characteristics of the sound (e.g. loud or dissonant) signal a "potentially important and urgent event", causing us to react on an instinctive level. Used as a tool to create suspense.

2) Evaluative conditioning:

When an emotion is elicited by sound because we have heard it repeatedly in a certain setting, leading to an association between sound and setting.

3) Emotional contagion:

When we perceive the emotion expressed by a piece of music: the music doesn't necessarily sound sad, but rather we recognize it as expressing emotion.

4) Visual imagery:

This is when the structure of a piece of music makes us imagine certain scenes or sensations, such as a rising melody connecting with the sensation of moving upwards.

5) Episodic memory:

Also known as the "Darling, they're playing our tune" phenomenon - when a particular sound or piece of music evokes a powerful memory.

6) Music expectancy:

This is tied to our experiences with music: for instance, an unfamiliar variation on a standard note progression may cause feelings of surprise and curiosity.

Of these mechanisms, the authors stated that the first two are in-born reactions, the second two develop during the first few years of our lives, and the last two tend to be learned during childhood and later life. The gestalt psychologists proposed that these were only members of such a system of perception. Could these theories be a component of a formula of the image and affect how we perceive art?

The gestalt theory of melody is independent of the question, in what key and what instrument it is played on. Its structure and its influence are only particulate elements of its whole.

That whole, in our sense of the world, is a system, in which every part influences every other part.

Lorenz. Konrad.Z. “The role of Gestalt perception in animal and human form”. Aspects of form. (1968)2nd edition. Percy, Lund, Humphries & Co

 

This led my learning in a somewhat new direction.

 

Ways of seeing. Ways of hearing and the affects of the experience.

There is much research into the how the brain responds and the components of neuro-scientific research could in many ways unlock the key to consciousness or at least to further understanding on how the un-conscious happening within our brains re-acts to certain stimulus.

Considering the structural exploration in the film flicker and the work of Conrad and Cale could one take this further?

Within surrealist music the uses of the unexpected juxtapositions and other surrealist techniques has become a part of the creation of new music though out history, Max Paddison defines surrealist music as that which, “juxtaposes its historically devalued fragments in montage- this enables the development of new meaning within a new aesthetic unity,” this does something more?  I would propose the fragmentation is a part of the neurological process that relates to the creation itself and in turn relates to experiences forgotten or lost to memory even imbedded in the subconscious.

 

In Using music and the absence of a recognizable narrative, a combined (time of music) gives the works a quality that I am not comfortable with however this is an attempt to explore experience and give the notion of the unknown, the substance of place or human endeavor and hopefully makes one question sense of space and belonging. The discord of harmony and evaluation related to the object that enables and encapsulates our very selves, culture and control. The idea of control came after seeing a work by Abigail Reynolds.

 

 Mothers Bones by Abigail Reynolds 2016   running time of approximately 14 minutes

 

Lecture at Plymouth University with Film shown at the Plymouth arts center 2/11/16

 

A small film with large impact, this work transcends human interaction with landscape and intersects with human emotion and belonging, one finds that the installation becomes in part a cluster of imaginative and symbolic gestures questioning the microscopic and macroscopic. The geology of the landscape,

Within the film it seems almost juxtaposed between image and the accompanying music, conflicting between the real and unreal.

 A place forgotten and a remembering of time. To which gives “Sensations of Mother Nature verses impact of human existence with connotations of history and considered movement both in the structure of its composition and alternative camera angles.

 

For my own experience I enjoyed these elements and after watching it more than once, I found myself questioning the mixture of mannerisms between the music and the accompanying images these were synchronized to perfection with the emotional contagion and visual imagery, reflections, working together to create a powerful narrative.

 

The theatre location was within such a small space gave the work an intimacy that for me related a narrative that showed our affect on the landscape and how the scenic effects replicated a duality of reflection and contemplation by the performance and the power of the image with that of the music performed by St Keverne band.

 

The speakers vibrated with the bass and pitch of the composition that accompanied the images. Giving a further consideration of how “The art had impact far from the location it which it was filmed and the transformed the location in which it was showing”. My conclusion was that -The sound indeed made it immersive, as did the location, images and experience.

 

 

The idea that music is the first of the arts is not a new one.

“Music is a Miracle and the First Place of Art” – Alice Herz-Sommer.

https://youtu.be/8oxO3M6rAPw sourced September 2016.

 

 

 

With the understanding of subject, comes the collaboration of ideas, expanding in the advancement of understanding both in the now and the future.

The way in which art is changing is not important in a singularity, for the advancement of technology and science has always gone hand in hand with art, the invention of the paint tube, the industrial revolution, the invention of the camera has not changed art it has just altered the way in which we produce it and show it, the internet has changed this once again, it enhances, influences and alters how one works and presents.

 

The problems that occur for all artists.

In deed there are moments an image can be taken too far and lose its aesthetic and other times one would seem to know when the image or piece is finished and yet could not explain why?

There are also moments that I have to create, it does matter what and indeed often it has the influence of my surroundings or an experience that has occurred to me or a flash of inspiration that has to be explored or a technique that has to be reconstructed or deconstructed a material to understand or a process that has to be learnt. “If something is worth doing its worth doing well” indeed sometimes, it can depend on the relying of others. However the idea that anything can be deemed as art is one that Duchamp and the Dadaist movement contributed to changing how we interpret art and how it maybe conceived and perceived.

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892-1974) in 1917 wrote about the artic struggle, leaving the most explicitly political orientated part of the movement to one side and the attack on the failure of expressionism said that, “Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives…”

 

The other side of the coin is there are works that never seem to be finished. When is a work Completed? How far does one go to the layering of context and meaning?

Exploring the many aspects of what art is and who we are, and how we work will not answer the questions that are sometimes proposed however it is an exploration of music, experience, a perception of one, The viewer or audience.

Every input to our senses is a stimulus, available for us to interpret as information, and from which we can derive further information. Our physical sensory receptors--our ears, eyes, etc.--can well be thought of as information "transducers" which convert external stimuli--changes in air pressure, light, etc.--into nerve impulses recognized by the brain. Scientists and philosophers have advanced many conceptual models of what the brain does with these nerve impulses to derive knowledge and meaning. (1)

By using music and location (a chair) as a statement and an instrument in a way of creating understanding. Inspired by the work of Sue Austin and how she talks about, the negative preconceptions of the wheelchair she also remarks of the appearance of being didactic is a problematic occurrence when working with an object or subject such as a wheelchair and disability. The idea that an object evokes such emotion and feelings of identity, with connotations of the subject matter.

 

I certainly don’t always love my chair I love the fact that it enables me to interact in the world, and enjoy using the chair as an instrument and see it as an extension to myself and in my artistic practice, however it is just an object and in no way reinforces my identity however it does in culture it would seem.

The object of the subject is a delicate matter Mark Quinn produced a statue of Alison Lapper, made from Carrera marble, this was displayed in London on the fourth plinth from 2005-2007 and later a copy was on display as part of the 2012 summer Paralympics opening.

 Anticipating reaction to the statue, Quinn, 41, said, (4) "I'm sure the public reaction will be mixed. Whatever the reaction is, it will be a success. It's already been criticized for just being a message. For me, art is a space where meaning can occur, which opens up possibilities and has an emotional response”.

 

 

The disability culture a term developed in the 1980s for the needed change within the disabled community Steven Brown wrote in an academic study,  "The existence of a disability culture is a relatively new and contested idea. Not surprising, perhaps, for a group that has long been described with terms like 'in-valid', 'impaired', 'limited', 'crippled', and so forth. Scholars would be hard-pressed to discover terms of hope, endearment or ability associated with people with disabilities.”

I continue to work towards creating ways in demonstrating location and identity within an image or object and continue to consider the interaction between process, production, location and the association and of the observer’s participation of the art.

 

I attempt to demonstrate the many complications and perceptions of identity. Using selected representations of feeling or emotion, combined with the presence of occupied space and the continued evaluation of the absence of space occupied.  Creating exerts of music to occupy the negative space, “without rhyme, nor reason.”

 

 

The ideas from which one creates come from a vault of blurred experience, emotion and avenues of chance, scientific notions and technological advancements, even points of law.

However those moments if not recorded can sometimes be lost forever.

Our anthropological and epistemological journey in this human race, it would seem that art has always been there, as humans I believe we give little credit to the intelligence and ingenuity of our ancestors the cave paintings found in Pech-merle discovered in the early 20th century and other examples show our commonalities stretching across the globe for over 25,000 years.

This evidenced with the finding of pottery and recent archeological discoveries.

During that time the perception of our identity seems to have morphed into a synopsis of difference and are portrayed in novels, even cartoons that with perception there is an underlying of judgment that our human traits directly relate to ones physical appearance, sexual orientation and religious beliefs.

 

Many believe that the moments of creation became the birth of consciousness. As an artist that may work on up to three pieces, how does the mind or brain switch in the “creative” capable of those conscious decision’s then translate to the unconscious, the brain is an amazing complicated computer, my thoughts are important.

 The crossovers that occur and bleed into my creative brain are maybe conscious decisions of direction but what about those unconscious connections?

 

 Austin’s work moving in the 360 conceived in 2009, and shown as part of the opening at the 2012 Paralympics was beautiful and mesmerizing. It shows the possibilities and a different perception. Indeed inspiring myself to take the idea forward.

The juxtaposed imagery of the object, action and place created a complication of experience.

 

Richard Serra (born 1939) from the Yale lecture.1990 in the wake of the" titled arc controversy. (2) Said, "I think that if sculpture has any potential at all it has the potential to work in contradiction to the places and spaces where it is created. I am interested where the artist is a maker of anti-environment. This is impossible if the sculpture is built in the studio, then taken out of the studio and adjusted to site, you can't build in one context and indiscriminately place it in another. Portable objects moved from one location to another often fail for this reason.”

 

My work has been an experimentation in how art and music intertwined with our individuality and our self experience can effect as well as affect us on a unconscious level music means different things to us all, it also can have elements that attribute to the dynamics of grouping with episodic values and other characteristics

 Using the contemplation that music and its elements has so much more.

 

Ideas of combining the object with that of music or sounds has relationship to Duchamp, the readymade and the power of the juxtaposition of the visual and relationship, with deeper meaning. A statement for others to interpret as they see and experience. A glimpse inside a change of perspective proportions, if you will, using the structure of an object to move the vibrations of air through space to create something new transforming into individual experience.

Sound can be used to create subject, structure or the object, in using music and audio works along side the idea of moving in a dimension that relates at a personal level yet in reality is not materially occupying that space in which it is present, there comes a connection, an understanding of experience. There is a contemplation of time. Music has so many facets that are constantly being reinvented and in “Using” the qualities of sound to demonstrate moments in history one might explore the possibilities, meet the musicians, use the process of delivery or processes of production, to create something new, music has influenced art in so many ways from the romantics to finding ones self to the identity affirming culture of hip-hop, and in my humble opinion is the fastest changing, cultural art form and will continue to be so. 

The obvious physical differences between The object and the sound is a proposition of indicators, the complication of the barriers that I explore can be made in a way to describe the difference of boundaries and the perceptions and consider the possibility of regarding music as a signification of space and the consideration of time and experience. Using moments of recorded time frames of human creativeness already in existence to create a new narrative that connects to the moments of conscious recollection that may have nothing and something that applies to memory of experience. (The paradox of what is real and what is not).

It is always a challenge to identify the relationship of things we recognize about something and perceive the question of reification, the object and the relationship of an immaterial thing.

 

Using the deconstruction and reconstruction as a metaphor to show the rebuilding of identity and the summation of those that have come and gone.

Identity does not change yet the perception seems to, involving the physical, the personal and the reaction, I believe with art one might be able to bridge the gap that exists not because there is a lack of empathy or there is something vastly wrong with humanity but create a possible understanding making the intangible into something real.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychoanalyst argued that the unconscious was not individual but collective and shared by all humanity. The collective unconscious is a kind of understanding or knowledge we are all born with, though we are never conscious of it. In man and his symbols (1964) Jung discusses the appearance of the archetypes that appear through the arts, histories and mythologies and dreams of all cultures and because these archetypes are not under conscious control, we may fear them.

For Jung psychoanalysis was the exploration of the archetypes so that we can heal by understanding how they shape our emotional and spiritual lives.

D’Alleva, A. (2012) Methods and theories of art history, 2nd edition. London: Laurence King publishing.

 

The things I have noticed are how everyone is so wonderfully different and through science, psychology and the arts I have explored this to points of self-destruction.

Mary Priestley's credited with the development of analytical music therapy, works with the patient improvises with the therapist to make contact with feelings and unconscious material: e.g. in dreams.

The author speaks from direct experience of her analytical music therapy inter-therapy training with Priestley. She quotes several passages from Jung's work to explain how this therapy accords with the need to contact the image behind the emotions, and to accept the ethical obligation presented by the dreams and the need to make concrete the experiences. She finishes with a call to musicians and therapists to be ‘more aware of the creative power of music to make us whole’

Finding new ways of doing those everyday things,

The relationship to neuro plasticity was in part again a pursuit to understand the way in which conditions could be created to possibly find a way of triggering the brain into repairing those misfires; it would seem a thoughtless pursuit for an artist/However I do dare to dream.

The links between creativity and reactions in the brain are well documented.

Using the materiality of disjointed sounds played on a gramophone which at its time of manufacture considered totally portable again a playful metaphor relating this with access, the broken records also demonstrates the fractured moments of time and relate to how music has been formed throughout our existence influencing culture inspiring poets artists from all the disciplines’ the relation in politics and forming of cultural groups.

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Using the contemplation that music and its elements has so much more, even Stonehenge is getting the sound treatment by Steven Waller's his intriguing idea is that ancient Britons could have based the layout of the great monument, in part, on the way they perceived sound.

He has been able to show how two flutes played in a field can produce an auditory illusion that mimics in space the position of Stonehenge’s pillars.

Music and art transcends the limits of location and can be used as a “Transformative engine for change” hopefully in more ways than one.

 

There are many influences to my work, the way in which I work can be varied sometimes born from inspiration some pieces have a more organic conception also known as a need to be occupied. The wheelchair symbol is associated with disability. Since its conception by Susanne Koefoed in 1968, later modified by Karl Montanis this image has been used across the globe to symbolize access, much like Sue Austin’s work “Creating the spectacle” which also deals with movement in an alternate dimension. I use the wheelchair in more ways than one. There are obvious changes in dimensions, yet one cannot prepare you for how you are treated differently. Using a wheel chair is a reinforcement of the identity of disability arts and shows that there is a different way of seeing, in attempt in creating a symbology and using it to demonstrate the changing views within cultural limits of understanding, it is showing a path of understanding with meaning.

Art has the importance with Music they have the ability to cross cultures it is not a lesson in how we must perceive.

Life would be awful without a wheelchair, as would the world without music.

 I use the wheelchair as a metaphor to relate to the human condition and create works to use as a narrative to create feeling. I have used the music, the inspiration of others, to relate an experience, perception, location and identity. By using the way in which we perceive an object through representation of movement using the mind, the experience and the eye, then using the sounds to complete the visual and create an immersive experience. 

One has to surmise that every part influences the whole, and as an artist it is my job to explore this”. Is the development of a disability culture creating separation or is it an important step to creating understanding.

 By the development of a piece of work that attempts to examine the transitions and perceptions of identity using platforms that relate to promoting an equality, a sharing of experience. As my epistemological journey looking for that distraction. Could that distraction become enhanced could we use the function of art/music to heal could there be a lost way of healing?

Could the “frisson” a French term that translates to aesthetic chills that exists within the experience of music and art be a link to a new scientific discovery? This is all speculation and for me using the abstraction is a way of linking into the processes of inspiration and in-turn stumble, groping in the dark for something that may be borrowed to create something new.

 

 

 

 

Reference.

 

(1) Music and Language (1992) by Chris Dobrian accessed 11/16

(2) Kunst & Museumjournal, Amsterdam, vol 1, no 6,1990, pg. 23-33

(3) Plato: The Theory and Language of Function
Author(s): H. S. Thayer
Source: The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-), Vol. 14, No. 57 (Oct., 1964), pp. 303-318 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St. Andrews
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2217770
Accessed: 05-01-2017 15:45 UTC This content downloaded from 94.11.92.186 on Thu, 05 Jan 2017 15:45:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

(4) https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/16/arts.artsnews retrieved 10/1/17

(5) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/frisson-why-music-only-gives-some-people-skin-orgasms-but-not-others-a7049601.html retrieved 23/1/17

 

Bibliography.

Curtis, P. and Wilson, K. (2011) Modern British sculpture. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

D’Alleva, A. (2012) Methods & theories of art history. 2nd edition. London: Laurence King Publishing.

Dalley, T. (ed.) (1984) Art as therapy: An introduction to the use of art as a therapeutic technique. London: Tavistock.

Elder, B.R. (2012) Dada, surrealism, and the cinematic effect. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Gabriel, M. (2015) Why the world does not exist. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell (an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Ltd).

Gale, C. and Fishpool, M. (2012) The printmakers’ bible. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic.

Gombrich, E.H. (1989) The story of art. 15th edition. Oxford: Phaidon Press.

Harrison, C. and Wood, P.J. (eds.) (2002) Art in theory, 1900-2000: An anthology of changing ideas. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Heller, N.G. and Grubb, N. (1997) Women artists: An illustrated history. 3rd edition. New York: Abbeville Press Inc. U.S.

Whitfield, P. and Greenfield, S. (1997) How we work: Understanding the human body and mind. London: Marshall editions.

Citations, Quotes & Annotations

Curtis, P. and Wilson, K. (2011) Modern British sculpture. London: Royal Academy of Arts.

(Curtis and Wilson, 2011)

D’Alleva, A. (2012) Methods & theories of art history. 2nd edition. London: Laurence King Publishing.

(D’Alleva, 2012)

Dalley, T. (ed.) (1984) Art as therapy: An introduction to the use of art as a therapeutic technique. London: Tavistock.

(Dalley, 1984)

Elder, B.R. (2012) Dada, surrealism, and the cinematic effect. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

(Elder, 2012)

Gabriel, M. (2015) Why the world does not exist. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell (an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Ltd).

(Gabriel, 2015)

Gale, C. and Fishpool, M. (2012) The printmakers’ bible. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic.

(Gale and Fishpool, 2012)

Gombrich, E.H. (1989) The story of art. 15th edition. Oxford: Phaidon Press.

(Gombrich, 1989)

Harrison, C. and Wood, P.J. (eds.) (2002) Art in theory, 1900-2000: An anthology of changing ideas. 2nd edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

(Harrison and Wood, 2002, p. introduction page – 4)

Heller, N.G. and Grubb, N. (1997) Women artists: An illustrated history. 3rd edition. New York: Abbeville Press Inc., U.S.

(Heller and Grubb, 1997)

Whitfield, P. and Greenfield, S. (1997) How we work: Understanding the human body and mind. London: Marshall editions.

(Whitfield and Greenfield, 1997)

 

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