Moving toward virtuality
this article is a continuation of the article 'life, form and chaos'
In January 24 , 2014 , in the world economic forum in Davos ,Switzerland , Israeli former president Shimon Peres received the prestigious 'spirit of Davos' award , honouring him for his long-standing commitment to its mission and his contributions to the annual meeting program for more than two decades.
In an interview in front of an audience with chairman Klaus Schwab ., Peres was asked about the dominant impulses in the near future of humanity. One of his observations (17:40) , was about "the extension of science by combining virtuality and reality , which mean a man can improve himself both physically, intellectually and mentally, and making himself stronger, deeper, ..a better person for himself". Virtuality , Is the sum of physical , narcotic and mental methods of interventions that could be exercised on human beings, to achieve certain results. It is the more totalitarian version of the escapist virtual reality, that become very trendy now days. but although virtual reality presents its own risks and negative influences on human beings, virtuality may lead to a future devoid of any unautomated feelings, genuine thoughts or creativity, a world in which human freedom , in the real sense of the word, might not even be a possibility.
Mr. Peres vision is well anchored in reality, not only through technological initiatives and research institutions , but mainly through the masses , each and every one of us , as a technology driven global conglomerate of individuals. The visual imaging, that not so long ago was the sole domain of the arts, is the main tool for us to explore, through its influences, the impulses that work in the dark, to lead us to the future envisioned by Mr. Peres. By this we might also grasp the future role of the visual arts, and what path should we tread in order to plant, within this apocalyptic future of human-machines, seeds of true development and change.
Art and reality
reality, as we experience it, is a fluent stream of sense perceptions, reaching us from the outer world through our senses. We cognize on it, on different levels, starting from the unconscious act of establishing order in the mere appearances of visuals, and later by willingly tie it up with certain content that we derive based on our mental pictures, past experience, intellectual knowledge and so forth. A feeling may than arise that is in accordance with what we made out of this two streams. The peculiar individual constitution, that is the outcome of his earthly as well as spiritual biography, is a key factor in the multiplicity of ways that humans establish this connection with reality. As much as we are able to illuminate what the sense perception streams forth, with the power of our cognition, we will be able to penetrate from their appearance into their essence.
This connection between inner and outer aspects of reality may than express themselves in the sphere of intuition and feelings.
Illustration made after Georg Goeltzer 'Der kristallene Strom'
A sub reality could be grasped as any activity that distort the harmony of the three fold constitution of man , whether by invigorating solely one aspect of this threefold, or by acting to numb it, and replace it , by narcotic, psychological, or technological means.
As a mirror image to sub realities, one can see art as a super reality, not only because of it's inherent ,recognized and well known peculiarities among all other human activities, but mainly because what it can teach us ,retrospectively , as visual evidence for the particular way in which those peculiarities came to expression through representative human beings in the various epochs of human history.
Art is able to transform matter, in a way that it will stream , in a unique, subjective way, something of the lawfulness of the cosmos. The physical ,material world , thus work upon human beings outlook in a polar way : as the subject of objective ,physical laws, that widens into an all embracing world view, it works to eliminate entities, including the human one. That is modern materialistic science.
As the subject of creative activity, it becomes a unique expression of an entity, and could lead also to meaningful experience of other entities, like natural ones for example, expressed through the artwork itself.. By observing artworks from various eras in humanity's development , we can explore the affinities between man's spiritual departure* point, to his future as resident and eventually ruler of the earth, and earth evolution.
The super reality of art express the relative reality of man in the specific point of his development.
when man felt reality as a continuing stream of mental images, mixed with a dim clairvoyance of his spiritual home, impressions flowed between waking and sleeping with no definite boundaries , the super reality of art was reflected through the mere act of freezing, putting signs on the walls that will stay halt.
This halting, embedding activity, could be seen as the first signs of man's destiny as an earthly being.
When people felt themselves in harmony with both the spiritual and the earthly realms, and logic and dialectic developed, the super nature of art was expressed in the proportions and harmony of the Greek art. In the art streams of the 20th century, the super nature of art was reflected through the unique individual search to transform reality to super reality, which mean , that artists of that time had reached to the point of recognizing the super reality of the artistic activity, and the gap between reality and super reality was somewhat exhausted.
In our time, the super reality of art reflects, in a way , the sub reality manifested in the visual expressions that will be discussed later. Thus, cancelling each other, we are left with the urgent necessity to experience and understand reality. Living in the age of the consciences soul , we are at the point of the halt , between humanity "inhaling" of the cosmos , to the beginning of "exhaling" our own made ego hood into the cosmos. This is a time of great changes, and a very intense retrospective look . this look should also be exhausted soon , because our essential activity in connection with the cosmos is changing. From this age on , art should be emanating from the consciousness soul ,and we will later see what does it mean.
Rudolf Steiner talked about the feeling of living in an 'unreal reality' , as the outcome of the one sidedness of the materialistic world view, that denies the spiritual entity of human beings and other entities, describing a world devoid of any entities in the real sense of the word,. Today , the feeling of living in an unreal reality is common , so much so that it find many cultural expressions.( like for example in the movie "disconnected ")
Escapism as disintegrated experience of reality
Escapism is a defining , reshaping impulse in the modern world.
In spite of the negative connotations of this definition, escapism , in it's 'softest' form, did perform a positive role in educating and preparing the masses to the modern age. the hardship of life in past decades was better endured through the development of this kind of activities ,while in the same time enriching the intellectual and cultural horizon of the common people. weather it is fantasy literature, newspapers or TV and radio shows, it broaden the view of the individual and contributed to the feeling of being part of one , vibrating , developing humanity. but escapism of the digital age become essentially different.
It is no longer about a temporary relief from external conditions. This escapist, sub realities, strive to provide a permanent means to escape from being in charge of your own being, escape from developing , practicing and harmonizing the human threefold nature by the work of the ego.
It's result is the disintegration of the three spheres that constitute our experience into three almost separate experiences. In perception and cognition, it acts to isolate and intensify, and on the mediating sphere (feeling), it is to substitute, to numb the inner unifying activity, that leads to a genuine human experience.
We will inspect three kind of ways in which images are coming to meet us in the form of escapism , and how it affects our experience of reality.
Cultural phenomenon
When observing the current state of cultural affairs through the teachings of spiritual science, One can distinguish three ways in which one sidedness is nurtured in the modern human being through the creating and receiving of visual images. Those three sub realities influence us separately and mutually, through our cognition , sensation and feelings. Their characteristics as sub realities are not immanent, but rather depend on our own activity and consciousness when interacting with it. Those sub realities could be seen as patches , stitched ,as it were , into reality through and by human activity, in a way that have vast qualitative influence on our way of thinking, feeling, and acting , more than what most of us will want to admit.
Because of the prevalence of the sub realities in our life , only when those are invigorated and become known as a cultural phenomenon , we can more easily trace the pathology that it conceals.
Cognial escapism
The first stream of sub reality , that include the most varied range of visual mediums, is the contemporary art. It is the only one of the three sub reality streams that could not be considered a common activity of the masses , and also is not qualify as escapistic in the naïve sense of the word.
This is a wide sphere of activity, that requires a caution when try the observe it's general characteristics.
Even so , for myself as an artist, this characteristics are pretty obvious. What will follow have nothing to do with modern artists themselves, for every artist that live and work in our times is a contemporary artist, weather he agree to this term or not. But the spiritual / driving impulses of the system that supposed to nurture, mediate, and reflect upon the development of the arts through the individual artists is the absolute opposite of what art should do, be, and represent for modern humanity, and this have tremendous influence on the artists themselves. The slogan 'art for the sake of art' represents truthfully the imaginative picture of a balloon, that stay floating only by the hot air blew in by its members. the situation is such that the art sphere is not more than the sum of its vocally articulated members, a synthetic, empty vessel , justified both as an alternative investment to stocks and to cover the behinds of cultural and state cultural offices, by promoting the camouflage of 'cultural preservation', more for the sake of the past than for the sake of the future.
What started as a conceptual art several decades ago , become into non artistic concepts.
By this I refer to the intellectualization of the arts , turning art into a bundle of gender, political and psychological concepts, among others. this impulse, that dominates with great power, restraining artistic freedom and real individuality in the most eluding way, by superficially aiming to promote this very same values.
In contemporary art we see the arbitrariness and absurdity that are the outcome of the rigidity of the thought, of the nurturing of intellectualized reality with narcissistic ego hood.
The strongest influence of the ahrimanic and luciferic powers find its ultimate sensual expression in the grotesque works of the most promoted, discussed and admired works of contemporary art.
Perceptual Escapism
computer generated imagery(CGI), in it's different cultural appearances, provide us with multi layered aesthetical experience, of the natural, civilized and phantasmal worlds,that can swirl us in visually intense sensations. While it may provide enhanced reality, both to perception and cognition, it would never be able to lead us beyond the perceptions into the real nature of reality (1). We cannot penetrate through the appearances with our cognition, because the essence is not there. The bond between perception and cognition is synthetic, provided only to continually maintain the illusion. The outcome is alienation from reality, a pathology well known in regard to computer games. Another aspect of this activity, is the numbness of imaginative abilities. This perhaps does not have pathological effects, but it effects culture as a whole. The orientation toward computer generated imagery took over the movies industry as well. Most youngsters find no other means to regard movies other than its visual effects, and rightly so, from their perspective, because content and imagination is so poor , to be tailored to public demand and abilities.
Experience - Feeling – photography
In the middle, between the abstractions and intellectualization of imagery in the contemporary art and the camouflage visuals, devoid of entities of the computer generated imagery , there is the rhythm of life itself, as a stream of experiences. Into this stream set foot, with arms reaching far into the two other sub realities, the camera.
Photography is already a well-established branch of contemporary arts, and large percentage of exhibitions worldwide are dedicated solely to photographs. On the other pole , concerning our body of sensations , there is an unprecedented attack of photos on modern man .
The 'digesting' of photos by our sensations body, could not be said to be an experience of the total human being.. This stream of "eye candies", weather it is sunsets, cats, sequoia trees or a girl in a bikini, are effective ways in which we derive some sort of aesthetical satisfaction.
photography is an act of a non-personal testimony. It is the objectification of reality on the expenses of experiencing it. It numbs our ability for sensitive being in the present, and dulls our time awareness through the reflecting soul. The objectivity of the camera could make us act for it. we act our life to produce an objective biography, that will commemorate us externally. This, of course, comes on the expanse of our soul life, let alone that it have very little meaning for our actual life perspective that occurs after we pass the gate of death.
Photographing thus replacing in this way the events in which our perception and cognition reverberates in a feeling. It is the event in which we become the world and the world is our inner life.
The future of Art
Among the art streams of the 20th century, we can find impulses that ,with or without intention , strive to oppose the trends that were just described. This stream put the emphasis on the I am , that is responsible for the harmonious function and development of his inner being, his community, humanity, and planet earth.
Environmental art
"sustainibility without the 'I' sense is non-sense”
shelley sacks
A place dependent work of art, in which the artist is reacting to the spirit of the place, is a way to counter act the "sucking" of nature into virtual realities. In its peak this kind of art have the potential to elevate a natural arena through the creative, sensitive intervention of the artist, that comes into dialogue of entities with the spirit of the place. It than have the potential to regenerate and nurture a bond between visitors to the place , through and by the mediating of the artwork.
Others streams o that do the same, that is, nurture human bond to nature elementals, are ones to walk on the line between science and art. Flow forms, vessels that bring water into an eightfold, pulsating movement, are one such stream. Revving of human bond with nature is dependent in our ability to elevate to meeting point to a new ground, in which the intuitions we lost will have the chance to kindle again. Flowforms are great tool for such elevation , by presenting water moving in its most natural way.
Social art
The famous saying of Novalis, everyone is an artist, that was later borrowed by Joseph Beuys, Is the starting point for the social artist. Beuys claimed that everything is art, if one is doing it with full intention and consciousness. There is something superficial in this saying, when considered literally, shallowing art into the masses , but when Beuys had the chance to elaborate what he meant , one can reveal that more than 50 years ago , Beuys tried to stimulate people to understand , that in the current stage of human development ,the super reality of art , should become to reality of all man. That we all should strive to develop the awareness to, and the harmony of ,our three fold nature, by becoming artist in our nature, by developing intuitions, inspiration , and imagination. this task become harder and harder , because of the ever increasing immersion of humanity in the sub natural spheres, through technology. nevertheless, this is the task we should confront, for ourselves , as well as for human well being and spiritual development.
Conceptual spiritual art
It is undeniable that modern man is a concept apparatus, requesting and receiving new content all the time. contemporary art had suited itself to this change in human condition, but only in one direction. A new form of conceptual art should strive to be able to work with the mediums of art in a way that concepts will be drawn from it in a different ways than through the intellect. An example for an attempt to work in this direction is my project of planetary seals, in which, following Steiner's inspiration, I try to deliver ideas about development that not necessarily have to be condensed into concrete conceptual form. but actually, every work of art could be aimed it a specific direction: either it's conceptual content takes you to the sphere of matter and intellect : genes , natural sciences, identity politics, heritage and "cultural history", or , it can raise one's thought to the spirit, by dealing artistically with the content of spiritual life and knowledge. This direction is, as far as I know, still in its seed condition. Let us hope, pray that this seed will find soil to develop much further into the future.