“Expression resides in perceptual qualities of the stimulus pattern”—Rudolf Arnheim
In achieving great quantifying skills we have seriously damaged our ability to focus upon the qualities of our surroundings and the effects of those qualities upon our worldview. With a little thought we can readily recognize that “we do not do justice to what we see by describing it only with measurements of size, shape, wavelength, or speed. The dynamic qualities of shapes and events have proved to be an inseparable aspect of all visual experience.”
When we consciously open our eyes to the dynamic qualities conveyed by any object we will inevitably see these objects as carrying expressive meaning. “All perceptual qualities have generality. We see redness, smallness, remoteness, swiftness, embodied in individual examples, but conveying a kind of experience, rather than a uniquely particular one…The dynamic differences between Romanesque and Gothic architecture translate themselves automatically into states of mind characterizing the corresponding cultural periods.”
Arnheim defines “expression as modes of organic or inorganic behavior displayed in the dynamic appearance of perceptual objects or events.
In a narrow sense expression is said to exist only in confluence with mind wherein facial muscles give rise to structures that relate to what is going on in mind. In this narrow view non animate materials have expression only in a figurative sense.
Theodore Lipps’ “theory of empathy” was developed to explain how we find expression emanating from our vision of inanimate objects. When I see the columns of a temple I feel the physical forces sustained by that column because of my past experience. I project my stress feeling onto the columns. I have the capacity to project such things as “my pride, my courage, my stubbornness, my lightness, my playful assuredness, my tranquil compliance. Only thus my empathy with regard to nature becomes truly aesthetic empathy…expression resides in perceptual qualities of the stimulus pattern
“One aspect of the wisdom that belongs to a genuine culture is the constant awareness of the symbolic meaning expressed in a concrete happening, the sensing of the universal in the particular…There are people who cannot swallow because there is something in their lives they “cannot swallow” or whom an unconscious sense of guilt compels to spend hours every day on washing and cleaning.”
All perceptual, as well as expression, qualities have generality. This is why it is correct to say such things as Picasso’s picture can symbolizes gentleness or that Michelangelo’s Creation of Man, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is generally understood to be a symbol of Genesis.
Quotes from Art and Visual Perception: Psychology of the Creative Eye by Rudolf Arnheim
doesn't the concept of "expressing" require "volition"?
Shouldn't the question be, Can inanimate objects have meaning in and of themselves?
The question, as it stands now, is can inanimate objects express meaning to you, when what you are trying to say is that you interpret meaning based on sensory phenomena.
Who... cares? If it's inanimate, it's not alive and has no chance of possessing nor conveying emotions of any kind via speech or gesture. It will only carry meaning if one chooses to see meaning in it. My TV is full of expressive meaning only because I say so. Don't make it so.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
if your a naive realist, then yes. oddly, parts of your own body can be "alive" and aware seperately from you, as can the earth{gai theory} as can the whole universe. heck there CUD possibly be a conciousness in time for every combination of two or more than two interacting phenomenon/structures.
"Coulds" and "perhapses" are frankly unimaginative. Anything "could" be, "perhaps." Finding the beauty in the clear and tangible is always more rewarding.
And your body is alive, in the literal sense. Your limbs and organs function and react of their own "free will" for lack of a more impressive phrase. But being the result of energy oscillations and sentient manipulations makes them, like the "perhapses," quite boring. They follow commands and react according to their physics. Anything that follows such patterns is predictable and tedious.
Purpose and meaning as we discuss them is subjective and abstract, a "human construct", to quote Dogma. Finding expression and emotion in that which doesn't possess the capacity to portray them is the realm of the foolish and hopeless dreamers. Not to be confused with beauty, though, which doesn't require a host with cells.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
You think in the extremes. I see things as absolute and unarguable when that is what they are. Gravity, matter, this computer. They are there, they can be measured, calculated, and manipulated in clear and tangible ways.
The mind is not a physical object. The ability to accurately measure and equate that which can not be perceived by anyone except your self places the mind beyond the rules of realism. To an extent. When it comes to the intangible, the incorporeal, the spiritual, and the ethereal... absolutes and certainty have no place. The mind and its intricacies fall under that category. But as humans, we still possess the ability to predict and analyze the mind.
If you see something meaningful and expressive in a lifeless rock that was formed as a direct result of energy and matter interacting with one another, then fine. But the rock lacks the necessary requisites to accumulate and experience these things for itself.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
^cudnt it be both though? cudnt your conciousness be at the same time a product of and simultaneously seperate FROM the physical objects and their physical process which give RISE to it? one doesnt have to necessarily beleive in the supernatural to beleive in qualia. i say that because it is simultaneously evident to me that my conciousness is a self evident entity not necessarily representing its physical constituents to itself, while also, being utterly dependant and predicted/affected by the physical processed inside the brain which give rise to it {due to neuroscience/physical death/physical pain/effects of chemicals on the brain etc}. it seems like a contradictory standpoint which is hard to reconcile, but thats the way i see. kinda like reletivity and quantum mechanics.
Whether this... supernatural(?) side exists to the universe or not, I don't know how to care. I care about beauty in that which I can perceive, and meaning in that which can be measured. I personally couldn't care less about the purpose of existence, or the mystery of the presence of life. My lack of belief in permanence or a cosmic plan forces me to see the eventual destruction of life and this universe as the end of purpose, because to me, purpose comes from we sentients.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
^true, however, if u were a materialist, ud have to accept the very real possibility that the entire fabric of existance was "sentient". and that wud imply that the universe CUD have a purpose implicit in itself/its own existance.
I accept that possibility, but like faith in a creator or a purpose, I put no stock in it.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
If (- IF -) this is true, then all things possess some degree of awareness, whether we can detect it or not (just as all things possess some degree of gravity, whether we can detect it or not).
__________________
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Jun 29th, 2009 09:57 AM
