Art is Synesthetic

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the fourth of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto. 

I have this pet idea that (a) we work at art is sensuous, that is, heightening our five senses for any stimuli around us.  Then (b) we cross the usual pairing of sense and stimulus, and now it's art is synesthetic.  Synesthesia is a neurological condition, where sense-stimulus pairings are scrambled, for example, hearing colors or seeing music.

Some synesthetes often report that they were unaware their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them, while others report feeling as if they had been keeping a secret their entire lives.  The automatic and ineffable nature of a synesthetic experience means that the pairing may not seem out of the ordinary. This involuntary and consistent nature helps define synesthesia as a real experience. Most synesthetes report that their experiences are pleasant or neutral, although, in rare cases, synesthetes report that their experiences can lead to a degree of sensory overload.

Though often stereotyped in the popular media as a medical condition or neurological aberration, many synesthetes themselves do not perceive their synesthetic experiences as a handicap. To the contrary, some report it as a gift—an additional "hidden" sense—something they would not want to miss. Most synesthetes become aware of their distinctive mode of perception in their childhood. Some have learned how to apply their ability in daily life and work. Synesthetes have used their abilities in memorization of names and telephone numbers, mental arithmetic, and more complex creative activities like producing visual art, music, and theater.

Reference: Synesthesia.

That's stupid.  Numbers don't have colors, they have personalities!

Of course, synesthesia isn't the purview of art alone.  I love what Alex relates at the end: Fellow synesthetes have very different orientations to numbers, so their gatherings have the makings of a friendly fight.

I don't view synesthesia as a medical problem, though it can be, if a person is disturbed by it and it affects his or her day-to-day functioning.  By and large, though, synesthetes who may or may not be artists clearly find it pleasant and normal.  I imagine that in general established artists or would-be artists have a greater degree of synesthesia than non-artists. 

Imagine the creative possibilities

Five years ago I was at Happy Hour with a couple of friends in Dubai, and I must've mentioned synesthesia.  They didn't know what it was, so I explained it and mentioned it as a hallmark of art.  I met them in an acting class, so like me they were artistic sorts and they were duly intrigued by its being an art manifesto.

I promised to write a poem about it:

They say, true synesthesia is involuntary –

Like twitch of muscle fibers, firing of nerve cells,

Molecular activity of momentary

But frequent ringing of cross-stimulating bells.

But I do not conceive this as neurologists

For science claims too much of human mantelpiece,

Or relegate to armchairs of psychologists

(Though I am one) this cross-emotional release.

So, dear, who truly owns this synesthesic power?

The artist!  Let’s begin with sight.  For eyes have might

To hear the music in Picasso, feel the hour

Shorten upon the skin from images at night. 

Consider hearing.  Enter Mozart opera –

“The Magic Flute” singspiel that is a rousing texture

On fingertips, a harlequin to camera

Of colors from dramatic notes-and-words admixture.

Now, smell.  The fragrant hyacinths across the field

May give rise to a spread of roasted lamb, merlot

And crème brûlée – for flavor is as much the yield

Of fragrance as of succulence, tied with a bow.

Taste, then.  Cold water on the palate in the heat

Of equatorial summers is to bathe in springs

Collecting from the mountaintops, down to their feet,

Where rushing, falling is what water also sings. 

 

Last but not least, is touch.  For lovers, all the world

Is synesthesia.  Were they simply left alone

To stroke each other’s face, we’d see the cherubs twirl,

Hear oud play, breathe perfume, lap Häagen-Dazs’s cone.   

So, there, the sensual artist is the king and queen,

Whose living fully rules each momentary scene.

Synesthesia © Ron Villejo

So how about synesthesia in short film, music video, and training and education?

I love the bits about listening to fruits and vegetables, meat and eggs, then himself.  Toasting, cooking and eating books.  Herds of cats coming out of the speakers.

The lyrics and singing are terrible, but the visuals and music are catchy.  The Hindu holiday of Holi - the festival of colors - is a nice touch.

I like the notion of metaphor as seeing the similar in dissimilar things.  But imagine the work of researchers in synesthesia, applied as training and education for all art students.  There is evidence that our brain is very plastic, that is, pliable and changeable.  So we could adopt neurological applications for children, teenagers and adults, and thereby build up their artistry, creativity and innovation, and reshape their (our) brain for a meaningful good. 

Art is Sensuous

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects. This is the third of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.

Touch

Nicholas Cage as Seth and Meg Ryan as Maggie in `City of Angels (1998) have a moment at the library.  She feels him hold her hand and run a finger on her palm.  She had questioned his feeling that she was an excellent doctor, and had tacitly dismissed such praise from the stranger.  In one regard, this beautiful, poignant film is her story, she who is first baffled and skeptical, then shifts from science (analytical and skeptical) to art (experiential and authentic).  At the end, she glides on a kind of ribbon of religion, where she lives life fully, with the wind in her hair and the sun on her face.

Taste

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste... as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy. 

From a passage in A Moveable Feast, by Earnest Hemingway, which Seth reads.

Sight

There is quite a lot in the following clip from `A Beautiful Mind (2001), where Russell Crowe as John and Jennifer Connelly as Alicia go a first date.  The visuals in general are arresting.  But if we believe that God is truly an artist, then the visuals of a Marc Chagall painting are as transcendent as Alicia sees it and also as stunning as she is.  At her behest, the geeky genius John sees a certain artistry in the cosmos. 

Self Portrait with Seven Fingers (1913), by Marc Chagall

Sound

Charlotte Church sings `All You Can Be, as the love theme, in a hauntingly beautiful voice.  In fact, the soundtrack James Horner is in and of itself sensuous. 

Scent

`Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is an unfortunate title for this lush and lavish 2006 film.  Indeed Ben Whishaw as Jean-Baptiste Grenouille does kill, in an effort to capture the intoxicating but elusive scent of a woman.  But his killings are simply one part of a rich story about his ungodly heightened sense of smell.  In reality, of course, we as the audience do not smell what he smells.  But through the filmmaker's craft and our imagination, it was quite easy for us to smell all that captivated Jean-Baptiste.

Finally, my poem on a stunningly fragrant, long lasting Casablanca Lily:

Not all pieces of art will engage our five senses equally.  But if we give free reign to all of our senses, then art as a whole rewards us with an inviolably sensuous experience.

Art is Always Autobiographical

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the second of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.

Art draws from experience

The 2006 film `Open Window stars Robin Tunney as Izzy and Joel Edgerton as her fiance Peter.  Theirs is a down-to-earth, genuinely loving relationship, but when a stranger enters through a window she left ajar, and rapes her, their lives turn inside-out and upside-down.  The film was so disregarded that there wasn't even a Wikipedia entry, but nevertheless I found it emotionally powerful and artistically compelling.

   

Here is the story of its writer and director:

One night in 1989, Mia Goldman awakened to find a menacing stranger sitting on top of her, ordering her to keep her mouth shut or he would "shoot [her] brains out" with a gun he had placed on a nightstand.

At the time, Goldman, a film editor, was living in a two-story condominium in rural Virginia, on location with the film, "Crazy People." Her assailant revealed that he knew she was working on the movie, that he had been stalking her and that he had entered the condo through a downstairs window she had left open a crack for air.

Over the next five hours, he brutally raped, tortured and beat Goldman, covering her body with bruises and injuring her neck. In the aftermath, she developed a heart murmur, endured cervical surgeries, experienced flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome and lost her boyfriend, who had tried to be kind but ultimately could not deal with his own feelings of trauma and violation.

Goldman says it took her six years to work through her depression and to heal, which she did with the help of her psychoanalyst, her family and her growing spiritual connection to Judaism. She drew on her experience to write and direct her debut feature, "Open Window," which premieres on Showtime July 16 at 8 p.m.

The intense, intimate drama revolves around Izzy (Robin Tunney), a struggling photographer, Izzy's fiancé, Peter (Joel Edgerton), and how their relationship unravels after she is raped by a man who enters her studio through an open window.

Both Izzy and Peter are devastated by the rape: "I wanted to show how the act violates not only the woman, but also the man -- and how it creates circles of pain that may extend to the entire family," Goldman says.

Reference:  Mia Goldman’s film is an ‘Open Window’ into trauma and recovery.

Art draws on empathy

I first heard of Rodrigo García as the director of the mysterious 2008 film Passengers, starring Anne Hathaway as Claire and Patrick Wilson as Eric, among unlikely survivors of a horrific airplane crash. It was a box office bomb, but I found it to be a well-scripted, well-acted, imaginative albeit creepy story of the after-life.

Breaking new ground with award-winning scripted dramas for the digital age

When I stumbled on the WIGS channel on YouTube, I was already acquainted with co-creator García.  I found myself enthralled with the fine, sensitive, empathic portrayal of women.  In fact all of the WIGS films are titled simply by the names of the women who lead a range of stories.  My favorite among all of them is the story of `Blue, with Julia Stiles, who struggles with a turbulent past of addiction and a double-life now as a mother and a call girl.  García's writing and directing are just brilliant.  Though it isn't a perfect effort for him, I'd definitely vouch for the fact that he nails these women roles:

Glenn [Close], whom we interviewed after our chat with Rodrigo, theorized why the director excels in creating absorbing female characters: “Rodrigo has a wonderful mother and had a wonderful grandmother. I think he has a very strong wife (Dawn Hudson, executive director of Independent Filmmaker Project/West) and he has two daughters. He’s surrounded by women. He probably would say he has no choice. I’ve been in his first two movies. He writes fantastic roles for women. He’s a man who understands the feminine side of life and revels in what all that means.”

When he was told that actresses he has directed often talk about his great insight and sensibility toward women, Rodrigo cracked with a smile: “I hear my wife laughing right now.”

But he admitted to having “What feels to me like a very strong imagination. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but when I imagine the women characters that I write about, I feel them very strongly in my head. I’m glad that so many women respond to them. If they didn’t, I would have given it up a long time ago. One of the things that feeds me to keep writing women is that a lot of women connect with them. But it’s always a bit of a prayer. I am not saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to nail this one. This is what this woman is like.’ I have to go with my instinct and, like I said before, I just assume she has to be a little bit like me. She must. She wants things.”

He said that one of the best things he has read on this topic was when Gustave Flaubert was asked who was Madame Bovary. Rodrigo said, “Flaubert said, ‘Madame Bovary is me.’ We make movies about other men. We make movies about people in other periods, people in outer space or who’ve gone to space, fired a gun, been on a horse. Imagination – you have to have that as storytellers. Plus empathy to feel that everyone else is me and that I am everyone else. There’s a particular set of circumstances around Nobbs. She had to hide to survive but everyone hides an aspect of themselves in order to fit in and survive.”

Reference: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s son on the art of storytelling. 

All men have been around women in one way or another, of course. So while Close's theory sounds quite reasonable, García probably draws on more than just personal experience.  I think he also taps his empathic understanding of women to make such breathtaking, compelling art. It is empathy - psychologically putting yourself in others' shoes - that he draws from most, and his films speak to his personal instinct, grasp and imagination. 

Art draws on imagination

Vincent Van Gogh is one of my longtime favorites, and more than three decades after my university days, impressionism as a genre still draws me.  The story goes that his friend and fellow painter Paul Gauguin advised him to paint from his imagination, that is, instead of reality.   While Van Gogh admired him, and paid lip service to his mentoring, he demured.  The deeply talented Dutchman preferred instead to paint scenes he saw in front of him, such as the following:

Bedroom in Arles (1888)

Then while in an asylum in Saint-Rémy, he didn't have his usual access to places that inspired him.  But inspired, he still was.  While there was an identifiable view of the following painting, that is, outside the east-facing window of his room, he apparently painted it during the daytime and in a different place at the asylum.  He painted it from memory, in other words, and the idyllic village in background and the bold fire strokes of the moon, stars and sky were his imaginative rendition.  

Starry Night (1889)

Bedroom in Arles and Starry Night are among the things that Van Gogh saw.  They speak to his remarkable ability not just to paint, but also to keep his dysphoria, delusions and torment under artistic control.  Besides imagination, there is emotionality to these paintings, which, pat psychiatric diagnoses notwithstanding, speak to a far greater complexity, richness and talent.

So just as Madame Bovary is Flaubert, and Blue is García, so Arles and Saint-Rémy are unmistakably Van Gogh. 

The foregoing works of art tell remarkable stories about the personal experience, empathy and imagination of the artists behind them.

Art is Cross-Art by Nature

Preface

As Dr. Ron Art took sufficient shape for me to launch it via a Facebook page three years ago, I wanted to share my Art Manifesto.  This manifesto isn't just a set of beliefs about art, but also a proposal about the very nature of art.  Physicists work at discovering the immutable laws of the universe, and in a similar way I work at crystallizing some fundamental truths about art.  More broadly, art is an integral component of The Tripartite Model, along with science and religion.

My Art Manifesto

1. Art is cross-art by nature
2. Art is always autobiographical
3. Art is sensuous
4. Art is synesthetic
5. Art is never completely original
6. Art has value

Dr. Ron Art is a sizable complex with five main wings, under which several projects are at various stages of progress:

• Poetry in Multimedia 
• Shakespeare Talks! 
• Dramatis Personae 
• Art Intersections 
• T'ai Chi Empower

My Art Manifesto is the undercurrent for these projects.  This is the first of six articles, where I introduce this manifesto.

 

I take umbrage at those who define art only as paintings.  Certainly what painters render from their imagination, onto canvas, is a work of wonder. But they aren't the only artists we can speak of.  Poets and novelists | playwrights, filmmakers and actors | dancers and musicians | even martial artists and fashion designers | and so many more | belong in this enormous circle, too.

Art speaks to a wide range of creative talent, genres and expressions.

Moreover, they all have a play on that canvas, which I see as a metaphor for any art creation. That canvas can be a video, a book, or a stage.  Social media is the wide-ranging, modern day platform we have come to know, but the tried-and-true media of TV, radio and print are very much alive and kicking.  Not just one, then, but multiple avenues, through which inspired artists can express themselves and also through which art aficionados can enjoy their work.

Art can play on a diverse set of media platforms and channels.

Consider the following:

  

You see, these two videos aren't just dance, but also an intimate, intricate coming together of music, drama and cinematography.  There is something supreme to experience, when we watch ballet live, which makes theater so much more of a draw than any other media.  Yet, that stage production cannot account for the creative versatility of film.  The cuts from Polina Semionova gliding in the air, to her sylph legs and feet; or from the pas de deux, to the tight closeups of Amelia in Edouard Lock's choreography, raise the artistry of these pieces.

What is art anyway?

Just in case you weren't sure:

  

  

Art may be very difficult to define, because to define something is to take an objective view and to arrive at a description that many, if not necessarily all, can agree on.  But by nature, art is subjective, and because it is so varied and people are arguably each unique, it defies conventional definition.

That subjectivity, uniqueness and defiance are all why I love art.

`Blue Interviews - The Cast on Season 4

Eric Stoltz anticipates, for us, an intriguing drama of intimate relationship vis-a-vis class difference. 

Jane O'Hara thinks it would be cool for her character to discover Blue, her sister in real life and in the story, in her nightly jaunts.

Laura Spencer echoes nicely the sentiments of others and ours, and hopes to stay involved.  I hope she stays involved, too.

Alexz Johnson is excited to see how Rodrigo García develops the intimacy between her character and that of O'Hara.  There is a lot that haven't been said, yet.



Uriah Shelton alludes to that very last scene between Blue and Olsen, and foresees trouble ahead with the latter's desire to build a relationship with his son. 

I cannot wait for Season 4!

`Blue Interviews - Alexz Johnson

I appreciate this little story of discovery.  I am quite plunged into my work as a whole, nose to the grindstone, and in particular well engaged with a range of artistic pursuits and projects.  But now and then, I find myself looking up and hoping that a producer, publisher or benefactor will discover my work. 

  

Satya is a tough, rugged, deeply independent woman, and I like that.  I didn't know Alexz Johnson, but, oh my, she is very attractive, quite a contrast to the looks of her character.   

  

I love the fact that Johnson is a musician in real life and that she offers a background on her music.

The following clips are songs she sings at her audition for a gig at the bar, her opening number at the show, and chatting in the bedroom with an inquisitive Josh:

  

  

 

Enjoy!

`Blue Interviews - Brooklyn Lowe and Laura Spencer

The insight about Julia Stiles, courtesy of Brooklyn Lowe, is that she, like her character, is close to the vest in real life.  But a more important realization, though, is this:  We as the audience are privileged to walk into the interiors of the story and the interiors of the characters.  So while Blue is close to the vest, in relation to many people, she isn't to us.  She has segmented her life well, among home life, day office, and evening office.  People in these segments don't get to see others in other segments.  However, there are crossings happening, such as Arthur being interested in Blue's personal life and forging an intimate (i.e., real) relationship with her. 

  

There does seem to be genuine interest and care between Francesca and Josh.  But to Lowe's point, there are natural and inevitable hurdles to overcome.  The drama of Season 4 may very well explore these passages from adolescence to adulthood.

Apparently Rodrigo García isn't hesitant to dish out a spoiler.

It's quite dramatic issue to tackle, and one that is very much unfolding, going into Season 4.  Laura Spencer speaks to it quite well:  If it weren't tragic enough that your mother is gone, but not to know what happened to her lifts that tragedy into total nebula.  So which is horrible, Spencer asks:  Is it worse to hear that your mother just up and left, or to hear that she died a horrible death?

  

In my Art Manifesto, I posit that art is always autobiographical.  What Spencer relates is in keeping with this:  While she keeps her personality separate from the characters she plays and interacts with, she does draw from experiences and people in her life.  She may also pull something out of her hat in the moment.  But even as Spencer restates her point about keeping things separate, she admits there are hints of her own personality in her characters.

 

Spencer relishes the idea of crossovers, that is, the same character in different stories.  If we as the audience are following other stories, then, yes, it is cool for us to see Vanessa in more than one.