Page 32 - NyghtVision Boot Camp One Fill Edition
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Emotion, Art, Being Human Learning to feel through the lens
Art is a reflection of our sense of who we are and what makes us human.
At the beginning his “Ascent of Man” Bronows- minished and in the face of that diminishment a
ki finds himself in Es Castillo - then the oldest kind of crisis of identity has ensured.
known occurence of human hand prints. They are If NOT logic and reason , then what is it that makes
everywhere. After reflecting upon these ancient us human?
hand prints, Bronowski concludes, “I, a Human,
did this.” Ironically, it is our ability to experience emotion
There is a tendency, especially in the West, to un- over time. Ironically because we rarely accord emo-
tion a status equal to or greater than logic and re-
derstand that which makes us uniquely human as ason. So, while we know that other creatures seem
a reflection upon our use of language, or, upon our to mourn their dead, and therefore experience
ability to make tools, or, our abiity to solve pro- grief, only we return to the place where we buried
blems using logic and reason. our dead and in that return we experience again all
Except that we now know that we are not the only the emotions associated with that person or place.
species that makes tools, reasons to solve complex This is why art transcends language and culture - art
problems, or builds abstract language from com- touches us beyond logic and discursive language.
mon words. In fact, even machines built upon a te- It transencds the seperateness that is the mark of
chnology pioneered by Hopfield and Shannon now our being in the world. Moreover, each time we re-
appear to reason faster and more effciently than turn to a work of art, our sense of the moment that
we, its creator, can. was the genesis of that creation changes, deepened
The sphere of what is unique to our species has di- by our experience of ourselves and the world. Art
32 Boot Camp, Part 1
