WHAT IS ART? THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN MIND

" I see with eyes, I think with words, therefore I am a human being."


"I see more with my eyes; I think better with my words, therefore I am an artist."

The evolution of knowledge is evolution of the languages of the mind. The two languages of man

Knowledge obviously is the accumulation of information about reality with the human mind. What is then the human mind? Here is when an objective analysis brings a rather simple, yet enlightening answer: Your mind is an organic system that processes languages of perception. Those languages of perception are basically two: sight and sounds, from where the two languages of human knowledge derive, numbers and words. What do numbers and words, eyes and sounds perceive? Eyes and numbers perceive space. Verbal words and sounds perceive time. Words are verbal constructions that talk about events in time. Mathematics are geometrical games that explain events in space. So we come to the conclusion that the human mind is a being that exists in space and time and so it perceives space and time.

You are a mind that perceives time and space. That is the nature of your existence. You perceive time with words, with verbs. You perceive space with eyes, with images. That is your connection to reality. The evolution of the human mind, of our words of comprehension of time, and our perception of images (either thorough art, or mathematics), is the very essence of knowledge. So to know, is to develop the two languages of the human mind, words and images, (simplified by mathematics), and the comprehension they bring us of the events of time, and the forms of space...

Once this is clear it is easy to understand knowledge, art and science as a process of evolution of human languages, and the information we collect with those languages.

What is art? The human mind, the Universe, the World and the world of artists

Today the concept of art has expanded well beyond the classic meaning of art in history. This extension of the classic concept of art has happened mainly because today art works are basically products on sale, and so they have acquired values and definitions proper of the economic world, very different from the spiritual definitions that were used to describe art, when it was not considered a market-product, but the fundamental form of knowledge of mankind. Hence a “sacred” endeavor. Since knowledge was considered to be the highest quality of man, the quality which connected us with “God” and his laws of Universal creation (either a personal being, as in most western religions, or an impersonal principle as in science and Eastern philosophies).

This second definition is what interests us here: art is a form of knowledge related to the more complex senses of the human mind, the word and the sight. If we define the human mind as a dual system of perception based on the senses of sight and sound perception, we could sum up our mental essence in a single sentence:

I think words and I see images therefore I am a human mind.

A work of artistic knowledge could then be defined as a form of sound perception (literary art, music) or visual perception (architecture, sculpture, painting), translated from the mind into an external medium. However since the process of creation of words and images by the human mind is constant, art was considered to be only those superior acts of mental perception that “evolved” the human mind, beyond its natural level of perception and creativity.

We only perceive a partial map of the Universe

Your mind creates constantly the reality you perceive. Our mind is not the real Universe, but the sounds and images we collect from it. To differentiate both we will call the vision of the Universe that humans have, thanks to their senses and minds, the “wor[l]d”. A World is a Mental world constructed observing the Universe with a language of time, n the case of man, Words, and a language of space, in the case of man, images. The mental world of man, is different from the mental world of other species which do not use words to explain temporally reality. For example machines use numbers to explain reality, dogs seems to use smells, as ants do... The Universe is the total reality, the world is the linguistic mirror that a mind of any perceptive species use to describe reality. To differentiate all those other maps of realities, made with smells such as those of dogs or ants, from the world made by man with words, and eyes, we call the World of Man, the Wor[l]d (world=word).

I think therefore I am, define essentially man and only man as a word-speaking species that perceives the passing of time with words. So words are the particular way the mind of mankind perceives times, as sight is the way we perceive space. We could say that all humans are artists of the I=Eye-Wor[l]d, since all humans see and understand with words and images the Universe. What an artist does, however, is to go beyond that common wor[l]d, the biological wor[l]d of our senses, to stretch the limits of perception of human words and sight. Art in such a classic sense, adopted here, is the creation and evolution of the human mind made of images and verbal thought. I see and think therefore I am defines Man. I see more, I think more therefore I am an artist defines an artist as a more complex human mind.

That perception is evolved by the artist's imagination into new forms, which return from the mind into reality in the shape of an artistic form, a “Work of Art”. A new verbal or visual form, becomes “real”, thanks to the use of certain materials, able to conform easily to the will and imagination of the artist, to become a work of art. Wood, stone, paint, metal, paper, allow the forms the artist has elaborated in his mind to become real, to become art. Thus, the artist is a sensitive man who "thinks more and sees more" and expresses his higher mental sensibility through his works of art. Such a theory of art developed by the Greeks and the Italian Renaissance, makes art a sacred endeavor, since art tries to expand the limits of human sensorial perception, in his perennial search for the truth and the essence of the Universe.

Out of all the human senses, why is it we highlight visual and verbal perception as the origin of art? In biological terms the answer is simple. Sound and sight offer much more information to the human mind than the other senses of touch, taste and smell do. Since the creation of art requires an initially rich sensorial evidence, only those senses can provide the perceptive material needed to create complex works of art. Art is therefore, first the evolution of our linguistic, verbal and visual perception of reality, and only in a secondary level, a product, a work of art for sale in the market.

The former explains why the Greeks considered philosophers, that only talked, and had no products on sale, the highest artists. Since they could combine words -the second level of the mind, that comments on what the sight sees- with such a beautiful logic, as to create new “wor[l]ds”, new linguistic images of reality, only with the power of the mind.

Images and words are the languages of creation of the human mind. They are like mirrors which show the Universe. However the mirror is not the Universe in itself, just an image of it. A linguistic mirror of reality. What you see is not reality, just the creation of your mind.

But all human minds have a genetic, basic way of creating the wor[l]d of sound as images, as all dogs smell and create a world of smells that probably is similar. What differences the artist is its capacity to distort, in several possible ways -what we call artistic styles- that basic biological mirror. He will be a verbal artist, when he makes descriptive models of the Universe with words. He will be a visual artist, when he creates sight-based models of that Universe.

Word Art and Sight Art. The eye-word, preceptor of space and time

It follows that there are two basic forms of “mind art”; Word and sound arts: music, and literature of any gender. And visual arts, architecture, painting, sculpture.

Why are images, and words the main sensorial languages of man? The answer is rather simple. We exist in time and space, the two parameters which define all species of the Universe. We therefore need to exist, survive and interpret such a Universe, a spatial and a temporal sense. The eye scans space. It is our spatial sense.The word remembers events in time. It is our temporal sense. So the eye-word are the human senses of perception of space and time, the main parameters of the Universe. This position places a special importance on the “higher arts”. It gives them a “sacred” meaning, since they deal with the very essence of mankind's intelligence, our “soul,” which is our consciousness of space and time, of the Universe. The difference between both arts is in the senses which control the creation of the art form. Visual arts depend on spatial perception, through eye-images. Word art is “temporal art”, since man uses words and verbs to measure and explain events which happen in time. Verbs are the “temporal memory of man”, the “scanner of time” of the human mind.

We conclude that art is the highest expression of the human mind, in as much as it takes the mind of man into further evolution beyond its biological limits. The visual artist is the person able to see more and, with a higher sight, he is able to create images in two dimensions (painting) or 3 dimensions (architecture and sculpture). On the other hand, writers and musicians are able to think better in sounds; either in the simplified language of 8 sounds (music) or the more complex language of 24 sounds (words). They are able to explain emotions, sensations and temporal events with more complexity than ordinary people can, and with a higher sense of harmony, according to the natural laws of the Universe.

Mind-art, art of the human senses of space and time, the eye and the word, is clearly the highest level of knowledge man reaches about the Universe by his own linguistic means, with his soul-mind. In this manner, the wor[l]d becomes our soul-mind, the linguistic mirror that words and images craft on the Universe of atomic energy and information.

Even though man has 5 sensorial outlets to the Universe, it is important to distinguish between our "Energy senses" and "informative senses". The former might also evolve and create human goods to satisfy our perception (gastronomy, perfumes), but these can hardly inform us about the Universe, since their physiology allows them to accumulate only a small quantity of information. So they give way to simple sensorial objects. The Informative senses of the mind, eyes and words, accumulate thousands of times more information than the lower senses do. So they give birth to much more complex works of art. For that reason those works which relate to the higher senses of man are considered to be the classic arts in History.

However, in the present market-oriented society, the word “art” has been devaluated to allow the sale of many products which traders promote as art when they are mere crafts that do not evolve the human mind. This has an economic reason behind it; "a single genius is a single sale". It is difficult to find enough truly creative works of art to invade the world market. Therefore the idea of converting any object into art and use the prestige of art to market industrial products, has expanded the notion of art beyond the products of the mind into many other things, from clothing to gastronomy, from images taken by machines to industrial design, of minimal creative content.

Man has existed for 150.000 years and he always considered art a sacred endeavor, and art works the most perfect or innovative forms perceived and recreated by the higher senses of the mind; words and images. Thus only products of “the eye-wor[l]d”, in its classical manifestations: literature, poetry, drama, prose, musical sounds, painting, sculpture and architecture, are considered art in this web. They are the seven arts of classical Greece, which the seven muses embodied.

The lower senses of man, those which have a limited perception of reality, (taste, touch, smell) blurred by the lack of distinct and clear information, create what we might call at best, lower art, forms of human goods, that should be promoted and reproduced as much as possible since they are the goods mankind needs to survive: gastronomy, sex, textiles, perfumes... Yet precisely for that reason they cannot be unique, or special of a certain human mind, but common and available to all men, in a healthy organism of history.

Technological art: evolution of metal-minds

How can we classify the third type of products that the market today sells as “art”, and are neither Human Goods, not Human evolutionary visual/verbal art?

They are either crafts and industrial designs that use forms of energy and information of minimal complexity, (geometrical cycles and lines) easy to be mass-produced, with machines. They are also creative forms, such as photographs or computer art, which are new, evolved images that seem to have the characteristics of sacred art, yet lack the fundamental element of human art: the human mind is not the main creator of those forms, but a machine, a "metal-Head" is. That is they are metal-mind art, the art of machines, the art of science…

In that sense we have to differentiate the human method of verbal/visual knowledge, the art of the human mind, that uses words and eyes to understand the Universe, with the method of knowledge that scientists use to perceive the universe of space and time: the scientific method.

If both art and science search for knowledge of space and time, then what is the main difference between the two of them? The difference is radical, when we realize that art and science use different sensorial instruments of perception to search for that knowledge. Art uses the biological organs of our mind to understand space and time. The word, our biological language that measures time, is used in art to express thoughts and ideas about the passing of time, and its 3 dimensions, past, present and future , which verbs mirror with its 3 temporal forms. The eye, our biological organ of perception of space, is used in art to define our understanding of the three dimensions of spatial reality, width, length and depth (created in 2-dimensional painting with perspective or cubist deformation).

On the other hand, science uses sensorial organs which are not human organs, but machines, made basically of another type of atoms, metal. So we can baptize the organs of perception of science, “metal-minds”. They are “metal-sensorial organs”, machines that perceive time (clocks and computers) and machines that perceive space (telescopes, microscopes, cameras).

We could say that art is knowledge through human senses, and science is knowledge through metallic senses. Hence the historic opposition we find between verbal masters (prophets of the wor(l)d, defending the truths of human senses) and scientific masters (prophets of the number defending the truths of sensorial machines). It follows that arts evolve the human perception of the universe, while science evolves the perception of machines. And so, thanks to science, the primitive systems of temporal perception of machines (the clocks of Mr. Galileo) have become computers. And the primitive first “metal-eyes” of Mr. Galileo, founder of modern science (his telescopes), have become today the sophisticated cameras we see all around us.

If we are strict in our classic, biological definition of art, the languages and images which cannot be reproduced by human minds and humans hands are not human art. So science and its machines does not produce human art. Please leave aside your western ideologies that worship machines, and consider machines abstract species. Technological art is not “a creation of the human mind”, but of a “metal-mind”. And the role of man in its creation will always be secondary to the role of the machine.

If in a painting, the canvas is the passive element, and the painter the active element, in a computer-designed art form, or a photography, the human mind plays the role of the passive “canvas” adapting his style to the properties of the machine. And the active creator is the machine, which imposes his language to the “craftsman”.

So we have to be much more exigent with technological crafts to consider them a form of human art. Only those forms of technological art focused in the human experience, that require a lot of human creativity (such as “art films”, or some photographic work by masters like Cartier or Capra), can be seriously consider a technological form of human art.

The other forms of technological crafts, specially those created with computers, or related to mere mathematical, and digital shapes, belong to the “lower arts”. We call them crafts because their human content is minimal. To disguise those obvious truths, the technological artist rhetorizes his work and markets it with arrogant statements to make-belief that he is the only artist, and the machine a mere extension of his mind, not a metal-mind with his own linguistic properties (the language is the message).

That anthropocentric concept of technological art, might be true, of art made with “primitive metal-minds” (classic film-making). Yet the arrival of computers and special effects gives predominance to the machine over the human manipulator. So today Hollywood films are made by computers, according to the computer and metal-eye properties that seek higher movement and hence violence, brutality with the human body, and distortion of human feelings with dramatic effects. They are genres imposed by the machine not by the artist.

Today the arrogance of the scientific artist grows as his role in the act of creation diminishes. So we can hear sentences, such as those of a well-known Asian video artist, that considers his last work of electronic distortions, his entering on “a sublime period, like the great French gothic cathedrals”. Or the sentences of a well-known computer mogul, that considers the 010011 crunching of his software programs, “a form of creative art, like anything the great masters have ever done”. Or the evil=anti-live sentences of the father of robotics, that says he wants to play god, and construct a species superior to the human mind...

In technological crafts as in market-art, rhetoric and the cult to the machine, takes over real human creativity. Scientists can occupy their creativity in whatever they want, specially when they pursuit money and fame, which are market-oriented concepts, but we cannot pretend to make Leonardos of children of human thought, working with Basic, Adobe Photoshop, or a video-monitor... to the risk of loosing any perspective on the nature of our human mind, and the importance that human art has to develop the human soul, our sense of ethics and aesthetics in freedom of thought. It is for that reason, that despite despite the beauty and easiness we can achieve using mental machines to do art, the great artists of history have despised technological art, and have built their works of art, in basic, simple media: sculpture, painting, literature, and even today when technological art dominates all, the great masters of film or photography, treat human themes, use minimal technology and try to reflect the canon of ethics and aesthetics, in their work. So we value far more the films of Truffaut or Welles than the films of Spielberg, the photography of Cartier Bresson, that the digital art of video artists...

The function of visual art

What is the social role on that sacred evolutionary view, of visual art? If we have considered verbal art, to be in charge of the temporal perception of a civilization, visual art, obviously will be in charge of the visual perception of such culture. Visual art therefore has also a human canon, an aesthetic, spatial canon, referred to the relative dimensions of man. If verbal art has to create temporal harmony among individuals, visual art has to create spatial harmony, beauty, in the space of that civilization.

Such is the classic vision of architecture and sculpture, urbanism and painting, even gardening, or agricultural development. All those arts that transform the space around us tried to create a harmonic environment in societies. And when both canons succeeded, we talk of a harmonic civilization in which ethics and aesthetics (the moral of the eye), favor a Wor[l]d built to the image and resemblance of mankind.

The function of art, is to shape the environment of man in a pleasant way. Yet since all measure in space and time is relative (Theory of Relativity), a pleasant space for man has the references of human size and form. To make of man the center of creation, the God of the Earth. This was understood perfectly by the theoretical minds of Renaissance, the last human culture, previous to the Industrial Revolution. The aim of renascence artists was to create ethics and aesthetics, for the Italian society. They worked hand in hand with the church in charge of the ethics of Christian societies. They tried to create “canons” of beauty as the gospel tried to create canons of ethics. They affirmed that men should try to achieve a mind and a body according to such canons. The artist, as the most complex mind of society, was the guide of the individual, which tried to achieve personal perfection as a human being, imitating those ethic and aesthetic roles, the artists showed him.

The destruction of the renaissance caused by the evolution of gunpowder weapons, the creation of Go(l)d religions that worshipped money instead of words as the language of information of human societies , and the beginning of science with its despise for human words and human eyes, meant the collapse of the artist as the guide of human societies.

The human paradise as the goal of history also was lost. A new culture, and a new civilization appeared, where the goal of history became the progress of the machine, and the human goal, the paradise of human senses, where “man is the measure of all things” was forgotten.

We are living the consequences of such mistake, in a world in which man no longer matters, where humans and words are submissive to mathematics and machines... It is an age of decadence of all forms of human art, substituted by technological art. It is the age of the Human Baroque.

The myth of superman. The human master

All this bring us to a final reflection on the nature of the Human Masters, the great artists of verbal and visual wor[l]ds that have confronted throughout History, the Metal masters, warriors, traders and scientists that base their power, not in their own senses and biological nature, but in the power of energy-metal (lines of metal or weapons from swords to missiles, cycles of metal, or money, and metal-minds or scientific instruments).

Human Masters who “think more and see more”, are the true masters of mankind. Since mankind is a mental race -its body is not even the strongest of all carbolife species- and the master artist is the most developed human mental race, it is the artist, the “super-man”, not the warrior, or the scientist, that rely on weapons and metal-minds, to power up their bodies and minds. This was the vision of the Greek philosophers, and it is the biological truth. Hence, human masters, masters of the wor[l]d should rule human societies, as Plato wisely understood. They do not rule our societies, because warriors, traders and scientists, impose their power with the help of their metal. And even worse, some of our societies are ruled “at distance” by the me[n]tal intelligence of money, by the biological laws of economics, that make of each man a mere consumer=tester and worker=reproducer of machines, without visual or verbal - artistic freedom. But those are political themes, on the “myths of human freedom”, in present money-controlled democracies, that go beyond the scope of this web.