If painting is just a trigger word then how can you go beyond it. Does this build a case for discovering what is new in Art. To define a trigger word: a word that causes a silent big bang in memory. It creates a reaction in yourself. Not to make you jump out of your chair as the stimulus is silent and brought forward in memory to make you react. Trigger words work only because they stir your past in memory.
I was watching a program on capital punishment on TV and there were those for life for life and the those for not. Both the groups sat opposite to each other. And interestingly both argued their space confidently. Both had very good reasons for what they said. So it was from their experiences that they decided for or against severe capital punishment. I guess we can say that it all was as a result of where in memory it comes from or the ulterior motives for arguing a subject one way or another.
Advertising plays with trigger words. They know the strings to pull to get you to their shops. So is it possible that Art is just a ‘higher’ form of advertising. With respect to the viewer, its form, its composition, the title with the narrative aspects of the composition, its colour all act as a trigger to the work. It depends on ones experiences, one’s memory and past to make an impact. The purpose of the work to the artist can never be met because the artist has no control of how the trigger in his work will function as per the viewer’s experiences.
Large malls in big cities could employ trigger words to its casual visitors just looking for a cup of coffee, but later seen walking out with bags of goods they wonder why they purchased. Trigger words can be made in silence, subliminally induced, to create an action in the ‘listener’. Today’s technology allows for this. The work of one artist can trigger further ideas in another artist which will never be conceived by the originator of that idea because of his particular experiences. Trigger words is only the beginning of the process that triggers a torrent of thoughts in ones mind. And today, soon, with high technology science, the mind might soon be able to be read by others. It is the way of the human mind to be captured by another. There is no way around it but perhaps only through observation and understanding of the process. The concept of the ‘meme’ gene from Richard Dawkins strengthens this idea. The meme gene is a non existent gene where an idea is passed on from one to another by word of mouth, or a painting perhaps, which when repeated enough times, is adopted by the society as true, good, well done, fantastic, brilliant, magic. That is why you see yourself dressed like your neighbour, your bola hat, ok yesterday, but perhaps not today – the gene not hard-wired is malleable and changes with time. It is a wireless gene where the mind is easily hacked into. It is transmitted wirelessly from one mind to another mind and another and adopted as true.
So there is no such thing as privacy. We might soon come to accept this. You can see how Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic field is just an extension of the mind in how it works. It is proof that we are all one and connected?: sharing what we discover. Triggering one to be the other.
In understanding how it works will trigger evolution of the mind. It will bring about the new.
So to the viewer, how does the new come about in a painting. Perhaps it does by not acting as a trigger to the past in the mind. That means that its form, its mark making, its content does not allow the past in ones mind to play a part in seeing the art work. The work does not start a narrative process in the mind. There is no movement or action in the mind towards a corner but allows it to remain in the centre to only observe the work. It could remain in the wow factor: only as an observation. No history to distort the feeling. There can be no form that is intelligible………that is new art will always be a:
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As J. Krishnamurti says, “…….And with those as screens (desires, prejudices, daily worries, fears etc), we listen” And nothing new comes of it but just patterns of the past.