I was going to post about violence in movies (and sex on TV, as Lois sings) when I found myself wondering if I actually knew what I was talking about. I asked myself cause I didn´t want to be annoying, this time. So I sketched a quick mind-map and things got pretty intense.
All of a sudden I had a map of Life, the Universe and just about Everything. Ah well, not really the Universe. Or maybe yes. Anyway, here it comes.
It can be read in any direction, it´s a circular, iterative mental process. Everything we know is either Art or Science, Art is part of Science and everything is Language. Here I write Language as Communication, and Communication isn´t just Verbal, it´s Semantics: the Word and its Symbol, its Representation. There are millions of connections, logical jumps, that one can draw here - here´s the fun about it.
I love Theories of the Whole. Let´s put some order in our Universe, shall we? Cause if you don´t understand Order, you won´t be able to deal with Chaos.
Disclaimer: how do I say this. This is just an image I did because I felt like it. It´s no conference paper. I just had it in my mind and felt like putting it down.
So from Word and Representation come all fields of Art. We start with pure Word as Poetry and Prose on one side, pure Symbol with Drawing and Painting on the other side. As traditional Art goes, they are two distinct disciplines, but here it´s not really relevant. I also group both hand and digital works. It´s the same mental process, although the tool is different. See my blog post about 3D printing for more about this topic. Then there´s Photography, and here there are other levels of complexity worth mentioning, which are quality and stream, pop. Oliviero Toscani against Instagram, say - while on Instragram there is a bit of everything, from yet another bottle of Vodka (people, seriously?) to amazing nature shots (now those are the right kind of shots).
Words go into Music, notes have names and can be hummed or sung or whistled - I hate hearing other people whistling just as much as I love whistling myself (such a cruel world!). Music again can be instrumental or electronic. Mozart or Skrillex. I don´t give a judgement here, I am pissing enough people off already, I am just leading a short trip through space and time, when I went trough it myself it blew my mind but by all means, you feel free to keep your levels of excitement down.
Music becomes Dance, which here I want to understand as pretty much any movement done on purpose of Beauty, done with an intention of Harmony.
Prose and Drawings sublimate into Comics. If you ever read Alan Moore you hopefully know what I am talking about. But down to any Manga, you see, word and picture are just so perfect together. Even more, not a picture, but a drawing. The idealized, symbolic expression of a known, or unknown, object or figure. Sometimes so much more perfect, touching and meaningful than a photography. The parts that our brain fills in, that´s the amazing stuff about comics. Like books, they defeat the chains of Time. I can look at that face, at that crazy city, just as long as I want. The frame won´t move on, it´s there for me. It´s waiting for me to be ready to be carried on.
Sculpture lifts from the two-dimensional space. From there to animation is a small step. If physical, it takes Movement (here Dance) arm in arm and enters Theatre, Cinema. If virtual, it´s Cartoons, Anime.
Architecture transforms visual, figurative Art into Science. Here I see architecture as the design of things. Interiors and products, buildings and urbanity. Fashion, too, of course. Social Sciences such as Economy, on the other side, are the bridge between emotive behaviour and rules.
Move a step more into the scientific, rational field and you find Engineering and Biology. Everything has a number and a definition. Here again, the word and its symbol. Biology abstracts in Chemistry, everything is Physics, and it´s Math. And I am here typing this because of Informatic, the realm of Logic.
Logic, as the use and study of valid reasoning, is the beginning of everything, even of Math. Back to start. This makes me think about common sense, and how important and essential it is.
The Answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42.
~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
p.s. I am still thinking where to squeeze in Cooking.
