The social net in the internet is a permanent invitation to spontaneous reactions. And spontaneous means trust your gut instinct, don’t hesitate, no time for thought or reflection, shoot from the hip, a direct immediate reaction is best. Is this really authentic? And can’t it be that authenticity understood in this way is really being misunderstood? Or might even be problematic?
Emotional = seducible
Whoever controls the keyboard of emotions can control the game. This is true of advertising and politics just as it is for our everyday interpersonal relations. Awakening desire and making promises is one side of the keyboard; fuelling envy, fear and anger is the other. Whether it’s selling diapers or making a political statement, emotions are the key means of seducing people and getting them on board. But especially when it comes to politics, one thing is very clear – and our German history is full of nightmarish examples that bear this out: if you place too much trust in your emotions you become open to seduction and quickly run the danger of being manipulated. If you take your emotions as the mainstay by which to judge all things, you can easily turn into a kind of puppet whose emotional strings are controlled by hands not your own.
For me it’s a misunderstanding to cloak pure emotion in an aura of authenticity. Because what we feel today can be quite different tomorrow. And if you look back at the history of your own emotional life, perhaps you’ll find that a lot of what you held to be the absolute emotional truth ten or twenty years ago, appears in a quite different light today. The contrary also applies: the cultivation of feeling so dominant in our present age, hides an awful lot of authenticity.
True authenticity
If feelings bubble and boil up in people, the language clearly says they are beside themselves – beside themselves with anger, beside themselves with joy, beside themselves with grief. In other words, they are out of control, no longer a coherent whole. They are not authentic.
To me being authentic means that I am capable of comparing my own thoughts and feelings with those of others who might agree or disagree with me and by doing so can develop a certain distance to them – before trumpeting them to the whole world. I call this self-leadership. And to me this is a central element in authenticity. A little flag flapping in a gale of emotions is not authentic.
And this also means that I must continually strive to put my own state of feelings to a rational examination. Emotions are important, of course they are, but they can also be deceptive. Blindly trusting them and following them might sometimes seem the obvious thing to do, but in no way is it a recommendable course of action.
“Shall I be authentic or shall I hide myself behind my emotions?” To me this is the key question which you, me and everyone else should ask themselves in order to put a soothing distance between ourselves and the emotional velocity that dominates our times. “There is strength in serenity” might be an old-fashioned saying, but it’s perhaps one that we can simply find cool.
Is the decision of the galleries a one-off exception or is it the first sign of a radical change?
Public interest contra profitability
Museums are a relatively new achievement in the history of our civilisation. Up to the French Revolution, art treasures were mainly the private possessions of kings, princes and other members of the nobility who were the patrons of the artists of their time, commissioning them, paying them and keeping their works. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century at the time of the rising bourgeoisie that art treasures gradually began to be placed in state-financed museums where they could be viewed by the general public. This was a great step forward.
Since that time the number of museums has steadily increased. And today, given the decrease in government funding, they are in intense economic competition with one another. Faced with the need for ever more capital in a time of drastic cuts to government subsidies for the arts, they find themselves caught in the “income-from-visitors” trap. Even though museums were intended to serve the public interest and not commercial ends, they find themselves constrained to follow the model of permanent growth. This has given rise to two key consequences.
First of all, the trend to blockbuster art exhibitions whose stakes are high on the commercial art market. The operative principle here is that if it costs a lot it must be worth a lot and will thus serve to draw in the crowds. This trend means that there’s no room available for experimental concepts or lesser-known artists who don’t figure among the art scene’s galaxy of pop stars. The risk of making a loss on an exhibition is simply too great for the museums to bear.
The second consequence following on from the first is that in their efforts to finance such crowd-drawing exhibitions, many museums welcome donations by rich private individuals and companies with open arms.
Money has no smell – or does it?
Now you might be thinking that money has no smell so it doesn’t really matter where it comes from. And if it serves a good purpose like keeping works of art in museums or restoring Notre Dame, then there’s nothing wrong with it and in fact such sponsorship it’s really both cheap and effective.
And in fact for a very long time nobody was interested in where the money for the sponsorship of the arts came from and what type of consequences such sponsorship entailed. It’s only now that people are beginning to take a more critical look.
Take, for instance the group of activists who, drawing on the famous “To be, or not to be” from Shakespeare´s Hamlet, call themselves “BP or not BP”. They are investigating the sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the British Museum by the BP oil corporation, and in particular attempts by the oil giant that have now come to light to exert influence on which special exhibitions should figure in the programme of the British Museum.
In the case of the Sackler family, the protest is directed at the fact that their sponsorship of the arts amounts to a “whitewashing” of the money they earn through their morally dubious pharmaceutical business.
And in mid-April when a fire seemed likely to destroy Notre Dame cathedral and part of the cultural heritage it contained, this triggered not only a universal wave of dismay and consternation but an unprecedented outpouring of donations from the richest families in France. In next to no time a staggering 800 million euros was donated. Undoubtedly this is of tremendous benefit to the badly damaged cathedral. And yet it prompted a wave of indignation from the French people. What is at the root of such discord?
Autonomy and diversity are at stake here
In a pluralistic society based on democratic principles, the question of the autonomy of institutions dedicated to the common good is of primary importance: only a sufficient degree of autonomy can ensure genuine diversity and encourage innovation – works not streamlined to swim with the current of the times but which might be contentious or thought-provoking. This is beneficial to an open society.
At the end of the day, this kind of sponsorship of the arts can only prevail because the public coffers are too empty to allow institutions to act freely, independent of such support.
There are many reasons for acts of generosity
All too often the fabulously rich can slip their obligation to contribute to the common good of society in the same unostentatious and altruistic way as the rest of us do. With their voluntary donations they make good on this obligation and by doing so also appear as benefactors.
Now to avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me add that it would be disingenuous and pure speculation to deny that sponsors have any true feeling for art and culture. Even so, the question of the ends served by many an act of generosity is still a valid one. Whether by a company or an individual, sponsorship is always a form of advertisement and marketing which in most cases comes in combination with an alluring write-off or tax relief scheme. This is perfectly legal and indeed from a corporate standpoint even desirable.
So without wanting to venture further into the broad field of museum financing in particular, and the arts and humanities in general, I would say that we really do need to take a much closer look at where the money for our cultural life comes from. I for one at least hope that the move taken by the Tate group of British art galleries will not prove to be a onetime event but a laudable example that in similar circumstances deserves to be followed.
As I myself use the various platforms of social media for my OUBEY MINDKISS project, I know the ways other users react, and the challenges associated with them, from my own experience. Here are a few of my personal thoughts on the subject.
Know-it-alls vs. knowledge seekers
Digital networking has made it incredibly easy for us to spread our own personal views. This is great because it gives a voice to people who otherwise wouldn’t be heard in public. And it also gives us all access to information and opinion which helps us to broaden our own understanding and gain new knowledge. Yet it can also have quite a different effect by reinforcing one particular human trait in us – our tendency to become assertively arrogant and self-opinionated.
How often do we only approve and pass on that which corresponds to what we already think – without ever stopping to check whether our opinion really is well-founded in each particular case. And conversely, how often do we simply ignore information and opinions that don’t fit into our own view of the world or even worse, troll and abuse views different from our own in firestorm attacks.
Probably people have always found it difficult not merely to tolerate different opinions but wherever possible to consider them as incentives to start fresh trains of thought. And we have always found it even more difficult to admit our own failures and errors in viewing or assessing a particular issue. Admitting to errors or mistakes is seen as a sign of weakness.
Both the speed and the structure of communication on the Social Web seem to actively encourage this human propensity to a righteous belief in the correctness of our opinions by affording us permanent endorsement of our own way of thinking – at the cost of a differentiated view of other ways of thinking that differ from our own.
Be strong and turn the dice
True dialogue is thin on the ground. Because far too often we take too little trouble to question and probe the different opinions other people have. The ideological aspect of opinion-formation is playing an increasingly significant role in this because the less I’m prepared to critically examine the information that reaches me and debate it, the more I’m swimming on the cusp of a wave formed by the opinion-makers – and the more I am liable to be seduced by the seeming correctness of the opinion of the multitude.
In dialogue reality always has three sides: one that I see, one that you see and one that neither of us sees. In this sense reality can be compared to a dice cube all of whose sides I can never see from whatever standpoint I adopt. To see all its sides I must either turn it or ask other people who see the sides I can’t. This is poignant and highly telling, and it means that we should be able to admit that our own standpoint must not (necessarily) be the only correct one.
A question of mindset
Being able to admit your own limitations and weaknesses to yourself – and others – is, I believe, a sign of strength. Nobody is infallible. Only if you can admit your own errors and mistakes can you be really strong and at the same time fully human. Personally, in this sense I believe that we could use the marvellous opportunities offered by social media in a completely different and much better way. Because social media offer us the possibility of constructive dialogue. Whether this possibility will be seized and used depends solely on the mindset of each and every one of its millions of users.
It was a revolutionary enterprise that embraced the principle of “form follows function” as a clarion call of liberation from the ideals of beauty of a bourgeois society rooted in the 19th century, one that sought to create better living conditions for all people.
Is there a Nonplusultra?
Within a decade, a new, modern, clear style was born. Yet at the same time the Bauhaus declared its own design principles to be the absolute gold standard and the nonplusultra for everything touching on design, art, handicrafts and architecture, and many of its followers still hold this view today.
My own view is a little more nuanced. Yes, the Bauhaus was a huge step forward at the time because it pioneered new ways of thinking about and designing space. And yes, the Bauhaus was important, perhaps even essential, in helping us to gain a new understanding about major aspects and matters of life.
Yet when I look at what has happened to urban planning and housing development over the past 60 years in the name of “form follows function” and in adherence to the principles of the Bauhaus, what I see is the huge discrepancy between this erstwhile absolute aspiration and what actually has become of it in the hard light of day.
What followed was normalization and standardization driven by the imperatives of economy – quadratic, practical, good. Soulless homogeneous residential landscapes hostile to the very notion of communal living. Gigantic silos on the outskirts of cities where people live in stacked up shoe boxes.
Admittedly – compared to the dark, damp, first or second back courtyard apartments where people used to live without central heating and with no sanitary facilities, this was indeed progress. Yet even so, it was still lightyears away from the aesthetic aspiration to a beauty of form that follows function.
The beauty of the Bauhaus aesthetic in architecture which I certainly find in the original buildings that can still be seen, is nowadays limited to a handful of mostly luxurious exceptional instances. The original promise that Bauhaus held up high has failed to materialize in its mass applications. What we need today are fresh and totally different concepts of the kind now being realized – without any aspiration to universal value – in local and regional projects.
What about women in the Bauhaus?
Furthermore, it’s not only how the application of Bauhaus principles changed the face of our towns and cities after the Second World War that gives grounds for critical appraisal.
There’s another quite different aspect which puts me some distance from the absolutist aspiration of the Bauhaus and its founders. Despite the fact that there were always a great many female members – in some periods even more women than men active in the movement – up to present these women remain largely unknown.
In other words, up to its dissolution by the Nazis, the Bauhaus remained a prime example of a thoroughly male-dominated organisation.
It’s mainly its 100th anniversary celebrations that we have to thank for shedding the very first light on the role played by women in the Bauhaus. For instance, arte TV recently aired a fascinating programme on “Women in the Bauhaus”. This exhaustively researched documentary shows that even the most gifted and ambitious women were deliberately excluded from management positions and kept well away from such areas of high-interest activity as attracted widespread public attention. Their usual fate was to be sent straight away to the handicrafts sections and in particular to the weaving workshop. This makes it all the more ironic to learn that these Bauhaus women in their preordained niche not only produced acclaimed design with their carpets, furniture and kids’ toys, but were also pretty successful economically too!
When it comes to the acceptance of qualified women Bauhauslers as partners of equal value, endowed with equal rights and on an equal footing, the male founders and protagonists of Bauhaus displayed a mindset that had more in common with conservative 19th century attitudes to women than with any revolutionary forward-looking leap into the future.
A new concept for the 21st century?
Today in Germany rented accommodation and living space has mainly become a question of size, price and rate of return. It’s an issue that has long been neglected, if not entirely ignored, by government. The result is, not unsurprisingly, an acute and massive lack of affordable housing. In the midst of public protest, wild demands calling for the expropriation of property companies are now emerging, yet there has never been a public debate on issues of design such as the Bauhaus movement was once vocal in articulating. I think this is a very serious shortcoming. And this is why – in spite of all the contradictions inherent in the idea of the Bauhaus – I would still dearly like to see such a radically thinking and progressive social force in action as the Bauhaus and its impulses proved to be for society one hundred years ago.
The Roman colonization of Central Europe led to a first period of constructing huge buildings and left as their architectonic legacy a series of three late Romanesque cathedrals along the river Rhine. Later on it was the foundation of cities in the Middle Ages that prompted a new heyday in architecture. The great number of gothic cathedrals erected in the centres of increasingly wealthy cities still remain as monuments of human ingenuity and creativity.
Something that has taken over 200 years to build can be turned by a fire into a heap of smoking rubble within hours. In times of war, over the course of countless centuries, people have continually seen such hideous destruction and are still seeing it today. The Emperor´s Cathedral of Speyer for example has been destroyed and burnt down several times, but each time resurrected in a new way and still exists and stands there in its powerful beauty. And now such a blow has struck the great cathedral of Notre Dame on the Île de la Cité in Paris like a bolt from the blue.
People across the whole world could follow the live streaming of the fire and watch as the flames engulfed the roof of the cathedral, moving forward at frightening speed towards the two main towers like a gigantic wave of fire.
Notre Dame engulfed by flames. “A difficult fire, hard to put out” says the fire brigade who with remarkable dedication and at great risk of life managed to get the blaze under control after five hours, avoiding the very worst. During this time they were stretched to their limits – just as were all those many people who doggedly toiled to build this cathedral over the course of 200 years. It is these generations of people, and them alone, that we have to thank, for without them this building would never have existed.
And it is our firefighters we now have to thank for preventing the edifice these builders erected from collapsing to a pile of rubble. Thanks to them the structure of the building has survived so the cathedral can be rebuilt; its main nave is left standing, its two front towers are left standing. This is certainly great news compared to the total destruction of the building which is what I expected when I saw the first photos of the blazing inferno that had engulfed it.
Five hours later came the first photos of the interior. The vault high above was on fire, only more smouldering than burning. Far below stood the cross and it was shining. The windows were shattered but the walls were still standing. These were pictures of hope and relief for me.
This magnificent building has been badly hit and wounded. But it’s still erect. It hasn’t collapsed into a smouldering pile of rubble. Thanks to the people who once built it, it has now survived the hardest ordeal it’s ever had to face and at some point will rise again in new glory. Whether I will be around to see this I don’t know but it’s still a pleasing prospect to me. Because such a building is more than mortar, stones and architecture.
Like all cultural monuments in the entire world, – it’s a symbol of the endeavour of our species to create structures that point to something much bigger than ourselves. In this sense it’s a symbol of what it means to be fully human just as it’s an expression of our own humility. And it’s simply beautiful. Perfectly proportioned, soaringly high and light on the inside, where it´s hosting one of the world’s most magnificent organs. And its beauty on the outside is stunning because its two towers are not the typical kind of pointed gothic tower rising upwards to heaven but rather flat-roofed marvels of straight-lined simplicity. This is why I love all those buildings that have a similar quality wherever in the world they may stand and from whatever kind of culture they come from. This is also why OUBEY loved such buildings too. And this is why the destruction of such buildings and cultural sites breaks my heart as does to see them gradually decay through lack of proper maintenance.
Yet respect for the cultural achievements of our forebears is something we’ve increasingly lost in western cultures over the past one hundred and fifty years. And such a lack of respect goes hand in hand with loss of respect for the cultures of other peoples whom we seem to consider inferior to ourselves, and whom we then enslave, oppress or at the very least despise. We are gradually succumbing to an ever more grossly inflated sense of our own worth and value. We think we’re the best thing that’s ever happened in all the history of evolution. We conquer, rule and travel the world and by doing so we degrade the monuments of stupendous creativity built by our ancestors to mere tourist attractions which we collect like new types of trophies. They are backdrops for selfies posted on the social web to get a maximum number of Likes. We place the cultural achievements of our ancestors on the same level as Disneyland, trendy restaurants and other must-see spots. We consume our Earth as though it were our natural right to do so.
I would like to think that the images of Notre Dame going up in flames make a modest contribution to restoring respect for the achievements of those people who lived long before we did, people who neither became nor will become rich and famous through what they did and what they created. Nameless people who have vanished in the huge vortex of history just as every one of us living today is destined to do. Through what they did and created they have handed something great and precious to other people living in times far beyond their own, something they can enjoy, and from which they can derive mental and spiritual strength and power.
Without love and respect for what our ancestors created with comparatively primitive tools hundreds and thousands of years ago, we shall capsize and smash on the challenges and developments of the future like a boat tossed on a stormy ocean that runs aground on rocks. This is why – and especially given the break-neck speed of development of artificial intelligence – we as a society need a discourse on the historical and ethical foundations and on the global and cosmic implications of what we think and what we do.
Image:
Taxiarchos228 [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)] – via Wikimedia Commons
It’s about one hundred years old and is attributed to Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin, the man who as an erstwhile revolutionary in Russia laid the groundwork for the totalitarian control system of Stalinism that followed him, a paranoid system that mistrusted everything and everybody and cost the lives of countless numbers of people.
Every control system is built on mistrust. Every good human community is built on trust. Sometimes mistrust is founded and necessary, sometimes it’s just plain wrong – so where do we draw the line?
Certainty in uncertainty
It’s not always easy to do this, especially when faced with some specific situation. But it’s important that we do ask ourselves this question so that when push does come to shove and we are uncertain, we don’t automatically switch to the control mode – whether in personal relationships or in dealing with social matters. I can understand that many people now yearn for security and the type of controlling that comes with it. Yet the decisive question in this context is: when is control really appropriate and necessary for our communal life and when will it only be detrimental.
Self-control and self-confidence
I think that we need both of these elements – both trust AND control – when dealing with our lives. And for me this also includes self-control and self-confidence. After all, if you can’t even trust yourself, how can you possibly trust anyone else? And if you can’t even control yourself, how can you exercise any meaningful form of control over others?
For many years I held an executive position in top management. Even back then I felt that there was no point in trying to control my co-workers. I knew that they all wanted to give their very best and that they could only do this by being trusted and by being provided with space for autonomous action and initiative. My job was not to control (to micro-manage???) their behaviour but to ensure that at the end of the day the right results came through. And in this way, working collectively, we were highly successful for many years.
People need to be trusted in order to develop their skills and abilities and act on their own initiative. This is something that parents raising kids should never forget. Yet unfortunately leadership through such oppressive, discouraging control systems in companies and organisations all too often destroys the very basis on which trust is built. These are often places where the mindset of the early 20th century still lingers on.
Using control judiciously
The need for control goes hand-in-hand with the question of security and risk. Do I want assured quality in the food I eat? Of course I do! Do I want road and air traffic to be controlled for the well-being of the general public? Absolutely! Do I want to see that animals lead good lives and that my rubbish is properly disposed of? Naturally! Do I want assured compliance with climate protection goals? Yes indeed!
So control in itself is nothing bad. Even so, it’s only the correct measure of control applied in the right places that makes it meaningful and useful. And this means that every single one of us – civil society as a whole but also government and commerce – still has a lot of rethinking to do.
Especially in these times we’re confronted by a veritable chorus of demands for controls and prohibitions. What we need to do here is come together and examine them all with the greatest attention – and not immediately subscribe to the next proposal for control or prohibition. Sometimes control may be necessary. Yet sometimes it’s much better to follow the path of trust.
Seeing the world with eyes wide open
In my own life I’m anything but a control freak. But I’m also not a person who can blindly trust. I’m a precise observer who gathers her own impressions, examines and weighs what she thinks and then draws her own conclusions. I’m alert and attentive in all kinds of situations and I don’t live my life along the lines of “trust once, trust always”. What I do try to do is to find the correct balance.
And honestly – If I were to spend all my time suspiciously doubting everything around me and trying to control and do everything by myself, there’d be no more room in my life for all the great ideas and suggestions from other people which inspire me and bring me forward, and no more room for all those people I love to work with on a solid basis of trust. And that is something I would really miss.
Is moaning really therapeutic?
Perhaps you’re now thinking that sometimes it really does help if you’re able to speak about your thoughts and feelings with someone else and that it does do you good to have someone who listens to you. And I would completely agree with you. Only I wouldn’t call that moaning.
Real moaning is when the thoughts in your head spin in a continuous loop. Real moaning turns in a circle and never finds a true ending because its goal is never to find an end. It’s an expression of the peculiar pleasure of being discontented or – conversely – of never wanting to be content. It’s never enough and never good enough.
Studies have shown that on average people in affluent societies are much more dissatisfied with their lives than are people in poorer countries. Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to romanticize the state of poverty. What I’m talking about here is that “Jammern auf hohem Niveau“, that “high-level moaning” or whinging about problems only of concern to the affluent first world, as the German politician Lothar Späth once famously put it.
If I badmouth everything and become obsessed with all those things others have but I haven’t, then at some point my life really will take a turn for the worse – not materially but in terms of my view of myself and my outlook on the world. Because all such an attitude to life does is to spread negative energy; it will neither change the situation nor lead to any positive developments or solutions. Moaning is not therapeutic. The only thing to do is to try and change things, even if the first steps in this direction are ever so small.
The vexed question of “Why”
But what if you can’t change the situation? What happens when a natural catastrophe destroys the very foundations of existence or the sudden unexpected death of a loved one tears your whole world apart? Naturally I can understand that people in such situations might moan now and then as they recognise that they can do nothing to change such blows of fate. I know the pain, the grief, the sadness but also the anger that arises from feeling completely powerless only too well from my own experience.
But even so, there is one question that I have never asked, a question that could easily have led into the realm of moaning and complaint, and that is the question of “why”. Why did OUBEY have to die so young? This question leads nowhere because it has no answer, at least not in this world. We are able to influence and shape our lives in such an infinite variety of ways and yet there are still things over which we simply have no control. It does help if we find it in ourselves to accept this. We haven’t understood the uncertainties of life if we blithely assume that we will be spared “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, because they are all destined for other people, not ourselves. This is not something to be taken for granted.
And this is why we should be grateful for all the good experiences and great times we’ve had and can still look forward to. Grateful people do not moan.
The perception trap
People who moan are caught in a perception trap whereby you overlook the good things to see only the bad. When you concentrate exclusively on the bad things and only talk about them, there’s a kind of amplifying washback effect that makes the bad appear even worse. In short, moaning grows strong by feeding on itself. Moaning is a letter of complaint addressed to nobody in particular. It’s a way of relinquishing responsibility. Because if you moan loudly, you’ll get attention but won’t have to change anything. And probably some people don’t want to change anything anyway.
That’s how it is
I‘ll stick with those people who first recognise reality for what it is without moaning and complaining about it. Now this certainly doesn’t mean that they’re accommodating and comfortable with everything – quite the contrary: that’s how it is doesn’t mean that’s how it always must stay. For me it’s just a springboard, a vantage point from which I can look out and consider what I can do with this here and now, and how it can be developed and changed. This gives birth to new possibilities which put excitement in life and make it interesting.
For as long as we live, we are always capable of changing things – even of changing our own behaviour. There are the most incredible stories of people who have found their way out of seemingly hopeless situations which can serve as shining examples of what we can accomplish when we don’t moan even though life has tested us to our utmost limits.
That’s how I try to live. And that’s what I wish all of you – including the woman at the next table.
Music is a special art. It can instantaneously produce a huge range of emotional responses in us. Depending on its key, rhythm, orchestration or the coloratura of the human voice, it can send shivers down our spine, hold us breathless, move us to raptures of joy, put us in a good mood or make us want to dance, move us to tears, make us feel calm or put us in a state of deep relaxation. Yet at its core music is nothing more than pure mathematics. Music is a medium that miraculously changes mathematics into feelings. How can this be possible?
The answer begins with a question: how is a sound produced? This was a question which OUBEY explored and he once put his thoughts on the subject down on paper, in the early morning hours of the 2nd December 1983 when he produced a trilogy of drawings in just half an hour.
This artistic “musical topographical try” of an answer is a thoughtful consideration of the “Order, Structure and Organisation of Consciousness” and the interplay of “The Rhythmical and The Amorphous” as he himself noted on sheet 1 of the trilogy.
OUBEYs sketches give us a very personal and close glimpse of the way in which his thoughts – his inner being – through his hand were given perceptible inspirational shape and form for the outside world. Something inherent in all his pictures – and indeed in every work of art – is laid open here for all to see. And perhaps this is the precise reason why so many viewers have found these drawings so particularly fascinating.
Yet what kind of answer does scientific research offer? How is it possible that a sound wave can give birth to a musical tone? This is a question of equally deep concern to mathematicians and physicists, musicologists, musicians and brain researchers.
It all starts with a relatively simple organ, the ear, which converts sound waves into electrical signals. The ear drum registers tiny variations in air pressure which are then amplified by the three small bones in the middle ear and transmitted to a membrane at the threshold of the fluid-filled inner ear. This snail-shaped organ then performs the astonishing act of splitting the sound into its component frequencies.
From now on what is heard consists solely of nerve signals which shoot through the brain where “pure physics” miraculously becomes an almost inconceivably complex and intensely emotional act of sensory perception. And this is precisely what makes music such an endless source of fascination for so many people – because it is, quite literally, a sensational act of performance by the human brain.
And yet, as if this were not already enough by itself, our brain doesn’t just transform soundwaves of various frequencies into musical sounds: the latest findings of “psychoacoustics” show that our ear can even sing.
Brian Connolly described this artistic ability of our ear like this: Our inner ear has the ability to behave like an instrument that can produce its own tones. Many experimental musicians have used this ability of the human ear to turn listeners’ ears into participating performers in the creation of their music.
One of the most exciting forms of musical creativity is the psychoacoustic phenomenon known as “otoacoustic emission”. This refers to sounds generated within the inner ear when it perceives certain sounds such as the emission of “difference tones“. It happens when two clear frequencies enter the ear – let’s say 1000 Hz and 1200 Hz – and the listener hears, as might be expected, these two tones . The inner ear then produces its own third tone of 200 Hz, corresponding to the mathematical difference between the two original sounds. The ear emits a precise 200 Hz tone that can be registered by an in-ear microphone. When doctors do hearing tests on babies, such a procedure or measurement is used as an integral part of their examination. This means that composers can use certain tones in their works and predict that listeners’ ears will add their own extra sound dimension when they hear the music. At a particular volume and within particular frequency bands, listeners can even feel a buzzing in their ears as response to the stimulus sounds! It’s truly astonishing what our ears can do! Such insight brings a new and fascinating level into making and listening to contemporary music. If we understand and use the ear not merely as an organ of hearing but as an instrument in its own right, as listeners we can then make new and unprecedented experiences with sound and music.
Had all of this not been so conclusively explained by science, we could easily speak of a miracle. Yet we honour it by offering our undivided attention and our love to the gift of musical sound whenever it is appropriate and possible to do so.
If you would like to learn more about this dimension of the abilities of our ears, and also like to try a few auditory examples for yourself, I warmly recommend the below article by Brian Connolly, from which the information given here is taken.
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www.soundcloud.com/brianconnolly-1
If you don’t ask you won’t know
And yet there’s nothing like a good question. After all, every learning and cognitive process starts from a sense of curiosity out of which a question in search of an answer is born.
Socrates knew this, the founder of a school of philosophy in the 4th century before our modern time reckoning, and the man who taught his students to ask clever questions. “I know but one thing – that I know nothing” is his most famous maxim with which he interrogated everything that that was generally seen as known, obvious, and natural.
For him it was clear that true wisdom would only be acquired by those who went out into the world with a sense of humility and curiosity. Only if you interrogate and continue to probe can you arrive at true knowledge. This is why the initial state of “ignorance” is one of the fundamental pillars of his school of thought.
Curiosity as the key to diversity
I’m certain that Socrates was right. The number of unsolved questions in this world and universe of which we form a part is so vast that each answer that we find to some question instantly gives birth to yet another question. This at least is what those research scientists find whom we have to thank for a not inconsiderable number of new discoveries and developments. If we believe that one single individual can have an answer to everything, we do little more than limit the great horizon of questions down to a myopic field. Whoever believes that there’s nothing more new under the sun has ceased to discover the world and by doing so has also ceased to know themselves. They stay fixed on the same spot and stop evolving.
Because life means movement and diversity. And doesn’t this just make the art of asking questions an elementary and deeply intelligent tool for living? Curiosity is a key to open up the doors of a world of diversity.
Space for discovery
Not just science but art too can trigger such questions, such wonder and discovery. OUBEY was equally enamoured of art and science. He was an artist who questioned and probed. His paintings ask questions but they also give answers which in turn lead to new questions. That’s what makes them so exciting.
That OUBEYs had this quality was something I could see time and again in the Encounters . People would stand before his paintings and gaze at them, thoughtful, fascinated, surprised, and with a questioning look in their eyes. They embarked on voyages of discovery that took them deep into the paintings. Filled with curiosity, they opened themselves up to the questions that the paintings triggered in them. And, deeply emotional, they sought the answers to such questions within themselves.
What really is unhelpful for viewing OUBEYs paintings is some seemingly omniscient scholar who reduces them to a mere form of explanation. What they do need is a broad open space where they can encounter people and encounter the world. Give them that, and the questions and answers to the question flow without any prompting. Because they come from deep inside the viewers themselves.
In 1983 the USA and Russia were engaged in a nuclear arms race and relations between the two great powers were at breaking point. So what happened?
Red alert
On the evening of 23rd September 198, the Soviet satellite monitoring system reported the launch of an American nuclear intercontinental missile against the USSR. The first report was shortly followed by further reports indicating that four more missiles had been launched.
Had these missiles exploded on Russian soil, they would have wiped out the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. A Soviet countermove to intercept them might indeed have prevented their reaching Russia yet would certainly have provoked a retaliatory nuclear strike by the USA which could have unleashed the unimaginable cataclysm of a global nuclear war. Disaster seemed unstoppable.
What to do? The answer to this question came not from the Kremlin but directly from the command center, from the officer on duty that night, lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov.
Obedience or courage?
He choose to ignore both the orders set forth in Soviet military protocol and the reports of the radar system.
Disobeying orders at the best of times is no easy matter and even in everyday private or professional life requires inner strength and a certain degree of courage. Yet in totalitarian systems like the Soviet Union, such courage is seen as resistance and is punishable. It comes with a high level of personal risk that people who live in a functioning constitutional state fortunately don’t know.
Yet the principle of command and obey is found in all armies no matter in which political system they are embedded. There is no military system in the world that makes provision for such an unauthorized operative-level decision as the one Stanislav Petrov made on the evening of 23rd September 1983. Accordingly, in the opposite case, an American officer would unquestionably have found himself in a similar conflict of interest.
A lonely decision
Stanislav Petrov didn’t refer the decision to his superiors as military protocol demanded. He stayed calm, thought it over, used logic and came to the conclusion that the data he had been given was wrong. “I don’t trust this computer”, he said and did nothing.
An extremely courageous decision that probably saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Because he was right. The alarm that he ignored was really a false alert, triggered by the software error of a Soviet spy satellite that had interpreted a sunrise and alignment of sunlight on high altitude clouds as a USA missile attack.
An almost forgotten hero
The “error-free” system of the USSR wanted to spare itself the embarrassment of having to admit that it wasn’t that infallible after all Accordingly, Petrov wasn’t honored but reprimanded, dishonorably discharged and would have fallen into total obscurity had the totalitarian system of the Soviet Union proven more resistant. Yet with Perestroika and Glasnost his case came to public attention. Even so, he still hasn’t been rehabilitated.
Petrov never saw himself as a hero. He always considered what he had done as pretty matter-of-fact. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize, yet never received it. Only the substantial documentation on his case has kept his reputation alive long after his death.
Making decisions is acting in uncertainty
Petrov’s decision could well have turned out to be the wrong one. Nothing in that critical moment gave him the certainty that he was doing the right thing. He trusted his own brain more than the computer. If he had been wrong, it would have entailed exactly those drastic consequences he was seeking to prevent. There was no cast-iron guarantee. Today we know that he made the right decision and we are grateful.
The trouble with every difficult decision is that it always entails a slight degree of uncertainty. Because whether a decision is right or wrong can first be determined when its consequences – sooner or later – are revealed and become tangible. These consequences are irreversible.
Whoever decides by themselves, whoever trusts their own mind and their own perspectives instead of blindly following rules and regulations, is moving on very shaky ground where no rulebook can guide them.
So should we rather stick to the safe side?
A partial answer to a momentous question
We all must find out the answer to this question for ourselves. Yet history encourages us with its countless examples, both small and big, of courageous correct decisions – from continuing to speak truth despite public pressure to civil disobedience, from refusing to obey military orders that contravene human rights and the Geneva Convention to the equally power-conscious and consistent decision of an American president in the 1961 Cuba crisis.
Steps forward and steps backward in this world are based on decisions, both large and small. Every day each one of us makes decisions which have an impact on others. We all bear responsibility for what we think and do. Nothing more and nothing less. Wouldn’t you agree?
Continually making this clear to yourself and bearing it in mind is already a partial answer to the vexed question of the previous paragraph. At least that’s what I think.
Kids’ stuff
There was a time when the best thing that adults could say about comics was that they were childish and only of interest to children while strict educators dismissed them out of hand as lowbrow trash. Yet thanks to my mother who at some point took out a subscription to Mickey Mouse for me, for many years and contrary to the prevalent opinion, I had the joy of finding a new magazine in the letter box each week which I eagerly devoured with great pleasure. And even today I still remember this.
It was a time when the line between serious highbrow culture and pleasurable lowbrow entertainment was rigorously drawn. Especially when such entertainment happened to come from America. Comics together with English pop and rock music were frowned on as trivial forms of entertainment, not to be taken seriously and they found their first real home in youth culture and the subculture.
Art
Nowadays comics are not only am integral part of the adult world but have also been accepted – quite rightly I think – as part of our culture and a valid expression of art. OUBEY always considered them as such. He always had a huge and continually growing collection of comics which included many of the wonderful publications of the Jean Giraud, who used the pseudonym Moebius and was one of a kind, or the magazines of the Japanese comic series “Akira”. They are all remarkable not only for the outstanding quality of their artwork but also for the philosophical issues they deal with in stories like “The Airtight Garage”. “Up to the Stars” is “one of the most fascinating science fiction adventures Moebius did ever create” commented the publisher. The header photo of this article shows the cover of this outstanding comic. Jack Lang, minister of culture in France at that time, awarded Moebius for his outstanding artwork with the “Great Prize of the French State for Graphical Arts” in 1984.
Commerce
The comic genre finally established itself in the mainstream when Stan Lee brought the comic heroes of his Marvel world to the big screen, Today they’re a standard part of most movie-goers’ fare. And with the merchandising that goes with them, they bring in revenues in the billions. Stan Lee – a marketing superhero. Is it through Stan Lee’s marketing skills that once despised comics have now achieved the status of a “cultural asset” due in large part to their lavish blockbuster versions?
An age-old longing
Sure, that’s a big part of it, but I still think that there’s another and much deeper reason. Boundaries have now become blurred, we’re now much more open-minded and our longing for fabulous fantastic tales of heroes have found a new outlet in many comics.
Such longing is nothing new. It was expressed in the old sagas about gods and heroes and today as a reflection of our times comes dressed in modern garb. The fantasy that animates these improbable tales of indestructible heroes has its roots in our need to see good eventually triumph. Comics satisfy this need, and satisfy it in a highly entertaining way. In them, the rational world of enlightenment finds its pleasurable counterpart which is not above making the occasional charged political point. This doesn’t just apply to the rather clone-like heroes of Marvel comics. It applied and still applies to a great number of other comic series which are now perhaps showing their age like Asterix & Obelix or the tiny but all-powerful Marsupilami.
“Yes, but what’s all this to do with art?” you might be asking.
The freedom of fantasy
This is a question to which I can give no adequate answer here. Yet I do see points of similarity between what we call art and what we call comics.
I got the idea to write this post from a conversation I had some time ago about OUBEY. The man I was talking to knew some of OUBEYs very deep and multi-layered paintings and drawings and so was completely astonished when I let drop at some point that OUBEY used to enjoy drawing comics. .
Even as a young schoolboy he drew and produced his own comic series “The Adventures of André Noir”. Back then there were no public photocopying machines so as he wanted to produce and sell as many copies as possible, he produced each single magazine by hand.
Anything is possible in art. And this applies even more to comics. They create and visualize new beings, new worlds, whole new universes. The mind takes wing and wanders in the free realm of fantasy. When I look at certain pictures and drawings by Paul Klee, who undoubtedly was a truly great artist, this kind of interrelationship becomes clear to me. As it does with part of OUBEYs work too.
In my view it’s a step forward when boundaries are no longer drawn so dogmatically. Art broadens its spectrum and what’s fun is no longer excluded just because it’s entertaining.
Rigid boundaries are a challenge to the spirit that it will seek to overcome. That the spirit continually and increasingly often succeeds is doing this is something I find excellent, highly refreshing and a most invaluable development.
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Header: Moebius – Up to the Stars (Cover), Schwermetall Volume 5, 1987
Art without a storm shelter
Popularity and your name written large in glittering lights is a dream many artists dream about, as long as they’re unknown and relatively unsuccessful. Yet if one of them should become a superstar, or even achieve iconic status, then they often find that such popularity becomes a burden, as it makes it practically impossible for them to lead a “normal” private life, constantly besieged as they are by hysterical fans and hounded by raving paparazzi. Well, this is just the price of fame, you might think, the price to be paid for living a life of luxury with no other worries.
But this isn’t my view. Many artists are driven by what the media and their fans expect of them. How do you deal with such expectations and still remain human? How can you steer and control them or, even more difficult, how can you ignore them and continue calm, collected and free to pursue your own way? Such visions of life are beyond the grasp of many artists and they fail in their attempts to achieve them – think of stars like Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson, groomed from earliest childhood to be a performing figure on a stage. They were both mega-famous, objects of boundless adulation now enshrined in the collective memory of people across the whole world. Yet were they truly happy during their lives?
Happiness might be possible in the limelight of the stage or under the spotlights of the movie set. After, all these are the privileged places of art where the division of roles is clear. Yet what happens when artists leave these bunkers and are left to their own devices? Or when they can (no longer) meet the expectations of the masses?
Many are broken by this as success is no meal ticket for finding human happiness. When success means achieving a certain level of fame, the price to pay is very high indeed.
Trapped in the public eye
For artists, art, the stage and the studio are first and foremost home ground, places where they profoundly belong. But also places they can escape to. Places where they can express just what they are. Places where they can be sure that in the process of its creation art is invulnerable. Artists only become vulnerable when they turn to the public and expose their works.
Good art reveals our most hidden feeling and thus is always deeply personal. This is why artistic creation causes anxiety and costs much energy. But when the general public comes into play, it tries to turn the persons behind the work into something they might well not be.
Some artists are broken by this, others develop resilience. Or they are securely embedded in a protective family environment – like a storm-proof boat steering them across the choppy waters of public attention and publicity.
Standing strong
My absolute number one favourite artist – and also as an unyielding strong-willed personality – was always and still is Bob Dylan. I’ve been going to his concerts for years. In 1966 when he first accompanied his latest composition “Like a Rolling Stone” with electric guitar and organ on stage, he was roundly booed and vilified as a “traitor” by his fans who only saw in him the folk singer and political rebel. For him, this new sound was a discovery and a broadening of the possibilities of his art yet these were perspectives for which his self-righteous (blinkered??) fans had nothing but contempt. What they wanted was for him to conform to the image they had made of him, and they made it very clear that Bob Dylan as an artist and Bob Dylan as a man wasn’t of the slightest interest to them.
Only Dylan himself can know what he felt at that time. Yet it’s now common knowledge that he remained impervious to such blatant disapproval and has continued in his own dogged way to do only what he thinks is good and right – even “against all odd”. In his concerts, he’ll change his songs just as he feels right, like singing “Blowin´ in the Wind” in waltz rhythm if the mood takes him. The first time I saw him perform, I couldn’t instantly recognise a single one of the songs he was singing. I’ve never experienced anything similar before or since with any other artist. Yet astonishingly, this lack of instant recognition didn’t lead to any disappointment on the part of the audience. On the contrary, he soon had the whole arena firmly in his grasp, following the sound and the rhythms with everyone – myself included – having a marvellous unforgettable evening.
What Bob Dylan wants to make known of himself is expressed in his lyrics and his music. Interviews with him are pretty thin on the ground. To me, this all seems extraordinarily consistent on his part, strong and honest and – with its inevitable downsides – also highly successful. Let’s just call it serendipity. The man and the artist are at unity, a fact that the fans have long accepted. He’s made his own way, proven his own point and they respect him for it and respect his personality too.
Their attitude mirrors my own feeling about people in general – and about my relationship with OUBEY.
OUBEY – the man in the artist
Famous or not – I always see the person in the artist.
This is why I never found it difficult to accept OUBEY just as he was. He too was a brilliant artist with a strong and resolute character, a man who always strode out on his own way. He needed a great deal of free space for his thoughts and his work just as he needed the loving support of another being – both of which I gave to him gladly.
I love the artist and honour him, yet at the same time I always see a man who deserved empathy and respect, a man whose freedom would have been limited by pushy overbearing attempts to gain his intimacy. A man who didn’t take kindly to strangers trying to gatecrash his life. This makes it all the more wonderful that OUBEY actually invited me into his life and let me share in his work.
“Marilyn Monroe – The Woman behind the Icon”, exhibition Historisches Museum der Pfalz in Speyer.
Photo credit: wikimedia/creative commons
You might think that this question is hypothetical? Not at all. Because the “somebody you don’t know” was me at the beginning of the MINDKISS Project.
And the end result of emails of this type that I sent out is extraordinary: a set of Encounters with OUBEY.
Camera on!
The idea of the “Encounters“ goes like this: someone views a painting by OUBEY they’ve never seen before and talks about the thoughts and feelings this painting inspires in them – in front of a running camera. Nobody knows which picture they’re going to see. And the painting remains covered until that camera starts to run. It’s a totally new form of spontaneous interaction between painting and viewer – fresh, unconstrained and original.
I am constantly amazed and thrilled by the sheer richness of the thoughts, insights and discoveries that have emerged from the 25 Encounters with OUBEYs paintings. To give just one example, when a palaeontologist of the calibre of Professor Friedemann Schrenk of the Senckenberg Institute in Frankfurt remarks that a whole 7 million years of human evolutionary history is contained in the painting he is viewing, this is a truly astonishing statement that neither I nor probably anyone else could have made. , It’s a unique and truly brilliant insight.
New dimensions
When I first took up the Encounters I fully realised that with its many long-distance journeys to people all over the world this was going to be a huge, time-consuming and very expensive project – yet at the same time one that also offered marvellous one-of-a-kind opportunities for OUBEYs art and for my own life.
For the Encounters are not just about other people viewing one of OUBEYS paintings, for me they are also always fascinating encounters with these interesting people. I got to know scientists and researchers, musicians, dancers and extreme athletes and through them became familiar with quite new perspectives on OUBEYs art. In the shortest time, my life became enriched by many new dimensions.
The MINDKISS idea
You can find out what they are and how I first hit on the idea for the MINDKISS Project in my new e-book MINDKISS: Following OUBEYs Tracks. Download it, it’s for free.
And in a combination of all these factors, we tend to overestimate the importance for us of what is big, loud and visible whilst simultaneously underestimating the importance for us of what is small, inaudible and invisible.
If we glance over the technological and industrial developments of the past 250 years and fix our attention particularly on the past twenty years, then these assertions assume a new and startling significance.
When I once spent several hours in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, my previous ideas about what was called the “First Industrial Revolution“ in Europe that took place in England 150-200 years ago and then spread were placed on a totally new footing by what I saw and learnt there.
Gigantic machines many meters high and many meters long, driven first by steam then by electric power, were lined up one against the other in the vast Power Hall. They are selected well-preserved examples representative of hundreds of their kind that were increasingly deployed in the wave of new factories that sprang up at that time.
What thoughts and feelings must the sight of such machines have evoked in the people of the 19th century who had never seen anything even remotely comparable to them before? People who up to then had lived by their own manual labour – whether working in the fields, in their own workshops or in manufacturing. How alien and how terrifying their first encounters with these monstrous clanking clattering machines must have been and how long it must have taken before people became accustomed to this new substance in their lives – not to mention the changes in their work and lives such machines brought with them which even today are still subsumed in the expression “Manchester Capitalism”.
This was radical brutal change. But above all else it was change that could be substantially apprehended by our physical senses. Change that, because it was visible, loud and large scale, could be apprehended by the human sensory system as it has developed over countless millennia. An enormous steam engine was recognisable for exactly what is was.
Today we stand on the threshold of another revolution determined by a new type of technology and machine which are no longer the huge self-evident monsters hissing steam, radiating heat and locking us into their rhythms. They are algorithms, invisible, inaudible yet immensely powerful mechanisms for which our sensory systems are not equipped to deal. Virtual worlds of no substance are emerging and at first glance we cannot recognise them for what they are. They don’t compel us, they seduce us. And so we stumble on from one snare to the next and yet still feel good, seeing ourselves as free beings living in a comfort zone.
Our species has created a world that lives from the shedding of substance. But what does that mean? Here we can call on Ludwig Wittgenstein from whose work the title of this blog is drawn: “If the world had no substance then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).” (From:Tractatus logico-philosophicus, 2.0211/2.0212).
When Paul Watzlawick was writing his brilliant book How Real is Real? he had no notion of such a construction of reality. In a physically near imperceptible, very quiet, invisible yet immensely powerful way this new revolution is making us square up to the question of just how efficiently and how quickly can we develop and sharpen our system of sensory perception and our consciousness with the aim of dealing with these seemingly innocuous yet rapid currents of change in an intelligent and self-confident manner. The great confusion in which the real and the fake now contend is giving rise to an unprecedented loss of reality. Think of the Matrix film. Today there is no option other than that we continue to surrender information and data. Yet at the same time our knowledge and our awareness of such a development is expanding. And for as long as people are active in the game, no force will ever arise without producing its own counter-force.
The new age is still in its infancy. Its course will be set across the decades that lie before us.
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Photo by Gerd Altmann, Public Domain (Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universell))
The same goes for me even though in my case this question is my constant companion throughout the whole year. It’s a question that came upon me with a previously unparalleled degree of intensity in 2004 when OUBEY tragically lost his life.
At that time many well-meaning people advised me to sell OUBEYs pictures, make closure on the past, and devote myself to planning my own future.
This I have not done. What I embarked on was something completely different.
Unexpected Energy
When I became aware that OUBEYs art still had its whole future ahead of it – over and beyond his sudden death – I was filled with a flood of unexpected energy. The certainty that my skills and abilities, my knowledge and my drive were still needed and esteemed released a whirl of energy in me out of which the MINDKISS Project was born. In the most difficult period of my life I found the courage and the determination to fix my gaze on the future without forgetting or repressing the past.
No doubt some people must have looked at me with a mixture of pity and compassion and thought that the great mountain of work I was now embarking on was little more than a distraction, a way of avoiding grief or confronting reality. Yet this is precisely what I didn’t do and I have never regretted it. At that time I did the very best I could do – for OUBEY, for his art but also for myself. And this has remained unchanging through to the present.
A New World
Once I had catalogued OUBEYs body of work, in 2006 work began on the MINDKISS Book, followed one year later by work on the OUBEY Experience Film. The enthusiasm for OUBEYs art and for my own endeavours shown by the people I collaborated with inspired me and spurred me on to think in terms far beyond those of books and films. I was ready to journey in new worlds. From that point onwards I channelled my energies into travelling the world with the paintings and making new experiences of a kind I’d never known previously in my life.
I had numerous highly personal encounters with amazing scientists, researchers and artists. I felt the fascination that OUBEYS paintings held for Maoris in New Zealand, people in Uganda and even managers at an international conference in Vienna. Getting to know all these different people’s thoughts and reactions to OUBEYs paintings was a marvellous voyage of discovery for me filled with many moments of joy. A matchless priceless present for which I am deeply grateful.
And as it turned out, my way really did become my goal. And along this way a new sense of meaning has come into being – not just for me alone but for many others as well. A sense of meaning that enables OUBEY to live on.
I still continue my travels. After a conducive two year break, I have a whole slew of new ideas for the future. Many are still in the embryo stage. Yet one of them I have recently brought to fruition: to write the story of how MINDKISS came about in e-book format. Why should I do this? Because even today many people still ask me about the particular circumstances in which this project was born. If you too are curious, simply download my e-book “MINDKISS. Following OUBEYS Tracks” for free and read how MINDKISS came about and what great things this project has set and still continues to set in motion – with many behind the scenes glimpses.