Art, depressed artists and nervous exam takers

I'm one of those people who, when looking at some piece of modern art, do seriously wonder what people see in them. Mind you, some pieces are seriously good, but some actually look like someone's baby puked on them. I once took a philosophy course in college, called art and technology (though I never quite saw the tech part :D ). It was interesting, to say the least. Though my limited philosophical skills saw me scrape throught the course, I did pick up some interesting insights into what is art, and how do people perceive it.

As part of my class presentation, I picked up music as the art subject of interest, and tried to go about thinking, how and why do we actually like music?? or even hate it, or worst of all, go from hating to liking it!. Trust me, songs do have this way of growing on you. And I saw these 2 concepts, "Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", and the obvious one, that beautiful things, are beautiful cause they have something in them. Which actually contradict each other, so u can't pick both.

You know, there was something taught in school which I never quite figured out a purpose for, resonance. It's quite wonderful in essence, and it says that everything, i mean everything has a certain resonant frequency. Which means that if u send waves of a certain frequency into the object, it'll vibrate like hell, much more than any other frequency. Still don't get it? remember that cool gadget Bond used to shatter glass? that's it. In school we actually had this experiment to determine the resonant frequency of something, don't remember what. In fact, there's this story that while walking on bridges, armies march out of step so as not to accidently make the bridge collapse, cause supposedly it's happened.

So you may ask why does resonance come into the picture?? well the answer's half already there. Forget the physics of it, and just focus on the concept, everything responds more to a certain input than any other. For more clarity, try and remember any memory in your head, and apart from that vivid image in your head, notice that you'll remember how you felt then. Sometimes those emotions might not even make sense to you, most people just ignore them. But the fact that your brain records them in the same detail as any sensory input gives an important clue to the importance your brain gives to emotions. Before I finally state my claim, consider this fact, you'll always like certain songs when you're in certain moods. It may differ for different people, but there are certain clear trends, like mopey songs when you're sad etc. etc. Well, that's it, isn't it, resonance. Your brain responds to certain types of songs when facing certain emotions. It's like your radio receives signals (resonance again :P) you tune it to a particular frequency, and voila music. Similarly, I believe, emotions tune your brain to accept certain input better, or look at things in a different way.

Still don't believe me? try playing different songs when in different moods, they'll seem seriously different. For me, when I'm pensive, like when writing this blog, I like songs more like Friday, by Goldspot, when i'm depressed or trying to drive myself to work, Linkin Park or other heavy metal style music is more like it. Forgive me, if my music classification is off, never got around to figuring it out. I especially give an example of music, because more people experience this form of art than any other.

With this done, you should be wondering, why does this resonance happen? well your brain gives you clues. It'll faintly reminisce about the past. I believe your brain keeps recalling memories, it's its way of understanding stuff, fitting current experiences to past ones. Which is why, if the song brings back memories whose dominant emotion matches your current state, you'll like it. But you'll still have stronger reactions to sad emotions, that's something I never quite understand. Which brings me to art in general, its appreciation requires that you have experiences some of those emotions expressed by its creation. And creation of art is even more problematic.

Most of you would have noticed, how many artists die of depression related stuff like suicides, drug overdoses etc. And as I said, people have stronger recalls of adverse emotions. Even more personal experiences, I feel that creating art requires a certain amount of depression, sadness. When seems plausible, when you're happy, why would you go through the whole process? why wouldn't you rather enjoy. This probably requires more thought, and so I'd rather leave it for another post considering how long this one has become.

My last topic for this post, nervous exam takers :D, well I'm one too. This too does have some relation to all of this, cause, as I said recall brings back emotions as well. So if u were not too confident while studying, in addition to having low confidence, you run the risk of having those emotions come back during your exam. Try thinking about it sometime.

Well, that about does it, that should clarify some things about art, but u're always welcome to use my opinions about some work of art when I don't like it, a baby could've done it!