“…even a stone can be attended to so that its aesthetic character can serve as a source of that special form of life we call art.” (Eisner, p 10)
In chapter one, Eisner describes the nature and birth of learning. With characteristic cynicism, Stanley Kubrick dramatized this same process in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Eisner tells us, “[the] ability to experience the qualitative world we inhabit is initially reflexive in character….But we also learn….to see, to hear, to discern the qualitative complexities of what we taste and touch” (p. 2). In other words, what begins as instinct develops, through repetition and practice, into deliberation. Deliberation becomes the basis for the formation of concepts. Concepts, in turn, create and shape culture. Through concepts “we can imagine possibilities we have not encountered, and we can….create, in the public sphere, the new possibilities we have imagined in the private precincts of our consciousness” (p. 3). But all of it begins with and grows from experience and perception.
Eisner and Kubrick seem to be in agreement that this quality is unique to humans. Kubrick depicts an imagined moment at which the leap from the animal to the human world is made, via the intervention of… Well, of what, exactly? The scenario presented in the film leads the viewer to believe it to be the intervention of some sort of alien intelligence, but Kubrick deliberately leaves this vague. The monolith, which is later encountered again on the moon and in orbit around Jupiter, is the only evidence we have of an alien being in the film, so, like the characters who organize a mission to seek them out, we are forced to assume their presence. But this is only a concept that we are applying to the scenario. We are familiar with intelligence as a concept and we presume that we can spot its makings. In (cinematic) reality, it is the ape’s encounter with an unprecedented experiential phenomenon that sparks its imaginative leap, and that is all. For Kubrick, that imaginative leap leads, ironically, to new destructive possibilities--this YouTube clip has been edited to cut out a scene in which the bone-wielding ape and his tribe assault a neighboring tribe, and the satellite in orbit that occurs at the end of the clip was originally intended to be read as containing nuclear weapons—but it also leads to the kind of culture that produces a visionary like Kubrick and the shared experiences that his films create. As Eisner has it, “imagination, fed by the sensory features of experience is expressed in the arts through the image,” which, in turn, allows us a qualitative, shared vision, that will—with any luck—“ refine our sensory system and [cultivate] our imaginative abilities” (p 4).
But how does qualitative, visionary work like Kubrick’s get us, as a culture, past the urge to smash, bomb, and blast for personal gain? Eisner describes that a little more fully near the end of chapter one. First of all, the arts encourage us to slow down by rewarding effortful concentration. Of this, Eisner says:
“In the context of practical activity, the criterion of efficiency matter a great deal. Normally we try to see the world and act upon it with the least amount of energy that will satisfy the realization of our purposes. Put another way, we typically see things in order to classify and use them.” (p 23)
This effect is also described in the ‘Make a Gap’ chapter of our Imagination First text. In that chapter, the example of a cat that is observed from the opposite size of a picket fence is given: our minds fill in the gaps created by the fence and we perceive the cat without any conscious effort. In the recent book by Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, he refers to this effect as being the result of what he calls the “lazy controller.” Kahneman describes how glucose stores are actually used up by effortful processing in the mind, and as a result, we’ve developed a variety of mental shortcuts that allow us to function without needing to suck down sugar 24 hours a day. As a result, the more “expert” we become in a task, the more shortcuts we work out to help us continue with our work. The arts “help students learn how to savor qualities by taking the time to really look so that they can see” (Eisner, p 24) and Kubrick’s film, as with many works of art that came before it, presents an opportunity to reflect on our world, our actions, our motivations, and the possibilities present in all of those things.
This reflection is important because slowing down and reflecting operates on the development of concepts, which in turn, influences culture and all of those that do and will take part in that culture. “What is clear,” says Eisner, “is that culture depends upon these communications because communication patterns provide opportunities for members of a culture to grow” (p 7) and “….the child’s mind is shaped by the culture of which the foregoing conditions are a part” (p 22). So, by delineating the destructive and dangerous sides of innovation and progress and juxtaposing them against their heroic and beautiful aspects, Kubrick may have done more than provide a cautionary tale or a bit of black humor—he may have forged a few new mental shortcuts to make it easier on the next generation of innovators and educators.
Post Script: On Experts
Our talk last week about experts and expertise versus the (dying?) ideal of a liberal education made me think of this song off of Laurie Anderson's last album which is catchy, funny, and spot on:
This is AWESOME!!!! Thanks for sharing it!!!
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