Art for art's sake
Alex Cooke
Issue date: 12/5/08 Section: Opinion
We are the purveyors of figures, the wizards of analysis. We are those who can turn your myriad of data points into a concise model. We are the engineers, the mathematicians, the physicists, the social scientists. Pencils ready and MATLAB at hand, we devote our time to quantifying phenomenon exactly, leaving them so completely described that it's as if we created them ourselves. So many of us here are so absorbed by our laboratories, our computers, and our science that we sometimes turn our backs on that which can't be quantified (as much as some would argue the contrary) - the intricacy in a painting, the ethereal sound of a flute, the empyrean of art.
The ability to quantify and model something is an appealing idea. When we can predict, without question, how something will behave and how it will affect that which surrounds it, we derive a certain comfort in knowing that there are no unknowns. Yet, imagine a world with nothing left to the imagination. Imagine waking up, knowing exactly how your breakfast would taste, who you would meet, what you would feel. Imagine knowing when you were going to die. It wouldn't be living. We all need that unknown, that which connects us to what we can't describe, to what we feel is in the ether that surrounds us.
Some might want to know how the arts can benefit us in more tangible ways. When doing anything involving science, the first steps toward analyzing something involve making qualitative judgments of the phenomenon in question. Nowhere else is the ability to make qualitative judgments more heavily used than in art. Furthermore, the arts can teach one to look at things from multiple perspectives, to find the subtler elegancies that make something unique. One learns to think both in and around an idea, to discover its essence, to express what falls between words and transcends numbers. Art isn't just catharsis; it's getting to the soul of something.
One might balk at the idea of learning an instrument or joining a theater group; after all, art is a skill and, like any other, it takes talent and effort. The key lies in realizing that you don't need to be proficient, or even conventional. Can't coordinate your limbs to play a drum set? Pull out the pots and pans and bang on them for a while. Don't understand why purple and yellow are complementary? Fill some water balloons with paint and throw them at an old sheet. Sit down with a pen and let thoughts flow. The point is, regardless of your natural abilities, you can still embrace and appreciate the function art serves. Art allows us to bring our inner essence to the outer world we live in. I firmly believe that no one can be a complete person without keeping one foot in the intangibles.
Alex Cooke is a senior math and psychology major with plans to go to graduate school and eventually join the FBI. He enjoys spending time with his horse and songwriting. Cooke can be reached at arc14@case.edu.
The ability to quantify and model something is an appealing idea. When we can predict, without question, how something will behave and how it will affect that which surrounds it, we derive a certain comfort in knowing that there are no unknowns. Yet, imagine a world with nothing left to the imagination. Imagine waking up, knowing exactly how your breakfast would taste, who you would meet, what you would feel. Imagine knowing when you were going to die. It wouldn't be living. We all need that unknown, that which connects us to what we can't describe, to what we feel is in the ether that surrounds us.
Some might want to know how the arts can benefit us in more tangible ways. When doing anything involving science, the first steps toward analyzing something involve making qualitative judgments of the phenomenon in question. Nowhere else is the ability to make qualitative judgments more heavily used than in art. Furthermore, the arts can teach one to look at things from multiple perspectives, to find the subtler elegancies that make something unique. One learns to think both in and around an idea, to discover its essence, to express what falls between words and transcends numbers. Art isn't just catharsis; it's getting to the soul of something.
One might balk at the idea of learning an instrument or joining a theater group; after all, art is a skill and, like any other, it takes talent and effort. The key lies in realizing that you don't need to be proficient, or even conventional. Can't coordinate your limbs to play a drum set? Pull out the pots and pans and bang on them for a while. Don't understand why purple and yellow are complementary? Fill some water balloons with paint and throw them at an old sheet. Sit down with a pen and let thoughts flow. The point is, regardless of your natural abilities, you can still embrace and appreciate the function art serves. Art allows us to bring our inner essence to the outer world we live in. I firmly believe that no one can be a complete person without keeping one foot in the intangibles.
Alex Cooke is a senior math and psychology major with plans to go to graduate school and eventually join the FBI. He enjoys spending time with his horse and songwriting. Cooke can be reached at arc14@case.edu.
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