h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*looks at clock*

*begins typing*

I'm going to have two of three 'NaJoPoMo' threads, each on a particular theme. I think it'll be 'Culture', 'Country life', and 'Ivory Tower'.

This is the culture thread.

We went to the theatre tonight. We saw a play called "shattered" which was directed and created by a friend of ours. It was a series of monologues on the subject of mental illness. It was at what is often called an intimate venue, as the audience was around the sides of the room and the cast was in the middle.

As you walked in the cast was each crouched on the floor and you had to edge around the side. Then once the music started they jumped into life, each talking at once. Gradually it sank into one monologue at a time. A young mother with post natal depression, anxious about harming her baby, a woman in a job interview trying to explain her shaky employment history because of mental illness, a student who knew he was in the process of failing his degree because of depression but couldn't bring himself to seek help.

One of the most powerful ended with the line 'it's not up to us to be 'brave' it's up to you to be understanding'.

One of the most interesting things about it was that many of the narratives were tales of people who had benefited from medication. It was firmly in the biological model of mental illness. When seeing work about mental illness, you often find that the art around mental illness is created by people who are more comfortable with the psychological or sociological models. The thoughts that mental illness is caused by childhood trauma, or by the social situation of helplessness such as in a bad job. It was interesting to see it from a different point of view.

It was a truely excellent piece of work, and I would never have believed it was a student production. I would at this point urge you all to go and see it, but it's only for one night only.

[Amy P]

Too bad about it's being one night only and probably not within driving distance for me anyway. I've thought about going back to work after several years of not working due to bipolar disorder, but I don't know how I'd explain my absence from working to potential employers.

I am sure you would have enjoyed it. Though I don't know if that particular monologue would have helped, as it recounted a conversation that didn't end well..

I could make suggestions about how you could explain it. But I guess you've heard them all before and they would be unhelpful.

Here's a link to the blog it was based on.
http://shatteringthestigma.wordpress.com/

Late going, hey?

Inspiring.

AE

reddit.

()

Sounds great and that is an excellent line, it is not up to us to be 'brave' it's up to you to be understanding

NaJoPoMo '4'

Today I wanted to work on my paper, but Ben persuaded me to take the morning off and see an exhibition about how Picasso influenced Modern British Art. As well as work by Picasso there were paintings and sculptures by artists who were influenced by him, including Graham Sutherland, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, and Wyndam-Jones.

The first paintings that come to your mind when you hear the name 'Picasso' may involve strange women with eyes in the wrong places, however that was only part of his prolific output. Much of his work is very different, his early work was done in Paris where he was very influenced by the impressionists and there were also some very skilled figurative paintings and drawings. Today I saw 'The Frugal Meal' an engraving of a painfully thin couple with a small lump of bread before them http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=4126, and the more famous 'Child with a Dove' a simple painting of a small child holding a dove, which is likely to be lost from the public view in December. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/aug/17/picasso-child-with-a-dove-painting

There were also some quite lovely sketches made whilst he was designing sets and costumes for a Russian ballet: 'The Three Cornered Hat'. The dancers in the sketches had chubby forearms and looked almost plump, yet the pencil portrait of the principle ballerina showed that she was just as slender as any other dancer.

I had seen reproductions of a lot of the Picassos that were on display. In a way it mutes the impact of the art work, you have already done the responding. My father, an 'professional' artist, says that he responds to art with his instincts. When I told him about the autonomic nervous system - the nerves that make your heart beat and your intensities squidge - his response was: "That's what you look at paintings with". At first I told him not to be so silly of course you use your visual cortex to look at a painting. However the neuroscientist VS Ramachandran proposed a similar theory in in 'The Science of Art' http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/art.pdf.
I am not knowledgable enough in this branch of neuroscience to be able to critique his theory. However my brother is a post doctoral researcher with PhD in visual perception, and feels that it is a populist oversimplification. I had already responded to 'The Crying Woman' and to 'Child with a Dove', so when I saw them close up they didn't have as big an impact on me as some of the works I was less familiar with. I felt punched in the gut by Sutherlands 'Bombed House', and spooked out by Wyndam-Jones 'Woman on the stairs'.

A whole room was dedicated to David Hockney's response to Picasso. After seeing a Picasso portrait of a woman with distinctive thick glasses, and eyes both on the same side of her face, Hockey saw a photograph of the same woman in the gallery catalogue, in the photograph she had removed her glasses for the sake of vanity. He later said this made him realise that the more accurate portrait is the painting, as it in the one that is less prone to manipulation.

The final picture was 'The Three Dancers' which is far more sinister in full scale. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-the-three-dancers-t00729/text-catalogue-entry . Displayed opposite was a collection of news paper clippings about the Tate Gallery purchasing it for the nation in 1960. Questions were asked in the House of Lords 'Why was the taxpayer spending £60, 000 on such a painting in this time of austerity? Was the treasury not overseeing the purchases made by the Trustees of the Tate Gallery?'
A letter was displayed from an outranged member of the public who thought that the work was of poor quality and clearly not worth the money. The director of the Tate, Roger Penrose replied 'I am sorry you do not like our recent acquisition, I on the other hand think that it is the most remarkable work. We are both entitled to our opinion'.

All in all we had the most enjoyable morning. Had the exhibition not closed today I would urge you go go along.

Yeah, What peanut sad
"excellent line, it is not up to us to be 'brave' it's up to you to be understanding"

Though, it takes both bravery and understanding from all of us, as often as we can muster it

While I am not a post doc, like your brother is, I am very interested in the subject of how the brain works. As a MD you must well know how interconnected the body really is. I would like to say I think they are both right, but perhaps it would be more correct to say your Dad was half-right, in my humble opinion.

Rather than agree with your brother, I think your Dad’s idea was not really some plebeian oversimplified view, it was quite insightful. His idea is typical of intuitive notions. In that it is profound but lacks a logical basis he can accurately verbalize. If he tried to offer a basis, there is scientific evidence that it would be only his best confabulation. I would guess this dynamic has a long history in your family. [smiles]

In science we offer glory to the power of logic and despise antidotal or plebeian evidence, and for good reasons. But in my experience with Neural Networks, we severely underestimate the value of intuition. Neural Networks [and by my extension, intuition] can probabilistically correlate vast amounts of raw data to detect patterns without using a logical algorithm [as least as we might think applies to this particular problem].

In any endeavor, including Art, an intuitive response can cause us to salivate or experience any emotional change. When Pavlov’s Dogs salivated, they did not logically think about a bell and then some post hoc fallacy. And while this Art thing may begin in the visual cortex, it also stimulates the right brain and can trigger the autonomic nervous system to work in specialized modes, i.e., make the heart rate change.

Your description of your Art experience underscores my view. We all need Art, even if we do not know why.

AE

So are you going to discuss any art that's not ending as soon as you experience it?

Humm..

I am Z, the culture killer. Well actually I am.. you'll have to wait and see.

Shattered is now available on you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyjEDPlhwE0&list=UUKAxwzDpY1efI1ABuIv3ECw&index=1&feature=plcp

AE Hill, I agree with you, I think that we do use some primitive parts of our neurological system to respond to art. Much in the same way that that the dogs had classical conditioning.

Today was one of those days where I realised that I am a pretentious . I have seen my first James Bond film today. I have in the past seen many art exhibitions a nice selection of French films, and I try to read the booker shortlist every year. But today I saw a James Bond Film.

And annoyingly it was very very good. I'll say right away I don't like action films. I don't like violence in films and I don't like lots of people dying for no good reason. I wasn't expecting to like this film. But whilst there was action there wasn't a lot of people dying. It was great to see an action film set in London. Albeit a silly cliched London, but it was still London. It was great to see Scotland featuring, again a silly and cliched Scotland. But it was places I've been on film.

What else was good? it was just fun. The violence was tolerable, not too bad. The female characters were powerful, and not just Bond girls..

I'm not very good at film reviews am I?

Au contraire (see how pretentious I can be? ) you've made me want to go see it, and I don't like James Bond...

I suspect you enjoyed that one more than you would the rest. I haven't seen it, but that's going on the reviews I've read of it.

Yes, I felt it worked on several different levels. It semed quite self referential in places.I think there was a lot of references to previous bond films.

So you enjoyed something others will actually have a chance to enjoy? *faints*



(Though it would've been kind of funny to see you end every culture post with some variation of "Sorry, not available"...)

I agree with Malabarista. It was a good review. I'm glad it wasn't over-the-top violent. What made you decide to go see it?