We may think of an artist as a godlike creator, in whom all things are possible, but this isn’t so. Every creator is bound by the limits of the medium, whether that’s oil paint, the piano, marble, the human voice, clay, etc.
To some extent, the work of art is just an example of what that medium does. We may discover mastery in the artist if it’s bold and effortless, but the master and the student have this in common: they’re servants of the medium, and maybe the master knows this better than the student. The role of the artist is to be a giving mother to the seed of inspiration. As the infant takes shape from the flesh of the mother, the work of art takes shape from the medium.
Life is also like this. Your medium is the time you live in and the circumstances of your youth. What was gestating in those moments, in that place, for better or worse, was you.
And the art continues to evolve, ever reflecting the nature of the medium.
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
― Michelangelo
Pulled this from a blog that attempts to argue the claim “art is not design.” Some people might agree while others might disagree. I’m guessing you are part of the group that certainly would agree.
Yes. And if we follow the changes within a particular medium, we can watch the artistic possibilities begin to unfold and deepen. The “means of production,” however prosaic they may be, are where art begins.
All roads lead back to Marxism, yes. Implied is that if we manage to lean socialist, this event won’t be magic. It will evolve naturally out of what and who we are just as capitalism did. I guess that’s a Marxist view?
Sometimes. The American and French revolutions weren’t points of genesis. The underlying movements had existed for a couple of centuries prior. The Russian revolution was something Russia sort of fell ass backwards into, and upon recovery from the purges, the Russian leader had the same role the czars once had: power broker.
Chinese revolution? I don’t know enough about it to say.
I recently came across The Law of Octaves. The human ear’s hearing range [20 \text{ Hz}, 20,000 \text{ Hz}]. There are vibrations that lie outside this range, but the beauty is we can make them audible, by simply doubling/halving the frequency until it falls within the audible range of our ears. Quite nice to hear the revolution of our celestial wanderers.
Not sure about this. If you change the frequency, it isn’t the same vibration anymore, since that’s what a frequency is. I presume you mean the same tone, hence your reference to octaves. Middle C and the C above it are the same tone, due to the octave relation, but different frequencies.
