imagery that its impact on would-be artists and designers is rarely contemplated; it is simply taken for granted. The permeation of our lives with what Matisse alluded to as visual “prejudice” is as much a part of our environment as the air we breath and the water we drink; both of which can also be polluted.
One of the most unnerving aspects of Matisse’s statement - his contention that we must learn to see as we did when we were children - refers to the innate visual innocence, excitement, and curiosity we had when we first began to explore our visual environment. But what are the children of today seeing? What is filling their visual memory banks? By the age of eighteen, students have spent more time watching television than doing anything else except sleeping (Liebert et. al IX). In this new age of computers and the Internet, the time spent glued to the monitor may now exceed that of sleeping for some children.
Television is a one-way experience. The viewer takes in sensory material and gives out little or none (Winn 4). It is a non-demanding activity in which the child viewer has no opportunity to discover strengths or weaknesses; where fantasies are supplied complete with auditory and visual components. There is no need for the child to create any component of the experience. Watching replaces doing, thinking, and touching. Passivity replaces activity (Winn 7). Individual experience is replaced with mass experience - experience that is being fed to millions of people at once. The sameness - the common experience, at best mediocre, at worst detrimental - becomes the child’s basic fund of mental associations from which we expect creative thought to arise. While there are more interactive aspects in electronic gaming and the Internet, it is yet to be seen how much creative thought is stimulated by these new time consuming activities.
The desensitization produced by technology transcends the visual and also deadens another critical aspect of creative thought: emotional sensitivity. Violence in mass media is probably one of the most widely researched facets of technology. Page after page was written in the sixties and seventies about television violence and its impact on youth. The fear that detective and cowboy shows would incite children to aggressive behavior now pales with cable television, electronic games, and the internet bringing appalling, sadistic and gruesome imagery and behavior into homes a cross the country. Movie after movie and game after game attempts to be more grotesque than the last, and young audiences make profitable the simulations of unending mutilations. It is frightening to me that so many people enjoy and are willing to pay to see brutality and sadism. But beyond this fear is the consequence that the bombardment of visual violence can deaden sensitivity to the real violence that permeates our lives. Genocide in some far away country, the murder across town, and the child abuse next door are all accepted as part of everyday life. Another change that electronic media is bringing to the potential artist is that of limiting the attention span. Images flash before the eyes at a phenomenal rate -a major trend in music videos, film, and advertising. This steady stream of images traps the viewer because the mind is so busy making associations to gain an understanding of the flow that there is no time to break away – no time to think. A kind of passive habituation can develop in response to this visual barrage. As a result people so habituated find it difficult to concentrate on slow moving or static visual images such as paintings or sculpture. When asked to think about what they are looking at people can become very confused. Looking and conscious thinking are no longer related activities. Instead, when one looks at an image, explanation is given through audio or by the flow of successive images. Looking at images has become a passive part of life, not an experience that requires conscious or involved thought.
What will the impact of visual, emotional and attention-span desensitization be on the designers and artists of tomorrow? We might not have to wait until tomorrow to see some of the effects. The younger artists being promoted by the art world today grew up in the world of technology. Much of the work of these young artists falls into a category being called “post-modern,” a catchall term. One of the characteristics of much of this art is that it is “eclectic,” meaning that it borrows heavily on the past. There is a heavy emphasis among many young artists on using approaches and imagery they have seen to the extent of outright “appropriation” of previous art. It is a kind of passive approach to making art. The thinking and creative association that have made the visual arts a dynamic, visionary part of the 20th century seem to be on the decline. There are undoubtedly multiple reasons for this, but I believe one of the explanations is that our new artists are children of the technology era. The capability of creating new visual experiences has been lessened by the sameness of the mass experience.
My rather bleak assessment of technology’s impact is not shared by everyone. There are positive qualities that technology has to offer: educational experiences, as seen in public television; expanded choice, as seen in cable television; and the enormous access to information, as seen on the internet. It can be claimed that this access of information and potential audience gives the artist a vast resource to farm into creative expression. This is true only if both artist and viewer approach technology with an analytical eye. The problem is that little or no effort is given to teaching people how to see analytically, be it looking with or without technology. The illusions presented us are generally accepted as reality. If they generate a profit, they are promoted; if they do not, they are eliminated.
In 1957 the scientist and environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote these words to parents:
Exploring nature with your child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to what lies around you. It is learning again to use your eyes, ears, nostrils, and fingertips, opening up the disused channels of sensory impressions.
For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we walk about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. (52)
The importance of youthful awareness is expressed in spiritual terms by Rabindranath Tagore:
When I was a child, God also became a child with me to be my playmate. … The things that kept me occupied were trifling and the things I played with were made of dust and sticks. But nevertheless my occupations were made precious to me and the importance that was given my toys made them of equal value with the playthings of the adult. The majesty of childhood won for me the world’s homage, because there was revealed the infinite in its aspect of the small. … The infinite is within us in the beauty of our childhood…. (Tagore, TR, 286)
Tagore’s homage of the world was symbolized in his being the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. In this quote he is acknowledging that it was his ability to keep the insight and wonder of childhood that contributed to his success.
In 1955 Abraham Joshua Heschel expanded on the importance of the sense of wonder:
As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder. (41)
To open up our senses to our environments is to begin to experience wonder. It is not impossible to regain some of the openness and appreciation Matisse spoke of earlier in this section. As students of art and design it is absolutely necessary to unclog the unused channels of sensory experience and purge them of the stereotypes stuck into them from years of mass media. We are partially blind and we must learn to see again and also to think again. We can learn to make our own associations, clearing the path for the creative process. This is not as difficult a task as one might think, it is based around learning to identify and analyze the visual elements - the alphabet of visual literacy. An awareness of color, line, shape, mass, value, texture , and space can be the first and most important step to unclogging the visual channel. Opening the sensory channels provides not only an unending reservoir of information for the artist; it also provides a richer experience of life for anyone interested.
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