Aesthetics of Electronic Media - 1. What is Beauty?

The last three posts in this blog have been very critical of the incredulity of the media. They make this blog seem hypercritical and almost cynical. There is therefore a need to change one's approach before the blog gets labeled and categorised. Hence this entry, the first of a series on an important issue - the aesthetics of electronic media.

What is beauty?

This is the main question discussed under the subject of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a discipline under philosophy, along with logic, metaphysics, ethics and epistemology. And so the mode of inquiry and pedagogy that we will adopt during this course is philosophical. Of raising questions and counter questions, of looking at available evidences, of discussion and discourse and not necessarily reaching final conclusions…

What is beauty?

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Yet if we take out the eye from the most aesthetically sensitive person and compare it under a microscope with the eyes of the most insensitive person, we may not be able to see anything different. When we say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, what we mean is that it is in the mind, in the consciousness that perceives rather than in the perceived.

To say that beauty is just a feeling is to express it too loosely. People quite often say that beauty is subjective and not objective. Yet it is not completely subjective. Because all of us would agree that Madhuri Dixit is beautiful. And what is it that determines this sense of beauty?

Scientists have pointed out that we find beauty in the averaged features of the opposite sex. That is, if we superimpose a series of photographic images of a large number of faces from any ethnic community, the result is a beautiful face – for that ethnic community. Yet we can’t assert that the most beautiful is the most average.

The study is definitely an indication that there are some evolutionary forces at work here. Our perception of beauty in the opposite sex – male or female has an evolutionary role. Beauty is one of the cues in selecting the mate. Besides natural selection which eliminates the unfit (and therefore should be rightly called natural elimination), there is a process of selection called sexual selection. When you are selecting the mate, you are also selecting which genes will go into the next generation. The beautiful plumages of many birds have thus evolved due to sexual selection.

Thus the sense of beauty might aid evolution. But then, our sense of beauty does not stop short at the selection of a mate. It extends to many of our cultural artifacts. The existence of art forms cannot easily be explained by the theory of sexual selection.

What then, is beauty?

If it is in the mind, taking a look at psychology may help us gain some insight. Art can be interpreted as an attempt at sublimation of the sexual instinct. And indeed many artists are sexually frustrated. The visual and auditory displays are the most common means to attract the opposite sex. And the art of Konark and other temples as well as the graphitti seen in toilets, lifts and other intimate and enclosed spaces are perhaps sublimation of the sexual instinct.

But then surely, old artists like Hussain or Gujral are not still sexually oriented! It is said that Bernard Shaw started writing after he was sixty. If art was sublimation of sexual instinct he should have started when he was in his teens and he should have produced the best of works before he was into his thirties. Thus the notion of art as sublimation of sexual energy has very limited application.

The fact remains that the sense of beauty has evolved in us and therefore must have some evolutionary advantages. The chimpanzees do not appreciate Pablo Picasso (in fact, even amongst human beings, very few do) and gorillas do not take pleasure in listening to Beethoven. (There are some reports on plants growing better if you play them some Mozart. Since the results have been questioned, let us not take them too seriously yet.)

So there has to be something internal to us that makes us appreciate beauty. Something quite new in evolution, something which even our closest cousins do not possess.

But we also know that a taste for music or painting is acquired. Just like taste for food. Like food, we consume art. And our preferences are acquired. A Malayalee going into Bengal may find the flavour of mustard oil repulsive. A north Indian going into Kerala may wonder how people can eat food prepared in coconut oil.

In fact, most cultures have ritualisms related to the first solid food offered to a child at the age of six months or so. In this ritual aunts and uncles and other relatives make the child taste a variety of foods from that culture. The taste for food is developed by repeated exposure. The taste for drinking of beer or Feni are other typical examples to demonstrate the point.

Similarly, the taste in art is developed by repeated exposure. Thus somebody who is exposed to hard rock for the first time may close his/her ears. But later on, the same person may be seen to groove with it. If you go to an opera for the first time, you might want to run away. But in the course of time you may learn to appreciate the art form.

In short, we have to reformulate our earlier assertion that there is something inside us which makes us appreciate art. Instead we could say that there is something in us that helps us to learn to appreciate art.

Many people feel that they cannot appreciate the paintings of Pablo Picasso since they cannot understand it. In fact, understanding is not important for appreciation. What for instance, is there to understand in a piece played on flute by Chaurasia? It is just a series of sounds. It doesn’t make any sense - like the words of a song do. Yet why do we appreciate instrumental music, while refusing to accept “modern” or better yet, “abstract” art?

And then again, even if you understand the meaning of a song, you may not like the song if the tune is not good. Thus there is no real connection between understanding and appreciation.

In learning to appreciate and in developing a taste, there is a transformation in the aesthetic sensibility. One should make the phrase aesthetic sensibility, a little clearer.

When one goes to a flourmill one sees a common balance, which can weigh 50-60 kilos at a time. At the grocers one sees a balance, which weighs 2 to 5 kg. And at the goldsmith’s one notices a balance, which is sensitive enough to make distinctions of a less than a gram. All these are common balances, but they have different sensitivities measured in terms of sensibility. In the same way, we find that different people have different aesthetic sensibilities.

A common man in the street will distinguish 7 notes in an octave – the sapta swaras. But a person trained in music will distinguish 12 tones in an octave, including the sharps and the flats – counting both the black and white keys within the octave in a harmonium or a piano. But a virtuoso in Indian classical music recognises 22 srutis. Thus the sensibility improves with training.

The improvement in the perception and production of nuances and details would come about only by dabbling in the art form. Exposure by itself may not be successful in creating a better sensibility since it is rather passive. Better sensibility is achieved only by more active sadhana or riaz.

Electronic media offers you a video channel to express yourself in the visual arts. It gives you the freedom to experiment with the literary (narration/dialogue) and auditory arts (music) through the two audio channels. (One must also remember that it is possible to super text on the video.) Thus we must explore the aesthetics of paintings, music and literature to see how they come together in television technology. I will attempt precisely this in the next few entries of this blog.

As for now, let us merely stress that it is not possible to improve the aesthetic sensibility by attending a few classes. As professionals in the electronic media we must expose ourselves continuously to good paintings, music and literature to develop good tastes. And if possible, dabble in each of them so that we are well prepared to appreciate the finer nuances of the art of electronic media. This could turn out to be a life-long homework filled with aesthetic pleasure.