an unfinished theory

BRIAN ENO
BETTE A.
 This is a black and white PDF version of the original 1 art 1
full-colour book first published in the UK in 2024 by Opal 2 feelings 23
Limited and Bette Adriaanse. A hardback, paperback and
e-book version of ‘What Art Does’ will be published by 3 fiction feelings 33
Faber in 2025.
4 fictional worlds 41
Design by Nick Robertson. 5 take haircuts for instance 51

Copyright © 2024 Opal Limited and Bette Adriaanse. 6 where does art start? 67
7 how does art change me? 75
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored, circulated or transmitted in any 8 how does art change us? 89
form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, 9 we start worlds 107
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior
written permission from Opal Limited and 10 wish 117
Bette Adriaanse.

bibliography 121
 All over the world people decorate themselves and
their surroundings with patterns, shapes and colours,

art
making and construct references to places, people and events
that aren’t now and here. We don’t know of any human
seems to be a group that doesn’t do art in some form or another, and

universal usually in many different forms.

human activity
We could say that art is one of the key attributes of
being human, like language. It’s easy to understand
why language is so universal, but we don’t seem to
have a very clear picture of why art should also be.

Why does every culture spend such a large part of

All over the world, people can be found creating its free time in ‘made-up worlds’ like books, plays,
and wearing elaborate costumes pretending to paintings, dances, movies, self-decoration, stories
be something else; a dangerous animal, a king, and songs - all the things we might call art? What are
someone from the spirit world. we doing there? Why did humanity develop them, and
why do we value them?

It isn’t enough to say ‘Well, they’re nice and we enjoy

them’. Why do we find them enjoyable? Isn’t ‘being
enjoyable’ nature’s way of getting us to do something?
Fruits are sweet and enjoyable because eating them
is good for your health and growth (and good for the
fruit whose seeds are thus spread). Sex is enjoyable
because your genes just love perpetuating themselves
and do so by producing more gene-machines like you.

4
We understand why science, for example, is If we can’t answer that question then we shouldn’t
important: it helps us understand how the material be surprised when governments marginalise the arts
world works and puts us in a better position to enter and humanities in education, or when the ‘brighter’
into fruitful relationships with it. students are directed away from the arts and into
This need not be the conscious motivation of an science and tech, or when support for theatres,
individual scientist, just as ‘improving my health’ isn’t libraries and concert halls are the first things to be
necessarily why we eat strawberries; but nonetheless withdrawn in a financial squeeze.
that is the result. We can easily explain the existence
of science by the benefits it produces for us. If the arts are seen as just a pretty luxury - the
dessert, not the meal - then those decisions make a
kind of sense.
But what does art do?
So why do we engage in these activities we call art?
People say things like; art helps me see the world, art
helps me understand the world, art helps me imagine
new worlds, art helps me to escape, connect, relax,
energize, forget, remember, heal, disrupt, recognise,
resist, forgive, accept, change...

But what do they mean? How does it actually work?

How can listening to a piece of music, for example, do
any of those things?

This book is an attempt to answer those questions.

It’s the beginning of a theory of art.

As short and simple as possible, it begins to answer

the questions:

What does art do?

And why do we need it?

5   6  
Why do I, for example, like one set of colours more than another?
Why do I wear my hair like this but never like that?
Why do I prefer oak furniture to pine?
Why do I like this dance but not that one?

Why do I
art
Let’s start with that word.

want to
What does it mean?
listen to
one specific record again In this book the word art is used in the broadest sense
and again possible. It includes all the expected things like:
and again
and again novels
and again sculptures
and again symphonies
and again
albums
and again
and again paintings
films
ballets
plays
poems
operas...

7 8
… all kinds of things where somebody does more
than is absolutely necessary for the sake of the
feeling they get by doing it.
we embroider our clothes

we decorate our food

we compose poems
we arrange flowers
we mix colours
we play instruments
we invent slang

There are things we have to do to stay alive - like

we adorn our bodies
eat food, drink liquid, wear clothes, make money, we curate exhibitions
communicate with each other. And then on top of
those things we do thousands of other things that we we sing and
don’t have to do;
we dance and

we hum and
we drum ...

None of those things are necessary, but we punctuate

our lives with them. We like the feelings they arouse.

11 12
 we all make art
all the time
but we don’t usually
call it that

Artists are people who’ve decided to make a job of it.

Every time somebody puts on their makeup, chooses
their jewellery and clothes, dances this way or that,
puts on a record, art is being made.

When we speak of an art object we mean ‘something

which is intended to trigger some feelings’. Art
is not a substance that radiates out of paintings or
symphonies. Art is a name we give to a certain type
of experience. It’s the name for a kind of engagement
we have with something.

13 14
What type of engagement is an art engagement? To
understand this, let’s think about screwdrivers.

A screwdriver has two parts: the blade and the handle.

The blade can really only be made in one form: it has
a specific purpose and it has to be a specific shape
and size and strength. You couldn’t make it out of
marble or glass or chocolate. It wouldn’t be able to
turn a screw. If you go to a hardware store and look at FUNCTION ART
a selection of flat screwdrivers you’ll see that all the
blades are virtually identical.

This is not true for the handles. There is no space The less functional a thing is - the less it has to do
for ‘art’ in the blades - but there is in the handles, something in particular - the more space for art there
which might be striped or speckled or multi-coloured is in it: the more freedom there is in it.
or opaque.

FUNCTION ART FUNCTION ART

These variations in the handles make no difference to The art engagement begins where the functional
the usability of the tools. They are stylistic variations engagement ends.
that don’t relate to function.

15 16
If you’re designing a cup that you intend people to be
able to drink from, it has to be able to hold liquid: a
perforated cup won’t work, even if it is very beautifully
perforated.

The degrees of freedom in what you do with your cup

are limited by the fact that it has a real world use: it
has to carry liquid and it has to be drinkable from.

If, on the other hand, you’re Grayson Perry or Carol

McNicoll, making cups as art objects, there are no
restrictions of that kind. You can make the cup any
shape you want with as many holes in it as you like,
you can paint it with any material you like. You are not
expecting anybody to drink from such a cup.

Because it doesn’t have a real world use, it isn’t

constrained. It has a lot of space for art.

Art can always be otherwise.

17 18
Art only happens where there is room for options, The fact that something is generally seen as an
where things can be fundamentally otherwise. art object does not dictate that we will have an art
An ‘EXIT’ sign in a theatre exists to indicate as engagement with it.
clearly as possible the way out. It has to do that as
unambiguously - as unartistically - as possible. A
FIRE EXIT sign in pretty swirly colours with a strange
typeface wouldn’t be a good idea. The more specific
the job, the less room for art.

Many activities are part art, part function. Running for

the bus can’t be otherwise - you don’t want to miss
the bus. But a little playful skip while getting on, can
make it part-art.

And the fact that something is generally seen as a

functional object does not dictate that we can’t have
an art engagement with it.

FUNCTION ART

A joke the bus driver makes as she announces

the stops, a bird tattoo poking out from under her
uniform sleeve, a little movement of her shoulder
when she thinks of her favourite song - these are
little expressions of art.

19 20
 A jar works well if it’s plain and simple, but we
have made jars in elaborate shapes and forms for
millennia.

A plain teeshirt does its job just fine, but we love

teeshirts with pictures on them.

And although bare walls keep our roofs up and

intruders out, we enjoy hanging paintings on them.

ART IS A WAY OF MAKING FEELINGS HAPPEN

why do we spend our

time on these
non-functional
activities we call

art?
Here’s a simple idea:

21
Feelings have a bad reputation. Feelings are faster (and sometimes completely wrong).
Logic and deduction are slower (and also sometimes
If you say that as an artist you think your job is to completely wrong!). Faced with a novel situation that
create feelings, other artists - and even more so needs a quick reaction, we rely primarily on our fast
critics - may look at you a bit askance. It sounds so feelings to navigate.
trivial, so unimportant. Surely, art is more important
than that? It may sound trivial, until you realise that Most of the really big choices in our lives: who to
what we call feelings comes before what we call marry, who to vote for, which job to take, whether or
cognition - thinking. not to try to have children... aren’t based on just the
careful application of logic and deduction: we use our
feelings.

It’s quite rare in life to have all the information we

need to make a perfectly logical assessment, but
nevertheless we can’t stand still: we often need
to make decisions before the evidence has been
collected and weighed.

FEELINGS THOUGHTS
‘Emotions play a
Feelings come before thought and articulation. They fundamental role
are our antennae, they help us feel our way forward
into the future. in survival.’

MARK SOLMS, Neuropsychologist

25 26
 Feelings are known as fuzzy, hard to pin down,
impossible to measure and ever changing. In a
technical culture like Western culture, things you can’t
count, don’t count.

Of course, there do exist ways of making decisions

that are not based on feelings. They have to do with
deduction and data. Those are usually grouped under
the heading of Science.

Science works by clearing the ground around a topic

- by removing extraneous details and trying to isolate
what is intended to be studied, so we can watch the
behaviour of just one thing in isolation. As much as
possible, science wants to remove all feelings from
the scene: the outcome of an experiment shouldn’t
depend on whether the experimenter is having
a bad day or is a Catholic. That is the essence of
testability - that when you do the same experiment
I’m doing, you get the same result I got. From that
kind of universality we can make reliable predictive
statements about things and build tools that work.

In most of our life we often can’t separate things out as

clearly as that. Our situations, our fears, our desires,
our values - they’re all bound up together and we only
have one life, one chance to see what works and what
doesn’t. And it’s all in motion too.

We need to use our hunches, our guesses, our gut.

27 28
 Feelings are powerful precisely because they aren’t
articulated.

Advertisers and product designers know how to

create feelings around something, so that they
connect with you on an emotional level. Adding an
aromatic chemical like Calone to washing powder
can ignite associations with the ozonic smell of
the seaside, and connects to feelings of ‘fresh’ and
‘clean’.

In the right context, using very high contrast photos of

people makes them look like criminals - because we
associate such pictures with police ‘wanted’ images.
That gets reinforced by early black & white film where
the villains and monsters are always high contrast -
Feelings are not rational, but there is some logic to while the ‘goodies’ get vaseline-lensed.
how we deal with them. We have a whole lifetime of
experience in feelings, and we learn how to recognise
them and what value to give to them. We weigh our
feelings against our past experiences.

Children will often fear the dark but as they grow up

they usually accept that there aren’t unseen monsters
waiting for them, and they learn to ignore the feeling
(though it can easily be re-aroused - for example in
horror films and haunted houses).

Because we know that feelings are subjective and

personal we are prepared to revise them - like
when somebody you first thought was a bit strange
becomes your best friend.

29 30
The feelings generated by art aren’t always nice
feelings, but they won’t hurt you. When encountering
Hannibal Lecter you might not be having nice
feelings - it’s a terrifying character! But you might
enjoy being terrified....

How does that work?

it works because
art is
harmless, because
art is a
fiction ART IS ESCAPABLE

Art is of no inescapable consequence.

31
Humans have this strange quirk of enjoying feelings There are many examples of art changing the course
through fictions…being ‘frightened’ during a game of of history, advancing revolutions, bringing stone-cold
hide and seek, being ‘tantalised’ by a description of people to tears and horrifying conservative parents.
a long-lingering kiss in a poem, being ‘upset’ by the
deceptive actions of a character in a soap opera. Art can have a tremendous effect on the world - that
is why dictators have been so eager to lock artists
We can experience the heartbreak of a character in a away or employ them as propagandists.
movie - but at a safe distance that turns it from real
heartbreak into a feeling we can enjoy.

but art is effective

because it is

safe
You can read a novel and experience the horror of
a prison or the beauty of deep love - but you don’t
have to endure the real-world consequences of those
things.

You can shut the book. You can leave the gallery. You
can stop dancing, close your eyes, exit the movie
theatre.

You can go away and you can get back to your life.

But you can take with you some memory of the

feelings you had and that can change you.

35 36
 Think of a flight simulator, which is what pilots practice
in. You have all the experiences of flying the plane, but
you never leave the ground. But the feelings feel real.
You feel elated when you lift off successfully and you
sweat anxiously as you try to bring the plane in for a
tidy landing.

What would the name for feelings of that kind be?

Artificial feelings? Virtual feelings?

Fiction feelings?

ART IS A SIMULATOR

38
What’s the point of fiction feelings?

They alert you to the range of feelings you are capable

of having. They enrich your feelings repertoire. They
tell you something about other possible worlds: those
you might want to be in, and those you might want to
avoid.

They tell you those things in advance of ever

encountering them… so you have a repertoire of
feelings about ‘fictional worlds’ in your mind. And
in these fictional worlds you are allowed to take the
consequences as seriously and non-seriously as you
want.

The level of seriousness is entirely up to you.

(Sometimes we get so attached to fictional worlds

that they become our reality, and they are no longer
playful and harmless. For instance when many
people believe in a fiction and start adjusting their
expectations and behaviour as though it is true,
thereby bringing it into being. Or when a large part of
someone’s life takes place in a fictional game and the
developments in that game truly impact them. These
fictional worlds become like reality to us, and then
we make fictional worlds about those, virtualisations
of virtualisations, and virtualisations of those - until
everyone has forgotten where it all began. (Conspiracy
theories are perhaps games gone wrong.))

39 40
We humans are extremely receptive to world-making.
We only need very little information and in the right
context we can make huge leaps of the imagination,
extrapolating that information to an entire world.

43 44
We already carry with us a huge amount of experience Most art objects don’t describe a whole world in detail
that can be extrapolated to possible other worlds, but like ‘1984’ does. Instead they come only as fragments of
we don’t think about it that much. another world, and another way of being.

They’re like a channel into another universe, or like

relics from the future. They’re pulled into our current
reality as representatives of another possible reality.

Though it’s easy to see how a novel like ‘1984’ describes

another world or another way of being, it’s harder to see
how something so small as an earring does that.
We carry, for example, ‘Bauhaus World’, ‘Laura
How is another world suggested when there is no
Ashley World’, ‘1984 World’, ‘AC/DC World’, ‘Pokemon
narrative or explanation involved? Where do we find that
World’... and a thousand others.
message in a small object? How does that work?
Some of them might be quite personal, only shareable
Let’s start explaining this by asking: What makes you
with a few others, like a secret handshake with your
choose one earring over another? You’ve seen earrings
sister. And some might be quite universal, like a
all your life, so when you see a new one, you immediately
long dress with little flowers on it. This dress can be
unconsciously compare it to all the others you’ve seen.
extrapolated to a possible world... a more romantic
In your history of earring-viewing, how does this one
world, a world where things are nice and gentle.
compare?

45 46
 Is it bigger than any earring
you’ve seen before? There are millions of possibilities, and then all the
Is it bolder, or more concealed, or more understated? Is it longer? Is it danglier? combinations of them. We earring-viewers register
Sparklier? Is it more intricate or simpler? Is it darker or brighter? Has these differences without even being aware of it and
colour been added to it or is it the colour of the material? Is it symmetrical or they say something to us. Some of the differences we
asymmetrical? Slender or bulky? Is it dangling towards the shoulder or climbing might like - the colour might remind us of a beach
up the auricle? Is it spiky or soft? Is it a figurative form, like a grape, or is it a vacation, or that new jagged shape suits our current
geometrical form, like a circle? Is it made of something expensive or cheap? political direction - and we will choose that one. It is a
Does the earring cover the earlobe or does it create a visible hole in the earlobe? world that we like. Or it’s a world that we don’t like, or
Is it made of one material or several materials combined? Is it shiny or matte? feel indifferent towards. But we can ‘read’ these little
Is it made of natural materials, like gold or feathers, or synthetic materials, like artworks by noticing all the small choices involved.
acrylic beads? Is it made by the person wearing it, or is it made by Cartier? Does
This usually isn’t something we do consciously. It’s a
it make a sound when it moves? Is it made of something earrings aren’t usually
feeling that we’re acting upon.
made from - say like cigarette ends or electrical cable? Does it reveal the designer
in an obvious way or in a hidden way that is only known to insiders? Is it lush or
stark? Does it show much of the ear or cover it? Is it easy to put on or does it
It’s like finding a fragment of a different world.
require effort? Is the shape familiar or unusual? Is it stately or flashy? Is it
angular or curved? Does it look heavy or light? Is it intended to look expensive or
a more romantic
wacky? Does the form have romantic associations, or a business-like appearance? or more eccentric
Is there a symbolic element in the design, like a cross or a skull? Is it ironic? or sexier
Does it match the outfit? Is it demure or brash? Does it look comfortable to wear or earthier
for long periods? Is it trendy or timeless? Is it engraved or patterned? Does it or crazier
look unique or mass-produced? Is it delicate or robust? Is it gender-specific or or saner
unisex? Is it sophisticated or fun? Is it flexible or rigid? Does it attract attention or swashbuckl-ier
or is it nearly invisible? If it is adorned with stones, are they natural or artifical?
Precious or semi-precious? Does it contain a message, like name or a word?
Can the earring-wearer easily move their head? Is the earring covered by hair?
world
Is it possible to do outdoor activities, like biking or camping, while wearing the
‘Sometimes you can take the whole of the world in, and
earring? Can it be worn in water or should it be kept dry? Is it suitable for all ages
sometimes you need a small piece to take in. I think that is
or more for a specific age group? Is it likely to snag on clothing? Is it something a
really what a work of art is: it is a small piece that you can
grandmother would wear? Does it catch the light or absorb it? Does it glow in the ingest, that gives you an idea of the richness of the whole.’
dark? Is it big enough to be seen from a distance or only up close? Can it double
as a gadget? Can it be mistaken for food? Can it be used to signal aliens? Does Sister Mary Corita Kent, artist
it have any hidden compartments or other secret elements? Is it funny or serious
looking? Is it the kind of earring that might start a conversation with a stranger?
Is it safe to wear it in public transport? Is it pet-friendly? Is it eco-friendly?
Would it be appropriate for a job interview? Is it traditional looking or rebellious? 48
We all share a history of objects and artworks. When
we see a new earring, or any artwork, we look at
where this new one sits in our history of looking at
artworks. It’s like being presented with the latest
sentence in a long story. We look for how this artwork
chooses to be different from what came before. It’s
more jagged, or it’s more soft, or it’s more detailed, or
it’s less detailed, or it tastes saltier, it smells muskier,
it sounds rougher, it feels stickier. Somehow or WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING AT ART
another, the message is: ‘This is a difference that YOU ARE LOOKING AT DIFFERENCES
feels interesting today.’

49
   
*

* a commonplace
art practice
that most
people
engage
with
Classical art historians tended to believe that But there is another view; that an art-object doesn’t
artworks are a sort of container for meaning, and that have any intrinsic meaning, but is actually a trigger,
meaning originates in the artist’s mind (or the mind a way of causing something to happen in your mind.
of God), and is then transmitted out to the viewer
through the object.

In this view there is a one-way flow: from the artist’s This may not be the same thing that happens in
imagination into the object and then from the object someone else’s mind.
into the viewer’s mind. The art-object in that view is a
kind of transmitter.

53 54
 And, since humans love experimenting, there would
naturally have developed different ways of doing that
- some easier, some more elaborate. Perhaps, in
some groups, women started doing it differently from
men, or older people differently from younger ones.
Those different ways of doing it would soon come to
stand for ‘male or female’, ‘older or younger’.

A difference might develop between people who kept

their hair short and those who decided to let it grow
long, which might be a sign that you had lots of spare
time on your hands; you didn’t work, for example.

All the new ways of cutting hair - new stylings - gather

associations. They come to stand for ‘rich or poor’ or
‘high status or low status’, ’rebellious or conformist’,
‘sober or wild’…
What happens in your mind when you see an artwork
depends on your personal history and the history Quite soon a whole haircut vocabulary develops.
of your culture. It is like a language that changes Each distinction comes with the heritage of a certain
meaning depending on the listener. meaning within a certain group. We can imagine
these distinctions as axes (plural of axis); lines
Take haircuts, for instance - the practice of shortening representing a spectrum you could take a position on.
your hair. The very first intentional haircuts in human
history may have been simply functional: a way to
keep the hair out of your eyes.

55 56
 The very first haircut distinction would be haircut / no haircut.
The second one might be female / male.
The third one might be wealthy / poor,
or
powerful / not powerful,
able to get hold of resources / not able to.
(It doesn’t matter what the sequence is really.)

and there are many others ...

A modern example would be At the other extreme of that axis

haircuts that are intended to look (we could call it the ‘natural /
‘NATURAL’ ‘natural’. In some communities stylized axis’) we might find the ‘STYLIZED’
‘natural’ might suggest ‘I have highly sculpted beehive haircut
an outdoor life, perhaps I ride - a construction that suggests
horses or motor bikes’. time, formality, maintenance.

57 58
When you choose a haircut you will probably be
choosing a point somewhere along that natural /
stylized axis. But that isn’t the only axis: you might
also be operating on the ‘conformist / rebellious’
axis, on the ‘feminine / masculine’ axis, on the
’retro / futuro’ axis. There are many. Once you start
overlaying these axes, one on top of the other, you
start to see the sum of all the distinctions you have
(consciously or unconsciously) taken a position on.

You are using this haircut as a sort of surrogate

version of you.... or a you that you might want to try
out for a while.

It’s a way of saying:

‘This is the person I would

like to be,
this is the person I would

like you to think ...this person who sits on these various spectrums in
these various positions.’
of me as...

59 60
meanings are
fluid
not eternal
shift
they

in time & space

In the 1960s the axis ‘short / long’ was very
highly charged. A British man with long hair was
automatically a hippie, part of the counterculture,
probably effeminate and almost certainly anti-war.
That has since changed: executives in tech companies
have long hair; as do pro-gun militia members.
Axes come and go and change value. They are always
in motion.
Occasionally an axis will go out of fashion - think of
powdered wigs ... nobody is particularly interested in
those any more. And then new ones come into being,
such as the fade / no-fade axis (in buzzcuts), or the
mono-coloured / multi-coloured axis.

The practice of braiding hair, which has been around

for millennia, has countless lineages all over the
world, and new distinctions come into being each day.

So if you look at haircuts you can see a whole new

stylistic language evolving, and some of the terms in
the language keep changing value. How the haircut
reads depends on when and where it is being read,
and by whom.
The same goes for any piece of art.

61 62
 Sometimes these

complex
readings can get very

And sometimes they are simple.

63 64
A piece of art doesn’t have to be a piece of art for
everybody. It does not have to cause feelings in
everyone. There’s local art, topical art, tourist art, and there’s
art that seems to last longer than that, or seems to
Art doesn’t have to be eternal. There could be spread further.
something that works as art for a few people for a few
weeks, for a lot of people for a hundred years, for one A meme that goes out on social media may reach a
person for a lifetime, for a small number of people for lot of people, and do all the things that another piece
a thousand years. There are all sorts of levels. of art does - but perhaps not for very long. In two
weeks time there might be other things to look at and
It is always a conversation, even if there is only one nobody is interested in that meme any longer.
person involved in the conversation. You might make
art as a conversation with yourself. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. It just means
it was a short-lived piece of art. It did not have a long
life, like some insects don’t have a long life.

And then there are other pieces, for instance the

Gęlędę spectacles of the Yoruba in Nigeria, which
have never had a worldwide audience, but have lasted
a very long time. And there are things that have had a
huge audience and have lasted a very long time, like
the Pyramids.

Think of an ecosystem with a huge variety of members.

Just as it is undecidable whether butterflies are more
important than elephants, it’s undecidable whether
pop songs are more important than symphonies.

65 66
 People used to think of play as frivolous time, the way
many people now think about art. We all understand now
that children learn through play. Children are learning
machines. In the first few years of their lives they absorb
vast amounts of information about how words fit together,
To understand why art what you can say to your mother that you wouldn’t say
is an important human activity, to a stranger, about what things you can eat and what
you can’t, about how to share the playground with others,

play
about how to buy things in a shop... it’s a huge amount of
let’s look at stuff, and a lot of it is learnt in the spirit of playing.

Watch a group of children playing. On the one hand we

have Celeste and Theresa sitting in a corner pouring water
back and forth from a jug into a cup. Nearby Melanie,
Zolani and Blaine are pretending to make dinner with
some pots and pans, adding imaginary ingredients. Shiv,
Tim, Nuala and Nick are competing with each other over
and how in the other corner - seeing who can jump highest. John
that works for children. is going down the slide over and over again. Mathilde is
talking to her doll, telling her a story.

The play of the children spans a spectrum. At the one

end you could say they are finding out about how the
materials of the real world work - how water works,
how their bodies work, how strong or flexible or sharp
things are. At the other end of the spectrum there is ‘Let’s
pretend’ - the invention of games or scenarios, of other
worlds that don’t really exist.

Children move fluidly between these two states of mind

and often combine them. In the varieties of children’s play
we see the origins of not only art and science but many
other adult behaviours like caring and nurturing and
philosophising and deceiving.

69 70
 All young animals The benefits of play make obvious evolutionary sense
when we’re talking about play that explores physical
want to play development such as coordination and muscle

humans
and control.

What ‘muscles’ are children developing when they

play ‘Let’s pretend’?

more than most The most obvious one is the ‘imagination’ muscle.
Imagining is the great human skill.

It’s how we project our minds into futures that don’t yet
exist; where we create and test projects that do not
presently exist.
Children don’t have to be
encouraged to play. They love doing We do this by practising it in play.
it. We see them jumping and running
and competing and developing their bodies,
taking things apart and broadening their
knowledge of the world.

The pleasure of play evolved

to keep us playing!

71 72
Children imagine other possible worlds in which they
are, for instance, parents, doctors, soldiers, babies,
princesses, monsters.. and they explore these worlds
by paying attention to their feelings about them. If
you play Mummy and Baby, for example, or Doctor
and Patient, or Police and Thief, what you are doing
is modelling sets of relationships and enjoying your
feelings about them.

Play is where we start to discover how we feel about

things. Feelings are the reward for playing. Play is how
children learn.

Playing with possible choices in a safe (imaginary, PLAY IS HOW CHILDREN LEARN
or fictional) environment and trying out the individual ART IS HOW ADULTS PLAY
and communal feelings that come with these choices
develops us as individuals and as social beings.

So what does this have to do with art?

Here’s a proposal: Art is how adults play.

Art is the continuation of play into adulthood. We keep

playing as adults because we need to keep learning.
Play is research.

In art we research our feelings. Artists are feelings

merchants - a piece of art is something designed to
trigger feelings. Our feelings guide us as we move into
new futures, either by tempting us on, or frightening
us away.

73
 You recall those moments in life when you’ve seen
or heard something which has stopped you in your
tracks. The feeling of being overpowered, entranced
by something, of wanting to see it more and more or
to hear it again and again: that’s when you know you
What really like something.

I really
is it that

like
That moment of discovery lights a flame inside you.

We’re used to the idea that we avoid the things that

hurt us - hot things, sharp things, stressful things -
but we’re less used to the idea that we can navigate

?
our way through life by following the things that truly
and deeply please us.

Paying attention to the things we love and that

make us feel good and happy isn’t an indulgence,
but a sensible use of our faculties. That’s why we
evolved them. The problem is that those faculties are
constantly overwhelmed by things that other people
wished that we liked.

The musician Jon Hassell

used to say that this is
the most important question
you can ask yourself.

77 78
To discover what you really like is to have a guiding
star and to be able to navigate through the blizzard
of all the voices telling you what you ought to like -
the advertisers, politicians, influencers, ideologues,
algorithms. It is your claim to independence of mind
(even if a billion other people like it too!).

A crucial part of self-realisation is being able to

distinguish between our shallow likes and deep
likes. Shallow likes are the fleeting ones, the
induced desires that advertising and its tentacles in
social media create in us. Deep likes are based in
who we are, in our most personal preferences and
values. They are persistent and generate feelings of
happiness.

Through art, you can investigate the kind of feelings

you want to have, and where to get them. Art gives
us the chance to answer the question: What is it that
I really like?

This investigation into our likes can be done through

artworks as elaborate as a novel, as vague as an
abstract painting, as direct as punk and as subtle as a
slightly tighter pony tail.

79
 art changes People might react to an artwork
in many different ways:
how we

feel about our

feelings ‘Somebody else has the same feeling as I do. ‘
or
‘I remember this feeling.’
or
‘This is a way I can identify and locate this feeling.’
or
‘This is a place in which I can indulge in this feeling.’
or
‘This is a new feeling about something old.’
or
‘I find this feeling a relief.’
or
‘This feeling makes me aware of something that is
missing from my life.’
or
‘I now have feelings about something that never provoked
any feelings in me before.’
How we notice them, how we respond to
or
them, how we compare them,
how we make use of them. ‘This feeling makes me feel ...’ (apply any adjective).

81 82
What an artist chooses to write or
make drawings or songs about,
can draw our attention to certain
worlds. It tells us that somebody
takes something seriously,
perhaps finds it beautiful or
threatening, and invites us to “human beings
don’t see what is
rethink how we feel about it.
in front
of them

they see what is

important
The things we care about are the things we make art
about. We frame them with our attention.

Art is proof of care. to them”

CARMODY GREY, Theologian

83 84
Sometimes art is showing us what is wrong or good
or fun about the world we inhabit, but other times it’s
showing us a made up world, with, for instance, trolls
and mermaids, or magical old-lady detectives. What
does it mean to find out you like something that is out
of this world?

Certain forms of art get criticised for being escapist.

There’s an assumption that good art must always be
difficult in some way.

But what’s wrong with escaping? What’s wrong with

wanting to experience another reality that is better
than this one? What does that tell you about this one?
If you find out what ‘better’ means for you, you have a
richer understanding of the world you’re in and what
it is missing.

If you find, for example, that you’re drawn to listening

to types of music where not much happens, where
there are big open spaces, it may make you realise
that you want to live in a world where there’s less
stimulus... That’s important to know! Wanting less
stimulus can be quite a radical message in a world
where you are exposed to ten thousand adverts a day.

Art can form a contrast to the world you’re in, and

you find yourself thinking: ‘What is it about this other
world that I like, that isn’t in my world?’

85 86
 For the writer bell
hooks, art exists
to show us what is
possible - how else
things could be - not
just what is.

ART SUGGESTS NEW PLACES TO DIRECT OUR ATTENTION

87
 Look at this picture:

There are 8 billion people in the world, and they’re more

different from each other than humans have ever been
before. Turn the clock back a million years and all humans
in a given landscape are engaged in pretty similar activities,
just like all elephants in the same landscape are engaged
in pretty similar activities now. There would have been local
art differences, in habits, style, customs, but most activities of
life would have been recognisable.
is where we

share Think of us now:

dreams There are people doing jobs that most of us do not

understand at all, making items whose function is a
complete mystery to the average person (say a birefringent
tuner or some forehearth channel blocks). In fact most
of the things we use during a normal day - a computer,
the bus, a phone, the plumbing, the radio - are actually a
mystery to us. We might know vaguely how they work but
we wouldn’t know how to fix a single one of them. But we
(and nightmares) don’t need to! - because somebody else does. We are the
beneficiaries of thousands of brains, not just the one we
carry inside our skull.

91
As an example, imagine how many people are involved in
getting you to work… Let’s start with the bus to the local
station from where you’ll take the train. We’re not even at the
Who invented the bus?
Who made all the parts of the bus? station yet and you’ve
Who taught them how to do this?
Who tested the bus for safety? used the products of the
Who drove the bus to the station?
Who taught this driver how to drive? brains of literally tens
Who designed the bus driver test?
Who wrote the questions? of thousands of people.
Who scored them?
Who came up with the road signs and the traffic lights?
Who installed those?
You don’t have to carry so
Who transported them to their locations?
Who wrote the transport laws and regulations? much in your own brain.
Who made the machine that reads your transport card?
Who made the parts for that machine?
Who designed them?
Who wrote the books this designer studied from? What happened is that we went from being generalists
Who gave the designer access to them? - people who could forage, hunt, cook, make shelters,
Who maintains the library administration system? fight, and store all the knowledge necessary for those
Who stores the library data? activities individually - to people who could survive by
Who got the petrol for the bus into the country? doing pretty much just one thing: specialists.
Who invented ‘refining’ oil?
Who runs the oilfields?
Who runs the shipping networks? We can store information externally, with other
Who runs the money exchange facilities? members of our communities, countries and groups.
Who translates between the countries involved? But that brings a new danger.
Who pays that person?
Who designed the chip in your transport card? How do all these wildly different brains stay connected?
Who gathered the materials needed? What can hold us together so that the whole system
Who checked on their safety? still has some integrity, some sense of unity? So that
Who transported the materials? we can do all those complicated things together?
Who negotiated the price for the materials?

93 94
 one
says
‘I think ornament
is superfluous. I
like things made by
industrial processes
which don’t hide their
Art is one of the things that binds
origin or try to be
people together. Or on the other hand,
something else. A chair
allows them to define themselves as
is a chair so let’s enjoy
separate. It’s a way of saying: ‘I belong
it for what it is.’
with this body of ideas and feelings, not
that body of ideas and feelings.’ That
is what fashion, interior design and
popular culture is often about. What’s
the difference between a Laura Ashley
house and a Bauhaus house - what does
each choice say?
the
other
says
‘I want to surround
myself with pretty,
natural things.’

95 96
 We often use cultural artefacts (like the Rolling
Stones or Monty Python, Yoko Ono, the Riordan
family, Spock, Audre Lorde, Kafka, Conchita Wurst,
Fela Kuti, Beyoncé, Aki Kaurismäki) as identifiers of
certain hard-to-describe feeling-ideas that we want
to refer to.

Those ‘feeling-ideas’ might be things like:

feeling constrained by the conservatism of your

post-war parents, or

making fun of over-narrow reductive thinking,

wanting to imagine a world that doesn’t have

This cultural conversation - the sum total of all our simple good/bad distinctions,
opinions about what is cool and what isn’t, what is
nice and what isn’t - this is ‘the cloud’: the one that believing the human spirit is stronger than any
really matters to us. oppressive government,

Art is that cloud; a reservoir of shared experiences aligning with a non-binary approach to gender,
which give us ways of sharing complex feelings and
ideas with each other. It’s the lifeblood, the lubricant, being critical of bureaucratic procedures,
the circulatory system of community. The maintenance
of community. preferring a more rational mode of being.

Civilisation is shared imagination.

97 98
How do communities change their minds in the Feelings, especially socially shared ones, guide us
absence of clear statements on moral, legal and towards a sense of what we think is right, but they
philosophical positions that we can all take a vote on? also guide us away from things. People pay a lot of
How does it happen that societies shift their opinions? attention to what other people are thinking and they
start to feel the friction of being not fully in agreement
An example of such a shift is how not adhering with others. This can arouse feelings of anxiety or
to a traditional gender identity is becoming more triumph... but it doesn’t pass unnoticed.
acceptable in the western world. That probably isn’t
because of legislation, but because more people We are acutely aware of difference. Of our positioning
somehow or other became comfortable with the idea in the scheme of things. Art helps us identify the
of a gender spectrum (rather than just ‘male’ and sources of those feelings and anxieties, gives us a
‘female’) and with the further idea that any point on way of locating them and sharing them.
that spectrum is a place you can live.

One of the primary ways we become comfortable with

that sort of societal shift is by first of all modelling it,
or seeing it being modelled, in art.

(remember: art is safe)

Many musicians of the sixties made it acceptable for

men to embrace feelings previously regarded as ‘un-
masculine’ and also for women to embrace feelings
previously regarded as ‘unfeminine’.

This didn’t need to be widely articulated to be felt.

Instead people saw it and found it aesthetically
attractive. They felt it was right and exciting for them.

99 100
Soap operas, for example, are good places for this
kind of social conversation. They provide a safe,
neutral space through which sensitive topics can be
broached and discussed. And they are pretty much
universal. They often become important centers of
national and even international conversations.

In Hangzhou factory workers bring each other up to

date with episodes of the soaps they missed due to
revolving shift patterns. In Trinidad, a few neighbours
might show up when the soap starts. In Egypt, some
families sit down together after the Iftar meal to watch
the Ramadan soap operas. A Rwandan soap opera
that aimed to improve inter-ethnic relationships was
found most successful when the audience listened to
it in a social setting: they discussed what happened
afterwards and later reported more positive inter-
ethnic attitudes.
Why does it matter that it is fictional?
It’s a way for people to take the local cultural
temperature. By discussing the developments in their
favourite soap opera they’re adjusting themselves because:
to the new realities in their societies, and they are
thinking about it from the position of all the characters
involved in the soap opera. They are jointly involved 1. they can know about the feelings of
in thinking something through which, because it’s all involved (because they ‘know’ the
fictional, they can develop their own feelings about. characters involved) and

2. there are no real-world consequences

to their thoughts.

101 102
 being

together in art is an
agreement
to share some
feelings
with each other

That involves being

vulnerable together,
opening up to each other.
ART MAKES COMMUNITIES
Art can be a way that
people who might be
wildly different in many
aspects can share
something. At the level of
feelings we can be equals.
We all have them.

Especially in the consumer era, we’ve been encouraged

to think of ourselves as separate and independent
individuals, whereas our strength as a species comes
from our ability to continually adjust and cooperate.
Art is one of the most powerful ways of doing that, of
finding out where our common grounds and our
differences lie.

103
Central to the idea of a cultural conversation is the notion As a species, we’re so phenomenally good at control,
of surrender. Surrender is what we do when we stop trying that we tend to think it must be the right posture for
to control things, when we let something happen to us. every problem.

All humans voluntarily engage in activities that involve But genuinely novel situations don’t come with ready-
surrender - sex, drugs, religion, art - and very often made control strategies: we have to understand them
these are considered peak experiences. In each of those by letting them happen to us. If that’s too dangerous,
we deliberately put ourselves into a situation whose we can simulate them, and let the simulations happen
reward is to be carried along by something ‘bigger than to us.
us’.
That’s what we’re doing in art.
Surrender becomes an active verb. It’s a way of stepping
back from individualism, stop being “me” for a little while If we don’t learn to make a balance between control
and enjoying being “us”. This voluntary suspension of and surrender, if we only know how to control, we end
control allows us to have experiences and feelings that up in a world shrunken to the bits that we can still
are new to us, that didn’t originate in our conscious control. The raw wild world develops and leaves us
brains. Isn’t this what we also call learning? behind, playing solitaire on our phones.

105 106
In art, we try out new possible worlds and other When we think of shaping the future, we can start with
ways of being, by paying attention to our feelings ideas about ideal worlds. Utopianism is imagining we
about them. Art allows us to share complicated could come up with the final definitive idea of how
concepts and feelings with each other. This cultural the world should be, and then sit back and enjoy it.
conversation opens doors to shifts - in ourselves and But we will never succeed in that project: there will
in society. always be work to do because nothing stays the same
for long.   
Art shepherds change.

Writer Stewart Brand says of buildings:

‘You don’t finish

a building:
you start it’...

... and that is the way we could think about artworks

and, probably, our lives. As artists, we don’t finish it:
we start it. It goes on to have a life without us, a life
we didn’t predict.

Let’s start admiring gardeners as much as we admire

architects. It will always be unfinished.

109 110
Individuals articulate ideas but it’s communities that The climate crisis, the wars, the increasing inequality
produce, support and nurture them. A single flower - the world urgently needs new ways of understanding
is the product of a whole landscape. Just as there is where we are and where we could go. Art is one of
no such thing as a self-made flower, there’s no such the ways we can do this, helping us feel new futures
thing as a self-made human. and understanding the powers of community to bring
about the changes we need. Science makes models
This vision says that culture is alive and different of things so we can understand how they work. Art
every time we look at it. This is why curators have makes models of things so we can understand how
become such important figures: they are testing and we work.
exercising this process, seeing how things fit together
now and what their current cultural valency is. This Politics all too often make the individual feel left
approach thinks of artworks as ‘alive’, not ‘finished’. outside, without agency or power. We will only
succeed when we empower people - all sorts of
Most importantly, perhaps, we might start to think the people, not just the experts and professionals - all
same way about ourselves: that we are unfinished over the world to have the confidence to imagine new
(and un-finishable) beings whose task is constantly futures. Just as we need science to tell us how the
to re-examine and remix our ideas and our identities. changing world is, we need art to help find out how
we feel about it. We need those feelings to guide our
An attitude like this equips us better to deal with decisions and values. Science discovers, art digests.
planetary emergencies like climate change and the
crises of governance. For although we will certainly If we re-imagine the human project as being about
need new regulations, laws and technical advances, means rather than ends - about making a mindset
beyond all of those we will need imagination, new and a sense of sensible procedures rather than
imaginings. designing an Ultimate Heaven-on-Earth - we will get
better results.
We need to be able to visualise the sensations of
our possible futures to imagine how we can live and We need new means, not old ends.
thrive and feel competent in the new realities we face.
And we will need new models of human interaction
which teach us how to cooperate better.

111 112
 spoken word, hoodies,
scrapbooks, daydreams,
poems, operas, chanting, haiku,
songs, nicknames, labyrinths, glasses,
novels, headscarves, wood carvings, monuments,
furniture design, face painting, origami, TV-shows,
gemstone collections, fantasies, Sunday suits, podcasts,
architecture, slogans, nose rings, sidewalk chalk,
sockpuppets, signature dance moves, hijabs, self portraits,
exhibitions, tattoos, mime, memoirs,
facial expressions, manifestos, pottery, rituals,
picture frames, love songs, water ornaments, altars,
graffiti, protest posters, selfies, cartoons,
installations, typography, water colours, nursery rhymes,
creative coding, zines, flipflops, games,
herbaria,

begin new worlds

galleries,
let’s playgrounds,

shrines, festivals,
that we like
melodies, cosplay, through our
bathroom tiles, moustaches, notebooks, screensavers,
glitter, earrings, journals, museums,
eyeshadow, cakes, handshakes, gardens,
cat pictures, funny walks, psalms, specialty coffees,
memes, love letters, bandanas, sunshades,
video games, self portraits, lighting, lipsticks,
textile design, water colours, curtains, mum jeans,
documentaries, frosting, waltzing, dad jokes,
plays, needle point, drums, silverware,
wedding vows, kinetic sculptures, papier mache, sewing patterns
rhymes, movies, paper weights, audiobooks,
easter eggs, rolling ball machines, slogans, buzzwords,
puzzles, land art, printmaking, captions,
street parties, trapeze acts, murals, trends,
flower arrangements, wigs, webdesign, ice cream flavours,
clowning, illustrations, radio shows, comedy specials,
crocheting, emblems, whistling ...

113 114
 If we want a new world, we have to start making it
right now...

...actually we are making it right now in every

decision we take.

To acknowledge that is the first step to doing

it consciously. If we want a world where women
are listened to, for example, we start by listening
to women.

In whatever we are doing, we have to make it

as though we are in that new world. By making
objects, systems, experiences and collaborations
that belong to that world, it comes into being.

Live the world you want.

What kind of world would

that be for you?

115 116
A wish for this book would be that it causes us to
reassess the value of these two things:

playing and feeling.

And to realise that what we need is already inside

us, and that art - playing and feeling - is a way of
discovering it.

There’s a beautiful sculpture by Giuseppe Penone.

He took a tree trunk and cut away most of the
growth of the tree, leaving behind what had been
there when the tree was ten years old.

Inside big tree is baby tree.

Inside you is little you.
It’s always there.

Giuseppe Penone, Albero porta (Door Tree), 1993

Sequoia Wood
photo © Luigi Gariglio

Brian Eno Bette A.

119
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acknowledgments and references:
www.whatartdoes.org