Dreaming in Bytes

The brain is like a sponge, absorbing experiences during the day that are either acted on immediately, or are stored more permanently. Knowledge is constructed from this semi-permanent file – if a thing is proved right to us on a scale that satisfies our morals, we accept it as truth. There is a critical factor in this moral scale that might be defined as worry. If something is not right, it worries us and these worries come out in dreams. Dreams are sometimes our brains attempt to file these preoccupations into folders where they are most likely to be accessible for use. When an unsettling replay resists classification, a video player of visual dreaming tries to re-enact a scene to understand what occurred and learn to process an event or impression in such a way that we can pass it to our knowledge base as an evidential cohesive fact.

Some cultures believe that dreams are an alternate reality, and this to me, is akin the theory of a parallel universe – neither proved nor disproved. Some believe that knowledge is passed on in dreams, and to some extent this is true, but waking reality plays a larger part in our survival. Since knowledge is stored in an area that is accessible in dreaming, communal dreaming is possible, but the knowledge that resides there must be acquired in a waking state. It is also possible that dreams do contribute to our knowledge base, particularly when some undigested experience resurfaces in dreams, played out to a point where we understand it better. When we understand, we have knowledge – thus also contributing to the personal and communal database that helps us to survive in our world. The way in which experiences are processed has been described geographically, going back to phrenology, which was once disgraced, into the refinements of CAT scans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging. When someone says that something is “in the back of my mind”, common experience tells us that the brain cells used for storing more permanent knowledge are located deep in the cranial filing cabinet. Frontal brain cells, among other things, control our more immediate facial and lingual responses. When someone says “on the tip of my tongue” it is an indication that the frontal engine is trying to access the dustier reaches of our minds.

Filing cabinets of memory can work like a zip files, remaining compressed, occupying little space until a trigger or command asks for an unzip and the file or memory expands. Often this trigger occurs in dreaming. Memory access during a dream isn’t a perfect search, but all of our memory searches in waking time aren’t always successful. Wide awake an unexpected memory or desire can drift forward at an inappropriate moment. Unrelated events, scenes and people can populate dreams, sometimes causing perplexing combinations. Often we wake from dreams asking ourselves “what was that about?” Unless we can separate extraneous elements from relevant ones, we can’t make sense of our dreams.

Sometimes a dream - more often a nightmare - will wake us up. Before we wake, our body often tries to react to a dreamed event, and we will kick, turn and move our arms, try to speak, grunt, or shout aloud. Sometimes we enter a half waking limbo, where we know we are dreaming, wish to wake up but can’t, and consciously try to move or make a noise that will wake us. Informed by the body of an need, our knowledge base tells us that we are dreaming as the body struggles to overcome sleep paralysis. Our survival instinct knows that remaining in a panic state for a long time it will be damaging to the mind, and therefore signals the brain to push us up into consciousness. This struggle can also be thought of as the workings of the frontal brain and the rear brain to communicate. It is now widely accepted that brain stem at the back of the brain controls the motor functions like breathing, heartbeat etc, so the so-called survival instinct is based here. Since messages travel across protein networks it takes time to assemble the appropriate files to travel the circuits from the back to the middle knowledge base to the frontal cortex. It can take a few seconds to wake up from a nightmare. We are after all, humans, not computers.

Generally our brain tries to do what is best for our body. The body is the vessel of the brain. Included in this instinctual health program, are dreams. Our mind tries to digest our experiences in an automatic defrag which takes place every night. For those unfamiliar with defrag, it is short for defragmentation, which attempts to re-file stray bits of information so that there are more blocks of stable usable space available for new memories. Unless we defragment our brains for a period in every 24 hours, we do not remain effective, rational, or sane in our waking lives.

There are computer programs that suggest the user delete information that is not connected to any usable material or that has not been used for a long time. Much like a computer, our brains sometimes tell us that a certain bits of information are gone, permanently deleted, but this is not actually the case. Microsoft and others would have us believe that deleted information is unrecoverable, but those who know computers on more than a superficial level, know that everything which was once there, is still there. This is also true for the brain. We don’t really forget, we only can’t remember. Sometimes what we thought we had forgotten will return to us at unexpected moments. Sometimes lost memories return in dreams.

Dreams are natural, useful, healthy, elusive things. We benefit by understanding them. The antidote to personal fear is in personal self-knowledge. The antidote to communal fear lies in understanding our world. Dreams help us in all realms.

The Feelgood Virus Rules the West

What has happened? These days “feeling good” has become a motive in western society to buy, act, and behave. The criteria for whether or not a thing has value, is whether it feels good or it feels bad. The antithesis of this is that if something doesn’t feel good it has no value.

The problem with this credo is that nothing has ever been achieved which advanced the well being of mankind without some struggle – and struggle doesn’t feel good. Schools often teach that correcting children might stifle and therefore damage their creative spirit, so we must always praise everything a child does. This is not to say that criticism and punishment should flourish, but a balance between praise and criticism is helps us to understand the world.

It may be that a prosperous time post war time in which parents and society indulged their children by giving them “all the things I never had” spawned the “Me” generation. If you indulge a child too much he will come to expect everything he wants and that he is the center of the world and is disappointed when experience tells him otherwise. The “me” generation couldn’t come to terms with the fact that we are not the center of everyone else’s world. Those born after the Second War have been taught to follow their own dreams at the expense of all else. The resulting isolation of individuals in a “me” society has been exacerbated by indulgent parents, and tolerant society, by television, danger on the street corner, drugs, and the culture of fear, until almost an entire society is composed of unconnected individuals who can only substitute real life with virtual belonging.

There seem to be exceptions to this world of isolation such as participation in team sports (only as a player however, since a spectator retains his isolation), but even the players are taught that their motive for playing is that it “feels good to win”. Feelgood victory dominates pep talk.

Some people feel good belonging to something. Perhaps they are fans of a certain television program, yet they watch television isolated from their fellow addicts. They participate in this form of virtual belonging because it makes them feel good but in fact they are only spectators.

Pop music and films are geared to sales and encourage consumers to buy products to take home. People still go to concerts, clubs, and movies, but the driving force behind the production of these commodities is to sell the products for people to take home and “feel good” in isolation.

The experimental drug culture from the ‘60’s onward encouraged drug taking as a way of “feeling good”. Of course taking a drug is a personal experience; the user is the only one who feels the effects. Observers might see the results, but the experience is basically internal to the user. Drugs are taken for escape and entertainment. Alcohol is the same.

In many other societies around the world people have more pressing needs than “feeling good” so the idea that this “feeling” is a reason for making decisions, is viewed as a somewhat obscene Americanism. Someone who must expend hard earned energy to search out food to give them the strength for the next day doesn’t jeopardize his own life by basing his decisions on what feels good. Most other societies have a much more solid foundation on which to make decisions, such as whether an act is in harmony with the known world and is in harmony and balance with nature. Western society’s soul has come adrift from its anchorage, so it searches worldwide to find something to fill the gap. That gap for many in the west is the hole left in Christianity by the battering it has taken from science. Church makes some people feel good, but many are no longer satisfied with traditional answers to the inevitable questions posited by science.

If a man in a poor country has scraped together enough money to buy a product, his choices would probably be based on factors such as usefulness, reliability and price. He might base his decision on what might help himself or his family, but to chose something because it “feels good” would be the least of reasons for making a choice. There is the indefinable factor of something’s rightness (its usefulness, reliability and price) making if feel good, but the siding only with the wow factor would be considered foolish.

The western marketing colossus attempts to create needs where none previously existed by exploiting human characteristics such as pride, envy, and a desire to feel superior. Television, which is watched worldwide, is an ideal medium for insinuating these new needs into every level of society. Feeling good is an easy sell, but the underside to the pitch is that we think that need these things that make us feel good as a way to cover up emptiness.

This is not to say that man doesn’t have a desire to feel good, but to believe that this desire is a philosophy, a way of life, or a reason for action, makes for an empty life spent traveling between one indulgence and another; an existence without heart, spirit or soul.

Sculpture in Public Places

Sculpture has been used in public places since the socialization of man. Tribes practiced cave painting, carved totems in wood & stone. Egyptians had obelisks, Greeks constructed temples with statues, Romans constructed arches and colossi; kings built monuments to their battles and themselves. In the democratic age, unexpected icons like the Eiffel Tower, The Statue of Liberty, and The Space Needle appeared, celebrating industry and nationhood and science. Once given a voice in what we build, use, and keep, we base some of our decisions on aesthetic appeal. We prefer a pleasing living environment, often imitating nature, expressing our history, culture and community in choosing our surroundings.

Large European cities like London, Paris, Rome or Berlin, contain buildings, monuments & sculptures from every era. People appreciate the mixture of old and new. To look around Rome and see the stone bones of an empire, flanked by Fascist parade avenues, catholic rich houses, and human scale squares which celebrate an apex of classical marble sculpture, with an overlay of trattorie, souvenirs, chic boutiques, neon, noise, motorbikes and all the racket which goes on in the making and spending of daily bread, is to realize that a lively city like Rome is not just the sum of its past.

Anyone who has ever lived in the country knows the shock of a trip to the city and the feeling of being pressed in by and towered over by buildings. Humans need a bit of open space. For Europeans this meant saving or reclaiming a bit of land for squares and public parks. Often these spaces were donated by city benefactors, or in the case of many European public parks, were ex-royal ground. North American cities developed as organically as European models, first one structure, then many on a central street. There was plenty of good land in North America – why construct a city on a hill – there were no threats to outward expansion. As cities grew large enough that it wasn’t practical for a cities inhabitants to travel far, governments created public parks. Parks need trees and open space. These parks are patterned on European parks, which are meticulously designed - even the trees are chosen. Capability Brown re-designed the English vision of the landscape. Many of us live in cities, larger or smaller, and all alike are bombarded with sensory input – that’s the stress and the joy of living in a city. If we accept that we live and work in crowded public spaces, we should try to have some input on what those spaces will be like. There are many places to locate sculpture in both a park setting and a street setting. A public park is an easy place to choose sculpture for – it is already a beautiful spot – even a ragamuffin of a sculpture would look handsome there. It may become a favourite or go unnoticed, or become universally disliked. Sculptures are removable, as all dictators must know.
Street settings for sculpture are more problematic and have more interesting solutions. West Berlin and East Berlin were both restructured after the Second War, so could qualify as a model about how to incorporate sculpture into a modern city. Wide country streets in the West became main thoroughfares with large football field intersections. Squares are created in the middle of this traffic flow. A Roman fountain would be lost and in the space. West Berlin also has a drainage problem, calling itself the Venice of the North, and supports a network of above ground waterpipes, which have been counterpointed at one intersection by Adolf Behrens “Berlin”, an untwisted knot of fluted stainless tubes. Startling contrast to the sad truncated tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.
East Berlin created its peripheral version of Soviet chic, with interminable rectangular blocks of buildings with windswept spaces between them, which for some hold a severe beauty. Yet the East German vision of the retro space in its TV Tower remains a landmark. From almost anywhere in the city you can find your direction by it – like navigating by the moon. It also fits because in it’s situated on a launching pad sized Alexanderplatz. It serves as a point of reference and as a meeting point. Appropriate sculpture can add scale, history, mystery, and importance to a place. A sculpture however, must be chosen to have particularity and universality. It should represents its era and also have longevity, not only in structure, but also in the imagination.
Equipping our public space to be more livable has a price. Someone has to buy, install, and maintain the thing. Again, scale is the key. Architects and planners now create space in front of large buildings by using corner cutoffs and building setbacks. This creates enough space for a small square. Depending on the size of the found space, benches & shrubs are possible. Sculpture needs less space and is less expense.
Sculpture in public places democraticizes art by bringing it outdoors. Living with art is no longer a preserve of the privileged. Yet in a rather American way, we tend to segregate our duties and pleasures. For open space go to a park, for shopping go to a mall, for work go to a building, for sport go to a complex, for art go to a gallery. This segregated approach makes every facet of every activity suffer by dislocating it from everything else relevant in life. A sane healthy life is an integrated life, both privately and publicly.

Public parks work, people need them. Sculpture parks however, are a step backward as they reinforce this eliteness and segregation. We should surround ourselves with some of the best examples of what artists, sculptors, architects and town planners can produce. We should see beauty in the street, the bank, the shopping mall, and work place with out having to make a trip to a museum.

Old can mix with new, different interests create diversity. Juxtaposition creates a powerful effect. Look at I.M. Pei’s glass & steel pyramid in front of the Louvre, Botero’s chubby bronze characters along a Florentine courtyard, downtown Chicago’s cow as character craze with noble creatures stuck in windswept concrete, Joe Farfards’s “Mind’s Garden” circular filigreed iron corral in a flat Regina field, the HSBC atrium in Vancouver which barely contains Alan Storey’s precise monumental motion “Pendulum” This behind glass solution solves the problem of vandalism and protection from weather. Can and should sculpture be protected from being climbed on and touched? The original of Michelangelo’s David kept indoors. The Copenhagen harbour mermaid has been damaged at least eight times but has always been put right. Like painting over graffiti, repairing damage and supporting creative alternatives to youthful self-expression is good policy in maintaining any structure.

Much effort and expense is often been channeled toward winning garden awards, yet in the north, flowers bloom only half the year. The same applies to fountains – water freezes. Sculpture thrives in all weather. Government and business often overlook the practical and beautiful role well chosen installations have in making a place attractive and memorable. Sculpture is an ideal candidate for lifting any location from banal to sublime.

A wealth of locations exist, but local governments, when deciding how allocated money should be spent, often overlook the practical and beautiful role in sculpture has in making a place important. Businesses could be accommodating. Even citizens groups, which have a tendency to celebrate themselves by erecting boosterist welcome signs, somewhat reminiscent of frontier town timber gateways, could spend the same time, money and effort installing something that transcends politics and commerce.

Technology as the fifth element

Men once thought that life was based on four elements – earth, air, fire & water. We have now splintered these elements into particles so tiny that the cornerstones of primal sense have lost meaning to us. Yet these four elements continue to exert a hypnotic influence on humans. I can gaze into a fire, watch the river run, be moved by the spirit of a landscape, be shocked by the power of air, as easily as I can move through cyberspace being in turns contemplative, spiritual, stunned, enlightened. In the 20th century a new equally attractive element took shape as new technologies created first radio, then TV, and now the internet. These have become repositories of knowledge, thought, beauty, power and creation, as earth, air, fire, & water once were to ancient man.

These days the ubiquity of TV & internet has made the world a village where all is technically accessible to everyone. There are those who lament this fact – anti-global demonstrators who never asked a man in a third world village for his opinion. I have seen people in many countries watching television, and what they watch is a combination of local TV and global TV - including soap operas from everywhere. These soap operas are watched and understood by women everywhere for the same reasons – fantasy and escape. It is not true that if an Italian woman watches The Bold & the Beautiful, Italian culture will be destroyed. The world of soap operas is as foreign to an Italian housewife as it is to any average American.

Anti global protesters take great offence to McDonalds opening on every corner in every part of the world. The fact that a McDonalds exists on my corner, hasn’t changed my eating habits – I choose not to eat there. Putting a McDonalds on a corner in Rome doesn’t spell the end of Italian cooking. The anti’s assume that people all over the world are not capable of making their own choices – that when confronted with a traditional dish or a hamburger, people will choose hamburgers. This is offensive, like saying that women should be covered from head to toe because the sight of her skin might stimulate man’s appetite, so much that he loses control of himself. This insults both women and men.

The anti movement would also argue that multinationals use clever brainwashing techniques in marketing to the have nots. I am a have not, and I am not fooled by advertising - I buy or don’t buy items based on a variety of factors – the least of which is that I have seen something advertised on television. I believe that if you see an ad on television, it is never for something you need. If ad was for something essential, the expensive hard sell wouldn’t be necessary. To say that obesity epidemic in America is caused by the companies who sold the food to the fatties is a red herring. The truth is that the cultural identity of America is consumerism, which prefers that individuals don’t think for themselves. Governments collaborate with multinationals in keeping individuals on the straight & narrow. Governments and companies prefer citizens who do as they are told, and both use fear to enforce this. Advertisers exploit human weaknesses, including the desire to feel superior to others. Yet to say that these marketing techniques will eliminate cultural identity, insults the intellect of men and women worldwide. Rather than cry foul when multinationals attempt to export consumerism, energy would be better spent by individuals examining their own choices, and attempting to understand why so many unsatisfied souls become victims. How has shopping become a cure for unhappiness? I sometimes look at shopping malls on a Sunday as the new churches, and think that goods are the new god.

Our electronic technology has pushed us ahead at warp speed to absorb information and make choices based on what we know. For our survival and advancement we have always exploited information passed on from others – always building on the shoulders of the past. Television and internet are simply tools for passing on memes in an accelerated fashion. When an ancient man passed the concept of the wheel on to his tribe, were there protesters who claimed that the wheel would ruin their world? Possibly. Did every anti globalization protester walk to his demonstration? Probably not.

Our electronic technology has the same power as any of the four cornerstone elements, and like the originals is an element which we can use to survive and improve our lives. We should understand the harmful consequences of consumerism by looking at our own society, even as we are in the process of exporting it, and talk with those who are new to working in this new element so that they don’t fall into the same traps as we have done. Perhaps some bright spark on the other side of the world has an antidote which will undo the sickness the bigger and more is better, yet a way which ensures enough for all, without killing the messenger in the process.