The adventures of Harshitha and tok

Social functions of art During class, we discussed about a piece of “art” submitted to the society of independent artist for an exhibition. The piece was accepted as per rule but wasn’t displayed. This was because the organisers/museum curators believed that the piece titled “fountain” did not serve a social purpose. This prompts a question :  “should all works of art present a social function?” But first, we must look into what social function are. According to “A dictionary of media and communication”, social functions are defined as “The general roles that communicative acts, or a medium of communication, can be seen as serving for society as a whole as opposed to simply for individuals.” Looking into it, I disagree with this question. A piece of art can mean anything and can express any emotion that the artist desires. I believe that artists can be selfish and make artworks that have a personal meaning to them and don’t really serve a social function. For example, a poet can w...

Background checks for artworks In my previous post, I talked about pianist and composer Brahms and the meanings behind his works. One question that popped up in my mind was this “How does knowing more about the social, cultural or historical context of a work of art have an impact on our knowledge of art itself?” I believe that knowing more about an artwork’s background is important in understanding the message that the artist is trying to convey. For example, let’s take the painting “Christina’s world”. At a first glance, the painting looks very simple and non symbolic. It’s just a painting of a girl in a dress lying on a grass field, starring at a house. But if you look up the background of the image, we learn that the girl is the painter Andrew Wyeth’s neighbour, Anna Christina Olson. Olson developed a muscle degenerative disorder that left her unable to walk. Due to her refusal to use a wheelchair, Olson usually dragged herself everywhere she went and longed to walk. Here...

How do we ascribe meaning to a particular work of art? Art is all about interpretation, a TOK concept. It’s a sort of communication between the artist and the audience where the artist shares a message, often cryptic, and the audience analyses it to find the meaning hidden in it. This question is quite a paradox, artists initially do ascribe some sort of a meaning into the work of art but so does the audience. When open to interpretation, the audience are free to come up with their own versions of the what the art means. Let’s talk about the pianist and composer Brahms. Brahms and his compositions are often viewed as a symbol of “unrequited love”. But why? Anyone that’s listening to Brahms, unknown of the story attached to it would think his songs are sad but pleasing to listen to. They can come up with theories for what happened, but only those that know the story behind it would understand the meaning. Brahms was in love with his best friend’s wife, he didn’t act on it directly b...

Evolution of art "Is art unique in being able to evolve and expand over time to include things that were entirely outside or opposed to its definition?" To me, the answer is yes. People's tastes and style has evolved from that of today's, and as the audience's opinion changes, so does the work of the artists. For the first example, let's consider music. Music is one of the oldest forms of art to exist but the type of music what parents enjoyed in the 1980s is very different from what we enjoy these days. In the 1980s, jazz and instrumental music were very popular and it was the trend those days. Nowadays, trends show that people prefer pop or rap music over jazz or instrumental.  In recent times, there have been newer methods to "create" art. Thanks to technological developments, newer gadgets like 3D printers have come into existence. 3D printers can be used to recreate all sorts of 3 dimensional objects using a computer software and it has many art...

Knowledge in art? In several asian countries, pursuing a career in arts is commonly frowned upon due to several misconceptions and stigma surrounding it. Some even argue that art is useless but it's not always the case. There is something that we can learn from every object around us, including art. This prompts the knowledge question "What kind of knowledge do you think art brings us?" To me, arts brings both personal and shared knowledge. From a piece of art work, we can analyse and learn the artist's feelings and gain an insight into their life. The interpretation that a viewer makes upon observation of the art is personal knowledge. When creating art, artists usually begin experimenting with their techniques and come up with newer styles and methods of creation. This can also be considered personal knowledge. As for shared knowledge, usually aspiring artists go to art college and major in it or work under the guidance of their professors or other artists they wish...

Maps with secret agendas When we think of maps, one of the first things that come into mind is the Mercator map- or as we know it "the world map".  According to National Geographic Society, maps are defined as "a map is a symbolic representation of selected characteristics of a place, usually drawn on a flat surface". Apart from this source, the definitions for map is very similar. One common trend that is visible is that none of them talk about how accurate a map should be. Bias is inevitable by a human. The aim and the longing for one self to be the best, the greed the humans possess, all of it causes us to be biased, intentionally or unintentionally. One such cases is the Mercator map. The Mercator map is a cylindrical map projection of earth by cartographer Gerardus Mercator. This map was revolutionary as it helped sailors and explorers with their journeys due to the map's ability to show directions accurately. But there is a huge disadvantage in the Mercato...

In TOK class, we have recently started discussing the area of knowledge "History". We first learnt that history is a branch of knowledge dealing with significant events of the past. The word "significant" holds importance here as all history is past but all past isn't history. That took us to a discussion about the differences between past and history. Simply put, the past is everything that has happened before but only certain significant/important events are considered to be a part of history. So how do we know what is considered to be history? Any event considered important by historians. Historians are humans too, which means they cannot be entirely objective to the knowledge they discover or procure. They are prone to be clouded by their opinions, judgements, bias, prejudice and beliefs. So what we study as history from these historians isn't entirely objective. However, in dire times history has been used as a way to manipulate people for someone to he...