SITE UPDATED 30TH MARCH 2007 THE STATE OF THE ARTS IN THE UK (A Personal Perspective)     For much of the last 200 years art (for which I mean all of the arts) has been something seen as removed from everyday life, as elite, almost as an optional extra that the majority of people were not expected to attempt to or want to access. This  was  reflected  in the  kinds  of  genre  that  have  been described as art. As  an  example,  music  is  often  spoken  of  in  academic circles as being either art music (more commonly misleadingly referred to as  classical music) or folk music (or more recently as jazz, rock, pop &c.).    However, recent changes beginning in the 1980s have coaxed the notion of  art  into  the  mainstream,  and  in  the  process  has included under that heading its folk/naive/popular forms. the changes that I am referring to are those that have assigned arts development and administration to play a part in governmental roles.    In  addition  to  the  establishment  of  the  Arts  Council,  most  local governments across the UK have at least one Arts Development Officer and some  have  whole  Arts  Development  Teams. These  vary  in terms of resources and relative funding priorities but in more than a few cases have produces excellent outcomes with respect to overall change in regional ethos, as has happened in recent years in Tower Hamlets, London (see www.towerhamlets.gov.uk ).     The realisation of the potential of bringing art to the community has led many British administational areas to place the emphasis not on the work 'art'  but  on  the  much  more  inclusive  term  'culture'  to  describe  such activities. In such quarters 'culture' and 'art' are quite rightly regarded as, if not analogous with each other, of equal worth and of a similar quality.  This progressive use of the word 'culture' is also reflected in the respective areas' mission statement. HISTORICAL ASPECTS     Prior to the Industrial Revolution and the corresponding Romantic movement in the arts the arts played a more holistic part in life and was involved with every aspect of life rather than being a nset occasion such a a play,  concert  or  exhibition. This  was  the  case  since  the  foundations of humanity. As an example, science and art were considered to be one and the same since science's beginning (sixth century BCE) up to the age of reason (late 18th century CE). When Pythagarus calculated the paths of the planets and established the Music of the Spheres he was intent on contributing to art (i.e. music) and science, not to mention religious aspects - they were all one and the same. Over 2000 years later Sir Isaac Newton related his physical theory of colour to music. These are not rare isolated examples but were the norm; they reflected humanity's way of thinking. The reason why I mention all of this is that with the continued receptiveness of the public to the 'new' ideas that havce sprung from the Arts Council Revolution, I believe that we are witnessing early steps towards a partial return to these pre Industrial Revolution/pre Romantic ideals. CROSS CULTURAL ASPECTS     In many deep rooted and traditional languages there is no word for music - not just one word in any case. This is because music is not a specific event as is a performance in this country, but is fully intergrated into the lives    ununununununununununununununun
VISUAL ART AND MUSIC IN RELATION TO SYNAESTHESIA
Synaesthesia is a condition where the senses (touch, sight, temperature, hearing, smell, pain, taste, sense of time &c.) can influence each other. Usually this is confined to two senses. The most usual example is coloured hearing or chromaesthesia. This is where sounds, often spoken vowel sounds and/or music give rise to sensations of colours which appear directly in front of the person's face or (no less vividly) inside the eyeball. Of musicians Oliver Messiaen and probably Liszt possessed the condition, and of visual artists David Hockney has it, as did Kandinsky.    Synaesthesia is a rare condition, although estimates of its incidence vary about a hundredfold from one in 250 to one on 25,000. Nonetheless it seems that many people are synaesthetic in a more abstract sense of the word; namely that they can think, almost automatically, about analogies between the senses.    Although only a minority of people perceive the world in a synaesthetic way, references of images belonging to one sensory channel are so common that we almost, if not completely, take them for granted. How often, for example, do we refer to colours as being loud or to sounds as being dull or heavy or, for that matter, 'seeing' what someone means.     A particularly common cross modal (i.e. synaesthetic) analogy is that of auditory pitch and visual luminance. This is especially extended to vowels sounds with their different pitch biases in auditory structure; a small majority of people find that the words 'bit' and 'beat' conjoure up lighter visual tones  than do 'but and 'boot' ('i' and 'ee' have higher upper pitch formants (peaks in the spectrum) than do 'u' and 'oo'). This is evidenced in a quotation give by Lawrence E Marks www.info.medyale.edu/faculty/marks.hmtl in his pioneering book 'The Union of the Senses' A five year old girl says 'My father talks like Santa Claus 'boom boom boom', dark as night, but we talk like the daytime, 'bim bim bim'.    The characteristic feature of synaesthesia, for example the colours that Messiaen  saw  as  accompanying  music,  is  their  pseudo-hallucinatory sensations.    Richard  Cytowic  in  the U.S. used  the  term  'secondary sensations' to describe these. Limiting the concept of synaesthesia to the five commonly  recognised  senses,  sight,  hearing,  smell, taste and touch,  a synaesthetic connection can be triggered by any one of these five and can produce secondary sensations in any of the other four. This gives for 20 combinations as shown below.       n Coloured hearing                       n Coloured smells                     n Coloured tastes       n Coloured touch       n Heard vision                     n Heard smells                     n    Heard tastes                     n    Heard touch                     n Smelt vision       n Smelt sounds       n Smelt taste       n Smelt touch       n Tasted vision                     n    Tasted sounds                     n    Tasted smells          n    Tasted touch                     n    Felt vision                     n Felt hearing                     n    Felt smells                     n    Felt taste
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