Fine Art falls... as will humanity...

For my entire life I have viewed art as a break from meaningful and boring subjects such as science, mathematics, and history... I never really put any more weight into the subject, thinking it was something frivolous and lazy, and chalked it up to a profession pursued by hippies.  This all started to change with my 4 years spent in the U.S. Army. As a PSYOP soldier, under USASOC, I was deployed in support of OEF-Philippines. My area of operations, throughout my 2 deployments, was the island of Mindanao and the entire Sulu Archipelago... PSYOP focuses heavily of transmitting messages via a whole array of mediums ranging from leaflets, radio broadcasts, SMS texting, T.V. spots, along with many others. Sadly, I never played a role in the creation of said products, but collaborated base concepts through the collection of cultural expertise and the passive collection of intelligence.

Kate Macdowell

I started to understand that the work that went into a product was uncanny. To give you some idea, the target audience focus ranged from a general populace level to a specific village, taking into account more than 8 different dialects. A shit ton of analysis had to be compiled before we could even think of pushing product, because good PSYOP could win a war, bad PSYOP could start one. The experience subtly exposed me to art and its effect on the human psyche; the manipulation of human perspective,  impacting and swaying the hearts and minds of a specific target audience to behave according to U.S./PI interests.

Fast forward 6 years>> I'm now in pursuit of a degree, and this semester I decided to take a few art classes to maintain/boost my GPA. In my two years, I have never been challenged, but these art classes have changed that comfortable position into a self-seeking crucible of sorts. I've started to understand common subjects as cerebral and mundane, and that they are easily conquered by the manipulation of formulaic responses and language. Mathematical equations are pragmatic puzzles, Science stresses these same puzzles as well as memory recall, and subjects like history, humanities, or literature stress memory recall and the manipulation of literal knowledge to express what you have learned (term papers). Art is something completely different... Something beyond all other forms of subject...

Art brings to light one of life's true challenges: the manipulation of one's self instead of the manipulation of others. The endless pursuit of transitioning your being into an aesthetically pleasing form. This challenge is further complicated by it's perceived beauty by exterior individuals.

Fine Art is sadly being overlooked by many institutions as non essential, due to there not being any real stable employment in the art world. Technology is rapidly consuming our art departments, encroaching upon hammer and chisel, ceramics, printmaking, and figure drawing. The reason behind the shift is the existing job market for graphic arts, drafting, and advertisement. More money is allocated to said programs based on this principle alone.

The loss of ground, in my opinion, is devastating. Technology negates the ugly stress on one's hands, mind, and body. It takes the challenging inner struggle of self accomplishment, and dilutes it into yet another subject filled with cerebral solutions.

Everyday humanity shrinks into this shadow of technological advancement. I take a shit, the toilet flushes itself. I wash my hands, the sink discharges soap without touch. The water turns itself on and off without touch, and I don't even have to unroll the paper towel to dry my hands. The door opens itself. The list goes on... We're drowning ourselves in it. The only saving grace would be some sort of applied balance. We need to be well rounded and seasoned, not square and bland.

Pulse-^-