Art, from the Medieval point of view, was a kind of knowledge in accordance with which the artist imagined the form or design of the work to be done, and by which he reproduced this form in the required or available material. The product was not called "art," but an "artifact," a thing "made by art"; the art remains in the artist.

What is a social artist? That is a good question. My sense is that it can mean a couple things.

One is an artist engaged in societal change, as an activist of some nature. Another is an artist who puts his or her work out into the world, as opposed to keeping it under wraps. Another is a specific kind of artist, like a storyteller, who maybe doesn't "perform" per se (of course boundaries are blurry), but functions through talking and verbal discourse. Another is an artist who has various schooling and training, so as to be "socialized" in the healthy sense of that term.

In general, my sense is that "social artists" can mean all of that, as well as an artist who is open to human-to-human relations, is engaged in the world, not categorically averse to the range of human experiences, and simply tries to be a healthy human, as well as a healthy artist (or at least psychotic in relatively healthy ways!)

It is funny; for whatever reason, I used to think such a description was rare. Now I'm thinking more and more the opposite. Silly me.

The IS of Art (or Integral Salon of Art) is an organic integral artist collective. The members form an experimental laboratory for integral art and integral consciousness. Artists from every medium have convened for meat-space workshops in Boulder, CO, and around the United States, to explore what it means to be an integrally informed artist in the contemporary world.

Stuart Davis founded the group, and midwifed the initial gathering. For many, the occasion was the first opportunity to share experiences with artists familiar with the integral literature. Stuart guided the weekend as an alchemical engine to push forth the creation and dissemination of integral art knowledge and practice in the world, for those fortunate to attend the gathering as well as for those beyond.

The IS of Art has been further blessed with the guidance and light of other Integral Institute consultants. None other than Ken Wilber met with the group on two occasions to discuss the integral model, integral artwork and interpretation, as well as ways to formulate an integral artistic practice. Robert Richards spoke to the group about IOS and subtle energy technology. Willow Pearson faciliated a discussion about dying via performance and song. David Deida spoke about energy body transmission, and coached two artists in real time. Ronit Herzfeld spoke about the dream and commitment it takes to organize large-scale art events that matter. These and other integral consultants have ongoing relationships with the collective.

Fundamentally, the IS of Art explores integral artist consciousness using the AQAL model, IOS, and ITP, supported by various means which include: subtle energy exercises, the Mini-Model, artist critique sessions, creativity and improvisation games, collaborative art, guided meditations, theoretical discourse, contact improv, Nia dance, group performance, online threaded discussions, community service, spontaneous art, a family vibe, collaborative cooking, howling at the moon, and much more. These explorations naturally include the creation of avant garde and integral artwork, as well as the development of coherent and constructive integral interpretations of art, both in ways relevant to the world.

The activity of the IS of Art is ongoing and ever-changing. Many members are producing art events around the country, in many major cities. Others have founded integral art salons in their home cities in order to sustain and facilitate the continued development and emergence of integral art in the world. Others are directly involved with Integral University.

What all of this can mean is that as the leading edge of art pokes forth just beyond the horizon, and just behind our every breath, the IS of Art can continue to be an alchemical engine that flutters as the Eye of a Worldwide Kosmic Art Hurricane. In essence, Stuart would have it no other way.

With his usual exquisite sense of timing, Shakespeare managed to get himself born at exactly the right moment for artistic greatness. Major art often flourishes on the fault lines between civilizations, fed by complex cross-currents between one form of life and another.

The economist J.M. Keynes once remarked that those economists who disliked theory, or claimed to get along better without it, were simply in the grip of an older theory. This is also true of literary students and critics.

The perfection of the object is something of which the critic cannot judge, its beauty something that he cannot feel, if he has not like the original artist made himself such as the thing itself should be; it is in this way that "criticism is reproduction" and "judgement the perfection of art." The "appreciation of art" must not be confused with a psycho-analysis of our likes and dislikes, dignified by the name of "aesthetic reactions": "aesthetic pathology is an excrescence upon a genuine interest in art which seems to be peculiar to civilized peoples."

The study of art, if it is to have any cultural value will demand two far more difficult operations than this, in the first place an understanding and acceptance of the whole point of view from which the necessity for the work arose, and in the second place a bringing to life in ourselves of the form in which the artist conceived the work and by which he judged it. The student of art, if he is to do more than accumulate facts, must also sacrifice himself: the wider the scope of his study in time and space, the more must he cease to be a provincial, the more he must universalize himself, whatever may be his temperament and training.

He must assimilate whole cultures that seem strange to him, and must also be able to elevate his own levels of reference from those of observation to that of ideal forms. He must rather love than be curious about the subject of his study, It is just because so much is demanded that the study of "art" can have a cultural value, that is to say may become a "means of growth." How often our college courses require of the student much less than this!

Art has also been defined as "the imitation of nature in her manner of operation": that is to say, an imitation of nature, not as an effect, but as a cause. Nature is here, of course, "Natura naturans, Creatrix, Deus," and by no means our own already natured environment. All traditions lay a great stress on the analogy of the human and divine artificers, both alike being "makers by art," or "by a world conceived in intellect." As the Indian books express it, "We must build as did the Gods in the beginning."

All this is only to say again in other words that "similitude is with respect to the form." "Imitation" is the embodiment in matter of a preconceived form; and that is precisely what we mean by "creation." The artist is the providence of the work to be done.

All of our modern teaching centers round the posed model and the dissecting room; our conceptions of portraiture are as a matter of historical fact associated in their origins with the charnel house and the death mask. On the other hand, we begin to see now why primitive and traditional and what we have described as normal are is "abstract"; it is an imitation, not of a visible and transient appearance or "effect of light," but of an intelligible form which need more more resemble any natural object than a mathematical equation need look like its locus in order to be "true." It is one thing to draw in linear rhythms and abstract light because one must; another thing for anyone who is not by nature and in the philosophical sense a realist, deliberately to cultivate an abstracted style.

Symbols are the universal language of art...the content of symbols is metaphysical....this implies for us that we cannot pretend to have accounted for the genesis of any such work of art until we have understood what it was for and what it was intended to mean.

We are thus in a position to understand in part how both the making of things by art, and the use of things made by art subserved not only man's immediate convenience, but also his spiritual life; served in other words the whole or holy man, and not merely the outer man who feeds on "bread alone." The transubstantiation of the artifact had its inevitable corollary in a transformation of the man itself.

Music critics sometimes complain about how hard their subject is to write about, and they are right: It can be murder. Music is an aural art, and must be understood aurally—and spiritually, in a way. If we could talk about it satisfactorily, we would talk, not compose, or play, or listen. Debussy once said, “Music picks up where human speech leaves off; it expresses the otherwise inexpressible.” A few years ago, the critic Bernard Holland wrote, “I am powerless to describe what music is; I can only describe the aftershocks it leaves.” I feel much the same way: A strong dose of humility, I think, is requisite in a music critic.

Nietzsche understood the universe to be fundamentally Dionysian and thus musical, characterized by passionate longing and suffering. Greek tragedy fostered nobility because it confronted its audience with this problematic truth about life, in the face of which only the most courageous could flourish. Unfortunately, Dionysian music was expelled from tragedy by the rise, in the West, of a rationalistic worldview, which saw the universe as intelligible and happiness as attainable.

Hi John,

When we start to feel into the question of a "new common practice," the main issue, as far as I can tell, is a consideration of "common to whom?" In general, commonalities are seen when a group of people, composers in this case, have adopted enough similarities that we can reasonably assert a common practice exists. One of the strengths of this issue of NMB (and all issues) is the emphasis on multi-angled examination, month after month. So I compliment the NMB staff in this regard. Really wonderful and comprehensive. Bravo.

I think we would do well to decide whether the original definition of common practice -- a shared language of harmonic procedures -- would apply to a contemporary common practice. It is my feeling that, yes, that definition can still apply generally speaking, with perhaps some minor tweaking. The tweaking that immediately jumps at me is simply to substitite "procedures" with "experience." After all, a language for "procedures" doesn't, upon examination, make a lot of sense. Languages are a collection of signs, symbols, and signifiers, which represent the inner signifieds of the person intent upon communication, and which are interpreted and understood via cultural/collective semantics. So what we are talking about is a common language for that which needs a language. Language is a complex construction for the exchange of perception. And that which needs a language is the full spectrum of consciousness, experience, and perception that breezes and storms through the perceptions of composers.

So if we are looking to understand what a common language for harmonic experience can be, again we circle back to the question of "common to whom?" Here is where the lines we draw enter into the discussion. Where are the circles of embrace, within which we want to determine commonality? The historical common practice period was determined, generally speaking, by drawing a circle around European composers, and composers educated in that harmonic tradition. Therefore, it appears that we can say that the common practice period was an ethnocentric determination. That is not to say that such a determination was in any way bad, unhealthy, or prejudicial. But it is, nonetheless, an ethnocentric definition because the circle of embrace was drawn around Europe.

If we make determinations that remain in an ethnocentrically-minded circle, then we can say, for example, that 20th C jazz composers adopted, I believe, a common practice (exceptions acknowledged) that we are understanding more and more. Of course there were differences in the ways that Ellington, Monk, and Williams composed, to use three examples of many possible. But harmonically-speaking, are their commonalities between the three? Most certainly. Each, we can say, shared a broad harmonic sensibility, spread around the culture for many to experience, and which each manifested and "brought down," to use a term from Aurobindo, into earthly existance. Of course the harmonic experience that jazz music reflects in mulitfarious ways has since spread around the globe far and wide.

The question is what else has spread around the globe, harmonically speaking? Or, what around the globe has always already been present in the harmonic experience of composers? We don't have to argue for pluralism, diversity, and differences -- that argument has been had over and over again and its over -- pluralism et al is an irreducible reality. This we know. Go into a record store and try not to be both thrilled and killed by diversity. 21st C composers are both blessed and cursed! Can I get an Amen!

In order to authentically honor what it means to have commonality amongst the harmonic experience of composers in the contemporary world, we have to reasonably assess the harmonic realities that operate the world over. In short, the new common practice, if it is to exist as an emergence, has to be worldcentric at the very least. We can draw ethnocentric circles till the cows come home. Each can be true, confirmed, and authentic, but given the information- and technologically-laden world we live in, an ethnocentric determination of a common practice is going to partialize and fragementize itself before it even gets off the ground.

So the inquiry can be: what is it that all composers experience in their "I"? What is the meshing flowing inner tapestry that captures, hooks, infuses, and tortures composers no matter what culture, and no matter what sonic-architectural tradition? What is present for composers the world around, if only for the simple reason that every composer, no matter what the stripe, paints aural wave pictures of, well, Music?

Let's explore THAT, collaboratively as well as individually. Let's start to frame, loosely, generally, but nonetheless coherantly, what the harmonic universe is that is common to ALL composers.

In my own view, composer W.A. Mathieu has provided the strongest step forward in this direction to date, with his masterful book Harmonic Experience. In fact, at one point in the text he states his intention to bring the entirety of harmonic experience (ie, worldcentric experience) into the common practice. We therefore might ground this discussion on the ground he and his colleagues have broken.

At the very least, I believe we can presume that anything less than a worldcentric analysis and model for a common harmonic experience is going to be more of partial account than it needs to be. Anything less than a model that honors and incorporates as much actual harmonic experience as possible into it appears to be simply not enough. That is the challenge we face. And if you ask me, it is a challenge that is very exciting.

So on with the adventure into harmonic phenomena!

So glad to be feeling into your energy through all of this. I do think there is an involutionary swing that can help oriente a usage of the mini-model principles in art-making.

In my view, which holds true for my own composing, each and every act of composing is an involutionary act. I have a vision (of whatever content) which I, to quote Aurobindo, "bring down" into the material realm. Spirit, which in this case is a state of consciousness with a correlate temporary body of energy, manifests from, literally, nothingness into somethingness. In my most resonant and buzzing moments, I can literally feel into the moments right before I know that the music levees are going to break. And that moment just before the crush is a moment, I believe, one can learn to hold onto and extend so that the waters back up higher and higher, so that the final release, which can also be controlled to some extent, is all the more kosmically flushed and flowing. And of course during those rushes I generally let go and ride the love-vibes of emerging Spirit, emerging inspiration.

Some would say this is a "top down" process. But I think that view is slightly inaccurate, at least as my own practice appears to go. And it is not even a bottom up process. There appears to be some truth in that, but again it is slightly inaccurate. The real swing, as best I can tell in my own creating, is best described as inside out -- or from a core outwards.

And taken one step further, if my own swing in composing is inside outwards, then my own swing in listening to others' music is outwards in. The very best music penetrates my core, forever altering and enhancing the core (cores) of my being. Much music, while I appreciate its ground value, simply doesn't grab my inner cores. This, I believe, is true for most people. And that is fine; I am often surprised by what does get in me. There is no recipe for that. Just put it out into the world, do so fully, and I believe those that need to hear the music will at some point.

All of this for me makes Ken's statement that "States and bodies are available at every level of development" all the more resonant. If I get really self-aware, I think about my own levels of development, and it isn't very interesting and I usually end up putting a creative block in my own path. No fun there.

Just to say that I have developed along the various intelligences is enough. It takes me five seconds to confirm that I'm more developed in terms of composing than I was 8 years ago. That is enough "Self-diagnosis" into my self-structure for me. But the main point is that whatever my stages of development are, I know from first hand experience that altered creative (that's redundant) states of consciousness and bodies have breezed through my awareness since I began composing. And long before. And sometimes they aren't breezes. They are hurricanes and tornados.

The point can be that creativity, the experience of it firsthand, is a state and body experience that is less dense and clunky than a garden-variery waking state and gross body; ie, everyday existance. Artists are blessed and cursed by these state-body changes. And why so many are driven to preserve them in a medium is simply to objectify through a medium that which tortures their subject, their I. Art is a medium of transmission, the absence of which often would leave artists with no other means of expression, no other language to frame that which they experience morning, noon, and night.

..."cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver." Eagleton now accuses theory of toying with esoterica while ignoring the real issues of life dealt with by literature.

Specifically, says theory's reformed bad boy, "[theory] has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil..." And that, as Eagleton says, "is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on."