Like many other great artists, Richard Wagner's insight seems to have transcended the subjective or entertainment value of his art. His grasp of the "Soprano problem", for example, contributed not only to the pleasure (not to mention intelligibility) of opera, but anticipated discoveries later confirmed by science about human physiology and song.
That relationship between the artful intuition and the de jure conclusions of science is one on which Wired writer and author (Proust was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide) Jonah Lehrer elaborates in this video shot just prior to his presentation at the 2008 IdeaFestival. And it's that transition from intuition to knowing that Lehrer also picks picks up in yesterday's Frontal Cortext post, comparing, though he doesn't make the explicit connection, Wagner's quest for "total art" and the movie Avatar, which manages like the best of opera - and the best of art in general - to momentarily suspend the deliberative, self-aware processes that we use to distinguish between fact and fiction, art and science and in far too many cases James Cameron would argue, between us and them. Despite some clumsy moments in the movie (so I've heard, I haven't seen it), that unselfconscious knowing, that temporary and all-too-brief stillness, is worth celebrating.
Wayne
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